RM Vol 3: For a World without Boundary – Chapter 45-5: Osprey down! (Part 5)

Author notes:

Next chapter is up! Phew~!

Not going to lie, reading all of your comments and advice has given me a new perspective on life. From what I've come to see, mental recovery in my case is a slow process. Though it's always advised to do what I enjoy the most by the look of it. Of course, it has to be in moderation. It has been made clear to me that burnout is an actual threat to my writing style now. I can only wish that the quality of my writing thus far hasn't diminished. Oh boy, that's one dangerous train of thought.

Now then, as of today, Corporal Kodrion has been assigned on a far away duty. His service to the Belkan Reich has been an honorable one. Salute~!

Other than that, new images are posted in the album. I hope you enjoy them!

https://photos.app.goo.gl/waZgkRa3UQhqKQBi9

P.S: This chapter and the upcoming one actually hurt my heart to write. Hopefully, you all can relate to it.

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"This is very suboptimal!" Screamed Randall as he ducked down, pulling the charging handle back before discarding the spent magazine. "Fucking Hell this is as bad as Arash!"

Gordy pulls the trigger on her rifle a few times while smirking. "As bad as Arash!? Arash was lukewarm compared to this! White Rock though, that's a whole different beast altogether!"

Loading up his fourth mag, Randall slaps his charging handle, letting it ride back home before raising his voice. "You and I remember Arash and White Rock very differently!" The wolfkin then aims his rifle and reengages the approaching horde. Behind him, intermittent suppressive fire from the HMG-14.5 provides much-needed relief where the G1 rifles can't.

The fight for their life has been going on for nearly ten minutes and by the Gods, they're expending ammo like no tomorrow despite their conservative approach. Five minutes into combat, the demons start amping up their numbers, forcing Albrecht and his machine gun to intervene more and more or they risk being overrun. That said, it's only the demons that are being sent out. The zombies, much to their chagrin, hang back and watch the situation with inhuman gazes. If they're as smart as the ones before, they probably decided to let the demons run the survivors dry before storming in to finish the kills.

"What's your kill count?" Randall asked while firing at a Knight charging at them, having prioritized it over the slower Chariots and Archangels. It's weird to see how these Archangels become slower the lower they are to the ground. While high up, they fly faster than one could aim to form that blasted dome that causes trouble for everyone involved. After a couple of bullets, the Knight stumbles and rolls with its horse, dead.

"Not enough!" Gordy responded as she braced her rifle to take a couple of shots. "Not nearly enough!"

Randall surmises that, between the two of them, they have taken out approximately sixty targets, not counting the ones killed by the HMG behind them. Unfortunately, not all kills were clean kills with some needing more leads before they went down. And yet, more just kept on coming, making him wonder just how many people were buried deep under this Gods' forsaken place. Yeah, there's no way in Hell their holdout will last long. The looming threat of dying to a bunch of ferocious and doubtfully mindless beasts grows larger with each squeeze of his trigger. Though much like his friend Gordy and the two unfortunate crew members behind him, Randall condenses his intent into each bullet he sends out, if only to take morbid glee into the fact that they've managed to inflate their kill count by just a bit more. By the end of the day, they may rack enough kills for a medal or two. The notion does bring a wry grin onto Randall's face. But when the wolfkin expends his fourth magazine, the grin is replaced by an annoyed expression.

"Oi, Gordy! I am down to 1/3 of my ammo! It's high time we start pulling back!" Randall shouted while reloading his primary weapon.

"Pretty much the same here!" Gordy responded. "Alright, fight and retreat! We'll tread back to the second defense line while those zombies still haven't rushed us. Use your secondary if you have to just don't stop shooting! Albrecht, Carl, you got all of that?"

"The MG still has some ammo left, though I will be switching over to the MP9 till you guys are clear." The last thing they need is for a friendly fire incident to take place. And a .57 cal hitting a humanoid body? It ain't pretty.

"Ready when you all are." Carl replied while perching by the first-floor window of the garage, his MP9 regularly fires on semi-auto.

"Roger! You good to go, Randall?" Gordy dared a look over to Randall.

The wolfkin gives a thumb up with his left hand while his right still holding up the rifle. "Ready!"

"On 3..." Gordy slaps the charging handle of her rifle home. "3!" The female Pathfinder stands up to engage multiple targets at once, mostly to suppress them.

"Oh yeah! Let's just skip 1 and 2 then!" Randall complained out loud, earning a short snicker from Gordy as he ran back to the nearest cover behind him before turning around to reengage. "Go!" Firing his rifle, Randall covers Gordy's retreat. Under the covering fire provided by a G1 and two MP9s, Gordy pulls back further behind Randall before taking a position by a broken wall with rifle raises.

"Move, Randall!" Taking that as a cue, Randall sprints back, but not before chucking a grenade at a cluster of demons. The grenade lands in the middle of the pack before exploding and pulverizing them. The pair of Pathfinders then repeat the process a few more times, minus the grenades, crossing a fair distance while they are at it.

Still, the noticeable reduction in firepower is capitalized upon by the demons who rush nearly unimpeded. By the time the pair have gotten to the second line of defense, the demons have approached an uncomfortably closed distance. Shooting down an Archangel to her front, Gordy does not dilly before swiveling her rifle to the right, squeezing the trigger twice to eliminate another Archangel. Before the second Archangel even finishes crashing and tumbling on the floor, Gordy is already aiming at a Chariot that is paving its way toward her in a bull rush. Flipping the fire selector to full auto, Gordy dumps the rest of her mag at the upper body of the demon, blowing off chunks of white silicone material and a good portion of its head. Its big body comes crashing down and carves a shallow trench on the ground.

Gordy doesn't have the time to reload her rifle though, she has to pull out her service pistol on her thigh holster. Flipping off the safety of her USP, she aims the pistol at a Knight. To be more precise, Gordy shoots at its horse. Pulling the trigger five times, Gordy disables a fore leg of the horse, causing it to take a nose dive head first. Its rider, losing its grip on the horse, comes sprawling on the floor with its claymore by the side. With a dispassionate gaze, Gordy dumps its body with four rounds of 9x25mm. Now with two left in the mag and one in the chamber, Gordy points her pistol at Randall.

Yeah, the girl just does that.

Randall bites back a curse before dropping his body lower to the floor, just in time for Gordy's USP to sing thrice, downing an Archangel that has snuck up upon the wolf from the air. As the Archangel falls by the side of Randall, the wolfkin can't help but curse. "Fuck! A little bit of warning would have been nice, woman!"

"It's either you lose a patch of fur or you lose your head!" Gordy shouted back while reloading her pistol. "Cover me, I need to load!"

"Leave that to me!" Albrecht said. Now that the Pathfinders are safely stationary and away from his line of fire, the crew chief takes up the handle of his HMG again. Once more, the booming of heavy-duty counterfire echoes across the battlespace, drowning out the rumble of demons around them.

Seeing the tracers flying around as she slaps the charging handle, Gordy can't help a grin from showing up. "Gods bless .57 cal, am I right!?"

Far behind them, Carl is the one to have the clearest view of the carnage caused by the machine gun. "Damn right, sister!"

Their joyous expressions don't last long, however, when the zombies seem to have had enough of the overall incompetency of the demons. Impatient, some of the zombies charge forward with their scythes and claws alongside the seemingly endless horde of various demons. Gordy, noticing the change on the battlefield, speaks up a bit unsurely.

"Uh, boys?" Firing her rifle twice at a hood-wearing zombie with... cat ears and claws? Gordy was aiming for a Hail Mary but was surprised when the zombie went down without much resistance. That said, it has only been a drop in the bucket, more are to come soon. "Yeah, boys. I think it's time for our front to go sky-high! We got zombies inbound!"

"Yeah! Yeah, I can see them!" Carl answered with squinted eyes. "Give them a few seconds, just a few more!"

Randall adds. "You better time it well, Carl! I am down to my second to last mag!" The wolfkin immediately follows by saying. "Gordy! I need a pistol mag!"

Gordy reaches into her belt, pulling out a USP magazine. "Last one!" She said before tossing it over to Randall who caught and loaded it into his pistol. Gordy then engages the immediate dangers to them while Gordy reloads his G1 rifle, ignoring the dead blob so that it will walk right into the blast zone of the trap. Albrecht eases up on his machine gun too, the thing is also mostly empty. In a corner of his mind, Albrecht dreads the moment when the MG will run out of ammo. Then, it will be a knife fight and a half, and he sure as Hell didn't rank the top in cardio.

But then again, it's the kind of thing that his future self would have to deal with, even if it's only a few minutes away.

"Alright," Carl said over the radio. "Hang on to your teeth, people! Fire in the hole!"

The pilot, holding the clacker, squeezes. Right beneath the steps of the demons and zombies, the shallowly buried C-4 charges detonate. The explosion ignites the nearby cans of fuel and motor oil while launching nails, bolts, and spark plugs at deadly velocity. The shockwave rattles the horde while lethal projectiles pepper their bodies. A fireball mixed with ash and sooth then engulfed the frontal area of the crash site, temporarily blocking the view of the stranded survivors. It doesn't stop them from cheering though.

"Fuck yeah! How do you like mankind's ingenuity you sons of bitches!" Albrecht sang.

"Language, my friend!" Gordy smirked. "We're all civilized people here!" Her jest earns the chuckle of the boys. Unknown to them, the spectators viewing their exemplary struggle also woop in cheers and waves of laughter.

And then disaster strikes.

"Ok, boys! Check your weapons, the flame won't-!" Gordy can't even finish her sentence when her location is blasted apart by a barrage of lasers. Cover and human included, everything is sent soaring into the air to the shock of everyone.

Crashing hard onto the floor and rolling a few times, Gordy is assaulted with a sensory overload that stops her from hearing the collective screams of concern of the boys.

"GORDY!"