*
Swarming from both the centre and outside residential zone E57, an army of drones promptly executing their search and destroy directives. They were shaped like cobalt blue ants and they were the size of a small car half the height of an adult with the length of a cushy bed. Designed to be rideable with their autonomy fully capable of being disabled at any time. Even now, artificial intelligence wasn't utilised to control these drones.
Through some esoteric ancient doctrine, humans came to the conclusion that the most efficient form of warfare was human controlled drones. If the aim was for utter and complete destruction, explosive armaments were the best suited for this role, making AI obsolete in the execution of its own role. They can follow patterns, identify enemies, but they commonly fall short when facing unexpected circumstances such as enemy troops disguising themselves with ally signatures.
They aren't programmed to deal with such situations and their learning speed is too slow. If they learned fast, they would quickly be designated as tactical threats and eliminated by the enemy's main forces. The era of fighting with faster learning AI and veteran AI cores was long over. Humans make the cheapest and most efficient AI cores, and any capabilities they lack can be supplemented by technology. After all, AI is only a threat when it is equipped by relevant technology, such as lethal fire armaments. Any other function, can also be provided to humans in the form of advance electronic tools.
The first few rows of vampires disintegrated into dust, leaving nothing behind. Traces are augmented beings capable of moving and reacting at many times the speed humans can. The C grade designation roughly corresponded to 800-4000x human capability, 10-100 times the speed of sound. These are not speeds that can escape camera coverage, the drones are properly tracking their targets and the humans making split decisions. As for toughness... Well it didn't really matter too much to the plasma aggregate ammunition. They effortlessly melt and consume the enemy before vanishing.
Correspondingly, the vampires put up magic shields with their skill, {Incongruity}. In a simple manner, it is like telekinesis. Using magical particles which cannot be affected by material reality, they isolate the plasma ammunition being fired at them. The ones at the front didn't have the luxury of learning from deceased comrades, they died without any Remnant's left behind and met a rather quiet end. The ant drones deployed in the centre began a sweep outwards, while the drones deployed outside the zone started to coalesce inwards.
At the start of the invasion, the vampires began their rampage disorganised, but quickly converged into a proper formation, losing tons of soldiers in the process. Their shields began to hold out, and the white hot mass expelled at blinding speeds from the drones turrets immediately vanished upon contact. Their lethality was designed to be isolated to the target, their aim is spot on at the heads of their targets hiding behind their arcane shields.
These plasma aggregate weapons were the same ones that the police wielded, engineered to reduce collateral damage by only killing the target and damaging nothing else. That meant it was suited to eliminating beings that possess flesh and bio signatures like Traces, an amalgamation of biology and mysticism. They weren't wholly spiritual beings like Yggdrasil, so they don't share the same immunity.
Right now, they are still slinging plasma bullets. It was a rudimentary level of threat elimination for these military suited ant drones, and a last resort weapon of the police. In other words it was their least powerful part of the arsenal. The main body of the vampire army and the wyvern ravaging the central part of the residential zone were engaged in combat with the drones and fighter jets. What they had to worry about was the stragglers that hid in homes and began preying on the innocents.
There was an unknown number of stragglers and even the frontline was barely being maintained. The vampires move fast when in small numbers, they even fly, so they're practically impossible for the human drone pilots to react and pull the trigger at. It was a fragile balance, the main forces of the enemy was packed and trapped behind their magical shields, under unceasing fire. The wyverns were easy to distract, their pride crushed by the faster and tougher metallic bastion of human ingenuity cruising the skies.
Unlike magical girls who are humans with their attributes amplified by magic, Traces are always at their highest level of combat performance. They are born strong, and they do not have an 'amplified' and 'unamplified' state, rather they are always 'amplified' since birth and cannot turn it off. The magic flows through their body and strengthens their flesh while boiling their blood like steam factories, this was their default way of being, as natural as how one's heart will keep beating as they live.
In peace time, there was roughly 3 magical girls in each zone, the upper limit set by the law of magical girls is unknown. The law isn't anything controlled by human hands, it a physical law of the universe just as natural as gravity. At least 3 magical girls were moving around at the current moment, eliminating the stragglers. They're C grade while the average magical girl is D grade, so they need to take their time and carefully fight them one by one. This was one of such confrontations.
"Ready! {Deluxe drive disdain}!" (Aluemia)
Her two close friends fire their own skills to bind the opponent as they created distance. The next attack was going to be large. Due to the simplistic nature of attribute amplification, the characteristics of magical girls largely fall under the same group of toughness, physical strength, magic proficiency, magical quantity and agility. A melee fighter would roughly have the same amplification levels as someone who is a tank. As the ability to dish out physical attacks would fall under the same category as the ability to push against attacks with a shield.
In other words they had a loose party formation of two tanks or melee fighters and one mage to charge up bigger attacks in the back, to finish off enemies. Black drills float up in the air, glowing an ominous black halation on its edges. The air around seemed to blur under the intense rotation of these basic looking cones that spun at an imperceptible velocity. They tear through the air and find their mark in a few vampires, blowing their heads clean off and cauterising the neck stumps. Their bodies fall flat onto the ground but do not vanish.
Her allies trusted their weapons into those dormant chests, a sword tears horizontally and splits the layed body from chest to back. A hammer pulverises its target, turning a would-be corpse into mush. They pour alcohol over the bodies and start small fires, causing the scent of burnt flesh to waft into the air.