Chapter 422: A Great Bloodbath
It was now a little over an hour after the dinner party. I hid myself in a spot overlooking Airia’s orphanage facility and kept an eye on the situation.
『Master.』
“Yeah. I got them on my end as well. They really came huh?”
The Ninja power armor’s high-performance sensors detected numerous heat signatures surrounding the facility. I adjusted the visual sensor range, zoomed in on the folks who were behaving suspiciously and checked them out.
『How shall we proceed? Shall we launch an attack from here?』
“There’s no need for that this time around. I’ll handle them personally. I should make full use of the Ninja armor’s specs in a real fight every once in a while.”
『Understood. I’ll monitor the situation and provide support when needed.』
“I’ll leave it to you. I’ll be careful not to make any blunders.”
I cut off the transmission with Mei and approached one of the groups surrounding the facility. I jumped from the roof of a lower block building and fired a hookshot into a wall. That reduced the speed of my fall and allowed me to get on top of the assailants practically unnoticed.
There were five in total. All of them resembled the thugs we encountered in the hideout we just raided. They were armed with laser guns, laser rifles, and cruder weapons like nail bats and large knives. As if to say messing with them won’t end well.
“It’s like I’m playing a stealth action game.”
Maybe I should attach hidden assassination wrist blades to the forearms of the Ninja armor next time I get the chance? While thinking of some silly stuff, I silently drew out a pair of swords – one long and one short. I held them in a reverse grip and jumped off the building I was standing on. My first target was the guy with the mohawk at the very back.
“Gueh–!?”
Making use of the fall’s momentum, I aimed the long sword held in my right hand toward his right shoulder and stabbed it in deeply, reaching all the way to his core. The sword’s sharpness effortlessly tore through his innards and bones. Within moments, the place was littered with blood and guts.
“Wha–!?”
“Huh–!?”
I decapitated a second guy with the short sword in my left hand using a backhand slash, flipped the long sword in my right hand around, switched it to an overhand grip, and cut the third guy down with an overhead diagonal slash.
“Hiii–!?”
“Gii–!?”
As I approached the remaining two assailants, I also switched to holding the short sword with an overhand grip, then used both swords to sever each man’s torso from their lower body. Un. The sharpness of the swords used by nobles definitely ain’t no joke. Even without using much force, you’d be able to cut a human’s body in half.
“That’s one group down…… Let’s go for the next.”
『Excellent work, Master.』
“Well, this should about do it.”
“The cleanup afterward is going to be quite troublesome though.”
“Do your best, guys!”
I cheered on the Reemay Prime decontamination team dispatched to clean up the blood-soaked lower block and gave them a thumbs-up while still in my Ninja armor. For some reason, it kinda felt like I’d been sprayed with excessive amounts of cleaning fluid and disinfectant, but since I was wearing the Ninja armor, I didn’t feel a thing. In fact, this saved me the trouble of having to perform cleaning on the ship.
“Big Bro……”
As I was seeing off the decontamination team carrying body bags and decontamination equipment, Heinz came out of the orphanage facility and called out to me. Well, I did cause quite a commotion, so I suppose them noticing what was happening was inevitable.
“Hey, man. There are dead bodies and innards all over the place, so it’s best not to wander around too much.”
“I kinda guessed that already, but……”
“Why’d this happen? Well, you see, we really did quite a number on them, so I thought it wouldn’t be strange if they wanted payback or something. Honestly, I thought there was only a 50/50 chance of them coming here. Staying vigilant was the right call.”
After saying so, I shrugged my shoulders in front of Heinz. The RIKISHI wasn’t capable of such fine movements, but this custom-made power armor definitely could.
In other words, I explained to Heinz that I lay in ambush after the dinner party while anticipating retaliation from the Bloodies. There was a good chance it would have ended up being a miss, but I suppose my bad luck played a factor again.
For those guys, having their main hideout crushed head-on was akin to having their honor blown to pieces. Of course, being taken lightly by others in the trade as a result of that would have spelled the end for both mercenaries like me and outlaws like them, so it was necessary to take revenge to gain back at least a bit of face.
However, one of the participants in the raid was Hartmut — the current governor of the colony. So, it would have been troublesome and unreasonable for them to go head-to-head against him openly. That’s why they decided to go for the other participants in the raid instead.
Why did they directly attack the orphanage? Well, even an idiot would notice that the combat bots that attacked their hideout and the bots guarding the orphanage were of the same model. It was only natural to think there was a connection, and if that were the case, then launching an attack on the orphanage would make sense.
Eh? If that’s the case, then it was ultimately my fault that the orphanage was targeted? Hahaha, I dunno about that.
Anyway, even if I laid in ambush for the guys who’d come for revenge, there was still a chance that some might slip from me if I was going at it solo. That’s why Mei rearmed the combat bots and had them stand ready nearby as well. Well, they didn’t get their turn in the end though. I mean, it was practically a one-sided slaughter.
After decimating one enemy team, I’d activate my armor’s multi-functional camo system, used the hookshot, and then launched another surprise attack from above. From the enemy’s perspective, it was a nightmarish scenario of something unseen slashing several guys to pieces in an instant.
Most of them moved in groups, so even if they noticed the attack, they wouldn’t be able to fire their laser guns and rifles for fear of friendly fire. On the other hand, since their enemy was almost completely invisible, they wouldn’t be able to guarantee they’d land a hit even when using clubs and knives. And so, I cut them down while they were hesitating.
After killing off all of the guys who came for revenge, I contacted Hartmut through Mei and had him send a decontamination team to get rid of the corpses. Well, that decontamination team in question seemed to be holding a grudge against me for getting them dispatched to perform major cleanup operations twice in a day though.
“You really are a mercenary, after all, Bro……”
“Yeah. What? You scared?”
“Very.”
Heinz displayed a bitter smile. After all, I easily killed over thirty people in this incident. Honestly, even I was a bit perplexed by the fact that I was able to kill this many people so emotionlessly. But then again, they were technically akin to space pirates, so I suppose it wasn’t that much of a surprise. They were actively causing the pandemic to worsen by spreading those illegal drugs, so even if Hartmut arrested them without any casualties, they’d still end up getting sentenced to extremely hard labor for life, stripped of all their human rights, and turned into lab rats for inhumane experiments. Therefore, directly killing them like this could also be seen as a sort of mercy for them.
“It’s a shame that killing these guys won’t earn me a single Enel though. From a merc’s perspective anyway. However, with this, I believe we’ve exhausted most of their manpower.”
“Then we probably won’t be expecting any further attacks from them for the time being, right Bro?”
“At the very least, they won’t launch another attack without some sort of plan.”
If they were to lose all of their pawns for some unknown reason every time they launched an attack, they wouldn’t be able to maintain their organization eventually. Or rather, they might have already lost most of their manpower after today’s massacre.
If that really was the case, then the options they can take would be quite limited. They can either hide, run away, or simply surrender. In any case, surrender was probably out of the question. After all, even if they surrendered obediently, they probably can’t expect a pardon. They were going straight to labor camps or the lab as guinea pigs.
“With this, I think my business in this colony is coming to a close…… Hey, I just wanna ask. Are you familiar with Tina? I wanna know what she did in this colony and why exactly she had to leave.”
“I only know her by name, but I don’t know much about her. I believe she had some sort of conflict with the Dawes Family. I don’t know the details though.”
“The Dawes Family?”
“It’s a criminal org mainly run by dwarves, and they’re involved in the manufacture and smuggling of illegal weapons and tech. During the commotion caused by the pandemic, most of their higher-ups fell sick, and the organization itself should have fallen apart by now.”
“I see. Thanks for the info.”
Plenty enough info can be gleaned from what Heinz told me. It’s unclear to what extent Tina was involved in the operations of the Dawes Family, but it’s not hard to imagine that she got into something quite troublesome before deciding to leave this colony. But if those guys got almost wiped out like Heinz said, ain’t this a good chance for Tina and Airia to meet directly……? No, maybe it’s still dangerous. Perhaps it would be better to just have Airia come to the ship instead.
“Once this matter is settled, I’m gonna invite you guys and Airia aboard my ship.”
“Eh?”
“After all, it’s dangerous for Tina to come down to the colony, but I still want her and Airia to meet in person. But inviting Airia alone to my ship is all kinds of awkward, right?”
“Ah–…… You’re right. Yeah, that would be awkward.”
“That’s why you guys should come too. My ship’s pretty good y’know? I’m sure you guys will be surprised at how different it is from a typical merc ship.”
“Is that so?”
“I’m 100% sure you guys will get floored.”
I engaged in small talk with Heinz while waiting for the decontamination team to finish the cleanup.
Updated from fr𝒆ewebnov𝒆l.(c)om