Chapter 43: Left Leg

Now then, time for work. As soon as that thought surfaced, a single problem rose up.

My left leg.

The left leg that had been blown off in the previous battle was gone from below the knee.

This was bad. I had to do something about it. Obviously.

Five hundred years after the time I was born, losing a limb in this era was not the catastrophe it once would have been. It could be handled fairly easily.

Unless you were someone like my parent Yuri, who liked one-armed life, the usual course was to fix it.

There were two options.

Regrow it, or mechanize it.

I did not have the parts on hand, but with the removed spine I could regenerate a leg, and by adapting powered-exoskeleton technology, I could make a prosthetic that reproduced the original movement.

Only, at the moment, I lacked the time and the technical resources to pursue either option.

Still, I had work to do.

I closed my hand around the necklace made from my spine.

Lying back against the far wall of the truck, my field of vision took in my current total fighting strength.

One Type-B Model-5 sniper rifle, one crossbow.

One powered exoskeleton, a centipede—repaired hound model.

Twelve Monoz. Repairs had finished, but only three could fight: Ox Unit, Sheep Unit, and Snake Unit. The others had crystal damage and could not be used in combat.

And finally, the puppy who’d stuck his nose between my legs. Of course, the convalescent Rudolf could not be counted as effective combat power.

Think.

A way to overwhelm them. A way to demonstrate my usefulness. A way to make up for the loss of my left leg.

Think. Think. Think. I thought, and a conclusion came.

All right.

I am not very clever.

I am clumsy.

So the thing to do is simple. The simpler it is, the better.

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The goal was to make them pay.

More precisely, it was about making them pay for having disrespected us. In other words, there was no such thing as doing “too much.”

I would not hold back. I would be merciless. After all, they were my enemies.

All right then. The plan had to be simple. The simpler, the better.

So the plan was simple and straightforward.

Kill.

Every human. All the Monoz. Kill and smash everything.

I was a sniper. So I would kill by sniping. Sniping normally requires legs, but it did not really need them. With my left leg missing, I slid into the Hound model. If the powered exoskeleton used DNA filaments bound to an artificial spinal cord to generate movement, I could walk even with the left leg empty.

I moved up to a high vantage point.

I took a deep breath.

I raised my scope and looked.

Ahead of me was an armored vehicle carrying six large Monoz. There were three humans inside. In total, the enemy had forty-five Monoz.

They were amateurs. That thought crossed my mind. Normally, it was a bad idea to have everyone crammed into the same vehicle.

Still, the real problem was the number of Monoz. There were many, and if even one escaped, they might spread word of my existence. That would be bad. What to do? This, I decided.

I pulled the trigger. I shot out the eye of the Monoz that was supporting the front-right wheel. The crystal and its core were damaged and the unit shut down.

The armored vehicle lost balance and began to lurch. I fired again. I took out the rear-right wheel, and then a Monoz in the right-middle. Three shots in all.

Monoz were tough. Those hits would not kill them outright. Still, at that level of damage they could not rejoin the line without time for repairs. In other words, that accounted for three disabled units.

The armored vehicle, having lost control on the right side, rode up onto a rock and flipped over. Disabling the right side had paid off. With the right side down, the vehicle could only be exited from the left.

And we had no intention of letting them exit.

“Snake Unit, Ox Unit, pin them down.”

I switched to the crossbow as I spoke. Snake Unit and Ox Unit began their suppression to keep the armored vehicle trapped. Unlike Snake Unit, which specialized in covert hind-sniping, Ox Unit was showing itself in the open, and a number of enemy Monoz turned toward it.

Maybe I should move a bit faster.

That was my call.

I pulled the trigger. I’d shot too far. I raised the angle a little. Rabbit Unit, acting as the power source, spun up. Next round loaded. Second shot. This time it landed in a good spot. I kept taking shots and placing them while breaking the target apart little by little. Ten bolts in all. Nine of them stuck into the armored vehicle like tombstones. I set the last bolt alight and launched it. The flame caught the liquefied incendiary the Snake Unit had “delivered” with the first nine bolts. That sticky stuff burned slowly and relentlessly—while the three humans remained locked inside the armored vehicle.

Monoz adore humans.

Monoz protect humans.

So roughly forty Monoz all swarmed toward the burning vehicle at once.

I methodically smashed them.

A few hours later, Rikan sent three “steam-roasted” ones over to Amatsu.

He didn’t forget to include proof that the perpetrators were human: a Monoz shot by a sniper rifle, and, with brazen mockery, a message attached: “It seems they were attacked by bandits.”

Well, it was a warning, a show of force. Apparently, the payment was made, too.

So I received no rejection email and was safely hired.