NOVEL WEB Chapter 16 - Charging Towards the Heavy Tank!
Zhou Lizhi seemed somewhat heated by Briar Churchill’s unexpected performance. Once again, with a ‘boom’ sound, the tank’s shell was fired, and this time Churchill had her back turned to the tank as she was trying to receive applause from us.
“Oh, really dangerous…”
“Intercept!”
At that moment, with a ‘psshht’ sound, a spark from Catherine Duey’s finger shot forward and precisely hit the incoming shell. The shell exploded in mid-air, causing a huge fireball and sand storm. I blinked and muttered,
“She shot a grenade?”
“Ow… my bones…”
But Duey’s interception wasn’t perfect. Briar Churchill, who was caught unprepared in the grenade’s explosion, was lying face down on the ground, groaning. Just as I was about to scold her that it would have been better to attack the instructor with that flame instead of doing unnecessary things, Zhou Lizhi shouted again through the loudspeaker from the other side.
“Do it properly, you lot, very properly!”
“Ah… the shield…”
Hoang Thi Linh, the Vietnamese hypnotist, started shaking her coin frantically, flustered that the shield she was leaning on had disappeared. Celine Demetriades, the Greek puppeteer standing opposite her, frantically waved her hands and screamed something in her native language.
It was probably telling Hoang Thi Linh to stop immediately because she might be hypnotized by the coin being shaken arbitrarily… but Hoang couldn’t understand Greek, and when the hypnotist, also flustered because of Celine, continued to shake the coin arbitrarily, the puppeteer eventually fainted on the spot.
In an instant, two people collapsed. All because of just one heavy tank… should I say?
“No, what did you just do?”
Shradha Bhatt asked Hoang Thi Linh with an incredulous face. Hoang, realizing what she had done, hurriedly hid the coin in her hand and explained in Chinese.
“Ah, no, I didn’t mean to do this, I forgot I was holding the coin in my hand and just, ah, but, it’s okay. It’s a simple fainting spell, as long as I don’t cast any more sp-spells…”
“I thought you were a hypnotist…”
Aren’t hypnosis and spells clearly different? Honestly, seeing someone knocked out just by shaking a coin, even I, an Asian, might fall into Orientalism.
“Ah, I feel a strong spiritual energy. The spirit is escaping. Hypnotist, could I ask you one more time? If you do it once more, I think I could collect this person’s soul…”
No, I take back what I said earlier. The white person from Europe is saying something even more Orientalist. Rebecca Katerfeld, the German spiritual ability user, checked the pulse on Celine Demetriades’ neck and started saying scary things with an indifferent face.
Hoang Thi Linh, who obviously had no intention of killing the Greek, vehemently refused Katerfeld’s suggestion.
“Th-This spell is not for stealing souls! If anything, it’s for putting escaped souls back into the body!”
“So if you apply it in reverse, you could pull them out too. You definitely have talent…”
“I-I said I won’t do it!”
If she really tries to take the soul, I should stop her, but if Hoang Thi Linh herself doesn’t seem to have any intention of doing so, let’s leave it alone for now.
“Anyway, what are you going to do? Even if we assume this woman is of no help without her doll, the Maestro who was blocking all the shells by herself is out of it.”
Julia Curoo, the American model who had been silent until now, stepped forward as if she couldn’t stand watching anymore. Catherine Duey shrugged.
“Let’s try to catch that tank. Actually, everyone’s thinking the same thing, right? We might not care much about whether it’s a test or what, but if we think of it as an opportunity to give that Weapon Master a taste of her own medicine, we want to do it at least once.”
“I don’t like that attitude. Aah, but because of the explosion just now, my parts have melted again…”
Shradha Bhatt seems weak to high temperatures. She looks like she’s having trouble moving now, so let’s leave her alone for now.
“Just get me close. Then I’ll at least be able to deal with it.”
Julia Curoo said, twisting her hair as if annoyed. I recalled her ability once again. Probably… the ability to transform into furniture, wasn’t it?
“How?”
I asked. Curoo pouted in irritation.
“Ah, really. Someone just needs to block for me until I get close. At least draw her attention. That tank, the driver seems capable, so it won’t be easy to deal with.”
“It’s probably a one-person operation. Yes, that’s how it is, she’s operating it alone.”
Soviet Colonel Tikhonov suddenly joined the conversation. Curoo, an American at odds with the Soviet Union, stepped back in surprise but shot back at Tikhonov without showing much hostility.
“What? Even if I don’t know much about weapons, I know that a Type 71 tank isn’t a tank that carries just one driver. Are you taking me for a fool?”
“No, it’s entirely possible.”
Catherine Duey shrugged.
“Because the opponent is a Weapon Master. A tank is definitely a type of weapon. Historically, the awakened ability of weapon mastery has been considered one of the strongest abilities. Because they can control most lethal weapons made to kill people at will. I’ve heard that some skilled Weapon Masters can even control the trajectory of flying shells as they please. I don’t know why the French army doesn’t have such an ability user.”
“Then I guess I can roughly understand why that woman is firing shells so recklessly…”
Well, if the fired shell looks like it might kill us, she can just stop it with her ability… is that it? I see. The Type 71 tank itself isn’t the problem. The problem is that the driver in it is a powerful awakened one. An awakened one who can freely control the tank with just her ability, even with her head sticking out over the cupola…
Everyone fell silent for a moment. It’s probably because we all realized that it would be difficult for us to fight against that Weapon Master without Briar Churchill, who had started snoring and sleep-talking strangely.
“Ah, it’s coming.”
At that moment, something was seen approaching this field fiercely from the opposite direction of the tank, from the dormitory road. Tikhonov waved happily at the approaching unidentified object.
The object revealed itself clearly only when it came a bit closer. It was the very unicycle that Colonel Barbara Tikhonov had been riding when striding through the bushes.
“The bicycle… by itself?”
“I told you, didn’t I? I’m the queen of bicycles.”
The approaching bicycle stopped abruptly in front of Tikhonov, as if waiting for her to mount. Tikhonov gently stroked her bicycle seat and then plopped onto it, balancing without holding the handlebars. The colonel shouted.
“Well then, let’s begin. If I can just get that American actress to the front of the tank, you’ll find a way, right?”
“Uh, um, yeah, that’s right…”
“Then, I’ll draw attention, so Lieutenant Duey and Miss Shin Eun-young, please advance forward while protecting Miss Curoo. Now, for the glory of the Red Army, charge!”
“Hearing that slogan makes me really not want to charge…”
Curoo said. I agreed with her words, but Catherine Duey seemed not to mind at all and laughed loudly.
“Anyone who’s a soldier has the right to shout a slogan for their own army! Now, Vive la France!”
I had no intention of shouting ‘Long live the Republic of Korea,’ and neither did the American model. Well, neither of us are soldiers anyway. I was bothered by the collapsed Maestro mumbling ‘Rule Britannia’ while raising her baton high…
But when Tikhonov started charging towards the tank on her bicycle at a speed faster than a train and began firing pistol shots, there was no time to think about that issue. The Type 71 tank interfered by firing its machine gun at Tikhonov approaching it, but the Soviet colonel persistently fired pistol shots at the Chinese-made tank, initiating the first meaningful attack against the heavy tank among us.
The bicycle moved so fast and erratically, jumping into the tank’s blind spots, that even we watching from behind were all bewildered. Zhou tried to catch Tikhonov by hiding her body under the cupola and rotating both the hull and the turret simultaneously, but the queen of bicycles mocked its movements at a speed the tank could never keep up with, barely even pedaling.
However, her bicycle ability didn’t seem to particularly enhance the power of the pistol shots. The bullets merely bounced off without even scratching the tank, let alone penetrating it.
We moved in sync with Tikhonov’s movements. I stretched out both arms in the form of tape and then spread them into a circular shape, creating circular shields made of duct tape material in both hands.
Although I haven’t used it in actual combat yet, during tests, I’ve caught flying bullets with this shield. Because the adhesive strength and impact absorption strength of the tape created by my ability are so strong, most rifle bullets can’t penetrate the shield I spread in this shape and get stuck in the adhesive. It’s a kind of bulletproof adhesive.
Of course, producing this adhesive strength consumes quite a lot of energy, but this isn’t the time to worry about such things, is it?