Chapter 22.2: Hunting the Spider (5)
Leon worships chivalry. Nay, he is chivalry incarnate.
He abhorred cowardly assaults and sought out fair fights. Of course, his opponents don’t always fight fair.
His many enemies harassed him with raids, plots, and all manner of sorcery. But this is no reason for him to forsake the virtues of knighthood.
He was the kind of man who would smash battlefield intrigue and shadowy sorcery from the front.
He was the embodiment of chivalry: broken, but unbreakable. That’s what made him strong.
It was for this reason that he waited for Yakt Spinner to finish its maintenance.
With very few exceptions, a knight’s honor is important, even if it’s a non-human being.
Leon had encountered many dimorphic races, some of them completely alien to humanity.
He was an Earthling, but he had lived in the world of dimorphs and xenomorphs for much longer than that.
Yakt Spinner inhumanly cold armor plates and structurally different joints were just part of its personality.
“For a robot, you’re majestic and powerful. It will be hard for those creatures out there to take you down.”
Before he could finish his sentence, a swinging wire slashed across Leon’s path. He ducked out of the way, but it struck a nerve with the Lionheart.
“Is it too much to ask for honor from a machine?”
Yakt Spinner eyes glowed red.
Armament check: 480 rounds of 60 mm machine guns.
Four wire cutters, two tons of last resort in the repair shop.
Supersonic whip after supersonic whip.
The Wire Cutters’ trajectories, their speeds, all calculated to keep them from tangling with each other and supersonic whips struck Leon from the ground, overhead, left, right, and center, with no way to dodge but Leon gripped his holy sword and parried the onslaught.
His opponent’s evasions were calculated, and the only attack that reached Leon was a wire cutter, which he deflected with his holy sword.
“………….”
The mixture of molten iron ore and hardened steel should have shattered under the whip of the supersonic wire cutters but the iron sword remained intact and even the common sense in the machine’s database couldn’t understand it.
Yakt Spinner used his four legs to disrupt Leon with even more agile moves than before.
It’s good if its opponent holds his ground like a heavy tank because immobile targets are just fodder for machine guns.
-Tut-tut-tut-tut-tut!
The machine gun opens fire and the first round misses as it should but Yakt Spinner analyzes the trajectory of the flying shells and makes adjustments before hitting Leon.
-Thud!
The concrete crumbles as it hits the ground, sending the figure soaring.
In the next moment, after the rising concrete blocked his view, Yakt Spinner condensed the hydraulic springs in his joints and leapt away.
-Quang!
A spear pierces through the spot where Yakt Spinner was just a moment ago. Yes, he expected it.
He analyzed the combat patterns of Threat Level 5 enough that he assumed every eventuality.
Spears appearing out of thin air, iron swords that don’t break at all, or shattering tank-grade armor with sheer force. It all defied common sense and logic, but the threat in front of him was real.
The sound of a door closing was caught by the noise filter and sounds don’t lie, even if they can’t be detected through debris.
Yakt Spinner slammed into Leon like an artillery shell as he ran against the wall but before he knew it, Leon mounted his summoned beast and retrieved his holy spear.
Yakt Spinner couldn’t understand how an organism can run that fast but he’s long since abandoned logic. The lightened Yakt Spinner darted between the maintenance buildings, blocking Leon’s approach.
“Stallion, he wants to play hide-and-seek with us.”
The fleeing Yakt Spinner and the horseman that gives chase, smashed through building walls and pillars with their bodies.
It’s a contradiction in terms, with Yakt Spinner guerrilla tactics using the terrain to his advantage and the horseman chasing him in a straight line, but Yakt Spinner isn’t just running away.
The wire cutter’s unexpected attack on the pursuing Leon was intimidating and deadly, but it was only buying time.
Leon calmly and skillfully deflects Yakt Spinner attacks while seemingly ignorant of its pursuit.
Yakt Spinner picks up the pace even more, thoroughly avoiding Leon’s approach but its joints are slowly wearing out.
Its structural limitations designed to deal with armored vehicles and slow infantry are being tested by a superhuman.
-Squeak!
The machine has been overworked beyond its carefully calculated capabilities and has collapsed from within.
How will the machine handle the absurdity of exhausting itself before the human did?
After a few minutes of chasing, the reversal was a calculated move.
With a large building pillar in front of it, it hooked its flimsy legs over the pole and grimly changed course.
“……Stallion!”
Yakt Spinner moved in an instant and slammed straight into the horseman.
Weighing over forty tons, even if it was lightened, it was not the kind of impact an organism could withstand.
“Not bad.”
But the Stallion held on, sliding smoothly as it was pushed back by the impact.
In the face of an impact too great for flesh and form to sustain, man and horse shake their heads lightly and gallop on again.
Nothing changed and Yakt Spinner took advantage of the distance and fired its remaining shells.
“──!”
Stallion dodges the fire with an amazing move and even with all the precious machine gun shells being fired, Stallion’s sprint doesn’t stop.
-Kugugung!
The hail of 60 mm shells chips away at the durability of the old building in real time as the walls, ceilings, and columns of the massive structure crumble like a sponge, spewing out huge chunks of stone.
Stallion leapt lightly toward the deadly boulders, and then began to climb, spurred on by the falling rocks.
The phantasmagoric beast, called a god, dodged the cascade of boulders and reached the ceiling in an instant.
────!!
As gravity pulls him back down, the camera lenses of Yakt Spinner and the eyes of the rider intersect.
Facing each other perpendicularly, they aimed their machine guns and lance at each other.
-68 rounds. All rounds fired.
“Glory be to the Lionheart…!”
Gravity-defying machine gun rounds rained down, and horsemen slammed vertically through the ceiling.
The ceiling, which had barely retained its shape despite the merciless misfires of the machine guns, completely collapsed under the impact of the white horse.
It was a charge like a white comet, a falling star pummeled by machine gun fire. But──
“……?!”
The glowing Stallion is unscathed since no physical attack can penetrate the Light Divine Beast, who has unleashed his divine power and is in sync with his rider.
-Boom!
A devastating blow of dense holy power slams into Yakt Spinner.
-Kwazizik!
Yakt Spinner is pierced and torn in half but Yakt Spinner robotic arms moved, even as it was thrown like a piece of trash from the massive impact.
With his opponent frozen in the aftermath of the impact and fall…it had 2.7 seconds to get his fuselage moving so it swung its four wire cutters.
The high-performance AI calculated the trajectory even as its body bounced around to kill the stationary enemy with certainty.
The trajectory determined that the sharp wire cutters swung from four directions would cut through the prey. This time, it was a must-kill.
“Excellent…!”
“……?!”
Yakt Spinner took a moment to review the camera malfunction as in a flash, the Stallion carrying Leon vanished into thin air, and he slammed into the ground.
The trajectory of the wire cutters had been calculated assuming a rider on horseback but when the target is less than half the size of the rider, the perfect calculation leads to a fatal miss!
Leon fired at it like a shell, hitting it right in the middle of its perfect trajectory. With the destructive power he’s shown so far, it’ll only take a moment to cut through the main computer.
[Yippee. What’s sealed in here should never leave.]
The AI finished its calculations in a split second.
A workshop built on top of a sealed facility, the last way to protect this place. If there is even a 0.01% chance, the machine will not stop acting.
-Initiate self-destruct sequence. Detonating all the explosives in the facility.
-Boom, boom, boom!
A large number of explosives planted in various parts of the repair shop explode in unison.
