At my words, the antennae shorty—whose name I still hadn’t asked, come to think of it—jumped up from her seat in alarm. Our contract stipulated that, as part of the payment for spending the night on the farm, they would help defend it if a hostile force attacked during their stay.
「Then we need to get our defenses ready! Why are you being so relaxed about it?」
「There’s still plenty of time before they get here. We’re fine. But their weapons… They’ve got clubs, spears, and bows, and barely any armor… Hell, they’re barely wearing proper clothes…」
「Ugh, could they be Predators? How many are there?」
「Thirteen from the north, eighteen from the east. What the hell are these guys? What do they think they’re gonna accomplish with gear like that?」
「Roaming cannibals. They use simple tools and have some intelligence, but there’s no talking to them. Rumor has it they’re some kind of biological weapon, though no one knows if that’s true. Everyone who’s gotten close enough to investigate has ended up in their bellies or turned into their clothes.」
「You’ve gotta be kidding me…」
Even when people put corpses to ‘good use,’ you don’t see anything quite that direct very often these days. Well, in a sense, space pirates find even more ways to put people to ‘good use’… Before they turn them into corpses, that is.
「Why the hell are things like that… Why haven’t people made more progress wiping them out?」
「They’re all males, right? They kidnap females from human-based races and breed ridiculously fast. Everyone here except you is a woman. If we lose, this place will make a perfect breeding ground for them.」
「That’s one hell of a way to reproduce… Between them and you, is this planet full of human-based races with extreme breeding habits?」
「Don’t lump us in with those things! That’s a hell of an insult!」
「All right, all right. I take it back. Sorry.」
I apologized to the antennae shorty, who had thrown up her arms in anger.
Yeah, maybe that was a little tactless. But needing the opposite sex from another race to reproduce sounds pretty much the same to me… Whatever. Leaving these girls and the big-horned women aside, I can’t let that happen to Erika. If there’s no talking to these things, fighting’s our only option.
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「Can you hear me? They’ll be in your range soon.」
「I hear you. But are you sure you’ll be all right? Even if there are fewer on your side, fighting them alone is reckless. And you sent the combat mechanical dolls over to us too.」
「It’s fine. No problem.」
According to Spica—the antennae shorty’s name—they were considerably tougher and more resistant to pain than ordinary humans. But from the physical capabilities she had described, they were, at best, about on par with flesh-and-blood humans worked into a frenzy by combat drugs. The source of this chapter is novelping(.)com.
Clubs, spears, knives, bows… Whatever they’re carrying, I’ve gotta say they’re a little short on what it takes to kill me.
「Erika. Don’t leave the prefab.」
「Glen-san… I can fight too.」
「Maybe I’ll have you do that someday, but that day isn’t today. Stay put. Understood?」
「…Yes.」
She sounded a little dissatisfied, but Erika was an honest, sensible woman. Now that she had agreed, she probably wouldn’t do anything rash.
「Here they come.」
They began emerging in a stream from behind the rocks to the north.
Hmm. I should clear the surroundings a little more so I can make proper use of the turrets’ range. Better keep the bots harvesting trees and breaking down rocks.
「SOMETHING THERE!」
「NOT FEMALE! KILL IT!」
Having spotted me, they pointed and started making a racket.
The translation implant’s doing its job, but damn, this is bad. Couldn’t you say something that suggests a little more reason or intelligence?
「KILL IT!」
「DIE!」
「Yeah, I’m not dying.」
I walked toward them, batting arrows aside, knocking them down, and smashing them out of the air with my hands.
Arrows really are slow. Way too slow. Sure, dozens or hundreds flying at me all at once would be a problem, but a few whizzing over here and there aren’t a threat at all.
The staccato sound of gunfire began in the distance. Looked like the fighting had started on the other side too.
「DIIIE!」
The spear-carrying man at the head of the charge hurled his weapon at me without breaking stride, so I caught it and threw it back. The crude spear shot through the air with an explosive crack, punched straight through the man who had thrown it, then buried itself in the chest of the man running behind him and sent him flying backward. This story is hosted at novelping . com.
The sight drew their eyes and stopped them in their tracks. In that instant, I kicked off the ground and closed the distance in a single rush.
The force of that kick tore up the ground… I’ll have to get a work bot to fill in the hole later.
「Hmph!」
I plunged into their midst and drove my fist into the center of the nearest stupid-looking face.
「GYOPAH!?」
My fist easily destroyed the target’s face and blew his entire head off with a wet sound.
The trick to keeping your fist and arm from getting unnecessarily dirty is to pull back ‘halfway’ instead of following all the way through. Follow through, and you get chunks of meat and blood all over your arm. It’s gross.
「K-KILL—!?」
「Shut the hell up.」
A face. The center of a breastbone. The base of a skull. I drove fists and knife-hand strikes into them one after another.
For a human-based life form, having the brain destroyed along with the skull meant certain death. The same went for having the heart crushed through the breastbone. Destroying the medulla and its central nervous connections would, at the very least, render them incapable of action. It was almost always fatal, though.
And the strength of my cybernetic limbs, combined with my reinforced fists, made all of that ridiculously easy.
「ABAH!?」
「GUGEH!?」
「GOEAGH!?」
Without a word, I methodically swung my fists and knife-hands, occasionally throwing in a kick as I destroyed them without pity or mercy. Once I decided to kill, I saw it through.
「Eek…!?」
Having watched their entire front line get wiped out, the archers lost their nerve and began to flee. I caught each one with a flying kick to the back, knocked him flat on his face, and stomped through the back of his head.
Flying kick, stomp. Flying kick, stomp. Flying kick, stomp.
Tedious work like this makes me think I should’ve brought a laser gun, at least. But the point this time is to show off what I can do physically. Even if it is a bit of a pain.
Now then, the gunfire’s stopped too. Looks like they’re finished over there. Oh, right. I need to dispose of the bodies and collect the loot, just in case. Though it all looks like stuff no one’s gonna want to buy.