WeTried Translations

Translator: Coughing Baby

Editor: Coughing Baby

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

Chapter 225: The End of April (12)

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A warning appeared on the PDA. Unusually, it was news from the navy. On the 21st, during combat with a group of Melville Rays, the cruiser Bunker Hill and the destroyer Stockdale and destroyer Gridley reported severe casualties. The maritime blockade had been compromised for a time. A new mutant may have made landfall. Caution advised.

Apparently, they had gifted the sea monsters permanent hearing damage with depth charge attacks, but it was a relief that the damage was lighter than expected. That was probably thanks to the normal chain of command holding together.

That did not mean he could afford to be blindly optimistic. A ship without a crew was nothing but an empty shell. Three warships covered a surveillance range measured, even conservatively, in hundreds of kilometers. Whether the navy, exhausted to its limit long ago, could properly fill that gap was another question.

“Sir. Why don’t you take a short break? It’s well past mealtime.”

After a brief hesitation, Gyeoul accepted Morales’s suggestion.

As he sat by the fire heating his combat ration, “Ale” Alejandro asked, “Major, do you have a lover?”

“No.”

Gyeoul gave an awkward smile. Maybe it was Xcel’s influence, but the soldiers’ small talk had not moved on for a while. It was closer to exaggerated war stories than love stories, the kind of conversation everyone enjoyed while knowing full well they were all bluffing.

“Come on. You must be popular... Even if it’s nothing serious, well, you know. That sort of thing. If someone like you says there’s never been anyone at all, that’s a hundred percent a lie.”

Harper backed up Ale’s smooth talk.

“No fire, no smoke. It may just be the sorrow of being famous, but I think there must be some reason the rumors about the Major’s women never stop.”

“I’m telling you, there isn’t any reason. What kind of rumors have you heard?”

“Oh, do you want to hear?”

“...I’ll pass.”

Judging by their mischievous faces, he could guess without listening. The Major’s women. The only information civilians could get about Gyeoul came from the combat records released by the Department of Defense, but apparently that alone had been enough for people hungry for entertainment.

Alejandro was persistent.

“I heard reinforcements are coming from Fort Roberts this time. So if there’s a nice, hot girl, could you set me up? Leave out that tiger Wonder Woman and the witch.”

Tiger Wonder Woman? Gyeoul thought of the comic book civilian aircraft pilot Luke Merrill had shown him. For whatever reason, Yura’s character seemed to have taken shape that way. He had even heard a similar nickname in a place like this, where he never would have expected it. Han-byul was probably not far from reality, though.

Schultz, who had been listening quietly, cut in.

“Ale. Isn’t asking someone to introduce you to a good woman while carrying that thing basically a public nuisance?”

“What the hell are you talking about? What’s wrong with my thing?”

“Listen carefully. I’m serious. Your precious little guy is worse than this supply pen here. Believe it or not, this thing meets a sixteen-page military standard, MIL-STD. Source: Reader’s Digest.”

“Go fuck yourself. If you see it yourself and still say that, I’ll accept it. Want me to whip it out right here?”

Pointless jokes. Schultz seemed to be showing there was no need to worry about him.

Screams and shrieks chilled the air.

The soldiers, who had been trying to drive away the tension, snapped into combat readiness by reflex. The only exception was Gyeoul. He remained seated alone and calmly continued his meal. After chewing and swallowing a biscuit everyone called disgusting, then drinking a deep-blue beverage that claimed to be grape flavored, he calmed the soldiers staring blankly at him.

“As long as it’s noisy, we should be safe. It’ll probably be more dangerous when it gets quiet.”

The real attack would begin without warning. If they were making a show of it like this, it meant they did not intend to rush in right away. Schultz asked, “I understand what you mean, but will the survivors be all right?”

“Probably. Listen a little longer.”

The wars America had fought recently had been far from total war. Experienced soldiers understood Gyeoul’s meaning easily. Their expressions soured all the more for it. As expected, the curses and shouts mixed with screams did not stop even after a long while. It was a trick meant to keep their nerves stretched taut.

“I think we’ll need to take stimulants. Permission?”

In an ordinary operation, it would have been left to each person’s discretion, but now they had to ask permission. When Harper lowered the muzzle of the gun and asked, Gyeoul added a condition.

“Try to get some sleep in shifts, even if it’s only for a moment. If you really can’t, then take them.”

The soldiers looked confused. But veteran soldiers slept somehow when given the chance. If things went well, the hunt might end before a full day passed, but if things went wrong, they might not get even a few hours of rest for several days. Stimulants alone would not carry them through.

After finishing his meal, Gyeoul swapped places again with Morales, who tried to decline. He climbed the ladder and went up the wall, but the curtain of forest clearly limited his visibility. All he could do was see a little more of the clearing near the barrier. Since he had 「Combat Sense」 and 「Crisis Detection」 anyway, that small difference meant almost nothing. Unless there was a creature that could evade sensory correction through 「Presence Concealment」.

Even the Stalker specialized in Tracking had limited 「Presence Concealment」. Basically, it did not have it at all, and based on Gyeoul’s experience, even when its grade rose, it never became perfect.

He might run into those hounds in this forest. A fair amount of time had passed since he first encountered them in Alameda, so it would not be strange for enhanced variants to appear now.

‘They seem to have prepared a lot, one way or another.’

The reason they had not appeared for a while was probably the ratio of special mutants. For monsters that stood out, their combat power was only so-so. Of course, he thought their individual weight would be lighter than a Trickster’s or Grumble’s, but if even that was wasteful, they would not be created.

Boom. Once again came the sound of a giant tree falling. Then Grumble’s roar. No matter how hard the Trickster tried, it apparently could not stop that pattern. It could have been a lethal card if it hid its existence until the decisive moment, but still. Gyeoul came down from the wall. Because construction had been abandoned midway, there were places where scaffolding remained attached to the inside of the barrier. Traces of some facility they had meant to add.

After midnight, the forest fell silent.

The team members who had failed to fall asleep gripped their weapons and watched the quiet.

When the tension had begun to fade into fatigue, Gyeoul, staring at shadows darker than night beneath the starlit sky, whispered into the radio.

“They’re coming. Get ready.”

The dog lying there without a care must have smelled something, because it barked at the moon. Gyeoul saw Schultz tying the leash to his ankle. The horses gathered to one side pawed anxiously at the ground. Whirr, whirr, whirr. Intermittent motor sounds. The six barrels of the minigun aimed forward spun in short bursts. It would not fire the instant the trigger was pulled, so there was a brief delay before it reached the set rotational speed.

Was it simple Reconnaissance in Force?

They did not seem likely to push blindly into concentrated fire. Just as Gyeoul thought that, he heard something heavy dragging along the ground. What was that? After tilting his head for a moment, Gyeoul turned his gaze to the rear. So they were not just trying to block the road. With a sigh, he transmitted over the radio again.

“I’ll handle our backs. Until I give the order, focus only on the front.”

[Our backs? What do you mean all of a sudden?]

There was no need to answer.

Thud! Thud! Tree crowns landed on top of the barrier. If there had been only one, mutants with poor balance would have struggled to climb up, but it was a different story when they were set in pairs. The locations matched exactly with the places where scaffolding was attached. That meant the Trickster had already made a full circuit inside before Gyeoul arrived.

Grumble roared very close by.

[Fuck.]

Static began to mix into the radio, along with Alejandro’s hollow voice.

The attack began from every direction.

Shadows surged over the wall. Kweeeek! Kyaaak! Naturally, rotten hosts rushed in from the front as well. But the density was not high. That made concentrated fire less effective, but they could not ignore it either. Gyeoul loaded three seconds into the time fuses of a pair of plastic explosives and threw them toward different scaffolds. Boom! Supports broke, and the platforms collapsed and tilted. Living corpses poured down in a heap.

After taking a rocket launcher, the Mk.777, and bundles of ammunition from the airdrop crate, Gyeoul ran to the center of the clearing. A few of the ones that had gotten up first on one side sprinted toward him. Gyeoul turned his back to them and knelt. Under the scaffold, he aimed at the pile screaming as it was crushed beneath the endless weight pouring down.

Three, two, one. At the ear-numbing instant of firing, the threat behind him vanished. The backblast had blown it away. Then the dozens of bodies he had aimed at scattered with a thunderclap. An upper body spraying entrails flew in an arc. Even then, its hand reached out toward Gyeoul, craving reproduction. When he drove a combat boot into its face, its neck bones snapped. Blood forced out by inertia wet his planted foot.

The mutants that jumped down and charged blindly lined up easily in straight lines. No individual with leadership had crossed over with them. Taking advantage of that, Gyeoul picked up the anti-materiel rifle instead of the launcher. He rolled a grenade with the pin pulled to the side, aimed forward, and fired semi-auto like mad. Even so, the precise shots pierced through parts without bone. Rapid fire meant to disable rather than kill instantly.

Kwoooerk!

The ones at the front of the plague vomited blood. Armor-piercing high explosive rounds threaded past ribs, pierced lungs, then struck targets beyond and exploded. Each shot dropped at least two or more. The ones that still crawled forward after that were no longer urgent threats. Having bought time, Gyeoul loaded the next round into the dirt-smeared rocket launcher. One of the creatures hit by the backblast but not killed was close. Bruises had spread across its groaning face. Crunch. He stepped on and crushed its cervical vertebrae, then set the remaining scaffold in the center of the sight’s crosshairs. Fire.

A flash and blast of wind rose. The rusted platform soared dizzyingly along with the corpses.

“Die, you motherfuckers!”

Morales shouted and swung the minigun’s line of fire. Brrrrrrt. Gunfire with no gaps left to hear. The six barrels spinning at high speed poured out firepower at up to a hundred rounds per second. The reddish-hot barrels spun like sparks in the darkness.

“Overheating! Watch the overheating! Unless you want the gun to blow up and kill you!”

With ammunition and magazines to spare, the soldiers were overwhelmed by the scale of the enemy and sprayed wildly.

The order to watch the front was not being followed. The assault at the entrance was not fierce, so the minigun gunner could hold it alone without much trouble. The only issue was frequent reloading gaps, and the grenadier covered those gaps for him.

In the middle of it all, the dachshund whimpered. Pressed against Schultz’s leg, it trembled and pissed itself. Whether Schultz noticed in the chaos or not, he was busy firing and reloading from a kneeling position. The horses were unsettled too, but the calm Xcel served as their anchor. They were in a relatively safe position, though a mutant corpse lay nearby, one he had kicked to death. A lone plague was weaker than large animals in a herd.

The number killed by five people passed three digits in a short time.

The short, stubby high-speed grenade launcher dyed the forest darker than night with smoke and blood. A thick blood mist bloomed from the crouching mutants. The instant the fragments burst, red dots sprayed across pale skin. Soon, altered blood seeped rapidly from those dots.

The plastic explosives Gyeoul sent over the barrier with repeated uses of 「Throwing」 exploded. Even if they could not snap thick logs at once, they could shift their balance enough to knock them down.

‘Why didn’t they break through the wall?’

As he aimed and fired with his rifle, then finished them off with his pistol, Gyeoul wondered about the short, fierce assault that was running out of strength. Every element of the air-raid shelter was obsessively thick, but not so thick that Grumble could not break it if given time. Even a crack large enough for ordinary mutants to pass through would have been enough.

[Woohoo! The enemy’s pulling back!]

Alejandro, the grenadier, shouted.

[I spotted the cunning bastard for a second! We need to chase it right now and kill it!]

Morales’s voice trembled with excitement.

“No. We won’t move until the scheduled time.”

After checking the time, Gyeoul rejected the Sergeant’s suggestion.

If the enemy had been avoiding the possibility of losing Grumble as much as possible, this raid was definitely not the decisive attack. Expecting clumsiness from a Trickster was out of the question. Even if many had died, they were all below average, including immature individuals. It had to be hiding something else, and it would be better to assume this outwardly impressive victory was bait meant to make them lower their guard and chase deep into the forest.

[Feels like we could end it right now...]

A few regretful words passed through the radio network. But they did not continue for long. That was trust in the commander.

Gyeoul ordered the soldiers to reorganize. He would fall for the trap, but only according to plan.

============================ Author’s Note ============================

#KakaoTalk - Rifle Carrying Method

Tunguska: Cartoonist, you were from the 27th Division, right?

Comic artist friend: Yeah.

Tunguska: When your unit carried rifles, did you ever do something called combat firing carry, where you only hooked the sling onto the loop near the stock?

Comic artist friend: The five-minute standby guys did that, and I did it for fun. It definitely makes sudden aiming easier.

Tunguska: I thought the only unit in Korea that did that was the Marine Corps...

Office worker friend: What does it mean to hook the sling only near the stock?

Tunguska: Instead of attaching it separately at the front and back, you gather it all at the rear. The U.S. military carries it that way. It’s called the one-point carry method. Attaching one at the muzzle side and one at the stock side is the two-point carry method. Hooking it front and back, then making a separate strap that goes around the body, is the three-point carry method.

Office worker friend: Oho...

Comic artist friend: If someone says they’re doing one-point carry and ties it to the muzzle-side sling loop, that’d be neither one thing nor the other lol.

Tunguska: It works, though.

Tunguska: Rapid suicide.

Comic artist friend: The Department of Defense does not want that.

#Q&A

Q. UnlimitedOne: @Unmanned turret... turret... the cake is a lie... mphmph. Is it safe to say that Gyeoul’s existence helps the government system survive even more than Gyeoul feels the power of the government? No, now that I think about it, Fort Roberts too, and every time something bad happened, the one who provided good news to cover it up was Gyeoul...

A. Correct. You could say all that rolling around has paid off.

Q. Crysis2: @It was so natural that I only just noticed. What will happen after the control personality gains an ego?

A. Good things will happen, of course. Very good things.

Q. Calpis: @Governator... Will Skynet appear too? The control personality gaining an ego sounds plausible too lol. Or could it be?

A. I wonder what comes after “could it be.” I have no idea.

Q. BlueCrystal: @In “the disadvantage is the soldiers’,” I understand that “disadvantage” refers to the campfire, but I don’t quite get it. Could you explain?

A. rumen: It means the noise and trouble that come from taking care of the dog.

Q. LunarKarma: @If the protagonist is in Heavy Infantry gear, can he hold a minigun in one hand and fire it? I’m asking because I’m curious, since he can apparently do low-speed firing with his bare body.

A. In the setting, the Centurion armored suit has a joint-locking function. Even someone other than Gyeoul can do low-speed firing.

Q. Ronaf: @Sometimes I wonder what it would have been like if Gyeoul had started the game in China or Europe or somewhere like that.

A. Like technology, starting points are also affected by inertia. Knowledge is power, so it must be well hidden... except that’s the Blood Ravens stealing my stockpile. Anyway, knowledge is power. Above all, China’s difficulty is extremely high.

Q. BlitZkrieG: @Author, let’s be together forever.

A. I refuse. I want to finish this quickly. Next work? I know nothing about that.

Footnotes:

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