Chapter 8: Raid Operation

A dry wind blew.

The wind scraped the rough earth, stirring up dust.

The weakened land yielded easily to the wind, but afterward, it came back to assault us. Grains of sand pattered sharply against the centipede’s head armor, striking with surprising force.

Head armor. Yes, head armor. Right now, I was wearing the head armor that Yuri usually forbade me from using. There was no helping it. This time, close-quarters encounters were expected.

—I’m counting on you, rookie.

Alex had said that, smiling broadly. Just like he’d promised when we first met, he really intended to send us into all sorts of battlefields.

After my single day off, I was sent to a battlefield very different from the high ground before: an open plain. The mission was to raid a transport convoy. A raid. Yes, a raid. If we had known the transport route in advance, we could have ambushed them. But since the mission started with locating their route, that wasn’t possible.

In other words, I needed to move.

That wasn’t good.

The fact that, despite six months of training raising my sniping skill to Rank 4, my general shooting skill hadn’t even reached Rank 1 was proof enough: I wasn’t suited for close-range combat.

—If you go running around, assume you’re going to die.

That had been Yuri’s warning.

But Alex told me to move. What should I do? Which order should I prioritize? I already knew. I was just a debtor. I had to work. Someday, I’d part ways with Yuri. That’s why I wanted to be able to do more than just sniping. That was how I felt.

That’s why I wore the Arakane head armor, with its matching mono-eye like the Monoz, and why I carried the Type-7 light machine gun instead of my familiar Type-5 sniper rifle, walking across the wasteland.

Still, I had no intention of dying so easily. I thought it over a little. I sent our squad’s strongest force, Team Momotaro, ahead to scout. I assigned Snake Unit to cover the rear. At my side were Rat Unit and Ox Unit. That was the formation I set up.

Right or wrong—I didn’t know. But for now, it seemed to be working. I was still alive, and Dog Unit, apparently leading the vanguard, was regularly sending back brief reports of combat outcomes.

I wondered if Snake Unit was slacking off as I left footprints in the red earth.

I deliberately had Dog Unit let enemies through a few times.

It was for my own training. But in the end, all I learned was what I already suspected. I really wasn’t any good when the distance to the enemy closed.

No, maybe it wasn’t exactly that. It seemed I wasn’t compatible with fully automatic weapons. I’d thought they were just for spraying bullets, but that way of thinking had been wrong. Of course you still had to aim while firing. But I couldn’t manage it. My shot grouping was far too poor.

Once, I left an ant worker to Ox Unit. He pinned it down precisely and tore it apart with suppressive fire. While I was taking the steps of shoot, pin, shoot, finish, the Monoz had already completed the process as shoot, pin, finish.

In other words, unlike me and my weak human body, they were fully capable of controlling a machine gun.

That frustrated me, so I switched the Type-7 from full-auto to semi-auto. After that, I was able to secure clean kills. Even at visual range.

It was disheartening to realize that even wearing a powered exoskeleton couldn’t compensate for my weakness. But thinking about it now, a handgun costing 25,000-C might have been useful after all. If it had been a large-caliber model, it probably would have been enough to serve as a weapon. I regretted not buying one.

Speaking of semi-auto, the new weapon I’d acquired was also semi-auto, but its trajectory was unusual, and I hadn’t fully grasped it yet. On top of that, the ammo was limited. It felt wasteful to use it on nothing but retreating ant workers. For this turn, I had no choice but to get through it with semi-automatic fire from the Type-7.

As I checked the corpse of a downed Ant Worker, I found myself reaffirming the importance of preparation.

***

Something felt strange.

That vague feeling solidified into certainty about three hours after we’d set out.

Almost every ant worker I’d taken down had already been wounded.

But those wounds were clearly different from the ones Dog Unit inflicted up ahead. We didn’t carry any weapons capable of gouging out spherical holes in flesh.

In other words, the ant workers were fleeing from something else.

Who were they running from? Another squad from our company? Or—some other alien enemy?

“…Well then.”

I muttered quietly, took off the head armor, and pulled my necklace from around my neck. I gripped it tightly. The pain sharpened my thoughts.

Time to think. Three minutes.

I ran my hand over an ant’s shell. Smooth. Hard. And yet, the flesh inside was wet, soft. That meant the attack had pierced the hard shell without losing the force needed to tear into the soft tissue beneath. It wasn’t just powerful—it was fast. But since even the largest wound wasn’t much bigger than my fist, it suggested the area of effect was narrow.

In other words, this opponent wasn’t a bad match for me as a sniper.

So, what should I do? How should I fight? How large was their force? What kind of enemy were they?

The information I had. The information I lacked. There wasn’t enough of either. Even so, I had to think. Precisely because I didn’t know.

The alarm went off. I hadn’t reached a conclusion.

I scratched my head roughly. There was no helping it. I’d have to simplify things. A binary choice.

I called over Ox Unit. “I want to organize my thoughts.”

“Beep!” came the reply. A monitor unfolded from Ox Unit’s back, and a stylus was handed to me. I spun the stylus once in my hand.

Let’s think about how to accomplish this mission.

Fight or avoid → Fight.

Ambush or keep moving → Move.

So far: Move forward and fight.

Next.

Cluster or spread out → Cluster.

Fast or cautious → Cautious.

Everyone or a small team → Everyone.

“Alright.”

I reviewed the notes I’d scribbled on Ox Unit’s monitor.

Move cautiously. Stay together. Cluster up. Keep moving. Fight.

The direction was already clear. The ant workers were fleeing from something—from the northeast.

***

I crouched inside a trench the Monoz had hastily dug.

Beyond my gaze was a river. A river of blue, and red, and streaks of pink.

It didn’t roar or rush with any strength; instead, it flowed softly, aimlessly, like it had forgotten what it was supposed to be doing. The river was made of countless bubbles.

Bubbles—one of the alien species we were at war with. The Bubble.

“Worst possible matchup.”

I muttered under my breath as I stared at the massive river in front of me.

Hundreds? No, thousands? Not even close. There were at least tens of thousands of them. At minimum.

This wasn’t good. Who was it who’d been thinking, “This opponent wouldn’t be such a bad match for me as a sniper”?

Me.

Correction: This opponent is the absolute worst possible match for a sniper.

One of the sniper’s jobs is to slow down large numbers with limited ammo by targeting commanders, sowing psychological disruption through sudden long-range strikes. It works. It works against Insectum. It works against Tooth. But not against Bubble. Not these.

They were more akin to fungal colonies than individual creatures.

First, they had almost no independent thought. You couldn’t intimidate them or make them hesitate. Every single one of them was both a soldier and a commander; you couldn’t decapitate their leadership.

Second, each bubble wasn’t a single organism—it was composed of hundreds of billions of tiny Bubbles, and those, in turn, grouped into tens of thousands, flowing together like the river before me.

At the center of each mass was a core, a Tree Crystal nucleus. If you shot the core, it would die—or rather, it would lose cohesion and fall apart. But unless you hit the core, even if your bullet popped some of the outer bubbles, it was like scooping a drop of water from an ocean.

The swarm closed up immediately.

I was confident I could hit a core. I was. But even if I took down one, there were still tens of thousands left. It meant nothing.

Slow-moving, not particularly powerful or long-ranged—the Bubble’s individual specs weren’t terrifying. But with sheer numbers and how hard they were to truly kill, they’d ended more human lives than any of the other alien species.

Simply put, this wasn’t the kind of opponent a fifth-day rookie should be up against.

What the hell was Alex thinking?

Even as I thought that, I kept watching through the scope I’d detached from the Type-5 to use as a makeshift telescope.

I couldn’t tell the difference between the red and blue ones, but the pink ones seemed to be on transport duty. I could see non-core Tree Crystals inside them. If they were bothering to transport those, it meant they were rare goods.

For humans, those Tree Crystals could be used to make Monoz or Centipede suits. If Insectum or Tooth got them, they’d make upgraded units. I didn’t know what Bubble used them for.

“I want that,” I murmured honestly.

I couldn’t win. But maybe… maybe I could steal it.

Clutching my necklace, I continued to observe.

And then, I spotted a black Bubble down below. There was something inside it. Something about the size of a fist.

Could it be a bomb?

If I shot it and it exploded, maybe—just maybe—I’d have an opening.

I tried to recall what Yuri had taught me about the Bubble. What worked against them: chemical weapons, flamethrowers, and explosives. If that thing was an explosive, then I had a plan.

Half an hour passed.

Finally, I could see the tail end of the Bubble river.

They’d only moved about three kilometers in that time, but the swarm stretched endlessly.

And then, behind the tail, something else appeared.

Black. Fast. Not Bubble.

What…?

I turned my scope toward it. Narrowing my field of view, I recognized them. Insectum. Ants. Among them, one carried curved swords in both hands. Wings. A Soldier unit. They were thirty in number. Enough to kill me. If those were coming for me, I’d be dead.

But they weren’t attacking me. They weren’t attacking the Bubble, either. Not really. No way to wipe out a swarm this massive—fifteen hundred meters long. The Ants knew it too.

They had a different target. They were going for the pink ones.

Same target I’d set my sights on.

Looks like I wasn’t the only one eyeing them.

I decided to watch. And then I realized what the black bubble was.

An Ant plunged into one of the red Bubbles. The Bubble popped easily, breaking apart into countless smaller Bubbles that clung to the Ant’s body. And the next moment—

I think… it spun. Spun at incredible speed. Spun, ripped through the Ant, punched a fist-sized hole straight through its body, and then fell to the ground under its own weight.

“Ah…”

I couldn’t help but breathe out loud as I watched the black bubble reform, sticking itself back together, floating again.

It wasn’t a bomb.

It was just a lump of flesh.

And Yuri had said the Bubble’s offensive power wasn’t that high?

I’d really like her to clarify which part of that wasn’t that high.

I would die.

My Monoz would die.

The Ants had died.

No.

One was still alive.

One Ant had survived, somehow avoiding a fatal blow, clutching the rare Tree Crystal with three of its arms.

But it staggered.

It was heavy.

At that pace, it was only a matter of time before they caught up, before it was overtaken, before—

“It’s… not overtaken?”

The staggering Ant was still ahead. The Bubble was slower than even that wobbling Ant. That couldn’t be right.

“…”

I gripped my necklace. A routine to focus myself. My thoughts sharpened.

…Maybe.

Just maybe.

I could do this.

Oh, and for the record, I let the ant go. I’d probably get scolded later when they reviewed my headset footage. But I didn’t care.

There are lines you just don’t cross.