NIKKE, When the Milky Way Blossoms

"Viper, you stay in the carriage and help look after those mass-produced Nikis, and also keep an eye on the Jackals."

Helen and I sneaked over to look for them.

"...Okay, honey, be careful!"

Amid the girl's concerned response, Phoenix made a phone call to Helen, who was in the refrigerated truck. He then slung his rifle over his shoulder, jumped off the truck, and ran towards the location 18700.

"Lieutenant, leave this to me. You can command from a distance..."

Helen easily kept up with the man's pace, but after learning that the mission was to arrest a Niki, she couldn't help but worry about her boss's safety.

In urban warfare, Nikki's high mobility will be amplified to an extreme degree. This is a point that the lieutenant specifically mentioned when lecturing at the MMR affiliated high school.

Unfortunately, Phoenix responded to Helen's concerns with a tone of refusal.

"In District 18744, on the sixth floor of a residential building, the target was sitting on the sofa, holding a gun, and is suspected of killing four people."

You lie in ambush on the south side of area 18744 to prevent the enemy from breaking through the window and jumping out. I will climb up the wall from the north side.

have you understood? "

"...I understand."

"By the way, while you're lying in ambush downstairs, send a message to Deputy Minister Ampa for me: for the second batch of smuggled people, I need Diesel and Marian."

"..."

Seeing that her boss was determined to work independently, Helen had no choice but to nod in agreement:

"Yes, Commander."

……

……

"Commander, Miss Yin Hua, Miss Marian, let me tell you a secret~ I'm actually quite timid. I'm afraid of hearing grenades, explosives, um... and rocket launchers..."

"Huh? ...Startled by the sound of the door closing? I didn't expect an Ark hero like the Commander to have PTSD, haha~ For some reason, I suddenly feel a sense of kinship with the Commander, like we're fellow sufferers~"

"I never imagined that Miss Yin Hua became Niki because of this..."

"Huh? My turn... The reason I became Niki... um... because I was a victim of that train bombing years ago..."

"My younger brother was on the train and wanted to buy candy, so I went to find the train attendant for him. Because there was one carriage between us, well... I survived the explosion just because of that one carriage..."

"Survivor... I never thought of myself as a survivor... I remember that time, my right hand and right foot were gone, I couldn't hear anything, there were no explosions, no screams, and the whole world felt very quiet."

Fires were everywhere, black smoke was everywhere, and even my own body was on fire…

"Commander... I'm the one who should die... If... if I hadn't always thought that as an older sister I should take care of my younger brother... if I hadn't insisted on buying him candy..."

"...I should have been the one to die in that explosion."

Memories from Region H kept flashing through the lieutenant's mind.

At first, everyone gathered around the fire chatting about the past, but later they talked about why they became Niki...

Until Diesel, usually so cheerful, struggled to suppress his sobs, his voice trembling, and his eyes filled with helplessness and confusion as he leaned on Marian's shoulder...

Each utterance of pent-up sorrow, simmering for years with nowhere to vent, is like countless flickering flames, stimulating the man's mind.

almost……

Silently climbing to the fifth-floor balcony, Phoenix tried to calm his turbulent emotions, steadily stepped onto the balcony railing, and jumped upwards.

Soon……

With his specially extended right arm, the man successfully grabbed the railing of the sixth-floor balcony. Then, he carefully exerted his strength and pulled himself up onto the balcony.

But at this moment!

The long-neglected railings, perhaps tampered with, just like in the movies, suddenly gave way at this crucial moment and bent over.

Clang!

Almost the instant the feeling of falling appeared, Phoenix's right arm, under Anick's manipulation, once again unleashed a force that the body could not withstand, pulling him sharply and propelling him forward and upward into the air.

pat!

As he rolled into the house, without the lieutenant even needing to give instructions, Anik intercepted a barrage of submachine gun bullets coming from the direction of the living room.

Jingle bells—jingle bells—!

A large number of bullets, their kinetic energy dissipated, struck the floor, producing a crisp, bell-like sound.

"Wow, a new gadget developed by Ark?"

Inside the living room, Krau grinned as he emptied half a magazine of ammunition with his left hand, then hooked his right hand and tossed a fragmentation grenade with the fuse pulled in the direction of Phoenix.

despair!

Unexpectedly, just as the grenade reached the apex of its arc, the nanomaterials that had been deflecting the bullet suddenly swung around. Thanks to Anik's calculations, a brass warhead was fired at the grenade, precisely deflecting it in the opposite direction...

Krau: "?!"

boom--! ! !

Immediately afterward, a deafening explosion rang out!

Kneeling on one knee, Phoenix, hidden under the shield of his right arm, felt as if his brain had been thrown into a giant centrifuge, and he was spinning around, unable to tell which way was which.

The explosive shockwave not only made his knees ache, but it also seemed to stop his heartbeat, almost causing him to faint on the spot.

On the other side, Krau, without cover and not enough time to roll, wasn't in much better shape.

With no other choice, she could only crouch down, cover her head with her hands, quickly shut down the pain and hearing modules, and let the shrapnel embed itself into her prosthetic body.

"Tch! It seems Ark has developed a new type of humanoid weapon?"

After the brief explosion, facing a life-or-death situation, the blood-covered terrorist stood up with a sinister grin, rushed towards Phoenix in a few strides while reaching behind his waist with his right hand.

Just as the lieutenant said in class, in close-range firefights, Nikki's explosive power and speed advantage will be amplified infinitely.

The distance from the balcony to the hall is only eight or nine meters, which is a distance that Clau can easily reach in the blink of an eye.

pat!

A thermite grenade with a very small kill radius slid out from Krau's waist and landed to Phoenix's left.

Then, she stepped on the man's nano-shield that transformed into spikes, letting the spikes pierce her feet, determined to keep the enemy kneeling on the ground, unable to move.

"Your modification level seems a bit low, friend."

An increasingly ferocious smile bloomed on the terrorist's face like a chrysanthemum; she couldn't wait to see what kind of bleak, pleasurable screams would occur when a human body was burned at three thousand degrees Celsius.

Unfortunately, what Clau never expected was that her willingness to get so close to Phoenix's face didn't mean Phoenix wouldn't dare to take the hit head-on.

"Who the hell would be friends with an animal?"

The lieutenant, who had a long history of risking his life, also grinned maliciously behind his shield, his emerald eyes filled with a madness that even terrorists found hard to display.

laugh--

Thermite grenades emit a sound indicating combustion.

Phoenix, however, was unwilling to give the grenade the respect it deserved. He ordered Anik to use nanometal to penetrate Krau's groin, and in the instant the aluminothermic explosion produced high temperatures, he successfully dismantled the structure of Krau's right leg that was standing on the shield.

The next second, the oxygen-deprived burning metal powder successfully melted through the outer shell of the thermite grenade, and the exploding flames, like an indelible leech, stuck to the lieutenant's left leg, left arm, and even left cheek.

Meanwhile, the terrorist whose right leg had been dismantled was dragged by the man at this critical moment, completely losing his balance and falling towards the thermite grenade that was about to burn out completely...

Chichichichichi——!!!

When Nikki's body came into contact with the grenade, the 3,000-degree heat instantly melted and destroyed Krau's central nervous system.

The firelight burned in the bastard's eyes, which were filled with astonishment.

Phoenix, whose body was half-engulfed in flames, stood before it, wielding the blade in his right hand, and began to cut through the charred flesh with its outstretched fiery wings.

"Hey?"

A few minutes later, after the injuries were treated, the man, with the beast's head still on his feet, made a phone call.

"Is that Diesel? I've prepared a birthday present for you."

"..."

"It's okay, consider it my belated birthday present."

"..."

Trust me, you'll love this gift.

Chapter 204 When the Lieutenant Was Incapacitated

[Partial loss of muscle mass in the left leg; able to stand but unable to walk]

[Left arm: partial loss of upper arm muscles, significant loss of forearm muscles, and loss of function of the left palm]

[A small portion of the left cheek was burned, and hair in the temporal region was also burned; disfigurement confirmed.]

[Have you considered further renovations? With your current shabby appearance, if you don't improve and repair them, I'm afraid no one will want you in the future.]

The characteristic emotionless mockery of artificial intelligence echoed in Phoenix's mind, but the man chose to ignore it as always.

Modification is definitely necessary. The score between Lecher and humanity is not yet settled, and he cannot continue to live with a disabled body.