Night had already fallen, but the warfire blanketing the world below showed no sign of dying down.
The flames re-lit what should have been swallowed by darkness, and against the black sky the fighting looked even more savage than it had in daylight.
All of a sudden, something burst up from a hole in the ground. Before a single soldier could react, there was a sick little sound—something punching into flesh.
Just as the thing that had surfaced tried to fire again, a monomolecular blade flashed down, chopping off the gun in its hands along with half its neck.
The attacker twisted in a way that looked like it should have snapped a normal person's spine, and in that impossible contortion, dodged several shots at point-blank range.
Bang, bang, bang…!
The autogun in the attacker's hands barked in rapid bursts. You could hear wet pops—rounds tearing something open—Gun Gaunt flesh splitting under impacts.
Gun Gaunts were about two meters long. They looked a bit like small dinosaurs, except their forelimbs weren't stunted at all—thick, powerful, and evolved to carry symbiotic weapons.
That "rifle" wasn't a machine-made gun. The "bullets" it fired were living micro-organisms. The gun itself was a nesting structure—essentially a tiny brood-hive.
Once launched, those parasites bored into a person's body and injected toxins that could devour tissue in moments.
That was why the PDF soldier who'd been hit immediately drove a knife into his own wound, dug the parasite out, and crushed it.
After that… it was luck. It depended on what strain had been fired.
If it was a fast-acting neurotoxin type, infection spread so quickly you had to carve away a huge chunk of flesh immediately to keep it from racing outward.
So if you were hit in an arm or leg, you might still live—amputate on the spot and your chances were decent.
If you were hit in the torso, you'd have to gouge out a fist-sized cavity to stop the toxin's spread, and if it was too close to vital organs… that was basically suicide.
And not all strains were "just" poison. Some detonated inside you. Some released strong acid. Some implanted eggs—feeding on blood as they hatched, multiplying and spreading through your body until there was nothing left but a hollowed-out shell.
Right now, large numbers of Gun Gaunts were lurking all around.
They were quick and cunning, using underground tunnels and whatever cover they could find to take potshots from the dark.
And inside those tunnels lurked the Tyranids that had dug them—snake-bodied horrors known as Raveners.
They had six razor-sharp forelimbs that let them rip through earth and carve tunnels with ease.
Those six claws, whipping back and forth, were a meat grinder in their own right—anything they caught would be shredded into ribbons.
"Hm?"
Noticing movement, Kain glanced toward the Salamanders.
Over there, they'd pinned a Ravener.
His eyes settled on one Salamanders battle-brother in particular. Unlike the others, this one had been carrying a metal case the whole way—something inside that looked like a specialized weapon, probably intended for cracking the nest itself.
Then a notification popped up, and Kain froze for a beat.
A livestream alert—from the Super-Dimensional Channel?
He spared a sliver of attention, and the message made him pause.
He skimmed it quickly and understood the gist: someone had taken his stream footage, made a derivative edit, earned rewards from it, and transferred the maximum share to him as the original creator.
So that was possible.
Good.
Leave Kuroneko a message.
…
In a coffee shop, two junior high students from different schools were tucked into a corner table, hunched over a laptop.
It was a brand-new, top-of-the-line machine—something most ordinary families couldn't afford.
The owner was the girl with the round glasses: Saori Makishima.
She was from a wealthy family, so of course she could buy gear like this. Now she'd brought it out for Kuroneko to use, insisting she log in and see just how hot her uploaded video had become.
Saori still couldn't figure out how Kuroneko had gotten her hands on footage like that.
The image quality. The staging. The effects. It was genuinely jaw-dropping.
Especially the orbital fortress smashing into the planet—the kind of spectacle that rattled you down to the bone.
The only shame was that there wasn't an extended "fortress falling" sequence. The clip began right at impact.
After that, the fighter pilot moved like he was walking a tightrope—threading through a storm of gunfire by the width of a hair.
Then another fortress fragment slid down through the sky, got blown apart, and plunged straight toward the ground.
No wonder the upload had exploded.
Its popularity was spiking across the net, being reposted everywhere at a terrifying pace.
People were speculating nonstop—some kind of AAA studio's game trailer CG, or leaked footage from an upcoming movie. Everyone was hungry to know what it was.
The only thing Saori found mildly unsatisfying was the editing: a few cuts were awkward, and some of the background audio choices didn't quite land.
"Huh? The view count is this high…?"
After logging in, Kuroneko clicked her tongue at the number of plays—and at how many people were watching right now.
"Kuroneko-shi, are you sure you're okay?"
"Huh? Me? Yeah, I should be fine."
Ruri knew what Saori was worried about: if this really was some company's unreleased material, there'd be lawyers involved.
Closing her eyes, Ruri slipped back into the Super-Dimensional Channel. She checked her energy bar—
—and realized it had ticked up again, by a tiny amount.
Was it possible that the more popular her edited upload became—the more people watched it—the more her energy bar would rise?
She entered Kain's livestream. He was still fighting Tyranids, and it didn't look immediately catastrophic. Only then did she glance at the stream's discussion panel.
There was a message from him.
Ruri stared.
He was telling her that when she edited the footage, she should emphasize how cool he looked—especially the "highlight" moments.
And any clips where he looked awkward…
She should hide them.
Which meant he knew she'd been downloading and re-editing his footage.
Ah. He must've realized there were rewards involved.
And with that message, he was basically saying she didn't need to hold back—she could download what she wanted and make derivative edits.
In that case…
She wouldn't hold back.
"Kuroneko-shi?"
"Give me a second. Don't talk. I'm picking clips."
She started selecting new segments—this time focusing mainly on Kain fighting the bugs.
Okay. Download these, and set the destination to this laptop.
And just like that, something impossible happened.
A multi-faceted crystal icon appeared right on the desktop—like a folder.
She clicked it—
—and the exact files she'd chosen were already inside.
"Kuroneko-shi!"
The trembling, stunned voice made Ruri look up.
Saori's round glasses were practically sliding off her face. She was staring at Kuroneko, then staring at the screen.
Ruri froze, then broke into a cold sweat.
In her excitement, she'd clicked without thinking—and Saori had just watched a "download" from another world drop onto her laptop like it was the most normal thing in the world.
How was she supposed to explain this?
(End of Chapter)
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