Objects traveling faster than sound tended to produce a sharp report.
When something accelerated past the speed of sound in an instant, the resulting sonic boom was especially loud.
And every time that explosive crack rang out, another soldier vanished.
A cloud of blood and a few scattered remains appeared where he had stood.
If there was anything behind him, the bullet tore through that too, its destructive power far exceeding what was needed to kill a man.
It also carried some of his pulverized flesh along with it.
The most striking result was that many of the walls now seemed to be made of meat. Gaping holes had been punched through them, their edges smeared with blood and mangled tissue.
Those grisly stains were all that remained of the soldiers whose bodies had been shredded and hurled against the walls.
"Wind speed..."
Several hundred yards from the slaughter, a prone sniper centered his crosshairs on his target while calculating the best moment to fire.
"Die."
He squeezed the trigger.
The powerful recoil slammed into his shoulder hard enough to make it feel as though the joint might pop out of place.
He kept his eye glued to the scope, waiting for his target's head to...
Huh?
For a split second, he thought his eyes were playing tricks on him. The target raised his handgun, pointed it in his direction, then lowered it again.
He seemed to glimpse a tiny spark in midair.
A moment later, his view lurched into a dizzying spin.
His field of vision seemed to have narrowed, too.
His pupil contracted.
As the world revolved around him, he caught sight of the position where he had been lying. His sniper rifle lay in pieces. Beside it was his body, a large portion of it blown apart.
Did that mean he was spinning because his head had been shot off?
His head struck the ground with a series of dull bumps, rolled to a stop, and his awareness faded.
"Number One! Number One, respond! What are you doing?"
An agitated voice crackled from the radio on what remained of his torso.
"Number Two? What about Number Two? Damn it, he's not answering either!"
"Number Three? We've lost contact with Number Three!"
"Damn it! What the hell is going on?"
Inside a command vehicle near the building, the officer in charge nearly hurled his radio to the floor.
He had positioned several snipers around the area. They had already had multiple good opportunities to take the shot, yet none of them had reported back.
Of course, he knew perfectly well that they couldn't all be ignoring him.
Something had happened to them.
Damn it. Their target had accomplices!
"All units, be advised..."
"Captain!"
A frightened voice interrupted him just as he was about to issue the warning.
He turned, irritated, but before he could snap at the speaker, a screen was thrust in front of him.
It showed the positions of the snipers he had deployed.
Every last one of them was now a mutilated corpse.
There was no sign of anyone else at the scene. Nor did it look as though enemy accomplices had killed them and quickly withdrawn. Judging by the damage visible in the footage, the attacks had come from the very man they were trying to surround and kill.
"H-how is that possible?"
They had been more than five hundred meters away.
That man was busy dealing with the soldiers attacking him inside the building. How could he possibly have killed snipers more than five hundred meters away at the same time?
One might have been hit by a stray bullet.
Three could not all be accidents.
And he hadn't even seemed to take deliberate aim. He simply raised his hand and fired.
That was enough to hit someone at that distance?
"Order the forward units to retreat!"
Sending ordinary soldiers against him was clearly accomplishing nothing except getting them killed.
There was no point continuing to engage him inside the building.
They would wait until he came outside, into the open.
Then they would bring the heavy weapons to bear.
On another building, a tall figure and a small one watched the overwhelmingly one-sided slaughter.
They had been about to leave and begin their game when the unexpected turn of events made them stop.
"Well, now. He's taking things even further than I would."
Kagetane sounded thoroughly entertained.
Some observers probably thought the man could rampage unchecked because of that unusual handgun.
But possessing a weapon like that wasn't enough to explain what he was doing.
Kagetane had noticed that he never missed. More than that, his bullets were colliding with the rounds fired at him.
He doubted that such precise interception was merely a matter of watching his opponents pull their triggers and calculating trajectories from the angles of their gun barrels.
The man might actually be able to see bullets in flight.
Kagetane also considered how much of a threat that weapon would pose to his repulsion field.
He could withstand a single shot.
Two or more were harder to judge. It would depend on the rate of fire. The faster the shots came, the greater the strain. If the man could fire more than ten rounds in a second, his field might not hold.
Back inside the conference building, the soldiers were withdrawing.
It wasn't difficult to guess what the forces outside intended.
If infantry couldn't do the job, they would use heavier firepower.
Armored vehicles had probably already surrounded the building, ready to unleash a storm of metal the moment he stepped outside.
The faint thrum of rotors suggested attack helicopters were waiting as well.
Come on, then.
Let's make this a little livelier.
Kisara noticed what he was doing.
He was reloading.
This time, however, the rounds were clearly different from the ones he had been using for sheer destructive force.
Hmm?
Was he going to charge straight out?
She had expected him to use the building to conceal his movements, fire through the walls, then send another round through the opening to kill the people outside before they could react.
Still, facing their barrage head-on would certainly make a stronger impression.
The instant he disappeared from the lobby, Kisara pressed herself behind a load-bearing pillar.
A storm of metal swept into the room, shredding everything in its path.
Within moments, the lobby was riddled with holes.
But the barrage lasted less than three seconds before falling silent.
Kisara stepped out from behind the pillar and brushed the fallen dust from her clothes.
Then she headed outside.
Boom!
Another deep gunshot rang out.
The nose of the last attack helicopter melted away in an instant.
Like a headless fly, it careened wildly through the air before plunging to the ground.
It crashed into the plaza between the building and the armored vehicles surrounding it.
The explosion bathed those vehicles in a red glow, illuminating their grotesquely damaged shapes. Sections of each had been reduced to molten metal.
Almost everyone inside had been vaporized in an instant.
Very few had left so much as a limb behind.
And all of it had happened in mere moments.
(End of Chapter)
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