Chapter 56 - EP.2 Mountains of Corpses, Seas of Blood 10

Underland.

At its core, Underland was a gloomy city, dark and quiet, with every conceivable element of desolation gathered in one place.

If Sanctum was a dazzling city that never slept, Underland was the shadow cast by its light.

But not today.

Ear-splitting roars and searing flashes drove back the darkness.

At the center of all that commotion was an armored vehicle named Revenant.

"Hold on tight!"

"To what?"

"Anything!"

The Revenant's enormous bulk roared straight toward Vortex's makeshift defensive line.

The people still pulling their triggers, along with the vehicles they had arrived in, flew into the air like bowling pins.

KABOOOOM!

"Aaaaah!"

Under a hail of bullets, the Revenant burst into Underland's darkness. At the same moment, Ash shouted,

"My lady! Tell me the way!"

Still dizzy from the tremendous impact, Siren answered him.

"Where to? Where are you going?!"

"The surface!"

Keeping his eyes ahead as he worked the wheel, Ash continued.

"They cannot display such open hostility on the surface! Sanctum's unwritten rule applies even to Vortex!"

Sanctum's unwritten rule.

It referred to the highest-level protocol that Z. O. T, the artificial intelligence managing Sanctum, applied equally to every citizen and corporation.

Its terms were exceedingly simple.

[Sanctum is safe. Anything unsafe will be made safe.]

Of course, Z. O. T did not control all violence within Sanctum. Fights and murders in back alleys were too frequent for it to intervene in every one.

But one thing was certain.

Whenever "disorder exceeding a certain level" occurred, Z. O. T would almost invariably dispatch the Sanctum Administration's elite troops, the Safemen, to sweep everything away.

And by anyone's reckoning, Vortex was currently causing "disorder exceeding a certain level."

There could be only one reason they were able to do so.

This was Underland.

Ash intended to exploit that fact.

Siren, too, grasped the situation and immediately nodded.

"That's a good idea! I'll guide you! First, turn left at the intersection ahead!"

Just as Ash turned the wheel at her direction, Zero shouted from the rear of the armored vehicle.

"They're coming!"

Vortex's pursuit team had apparently caught up before they knew it.

"Everyone, brace yourselves!"

Gripping the wheel tightly with one hand, Ash drew a pistol with the other.

It was the Bloody Heart Mk.7, which he carried around almost like a talisman, though he had used it so rarely he could count the occasions on one hand.

VROOOOM!

Just then, a motorcycle came into view alongside the Revenant. Its rider drew a compact submachine gun and leveled the muzzle at them.

BRRRRRT!

Sparks flew from the reinforced armor plating.

At the sound, Ash fired out the window without hesitation.

BANG! BANG!

The two bullets he had fired so boldly went sailing through empty air. Only then did Ash remember that his marksmanship was abysmal.

Rather than waste precious ammunition, he chose a more reliable method.

He jerked the wheel.

The Revenant's heavy body lurched to one side, slammed into the biker who had been spraying submachine-gun fire moments earlier, and crushed him against the wall.

CRUNCH!

With a hideous crunch, the biker became an unrecognizable mass of scrap metal and flesh, dwindling to a speck in the rearview mirror.

RAT-TAT! RAT-TAT-TAT!

There was more than one pursuer.

This time, the Revenant came under attack from the right.

Ash all but tossed his pistol to Siren.

"Use this!"

"What about you, Mr. Ash?"

"I'm better off without it!"

At his emphatic reply, Siren hurriedly took the pistol, extended its muzzle out the window, and fired at their pursuers.

She evidently knew a thing or two about shooting. Her bullet punched straight through a motorcycle, disabling it.

"A-aaargh!"

The motorcycle lost its balance and skidded into another pursuing team behind it. A chain of explosions followed, and the two bikes tumbled across the ground as burning scrap.

Watching in the rearview mirror, Ash muttered under his breath.

"... Clearly, there is nothing wrong with the gun..."

"Sorry? Did you say something, Mr. Ash?"

"Nothing."

Then, as though mocking their conversation, an engine whine rang out, incomparably sharper than anything before it.

WHEEEEE!

Unlike the hulking Revenant, the vehicle looked exceedingly sleek. Its speed was every bit as fearsome.

It overtook the Revenant in an instant, and two pale shapes appeared in its cargo bed.

Two humanoids, their optical sensors streaming sky-blue light.

Without hesitation, they hurled themselves at the Revenant.

"Damn!"

Ash hastily turned the wheel.

The heavy vehicle swerved to one side, and one of the leaping humanoids missed its landing on the Revenant and fell to the ground.

Which, conversely, meant the other had made it aboard.

THUD!

Having landed on the hood, the humanoid deployed its arm blade and targeted Ash in the driver's seat.

CLANG!

But its blade never even reached the reinforced windshield, let alone Ash. A shuriken had come flying in to stop it.

A moment later, another figure appeared on the hood.

Zero.

He had apparently opened the roof hatch and climbed outside.

CLANG! CLANG-CLANG!

Atop the armored vehicle racing at high speed, the Grotesque ninja and Vortex's humanoid exchanged a series of sword strikes.

Suddenly, the humanoid's sky-blue optical sensors flashed.

Its blade shot straight toward Zero's heart. Reading the movement, Zero moved his hand even faster and knocked the arm blade aside.

CLANG!

Then, using the rebound to spin his body through a full turn, he sliced off the humanoid's head.

SHING!

The disabled machine staggered for a moment, then fell beneath the vehicle and was shattered under the Revenant's wheels.

Ash and Zero met eyes through the reinforced windshield and nodded in unison. Then Zero abruptly looked back.

Far away, a laser pointer had flashed atop a lightly armored vehicle.

It was unmistakably a targeting signal.

"Damn...! An antitank gun!"

At those words, Ash immediately slammed a button on the center console. Exhaust ports opened at the Revenant's rear, releasing an explosive cloud of acrid smoke that resembled engine fumes.

FWOOOSH!

In an instant, smoke swallowed the road, obscuring everything ahead.

"Zero! Hold on tight!"

Standing on the hood, Zero immediately crouched and clung tightly to the Revenant.

SCREEEECH!

A sharp turn of the wheel and a stomp on the brakes.

The heavy vehicle slid sideways with a deafening roar.

As the Revenant skidded out of the way, a rocket tore through the air beside it, passing through the space the vehicle had occupied just moments earlier.

"Holy... shit..."

Clinging to the hood as he watched, Zero let out a sound that might have been awe or despair. Meanwhile, the Revenant's engine pistons hammered once more, driving its tires around.

The Revenant burst out of the thick smoke. The Vortex light armored vehicle following it did the same.

"There is no end to them!"

With that brief shout, Ash jerked the wheel again—straight toward the lightly armored vehicle that had pulled up close alongside.

CRUNCH!

With a hideous crunch, the enemy vehicle was caught between the wall and the Revenant and crushed beyond recognition.

The violent collision sent Zero swaying on the hood, nearly throwing him off.

"Big Brother!"

His siblings climbed out through the roof hatch and hauled up Zero as he dangled precariously. Meanwhile, Siren leaned out the window and covered them.

All of this took place atop a vehicle traveling at full speed.

Suddenly, Siren's face brightened as she watched the scenery streak past, and she shouted,

"We're almost there! Just around that corner is the tunnel to the surface!"

Her cry was a ray of light to them all.

But that hope was short-lived.

As soon as they rounded the corner, they were greeted by a Vortex barricade made up of dozens of vehicles and personnel.

They evidently knew it, too.

If Ash and his companions escaped Underland, there would be nothing they could do to them on the surface.

The Revenant, which had been tearing madly through Underland, gradually slowed. The Vortex troops pursuing them also stopped, keeping their distance.

Ahead and behind.

They were completely surrounded.

"Damn it...!"

As everyone succumbed to despair, Ash's optical sensors moved busily.

He was staring not at the barricade, but at an enormous, aging pipeline that ran diagonally beside it.

Zero, who had since climbed back inside, surveyed the Vortex troops through the reinforced windshield and spoke to Ash.

"... It looks difficult to force our way through as we did outside Inferno."

"So it does."

"Should we get out and prepare to fight while we still can?"

Ash shook his head.

"There are hundreds in sight alone. And that does not even appear to be all of them. The moment we get out, we are finished. We would lose our mobility as well."

It was a decidedly bleak assessment.

"Then... what do you intend to do?"

Ash stepped on the accelerator.

The Revenant growled, its four wheels turning after their brief standstill.

"What else? Take a gamble."

At the sudden charge, Zero and Siren cried out simultaneously.

"W-whoa? Sir?"

"Mr. Ash? Mr. Ash?!"

Ash gave no real answer, merely pressing harder with his right foot.

VROOOOOOM!

The heavy vehicle shuddered violently, its tires screeching against the ground and raising thick smoke.

Then, at full throttle, it surged forward.

"Everyone, grab something! We are about to fly!"

With that shout, the Revenant left the road and charged toward a sloping heap of collapsed rubble beside it.

VROOOOM!

Using the rubble as a ramp, the Revenant shot into the air like a cannonball. Then it landed squarely on the sloping pipeline with all four wheels.

CRUNCH!

The heavy vehicle balanced precariously atop the rounded pipeline.

While everyone from Vortex Society gaped at the stunt, the one who had performed it burst out laughing.

"Hahaha! This driving business is quite entertaining!"

As though traveling along a road, the Revenant climbed endlessly up the sloping pipeline.

The pipeline was enormous.

It was also round.

Huge steel pipeline or not, it was far too narrow and unstable for a heavy armored vehicle to drive along.

The slightest misstep would surely send them plummeting.

At this dizzying display of stunt driving, Zero and Siren squeezed their eyes shut, grabbing whatever they could as Ash had instructed.

But Ash's hands on the wheel did not waver in the slightest. At times like this, a mechanical body came in handy.

Whatever his emotional state, he could always make minute adjustments!

When he finally reached the point he wanted, Ash slammed one of the buttons on the center console.

HISSSSS!

The Revenant's body abruptly sank until it nearly touched the surface beneath it, then sprang upward as its pressurized hydraulic pumps released all at once.

It was an emergency escape feature, originally intended for getting unstuck from mud while crossing the Outer's unstable terrain.

Ash had just used that feature to launch them.

As the Vortex troops stared upward in horror, the enormous armored vehicle leaped off the pipeline and sailed through the air in an arc.

Its destination was directly in front of the tunnel—on the far side of Vortex's barricade.

"Aaah, aaaaaah!"

"Aieeeee!"

Siren and Zero screamed, making no attempt to control their airborne bodies. With their screams as its background music, the Revenant accomplished something resembling a landing.

KABOOOOM!

The Revenant landed with an enormous crash, practically smashing into the ground. It even rolled over twice upon impact.

Inside, sparks flew wildly, and people went tumbling every which way.

Having performed the Lazy Donkey Roll, the Revenant eventually exhausted its kinetic energy and came to an abrupt stop.

"Is everyone all right?"

No one answered Ash.

Most were simply wedged somewhere inside the vehicle in grotesque positions. Looking them over, Ash nodded a couple of times, then turned to the instrument panel.

Quite a few warning lights were on, but that was all.

Surprisingly, the Revenant had suffered no major damage. It was as if this was nothing compared with the Outer's harsh conditions.

The engine, its heart, was no different.

GRRRR...!

After briefly watching Vortex's barricade in the rearview mirror, Ash pressed the accelerator.

The Revenant glided forward.

At the movement, a loose exterior armor plate on its right side, left dangling by the violent impacts, broke away and hit the ground with a dull thud.

With that final parting gesture, the Revenant vanished into the darkness of the tunnel.

The Vortex men lined up in front of the barricade could only stare after it, utterly dumbfounded.