novelraw Chapter 80
Chapter 80
Chapter 80
I fought on the land that burned black, confirmed there were no more enemies to eliminate, and drew back the Paradoxical Flame.
“What are the casualties?”
“Three died, eight were injured. Two were in serious condition.”
So five were out. I had brought fifty people, and in just this one fight ten percent of our fighting strength went up in smoke.
“I don’t know if we’re going to be all right at this rate.”
“Experience matters. The ones who can keep fighting will have picked up some tricks.”
From here on, even if monsters of this scale and caliber swarmed us, we probably wouldn’t take heavy losses.
If anything, I was more worried about Nanami. Even while we were handling the monsters that came close, Nanami didn’t stop, she kept sweeping distant targets with radar and pounding them with bombardment.
If anyone was going to get exhausted, it wouldn’t be us, it’d be Nanami. Even so, she looked surprisingly lively.
“Fantasia Stream!”
She actually looked like she was having fun? With that cry, Nanami lofted a huge pink sphere high into the sky. The pink globe hung there and, like a Gatling gun, sprayed bursts of pink mana fire toward somewhere far off.
“…”
The shelling was so intense that the tremors of the blasts traveled through the ground.
At least when it came to long-range area destruction, no one could touch the grinning woman on the truck who was playing at being a magical girl.
Calling her a walking self-propelled gun didn’t even do her justice. On top of that, the mana cost to fire those cannons was abnormally low.
In the middle of that, one of the undead sprawled on the ground suddenly lunged at Nanami.
“Where do you think you’re going!”
She thrust out her hand, and a slim pink ray blew a hole through the charging undead’s chest.
“Hm? The amount of mana you used was the same.”
Only then did I catch the strange thing about Nanami’s mana handling.
I didn’t know what trick she was pulling, but it was a pretty unique way of operating it.
She had spent about the same amount of mana on the round that killed the undead that rushed her as on those massive cannon shots that were slamming some distant horde like artillery.
But the difference in power was heaven and earth.
“Are you fixing the mana expenditure per shot?”
Nanami let out a breezy little laugh and answered.
“Secret!”
It wasn’t much of a secret anyway. I had wondered why her bombardment seemed absurdly efficient. So that was the trick.
The heavy-caliber mana shells she kept firing and the mana shot she used to drop the undead in her face both cost the same mana.
If a few conditions were met, it was overwhelmingly efficient, but if they weren’t, the efficiency crashed.
If Nanami got dragged into close combat, she’d burn through her mana in a flash. You couldn’t solve close-quarters with a handful of shots. You might need hundreds, and she probably wouldn’t last even three minutes.
On the other hand, if she went all out, she could pour out hundreds of orbital-strike-level shells in under three minutes and turn a chosen area into a Sahara crater where a nuke had dropped.
Watching me mull it over, Nanami dismissed the radar floating over her hand and changed outfits.
“Japanese Hunters are weak.”
She let out a small sigh and muttered that, then gave a blunt assessment once she had changed.
“All the outstanding talent flowed to Korea. The support here is thin.”
Most of the Hunters guarding Japan now were Korean, and the majority were here on paid dispatch contracts.
“Of course, from the perspective of Japanese companies or the government, if the skill level was comparable, they’d want to hire Japanese Hunters. But there’s no comparison.”
As she spoke, Nanami checked the undead lying on the ground.
“If fifty Japanese Hunters had come here, they wouldn’t have killed even ten in that last fight. They would all have died.”
“Even so, Adakawa Nanami is pretty exceptional.”
Nanami gave a wry smile at my words.
“I threw away one field to push another to the extreme. Se-eun doesn’t even need to do that. She could take on fifteen Hunters like me from ten kilometers out, be on their noses in under ten minutes, and wipe them all out.”
I couldn’t deny it.
“Korea and Japan have an overwhelming gap in their Hunters and in the infrastructure for dealing with Erosion Cores. It’s the kind of gap you can’t easily overcome.”
“What about China?”
Nanami clicked her tongue at my question.
“China’s issues aren’t about handling Erosion Zones right now. Their government can’t even function properly.”
They were barely keeping the shape of a state through the provisional government established in Nanjing. The Great Eight member named Gonsalok had slammed their own capital, after all.
The timing had been the worst. It happened during the National People’s Congress, and the entire leadership died.
“I’m recognized as one of the top Hunters in Japan. In Korea I’m just one of the many Partner Hunters.”
“That treatment can’t feel great, can it.”
Nanami shrugged at my comment.
“What can you do? That’s reality.”
“How is Korea perceived in Japan?”
Nanami burst out laughing at my question.
“There are a lot of groups that insist every Korean Hunter should be kicked out. But if the Korean government really tried it, those same people would be on their bellies begging to be spared.”
“I take it Hunters working abroad are causing their share of problems.”
Nanami nodded.
“Even so, they at least honor their contracts strictly. And if the Korean Hunters actually pulled out right now, a good number of countries would find their very existence in danger.”
So there was nothing for it. Even if the Korean Hunters acted a little high-handed, people had to sit tight.
“Oh, of course, in Japan people think I can stand shoulder to shoulder with Hunters like Kang Hoon, Se-eun, or Sung Sihoon from Korea. Honestly, I don’t go out of my way to deny it.”
There were few things as foolish as poking at people’s puffed-up patriotism. While we talked, a report came back that the necessary treatment for the wounded Hunters was complete.
“Let’s move again, shall we.”
Nanami transformed once more, then resumed shelling as she tracked monster positions through the radar.
The truck carrying the Hunters rolled out.
“Good grief.”
After several days of movement, we finally stood before Harbin. Nanami stared at the radar with a grave expression.
“Why? Are there a lot?”
Nanami nodded at Jung Oh-hoon’s question.
“A huge number.”
Harbin was crawling with undead. Still, the fact that Nanami’s radar could pick up their numbers was good news. Undead that appeared on her radar weren’t all that strong.
“They probably turned the people of Harbin into undead.”
Han Sang-ah looked over her sword and answered my comment.
“Until contact was lost, Harbin kept communicating back and forth with the provisional government in Guangzhou. The population identified at that time was two and a half million.”
It had once been a city of over ten million, but by the last contact only a quarter remained.
It had been the capital of Heilongjiang Province, so there would still have been many people.
“Even if only half of the two and a half million became undead…”
That meant a hell-pit with over a million undead swarming in it.
“We have about forty left.”
At Han Sang-ah’s words, I stood up and spoke.
“I’ll slip in and scout the caliber of the undead.”
Jung Oh-hoon answered me.
“I looked it up. There’s a place called Harbin Long Ta.”
“It’s the tower in central Harbin, isn’t it.”
A high-rise that boasted a height of three hundred and thirty-six meters. Jung Oh-hoon nodded at my words.
“If I set up on the top of that building, I can see the whole of Harbin. I’ll survey the area and keep reporting to Seagull over the in-ear.”
Jung Oh-hoon’s eyesight was reliable. There was a reason I had him in the sniper role. If he took a position at Harbin Long Ta and kept feeding Seagull updates, Seagull would share that information with us.
“The question is whether you can get there.”
It would not be wrong to call that building the very middle of Harbin.
“Once you arrive, can you hold out without being detected by the undead?”
Jung Oh-hoon nodded to Han Sang-ah.
“If Miss Adakawa draws their eyes with bombardment, and I slip in while that happens, it should work.”
Nanami would stay with us on the eastern outskirts of Harbin and keep shelling, while Jung Oh-hoon would enter from the southern outskirts, move into Harbin, and head for Long Ta.
“Even if we only have forty in the advance group, we fought undead at least ten times on the way here.”
I checked the time and pressed the in-ear button.
“Team Seagull, where is the main force now?”
A reply came back.
— The distance from the advance party is about two hundred and fifty kilometers. We need about two days.
With these forty, it was impossible to clear out the undead in Harbin and hold it. The main force had to arrive.
— When the main force comes, do you judge if it can be secured?”
I gave Seagull a simple answer.
“With some sacrifice and effort, I think it’s possible.”
The selected Hunters weren’t exactly weak. More importantly, we had the benediction diagram.
“Against people turned to undead, the benediction diagram can inflict heavy damage.”
It was only the numbers that were overwhelming. They were basically a ragged mob. That didn’t mean forty could take on a million.
But if you added the Hunters trailing behind us, nearly a thousand Hunters would link up, along with countless vehicles bearing the benediction diagram.
At that point, we could go into Harbin ready to fight one against a thousand.
“On top of that, if Jung Oh-hoon gets to the top of Harbin Long Ta,”
Then it really became doable. It was more than worth attempting.
“But Jung Oh-hoon, you’re coming with me.”
He made a small groan at my words.
“That’s not ideal.”
“Then do you want to go with Han Sang-ah?”
Jung Oh-hoon glanced at Han Sang-ah, then let out a small sigh.
“Fine, I’ll go with you.”
“I’m bringing you because I want to keep you breathing. Don’t complain.”
First, we needed to figure out how the undead in Harbin detected us.
If they detected us by sound, I would burn the sounds we made with the Paradoxical Flame. If by scent, I would burn the smell.
“But if they sense us by things like vitality or life force?”
“If you burn something like that, you’ll die. But if it is the by-products produced by vitality, it’s fine to burn those.”
So I would sneak Jung Oh-hoon to the top of Harbin Long Ta, keep the Paradoxical Flame attached to his body, then rejoin the main force.
“Doesn’t that mean you can’t use that weird black flame in battle?”
“Burning a few undead with the Paradoxical Flame is much less valuable than you providing overwatch from the top of Harbin Long Ta.”
And it wasn’t as if I became drastically weaker without the Paradoxical Flame. It was a powerful ability, but if I had lived relying only on that, I wouldn’t even be here now.
“Alright… Let’s do this.”
With that, we began to refine the rough plan we had just sketched out.