Chapter 142 – Just How Many Little Hands Does It Have

Arden and the navy-blue heavy machine -- the blades of light of the two colliding machines threw off sparks, and their clashing energies let out an explosive, repelling roar.

Letaria deflected the enemy's blade of light in an instant and, without a moment's pause, drove Arden's leg out in a sharp kick.

-- Right after that, a metallic scraping sound rang out from the enemy machine's foot. Splitting the armor open, what suddenly extended from it was an eerie, small arm with thin joints, and a sharp solid blade fitted to its tip.

"There are arms attached even there?!"

An unexpected ambush. Evading it was not impossible in itself. -- But if she twisted her body hard in the middle of the exchange, she would break her posture badly and allow the follow-up attack.

She would trust Milea on this.

Letaria steeled herself and drove the kick's power to its limit. Arden's right leg crashed head-on into the hidden arm and solid blade extending from the enemy's foot.

A powerful impact shook the cockpit violently. Arden's leg armor forcibly shattered the enemy's solid blade and snapped the hidden arm off at the joint.

Before that unexpected force, the enemy machine froze for just an instant. Letaria did not let the opening slip by.

"There!"

Swapping her pivot foot, she slammed a left rolling back kick into the enemy's waist, carrying the full momentum of her spin. The blow detonated, and Arden itself was thrown backward by the powerful recoil. The navy-blue heavy machine, which had taken the hit squarely, sailed through space and flew in a straight line into the wide-area minefield.

A chain of massive mine explosions. Searing flames and black smoke completely swallowed the enemy's colossal body.

"D-did I do it...?"

Catching her ragged breath, Letaria sharpened her magical senses and spread them across the wide area once more.

...She could hear it. That breathing. Clearly more ragged than before, smaller, and frailer -- yet it unmistakably asserted that its owner was still alive.

"...So you still mean to fight!"

Almost at the same moment as Letaria's cry, a navy-blue shadow sprang up through the scattering black smoke. The armor, having taken the chain of mine blasts, was torn open in places, the inner armor exposed. But what was truly strange was its posture.

The eerie hidden arm that had emerged from its right foot earlier -- mechanical arms of the same kind were growing not only from its other leg, but from the armor of both its left and right shoulders as well.

"Just how many little hands does this thing have...?"

The mine damage had taken away the smoothness of its movement, and its stiffness was conspicuous. Yet the multiple arms growing from its shoulders and legs each leveled photon guns or small blades, and attacked Arden relentlessly.

A multi-angle crossfire and continuous stabbing assaulted Arden. Letaria made Arden dart in small leaps up, down, left, and right, avoiding the barrage and blades with minimal movement while cutting off the extending arms with the Photon Saber in her left hand.

Damage should certainly have been accumulating. Yet the enemy machine clung on with an unnatural tenacity.

"Do you suppose that adding more attacks will let you overpower me?!"

Dodging the multiple oncoming arms by a hair's breadth with a sliding movement, Letaria drew Arden's right fist back as far as it would go. Concentrating the output into a single point at the fist, she drove a full-force straight punch into the enemy machine's chest armor.

It warped the heavy armor and shoved the enemy machine far backward. But as Letaria stared at the enemy that had put distance between them, her forehead was thick with sweat.

Fast... too fast...

Beyond the speed of the machine as a whole, its response to her own movements was abnormal. The instant Letaria operated Arden, it took evasive or defensive action as if it had sensed the movement in advance.

It was fundamentally different from the foresight that Grain and Ethan and the others used. A more instinctive responsiveness.

It was just like... just like herself...

The fight, which seemed to grind her nerves down to the limit over and over again, left a heavy weariness weighing on Letaria's whole body. The enemy machine had held back from charging and seemed to be quietly watching her, keeping its distance.

-- Then.

Letaria's keen magic caught a "surge of hostility" from the side.

"I can see you!"

Without even turning her gaze, Letaria instantly swung the barrel of her right-hand Photon Rifle sideways and fired.

A huge blast erupted right under Arden's nose.

"Ngh... a mine...?!"

The explosion smoke screened off the space in an instant. Letaria hurriedly switched sensors to secure her view -- but when the smoke cleared, both the hostility that had been closing in from the side and the navy-blue heavy machine that had been standing in front of her were gone.