The Knight King Who Returned with Gods : Chapter 22
Translators: Nyx and Ririi Rain
Episode 22 Hunting Spider (5)
As the sandstorm worsened, the hunters made their way to
the center of the city, moving cautiously from building to building.
Despite the Yakt Spinner's devastating fighting prowess,
the hunters' spirits were high.
The Yakt Spinner had suffered severe damage and
retreated. No doubt that its main weapon and many of its limbs were destroyed.
The hunters thought it would take a long time for the
thing to repair itself.
Even with Leon's refusal to cooperate, the attacks of
S-class Hunter Hwang Gum-cheol, quasi-S-class Hwang Yeon-ha, and mage Gil
Tae-sung should have been sufficient.
The Yakt Spinner is not invincible. The Hunters were
confident.
"But will it be okay? I mean, without that weird
knight."
"It's nothing to worry about, especially since he's
such a dick."
"But... if he's strong enough to handle that freaky
monster, isn't he even stronger than our guild leader?"
Among the hunters, Leon's identity was a hot topic of
conversation. And those hunters who had experience in the field had come to the
same conclusion,
"He's most likely a survivor. Those guys tend to be
selfish."
"It's not that bad, though, is it?"
"Where did he come from, anyway? I haven't heard of
any survivors coming out of a gate lately."
The hunters tried to explain Leon's comet-like arrival
with the common knowledge they knew.
But even they weren't convinced.
The man was different, not quite like the others. They
instinctively sensed that he was not of this world.
"Wait."
The hunter at the front gestured for the others to stop.
He pointed his finger toward a spot.
"Two hundred and fifty meters ahead, on the roof.
Machine guns out. That's the enemy."
At his words, the hunters behind him cautiously made out
the shape.
Its distinctive crab-like body was exposed at an angle.
An awkward angle to shoot at.
Luckily, there was a ten-story building across the street
from the Yakt Spinner with a good view. Sniping from up there would leave the
enemy helpless.
"Long-range shooters, make your way up to the
building opposite. We'll wait here. If it spots us, we'll distract it and buy
time."
At his command, the long-range shooters made their way to
the other building. Walking up the stairs slowly, keeping their breathing
steady, it would take some time.
"We have you, Spider."
The hunter grinned with conviction and waited for the
signal from his colleagues up the building.
One minute, three minutes, five minutes...... and he was
not moving for fear of being discovered by the Yakt Spinners. But no matter how
long he waited, no signal came.
"What are those guys doing up there? You, go up
there and check it out."
............
He discreetly dispatched his colleagues, but there was no
sign for a long time. When the hunter finally realized that something was
amiss──
-Sksk
"Huh?"
The hunter felt his vision swam.
As his vision spun, he saw the familiar shape of a
spider.
"Ya-akt-you?"
'Something...
seems... different, much smaller... no, wait, if that's the Yakt Spinner, what
the hell is that thing on the rooftop I've been watching──'
His gaze darted into the air, and his hazy vision caught
a glimpse of the building's rooftop.
A large shell. There was also a 'mock-up' of a crude
machine gun on the wide armor plate that seemed to have been partially removed.
"Mo-h?"
-Slash!
-Slash! Slash!
By the time the man's head hit the ground, several dozen
of lashings had already been delivered.
* * * *
The Yakt Spinner lived up to its reputation.
Its unprecedentedly lightweight maneuverability allowed
it to crept like a spider across building walls,
The numerous cutting wires from its robotic arms emitted
a distinctive air-slicing sound that shredded its prey.
It didn't even use a single machine gun. It slaughtered
the hunters with nothing but its cutting wires, moving nimbly with its
lightweight frame and fluid limbs.
"Shoot! Do something to stop it!"
Someone shouted, almost in a panic.
At the same time, magic missiles were fired in the wild
gusts of the sandstorm, and chased after the the Yakt Spinner.
-Kririg?
Noticing this, the metal spider sprinted up the wall.
With a series of amazing movements, the Yakt Spinner
maneuvered itself vertically and deftly slipped into the narrow gap between
buildings.
-Boom boom!
Two magic missiles slammed into the outer wall of the
buildings, unable to keep up with the perfect evasion.
The three remaining magic missiles seemed to realize that
they had lost their target and turned themselves upright.
The magic missiles soaring into the sky head straight for
the Yakt Spinner crawling through the gap in the buildings.
It couldn't maneuver fast enough in the limited space.
The gun muzzle swivel.
Ra-tat-tat!
Even if they had some sort of direction guidance, those
magic missiles were nearly one-dimensional objects. But the AI was perfectly
capable of neutralizing the magic missiles.
The magic missiles exploded in midair. The hunters who
witnessed it were left stunned, their mouths agape.
"C-crazy... is such a thing possible?"
"It's not like this is acrobatics or
anything......."
They couldn't fathom it. How could they prepare
themselves for a killing machine with superior artificial intelligence, born
only to fight?
As they stood in stunned silence, the Yakt Spinner closed
in on them in a flash.
"Shit! Take cover! Take cover!"
The robotic arms swung the cutting wires they wielded.
The onslaught of the Yakt Spinner, which had switched to
wires as its primary weapon, had killed over two dozen hunters by this point.
With even the long-range magic supports proving futile,
the hunters swallowed their screams and sprinted.
The urge to live, the desire not to die, gripped them.
After a desperate run, the last few surviving hunter
reached a cemetery, where he tripped over overgrown weeds and rubble.
"Kwagh...!"
After rolling on the ground from the force of his fall,
the hunter gasped for breath and tried to crawl away.
-Creak! Creak!
But the four-legged Yakt Spinner was closing in, and the
hunter despaired as he realized he couldn't escape.
"Ah, no. Help me... God, I don't want to
die......."
He hid behind a crude tombstone as a shield, begging for
help in prayer. Something that even he himself was not sure about.
-Kririg....
The Yakt Spinner came to a stop in front of the hunter, a
machine gun pointed at him.
The killing machine's logic circuits, which had never let
an invader live before, made a judgment:
「Second logic -
prioritize. Eliminate invaders.」
「Third logic -
prioritize. Eliminate invaders.」
The machine gun was aimed. Whatever the weapon, the Yakt
Spinner can finish the hunter. But──
「Autonomous judgment.
Logical decision hazing. Sub-logic interruption. Force priority change.」
The weapon was retracted.
No more machine gun, no more metal wires.
At that moment of pause with all those weapons retracted,
magical arrows rained down from the sky.
-Clang clang clang clang!
The magic arrows struck the Yakt Spinner. The combined
firepower of Gil Tae-sung and the Black Mamba hunters hit the Yakt Spinner.
"Nice! We hit the target!"
"It's staying still like a fool!"
Yakt Spinner turne its wide-angle lens on the hunters who
had attacked. That was an attack that can be easily avoided by moving around
the cemetery. But.......
「Final judgment. First
priority. Protect citizens.」
It turned away from the tombstone where the hunter it had
been trailing was crouching. Fighting here would mean inevitable damage.
The Yakt Spinner immediately decided to retreat.
"Huh?"
The Yakt Spinner ignored the hunters who uttered confused
noises and fled the cemetery. The chased hunter didn't understand anything and
was just relieved to be alive.
"The Yakt Spinner is getting away!"
"It is at its limit!"
"Chase!"
With its four limbs, it darted from building to building,
fleeing as far away from the cemetery as possible. The Yakt Spinner didn't even
fight back, not wanting to risk getting another beat up.
「Yappy. Look, I made a
crown out of flowers!」
The safety of the citizens was the most important thing
to prioritize.
Even if the citizens were already dead.
* * * * *
Yakt Spinner returned to the garage once again.
It mended the damage it had received during the battle,
resupplied the torn wires, and refilled its supply of self-produced
ammunitions.
It hadn't been easy tending to its body in a place that
wasn't even a proper maintenance facility, but it was still manageable.
「Protect
what is sealed. Don't let anyone take it.」
The last order left in the machine's chain of command.
But the AI's logic indicates that it's becoming impossible to fulfill that
order.
If it can stop this invasion, what next? And the next? At
some point, failure is inevitable. The time it spent pushing itself to the
limit was drawing near.
While patchworking itself with homemade ammunition,
wires, and parts made by melting down the city's scrap metal, it connected to
the remaining surveillance cameras around the city.
-Estimated enemy strength: 49. Level 5 threat alive,
Level 3 threat alive, multiple Level 1 threats. 35.7% chance of defeat.
-Continuing operations.
Nothing changed. Machines merely fulfill their orders.
When the Yakt Spinne finished its work, as the machine
pushed itself to its feet, its body rattling with effort──
"Have you had fun with the minions?"
"............!?"
The knight had been watching the process from beginning
to end.
* * * *
Leon admires chivalry.
Nay, he is chivalry incarnate.
He abhorred cowardly attacks and sought a fair fight.
Of course, his opponents don't always fight fair.
Numerous foes he had encountered pestered him with
ambushes, schemes, and all manner of sorcery.
But this was no reason for him to abandon the virtues of
chivalry.
He was the kind of man who would crush any form of
trickery or sorcery on the battlefield by smashing them in the face.
He was the embodiment of chivalry: bendable, but
unbreakable.
That's what made him strong,
Chosen because of it.
It was for this reason that he waited for the Yakt
Spinner to finish its repair.
With very few exceptions, a chivalrous spirit is
important.
Even when it comes to non-humans.
Leon had encountered many varieties of races, some of
them completely alien to humans.
He was an Earthling, but he had lived in a world of
dimorphs1 and xenomorphs2 for much longer than the time he lived on Earth.
In other words, the Yakt Spinner's inhuman cold armor and
structurally different body parts were accepted as part of the species'
distinctiveness.
"For a machine, your grandeur and bravery are
impressive. It will be hard for those out there to stand a chance."
Before he could finish his rambling, a swinging wire
slashed down at Leon's position. Although he easily avoided it by leaping, it
struck a nerve within the Lionheart King.
"Is it too much to ask for grace from a
machine?"
The Yakt Spinner's eyes glowed red.
Armament check: 480 rounds of 60mm machine guns.
Four cutting wires, the last of their kind, weighing two
tons.
Lash after lash at supersonic speeds were released.
The cutting wire trajectories and velocities were all
perfectly calculated and coordinated to avoid any potential entanglements.
The supersonic lashes struck at Leon without any way to
dodge, coming from ground level, overhead, left, right, front, and rear.
The man was still in the air. Leon gripped his holy sword
and withstood the onslaught.
Leon predicted his opponent's every move, and when he was
forced to take action, the single cutting wire was parried with his holy sword.
"............."
Something like a hardened mixture of metal ore should
have shattered under the whip of a cutting wire moving at supersonic speeds.
But the metal sword remained intact. Not according to the
calculations. Even if the logic in the machine's database doesn't understand
it, the Yakt Spinner used its four legs to disrupt Leon with even more agile
moves than before.
It was good if its opponent stayed put, like a heavy
tank. An immobile target is an easy prey for machine guns.
-Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat!
A torrent of machine gun fire erupts from the muzzle. The
first rounds miss the target as if it were nothing.
But the Yakt Spinner analyzes the trajectory of the
flying shots, their impact zones, and made adjustments before firing again at
Leon.
-Thump!
The concrete ground crumbles as he stomped the ground,
sending his figure soaring.
In the next moment, when the rising concrete obscured its
vision, the Yakt Spinner compressed the hydraulic springs in its legs and
bolted to escape.
-Bam!
A lance pierced the spot where the Yakt Spinner had been
just moments before. Yes, the Yakt Spinner expected it.
It had analyzed the combat patterns of the Threat Level 5
to the point where the Yakt Spinner could anticipate every possible scenario.
A lance appearing out of thin air,
An unbreakable iron sword,
Shattering battlefield-grade armor with sheer force.
It all defied common sense and logic, but the threat in
front of the Yakt Spinner was real.
-Tap!
The sound of a running start was caught by the noise
filter. Sounds don't lie, even if they were obscured by falling debris.
Leon landed like a cannonball on the wall where the Yacht
Spinner was running while clinging to the wall. Within an instant, he mounted
his summoned familiar and had even retrieved his holy lance.
He's fast.
The Yakt Spinner doesn't understand. How can an organism
have such speed.
But the machine had long since abandoned logic. The lithe
Yakt Spinner darted across the garage building, keeping Leon at bay.
"Stallion, it wants to play hide-and-seek with
us."
The fleeing Yakt Spinner and the pursuing horseman
ignorantly smashed through building walls and pillars.
The Yakt Spinner's tactics seem contradictory, with a
guerrilla strategy of using the terrain to its advantage while the horseman
pursued it in a steadfast fashion, as if the roles were reversed. But the Yakt
Spinner wasn't just running away, either.
The cutting wires unleashed upon the pursuing Leon were
menacing and deadly, but they were merely a means of buying time.
Leon calmly and skillfully deflected the Yakt Spinner's
attacks while seemingly ignorantly chasing.
The incongruity of a human chasing a war machine. The
Yakt Spinner picked up the pace, thoroughly avoiding Leon's approach.
-Creak!
But its joints were slowly wearing out.
Originally designed to handle armored vehicles and slow
infantry, its structural limitations were being tested by a superhuman.
-Creak!
The parts were screaming.
Too much strain, not part of the machine's carefully
engineered design, had caused it to crumble from within.
How will machines handle the absurdity of getting
fatigued before humans do?
After a few minutes of chasing, the turning point that
was a calculated maneuver was here.
Coming to a sudden stop at a large building pillar, the
Yakt Spinner hooked its thin legs over the pillar and changed its trajectory
forcefully.
"......Stallion!"
The Yakt Spinner spun around in an instant and slammed
straight into the horseman.
Even if it was lighter, the Yakt Spinner still weighed
over forty tons. Not the kind of impact an organism could withstand.
"Not bad."
However, as it was pushed back by the impact, the
Stallion held on by sliding smoothly.
In the face of an impact too great for flesh and form to
sustain, the human and horse merely shook it off and galloped again.
Nothing changed. The Yakt Spinners took advantage of the
growing distance and unloaded its last few machine gun rounds.
"──!"
The Stallion dodged around with an unbelievable movement.
Even with all the precious machine-gun ammunition being
fired at him, he continued to charge.
-Bang bang bang bang!
The hail of 60mm machine gun bullets chipped away at the
durability of the old building all the while.
The walls, ceilings, and pillars of the massive structure
collapsed like sponges, dropping huge chunks of debris.
The Stallion leapt gracefully across the deadly chunks,
one by one, until he finally began to climb the falling debris.
The spirit beast, called Shinma, ran through the cascade
of debris and reached the ceiling in an instant.
────!!
The camera lenses of the Yakt Spinner, who was about to
be pulled back down by gravity, met the eyes of the rider.
Facing each other perpendicularly, they aimed their
machine gun and lance at the enemy, one above and another below.
-68 rounds. Firing all rounds.
"Glory be to the Lionheart──!"
Gravity-defying machine gun rounds were flying upwards,
and the horseman slammed vertically against the ceiling.
The ceiling, which had barely retained its shape despite
the merciless misfires of the machine guns, completely collapsed under the
force of the white horse.
The charge was like a white comet. A falling star
pummeled by machine gun bullets. But──
「......?!」
Shinma, bathed in light, was unscathed. No physical blows
can touch the divine beast of light which had unleashed his divine power and became
one with his rider in the charging.
-Boom!
A devastating blow imbued with dense holy power struck
the Yakt Spinner.
-Kwazizik!
The Yakt Spinner was pierced and torn in half.
The Yakt Spinner's robotic limbs moved, even as it was
thrown like a piece of junk from the massive impact.
With its opponent stopped momentarily in the aftermath of
the hit... the Yakt Spinner had 2.7 seconds to mobilize its limbs. The Yakt
Spinner swung it four cutting wires.
The high-performance AI calculated the trajectory even as
its body was hurtled down. To ensure the killing of a hovering enemy.
The calculations determined that the sharp cutting wires
swung from every direction would cut through the target.
Rows of silver snakes lunged from all directions to bite their
prey.
This time, it was a sure-kill.
"Excellent...!"
「......?!」
The Yakt Spinner took a moment to examine its seemingly
malfunctioning cameras. In a flash, the stallion carrying Leon vanished into
thin air, and Leon kicked the air.
The path of the cutting wires had been calculated
assuming the rider was on horseback.
When the target was less than half the size of the
intended target, too perfect a calculation would lead to a fatal miss!
Leon launched himself at the Yakt Spinner like a shell,
hitting it right in the middle of the perfect trajectory,
With the destructive power he had shown so far, it would
only take a split second to cut through its main computer.
「Yappy. What's secured
here must not be allowed to be taken away.」
The AI finished its analysis in a split second.
A garage built on top of a sealed
facility. The last way to protect this place. If there was even a 0.01% chance,
the machine will not stop its actions.
-Initiate self-destruct sequence. Detonating all the
explosives.
-Boom, boom, boom!
A large number of explosives planted throughout the
garage exploded in unison.
***
Notes:
1 Representing two distinct forms↩
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