A low charging hum rose simultaneously from all around the factory.
That was not the sound of ordinary rifles charging.
Tsukishiro Yanagi was a former officer.
Having participated in war, she was all too familiar with that sound—it was the sound of a heavy mech’s core battery releasing energy during weapon warm-up.
And not just any heavy mech.
The kind capable of easily blasting through an armored vehicle.
The steel door was violently pulled open from the outside.
Sunlight poured in.
Tsukishiro Yanagi’s pupils contracted to pinpoints in that instant.
Lined up neatly in the open area outside the factory were four heavy Autonomous Mechs.
Their black armor reflected a cold metallic sheen beneath the Hollow’s dim light.
Each one possessed a pair of electrified heavy fists crackling with energy.
The red paint scheme identified them as anything but standard models.
“Typhon Destroyers.”
When Tsukishiro Yanagi spoke the name, her voice was so quiet that only she could hear it.
The Typhon was a close-combat Autonomous Mech that completely abandoned ranged firepower.
Compared to the Challenger and the Striker, the Destroyer’s defining features were its red paint scheme and a pair of fists capable of unleashing tremendous electrical power.
She had only ever seen one actual unit in the Defense Force’s Special Modification Department.
Just what kind of influential force did the enemy belong to, to be able to deploy four of them at once?
As for their combat capability, Tsukishiro Yanagi had tested them in combat simulators before.
Even in a simulation room, where costs and consequences didn’t matter, dealing with two simultaneously had already been her limit.
Yet now there were four.
And in addition to them, a combat detachment numbering over a hundred personnel…
Her heart sank.
This wasn’t a simulation battle.
Behind her were still more than a dozen non-combatants.
If she went all out, she might have a way to destroy all four mechs.
But afterward, she would lose all ability to sustain further combat.
In other words, even if she played her trump card, at best she would unleash one burst of power before waiting for death.
“Asaba!”
“Already prepared, Vice Section Chief.”
Perched by the factory window ledge, Asaba Harumasa wasted no words.
His bow had already been split into twin blades, their edges reflecting the flickering arcs dancing across the mechs’ fists.
“You’d better hold on until I bring the Section Chief back.”
Tsukishiro Yanagi pushed her thumb against the guard of her weapon.
“Don’t underestimate me.”
The instant the words left her mouth, her heel traced a half-circle across the ground.
The sound of her Naginata leaving its sheath was soft.
As soft as the first crack forming in a sheet of ice.
Her stance changed.
No longer the half-crouched defensive posture she had maintained earlier, ready to retreat at any moment.
Now her center of gravity leaned slightly forward.
The spear tip pointed downward.
The blade faced outward.
The attack posture used by the Defense Force’s Close Quarters Combat Squad only during the final five seconds before engaging the enemy.
“Hey, hey…” Harumasa’s mouth twitched.
“Didn’t we agree that you just needed to hold them off—”
He never finished.
Because Tsukishiro Yanagi had already charged out.
Not toward the interior of the factory.
But directly at the first Typhon Destroyer stepping through the entrance.
The enemy commander reacted quickly.
The moment Tsukishiro Yanagi moved, flames burst from the thrusters beneath all four mechs.
The hundred-man detachment raised a wall of ballistic shields in the front ranks.
Their tactical formation shifted from encirclement to a wedge.
The tip of the wedge pointed directly at the factory entrance, intending to use the mechs’ firepower to crush the two people inside before they could leave the entry corridor.
But they had miscalculated one thing.
Tsukishiro Yanagi had no intention of defending the doorway.
She was charging out through it.
Since the enemy intended to annihilate them here, someone had to break through.
As long as one person escaped, the enemy might be forced to abandon their interception operation out of fear of whoever that person might bring back.
Under these circumstances, whether it was Asaba Harumasa or Tsukishiro Yanagi who escaped, neither outcome was something the enemy could afford.
Of course, because the factory was so large, while Tsukishiro Yanagi was talking with the enemy, Asaba Harumasa had directed the Investigators to hide in the partitioned rooms on the second floor.
But no matter how large the factory was, it would not conceal them for long once faced with a thorough search by over a hundred people.
The rebels immediately understood their intentions as well.
Unlike that mysterious rat who had appeared from nowhere, either of these two could immediately summon New Eridu’s youngest Void Hunter.
If either one escaped without hesitation, then the dozen or so non-combatants would no longer matter.
“You must stop them!”
The commander shouted.
The Typhon Destroyers reacted far faster than human soldiers.
The two mechs in the front row completed threat assessment within fractions of a second.
All four electric fists charged simultaneously.
High-voltage arcs crackled between the gaps in their armored gauntlets, ionizing the air across the entire open area and filling it with a pungent scorched odor.
The mech on the left attacked first.
Before its fist even arrived, electrical arcs had already torn through the air.
The ground half a meter in front of Tsukishiro Yanagi exploded, blasting up a fan-shaped barrage of shattered stone.
Tsukishiro Yanagi shifted half a body-width aside a fraction of a moment before the debris erupted.
It wasn’t an evasion.
It was an entry.
Her left foot stepped precisely into the vacuum created when the mech’s arm began retracting after its punch.
Her Naginata swept upward from below.
The lightning-wreathed blade scraped across the mech’s forearm armor.
Rather than attempting to cut through the composite plating directly, she guided the blade along a seam between armor plates.
The tip precisely severed an exposed hydraulic line.
The hiss of hydraulic fluid spraying from the rupture sounded like a short scream.
The mech’s right fist instantly lost pressure.
The electrical charge building within the gauntlet backflowed into the arm itself, detonating a burst of blue-white sparks at the elbow joint.
But there were still three more.
The mech on the right had already adjusted its attack angle.
It didn’t punch. The source of this chapter is g.com.
It simply rammed forward.
A Typhon Destroyer weighed over three tons.
At that mass, no attack motion was necessary.
A frontal collision alone was enough to turn any unprotected human into a smear.
Tsukishiro Yanagi did not retreat.
Her toes pushed off the damaged mech’s knee armor.
Borrowing the force, she launched herself into the air.
The right-side mech’s heavy fist swept beneath her feet.
The residual electrical arc burned through the hem of her uniform, leaving behind a charred black tear.
Twisting her waist in midair, she slashed horizontally with her Naginata.
Her target was not the mech.
It was the infantry behind it.
The blade struck no one.
But the soldiers holding ballistic shields instinctively flinched.
That single hesitation.
A figure shot out from a broken second-floor factory window.
No.
Flew out.
Asaba Harumasa’s silhouette traced an arc through the dim sky, one so flat it was nearly parallel to the ground.
He never landed.
His toes tapped the shoulder of the damaged left-side mech, using the recoil to launch himself toward the rear factory wall.
“Stop him!!”
The commander’s voice rang out from behind the infantry formation, rising an entire octave.
The marksmen in the rear immediately elevated their firing network toward the space above the wall.
Energy beams crisscrossed through the air, weaving a net of light.
But Harumasa’s movement wasn’t linear.
He kicked off the wall and changed direction to the left.
Then he borrowed momentum from an abandoned material transport pipe and ricocheted to the right.
Every change in direction occurred at the exact instant before the firing net could lock onto him.
But the mechs reacted even faster.
Of the four mechs, the only one that had remained on the perimeter and not participated in the assault on Tsukishiro Yanagi—the one stationed behind the formation from the start—activated all of its thrusters the moment Harumasa vaulted over the wall.
It didn’t pursue him.
Instead, it smashed directly through the factory’s outer wall from the flank and moved into the space between Harumasa and the wall.
Harumasa had been cut off.
The mech’s electric fists sealed the route beyond the wall.
Behind him, the infantry were already recalibrating their fire.
Caught in the middle, his only cover was a crumbling old support pillar that looked ready to collapse at any moment.
Meanwhile, Tsukishiro Yanagi’s situation was no better.
Two mechs were suppressing her in alternating turns.
Although she had disabled one mech’s right arm, its left arm still functioned.
That mech changed its attack pattern.
Rather than throwing punches, it used its electrical arcs for close-range area discharges, preventing her from closing the distance.
The other mech alternated between charges and heavy punches, sealing off her retreat and forcing her to constantly maneuver through the narrow gaps between the two machines while steadily draining her stamina.
At the same time, the infantry detachment was beginning to flank from both sides.