“Go on, scram, you damn yandere! Nya nya nya nya…”
As the shimmering spatial rift vanished, Shijō Yurizumi immediately pulled at the corners of her eyes with both hands, making a grotesque face at the spot where Salome had disappeared. While she hadn’t dared to raise her bow against Salome after witnessing the latter’s ghostly spatial severance abilities, which cut through metal like tofu and wreaked havoc, it would have been too cowardly, too unworthy of her ancient and noble lineage, not to mock her upon her departure.
“Enough, Shijō Yurizumi,” Shirley said with a touch of helplessness from inside the cockpit.
“Now that things have come to this, all we can do is try our best to protect those who haven’t yet fallen victim. At least Salome left us with enough weapons.”
“Who knows if these things even work?” Shijō Yurizumi muttered, having been thoroughly wary after Salome’s numerous tricks.
“Indeed, we can’t rule out the possibility that they’ve been tampered with,” Eileen added.
“Then… I’ll give it a try,” Ji Bingyao declared after a moment’s consideration.
She cautiously approached, extending a hand. Though she feared these weapons and ammunition might contain self-destruct devices or booby traps, the pressing threat made these armaments incredibly tempting, too valuable to discard.
Thus, after a brief internal struggle and careful deliberation, Ji Bingyao picked up the most outlandish-looking weapon among them. While the accompanying manual claimed it was a “B-9K Plasma Assault Cannon,” its design more closely resembled a peculiar camera than a firearm or artillery piece. It boasted a silver casing and a muzzle as wide as a fist, which looked more like a camera lens, its edges emitting a faint green glow.
“Let’s see… hmm, this is the safety, and here’s the energy cell slot. After inserting it, this is the power button, and this is the auxiliary optical aiming system,” Ji Bingyao murmured, consulting the simple instructions while trying to familiarize herself with the cumbersome weapon’s operation.
“The firing button is… is… huh?!”
A massive green orb of light shot from the muzzle before she could even react, a result of Ji Bingyao accidentally pressing the firing button. At the moment of discharge, Ji Bingyao felt no recoil, only a sudden rush of heat, as if someone had abruptly ignited a huge bonfire directly in front of her.
Then, as the green orb sped away, the heat gradually subsided. Yet, the orb silently melted everything it touched, searing a gaping maw in the wall as if a blowtorch had melted beeswax, before vanishing into the distant sky.
“My goodness…” Everyone, including Ji Bingyao, was stunned into silence. While the disposable rocket launcher Shirley had acquired earlier, at the cost of an eye, possessed considerable destructive power—capable of blowing off a welded steel security door with a single shot—it was still within a comprehensible range. But the combat efficacy of this genuine Big Fxxxing Gun was truly jaw-dropping!
Fortunately, when Ji Bingyao had accidentally fired it, no one had been directly in its path; otherwise, one accidental shot would have been genuinely lethal.
“This one isn’t bad either,” Eileen remarked, seeing that the weapons seemed safe.
She picked up an AR-I Plasma Assault Rifle and fired two short bursts at a nearby wall. As the scorching blue-white ion beams flew, thumb-deep indentations were instantly seared into the white tile, and the materials within were completely vaporized. Alice, meanwhile, cautiously lifted the six-barreled Gatling gun, beginning to study the manual on how to change its drum magazine, before handing Xia Hua a double-barreled shotgun.
Among them all, only Shijō Yurizumi remained uninterested in these armaments, still adjusting her bow and then sharpening the fish-gutting knife she had brought from the kitchen with a small whetstone.
“Aren’t you taking one? You chunni… Shijō Yurizumi?” Eileen inquired.
“My noble lineage, that of Fujiwara Ason Shijō Yurizumi, can be traced back fourteen hundred years! Even in battling evil, one must adhere to the traditions left by our ancestors!” Shijō Yurizumi drew her longbow, the string sliding back and forth between the carbon fiber pulleys.
“Back in the day, my ancestor, who was both learned and martial, and exceptionally handsome, followed His Majesty the late Emperor with his archery and equestrian skills, pacifying the realm and annihilating all enemies of the court…”
“Um, which late Emperor did your ancestor follow?”
“Why, Emperor Go-Daigo and Emperor Go-Murakami, of course! Back in their time…”
“Alright, well, it seems their archery and equestrian skills were just so-so then,” Ji Bingyao mumbled. Nevertheless, no one suggested Shijō Yurizumi take a gun again. After all, her bow and arrows were certainly effective against most enemies. Moreover, entrusting such a chuunibyou with these incredibly powerful high-tech weapons—who knew what colossal mess she might create? It was far safer to let her stick to her bow and arrows.
“How much time do we have left?”
“Not much, I’m afraid!” After familiarizing herself with loading the double-barreled shotgun, Xia Hua glanced at the still-operating monitor screen, shaking her head.
The cameras on the east wall of the school had already captured large, dark silhouettes stirring between the distant woods and hills, some of them quite massive. Activating the rangefinder, Xia Hua discovered that these creatures were now less than a kilometer from the school.
“They’re certainly fast.”
“Are they? Then everyone, grab as much equipment as you can, and we’ll head to the kindergarten section,” Shirley decided swiftly.
“The kindergarten section is in the southeast of the school. It should be the first place to be attacked. We need to get there before those bugs do. Can you all cover me in the upcoming fight?”
“Don’t worry, Shirley!” Ji Bingyao loaded another green energy cell into the Big Fxxxing Gun, then donned a tactical vest, stuffing a spare battery into each of its four pouches.
“I won’t leave your side!” Eileen declared with a firm tone, hefting her plasma assault rifle.
“I’ll make these otherworldly bugs truly experience our family’s ancestral martial arts!” Though reluctant to use firearms, after a moment of hesitation, Shijō Yurizumi still picked up a massive chainsaw with a snarling beaver logo on its grip.
“I-I’ll try my best too,” Alice said, holding the six-barreled machine gun, appearing somewhat uneasy.
Fortunately, perhaps due to the machine gun’s successful lightweight design, or perhaps because of her prior physical enhancements, even the petite Alice wielded the weapon without apparent strain.
“Then, I’m counting on all of you.” With a mere thought, Shirley piloted the ‘Huntress,’ leaping through the hole Ji Bingyao had just seared into the wall with the B-9K Plasma Assault Cannon.
The quadrupedal mech landed steadily on the ground, performing admirably. The only drawback was that, having jumped from the second floor, its mechanical legs absorbed a significant impact. For Shirley, this meant the ensuing pain was on par with simultaneously stubbing all five toes against a table leg!
“Agh! Ow, ow, ow!” To avoid disturbing the others, Shirley even had to switch off the ‘Huntress’s’ loudspeakers before she began screaming. Even so, it wasn’t until her companions, armed with their weapons, ran down the stairs and emerged from the blown-open back door that Shirley managed to recover sufficiently to continue maneuvering the walking machine forward.
Scattered enemies wandering the school—primarily giant insects still searching for isolated hosts—were drawn by the ‘Huntress’s’ movements and immediately became literal cannon fodder. For these non-human entities, Shirley needed only her will to control the aiming reticle projected in her vision, locking onto them one by one, then calmly firing high-energy plasma beams.
Although more and more giant insects were attracted, and occasionally a faster flying insect would break through the intercepting fire to launch a close-range attack on the ‘Huntress,’ their sharp chitinous claws could at most only create scratches on the walking machine’s exterior. The corrosive substances they spat out could only burn unsightly black marks. Ji Bingyao and the others, flanking the ‘Huntress’ for cover, could leisurely eliminate them one by one with small-caliber weapons, or even chainsaws and stun batons.
However, while these attacks had very limited effect on the ‘Huntress’ itself, for Shirley, lying in the cockpit, it was an entirely different matter! The highly sensitive sensors covering the mech’s surface faithfully recorded every attack, converting them into sensory signals that were then greatly amplified and transmitted directly into Shirley’s nervous system. Thus, with each attack, she felt a terrible pain no less severe than being pierced by a blade.
“Damn it, I understand the need for tactile sensors, but why make them like this?!” Shirley complained mentally.
“Making them so sensitive is just purely asking for trouble.”
“Ah, yes, Mother, you’re absolutely right, it is purely asking for trouble,” Salome’s voice suddenly cut in over the ‘Huntress’s’ communication system.
“Because this is what you designed… And even after discovering the flaw, you, at the time, ordered this problematic experimental unit to be kept.”
“Huh?” Shirley asked, after struggling to focus and incinerating over a dozen disgusting large bugs with a plasma shot.
“Why?”
“You said it was a ‘beautiful accident,’” Salome’s voice was filled with joy; undoubtedly, the current events were a cause for great celebration for her.
“Although subsequent mass-produced models of the ‘Huntress’ corrected this issue, you kept this experimental unit for the ‘Mermaid’s Trial.’”
“What… is that?” Shirley asked, enduring the pain as she pushed through a thorny hedge.
The tough branches could not harm the mech’s exterior, but they made her itch as if hundreds of ants were crawling all over her. The moment she passed through the hedge, several possessed students swarmed her… only to be immediately pinned to the ground by her mechanical legs. Then, the others, providing cover, rushed forward and bound all these unfortunate victims.
Although everyone now understood that the possibility of these possessed individuals returning to normal was extremely slim, Shirley still couldn’t bring herself to kill them unless absolutely necessary.
“It’s based on a story… you know, the Little Mermaid story,” Salome explained.
“You used it as part of testing us, your ‘daughters’: each daughter had to be connected to this problematic mech and participate in a combat mission. If they couldn’t endure the pain and chose to withdraw, their score would be significantly downgraded, facing the risk of being processed… Cassandra and Snow White almost got ‘processed’ by you because of this back then, and Mary chose to undertake more dangerous missions to ‘prove herself’ in order to survive, resulting in… that state.”
“So you wanted me to experience this too? But I really can’t remember anything…”
“My dear Mother, you don’t actually need to act so much,” Salome clicked her tongue.
“Unlike you, Mother, we won’t ‘process’ Mother. If you truly can’t bear it, you can immediately choose to switch to automated control, you know.”
No sooner had Salome finished speaking than a red button bearing the word “AUTO” appeared before Shirley’s eyes.