After everyone had left Random Play, all the others besides Geno also made their way into the Hollow.
To boost efficiency, the group split into two parties.
Number 11, Trigger, and Anby formed one team and followed Eous to investigate the location of that band of mechanized soldiers Geno had run into earlier, to see whether there were any more clues to be found.
Twiggy, meanwhile, went together with Yanagi Tsukishiro, acting on some intelligence they'd obtained from HAND to search for some new breakthrough.
Walking atop the ruins, Yanagi Tsukishiro rested a hand on the long blade at her waist, her body swaying quite naturally in step with her casual stride, putting the voluptuous figure of a mature woman fully on display.
Beside her, Twiggy looked at the route map on her phone—the one Fairy had drawn up from her analysis of HAND's intel—and led the way out front.
"Is this intelligence really that trustworthy?"
Having found nothing out of the ordinary the whole way there, Twiggy couldn't help but voice her doubt; Yanagi Tsukishiro's answer, however, was utterly certain.
"This intel came from one of the members of our intelligence division. After he delivered it back, he too died from excessive Ether Corruption."
Yanagi Tsukishiro's tone was exceedingly calm, as though the so-called death she spoke of were not the passing of a life, but merely some grass and flowers by the roadside—something she didn't care about in the slightest.
But watching the way her hand gripped the long blade, knuckles gradually turning white, one could tell that this so-called calm of hers was nothing more than a surface veneer.
"Is that so."
Twiggy realized too that she'd stepped on something of a landmine, and her tone was no longer quite so blunt.
After they had pressed on for another stretch of time, sure enough, in an area not far ahead, the two of them discovered an anomalous situation.
"A high-concentration Ether reading. Looks like we've come to the right place."
Looking at the high-energy reading displayed on the instrument on her wrist, the gaze behind Yanagi Tsukishiro's lenses gradually turned grave.
The culprit behind the swelling within Crete Hollow was about to appear before their eyes.
Pressing onward and deeper, before long a vast encampment came into view before them.
Crude defensive measures stood all around, while a great number of automated mechanized soldiers and rebel troops patrolled without cease.
The protection was so tight that not even a mosquito could have flown in.
"Rebels, huh... that part's within expectations, but what exactly is their objective?"
Yanagi Tsukishiro's gently curving willow-leaf brows knit together slightly.
She couldn't fathom why the rebels would show up here at this particular juncture.
New Eridu was right in the middle of its municipal turnover election; by rights, this stretch of time ought to be the most tense moment for every link in the whole of New Eridu's machinery.
Of course, the way things looked now, the standby status of the Anti-Hollow Section Six and the leave of absence granted to the Defense Force were probably also the work of spies the rebels had planted, stirring up trouble at the top.
Yet even so, Yanagi Tsukishiro still couldn't imagine what odds of winning the rebels had.
You think you can just tell me to hold still and I'll hold still? Don't make your big sis Yanagi laugh.
If they really dared to come, the name of the Void Hunters wasn't just for show.
And yet the rebels came all the same—they even laid everything out in the open, going so far as to activate spies who had been lying low for ages, mobilizing every force they could possibly muster.
As for what their aim was—that would depend on how much the two women could uncover through their next moves.
"Proceed with caution. If we run into danger, we pull back immediately."
Having given Twiggy a word or two of instruction, Yanagi Tsukishiro drew the long blade in her hand from its sheath, whereupon it shifted form into a naginata crackling with electric arcs.
Although Yanagi Tsukishiro now spent most of her time handling Section Six's paperwork—after all, her own section chief was a battle maniac—
as a veteran who had come down off the battlefield, anyone who assumed she could only handle paperwork would be making a grave mistake.
Correspondingly, Twiggy was, whatever else you might say, a graduate of the Silver Squad; even if she failed her routine combat training assessments, at the very least she was more than capable of holding her own.
Though the two had never once worked together before, their well-matched military competence meant they quickly fell into a smooth rhythm.
Cooperating with each other, the two attempted to infiltrate this crude military fortress.
Reality, however, was not so rosy.
Faced with the enemy's defensive line—not especially sturdy, but vast in numbers—the two of them simply couldn't manage; after slipping past only two squads of troops, the defenses multiplied exponentially.
"There are way too many rebels here. This is already a war-scale deployment."
Hiding in a corner against a wall, Yanagi's expression grew ever more grim. By her rough calculations, the number of rebels stationed in this encampment was at least five thousand men—enough to take down a Companion Hollow harboring some notorious Ethereal.
And that was without even counting those mechanized soldiers.
"The most fatal thing is, we have no idea how many encampments like this there are."
You can't put all your eggs in one basket, and there was absolutely no way the rebels' encampments were limited to this single spot.
"It's too risky to keep the operation going. Let's pull back first."
Twiggy rendered her verdict on this mission—carrying on like this would only be sending a lamb into the tiger's den, with no use to it whatsoever.
Yanagi nodded, indicating her agreement.
But just as the two were about to withdraw, the communicator at Twiggy's waist suddenly let out a beep.
In an instant, alarm bells went off in both their heads.
The relentless, continuous beeping quickly drew the attention of those nearby, and the two of them, without exception, became the most universally watched superstars of the entire encampment.
"Enemy attack!!!! On guard!!!"
"Intruders spotted! Suppressive fire!"
In the span of a mere instant, the two women's position was exposed to the entire rebel base.
Fortunately, the pair's reactions weren't too slow either. Yanagi swung her naginata, beating back the rebels blocking her path, while Twiggy held her saber across her body, clearing out on the spot the foot soldiers trying to finish them off with a follow-up shot.
Seeing that they were no match for these two, the rebels had no choice but to call for reinforcements.
And it was precisely in that window of opportunity that the two carved out a path to survival.
When the reinforcements arrived, all they found was an utter mess, and their faces turned grim in the extreme.
"Useless! You couldn't even hold onto two people?!"
"Sir, those two women were absolute monsters—a lot of the brothers got beaten up!"
The rebel foot soldier's tone was full of grievance. They'd wanted to catch Twiggy and the others too, but they simply hadn't been able to win.
Who could have guessed these two would be such good fighters!
As it turned out, after hearing this the officer's fury was not the least bit quelled—on the contrary, he only grew angrier.
"Useless! If you can't beat them, don't you know to send the mechanized soldiers in?!"
When poor, use tactical infiltration; when rich, use firepower suppression.
With automated mechanized soldiers on hand and not using them—are you waiting for them to rust?
"But, sir... the brothers are in there too. What if we hit them by mistake..."
"Are you questioning me?!"
"N-no... I wouldn't dare..."
One rank higher crushes you to death—and for the rebels it was no different.
Meanwhile, on the other side, Twiggy and Trigger, having successfully made their escape, were counting themselves lucky to have survived the ordeal.
"Damn it! Who on earth would send a message at a time like this?!"
Twiggy indignantly pulled out her phone to check, and the next moment she saw Geno's distress signal.
"Oh no! Something's happened to Geno."
The moment those words left her mouth, Twiggy didn't dare waste a single second, and in a frantic rush she charged off toward the coordinates Geno had sent out beforehand.
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