Chapter 97: VS. Yuri, Part One

A red mono-eye swayed through the swirling dust, its light trailing behind it.

Tatara Heavy Industries, assault-use reinforced exoskeleton, Kurogane.

Its black multilayer armor, made from countless overlapping plates of thin armor, was light and tough.

In her right hand was a massive, thick claymore that could only be described as an iron slab. It was suited less for cutting than for crushing. In fact, its shape was more suited to that purpose, but that thing was not a blunt weapon. It was a sword.

In other words, it could cut.

Brute force of sheer mass.

She controlled it with one arm.

Her left arm did not exist.

Because she felt she would become weaker.

For that reason, she had never regenerated her arm, nor had she attached a prosthetic.

Naturally, her Centipede had been made to match that.

Given the Centipede’s structure, which connected to the artificial spinal cord, if there were an arm section, it could be used as an arm even with nothing inside. But there was not even an empty left arm there.

An obsession that made no sense.

The height of irrationality.

And yet she disregarded all of that.

The height of absurdity.

That was the person called Yuri, my mother in this era.

I knew that. But I had not understood it.

Now, however, I did.

Ah, I see. So this is absurdity.

For the first time, I understood.

Four arms. Four curved blades.

If Tooth swung them down with his physical strength, that alone would be enough to kill a person through a reinforced exoskeleton.

But that did not happen.

Before Rikan’s fierce assault, Yuri took one step.

It was a light, casual step.

She did not even use the claymore resting on her shoulder. She lowered her body and merely gave a light swing of the bladed sharp angle jutting from the head armor, the hardest part of the Kurogane.

That was enough.

All four of Likan’s consecutive strikes were handled.

The first blade was crushed by her single step in. The second was deflected by the sharp angle. Before the third and fourth could reach her, her knee sank into Rikan’s stomach.

“Ugh.”

A groan spilled from Rikan’s mouth, and his body folded over.

The sight was like a condemned criminal begging the executioner for death.

With a kii, I had the illusion that my pupils had creaked. The intent to kill made the backs of my eyes ache.

Yes. Yuri intended to kill him.

The claymore resting on her shoulder.

The single right arm gripping it.

It creaked.

I could see the flow of power. Soft, yet with a firm core. That was how she applied her strength.

Killing intent in its natural state.

With that, she could sever Rikan’s thick neck.

“…”

I would rather she did not.

So I fired.

The instant I saw her, I had already taken aim. Once I took aim, I fired. It was like water flowing gently. I did it without letting any killing intent seep out.

I managed it.

Even so…

“…She dodged.”

Well, of course she did.

“Sorry, Rikan. I’m coming in to support you.”

“Good! That helps!”

“Where are my Monoz and Rudo?”

“They are entertaining the enemy Monoz together with my subordinates. The young lady too, by the way.”

“…She can fight?”

That girl?

“Endo said, ‘She can do it,’ so we let her try, and she could.”

“Isn’t that too sloppy?”

That decision.

“We are in a situation where we would take even a cat’s paw. It cannot be helped.”

I see. That was how it turned out.

In that case, Yuri’s Monoz were being handled by four Tooths, three Monoz, one dog, and one human.

That was quite the luxurious lineup.

Especially the four Tooths part.

“That’s a problem. We’re in an economic crisis here. I wish they would stop giving them such lavish service and come back already.”

“Quite so. But it does not look like they will be finished over there anytime soon. This woman is bad enough, but her Monoz are bad too.”

“Daikon and the others have different levels of training.”

My Monoz were stronger than the Monoz of ordinary people in the same line of work. That was because I had walked through some fairly dangerous battlefields, and because my style meant they were the ones running on the front line.

In other words, they were highly trained.

But Daikon, Yuri’s Monoz, had crossed even harsher battlefields than that.

This would not be easy.

“Not bad, considering how limp their name sounds.”

“Yuri likes oden mascots.”

She even has plushies.

“…So, Ratchet, what is that?”

“She is my mother.”

“So the parent of a monster is a monster too. Honestly, I cannot laugh at that.”

Oh yes.

I shrugged and put the monster at the end of my gun barrel.

Yuri had been listening to our conversation with a faintly amused air. But that was about to end. The claymore resting on her shoulder tapped against it.

Are you done yet?

That was what it seemed to be asking. Saying no would not help anyway.

Time to go.

“…”

I lightly kicked Rikan’s heel. For an instant, I took my left hand off and knocked three times on Rikan’s back.

“You’re the owner of a monster like that, aren’t you? Put your back into it, Gabriel.”

“You make it sound so easy.”

Three seconds.

The sound of feet kicking off the ground rang out.

Rikan leapt. Seeing that, I sank my breathing. A deep inhale, a deep exhale. Amid combat and the color red, I focused only on keeping myself blue. Yes. A pale blue would be good.

I could not use the Type Five. This distance was not my distance. Even so, I had to fight at this distance.

I held the Lacquer Type light machine gun in my left hand and the automatic pistol in my right. I could not control the thrashing Lacquer Type even with both hands. Then I would use it for scattering bullets from the start. My true weapon was the automatic pistol in my dominant right hand. My true weapon was sharp shooting.

Because I was a sniper.

I had started walking a little before Rikan leapt. Slowly, I came out from behind his shadow. The moment Likan struck, I fired a shot as well. A shot with the bullet hidden behind Likan’s shadow. The gunshot rang out. That could not be helped. But I had hidden the path.

And yet she dodged it.

“…”

I was not satisfied.

Rikan’s four downward cuts were matched by a single downward swing.

Giin.

Metal rang against metal.

Rikan, who had the superior physique, was overpowered.

Ah, this is bad.

“Rikan, fall back.”

The moment I said it, I pulled the trigger in my right hand.

Once.

I drew Yuri’s attention to me.

A sway.

Watching the bullet, Yuri dodged with a loose, easy motion. Her upper body wavered. Her lower body did not. I aimed there and pulled the trigger in my left hand. A crude spray of bullets. The rounds tore into the floor materials.

But before they could, Yuri had already jumped.

She was no longer there.

My eyes were following her.

So the instant she landed, I placed a bullet at the knee that sank ever so slightly.

If that broke her knee…

“She would have been an easy opponent…”

But she was not that kind of opponent.

The claymore was placed there before her knee.

Power and perception.

That was Yuri’s strength.

Because she had such high compatibility with reinforced exoskeletons, she could draw out performance beyond their specifications.【Reinforced Exoskeleton Aptitude: Power, X】

The same as Vulture. But Yuri’s compatibility with reinforced exoskeletons was even higher, and it carried her into another dimension. Output that should not exist by design was nothing but absurd.

And she easily dodged bullets, shaving attacks away by a hair’s breadth with 【Perception: 5】

If rank 3 was the boundary between quantity and quality, then rank 4 was the boundary between human and hero.

In other words, my mother was a hero.

“Are you all right?”

“I’d be dead if you weren’t here, but I’m managing.”

“I see.”

Honestly, it made me sick.

Here I was, pretending to be a gun dog drifting in gunsmoke, while she rampaged around with one greatsword.

She was in the wrong genre.

I wished she would go hunt dragons in a fantasy world instead.