NOVEL ONLINE FREE Chapter 63
Chapter 63: Give It to the Kids! 6
Honestly, at first, I also thought about dismantling underground train cars like these to use as temporary tents instead of regular tents or tarps.
However, if all the cars belonging to Earnest Rail disappeared at once, they would definitely track their location.
While meal kits are disposable after consumption, train cars are too large to hide easily.
“Instead, feel free to play with it to your heart’s content.”
“Gasp!”
“Hehehe, I brought glow-in-the-dark crayons just for today…!”
“Me too! Me too!”
“Can I eat this?”
“It’s a wooden chair, so I guess you can eat it, right?”
“Whoaaa!”
The kids were like a swarm of locusts.
Coloring the inside of the train with glow-in-the-dark crayons didn’t even count as a prank to them.
They tore apart things that looked like seat covers to take them home or scratched windows and walls with knives to leave graffiti.
Some, out of boredom, even started shooting guns as part of their mischief.
They even gnawed on wooden chairs or tables when they found them.
-Crunch crunch!
“Ugh, it doesn’t taste good!”
“The meal kits are better!”
“But I can’t stop munching!”
Sohi had mentioned that in emergencies, I could feed the kids any organic material, like wood or plants.
And indeed, they gnawed on wood like rhinoceros beetle larvae.
Of course, I didn’t bother stopping them.
Would the kids who ran wild back at the Saya Guild mansion listen to me now?
It wasn’t like this train was mine, anyway; it belonged to Earnest Rail.
There was no reason for me to treasure it.
“Alright, we’ve arrived!”
“Whoaaa!”
A box full of meal kits.
Meal kits aren’t ordinary food.
They’re high-calorie, high-energy meals.
Thanks to the Saya Guild’s dairy industry, the ingredients and flavors were excellent, and large-scale corporate technology ensured the quality of the entire meal was incredibly high.
“Food is here!”
The kids hadn’t eaten a single meal since waking up.
At the Saya Guild, they ate every meal regularly, but now, relying on meal kits, they would stuff themselves whenever they got the chance.
“Um, uh… Teacher… I think this isn’t ours…”
One timid kid hesitated and spoke to me, seemingly pricked by their conscience.
Maybe it was because the huge Earnest Rail logo was plastered on the box, making them feel guilty.
“Ah, child. Look at this.”
“At what?”
“The Earnest Rail transport ticket.”
A holographic document was attached to one corner of the meal kit.
It was probably a record used by the person dispatching the train and the one receiving the supplies at the base to ensure everything was accounted for.
“See here? It says ‘Destination: Northern Front Base.’”
“Yes.”
“But isn’t this the Northern Front?”
“Still…”
“If it were meant to be delivered to someone specific at the Earnest Rail base, then yes, we’d be stealing. But it just says ‘To the Northern Front,’ doesn’t it?”
“Gasp! That means…!”
“That’s right, the person who sent this train wanted someone, anyone, at the Northern Front to have it—like Santa Claus!”
“Santa Claus!”
The little girl, who had been weighed down by guilt, visibly brightened.
“And we’ve said many times that we aren’t stealing. We’re just moving its location a little.”
“Wow! Teacher, you’re amazing!”
“The teacher’s nonsense always sounds so convincing!”
“I’m totally sold!”
“So squishy!”
Hearing the kids cheer made my shoulders rise with pride.
【Human, the automated weapon system has been forcibly activated.】
‘What?’
Could it be that Earnest Rail has already noticed?
【That is not the case. The surveillance and security systems remain unchanged, but the automated weapon system itself has automatically identified a target.】
【Prepare yourself, Human. Dominator automated attack robots will soon commence operations.】
-Bang!
As soon as Theresa finished speaking, the door to the front car was smashed open.
[Unidentified intruder detected.]
-Screech!
-Creek!
-Clank!
Dominator robots.
Unmanned combat robots that, by Hunter standards, range in danger level from an average of C to B rank.
One on its own isn’t particularly dangerous, but the problem is that Earnest Rail, with its massive corporate resources, will undoubtedly have an overwhelming number of these Dominator robots.
The robotic arm the kids were playing with earlier seems to have belonged to one of these Dominator robots.
“Wow! Robots!”
‘Theresa, how many units are there?’
【Dominator unmanned combat robots, a total of 692 units. Reinforcements are continuously arriving from the front cars.】
That’s a lot.
But we have numbers on our side too.
As soon as the kids saw the combat robots, their eyes lit up.
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Hehehe.’
‘Hihihihi.’
The masks on the kids’ faces rose, forming monstrous mouths on their blood-red suits.
Weapons that had been stored in the form of pile bunkers melted and flowed, transforming into complete blades.
To set an example for the kids, I also deployed my mechanical tendrils.
“Our playmates have arrived, kids.”
‘Playmates!’
‘Play!’
‘Play friends!’
In terms of numbers, we weren’t at a disadvantage.
If we were in a wide open plaza, the Dominator robots might have been able to exploit their numerical advantage, but we were inside the narrow confines of a train.
[Identify yourselves.]
[You are currently infringing on Earnest Rail corporate property.]
[Under Ark Corporation Protection Law Article 38-1, the legitimacy of private sanctions has been established.]
[You are ordered to reveal yourselves immediately.]
[Surrender is strongly advised.]
[Failure to comply will result in lethal measures.]
Unaware of this, the Dominator robots simply stared at us, repeating their automated instructions like machines.
Looking at the overly excited kids, I curled my finger.
“Let the games begin.”
‘Whooooooaaaaa!!!’
‘Maraaaang!’
‘Woooo!’
‘Pllaaaayyy!’
‘Kyaaaaahhahaha!’
The 20 kids around me immediately sprang into action.
The children clinging to the walls and ceiling scattered in every direction, crossing the train corridor in an instant, and pounced on the robots.
-Bang!
-Crunch!
The robots in the front row were destroyed in no time.
The kids fired bullets imbued with their life force, and as the bullets ran out, they loaded their bodies with bone and flesh to continue firing.
Thanks to the limitless regenerative capabilities of the creations of the Immortal Factory, the kids’ reckless shooting went on endlessly.
Meanwhile, a dozen or so kids, ignoring whether they were hit by bullets, charged at the Dominator robots wielding swords.
‘Whoaaaah!’
‘Haaah! Get dismembered!’
‘Take this! My sword!’
The sounds were adorable, but the results were far from it.
The Dominator robots, made of metal, were torn apart as easily as slicing tofu, and seeing the kids couldn’t handle it alone, I joined the fray.
The Dominator robots were armed, including firearms, but Earnest Rail values its corporate property.
Perhaps to avoid damaging the train’s interior with firearms, a lock seemed to have been placed on the Dominator robots, restricting them to melee weapons like swords and chainsaws.
Already outmatched by our base specs, they couldn’t even utilize their numbers or weaponry advantage.
-Thud!
[Following orders, following orders, following…]
Unlike the kids, I didn’t need to rip apart the robots’ bodies or limbs.
With my mechanical tendrils, I simply struck the power cores and drained them, ending it swiftly.
If I had enough time, I could leisurely enjoy draining all these robots since they were practically my power source.
However, Theresa only had 9 minutes to hack into the train’s main system.
Considering we already spent about a minute getting here, there wasn’t much time left.
-Smash!
[Attempting to contact, contact, cont, cont, cont, cont, cont, tact, fai…led…]
I didn’t bother dodging the Dominator robots’ swords.
Attacks that couldn’t penetrate my exterior armor weren’t a threat.
I just walked forward and pierced their power cores with my mechanical tendrils.
One, two, three.
I destroyed 19 power cores at once.
The damaged cores didn’t yield much energy, but since I had plenty of surplus power sources, I didn’t need to worry about it now.
-Crack! Thud! Thud!
[Main system, connection fai, fai, fai, fai, fai…failed…ahhh…]
-Crack!
I moved forward, and the kids swept through the rest.
Destroying the 692 Dominator robots Theresa mentioned didn’t even take 7 minutes.
A pile of wreckage from countless robots formed a hill under the tiny hands of the children.
One girl laughed as she stuck a robot arm into her body.
“Teacher! This leg is amazing!”
“I’m a Quattro Musketeer now!”
“What?! Installing a robot gun on your back is cheating!”
“I want to be like Teacher, too!”
“Ah, no.”
-Smash!
[Emergency, attempting urgent contact with the board of dir, dir, direc…]
Breaking the head of the last remaining Dominator robot extinguished the red light shining from its head completely.
“Kids, let’s go now.”
“Yes~!”
“My chairrr~!”
“Aww.”
“It’s over already?”
Now all that was left was to toss the boxes filled with meal kits out of the train.
★
★
★
“They even plundered our supplies through the underground route…?”
“………”
The Northern Front Base was in a foul mood.
Surviving a few days on nutrient capsules was one thing.
But with the supply shipments they’d been requesting increasingly cut off, the leaders of the combat and suppression teams began sensing ominous signs.
‘Could it be that we’re isolated here on the Northern Front?’
The train itself arrived intact, but the raiders shamelessly stole all the meal kits inside.
Even though Earnest Rail’s headquarters dispatched 700 Dominator robots to deal with the raiders, the robots’ broken parts now formed piles inside the train, leaving the full-time employees dumbfounded.
‘No, this isn’t just frustrating—this has gone beyond an emergency due to a lack of food.’
Milton, the manager of Earnest Rail’s Northern Base, let out a deep sigh as he smoked a cigarette.
Surviving on nutrient capsules on an empty stomach was only feasible for a day or two.
Awakened individuals consume far more calories and nutrients than ordinary people, making high-calorie food essential, and nutrient capsules are merely temporary solutions.
Even the Hunters were beginning to leave, accusing Earnest Rail of breaching their contracts due to hunger.
The problem was that most of these defecting Hunters were independent ones who could take requests from external forces and potentially turn against Earnest Rail.
‘We finally caught the leader of the external forces and had a golden opportunity to crush them, but we couldn’t even mount a proper expedition due to food shortages, and now we’ve lost our chance to suppress the external forces!’
The most likely suspect behind all this was Dawn.
While the natives and external forces were possibilities, they weren’t much of a threat without a leader.
However, if it was Dawn, they would know all the terrain around the base and nearby zones.
If Dawn, betrayed by Earnest Rail, had left behind a rogue unit to wreak havoc on the Northern Base, it would be incredibly effective.
“Summon the team leaders from each department. Tonight, we’ll release the dolls into this forest.”