It fell like a red-hot spike, plunging straight into the earth and piercing the heart of a thriving city.
With such enormous mass traveling at that speed, the sheer force of the impact drove deep underground.
In the next instant, the terrifying destructive energy, unable to disperse quickly through the densely packed earth, erupted in an explosion.
The shock wave twisted the ground, shattered it, and hurled it upward.
The skyscrapers built upon it had been designed to withstand magnitude-seven or even magnitude-eight earthquakes. Now, they proved more fragile than buildings made of toy blocks, collapsing and disintegrating in seconds.
The cars on the streets were crushed and twisted even more easily than aluminum cans. The slightest impact mangled them beyond recognition.
As for the people closest to the impact point, they were not simply blown away. Human bodies were far too fragile. When the shock wave struck them, they burst apart like fresh tofu crushed beneath a palm.
Farther away, buildings, vehicles, and crowds were swallowed by what resembled a small tsunami made of earth and shattered pavement. Everything in its path was swept away.
In little more than ten seconds, a city that humanity had spent over fifteen years rebuilding, a city inhabited by countless people, was reduced to ashes.
The same hellish devastation unfolded across several regions of the world.
Seven cities were wiped from the map.
How many people had lost their lives in those seven cities in a single instant?
No one knew. What was certain was that the number of dead had already surpassed the entire population of Mars.
Asseylum's face turned deathly pale.
"The war has begun."
"Yes."
Yuki nodded at her superior's words.
This was no longer an internal Martian conflict.
The moment the Landing Castles struck the surface and inflicted such catastrophic damage upon humanity, Mars and Earth had entered a state of war.
Earth's military forces were already mobilizing around the impact zones.
For fifteen years, Earth had been preparing for this day.
Bang!
The sudden gunshot made Yuki's expression change sharply. Less than fifteen feet away, a crater the size of a bowl had been blasted into the concrete.
A sniper!
She immediately looked toward Kain. He had already drawn an unusually large firearm and opened fire.
The barrel was aimed at a building across from them. Following its line of fire, she noticed something strange near the top floor.
She raised her binoculars and looked through them.
Behind a shattered window lay a headless corpse.
Not only was the head gone, but so were the neck and part of the upper torso.
Was that the power of Kain's weapon? Every shot struck with the force of a grenade.
Then Yuki sensed something else, and her face changed again.
"Everyone, get down!"
"Kids, hit the ground!"
She and Koichiro Marito shouted at the high school students.
At the same time, both drew their handguns and aimed at the enemies pouring out from every direction.
These armed men, charging forward with rifles raised, were clearly Martian agents planted on Earth.
Now that they knew the princess had survived, they had tracked down her location and launched another assassination attempt.
Just as Yuki was about to pull the trigger, another strange, deafening noise erupted. It sounded somewhat like gunfire, yet not quite. Magnified many times over, it might have resembled the roar of a rocket engine.
The roar sounded once, or perhaps several times. The shots came so quickly that they almost completely overlapped.
As the thunderous noise reached her ears, the four terrorists in her field of vision were suddenly torn apart before they could fire.
Their bodies shattered like porcelain smashed by a hammer.
Most of their torsos were reduced to chunks of flesh no larger than a baby's fist. Only parts of their limbs remained relatively intact.
It looked like watermelons bursting apart, spraying crimson fluid in every direction. The sight was horrifying.
Several more explosive reports snapped Yuki back to her senses.
It was Kain's weapon roaring.
He was moving too fast for her eyes to follow. By the time she realized what was happening, he seemed to have fired six or seven rounds within a single second.
Every person caught in the weapon's sweep had most of their body blown apart, scattering pieces of flesh across the ground.
Yuki's pupils widened.
One terrorist had already aimed at the princess, and an orange muzzle flash had appeared at the end of his rifle just before he was obliterated.
Terrified, Yuki spun toward Asseylum.
What?
Kain was already standing in front of the princess. The afterimage he had left behind in his previous position was only just fading.
He held a short blade in a reverse grip. Sparks still danced along its edge.
The enemy's bullet had clearly struck the blade.
Yuki could not believe it had happened by chance. There was only one possible explanation: Kain had deliberately intercepted the bullet with his knife.
No human being should have been capable of reacting that fast.
Without warning, he vaulted over the nearby railing and dropped down.
A hail of gunfire immediately erupted from below, forcing Yuki to pull back just as she was about to peer over the edge.
The concentrated barrage lasted only an instant before falling silent.
Using the reflection in a nearby building's floor-to-ceiling windows, Yuki saw another group of armed men attempting to storm their position from below.
Yet they were somehow being driven back at frightening speed.
Biting her lip, she leaned over the railing and looked down.
A figure moved among the gunmen like a phantom.
Each time the shadow flashed past someone, that person collapsed as if a crucial support had suddenly been pulled from a tower of blocks. Their bodies fell apart into several pieces, leaving only bloody chunks with perfectly smooth cuts.
In the span of a single breath, more than half of them were dead.
Then Yuki sensed something overhead and looked up.
Several unfamiliar aircraft had arrived above them. Three transformed in midair, taking on humanoid, mecha-like forms.
The remaining craft appeared to be a transport. Three soldiers wearing identical uniforms leaped directly from its interior.
She could also vaguely make out another unit concealed by optical camouflage.
These were clearly Kain's troops, and they had come to provide protection.
Their mission was obviously not to protect him. They knew exactly how powerful their commander was and made no attempt to intervene in his battle.
Instead, their defensive formation centered on the princess. Everyone near her had also been included among their protection targets.
Several missiles streaked toward their position, only to be intercepted by the transformed machines' lasers. The machines then immediately returned fire in the direction the missiles had come from.
Just like that, an armed terrorist force numbering more than fifty was completely annihilated less than thirty seconds after launching its attack.
Their ambush had come quickly.
Their deaths had come even faster.
Yuki and the others barely had time to understand what had happened.
The sight made her realize just how terrifying Kain's unit truly was, especially its commander.
He had created a slaughterhouse worthy of hell, yet his expression remained perfectly calm, as if he had done nothing at all.
It was as though the things he had killed had not been human beings, but training dummies. As though the blood covering the ground was nothing more than spilled paint.
The sheer indifference made her scalp prickle.
"Urgh...!"
At last, someone fully processed the hellish scene before them and began vomiting.
(End of Chapter)
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