Ch.167167. Glorious End

Of course, Truia’s fleet hasn’t completely disappeared from this engagement.

The small fleets maintained by each planet like American National Guards,

and armed merchant vessels owned by individuals or corporations still exist,

sufficient enough to fend off miscellaneous pirates.

However, the damage from the evaporation of their regular space navy has become absolutely unbearable.

Simply put, both air and space superiority have fallen completely into the hands of the Hive fleet.

Therefore, the commander known as ‘Metal Gear,’ judging that they couldn’t be stopped even if the fleet was divided,

began dispersing the fleet for a full-scale invasion,

and called in transport ships that could be considered reinforcements.

These transport ships, similar in class to the 10km-grade Hive Ships,

invested all their space solely for the creation, transportation, and shuttle deployment of monsters—

Naturally, the cause of monsters pouring into Truia’s territories resulted in at least tens to hundreds of billions of monsters descending on each planet.

Of course, bombarding to crush resistance before landing was standard procedure.

And so, as all systems under Truia’s control were attacked and slowly carved away.

Only Stone World (translated from the Truian language), which could be called Truia’s mother planet,

remained uninvaded even as four fortified satellites were being shattered.

Obviously, this wasn’t because ‘Metal Gear’ or the Hive Mind suddenly realized mercy and wanted to spare them;

the truth was even more shocking and cruel for the Truians.

For now, dozens of capital ships and hundreds of thousands of vessels completely surrounded Truia’s mother planet, ‘Stone World.’

[…W-would that be acceptable?]

[Yes, fire.]

And in the midst of this, Seah rarely ordered a fleet commander with reason and autonomy in the Hive fleet

to load her—not in a capsule, but just her bare body—into a cannon and fire her at the Truian mother planet.

In other words, she intended to descend to the planet alone and conquer the Truian mother planet—’Stone World’—single-handedly.

At first glance, this might seem not just reckless but essentially suicidal,

but all operations planned by these monsters are fundamentally reviewed by the Hive Mind.

[F-fire, they say!]

[—Load it!]

Therefore, with the Hive Mind’s approval,

Seah—’Metal Gear’—full of thoughts about relieving the stress accumulated from leading that damned nano-tech, was loaded into the cannon.

[Fire!]

KWAAAANG—!!!!

‘Metal Gear,’ loaded into a mysterious cannon powered by gravity, dark matter, and dark energy,

was fired like a bullet toward the planet, resembling a space marine tearing apart and killing demons.

※ ※ ※

‘Stone World’

On the surface, it appears to be just a rocky world with a bumpy exterior similar to the Moon or Mercury,

and naturally, with no atmosphere, only a very small number of life forms exist.

But unlike this modest external landscape, the interior presents a truly new world (not a cult reference).

As if embodying the Hollow Earth theory, it uses the planet’s core as a pseudo-sun for illumination,

and due to strange gravitational effects, there are even floating islands in the air.

Not only is the gravity chaotic enough for floating islands to exist,

but the natural environment has adapted to this extreme planetary condition, leaving almost no normal terrain.

From lakes formed by water masses floating in the air,

rivers flowing from those lakes,

spheres floating in the air with small planetary-like climates,

to forests made of trees kilometers tall.

In this insane environment where snow fields and deserts coexist right next to each other, the life forms living on this planet couldn’t possibly be ordinary.

The Truian species is one of these extraordinary creatures, alongside trees that average 2-3 kilometers in height and are so sturdy they’re used as spaceship interior materials.

The ecosystem’s backbone includes pterosaurs exceeding 8 meters in length and giant land animals with monster-type beast-level specs,

as well as alien creatures that, despite being in a position equivalent to Earth’s mice, possess lower-grade monster physical abilities.

Because of this, the Truians, who are practically natives of this planet, build structures on the planet’s surface and within the crust,

but rarely enter the internal ecosystem except for taming animals or hunting—on this hellish planetary surface—

KWAAAAAAANG—!!!!

As something plummeted from the sky and hit the ground, a thunderous explosion created a crater nearly a kilometer wide.

And in the center of that crater,

the being that fell from the sky was, as everyone already knows, “Metal Gear.”

She wore a mask that covered the front of her face and crown, resembling an egg, reflecting some part of the universe,

with thick orichalcum bands around her jaw and the back of her head, reminiscent of an astronaut’s helmet.

Her equipment resembled medieval knight armor,

while simultaneously looking like protective gear from SF or cyberpunk genres.

This very stylish suit, composed of black adamantium armor plates bordered with golden orichalcum

and mythril lining, predominantly black with gold decorations, wasn’t too heavy to allow for easy movement.

The weapon in her hand was a greatsword, specifically a biological weapon specially made by the Hive Mind for its favored subordinate and former junior.

This greatsword, with an amber eye embedded where the grip meets the handguard,

is made from a tiny fraction of the Hive Mind’s physically manifested body.

Naturally, the flesh of the most powerful and influential deity holder in our galaxy

is a superior weapon that treats orichalcum and adamantium like mere scrap metal.

To put it extremely, this biological weapon in greatsword form is essentially a highly pure psychic-knight mass processed into a sword shape.

Channeling just trigger-pull levels of psychic energy into the sword could split mountains;

despite its sword form, its output rivals that of her flagship’s main cannon.

Behind her back float numerous metal flying objects resembling coffins;

these are her autonomous mobile auxiliary weapons, the decisive reason she’s called ‘Metal Gear.’

Each equipped with psychic-knight power sources, theoretically capable of annihilating millions of troops with just one unit, six of them are aligned behind her back.

Comprehensively, she possesses destructive power comparable to a human-sized spaceship. She had planned to raise her sword and cut through the crust to enter the planet’s interior.

—VRRRRRRRRRRM!!!

[…Hmm?]

She would have, if her senses—so keen they’re practically precision detection devices—hadn’t picked up engine sounds from the distance.

[Let’s see…]

‘Metal Gear’ Seah turned toward the sound, concentrating psychic energy in her eyes to look into the distance,

where tens of thousands of vehicles were approaching.

The types of vehicles were extremely diverse.

Just considering the wheel structures: regular wheels, tracks,

half-tracks with both wheels and tracks,

and hover vehicles equipped with anti-gravity or flotation devices.

The vehicle bodies were also varied, from simple one-person bikes to off-road vehicles or jeep-like convergent evolved forms,

armored trucks or technicals with mounted machine guns,

rare turretless armored vehicles,

and some vehicles that were practically armored weapons.

Though all different in form,

these vehicles were advancing with the single thought of stopping her.

Even though they knew better than anyone that they had no chance of winning.

[…Huh.]

Looking at this sight, ‘Metal Gear’ smiled—whether a hollow laugh or a sneer—and concentrated power into her raised greatsword—

—KWAGAGAGAGAGAGAG!!!

Despite being able to annihilate them all with a single volley from one coffin,

she swung her sword as if honoring their spirit, personally delivering death to the Truians.

From the swung sword, waves of slashes made of high-density psychic energy poured forth.

Dismembering, vaporizing, pulverizing, shattering into pieces, or destroying.

Against this attack far surpassing any moderate natural disaster, the approaching Truians quickly withered away.

But even in the face of this overwhelming calamity, these brave warriors didn’t retreat an inch.

These valiant Truians, advancing without the slightest backward movement to the very last person, met their glorious end.