Ch.339The Supporting Character’s Story – Holy Warriors of the Free Market, Extreme Pareto Principalists, Walking Test Sites for New Weapons (2)

The Metzgerhund’s presence was merely a certificate. It was simply a sign that everyone knew these attackers weren’t the real Belwether.

However, the Market Keeper would certainly benefit from his force. Belwether’s forces and the Corporate Justice forces were holding guns but not firing them.

They needed to be attacked first. That would make the reports cleaner. Soon, the doors of the fake Belwether patrol cars opened, and agents began to disembark.

Metzgerhund knew about the inevitable inefficiency of nationalists. Perhaps information and intelligence were inherently like that, but beneath their flashy exterior, they were mostly improvised.

Even during the Madeline’s Lot incident, to put it extremely, they might as well have let the Corporate Justice agent massacre freely at Madeline’s Lot.

Although Metzgerhund himself had tried hard to ensure only the wicked were excised… even if he had killed indiscriminately, they would have had no way to stop or notice it.

And even after the job was done, because of a field commander who tried to betray him while drunk on his own prejudices, Metzgerhund himself had to go to headquarters to find someone reasonable to talk to.

At the very least, Metzgerhund hoped Jeff wasn’t involved in this. Staging something like this despite pointing out all that inefficiency… would be terribly inefficient even by nationalist standards.

A fake warning broadcast sounded. And gunfire erupted. No, the gunfire didn’t matter. Neither Metzgerhund nor the Market Keeper reacted to the sound. They moved in response to the muzzle flashes.

The shower of armor-piercing rounds couldn’t penetrate the Market Keeper’s tactical truck, which was disguised to look like a cheap food truck. Not a single bullet made it inside from the outside. But the reverse wasn’t true.

Its precise name was the K-Ψ-13 Prototype, more commonly called the “Cookie Cutter” by Corporate Justice, and referred to as “Singing Steel” by the nationalists—and it clearly possessed malice.

The armored plates of the van, impenetrable by armor-piercing rounds, were pierced like flour dough by the Cookie Cutter fired from inside. Beyond the hole with its glowing red edges was nothing. Literally nothing.

There was only a hole that had bored through and pierced the nationalist agent who had been aiming a rifle, the fake Belwether patrol car behind him, and the curb, pavement blocks, and ground beneath them.

The nationalist agent was horrified at the sight. It wasn’t that they hadn’t expected the Cookie Cutter. What they hadn’t expected was… that the Cookie Cutter had been fired in two directions. That there wasn’t just one.

Soon, both sides of the van disguised as a food truck opened, and two power suits inside sprang out. There were two of them.

Numbers wouldn’t have been an issue. But the appearance of one of them would be problematic.

Because he was Belwether’s private force. Because this false flag operation was the simplest way to prevent it from looking like Belwether had fallen into paranoia and was attacking even the Market Keeper.

It wasn’t that they hadn’t considered it. They had only moved after using their intelligence to confirm that neither Belwether’s Hammer nor the Special Operations Division was with the Market Keeper.

Was there a hole in their intelligence network? The agent bit his lip. His lips only gave off the soft rubber smell close to the distinctive flesh scent of high-grade artificial skin.

For now, they had to fight. Running away would be an admission. If that happened, next time more than one Market Guardian would come.

“Engage! Don’t worry about collateral damage, focus only on the objective!”

At the command that rang through the computing assist device, one nationalist agent raised a railgun, using suppressive fire as cover. It was the federal government’s reverse-engineered version of Chance’s sniper weapon, meant to counter Belwether.

But the Market Keeper, who rose while withstanding the suppressive fire, was much faster in pulling the trigger of her grenade rifle. The self-propelled grenade flew through the air, pierced the shoulder of the agent holding the railgun, and exploded.

Despite this, the Market Keeper didn’t see a person’s death. She only saw the resolution of an externality. The bullets raining down on her weren’t projectiles but the desperate resistance of externalities.

Even armor-piercing rounds slid off her without penetrating. The best options in this situation were either to overwhelm with firepower or to engage in close combat.

Against an opponent impervious to bullets, bringing a high-frequency blade to bear was far more economical and efficient than firing a railgun.

But the Market Keeper didn’t allow close combat. She was approaching them one step at a time, yet the distance between the nationalist agents and the Market Keeper remained constant.

This was because as the Market Keeper walked forward, the agents moved back, maintaining the distance. They still had hope. They had a sniper prepared just in case, but the Market Keeper could see that sniper.

She could locate the sniper aiming at her amid Chicago’s bland skyline and dispatch them with a Cookie Cutter round that seemed to forget even the concept of air resistance.

Thus, the nationalist agents were cornered. One agent even tried to recover a heavy weapon that had fallen to the ground during the suppressive fire, but it was useless.

The moment the agents raised themselves to provide suppressive fire, Cookie Cutter rounds pierced through them. She fired four shots from a six-round revolver. Two rounds still remained.

The nationalist agents had also prepared Cookie Cutters, but for safety, they had given them to the sniper. The problem was that the sniper had already been killed by the Market Keeper.

Were forty agents not enough? While the twenty facing the Market Keeper were being overwhelmed by superior firepower, the twenty being hunted by Metzgerhund were literally being slaughtered.

Unlike the Market Keeper who confronted head-on like someone walking against the tide, Metzgerhund immediately flanked them, and the agents were cut down by the social blade without even having time to scream. Only their voices remained undead.

They had no choice but to impose radio silence due to the voices of their dead comrades heard on their communication channels. Electronic warfare was also useless. The anti-electronic warfare module Metzgerhund wore was non-standard even to them.

Metzgerhund had somehow acquired the anti-electronic warfare system they had discarded to end that war, and had completely tamed it, making it his shield. He boldly used the nationalists’ own weapons against them.

Originally, they had planned to finish things with the sniper’s shot while the agents bought time, but now even that wouldn’t work. Could they call for backup? They probably could.

But the moment they did, they would be revealing who was behind them. They couldn’t call. Anyway, the moment Metzgerhund appeared, their operation would have been considered a failure.

They had to try something. They needed to buy time somehow and retrieve the Singing Steel rounds to make one last stand. Manpower was already critically short, but the agent made a decision.

“Jamie, Kasim. Fall back! We’ll try to buy time somehow, so get to the sniper position and retrieve the Singing Steel first. Understood?”

A resounding response came back, but the voices were trembling. They knew it was an operation with almost no chance of success.

If they took too long to flank, Metzgerhund would finish on the other side and come for them. Still, this was the only move they could try.

“Alright. We’ll hold out somehow until those two succeed! Show them why we’re called monsters no different from Corporate Justice! Without the Cookie Cutter, even those power suits can be dealt with!”

With those words, he himself charged at the Market Keeper first. He tried to stab her with the high-frequency blade that extended from his forearm, but there was a problem. The Market Keeper wasn’t there.

The Market Keeper was grabbing the agent’s shoulder and lightly somersaulting. She displayed movements as light as if she were wearing nothing, despite being in a closed power suit.

After passing over the agent’s back, she neatly turned her body and pierced through his spine area, despite his implants. She lifted her arm upward, slicing through, and moved on.

The shower of bullets merely grazed past her, and an agent who charged at her was kicked away before having a cookie-cutter-shaped hole punched through his head by a Cookie Cutter round.

There was also an attempt to ram her with a vehicle positioned behind, but when the Market Keeper stamped the ground with her fist to brace herself, it was the vehicle that went flying, not the Market Keeper.

The Market Keeper moved like an incomprehensible, unavoidable phenomenon. Even though her opponents were agents who could easily handle ordinary Corporate Justice agents, the difference was stark.

The most desperate point was that they couldn’t expect reinforcements. They couldn’t expect the federal government’s forces. Nevertheless, they had to fight.

Somehow killing the Market Guardian and Belwether’s Hammer and reporting mission completion was the only way they could survive.

Though not numerous, it was enough to go all-in. One nationalist operative ran to pick up a railgun that had fallen to the ground, while the rest held off the Market Keeper.

The time they needed to hold out wasn’t long. They just needed the rail to charge and for additional rails to be generated by the magnetic field. That short time would be enough. But even that small greed was too much against the Market Keeper.

The edge of a high-frequency blade stopped upon contact with the Market Keeper’s vibration-absorbing power suit, and the Market Guardian resolved one externality. After kicking one away, she activates her jump jets aimed at the fallen agent’s head.

The jump jets burst with enough force to make the heavy power suit rise, and the agent’s head area collapses into mush. Another agent is thrown and pierced through by the last remaining Cookie Cutter round.

Even while reloading, the Market Keeper used the high-frequency blade on her forearm to puncture and then slice open the power suit of an agent who clearly was the point man, with its weak but present vibration absorption function.

It was the textbook method for dealing with vibration-absorbing elastic materials. Amid the gunfire and countless weapons being deployed around them, it was the Market Keepers who recalled that textbook.

And so, as one agent raised a railgun covered in the mangled shoulder flesh of another agent who had been blown apart, seeing the magnetic rail rise and aiming it… the Market Guardian was silently in front of him.

She was emotionless. Externalities should be resolved economically, not emotionally.

She didn’t speak either. The guardian’s role was to protect and represent, not to speak.

Nevertheless, she pulled the trigger. Because the free market wanted it. An armor-piercing grenade burrowed into the nationalist agent’s head and exploded. The final market instability was corrected.

It was not surprising that Belwether’s Hammer was more efficient than her when it came to slaughter. Tools, machines, proxies do not possess creativity. Creativity belongs to ideology.

Therefore, Metzgerhund returned with the heads of the two agents who had gone to retrieve the Cookie Cutter rounds at the sniper position, instead of her. He tossed one head in a preservation container to her and kept the other.

“Evidence?”

“Evidence indeed. The Market Guardian doesn’t take out her anger on enemies, does she?”

“Of course not. Such actions provide no benefit to the correction of market failures. I appreciate the agent’s excellence.”

The Market Keepers were as empty as they were full of fervor for the market. It didn’t matter. Completely empty humans were easily filled with market desire and fanaticism.

Metzgerhund briefly looked at the Market Guardian and then shook the blood off his body. All that clung to him was blood and fuel, but the Market Keeper’s power suit was covered with flesh and power suit fragments.

There is no excellence. They only push forward stubbornly with specs. Some might call it crudeness, but Metzgerhund decided to call it their own kind of desperation.

They wanted to become phenomena. Like waves, they wanted to be categorized as natural phenomena of this high-speed era that people couldn’t stop no matter how hard they tried. That’s why they acted like that.

Perhaps the Market Keepers are also human. Perhaps they’re so human that only after scraping away every last bit of remaining humanity would they be recognized as a proper Market Guardian.

“Well, let’s retreat. We could easily weed out those who were planning to draw the attention of one Market Keeper and kill her with a Cookie Cutter sniper shot, but a full-scale battle is hardly appealing, right?”

They were armed only with ordinary weapons to stage an attack that the Market Keeper couldn’t have anticipated. It wasn’t a good situation for facing the pinnacle of the nationalist forces’ tower.

“Understood. Information gathering is complete, and if the nationalists deploy additional forces, more than one Market Keeper will be deployed. Thank you for your work today.”

“Ah, yes. Thank you for your work today.”

A helicopter came to transport the Market Keeper for the correction of the next market failure, and Metzgerhund was looking at the Belwether cleanup team that had already arrived.

An attack helicopter circling to escort them lowered its altitude, and Metzgerhund lightly jumped aboard. Belwether would show resilience, and the market would recover. The guardian outputted.

But she couldn’t understand the sight of Metzgerhund who, as soon as he boarded the helicopter, was connecting a video call from inside his power suit and speaking to someone in an affectionate voice.

He was speaking English, and despite having just perfectly executed a mission together without a single operational directive, she couldn’t understand that image at all. She probably never would.

Was she regretful? Louisa thought with her brain rather than her computing assist device for the first time in a long while. And soon denied it. She began thinking like a Market Guardian through her computing assist device again. She loved the free market.