Chapter 108 – Masquerade Party (22)

In a cube-shaped cavity carved out in a natural bedrock terrain stood a tower in the center, created out of countless different mechanical parts and pieces.

The tower was located at the top of an endless spiral of stairs, which Gyosu was only able to see from his position after tilting his head upward. Unlike its function of being the collection of the Old Time’s greatest technology, the tower had a sort of majestic aura like that of a temple.

A beauty difficult to witness now in a world where the objective of architecture only depends on its function.

In a world where people pulled the trigger for a single wedge of a potato or a shrapnel of metal, this massive art piece of a facility that would have been made without any proper construction equipment showed just exactly how important the Dome was as the central generator.

‘It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that just this signal central generator held the lives of everyone in the city in its hands, so in a way, they could even consider it a god.’

Feeling the knee that he had kneeled down on the ground get wet, Gyosu lightly grimaced.

‘Blood. It’s flowing down the stairs.’

[They must have killed a bunch up there. Both sides.]

Crunch!

Krgggggk!

Gyosu couldn’t really see the fight from his current position at the bottom of the staircase, but he could still see the Exosuits’ silver arms and the weapon in their hands.

[A shield and… hammer?]

‘From the grinding and engine sounds I can hear, there must be someone using a chainsaw too.’

[Why are they using those as weapons instead? Is it some kind of… ritual?]

‘It’s not that they’re not using it; they can’t. Not here at least. Both the Exosuit’s pulse rifle, its main weapon, and the large caliber bullets that can break through its shield would cause not only everyone here but everyone in the city to get caught in the explosion if the shot landed somewhere critical on the central generator.’

Checking the weapon that Hyde identified just as the tower’s light passed by, Gyosu’s expression scrunched up. Booster Hammer. A weapon powerful enough to not just damage a combat vehicle but be strong enough to send it flying. Their shield was an Energy Shield. Not to mention, this place was the Dome’s most important facility. Not even the Executive Department would think of remodeling this place to install Shield Absorbers, so the Exosuits should have been able to overwhelm the Executive Department under the protection of their shields.

Krgggggk!

‘But why are they getting pushed back?’

Looking at just the sparks caused by their weapons colliding and the small glimpses he saw of the fight when the tower’s light shone on them was enough to let him know that the Exosuits were at a disadvantage.

Thwoom!

Just then, something heavy flew down from above and fell next to Gyosu.

It was an arm. Of an Exosuit’s.

‘We intervene.’

He didn’t know anything, whether that was the identity of the enemy or their weaponry, but it was going to be nearly impossible to regain control over the central generator if the two Exosuit units became incapacitated anyway.

Spelch squelch splech!

Gyosu ran up the crimson staircase, drenched in blood.

He had a lot of thoughts, but the actual time he stood there blankly was about 8 or 9 seconds. The situation was too urgent to consider every single outcome.

Thanks to that, Gyosu needed to continue thinking even as he ran up towards the enemy.

‘I don’t know exactly how they’re fighting the Exosuits, but it’s nothing too big or heavy.’

He didn’t see any other traces aside from the Exosuits on his way here.

It wasn’t like they could drive tanks all the way in here either, so the enemy’s equipment would either be more Exosuits or weaponry that a person could carry.

From what he could hear, the only sounds he could hear were coming from the two Exosuits, so he naturally thought that the opponent would have been facing the Investigation Bureau with a special weapon.

‘I thought I would have a chance if I sniped them when there was an opening…’

Kraagggggk!

Boom!

It was technically a special weapon.

With red, bloodshot eyes, their body, where their right arm should have been, instead had a large chainsaw.

And holding a bluish shield in the other, they used their hand, which looked similar to a hydraulic press, to parry away the gun hammer the Exosuits swung at them. These people were displaying a similar power to the Exosuits in a human body.

There were about five of these half-human, half-machines.

[I don’t think a gun is going to even tickle them.]

‘You won’t know until you try! They still have a decent area of skin revealed compared to the Exosuits! And there are a few of their corpses on the ground!’

Bang!

The enemy has yet to notice him. This was the best situation to snipe them. Lying down at the edge of the stairs, Gyosu aimed his bullet at a half-machine who was swinging a broadsword with laser blades on each side of the blade and stood out from the others…

Clang!

“Uh…”

[There are things you can know even without trying, sometimes, you idiot! All you did was reveal your location!]

The sword that had been swinging at an Exosuit suddenly changed directions and blocked the bullet that was headed straight for the back of its head. The blade looked more like an oar than a sword, and the man who was swinging the clearly heavy blade that Exosuits would handle like it was a small tree branch, in the moment the nozzle burst with gunpowder, identified Gyosu’s location and turned his sword to defend himself.

‘Even if there are laser blades instead of steel on each side of the blade, that thing’s able to swing around something that looks easily over 10kg at that speed. And that precisely?’

[W-what is that? What’s it doing here?]

‘Like the hell I know! It’s my first time seeing it too!’

The man looked down at the smoke rising from where the bullet was lodged, then abandoned his position from the fight with the Exosuits and turned in the opposite direction.

In the place where his eye should have been, there was a red lens that looked straight at the location where Gyosu was hiding.

“Is it reinforcements?”

That was the only thing the man said after they spotted Gyosu. Just as he turned the barrel towards another man with a fist instead of the swordsman, the laser blade that suddenly appeared before him sliced off the butt of the rifle that Gyosu swung out in surprise. From how clean the cut of the burnt surface was, the output of that blade wasn’t just any normal level of good.

[Y-you dodged it! It’s not impossible to follow him by sight! He’s just stupid fast!]

‘It doesn’t matter if I can see him! My body can’t keep up!’

[You’re good at talking! Try begging to him or something!]

Pssshk!

Zwoom—!

“Aaahh! That guy has no intention of talking it out!”

He threw his body down the steep stairs and managed to dodge the sword that tried to split his skull in half, but the gun he held out in an attempt to block the swing ended up in two halves. They cut a Year 2040 model alloy firearm like it was some kind of tofu!

[Vessel! Personally, I know we’ve fought against some serious monsters together, but this really doesn’t look like our fight!]

‘Damn it! The only guys that should be here are from the Executive Department, so where did those T-3000 guys come from?’

Bang!

With this current situation, it was all or nothing.

Gyosu threw aside the now useless rifle, then quickly took out the pistol from its holster and shot the man. He didn’t expect the shot to land. The man was going to block it. He had to!

Ping!

‘I knew it!’

There was a smirk on his face as he blocked the shot that was aimed slightly off of his head. As if such shots wouldn’t do anything no matter how many he shot.

Of course, Gyosu also knew that.

“Oy! I’m trusting you! If you don’t block all~ of these! We’re all going to die!”

Click!

Gyosu raised both pistols in his hands. Up past the half-machine’s feet, knees, waist, chest, and head, then even higher. Towards the central generator’s tower, where an outstanding amount of power was squirming about.

When he did, the machine man’s confident expression instantly hardened.

Ba—bang!

P—ping!

And he blocked the bullets that were aimed far from his body.

“You… You mother—*er!!!”

“Oh! Done with the cool guy act? I wouldn’t usually act so suicidal with normal people, but I’m trying it because you seem special! You can do it, right? You have to block it! No matter what!”

Grrrind!

Watching the man grind his teeth but still being unable to approach him, Gyosu snickered mischievously.

“A strategy should always go in the direction the opponent doesn’t want it to go.”

[Hey, what if that guy decides not to stop it?]

‘Don’t worry, don’t worry. They wouldn’t have made the city’s heart that weak. That generator is pretty sturdy. As long as I don’t hit a weak spot, it shouldn’t blow up right away or anything.’

There was a part that let out a light at intervals. But instead of the places where they could see inside, he was aiming at the darker parts, so even if the guy really did go off the hook and stop blocking, the chances that the huge accident he expected would happen were low.

[The chances are ‘low’?]

‘It can’t be completely zero. If it turns out that the dark parts are actually weaker—’

[Hey!]

‘You need to take risks, you know!’

B—bang! B—bang!

In order to stop the man from charging at him, Gyosu continued to shoot at the tower.

He succeeded in keeping the opponent busy for now. Seeing how the man was clenching his jaw but still darting his eyes towards the place each gun pointed at, he looked like he didn’t want to die.

‘The problem is, my hands are tied right now too.’

The man couldn’t attack while Gyosu was aiming at the tower. But if there was a small pause, like if the bullet got stuck, he accidently used both bullets at once, or he ran out of bullets completely, then the owner of the one-sided attacks would return to him. What that meant was that if he didn’t take a risk and defeat the man, then it was only a matter of time before that laser blade split him in half.

And so…

“I have to take a chance!”

Bang!

Aiming at the top left so he was left wide open as he blocked it, Gyosu charged into the man at full power.

Vwoom—!

With bullets still left, Gyosu was the one leading the fight. But despite him moving the opponent to his intentions as he moved, the speed the blade chased Gyosu at was faster than his movement.

Bang!

The great sword that had been falling gracefully towards Gyosu from the top left followed the trajectory of the bullet fired from his right hand and blocked it.

‘He’s even faster than I thought.’

Right after he shot the right pistol and his finger was just about to pull the left trigger, the man’s sword was already falling back down to him.

‘I thought getting closer would make it harder for him to fight with a longer weapon…!’

He just needed a short gap, a split second, to not even move my arm but to turn my wrist and point the gun at the guy, then pull the trigger.

Shwooooo!

But at the same time his guard opened up, his knee split through the air, and it flew towards my face. This was also at a speed that he wouldn’t have been able to follow if he and Hyde weren’t sharing senses. When I dodged his knee, the sword swung down. And when that happened, the gun that I pointed towards the man shifted back outwards—

Bang!

‘Damn it! I can’t find an opening!’

And a shot for survival followed.

B-b-b-b-b-b-bang!

All of this happened between the bullet being fired and the pistol’s slide reciprocating.

As a number of exchanges identical to the number of bullets continued, blood trickled down Gyosu’s nose.

He was using Hyde’s senses to follow the exchange that was as fast as the machine’s shooting speed, but his head felt like it was shattering.

‘7, 8…’

Bang—

Click!

[T-the bullets!]

‘9!’

The new magazine of bullets he reloaded before charging in. During an exchange where he didn’t even have a moment to blink, it was impossible to reload, and only after a mere few seconds after he closed in on the man did the pistol in his left hand let out an empty cry.

His consciousness, currently accelerated to its limit, projected the half-machine man’s sinister smile.

As if planning to prevent any future chance of a counterattack, the large laser blade slashed down at the left arm with the empty gun.

[Please come out! Please! Please! Please! It’s my body!]

‘Snap out of it, Hyde! It’s not over yet!’

Looking at the broadsword fall towards his left arm, Gyosu returned the smile to the machine man.

“I gotch-aaaa!”

Pzzpt!

Just before the sword cut his left arm in half, a shield’s distinctive buzz sounded instead of the sharp, wet sound of a division.

“Even a cheap personal shield can deflect one blow!”

At the Investigation Bureau’s armory, through all sorts of persuasions, he obtained a bolt rifle and a portable anti-personnel shield.

Deflecting the sword with the shield he had been holding in his hand, Gyosu aimed his right gun, with one last bullet left in it, at the man’s head.

“Blame yourself for attacking a gunpowder weapon with a melee weapon! Half terminator bastard!”

Bang!

Psht!

The last shot he poured everything into landed exactly in the half-machine’s head.

The bullet flew straight through the man’s eye. His head arched backward as blood and red shards exploded out of his eye.

It worked. His improvised plan fit together like gears, and everything went along with his plan all the way to the end.

However…

Creak, c-reak-k!

“Then…you should have…known that…a terminator…doesn’t die from a small bullet like that!”

It was merely Gyosu’s defeat for not expecting that the enemy was tough enough to live even after taking a bullet to the head.

Click! Click!

Above the empty clicks of an empty gun, the sound of the laser blade searing the air swung down towards him.

Pow!

He needed to live. He promised he would live, so he had to survive somehow.

Through his accelerated consciousness, he instinctively saw the man raise his arm up and the glowing green ray of the laser blade fall like a guillotine.

‘I couldn’t turn on the generator… Vex, Ian…’

The half-machine’s red eye glinted. His lips curled up like those of a victor’s. Gyosu closed his eyes. A hot feeling enveloped his arm. As if it were on fire, a dense, burning pain throughout his entire…

’…? That’s not right.’

After getting his arms sliced and broken over a hundred times in GG, Gyosu knew what it felt like to get his arm cut off more than anyone else in the world. It was definitely a dense impact with searing pain, but not an overall burning pain like this.

Poww!

More than anything, it didn’t feel like the blade was pushing through his body, but rather that his arm was blocking the sword and pushing him into the ground.

[It… It worked! It actually worked!]

‘H-Hyde?’

He had a crippling headache, and his arm still felt like it was on fire, but at least he still had a whole body. If the laser sword just sliced his body in half, then he wouldn’t have been under this much pressure.

‘What exactly…’

Gyosu carefully opened his eyes.

The first thing that came into sight was the intimidating green glow of the laser blade right in front of his eyes. And then behind that, the horrified face of the cyborg.

And…

From the tip of his hand to his shoulder, his left arm had a black layer of skin like a monster’s arm. The laser blade was being held in that left hand.

After reading Hyde’s consciousness, Gyosu immediately understood exactly what he had done.

“You… what the hell did you do to my bodyyyy?!”

[What do you mean what? It’s my body! I’ve created the real body that I wanted all this time!]

Crack!

Hyde let out a cheer, then crushed the laser blade held in his hand.

The body’s original owner lost consciousness.

But it was still able to live and use all of the body’s functions.

And now, with Gyosu’s consciousness completely gone from his left arm, Hyde’s memories were left behind in there!

[I told you! I know a hundred times better how to use this body than you do! I knew it would be possible as long as I knew the mechanism!]

“How could something like this even happen…?”

It was a Type 3 mutant. The mutant virus recognized the ‘left arm’ that was no longer under Gyosu’s control as a dead body and used Hyde’s memories left in the arm to mutate it into the most ideal image of him he wanted.