“Colonel Sakamoto! The Union Examination Squad is back.”
“I see. Call them to the meeting room.”
The Union Examination Squad, a joint squad formed in coordination with the Ground Forces, was a squad charged with testing new weapons in actual combat.
“Captain Komada, how did it go?”
Sakamoto went straight to the point and asked the saluting Komada. It was probably because he was really anxious to hear the results.“Sir! The results were way better than what we expected. If it’s human type monsters, we can mostly kill them with one attack. If we compare that to the fact that it would have taken us more than 20 ammunitions just to silence one of them, I think it was a huge success.”
“Is that so…”
The new weapons were made from the metal excavated from the darkish blue land. In Japan, that metal, which had Magic Particles embedded into, was called “Magic Steel”.
Currently, it’s used to forge swords and hammers, which were then later used in actual combat.
By using the Magic Steel to forge the part of weapons that could cause damage, like the blade of the sword or the blunt part of the hammer, and forging the remaining parts of normal metal, it was possible to reduce the amount of Magic Steel used.
However, due to Magic Steel being so hard to obtain, it’s impossible to mass produce them. In this experiment, there was only enough material to forge weapons for a 6 person squad. Even with only that the experiment was deemed a success.
In order to be completely safe, there was still a support squad made up of numerous people carrying firearms in the back.“Colonel Sakamoto. How many of these weapons can we produce?”
“With the resources we have currently, 20~30 is our limit.”
“20~30…”
That wouldn’t be enough to change the current situation. Naturally, in the Self-Defense Force, there was a team in charge of excavating the metal. Due to the fight against the monsters, it was severely lacking manpower.
Aside from Tokyo and Fukuoka, monsters had started appearing in other places as well. Hokkaido, Yamagata, Fukushima, Niigata, Nagano, Ibaraki, Totori, Hiroshima, Kochi, Miyazaki, Kumamoto, and so on. The casualties in all of them were enormous as well.
The one with the strangest occurrences was Nagano. Even though it was close to Tokyo, and the enormous land had appeared there as well, the number of casualties was surprisingly low.
Was it a coincidence? There still wasn’t any concrete information on why it was happening so no one could come to conclusions.
“Excuse me, Colonel, but may I talk to you for a bit?”
“What is it, Komada?”
“After we finished fighting with the monsters, one of the soldiers in the squad started saying some strange things, so I wasn’t sure if it’s something I should report or not.”
“Strange things? What kind?”
From the line in the back, a single female soldier came out in front.
“You are Master Sergeant Sakuragi, right? What happened?”
“It’s just that, I can see things.”
“You can see things? What exactly do you mean by that?”
“In front of people, there’s this thing. It looks similar to status windows that you usually see in games.”
