The light impaling the Attack Moon was fading, as if it were running out of power.
The Orks responded with even louder cheers, swarming deeper into the planet's interior.
Once most of the fleet outside had poured in as well, the massive energy exhaust structures that had previously gone dormant began operating again.
This time, instead of emitting colossal plasma beams, they began releasing microwaves that violently accelerated molecular motion, and the Ork leader's expression changed at once.
He understood how serious the situation was.
Without hesitation, he jumped into a shell-like craft and launched himself straight toward the core of the mechanical planet.
A few seconds later, it struck something and blasted a hole straight through it.
His psychic senses immediately locked onto the target.
That was the one he had to deal with.
When he reached the control chamber where the target was located, he charged in and unleashed a psychic attack without the slightest pause.
The result was like a stone sinking into the sea.
At once, he realized there was something abnormal about this human. Psychic attacks had no effect on him.
More precisely, he was immune to attacks made of pure psychic energy.
Then physical force it was.
The weapon in his hand spat out more than a dozen spikes, enough to punch the target full of holes.
Even power armor would be pierced with ease.
After all, when one of those human warriors called Astartes was hit by this weapon at close range, their power armor was like armor made of packed mud. It was effortlessly blown through.
And right now, he was still enhancing the attack with psychic force, accelerating it even further. Against a target with reflexes like this one's, dodging would be nearly impossible.
Even if the human managed to evade the first strike, there was no way he would avoid the second.
And yet, the result was unexpected.
The target made no attempt to evade at all. He simply charged straight in.
That made the intent obvious at a glance. It was a suicidal attack, because in the human's hand was something that was unmistakably a bomb.
That object was also what had been giving him such a deeply ominous sense of danger.
Thwip.
The spikes punched through the target's flesh, successfully slipping past the armor's protection.
The "slipping past" part did not mean by moving left or right. It meant the human had twisted his body as much as possible to avoid the worst of it.
Even if he could not avoid all of them, he still managed to keep the vital parts of his body from being directly struck. He did, in fact, avoid any immediately fatal penetrating wound.
But ironically, one spike pierced the joint of the arm holding the bomb, causing it to slip from his grasp.
The Ork leader casually sent out a psychic shockwave and knocked the bomb flying.
Its power could not possibly be that overwhelming. If it truly were, there would have been no need for the human to rush in. He could have detonated it on the spot.
The fact that he had chosen to charge in meant only one thing. At that distance, the blast probably would not have been enough to kill him.
And because the spikes had pierced clean through, the impact transferred to the human's body was limited. It was not greater than the momentum of his forward charge, so his torn-apart body still slammed toward him under its own inertia.
At that moment, he caught sight of part of the human's face beneath the helmet, where one corner had also been ripped open by the spikes.
It was a mocking expression.
As if he were the real winner.
The winner?
When clearly...!
No.
The sense of danger from earlier had not disappeared. It had not lessened just because the bomb had been knocked away.
If anything, it had gotten closer.
That danger was moving together with this human.
The danger was the human himself!!!
The instant he realized that—
"Checkmate!"
The human spat out words he could not understand, and his other hand slammed onto him.
The Ork leader tried to fling him away immediately, only to discover that his body would not obey him.
A violent tearing sensation ran through him.
No, not his body.
His consciousness.
In the next instant, his mind shattered, and everything sank into darkness.
...
"So we knew this thing was still alive, but watching the recording really is tense."
"If he'd hesitated for even a moment, if he hadn't committed fully, it would've been over."
"But how did he know he'd be pierced clean through instead of getting skewered and thrown back? Was he gambling?"
One of the Astartes said this while watching the footage.
If the metal spikes the Ork fired had not penetrated his body cleanly and instead lodged in him, then he would have taken far greater impact.
If he had been pinned and flung away, then he would have been completely finished.
So was he gambling that the Ork's attack would penetrate?
And that raised another question.
How had the kid known the Ork warboss's weapon worked that way in the first place?
It was precisely because he knew that method of attack that he had made the calculations in advance.
He had activated the same ability he had previously used to kill the Inquisitor ahead of time, then used that setup to successfully close the distance to the Ork warboss, touch him, and erase him in an instant.
"When we came in, wasn't there a wall that had been smashed open? There were holes around the edge of the breach too. Clearly, that weapon had riddled the wall like a hive first, and then it was smashed through. The kid must've seen that on the surveillance feed, evaluated the attack, and concluded that even power armor would be pierced just as easily."
Another Astartes offered that explanation.
It was probably the correct one.
As for why he had not run, the microwaves had not yet heated things enough to carbonize all the Orks. He could not allow the Ork warboss to destroy the operations console here.
But the more important reason was this: his ship was in the middle of linking up with another vessel. He obviously could not disengage at once, so there was no way for him to escape.
As for the result, he had successfully killed an Ork that even their entire Astartes Tactical Squad would not have been able to defeat.
After that, the microwave heating spread into the chamber as well, roasting the Ork's body into charcoal.
When the heating cycle ended, the kid left his things behind and fled in his ship.
"Captain, agents of the Inquisition have gone down there."
The message from the assault craft made everyone present frown.
The Inquisition really was like sticky tar. Once it latched on, it never let go.
"Destroy that video. No, destroy everything."
"Understood."
Erase all traces of the kid physically. Destroy every last bit of evidence.
After all, everything he had needed to download had already been copied onto the drive he left for them.
...
Ijie felt he absolutely had to give himself a vacation and get some proper rest.
Especially after this latest job. This was already the second time he had ended up with one foot in the grave.
As for the first time, he had actually stepped all the way through it, only to be dragged back by the guy on the Golden Throne with one massive healing buff.
Now that he had more than three hundred star coins, he could afford to rest in a world where he took no commissions for at least three thousand hours.
Converted into days, that meant one hundred and twenty-five days off.
Counted by months, that was about four months of vacation.
Counted by years, that was nearly half a year off.
Hm?
Professor Kouzuki wanted to talk to him about G-Elements?
He pulled out the data he had downloaded, opened it on the Thinker-computer, and began searching through it until he found the relevant section and had her compare it.
The result suggested it was indeed the same kind of substance.
That made things interesting.
Because right now, he actually did need something like G-Elements.
The warship-shaped weapon he had obtained this time was a kind of dimensional weapon, something similar to a two-dimensional foil, and activating it did indeed require that substance.
(End of Chapter)
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