He pushed his bullet time even further, and the world in his vision changed again.
What he saw could no longer be described as an ordinary optical image.
It resembled thermal imaging, yet his eyes also seemed to possess a degree of X-ray vision, allowing him to make out some of the structures inside the immense mountain of flesh before him.
Once he identified a few key points, he acted without hesitation.
His blade opened a wound faster than the creature's molecular-level regeneration could close it. Then he fired a round three times the caliber of those used by an ordinary boltgun into the opening.
Before the round could reach its target, the wound was already knitting shut, and regenerating tissue began to impede its progress.
But the projectile functioned like a bunker-busting round, boring through the flesh in its path until it reached the designated point.
Then it detonated.
A molten cavity nearly ten meters across opened inside the creature. The material within that space was torn apart at the atomic level, almost entirely vaporized.
The bone was too dense to vaporize outright, but it visibly melted into liquid.
Even a cavity that large would take no more than three seconds to regenerate completely. The bone would be rebuilt as well.
But the muzzle of Kain's large-caliber boltgun kept flashing.
More than a dozen melta rounds struck within a second, expanding the cavity further.
He slipped inside.
Like a virus invading a human body, he triggered a frenzied response from its immune system.
Where regeneration failed to keep pace, bizarre structures erupted from the surrounding flesh.
It was like stepping into a secret chamber packed with traps. Sharp, alien growths thrust at him from every direction at supersonic speeds.
At the same time, concentrated toxic fluid sprayed toward him, its corrosive power rivaling aqua regia.
The fluid, however, posed little threat.
His power armor possessed a special defense. Resonance induced rapid molecular vibrations, creating what appeared to be a transparent protective layer around its surface.
That was why he had been able to ignore the earlier downpour of corrosive poison. An invisible "raincoat" had kept it off him.
The sharp growths still had to be dealt with, though. They could potentially penetrate that protection and expose him to the corrosive fluid.
Six directions.
He switched ammunition. Metal Storm frag rounds detonated around him, shredding the growths closing in from all six sides.
Alternating those rounds with melta rounds, he temporarily suppressed both the cavity's regeneration and the attacks from its walls.
He could maintain that situation for no more than two seconds.
His boltgun's magazine wasn't bottomless.
In the time it took to reload, the wound might close completely, and the surrounding flesh would resume its assault.
But two seconds was enough.
By the time he had expended half the magazine, he had collected the samples he needed: a partially regenerated section of bone and a tendonlike substance that controlled the movement of the surrounding muscles.
He cut them free, placed them in a specimen container, and instantly stored it in his personal space.
Hm?
Kain's pupils widened.
He spotted the abnormality and immediately accelerated toward the exit.
An instant later, immense pressure descended.
The air itself seemed to explode!
"What happened?"
Back in the Tokyo Area's Outer District, Miori genuinely couldn't make sense of what she was seeing on the screen.
The footage they were watching wasn't coming from her company's drone anymore.
It was being captured by Kain's power armor and transmitted to the equipment he had left at the facility.
Sumire currently held the receiver.
In effect, he was acting as her surgical instrument, entering the body of the terrifying patient called Scorpio to provide her with a closer look.
But now the image had suddenly turned white.
Miori had no idea what had happened.
"Atmospheric pressure. Scorpio pressurized the inside of its wound. The pressure increased more than five hundredfold in an instant."
That was Sumire's explanation.
Five hundred times standard atmospheric pressure, generated in an instant.
And the wound hadn't even been completely sealed.
What an astonishing ability.
Then again, perhaps it needed to generate pressure like that to support a body more than four hundred meters tall.
Under that immense pressure, the air compressed, and the moisture within it erupted outward as a white, mistlike plume.
Kain had escaped before the pressure could crush him.
But once outside the wound, he was airborne. The erupting steam and its accompanying shock wave caught him, launching him like a cannonball into the nearby ruined city.
He smashed straight through several buildings.
Before he could recover, Scorpio attacked again.
Its grotesque maw opened as though it meant to swallow everything before it, and a tremendous roar burst forth.
In an instant, the city that had already been devastated by Gastrea crumbled.
It was as though the ruins had been made of sand, shaken apart by an overwhelming vibration.
Sumire grew anxious.
If something happened to him, how would she develop a cure for the Gastrea virus?
And beyond that, she was deeply fascinated by his extraordinary body.
She couldn't bear the thought of losing such a precious specimen.
"It's a sonic attack!"
Watching the effects through her drone's feed, Miori immediately identified the mechanism.
The terrifying sound waves induced resonance within the structures around them. Once the vibrations exceeded what those structures could withstand, they shattered.
A few seconds later, the attack reached her drone.
Its systems failed, and it crashed.
Shiba Heavy Industries had lost its view of the battlefield.
Fortunately, the aircraft Kayo was piloting was still transmitting footage, so they could continue watching.
The attack had even blown apart the clouds overhead.
Moonlight illuminated the devastation below.
The entire area looked as though it had been reduced to a desert.
Where was he?
There!
Miori spotted a metallic humanoid figure moving through the dust.
Then he vanished.
No, he had simply accelerated. The footage could barely capture him as he darted across the battlefield.
At the same time, Scorpio unleashed a dense barrage of black streaks, sweeping them across the area like beams from a laser weapon.
Miori could roughly understand how it was producing those attacks.
The earlier blast of white vapor had given her the answer.
It was using the same sudden increase in atmospheric pressure to compress and propel its toxic fluid.
Each jet struck the ground with enough force to gouge out a crater. The poison then vaporized, its corrosive effects dissolving the surrounding material.
The resulting destruction resembled the impact of an energy weapon.
Had any of those attacks hit him?
She couldn't tell.
He moved like lightning, far too quickly for her eyes to follow.
But one thing was certain.
Scorpio still considered him a threat, and its attacks showed no sign of stopping.
"This isn't good."
"What is it, Doctor?"
Kisara noticed Sumire's tightly furrowed brow and the alarm on her face.
"Scorpio couldn't do this before. It's adapting to his attacks. It's evolving! Changing itself!"
If he continued collecting samples from different parts of its body, there was no telling what further changes he might provoke.
It was far too dangerous!
Scorpio needed to be killed immediately.
Sumire sent Kain a message at once, telling him to abandon the remaining samples.
He mattered far more than Scorpio.
After all, there was more than one Stage V Gastrea in the world.
But someone like him might be the only one.
(End of Chapter)
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