Chapter 47: Hell Heavy Infantry - [Demon Samurai]

No matter what, the deployment of the Yamato 2nd and 9th Class-A Divisions completely transformed the tactical landscape across the entire city.

Though Zhang Shan wished nothing more than for every single Jap to drop dead, he had to admit that at this particular juncture, the enemy's Class-A divisions possessed a terrifying level of combat effectiveness.

With his own eyes, he watched a three-man Jap detachment on a street actively probing the terrain with their own bodies.

Those fresh recruits were essentially sent out as bait.

The moment a defending machine gunner opened fire, Zhang Shan knew they were in trouble. Clearly lacking experience, the gunner killed one of the Japs with his machine gun, only to be struck with sudden astonishment as the remaining two Japs swiftly dove to the sides of the road and agilely rolled to find cover.

Before the machine gunner could even react, at least three rifle rounds slammed into his position within two short seconds.

Perched atop a pile of rubble on the third floor of a ruined building, the young machine gunner thus lost his life.

His predicament served as a miniature portrait of most defenders manning machine guns.

Unless they were operating a heavy machine gun equipped with a gun shield, or were hidden with absolute perfection, a defending soldier armed with an MG34 faced a fifty-fifty chance of being picked off.

On one side, the Yamatos laid down withering suppressing fire, while on the other, transformed Japs utilized their heightened mobility to flank and encircle the Rossian machine gun squads.

This phantom-like tactic left the defenders—whose tactical competence fell vastly short—completely bewildered and at a loss.

Were there enemies here?

Or were they over there?

The pitch-black night, resembling the gloom of the abyss, stretched the soldiers' nerves to a breaking point and devoured their sanity.

Every single sound consciously or unconsciously made by the Rossian soldiers, every superfluous movement, risked inviting a merciless blow from the hidden enemy in the darkness.

In the past, whenever the Rossians failed to hold against a Yamato charge, they could simply fall back during the day, reclaim their positions at night by deploying TM-38 anti-tank mines, or close in for vicious hand-to-hand combat.

None of that worked anymore.

Because...

The Yamato heavy infantry had arrived!

As a specialized combat branch unique to this world, the transformed elite heavy infantry could effortlessly haul over a hundred pounds of heavy armor. Including their other equipment, their total combat weight exceeded two hundred pounds.

The absolute strength wielded by these inhuman entities surpassed the limits of most people's imagination.

When ordinary soldiers confronted these monsters—whose frontal armor averaged ten millimeters in thickness, with critical chest, abdomen, and helmet sections reaching twenty millimeters—the only thought that arose in their minds was pure, unadulterated despair!

"Da-da-da!"

"Die! Just die! Why won't you die?!"

In a narrow alleyway, a cornered Rossian soldier squeezed the trigger, emptying every single round from his "Chicago typewriter" directly into the torso of the "human-shaped tank" standing before him.

It was useless!

The .45 ACP bullets stood zero chance of piercing the heavy armor of this demon-masked, fiendish samurai.

Every frantic round fired off scattered into a shower of splashing sparks.

Undoubtedly, the enemy was a walking altar of war, standing as resolute and unyielding as an ancient fortress.

A meticulously forged shell of war completely encased this bipedal behemoth, standing a towering two meters and twenty centimeters tall.

Modern battle armor crafted from homogeneous steel was entirely covered in so-called Susanoo spell-engraved runes.

In the gloom, these intricate decorations sullenly swallowed the light, making this exceptionally bulky heavy infantryman—the [Demon Samurai]—look even more grotesque and terrifying.

Its demon mask and sloped, towering shoulder pauldrons featured a thick chest plate on the front that felt capable of stopping not just rifles, but even sustained fire from a 12.7mm heavy machine gun. At the seams of the breastplate lay interlocking layers of complex scale armor, as intricate as the continuous treads of a tank.

The bone-white, metal-clad demon helmet and faceplate were modeled directly after a demon-transformed samurai. Only the twin beams of cold light flashing deep within the sunken ocular visors revealed the presence of a genuine demon from the underworld, poised to leap out and devour its prey.

As those iron-gray, corded arms shifted slightly, the armored joints engaged and vibrated with the muffled thud of a prayer bell's hammer. Beneath them, steel-like muscles and sinews bulged, creating an illusion that even when he merely reached out from afar, it was the hand of a giant descending.

"Ah-ah-ah!" Terrified out of his wits, the Rossian soldier panicked, discarded his Thompson submachine gun, executed a side-roll, and drew a Kar98k dropped by a fallen comrade.

"Bang! Clack! Bang! Clack..." The monotonous sounds of gunfire and bolt-cycling intertwined.

Terrifyingly enough, the rounds from the Kar98k—which possessed enough velocity to pierce ten millimeters of homogeneous steel plate at a hundred meters—similarly failed to penetrate this heavily armored humanoid monster.

Before the young Rossian could flee, the inhuman entity strode forward, eating up two meters with every step, and closed the distance in a single encounter.

A grip of titanic strength clamped around the young Rossian's neck, plunging him into a dizzying wave of blackness.

Right at that moment, a voice sounded from behind the demon samurai: "Wait, I've got a brilliant idea."

"Oh?"

Not long after, the long-silent loudspeakers in the southern district of Red Tower City suddenly crackled to life.

"Hey, hey, can you hear me?" A timid voice broadcast in the Rossian language spilled from the horn; one could tell immediately that it belonged to a child.

Across the nearby battlefield, any Rossian soldiers not currently engaged in combat instinctively pricked up their ears.

Then, a flurry of Jabbering Yamato speech erupted from the broadcaster, followed instantly by the Rossian child translating each sentence.

"I have a pathetic wretch right here with me. I am going to use him to demonstrate the end that awaits all you Rossians—"

With just those few words, the Rossians across the entire southern district caught the heavy stench of malice.

"Tell me your name. Where are you from?" A sharp slapping sound echoed through the broadcast.

"Dmitri Nurbagandov! From the village of Turgolyov in Danmaga," another weak voice replied from the speaker.

The moment the words fell, many Rossians recognized who he was.

"Oh god, he just successfully proposed to Maja from the medical team yesterday."

The vicious voice rang out from the broadcaster once more: "Say it—Tenno heika banzai! Or else I'll let you experience what true hell is like."

Yet, the demon samurai was met with disappointment.

Following a brief hush of silence.

"Brothers..." After a brief pause came a shout wrung from the very depths of his soul: "Uraaaaaaa—!"

The Rossian battle cry lasted barely a second before devolving into a heartbreaking, soul-rending scream.

No one knew what was happening on the other side of the broadcast; they could only hear the sickening sound of tearing flesh, bones being snapped, and agonizing groans suppressed to the absolute limit.

"Say it—Tenno heika banzai!" The impatient voice grew increasingly ferocious and vivid.

"Uraaaaa... wuwuwuwu..."

Another burst of tearing flesh, the sound of heavy breathing enduring ultimate agony, and the low, muffled sobs of the translating child.

"Bah! Bad luck! I refuse to believe every single one of you Rossians is a so-called tough guy. I'll just drag out a second, a third, countless more Rossian men. I'll slaughter every last backbone, and once that's done, what's left will just be slaves! Hahahaha!" The unbridled, maniacal laughter of the demon samurai echoed through the airwaves.

Rossians across a good portion of the city fell silent.

Silent, ever silent—either they erupted within that silence, or they perished within it.

Coincidentally, Zhang Shan, who had been listening to this broadcast, checked the coordinates locked in by his system and picked up a phone: "Hey! Profirov? I've got a nasty job that needs you to handle it."

Fifteen minutes later, just as the brutal mockery and flesh-ripping torture of the demon samurai echoed from the loudspeakers once again, a thunderous explosion shook the southern sector of the city to its foundations.

"Boom!" Amidst a blinding pillar of fire, the broadcast was abruptly cut short!