52. Target: “Trailer Park”

Target: “Trailer Park”

More tests followed with more soldiers.

Many soldiers displayed, to varying degrees, major enhancements to weapon performance. Similar to the first test, some leaned toward accuracy, some toward firepower, and some caused ammunition counts to increase, replenish themselves, or last longer.

Repeated testing showed that, for most soldiers, if they changed to a different model of weapon, the effect dropped sharply.

With the same type of weapon, the effect mostly remained stable. But if they used the same individual weapon they had recently used in combat and repeated the firing again and again, the effect improved very slowly.

The tests continued.

Most soldiers were extremely fatigued, stressed, sleep-deprived, demoralized, and sometimes injured, but no one complained.

Everyone understood that gathering more data about this new anomaly was absolutely vital. And survivors of the army’s most recent defeat were more willing than most to keep being tested.

Among the several hundred survivors who displayed abnormal abilities, most were fairly similar in what they could do and in the effects they produced.

But some were different.

A young black-haired female volunteer from a mobile emergency response support unit could only be described as timid.

She picked up a pistol that looked as if it had been made from rainbow crystal.

When she pulled the trigger, a vivid red tracer-like streak hit the first target, which immediately caught fire.

Since ballistic gel was ninety percent water, that was rather surprising.

The second target was struck by a bright orange tracer-like streak… and then exploded as if a small grenade had gone off inside it.

After the third target was hit by an orange streak, it immediately began to hiss and rapidly melted into a foul-smelling puddle.

A green magical bullet caused the next target to blacken and cave in until it became a dark brown powder one-tenth of its original volume.

The target struck by a blue bullet froze almost instantly and shattered, while the indigo bullet turned its target into a sheep—though it still died from the physical bullet wound.

The violet bullet was the brightest, more a beam than a tracer, and it made the ballistic gel vanish without a trace.

This woman was the most unusual case so far, but by no means the only unique one.

Some soldiers could enlarge their bullets to inflict greater damage, or multiply them to strike multiple targets.

Some snipers could make bullets automatically track targets like tiny missiles, or magnify penetration and overall damage manyfold.

One old veteran fired rounds that turned into small, dense clouds of locusts, which ate through multiple ballistic-gel targets in less than a minute before vanishing.

One platoon leader could make every weapon fire a stream of flame like a flamethrower, with size and range scaling according to the weapon’s caliber.

The platoon leader’s partner could make weapons fire bubbles. The bubbles expanded, engulfed her targets, and proved harder to shoot or cut through than infantry ballistic plates.

As the enemy inside the occupied city brought forth more legions of unnatural creatures and triggered supernatural weather, the American military rushed to understand how the enemy fought—and to turn the enemy’s strengths and weaknesses to its own advantage.

Mott, consul of the Mavis domains, waved a hand.

Another mass of clay and soil the size of a large room turned whiter than the purest snow, then sublimated into raw magic.

Before the twenty-meter-wide gap in the soil and bedrock could collapse from the sudden transformation, two dark masons stepped forward.

The first maintained magical repairs to keep the new section of tunnel stable. The other conjured steel-stone plates to reinforce it, if not permanently, then at least until the campaign ended.

Once this was done, the group of three advanced sixty meters and repeated the minute-long process, just as they had been doing for the past several hours.

For mortals, laboring underground without rest would have been grueling.

The ancient Mavis had discovered that long ago, then replaced slave labor with far more reliable undead and magic users.

Compared with a dark mason’s training, this simple construction work was fairly easy.

Unlike the cursed obsidian, ironstone, and black granite bedrock of Mavis, the soil of this world proved soft and easy to shape.

The first part of this project would require only a few hours. The rest only a few days.

If all went according to plan, Mott’s hastily built surface base would hold long enough for them to finish the project.

It would also gather the magical input required to start it.

Not to grant life, of course, but something similar, simpler, purer.

To that end, the consul had sent his other dark masons to repair the damaged parts of the base and replenish the army’s numbers in preparation for the coming resumption of battle.

This differed from his original plan. That was a result of the locals proving they could repurpose even the most destructive weapons into magical construction.

But it was not unwelcome.

Mott welcomed the challenge.

His great strength came first from his lord, but second from all those clever enemies who had resisted Mavis invasions not only with force, but with foresight and intelligence.

Absorbing the lessons they taught would only add to the glory of Mavis.

Naturally, it was Mott’s duty to find a way to survive the learning.

Half an hour later, footsteps echoed through the huge, gently curving tunnel they had been excavating.

Two sets of footsteps, in fact.

One slow and extremely heavy. The other so light it was almost inaudible.

The consul smiled. The agent he had sent had finally arrived. Without stopping his work, he called out in greeting.

“Welcome, Captain,” the Mavis invader said cheerfully. “I see you brought a companion.”

“The brat wouldn’t stay put,” a massively muscled man grumbled from a height of five and a half meters.

He wore one of the locals’ sleeveless, absurdly thin shirts. It had once been leaf-green, but it was now so dirty and stained that it had become mostly dark brown and yellow.

Trousers resembling the locals’ military uniform bulged around legs like tree trunks, and he stomped along in rough, heavy boots.

The same monstrous musculature and size stretched the stained shirt tight. His chest was barrel-like, his arms thicker and longer than his legs. He had almost no neck, and a thick, fleshy head topped by closely cropped blond hair.

Filthy blue eyes glinted ominously behind narrowed lids as he glared at his small companion.

“And who are you, little girl?” Mott asked the child, pausing his spellcasting to receive his guests.

The little girl did not answer. She hid behind the man’s leg, her head barely reaching his knee.

“She’s a headache,” the “captain” grumbled, his voice like stones grinding together. “Managed to take out one of the zombies you gave me for grunt work. If I hadn’t caught her, she would’ve run straight into the battlefield.”

“That is a good omen,” Mott remarked.

“Children of Mavis must kill their first zombie before they are accepted into our training programs.

The earlier they manage it, the farther ahead of their peers they stand.

And if they fail?”

The consul shrugged. “Then the unfit and the reckless are removed from the pool of volunteers. No one forces them to attempt it before they are ready. Failure is their own fault.”

“Bah. Children are children. They’re only useful when they have discipline,” the man retorted.

Mott did not voice his disagreement.

Educating the short-sighted was not part of his duties.

“The little one said you were looking for me. New assignment?”

“Indeed.”

At Mott’s words, the muscled fool did not even try to suppress his excitement. His eyes shone and his mouth nearly watered at the thought of a new assignment.

But because the man would remain a useful fool for some time, Mott did not show his contempt.

“Survivors have gathered at your old place, my friend. I would have sent some of my forces, but… the ‘nucular’ weapon has seriously reduced their numbers, and resistance fighters will almost certainly appear.”

The consul deliberately mispronounced the name of the amusing destructive device, as he often did with his newest guest, concealing how much he understood of local culture.

It made him seem uncultured in the fool’s eyes, and therefore easier to manipulate, despite Mavis civilization’s obvious complexity and superior methods—which, in turn, made the fool easier to manage.

“You mean people are still resisting?” As expected, the fool’s eagerness intensified.

Then again, Mott had purchased the man’s loyalty with the power and lifespan granted by killing, and the disgraced former captain had shown absolutely no moral objection to that.

“You want them captured or dead?”

“I leave that decision to you, my friend,” Mott said with a shrug.

At first, he would have been willing to treat the man as a friend. Capable collaborators were not easy to find, and the conquest of this world had originally been planned as a long campaign.

Alas, the fool had proved more willing to become Mott’s foolish pawn.

“I simply want this… trailer park, was it? I want the place cleared for new construction.”

“Excellent,” the fool agreed readily. “Is there somewhere I can put the brat?”

“There is a guest room beside mine,” Mott said.

At that, the little girl’s face turned pale.

If she continued proving herself smarter than her father, perhaps Mott might yet gain a decent new recruit out of this entire mess.