Chapter Sixteen: On the Set of a Major Horror Film

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In theory, the full complement and equipment of Outpost No. 12, belonging to the Garrison Corps of the New Yumen Governor-General’s Office of the Commonwealth, should have been as follows: one infantry platoon of thirty-five men, equipped with C10 electromagnetic rifles and personal armor; two eight-man mobile infantry squads, along with fifteen AS40 powered exoskeletons, the excess naturally being spares; three squad-level Thunder autocannons, two light phase-fluctuation cannons, and one Hive missile carrier, operated by two twenty-man weapons teams; five Panther Type 3 multipurpose infantry fighting vehicles, with a twelve-man maintenance and driving crew; one low-altitude airship with a captain, co-pilot, and dedicated ground crew, five men in all; a three-man communications team; a three-man medical team; and a five-man general affairs team.

If they had truly arrived in those numbers, even three times as many insectoid creatures could have been torn apart beneath their clearly layered web of firepower.

Unfortunately, we had already seen what the actual situation was… The airship had vanished without a trace, supposedly commandeered by its pilot for some private business. Of the five infantry fighting vehicles, only two were intact, while the remaining three had barely enough power to crawl from the building ahead to the overpass for a meal of lamb spine. The weapons teams and their armaments existed purely as a matter of paper mysticism. As for the so-called mobile infantry—well, not a single professionally trained elite soldier with an exoskeleton pilot’s license was to be found. People like Lieutenant Mondsun and Miss Yina had simply been pushed into the role with no preparation whatsoever.

The communications team consisted solely of Sergeant Cindy, a dull-witted signalman who looked as though he could not even repair the equipment. The medical team had only Doctor Banks and Nurse Belinda. And the general affairs team… Hadn’t Yoyo been the one frying the steaks herself earlier?

The infantry platoon could at least be considered fully staffed, but more than half of them were recruits who had never seen blood. Quite a few had not even completed three months of standard recruit training before being put on duty.

That was hardly surprising. Even Lieutenant Mondsun, the commander of the outpost, had never completed recruit training.

After such a battle, fewer than thirty people remained capable of moving. Half the outpost had been destroyed, the city wall had collapsed, and only one sentry cannon remained—and it had practically exhausted its ammunition.

The same phrase, one he had somehow repeated countless times already, came to mind once more:

This was no place to linger.

This time, at least, no one raised any objections.

After Yulian passed on orders to “gather the wounded” and “collect all ammunition and supplies,” Yina, Baka, and the others hurried off with the soldiers to carry them out. He himself followed Uncle Carl the mechanic to the garage.

Only there did Yulian discover that matters were even worse than he had imagined. Apart from the two vehicles stationed by the entrance and used for fire support, the autocannons and radar units atop all three remaining Panthers were damaged. One of them was even missing a section of side armor. In addition, one vehicle had engine trouble, another had a broken stabilizer, and the last had lost its engine, stabilizer, and hover system all at once.

Fortunately, the vehicles had at least been reasonably well maintained on the outside, which proved that the mechanics had not completely given up on treating them.

“I can repair them. At the very least, I can get them moving again,” Uncle Carl said.

“Then why weren’t they repaired before?”

“Er… Second Lieutenant Russo said there was no need. He said that if the vehicles were in good condition, certain accounts would be difficult to submit to his superiors. I didn’t really understand him.” Uncle Carl seemed to feel that speaking ill of the dead was improper, and his words came out somewhat evasively.

Master Sergeant Second Class Carl Johansen was the oldest and most respected man at the outpost. It was said that he had once been an engineer for a major corporation. As for how he had ended up here, that was probably a very long story.

In any case, the memories Yulian had inherited from his days at military academy told him that the old man’s abilities were worthy of trust.

“How long will you need? I mean, to get them moving again.” Yulian looked over the old mechanic and his crew. The maintenance team should have had twelve men at full strength, yet only half that number remained—and one particularly ferocious member had lost an arm in the battle just now.

“Two hours?”

“You have one.”

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“Very well.” The old man said no more. He clapped his hands, and his subordinates immediately sprang into action. One began removing panels, another gathered materials, and a third fetched tools. Everything proceeded in an orderly, methodical fashion. Judging by how practiced their movements were, they had clearly been prepared for this all along.

Yulian suddenly felt that he had given them far too much time.

“However, I can only get them moving. There’s a major problem here…”

“The power packs? I know. I’ll find a way to deal with them!”

Yulian’s tone was utterly confident, but Uncle Carl did not relax. The greatest obstacle now was energy. Without it, even if Carl Johansen himself had three heads and six arms and could refurbish all five vehicles in a matter of minutes—even polish their hulls—he still could not make them move without the battery blocks Second Lieutenant Russo had sold off.

“May I borrow the workbench here?”

The old mechanic nodded, still watching suspiciously as Yulian left the garage. A minute later, his eyes went blank. He stared stupidly as Yulian led a group of people inside, dragging in the torso of a Gravel Dragon.

The sight was genuinely horrifying. Everyone working in the garage stopped, and a large crowd followed in from outside.

The Gravel Dragon had indeed been a colossal creature that blotted out the sky, but its body was that of a typical reptile. Once its wings had been chopped off, its tail and limbs broken, and its two hooked claws torn away, the remaining torso was only a little over three meters long—small enough to fit on the workbench. Sergeant Yoyo and several strong soldiers lifted it onto the table with considerable effort.

Yulian, meanwhile, casually fastened a mask over his face, picked up the chainsword Lieutenant Mondsun had left behind, and climbed onto the workbench. With a loud, grating buzz, he began sawing, sending sparks flying in every direction.

The old engineer took several steps back. Everyone else retreated even farther. They felt as if they had been dragged onto the set of a horror film and forced to watch a mad scientist assemble and stitch together a monstrosity at close range.

“Besides dragon crystal, the Gravel Dragon’s body contains a certain amount of haistone. It’s usually stored in the gallbladder.” Yulian plunged both hands into the cut in the carcass. After fumbling around with a series of wet crunches, he finally pulled out several pitch-black stones and nodded in satisfaction. “Excellent. This is an old dragon. The purity and size are both quite good.”

He handed the stones to Yoyo.

The Black sergeant held the stones, which were coated in foul-smelling bodily fluids, and nearly vomited. She hurriedly placed them in a large barrel that had been prepared in advance.

“Also, if its liver is boiled until it completely disintegrates, it can yield a small quantity of high-energy dust.” Yulian pulled out a mass of organs the size of a human head and thrust it directly into the hands of the nurse, who had come over to help.

“Go. Bring the water to a boil and cook it over high heat. Add one liter of desiccant. The liver should dissolve within ten minutes at most. Pour out the water, then scrape off the blue powder around the edge of the pot and bring it to me.”

The nurse, her face twisted in despair, went off to attend to the task.

Yulian began the next step. He pulled out the Gravel Dragon’s entire intestinal tract, stretched it open, and washed it clean. Anyone watching might have thought he was preparing to make sausages.

“What exactly are you doing…?” Uncle Carl could not bear to watch any longer. He was deeply worried that their new commander had gone mad.

“The Gravel Dragon’s intestinal membrane is exceptionally tough,” Yulian explained as he drew a dagger and cut the membrane into five equal portions.

…No one could see where the toughness was supposed to be.

“I mean on the energy level. Its intestinal membrane is highly flexible, heat-resistant, and pressure-resistant. It can even be used to make… Well, in any case, it can serve as the casing for a power pack.”

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It could even serve as the casing for a small energy shield, though that technology would not emerge for several years yet… Hmm. Perhaps he could find a way to develop it ahead of time?

But even if he did, in this doomed and broken Commonwealth, there was a very good chance that the Alliance and the Empire’s financial oligarchs would seize it. How could he prevent that?

Yulian decided that once he had a little free time, he would find a notebook and carefully record all the useful information he possessed about the future. He had been reborn, after all. The protagonists in all those rebirth novels he had read before crossing worlds always did the same thing.

As the thought turned over in his mind, his hands never stopped moving. He continued explaining:

“When haistone and high-energy dust are soaked together in an electrolytic solution, a chemical reaction begins, producing energy and electricity. However, the process generates considerable heat, so we have to use this intestinal membrane to make an insulated container. Put simply, the principle is similar to…”

“Komina bio-battery technology!” Uncle Carl exclaimed, suddenly enlightened.

“Yes, exactly. It’s actually quite easy to understand, isn’t it? In a sense, their biological technology represents an entirely different evolutionary path.” Yulian glanced at the old mechanic, thinking, This man knows his stuff!

“But that—that isn’t scientific! The Kominans went through who knows how many rounds of genetic adjustment to obtain perfect biological materials, and they’re still improving them to this day. The genetic maps and chemical formulas for all those biological materials are their greatest secrets. No amount of wealth from the Alliance or pressure from the Empire could make them reveal a word…”

That was exactly why they had gone under! Their homeworld had been turned into a mine. Half their population and biologists had been divided between the two poles of the galaxy. Of course, most of their research had actually been taken by the Insect Queen. That was how the future Leviathans had come to exist—or rather, those few Leviathans capable of fighting Titan ships head-on.

If Yulian had not personally beaten the Queen and stolen her bag, he would never have known any of this.

“But how do you know…” The old mechanic was growing increasingly bewildered, and beneath that bewilderment lay a growing hint of fear.

This really was an expert—and an expert to an alarming degree. Why would someone like this be working as a mechanic at a remote colonial outpost? That had to be another terribly sad story.

“Haistone reacts with high-energy dust. It’s covered in alchemy textbooks.” The important point was that it came from an alchemy textbook, not a chemistry textbook. But as a “Moonman,” having access to semi-classified materials was simply one of the benefits of his past.

“There are two such substances in the Gravel Dragon. I heard about it from an old ranger when I first went to Tulong to broaden my horizons in the black market. Of course, I paid no attention at the time. It was only after I discovered that its energy breath had a pronounced magnetic-storm property that I remembered.”

There was no way to verify any of that, but it was at least a plausible explanation.

“I understand!” Uncle Carl nodded. In a sincere voice carrying a trace of respect, he said, “Commander, give me forty minutes. I guarantee I’ll have these tanks moving!”

“Oh. All right…”

So what, exactly, did you understand?

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