A peal of thunder cracked overhead.
It was like the war drum of the heavens.
More terrifying, more deafening than any before it.
This time, it didn't roll from some distant horizon. It exploded as if right above each man's head.
The entire Kamiyama Region shook violently with that thunderclap.
...
In the forest, the mercenaries reeled, their eardrums ringing from the sudden roar.
Their legs buckled, and they nearly all collapsed to the ground at once.
"Fuck! What kind of weather is this?! The meteorological bureau ought to be shot!" One mercenary couldn't help cursing aloud.
"Shut up!" Ghost barked sharply.
But unease was rising hard in his own chest. This was beyond abnormal.
He raised the binoculars again, forcing past the ringing in his ears, looking toward the center of the rice paddy.
He wanted to see, in that field about to become a sea of fire, whether there'd be figures running and screaming in panic.
He saw nothing.
The center of the paddy was empty.
Only the golden waves of rice, rolling calmly, eerily, in the wild wind.
Time felt as though some invisible hand had pressed the slow-motion key.
The dozen-plus lethal incendiaries had already reached the airspace above the rice paddy and were plunging fast toward the golden field.
Less than fifty meters from the ground.
One more second, even a fraction of one, and this beautiful land would become a hell on earth.
At the forest's edge, a victorious smile had already spread across Ghost's face.
He could practically hear that distinctive, satisfying sizzling sound of phosphorus meeting rice stalks.
But in the very instant the incendiaries were about to fall...
Blinding silver-white lightning bolts came crashing down from the rolling black clouds.
They were thick as ancient pythons, like spears of judgment hurled by gods, ripping the night apart.
These bolts were not striking randomly at the ground.
They were precise as if computed by a supercomputer through hundreds of millions of calculations.
Their target was the dozen-plus incendiaries plummeting through the air.
A series of immense explosions erupted at almost the same moment, mid-air.
Each bolt struck its lethal warhead with absolute precision.
The dozen-plus incendiaries didn't even reach the ground. They were detonated in the air, by this "divine wrath" from the sky.
In an instant, the entire night sky was lit bright as day by a chain of huge white fireballs.
A terrifying wave of superheated air, mixed with shockwaves, swept outward in every direction.
It tore a massive hole right through the clouds overhead.
Countless droplets of burning white phosphorus came pouring down like a rain of death, raining onto the forest and the paddy below.
"Oh my God!"
At the forest's edge, the young mercenary code-named "Rookie," seeing the mythic, epic spectacle before him, let out a shriek of disbelief.
What had he just seen?
Lightning... intercepting incendiary bombs in mid-air?
How was that possible?!
It was more absurd than a sci-fi film.
"Move! Take cover! Find shelter!"
Ghost's reaction was the fastest.
He grabbed the young mercenary, who had already frozen in shock, and pinned him hard behind a massive rock.
The next moment.
Countless burning droplets of white phosphorus rained down on the trees and brush around them, igniting an inferno in seconds, turning the area into a sea of flame.
He had been through hundreds of battles, had seen all manner of unbelievable weapons.
His instinct said this had to be some bleeding-edge defensive technology no one had heard of.
Like a laser interception weapon deployed in space, or some long-range high-energy microwave system.
"They've got something like an Iron Dome! Everyone, find a target now! Locate that damn launcher! Destroy it!" Ghost ordered sharply.
His men were also veterans of the battlefield.
Though shaken to the core by what they'd just seen, professional discipline forced them to choke down their fear.
They scattered immediately, using the burning trees as cover, raising their assault rifles, switching on the infrared sights.
They began frantically scanning the rice paddy across from them, hunting for any possible enemy, any suspicious weapons platform.
If it was man-made, it had an energy source, a launcher, and it could be found and destroyed.
...
In the center of the rice paddy, Seiji Fujiwara still calmly held Eru Chitanda in his arms.
That violent explosion just now had occurred less than fifty meters above their heads.
It was hot enough to melt steel.
Those burning phosphorus droplets had splashed outward in every direction like a deadly meteor shower.
Yet not a single drop of that fiery rain landed in the small patch where they stood.
As if an invisible barrier sealed them off completely from the destruction outside.
Eru stared blankly at the huge white fireballs gradually dimming in the sky. Her already-numbed mind couldn't process any of what was happening.
Lightning... intercepting artillery shells?
Was this... a miracle?
Almost without thinking, she turned her gaze to the man holding her.
She saw on his face no trace of surprise, only the calm of a man for whom everything was already in hand.
Seiji felt her gaze.
"You see, I told you it was beautiful, didn't I?" He gently brushed away a tear at the corner of her eye.
The tear had welled up of its own accord from the shockwave of the explosion.
"This is far grander than the fireworks at any festival."
No explanation. No explanation needed.
That smile said everything.
It was him.
All of this was his doing.
That realization rocked Eru harder than the explosions had.
...
At the forest's edge, the mercenaries' struggle continued.
"Captain! No targets sighted! Across there... there's nothing! Not a damn shadow!"
"On thermal imaging, I see nothing but rice paddy at uniform temperature! This isn't science!"
"Fuck! Where the hell are their weapons?! Are they invisible?!"
Cold sweat the size of beans had broken out on Ghost's forehead.
The combat fatigues on his back were soaked through.
The unknown was the most terrifying thing of all.
He forced himself calm and issued a new command into the comm.
"Everyone, stay calm! Don't let yourselves be shaken by their psy-ops! This has to be some long-range weapon we can't detect! If they could intercept the first wave, they can't intercept us forever! Energy is conserved!"
"All units disperse! Cross-cover formation! Prepare for a second round... fuck! What's that?!"
His words were cut off by a sudden cold sensation.
A drop of icy rainwater slipped through a gap in the canopy burned out by the flames and struck him hard on the tip of his nose.
Then a second, a third...
Within seconds, fat raindrops were pouring down in sheets.
As if someone in the sky were spraying them down with a fire hose.
This downpour drowned the flames burning around them, and drowned the last shred of hope in their hearts.
Then the strangest thing of all happened.
This sudden torrential rain had a coverage area as precise as if some god had drawn it with a compass.
The downpour fell only on the few hundred square meters of forest where they stood.
It soaked the twelve mercenaries and the scorched trees around them down to the bone.
Yet just a hundred meters away, the golden rice paddy still bathed in clear moonlight, dry as ever, untouched by a single drop.
You could even see fireflies drifting lazily through the moonlight.
"This... this is impossible..."
A mercenary stretched out his hand, catching the cold rain.
He stared dumbly at the dry ground a hundred meters away.
That ground seemed to belong to another world.
"Dear God... is this... is this the judgment of Noah's Ark?" Another mercenary, a devout Christian, had thrown his rifle aside completely. He knelt in the mud and began praying frantically, incoherently.
And it wasn't over yet.
Another deafening peal of thunder cracked overhead.
Then, a thunderstorm in the truest sense began. Tailored exclusively for the twelve of them.
Countless vicious silver bolts, thick as a man's arm, exploded violently right at the treetops above their heads.
Sharp cracks of electricity flashed one after another.
The blinding electric light lit each man's face deathly pale.
They could clearly smell the thick, biting ozone in the air.
Even the static was so intense that every hair on their bodies stood on end.
But the most terrifying part...
Of all the countless bolts that seemed about to tear the sky in half, not a single one actually struck them.
It was as though they were being controlled by an unseen hand.
With malicious precision, the bolts cracked above each man's head, beside his feet, alongside his body. And always missed his flesh by a hair's breadth.
A bolt split the tree "Butcher" was leaning against straight down the middle.
Charred wood splinters whipped past his cheek.
Another bolt carved a smoking crater into the mud right in front of him. Less than ten centimeters from his combat boots.
It felt like a god toying with caged rats by lashing an invisible whip against the bars.
Striking again and again, hard, against the bars of the cage, making tremendous noise, never actually striking the rats themselves.
Just to enjoy the ugly spectacle of the rats panicking, scattering, fleeing in disarray.
This higher-dimensional torment, full of malice and amusement, finally shattered the last shreds of psychological defense in these battle-hardened professional soldiers.
"Aaaaaah! Devils! They're devils!"
The young mercenary code-named "Rookie" was the first to break.
He threw down his weapon and bolted into the depths of the forest like a headless fly, sobbing and screaming.
The collapse spread among the others like a plague.
"I'm out! I'm out! This isn't fucking war! This is divine wrath!"
"Mama... I want to go home... I don't want to die here..."
"Don't strike me! Don't strike me! Please! I'll never do it again!"
They threw down their weapons.
Crying out, screaming, they scattered through the mud and the storm.
In their eyes there was no longer any trace of professionalism or coldness, only fear.
Ghost stood there, the squad leader.
He stared blankly at his men, who looked like a pack of stray, beaten dogs. Then he looked at the rice paddy in the distance, still serene and lovely under the moonlight.
A bolt of lightning carved a charred crater into the mud right in front of him. Splattering mud across his face.
He let out a scream of his own and, half-stumbling, half-crawling, he too fled into the boundless dark and vanished.
...
...
In the center of the rice paddy, Seiji slowly raised a hand.
Like a symphony conductor, after the final note, gracefully lowering his baton.
With his motion, the rolling thunderstorm in the sky, as if receiving an order, swiftly stopped its roar.
The black clouds dispersed at a pace visible to the eye. The thunder faded.
The downpour that had fallen for twelve men alone stopped just as abruptly.
The clear moonlight poured down again unobstructed. It lit this untouched land as if it were heaven.
As though the world-ending disaster moments ago had been nothing but a hallucination.
Before Seiji, a virtual system screen materialized. Only he could see it.
On it, in clean, emotionless text, were the words:
["Aegis" System Notice: Targets routed. Threat eliminated.]
He nodded, satisfied, and casually closed the system.
...
Meanwhile, on the other side of the world.
In a fortress-like secret safehouse buried deep in the Swiss Alps.
Richard Anderson paced like a caged beast, anxiously waiting for his mercenaries to send word of their victory.
A video feed suddenly appeared on the screen in front of him.
The footage came from a camera mounted on a mercenary's helmet, transmitted in chaos, broken and intermittent.
The picture shook violently, full of static and signal interference.
But he could still see it clearly.
He saw the dense lightning fall like divine judgment. From the heavens, detonating the incendiaries he'd had launched, mid-air.
He heard the screams of pure terror from the elite soldiers he'd hired at enormous cost.
Heard the word they kept shouting again and again...
"Devils! Devils!"
In the final second of the video, the lens swept across a forest drowned in pouring rain, and in the distance a dry rice paddy bathed in moonlight.
Anderson stared blankly at the mythical footage.
His brain shut down completely.
Slowly, he turned his head and looked at the huge world map on the wall of the safehouse.
His eyes fell on that small red dot marking the Kamiyama Region of Japan.
His expression went from disbelief to shock, to terror, and finally settled into something utterly deranged.
"Devils... there are devils there..."
He muttered to himself.
Then Anderson let out a beastly, bloodcurdling howl.
He grabbed the expensive cigar box and crystal ashtray off his desk and began smashing wildly at the fortress that had once given him a sense of safety.
In the end, when the security personnel rushed in, broke down the blast door, and subdued him with sedatives, he was already curled in a corner, eyes vacant, having soiled himself.
He kept repeating the word "devils," and had become, completely, a madman.
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