Episode 23 — Laser Line 5

At the Overlords users' battle cries, the comms officer directing Cosmo Spawn's soldiers suddenly seemed to realize something, his eyes flashing.

"T-the self-propelled guns...! That's right! We've got the self-propelled guns!"

He immediately grabbed the mic clipped near his mouth.

"Hey! Gunners! Switch to direct-fire mode right now and blow apart these guys pushing in here! Right now!"

[What about the bombardment on the city?!]

"That's not the priority right now! These mercenary bastards are stubborn as hell!"

[F-fine, got it!]

Zhhhk—.

The legs of the self-propelled guns immediately began to shift. Just as they slowly swung around to face the Overlords side, a whispered promise of victory reached the Professor's ear.

[Setup complete.]

"…Your extraction?"

[Already handled, naturally. Go ahead whenever you're ready.]

"Excellent."

Click.

The moment he pressed the detonator, the explosives attached to the underside of the self-propelled guns all went off at once, triggering a chain reaction that sent the guns up in a column of flame.

"Wh-what?!"

"Alright! The battery's wiped out! Push harder—!"

With their bazookas now having nothing left to shoot at, the Overlords users turned them on the soldiers still resisting inside the base. Explosions rang out one after another, dropping wounded soldiers left and right, and the comms officer directing them began to panic.

"D-damn it...! Reinforcements! Why aren't the reinforcements coming?! This is our main base, isn't it?!"

The aerial assault force they'd called in at such cost was being shot down helplessly under the anti-air guns and the Legion users' large-caliber assault rifle fire. By now, a heavy-infantry unit should have arrived to reinforce them — but none came.

"F-fall back! Everyone, retreat to the bunker!"

In the end, the comms officer ordered a retreat to the large bunker built deep inside the base.

But standing in their way was the Overlords' massive force, a pack of starving wolves if ever there was one.

"What, you're running? You bastards!"

"Chase them down! It's a mop-up!"

"Strip them of everything they've got—!"

Riding their momentum, the Overlords users used their shields to bash down the fleeing, panicking soldiers, trampling them underfoot as they pushed forward.

The panicked comms officer managed to gather up roughly twenty soldiers nearby and flee into the bunker, but every soldier left outside was shoved down, stomped on, stabbed with bayonets, and stripped of every last piece of gear by the Overlords.

"Damn it... savages, the lot of them! Hey! When are the reinforcements coming?! This is the allied forces' logistics base! We're on the verge of falling!"

Pounding the radio in frustration, he vented his grievances — and as if summoned by magic, four more armed transport ships appeared in the sky above the base.

[Confirmed your distress call. Deploying the heavy infantry unit immediately.]

"Finally! It's too slow, way too slow! Hurry and bring down judgment on those savage mercenaries!"

By the time the Overlords had surrounded the bunker, and the full user force had pushed into the base's interior, they dismissed the newly arrived transports as nothing to worry about, intending to handle them the same way as before. But this time, instead of ordinary troops with jetpacks, soldiers wearing thick, almost spacesuit-like padded armor touched down on the ground.

"Your rampage ends here. Mercenaries."

"Withdraw right now. Or we'll show you hell."

The two heavy-infantry troopers standing at the front issued their warning, but the users only laughed.

"Ha! Scared of us just because you're wearing some styrofoam-looking getup?!"

"Hey! Light 'em up! Turn 'em into a beehive!"

The users immediately opened fire — but something unexpected happened right away.

Ting ting!

"What?! That was a shield-neutralizing round!"

"Hmph. Rounds of that caliber won't pierce our heavy infantry's reinforced shields!"

The shield-neutralizing ammo the users relied on simply wasn't working. Only then, swallowing hard as they realized these enemies were different from anything they'd faced so far, did the users start firing their anti-tank cannons.

"Die! Just die already, you bear bastards!"

Even these troopers seemed to feel a real threat from the anti-tank cannons, and began to retaliate.

"All units, begin attack!"

"We'll show you a taste of hell!"

As the armor on both their arms deployed, one of the weapons revealed was, of all things, a napalm sprayer. As a stream of red fire poured out like a hose, the Overlords users holding their shield-line formation began burning and collapsing, their shields rendered useless.

"Aaaaargh—!?"

"D-damn it! A flamethrower?!"

"Shoot! Keep shooting! Even if the shield's tough, if it breaks, we've got the advantage! Keep firing till it cracks—!"

"Bazookas! Use the bazookas! Regular rounds will take forever to get through!"

Two of the heavy infantry had their protective barriers pierced after taking three bazooka hits each, but despite the barrage of fire that followed, their suits — rubbery as they seemed — easily deflected or absorbed the regular rounds.

Leveraging that defense, the heavy infantry unit began advancing slowly, spraying napalm as they came.

"Aaaaaargh—!! Fire! It's on fire!"

"Damn it all! Why aren't the bullets working?!"

"What the hell are those damn suits made of?!"

What turned the tide back in favor of the users was the Professor's team. In the midst of the heavy infantry's advance, as they pushed forward behind their napalm sprayers, a shadow suddenly flickered past the rearmost trooper — and sparks burst from his back before he erupted in a massive explosion.

"Gwaaaaaaaah—!"

"What?! H-how?!"

"No need to panic! Don't break formation!"

Even as the one who seemed to be their leader raised a hand to reassure the others, he suddenly felt a cold gaze on him and looked up toward the distance.

"What is that…?"

The moment he used his helmet's zoom function to magnify whatever was glinting atop the rooftop of a shopping building—

Pfwang!

That thick shield was punched through without resistance, and the bullet's momentum showed no sign of slowing even after.

The heavy infantry leader instinctively realized it — one of the very few rounds his unit couldn't defend against: a .50 caliber armor-piercing incendiary round.

"No way…! On our very first engagement, they already found our weakness…!"

By the time the realization hit him, that terrifying round had already punched through his visor and blown his head apart.

Watching their leader collapse limply to the ground, the heavy infantry faltered.

"T-this can't be! What happened?! The leader's down!"

"D-don't panic! That was a sniper shot! Just watch out for the sniper!"

"Where did it come from?! Find him!"

The heavy infantry halted their advance, each of them hesitantly scrambling for cover. The Overlords users seized the opening to regroup and put some distance between them.

"Damn it! Looks like the Professor pulled off something, after all...!"

"Medic! Patch up anyone with a shot at surviving! There's no time to waste!"

"Regular firepower's not going to cut it against those bears! We need to get the Legion to handle this!"

The Legion users who came running at the Overlords' request had their expressions harden. The Overlords' casualties were worse than expected — it seemed pushing in with a tight formation had left them badly exposed to the flamethrowers.

"Well, isn't this something... Hey! Grab the grenade launchers! Bear hunting's the Gaia Legion's specialty, right?"

"Brought 'em already! Just say the word!"

As the Legion users showed up carrying grenade launchers, the heavy infantry began to tense up. Against those launchers, even their reinforced shields were bound to shatter. Of course, their high-impact-resistant suits could withstand the explosive damage from a grenade even without the shield — but once the shield was gone, there was no telling when that sniper's round — the same one that had killed their leader — might come flying in again.

"Damn it. Ready the primary weapons!"

"Understood! What about the sniper?"

"What about the transports...?"

The heavy infantry officer watched for a moment as the transports, already hit by anti-air fire, went down one by one, and gritted his teeth.

There would be no more reinforcements coming. Mercenaries had pushed into the other sectors too, scattering reinforcement forces thin — his unit had been the last one available to come here.

"Ignore the sniper for now! If we move fast enough, we won't take a hit to anything vital!"

"B-but, sir...!"

At that moment, an unfamiliar presence crept up behind one of the rookies at the rear.

"...!? Rookie! Behind you!"

"Huh?"

Turning around on reflex, he saw a kunoichi rising silently out of his own shadow, her wakizashi driving precisely into the vulnerable point on the back of his pack.

"Wha—?! This woman?!"

"Carelessness will cost you."

Watching the rookie trooper detonate in the same chain-reaction explosion as before, the rest of the heavy infantry grew desperate.

"Wh-who is that woman?! Where'd she come from?!"

"Damn it! Charge! Charge—! If we keep hesitating like this, that woman, whoever she is, will take us all down! Just run! None of these other small fry can even touch us anyway!"

"Aaaaaaaah—!"

In the end, charging forward almost out of desperation, the heavy infantry drew the primary weapons hidden in their right-arm armor.

"Fire—!"

With a blast like a roaring beast, a heavy, pressurized blast of compressed air slammed into the Overlords and Legion users.

In an instant, dozens of users were sent flying like scattered leaves, crashing back down in a heap as their formation collapsed.

"Waaaaagh—?!"

"Wh-what the?! Compressed air cannons?!"

"These damn bastards, what else do they have strapped on?!"

"Watch out! That thing's range is wider than it looks!"

The Overlords users grimly fixed bayonets onto their rifles, while the Legion users pulled out grenade launchers to counter.

"Fire! No matter how thick it is, it's still just a shield! Hit it with a grenade and it's bound to shatter!"

"Like hell I'll get hit! Run! Faster! If you stop, you get sniped!"

The heavy infantry tried to break through by shattering the users' formation with their air cannons, but it wasn't going to be that easy. The Black Tiger Alliance users, who'd been waiting in reserve on both flanks, had joined the fray as well.

"Ready — fire!"

"Yes!"

They unleashed a full, simultaneous volley of grenades, leaving the heavy infantry utterly stunned.

"What?! Everyone, stop—! Gr-grenades!"

"No way! What kind of grenades are those?!"

After dozens of violent explosions rang out one after another, the scene that remained was nothing short of brutal. The grenades' blasts and metal fragments had torn through not just the shields but even their prized protective suits, leaving them barely standing, battered and unsteady.

"N-no... at this rate...!"

"All units, pour everything you've got into them—!"

Even as they tried to mount one last counterattack, what they witnessed instead was the Overlords users charging at them, bayonets fixed, eyes bloodshot with fury.

"Vengeance for our fallen—!"

"You'll pay in blood for daring to lay a hand on the Overlords!"

Bayonets stabbed into the torn gaps in the heavy infantry's armor from every direction, dropping them one by one, and the few still left resisting were finished off in turn by Shadow and the Professor's combined attacks.

Seeing the heavy infantry fall, Cosmo Spawn's remaining soldiers panicked and fled, and the users erupted into cheers of victory, overjoyed at having claimed their first win.

"Alright—! Victory!"

"Uraaaaaaaa!"

While the users celebrated behind him, the Professor silently wandered among the enemy's supply containers, checking to see if there was anything worth taking.

"Not here either…"

After looking around for a while, he apparently found what he was after — picking up a long, narrow case and slipping away from the scene, careful to make sure none of the other users noticed.

—To be continued—