The windows shattered on either side of the nearly-deserted last train. Even if it was a slow train, it was still moving quite rapidly, so how had someone managed to land on the side and jump in? The assailants who entered in unison were a never-before-seen form of Repliglass, which used silicon stem cells. And yes, not even Kyousuke and Biondetta had seen this variety before.
Their overall silhouettes resembled heavily-armored humans, but the five wings on their backs stood out prominently. Kyousuke narrowed his eyes when he saw that back equipment that rotated like a helicopter. Those bizarre wings did not exist in the natural world.
Also, their extremely enlarged arms came apart like unfurling ribbons to form seven tentacles each.
“…Released Creation, huh?”
Whether a robot, an android, or a replicant, the primary purpose of manmade machines was to reproduce the structure of other living things. The greatest examples were the robots with humanoid bodies or computers with human thought processes which were seen in SF.
But just as tanks and cranes did not resemble any living creature and just like the giant robots in fictional stories were not even remotely practical, people’s imagination could sometimes surpass the limits of the natural world.
The same was true of Repliglass.
They had a variety of advantages, but the biggest was how difficult their movements were to predict. Using the traits of existing plants and animals gave you a treasure trove of data to work with, but it was also easy to imagine just how a mantis model, grasshopper model, or hornet model would move. A Released Creation did not have that. And in battle, calmly observing and putting together a new plan would require placing the chips of human lives on the table. When faced with bizarre, never-before-seen, and supersonic movements, waiting was the same as standing still while you were killed instantly.
Yes.
Unless your brain had greater calculation power than a supercomputer like Kyousuke’s did.
“…I see.”
Without any actual data to work with, he could only make general calculations, but with that much Repliglass muscle fiber bundled together into those tentacles, they could likely make jabs that surpassed Mach 2.5. He estimated them to be heavily-equipped models that weaponized their power and speed which could grab and crush their enemy with instantaneous speed rivalling a fighter jet’s top speed and could knock down every last bullet when a Gatling gun was fired at them head-on.
Once they stood on the same stage as you, the Repliglass had essentially already won, whether they wanted to restrain you or simply behead you. The end effect would be little different from having them move freely while time was frozen for you.
(They’re dangerous, but I guess they aren’t going to give us a chance to stop the train.)
But Kyousuke responded with a disinterested sigh.
“Biondetta. Up above.”
“Yes, sir.”
Despite her miniskirt, the waitress spread her feet wider than her shoulders while pulling out her silver Blood-Sign (which was also a bolt-action sniper rifle) and aiming it toward the ceiling as instructed. She then fired a powerful shot. The recoil caused her long hair to flutter and her large breasts to jiggle while she pulled the cocking lever to load the next round and fired again. Her miniskirt fluttered. She repeated the action a third, fourth, and fifth time…
Something flowed by outside the speeding train’s windows.
“Report.”
“I didn’t detect a hit. The sudden gunfire probably scared them, so they slipped off.”
The plan had been the same as a cheap stage magician. The Repliglass had been sent in as an obvious threat while the actual summoner and vessel would make their attack from the roof. The Artificial Sacred Ground established by an Incense Grenade was initially a 20m cube. As long as it was close enough, it would capture the target even through walls. …That said, it could not be established when the user could not see the target with the naked eye, so the summoner had probably been lying down on the roof and dangling upside-down to peer in through the window.
“Didn’t you say the boring slow train would be ‘safe’?”
“My apologies, sir. I forgot to preface that with ‘relatively’☆”
A tempo late, a wrinkled old voice cried out.
It came from the very compact old lady who had unfortunately been riding the same car.
“There’s nothing to worry about, young lady.”
Kyousuke said something to calm her down while he reached toward the back of his hoodie. He pulled out the Repliglass Blood-Sign named Phosphorus.
“You will forget all about this bad dream soon enough.”
As soon as he finished speaking, everything set in motion.
But the Repliglass weapons should have noticed that control of this place had already secretly shifted to the Freedom 900 levels.
Modern warfare compressors sliced through the air from multiple directions with enough intensity to break the sound barrier, but the greatest weapons of those Alphas – as Kyousuke dubbed them – were the seven pairs of tentacles and those failed to reach the summoners’ heads.
They had misread Shiroyama Kyousuke.
He took a step to the side so as not to get the old lady involved, but they should have noticed just how far he was planning ahead with that action.
A great crashing sound soon followed. The deadly stretching weapons grabbed at the heads and torsos of their supposed allies and the Repliglass weapons tore each other apart.
“You mechanically lock on using microwaves or infrared. At speeds surpassing Mach 2.5, the human pilots themselves can’t hope to visually follow the action from beginning to end.”
If a more cheerful color had seeped into Kyousuke’s soul, he might have hummed a tune.
As seen with a tightrope walker crossing between buildings, it was while relaxed that humans could draw out their greatest performance. You only hurt your chances if you let your muscles tense up from the nerves of brought on by great danger or a major challenge.
The summoner continued his one-way conversation while surrounded by a unique aura similar to “the zone” for a golf or shogi player and while constructing a world into which no one could enter.
“So I can intervene all I want during that ‘blank period’. I don’t have to face you head-on and stop you. If I give a slight push on your joints with the end of this stick to shift your movements just a little bit, those tentacles will end up going somewhere else entirely.”
However, this strategy should only work if he could accurately predict where those tentacles would go while moving with speed rivalling an afterburner and if he could reproduce precise movements akin to touching the side of a flying bullet with his finger.
Nothing could be more unreasonable than a subsonic object repeatedly controlling supersonic objects and guiding them to destroy each other.
But this was the proper form of a summoner.
A summoner was a puny human who controlled the higher Materials. You could not discuss their essence without mentioning the absurdity of a lower being exceeding a higher being.
The high-spec Alphas surrounded the slender and puny human and swung down their many tentacles and powerful arms in unison, but they suddenly found themselves turned to the side and destroying their fellow units.
The area sounded much like a scrap factory, the masses of special armor were tossed into the box seats and windows, and the entire car soon fell silent.
