Chapter 75: Hellhound

It was supposed to be an obsolete weapon.

That class of armament had died out half a world-war ago. Even if you tried to beef one up to be portable by infantry, it still failed to fulfill its intended role—one reason for its retirement.

But in this age, it had regained value as an infantry weapon.

A workforce called Monoz—first-rate combat engineers—made it possible.

If the firepower isn’t enough, make it bigger. If it becomes unwieldy, assemble it on-site. If it’s too heavy to carry, have something carry it. Akito’s design philosophy solved problems not by finesse but by brute-force practicality, and so the old thunder returned to the battlefield.

An anti-tank rifle.

A weapon that had slid into history.

“—Rat Unit, prepare observation.”

I put the world in the scope.

Higher magnification than usual narrowed the world and pushed it farther away.

Kamisawa Heavy Industries—large-calibre bolt-action anti-tank rifle, Avici.

A custom piece, though.

A one-and-only, one-off. Avici—borrowed from one of hell’s names—and in this hunting-dog spec, the Hound model: the Hellhound.

That was the name of the black, massive gun pressed against my shoulder.

Beyond the crosshairs sat the enemy mortar.

I surveyed a scene invisible from below from the ridge behind our lines.

A mortar’s trajectory is a parabola.

Which is why it can be emplaced and operated from inside a trench.

From my vantage, I could see the mortars and the people operating them.

They were faceless humanoids—the moving dolls Marche had called “Dolls.”

A chuckle escaped me.

Good. Good. Blessedly simple. I can kill those all day and sleep fine afterward.

I squeezed the trigger. Trajectory observation. I matched the correction data Rat Unit fed me with my own senses. Right a little. Fire. Hit. I tore one apart.

“If you value your life, plug your ears, Doll. You can hear this….”

The round slammed into a chest, the kinetic energy detonating, blowing the torso to a powder and leaving nothing to regenerate. I had no intention of letting them come back to life. That was the Hellhound’s purpose.

The heavy barrel did not recoil up.

Using the world in my left eye as reference, I painted the next Doll into the right-eye view. Fire. Repeat.

A Doll ducked behind the mortar.

Vision.

I imagined. Where is it? The shell’s path after I destroy the mortar—predict it, then shoot. I imagined, then fired. The round pierced the mortar and shattered the Doll. —Ah, no. The hit location was wrong. It didn’t die.

Five rounds per clip.

Including trajectory corrections, three Dolls went down. If they could hide in the mortar’s shadow, it was harder; that was a lesson learned.

Rat-tat-tat—metal on metal—as I chambered the next round.

Shoot. Kill. Five shots, reload, shoot again.

I kept repeating that.

Use a mortar, you die. Come near a mortar, you die. So don’t use mortars.

That was the message threaded into each bullet.

The barrage gradually eased. The face of the battlefield shifted. Our bombardment now rolled unchecked, ravaging the enemy lines—and it was only natural the other side would make their next move.

They sent out their cavalry to silence our guns and stop the infantry push.

Two-wheeled and four-wheeled rigs—ball-wheels tearing across the rough earth. Rikan and the others tried to respond from the cover of the trenches, but it was getting hard. Ball-wheels have an outrageously unfair ability to cross broken ground.

I decided to swing round and provide support.

I inhaled. Exhaled.

A mental flip: from the head that had been picking off Dolls, to the head that would now pick off Monoz running across the wastes.

A fraction forward.

I pulled the trigger toward the seconds-ahead future of my chosen target.

It connected.

A four-wheeled armored vehicle lost its balance. Rikan took the opening and lunged into the column—four arms brandishing twin gatlings.

The bio-gear he favoured thudded, pulsing in his chest; the projectiles it expelled were, of course, the bone rounds Rikan himself had crafted.

Using the lead armored car as a shield, his charge should have been the right play. Instead, it backfired completely.

The cavalry massed and then scattered perfectly under the rain of armor-piercing rounds that punched through their plating.

That’s the cruelty of the Tooth side. Weapon performance varies by individual, and when you run into an extreme like Rikan, conventional tactics get swallowed whole.

Absolutely unfair.

So everyone focused their attacks on Rikan.

Let the nearby enemies deal with him.

Counter-sniping.

My targets were the distant professionals.

Until a little while ago they’d been bothering our bombardment teams with sniping; now they were busy with the immediate threat—Rikan. I wanted them to turn back this way. Lonely, I wanted their eyes on me again. But—

“—Rikan.”

『What is it?』

“You’re being targeted by a sniper. Take cover.”

『Can you pull the shot?』

“It’s tight.”

The distance, the elevation difference, the number of snipers, and the fact my rifle still wasn’t fully familiar to me—all of it made a sustained precision burst, a rapid-sniping pass, uncertain.

『Dog Unit and Monkey Unit will hold the line for a moment. Pursue Rooster Unit.』

“Understood.”

Rikan acknowledged, and I squeezed the trigger.

I couldn’t be certain of a hit, but a warning shot matters.

It hit.

Red showed in the scope.

I’d thought it a Doll; it turned out to be human. Then—

I fired again.

It connected. Not lethal. The round aimed at the torso clipped an arm—more precisely, it clipped something that might not even have been a proper arm. Still, it was enough. Even a centipede-clad limb caught the edge of an anti-tank rifle round and came away.

The message was clear: I’m watching you.

As expected of fellow professionals, they understood my meaning instantly; their movements dulled. My work here was done. I radioed D.D. and turned toward the real target.

“All right—let’s go, Horse Unit.”