WeTried Translations

Translator: Coughing Baby

Editor: Coughing Baby

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

Chapter 226: The End of April (13)

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What had they prepared?

A forest thick with giant trees was actually poor terrain for a Trickster too. Its radio range would shrink. That meant at least some of the traps they had set would be dangerous even without direct control.

As countless possibilities brushed past Gyeoul’s 「Insight」, the satellite terminal picked up a new signal.

“Major. Golden Eagle is calling David Actual.”

At Morales’s words, Gyeoul tilted his head. It was an unfamiliar call sign.

“Golden Eagle?”

“Uh... Could you wait a moment? ...Carl Vinson. They say it’s Carl Vinson. A carrier strike group. They have something to notify us about regarding additional support.”

The contact came not long after the battle ended. Apparently, Marigold or someone higher up had sent a drone high overhead to watch the engagement. This probably was not just because it was Gyeoul. Considering the importance of Operation Preventive Scalping, every report might be going all the way up to the White House in real time. During Operation Neptune Spear, for example, when bin Laden was killed in Pakistan, the American president had watched the combat situation in real time with his staff.

Had it looked that dangerous?

To Gyeoul, who had been in the middle of it, it had not been a deadly assault. From the perspective of those watching, though, it must have looked very different. Only five people had been surrounded and attacked by hundreds of mutants, including special mutants. The task forces participating in this operation were being worn down at a frightening rate. Even if they had rescued just as many people, the loss of elite troops who could not be replaced in the short term was a problem on an entirely different level. Reinforced support they had not even requested made sense in that context.

‘Having an attack helicopter formation attached to only five people is already incredible...’

Either way, there was no reason to refuse when they were offering.

When he answered the transmission, the message was that the frigates would fire cruise missiles, Tomahawks, timed to their entry. Were they really willing to risk friendly fire? Because the hidden mutant horde was estimated to be that large? Gyeoul wondered for a moment, but the notice that followed erased his concern.

“Golden Eagle, what exactly do you mean by special-purpose warheads?”

[Chaff warheads and graphite filament warheads. They should suppress Trickster communications across every area except David’s movement route, and degrade their other abilities as well.]

Chaff was a method of scattering thin aluminum strips to disperse radio waves. In other words, no matter how many were hiding in the forest, they meant to stop them from receiving the Trickster’s signals. And for Tricksters, whose primary vision was radio waves, being inside the chaff’s area of effect would be no different from blindness. The darkness of the forest would be difficult to gauge with the naked eye.

The filament warheads were unfamiliar. The idea was to scatter spiderweb-like graphite fibers so they would wrap around a Trickster’s body wherever it went. That would make it difficult for them to use bioelectricity as a weapon. Such as by swinging their arms like whips. Morales, listening beside him, looked dumbfounded.

“Six Tomahawks... I mean, I’m grateful, but if they gave even half that money to us, we’d really fight with our lives on the line. Damn, ten million dollars is more than I could earn in a lifetime.”

The other squad members nodded in agreement. It was the kind of joke suited to people who fired portable anti-tank missiles, Javelins, while shouting, “Wow, there goes two hundred thousand dollars!”

The American government also felt like it had been driven into a corner. It must have had plenty of budget concerns, yet it was spending expensive weapons systems without holding back. Then again, this was a situation where humanity’s survival was at stake, and if they hesitated to use them, there might be no one left to use them. The countless lives this operation would save were worth more than that.

After finishing the exchange, Gyeoul waited for a moonless dawn.

The constellations drifted with time. The night, broken by sporadic roars and screams, shook under a sudden thunder. The Noise Makers had activated. It meant the attack helicopter formation was approaching.

Then the roar of jet engines mixed in. Points of light could be seen approaching from the western sky. Boom, bang. Beneath the starlit celestial sphere, six missiles burst apart all at once. Faint white fibers scattered over a wide area, and silver powder sprayed like fountains from the many projectiles riding the wind beneath tiny parachutes. Nearly two tons of aluminum powder would be scattered continuously for the designated duration.

Human ingenuity answering mutant evolution.

“Let’s go. They’re helping us this much, so let’s finish the hunt while we have the chance.”

Just before departure, they detonated the Claymores. Thousands of tiny steel balls swept across a wide front with the shock wave. The lurking plagues screamed horribly. Alejandro poured every remaining round from the high-speed grenade launcher into them. They could not leave ammunition behind.

Gyeoul turned his reins to the side.

“We’re detouring. They’ll try to fill the gap.”

A thick stench rode in on the wind mixed with gunsmoke. Movements to close the hole in the encirclement. But that would thin out the surrounding density instead. Gyeoul moved in a half circle and raised his hand. Beyond the bushes they were using as cover, mutants were gathering in droves. There were a lot of them.

There might be a hound among them.

They did not need to shoot all of them dead. If they killed the ghouls and hounds, the Trickster’s control alone would inevitably lose finesse. At the same time, they had to leave enough alive that the enemy would chase with confidence. That way, in the final phase, the cunning ones would enter the kill zone.

Ghouls were especially pale even from a distance. The problem was the hounds. Stalkers looked little different from ordinary mutants. Mixed in with so many at this range, even their sniffing was hard to distinguish. What should he do? As Gyeoul thought, he suddenly stared into the wind.

Dudududuk!

Instant aimed fire. A bird that had taken flight in alarm at the vicious night died on the spot. Three rounds hit it, spraying a fair amount of blood and feathers. The moment the wind spread that scent, several mutants in the pack immediately changed direction. As expected. Gyeoul aimed at that commotion and pulled the trigger seven times in one breath. Last, he planted a round between a ghoul’s brows. The gray-white corpse’s head snapped back.

“Run now!”

Hooah! In the echo of the Noise Makers, there was no need to keep their voices down. The five horsemen sprinted with the pack behind them, its guides all gone and its movements splitting in every direction. They took a route subtly offset from where the survivors would be. That was where the center of the trap would be.

They would let themselves be trapped. At the scheduled time, in the scheduled place. Until then, they had to scatter the enemy, playing a game of hide-and-seek where they were almost caught, then not quite.

Kieeeeeek!

Monsters hidden here and there burst out. But their movements lacked coordination. While Gyeoul swept the front clear, bang, bang, bang, bang! A chain of heavy gunshots tightened his chest. They were automatic shotguns, AA-12s, carried by the squad members as secondary weapons. The very same weapon Joanna had once carried onto the passenger ship. Thirty-two fully automatic shotgun shells were nearly a disaster in close-range combat. Mutants closing in from the left and right were torn apart. A hit to the knee shattered the joint, and a hit to the abdomen ruptured the intestines.

Above?

A warning so intense his whole body tingled. The moment Gyeoul sharply turned Xcel’s head, small bodies dropped like overripe fruit from the top of the canopy ahead, from above the curtain of dense branches and opaque leaves.

“Ahh! What the hell are those?!”

He could not tell who had screamed. One horse nearly fell over.

Kkaek! Kiiik, kiiik! Aeng, aeaeeng!

The things crying disgustingly as they fell to their deaths were plague infants, their plump bodies covered in yellow pustules. Their forms had changed slightly from the ones he had seen before. Each time they fell dozens of meters and burst apart with a wet thud, strong acidic body fluid exploded. Wherever it spread, the ground burned, sizzling as acrid smoke rose. Heavy, pulpy impacts continued one after another.

Gyeoul’s eyes narrowed slightly.

So this was it. Even considering the situation, Gyeoul had thought their numbers felt strangely low. This was what they were aiming for.

If it had just been an ambush with overwhelming numbers, that would have been within the range they had prepared for.

“Reload!” came the shout asking for cover. But almost at the same time, the soldiers who had emptied their magazines left a gap in their firepower. As the gunfire died down, the plagues closed in. Flustered hands bought time. It was too late to yank the reins. Gyeoul lay back on the horse and fired bursts into his upside-down field of view. Clack! The chamber was empty. Half a breath to reload. Over the next ten seconds, seventeen heads had holes punched through them.

“Forward!”

Gyeoul took the lead and spurred his horse. They ran over ground that had already been struck by one round of harmful rain, following a path where the canopy thinned. Naturally, they had to change direction more often, and their speed dropped. This, too, must have been a route predicted by the cunning mutant. To escape it, they needed grenades again and again. Even then, fallen giant trees blocked them several times.

“Ale! Grenade!”

At the short command and hand gesture, Alejandro aimed the grenade launcher diagonally. Nervous bursts sent artificial rain pouring down. The corpses running beneath it melted. But one that avoided the fragments fell toward horse and rider. An infant just about to burst. Gyeoul snatched its short leg and flung it hard. The ghoul he had targeted nimbly lowered its body, and the three ordinary mutants behind it were covered in liquid death that ruptured in midair. Kyaaaaaaak! Even among infected screams, it was an especially horrific dissonance.

Dududuk! Dudududuk!

Sparse branches did not mean safety. Clumps of flesh stuck to ancient trees hundreds of years old, filthy fruit, were pierced by precise fire. The juice leaking from them in streams was a deflated explosion.

“Check remaining grenades!”

Reports followed Gyeoul’s shout. Five, four, five, seven. The explosives packed full into their saddle bags, more than enough for an ordinary engagement, were already running low. Alejandro, the grenadier, did not even have time to load another magazine.

By now, the path they had run formed a figure eight. They intended to buy time by running along the paths they had already opened, like a track. Until they linked up with the attack helicopter formation.

A huge shadow rose among the countless giant trees ahead. Fifty meters. That was the range at which Grumble’s sense of smell could detect humans when the wind did not interfere.

“Down!”

At Gyeoul’s sharp shout, the soldiers instinctively lowered themselves. A fastball passed over them.

Acid mutants could be seen climbing up Grumble’s legs. They crossed over the shoulders, passed along the thick arms, and “loaded” themselves. It was synergy between the throwing pattern and the acid mutants.

But it was crude.

Dudududuk!

Just as it was about to throw again, Gyeoul’s aimed fire landed. The pustules of the one held as a projectile, the one on the opposite shoulder, and the ones climbing up the legs burst in succession. The large mutant, drenched in acidic body fluid, let out a roar. Gyeoul had already aimed the anti-materiel rifle at that instant, but first he had to swat away the living bombs suddenly dropping from above. Taang! Tang! A pair of heads, tiny compared to the bloated bodies, vanished. With no heads, their explosion timing slipped. The bodies knocked off course by the shock of being pierced by armor-piercing high-explosive rounds swelled belatedly.

Kraaaa!

After roaring, the monster chased at full speed. It crashed into all kinds of trees and smashed every other obstacle while half its body sizzled. Gyeoul threw a TNT bar fitted with a remote detonator. Against an intact one, maybe not, but with its hide damaged now, there was a good chance it would work.

Click. When he pressed the switch, the forest flashed. The massive body lost its balance and tumbled with a crash. It rolled with all its momentum and slammed into a ditch. Even if it was not dead, they had bought time.

Perhaps the mutants had realized they were running along a fixed path, because their density had increased. Gyeoul checked the time and finally turned toward the rendezvous point with the helicopter formation. He encouraged the squad members.

“Hold out just a little longer! It’s almost time!”

“Over there! Isn’t that a Trickster?!”

Schultz shouted and sprayed bursts toward ten o’clock. A deformed silhouette flashed past. It looked grotesque, tangled in a mass of thread-like strands.

Before they had run much farther, open sky came into view. In any case, it seemed the Trickster had also planned to push the cavalry into a clearing. Humans trying to avoid acid rain would have no choice but to look for a treeless place. Another ambush would be waiting at a distance where it would not be detected.

‘If I create a favorable situation, it’ll want to infect me too.’

There was no host better than Gyeoul. In past apocalypses, when he watched the progression after his death, Gyeoul’s body, after dying unavoidably from infection, often became an especially powerful monster.

The moment he stood beneath the open sky, he pulled a flare launcher from the saddle and fired it toward the center of dawn. The invisible infrared light was the signal that they had arrived as scheduled. It was an agreed sign, set because it would be a problem if the helicopters appeared a step too soon.

“We hold here! Thirty seconds!”

At Gyeoul’s shout, the soldiers’ lines of fire spread in every direction.

“Fuck! There are a shitload of them! Frag out!”

Morales threw every grenade that remained. Dozens of shadows fell, and even more rushed in from beyond the darkness. The loose, scattered encirclement rapidly grew thicker. The way they did not immediately rush in was as clever as a pack of wolves circling prey. Rather than waste themselves in piecemeal attacks, they seemed to mean to attack all at once and end it once there was no chance of failure.

The survivors some distance away were probably already outside their interest. They could just chase them down and kill them later.

At last, the moment the wave of mutants overflowed.

A fierce wind, different from anything before, surged in.

Four attack helicopters appeared in a small gap in the dense forest, in an area less than one hundred meters across. The Apache formation hovered so low that the pilots seated in tandem were visible. Since the appearance of the Tricksters, low-altitude flight like this had never happened. The flood of plagues hesitated. That meant the cunning mutants were confused.

[David Actual. Good work. Hammer Fall will engage from here. Keep low in case of fragments. You may just sit back and watch.]

The squad members who heard the radio were trembling with extreme tension and panting for breath, yet they erased their relief and showed annoyance instead. These sons of bitches were full of themselves. Gyeoul warned them over the radio.

“Hammer Fall! Watch out for Grumble! It throws mutants with acidic body fluids!”

[Acidic...? Copy. We’ll crush it before then.]

Right after that, no conversation was possible. The high-explosive fire poured out by the helicopter formation erased every other sound. Gyeoul lay down with Xcel, and the squad members laid down their horses and flattened themselves close to the ground. Explosions comparable to grenades flashed forty times per second.

Amid it all, a thin roar could be heard. Grumble. As the monster burst out over the devastated forest and shattered pieces of flesh, two helicopters fired missiles at it almost simultaneously. Excessive firepower capable of penetrating a 140-centimeter-thick steel plate easily crushed its beta-grade physical resistance.

A Trickster burst out from behind it. It seemed to have approached using Grumble as a shield. It apparently thought the dense trees would hinder self-destruction. The line of fire from the chain gun went babababak as it swept over the creature’s limbs, but the monster still managed to unleash an invisible shock wave.

The helicopter formation wobbled for an instant. The firing stopped, and their altitude dropped by about one meter.

That was all.

The attack helicopters, plastered with forced discharge devices on every circuit, returned to normal within seconds. They were experimental machines Marigold had sent with clear intent.

[Did you think we’d just keep taking it forever, you dumb fucks?]

Another shock wave shook the Hammer Fall formation. Another Trickster’s self-destruction. The result did not change. Rocket fire poured down on the scattering mutants. The four helicopters had brought nearly three hundred rockets. A continuous line of explosions dug deep into the forest. Alejandro shouted something that could not be heard.

‘There’s still a Trickster left.’

Gyeoul read the mutants’ movements. If their head had been entirely gone, they should have ignored annihilation and charged. Right now, they were confused, but they were still somehow retreating. Judging from their movement, there was probably not more than one. Though the Silent One had to be treated as an exception.

The seemingly endless barrage died down.

[Support mission complete. David Actual, Hammer Fall is pulling out now. Good luck.]

“Hammer Fall, thank you for the excellent support.”

After sending his thanks, Gyeoul immediately began the pursuit.

The surviving Trickster did not seem to be in a normal state. Across every channel, noise carrying its death throes rang loudly. Following the direction where the signal grew stronger, they found the special mutant being supported by a small group in front of a 1,300-year-old sequoia. Gyeoul killed the ordinary mutants that immediately rushed them and asked the squad members.

“Anyone want to kill that?”

The squad members exchanged glances. Alejandro stepped forward.

“May I?”

“Of course.”

The Latin American private took aim at the neutralized Trickster.

“I’ve always wanted to say this line at least once. Yi-pee-ki-yay, motherfucker.”

The soldier emptied an entire magazine into the monster as it shrieked the last cry of its life.

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

This was originally the portion I wrote last Friday, but I ended up posting it today to match the release date with Naver.

I think I’ll post one more chapter today, so I’ll do the Q&A in the next chapter.

Footnotes:

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