"Well, this is... quite a headache..."
The Gigant Peeders crawling out of the Inado Mine weren't as massive as the first five. At most, they were ten meters long and less than a meter wide.
But their numbers were staggering. There were easily over a hundred of them.
"Now, how should we handle this?"
"Jin, this is no time for such leisure!"
"Saki-nee, calm down. Panicking won't help us find a solution."
"Ugh... I know, but still."
"Look at Jin-nii. He’s calmly formulating a plan. As expected."
Jin appreciated Elsa's praise, but despite his composed exterior, he was actually frantic inside.
(I can't use the magic swords anymore... and the magi-cannons aren't suited for targets this small... Wait. Small?)
An idea suddenly struck him.
"I’ll just have to try it... Reiko, Touka... No, catch the vibration swords!"
He had brought the vibration swords along just in case. Jin dropped the blades from Pegasus 1 for the third time, and Reiko caught them.
"Reiko, see if those can cut through them!"
These swords were forged from magi-adamantite, the hardest metal in the known world. Since an adamantite shell fired from a magi-cannon could pierce them, a blade should be able to slice them.
He was right.
As Jin and the others watched, Reiko masterfully bisected a Gigant Peeder. Corrosive fluids sprayed from the severed section, but Reiko nimbly dodged the gout.
Because these variants were smaller, the volume of fluid was manageable.
"Great, that’ll do it!"
Jin contacted Laojun and ordered fifty Army golems to be equipped with vibration swords and warped to the site.
『Understood.』
Laojun accepted the command succinctly, and in less than five minutes, fifty Army golems were deployed.
"All right, Land squad, full output! Hack them to pieces as fast as you can! Deploy your barriers the moment you make a cut. Avoid touching their fluids as much as possible, understood?"
At Jin's command, the newly arrived Army golems—Land 51 through 100—sprang into action.
With Reiko joining the fray, the scene became pure chaos—or more accurately, a one-sided slaughter.
Since the vibration swords didn't cauterize the wounds, fluids sprayed everywhere, sending up plumes of white smoke. The Land units moved agilely to avoid the spray, raising their barriers as they systematically butchered the monsters.
Still, facing such an overwhelming number of Gigant Peeders meant some damage was inevitable.
Only Reiko continued her whirlwind of destruction completely unscathed.
One hour later.
After mincing a total of 129 small Gigant Peeders, the war of extermination concluded. Most of the fifty Army golems had portions of their bodies melted, but none were out of commission.
"...Is it finally over?"
Jin ordered ten units, Land 91 through 100, to investigate the interior of the Inado Mine tunnels.
Ten minutes later, a report came in.
"『Master, we have reached the deepest part of the tunnel. Not a single Gigant Peeder remains. It appears they have been completely exterminated.』"
"I see. Good work. Come back after a final sweep."
Jin finally let the tension out of his shoulders.
Night had fully fallen, and the moon hung high in the sky. It was roughly eight o'clock.
"Jin-nii, good job."
"Jin, that was quite the ordeal... I honestly thought we were doomed. I mean, we were in the air, so we weren't in immediate danger, but still... how do I put it?"
"...A sense of despair?" Elsa offered, helping Saki find the right words.
"Exactly! Despair. That specific brand of awe you feel toward an enemy that humans have no hope of defeating."
Perhaps as a reaction to the sudden relief, Saki was being unusually talkative.
"To manage a situation like that... Jin, you really are something else. You truly are a Magi Craft Meister!"
"No, I was sweating it this time too. This whole thing reminded me I still have a long way to go. I never imagined beasts like that existed..."
Jin truly hadn't expected his Laser Cannons to be rendered useless.
Since they were light-based, it was only logical they could be countered by reflection. He found himself wondering if he could develop a barrier that reflected light.
"The magi-cannons aren't exactly versatile, either..."
In short, his close and medium-range arsenal was lacking.
He definitely intended to finalize the Plasma Sword design now.
"If only I'd had a mana bomb... No, the collateral damage would be too high. Wait... if I used a barrier... No, a wide-area one is difficult... but..."
Seeing Jin descend into deep thought, Elsa and Saki fell silent. Elsa, in particular, had a feeling that when Jin got like this, he was about to have a revolutionary epiphany.
True to form:
"It might work!"
Jin had hit upon a breakthrough.
"I can have two Titans project hemispherical barriers toward the same target. When the two hemispheres overlap, they'll form a perfect sphere. We can trap the enemy inside that spherical barrier, then use a transporter to send a mana bomb right into the center...!"
He appeared to be talking to Elsa, but he was actually just thinking aloud to solidify the concept.
Elsa, listening nearby, understood the principle and was impressed—it was so typically Jin. Meanwhile, Laojun, listening via the manacam, immediately began calculating the details.
Just then, another emergency transmission arrived.
"『Master, the tunnel is about to collapse.』"
"What? Cancel the investigation! Everyone, get out now!"
Whether it was because the ground had been weakened or a structural failure caused by the centipedes' exit, the mine was failing. Jin hurried the Land units back to the surface.
Faithful to Jin's orders, the Land units rushed for the exit without pause. On their way out, they spotted something that looked like an unfamiliar magic tool, but they prioritized their master's command over curiosity.
Had they stopped to inspect it, a significant new truth might have been revealed. However, had they done so, half the Land units might have been buried alive.
Whether missing that magic tool was a stroke of luck or a tragedy, no one could say. But had they recovered it, their destiny might have taken a very different path.
Seconds after the Land units cleared the entrance, the tunnels caved in. The Inado Mine was now nothing more than an abandoned ruin.
"All right, everyone is safe."
Jin finally relaxed, convinced the crisis was finally over.
The area surrounding the mine was a wasteland. Trees were snapped, boulders were scattered, and the ground was pockmarked with holes.
To make matters worse, the remains of the Gigant Peeders littered the landscape, their fluids hissing and producing white smoke.
"...Cleanup is going to be a nightmare."
Well, he would let the Klein Kingdom handle that, Jin decided. He moved Pegasus 1 to perform a final inspection.
"Ah... I wonder if those are salvageable as materials?"
The centipedes Reiko had dispatched with the swords of light had their wounds cauterized by extreme heat, meaning no fluids were leaking.
Jin instructed Laojun to recover those carcasses, along with the damaged general-purpose golems.
『I have dispatched Condor 3, equipped with a Warp Gate for the return trip.』
Right on cue, the massive transport plane Condor 3 was warped into the area.
"Phew... Jin, just how many airplanes do you have?" Saki asked with a heavy sigh.
"I'll explain everything properly eventually."
"Yeah, I hope so. We're going to be together for a long time, so go easy on me."
Saki gave him a weary smile.
"Saki-nee, you'll need to be careful about how you 'get together' with Jin-nii."
"Eh!?"
"Wait, does that mean... you don't want us together?"
Depending on the context, that was a rather harsh thing to hear.
"Actually, it's hard to hear it any other way..." Jin added, intentionally putting on a wounded expression. "To think Elsa felt that way about me..."
"Ah! No, that's not it! That's not what I meant!"
Seeing Jin's dejected look, Elsa panicked.
"N-No! It's just that Jin-nii is... it's not that you lack common sense, it's just that you're beyond common sense!"
"Elsa... even to my ears, that's a bit much," Saki chimed in.
"Ugh, ah..."
Elsa's face cycled through several shades of red and pale.
"N-No..."
Tears began to well in Elsa's eyes. Realizing they'd pushed her too far, Jin and Saki scrambled to apologize.
"Elsa, it's okay, I get it!"
"My bad, my bad! We know what you meant!"
"..."
"I'm sorry, I just thought Elsa's reaction was so cute I couldn't help teasing her a bit," Saki said, patting Elsa on the head.
"...I'm not talking to you."
Elsa turned her head away with a huff.
"Kufu, I've never seen Elsa make that face before. Elsa, you've really become quite a charming girl."
"...Saki-nee is a big dummy."
Inside Pegasus 1, peace had finally returned.