At the operations headquarters in Tokyo Area's First District, the footage had grown difficult to make out.
The reconnaissance drones that had ventured closer had been destroyed, leaving only cameras recording from a distance.
Still, the target was enormous. Its movements made it clear that its attacker was keeping it occupied.
Scorpio seemed unable to deal with the person attacking it. It was growing increasingly agitated, and its attacks were becoming more vicious.
What looked from a distance like a dense barrage of lightning was actually a series of intensely compressed, high-voltage electrical discharges.
A single sweep of that attack could probably flatten an entire stretch of the city.
Then there was the terrifying infrasound attack that had shaken an abandoned town to pieces. The sight had left everyone horrified.
If it unleashed something like that inside Tokyo Area, the buildings would probably crumble like crackers, collapsing into heaps of fragments.
Human bodies might not break apart under those sound waves, but they would likely be distorted, their flesh and internal organs reduced to pulp.
Like a crushed tomato, with red juice squeezing out from within.
Someone swallowed hard at the sight of another attack melting countless holes into the surrounding ground.
If one of those black rays hit a person, they would melt in an instant.
Fortunately, the battle was still taking place along the coast, some distance from Tokyo Area.
But Scorpio was a Stage V Gastrea more than four hundred meters tall. It would not take a creature that size very long to reach them.
They were even worried that it might suddenly launch an attack all the way from its current position.
That was entirely possible.
During previous battles against the Gastrea, other Stage V creatures had demonstrated attacks with enough range to strike Tokyo Area directly from Tokyo Bay.
"Come to think of it, I don't remember Scorpio using attacks like these during the last war."
"Neither do I. There's nothing about them in the records I've read."
That exchange made the atmosphere in the conference room even heavier.
It meant Scorpio might have undergone further changes in the ten years since its last appearance.
Any plan based on their old information could prove fatally inadequate.
"What the...?"
Several people shot to their feet.
A series of flashes had suddenly erupted inside one of Scorpio's eyes. A moment later, an enormous cavity occupied the place where its eyeball had been.
Everyone present recognized those flashes. They had already witnessed what those special rounds could do.
When one struck and released that light, any part of an armored vehicle caught in the blast would instantly turn to molten metal.
A person would simply vaporize.
In other words, the mysterious man named Kain, whom Tendo Kisara had brought in, had just vaporized one of Scorpio's eyes in an instant.
"Don't tell me he's going inside it again."
The sight of him forcibly carving his way into the monster earlier had stunned them all.
"Maybe he's going in to plant some kind of powerful bomb."
Otherwise, how could anyone possibly kill that thing?
Suddenly, enormous tentacles erupted from Scorpio's body.
They were grotesquely thick, and they plunged savagely into the empty socket where its eye had been vaporized.
Blood sprayed everywhere. The sight made everyone's scalp prickle.
But as the tentacles tried to burrow deeper, light flashed again. Segment after segment vanished into thin air, plainly vaporized by those same bullets.
Thump!
Another round launched from the grenade launcher mounted beneath Kain's bolter.
This time, he did not fire at a target. He aimed into the empty space inside the creature.
The shell burst, scattering fine metallic powder throughout the surrounding area.
The flesh that had been gathering to regenerate abruptly stalled, as though something had suppressed it.
The shell was a specially manufactured round containing the Varanium supplied by Kisara.
She had not been able to provide much of the metal, so he could not afford to waste it.
In the story he had watched, Black Bullet, Satomi Rentaro had killed Scorpio with a single shot from the railgun called Heaven's Ladder. That had worked because the projectile contained Varanium taken from his prosthetic arm.
But if the amount of Varanium in one arm was enough to kill Scorpio, why did Rentaro need to shoot other Gastrea with Varanium bullets at all?
Why not simply kill them with that arm?
Sure, bullets allowed him to attack from a distance. But once a Gastrea got close, why not injure it with his metal arm or leg?
All he needed was a retractable blade. He could slash his enemies open and suppress their regeneration with ease.
Why wasn't it designed that way?
For that matter, if one arm's worth of Varanium could kill a Stage V Gastrea, ordinary Gastrea should theoretically begin disintegrating the moment they came into contact with that much of it.
After arriving in this real world, Kain had finally understood why that did not happen.
Varanium possessed a unique magnetic field that interfered with Gastrea regeneration. However, that field needed to pass through the creature at a certain speed to cause damage.
It was like a fishing line stretched across your path.
If you walked into it at a normal pace, it might catch against you, but it would not cut your body apart.
At walking speed, the pressure of the line would not really injure you.
Jog into it, and it would hurt. It might leave a welt, but you probably would not suffer a serious injury.
Sprint into it, and it could genuinely wound you. The damage would be worse, and it would take longer to heal.
But what if you hit that same line while riding a motorcycle at tremendous speed?
The line would become a razor's edge, capable of cutting straight through you.
The magnetic field that disrupted Gastrea regeneration worked on a similar principle. The faster it moved, the more devastating its effects.
The relationship was directly proportional.
That was why attacks with an arm or a leg were less effective than bullets, unless the limb could strike at a speed comparable to a bullet's.
When Rentaro killed Scorpio, the Varanium had been loaded into the projectile fired from that railgun and accelerated to a substantial fraction of the speed of light.
At that velocity, the magnetic field's ability to destroy Scorpio's regeneration had reached an unprecedented level. It then triggered something like a chain reaction, causing regenerative failure and collapse throughout the creature's body.
Apparently, a magnetic field moving that fast induced another kind of transformation in the Gastrea virus. It also intensified the destructive effect, allowing it to spread rapidly throughout the body and cause total collapse.
In that sense, even a Stage V Gastrea was easy to kill.
All someone needed was a way to fire a Varanium-containing projectile with enough force to punch straight through its body.
Exactly how much Varanium was required, and how fast its magnetic field needed to travel to kill a Stage V, remained unclear.
Once Kain finished collecting this sample, however, he would not need to take any more.
After that, he could use the Varanium round A2 was preparing and launch it through a particle accelerator. Accelerated to a substantial fraction of light speed, it should likewise kill Scorpio in one shot.
Then he sensed something.
He stopped collecting the sample and frowned.
Erratic light was flickering all around him.
An instant later, an ultrahigh-voltage current punched through the inner walls whose regeneration he had suppressed.
Countless needlelike streaks of light stabbed at him. His power armor shrieked under the assault, and the force transmitted through it jolted his body as well.
When the current subsided, everything around him was charred black.
Sparks danced across his armor.
A string of explosions crackled over his body like firecrackers. They resembled the detonations of reactive armor, but he had triggered them himself, blasting away large sections of the damaged outer plating.
Without hesitation, he turned to get out.
His power armor, in its current state, would never withstand a second electrical attack of that magnitude.
Just as he was about to launch himself out, however, his gaze locked onto an opening deeper inside the creature.
The current had burned through to another cavity.
And something was leaking out of it.
Emotion.
It felt like a child's emotions: an intense longing for something, something that mattered enormously to it.
Other emotions were mixed in as well, tangled together in chaotic confusion.
It was almost like a child throwing a tantrum.
Kain pushed Bullet Time to its absolute limit.
He "saw" a hazy shape inside the cavity.
In spiritual terms, it was a soul.
Scientifically speaking, Kayaba had described such a thing as a light-quantum field that constituted human consciousness.
The field in front of him was profoundly abnormal, twisted and chaotic, as though it might come apart at any moment.
But if this creature had a soul, if it possessed consciousness, then there was no need to leave its body just yet.
Time to use the D99 serum!
(End of Chapter)
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