"Get inside the building!"
Yakura twisted lightly aside to avoid an arrow, caught another mid-flight, and used it to knock away the ones that followed.
Uchiha Tekka and the others handled themselves just as skillfully, and at her instruction, quickened their pace toward a nearby building.
Inside, civilians were also pouring in to take shelter.
But in their blind panic, none noticed the four shinobi vanish into thin air in the corner.
At the same time—
Maintaining their invisibility technique, Uchiha Tekka and Yakura's team reappeared on the rooftop, their expressions grave as they swept their eyes over the massacre below.
By now, the enemy had moved beyond arrows.
Goblins, trolls, kobolds, and the rest of the monsters charged out.
They hacked at every person they saw, killing indiscriminately.
Above, the dragon knights urged their flying mounts to dive at chosen targets—some knights skewered their victims' bellies with long lances, while others let their dragons tear human bodies to shreds with their jaws.
In just one or two minutes, the once bustling, spotless, and brightly lit Ginza Avenue had turned into a field littered with corpses, stained with blood, a scene like the most brutal of killing grounds.
"Could that be another form of the Dimensional Gate? Are these the native forces of the Zero-Magic World deployed by the World Government?"
Yamanaka Kōsuke muttered in a low, uncertain voice.
"Impossible. Even if it were, we should have received advance notice!"
But even as Uchiha Tekka said this, his voice carried little confidence.
Yakura suddenly spoke: "Let's first report this to Captain Yamanaka Inoichi, then continue tailing them."
"And pay attention—these troops are not carrying the Five-Round Cross banner. That means they're not World Government forces!"
...
The sudden, horrifying massacre drove the police officers stationed at Ginza's local koban to urgently call their superiors.
Although every rank-and-file Japanese officer was armed with a pistol, each koban only had two or three men.
And their weapons were nothing more than small revolvers—completely incapable of piercing the refined armor of those ancient soldiers.
At best, they could squeeze the trigger twice, hear the empty click, and then be run through by the cavalry charging right into their faces with a single spear thrust.
The chaos grew louder.
Centered around Ginza 6-chome, four streets had already fallen into complete disorder.
Dragon knights soared through the sky, occasionally swooping down to snatch away one or two lives at random.
Goblins, trolls, kobolds, and other monsters smashed down nearby doors, storming into building after building, slaughtering every man, woman, and child hiding inside with their clubs, blades, and swords.
Screams, wails, cries, shrieks, blood splattering in all directions, mangled corpses—
The district once hailed as "the most expensive in Asia" had now been reduced to a living hell.
The moment the emergency began, the Metropolitan Police Department reacted at once.
Soon, four large buses arrived. Their sides were emblazoned with "Metropolitan Police Department" and "Special Assault Team", and a golden badge was fixed to their hoods.
As the doors swung open in unison, officers poured out, clad in black tactical vests and riot helmets.
Some carried ballistic shields, others wielded M4 assault rifles, Remington shotguns, or even MP5 submachine guns, quickly forming ranks at the intersection.
This was the Special Assault Team—SAT—the elite anti-terrorist force of the Metropolitan Police Department's First Security Division.
Before long, phalanxes of infantry armed in iron armor emerged ahead, their raised spears thrust toward the sky.
But the first to rush forward were the snarling monsters in front.
Their weapons were still dripping with fresh crimson blood.
Confronted with such enemies, the SAT officers, at their captain's order, squeezed their triggers without the slightest hesitation.
"Fire!!!"
Gunfire thundered.
The charging goblins, trolls, kobolds, and other twisted creatures erupted in bursts of blood as bullets tore through them, collapsing one after another to the ground with agonized screams.
And yet, for the army formations behind them, their deaths went completely unnoticed.
Arrows were immediately launched from the rear, blotting out the sky.
"Raise shields!!!"
The captain of this SAT unit shouted urgently.
His men reacted quickly.
As the rain of arrows fell from above, in the blink of an eye two to three dozen men went down.
Their tactical vests might have been bulletproof, but they offered no protection against arrows.
Fortunately, the riot helmets held up well, so no one had been killed outright.
Still, the searing pain of arrows piercing their bodies had those struck screaming in agony.
But the captain had no time to care for them now.
He saw the ranks of ancient soldiers pressing forward, and yet another wave of arrows rising into the sky.
"Keep shields over your heads! Assault team, fire at those soldiers! Sniper squad, take out the monsters closing in!"
The man bellowed from beneath a shield, his voice tearing at his throat as he commanded, all while firing his M4 assault rifle frantically at the enemy.
Still in the Ginza district but perched on the roof of another building were Uchiha Tekka and the four from Yakura's group.
They had already spotted five helicopters approaching in the distance.
"Apache attack helicopters—looks like the Ground Self-Defense Force from North America. Just in time to test what these guys are made of. I can't shake the feeling they're far too weak."
Uchiha Tekka crossed his arms, his cold gaze fixed on the cavalry galloping down the modern streets below.
They had already confirmed this strange force was not from the Zero Magic World.
That meant it was another world invading this nuclear world.
It sounded shocking—
But for Uchiha Tekka, Yakura, and the others, it was not difficult to accept.
After all, the shinobi world had been invaded before, and now they themselves were invaders.
The next step was to gauge the strength of this rival.
No matter how ferocious they seemed now, slaughtering every life they came across—
They were, after all, preying on nothing but defenseless civilians accustomed to peace.
"Indeed, their dragons don't seem to breathe fire or use magic. They're inferior to the dragons of the Zero Magic World and the dragons of the Teigu World."
"And those monsters are just physically strong. I haven't seen any extraordinary abilities. As for their human troops, yes, they're well-equipped, but at the end of the day they're still just ordinary people."
Hyūga Kōryō spoke while scanning the surroundings with his Byakugan, echoing the captain's words.
Yakura nodded and joined in: "The key point is, I haven't seen anyone with supernatural powers."
"Logically, a civilization capable of opening a dimensional gate to invade another world should have people like mages among them. But in their ranks, I haven't seen a single one. Are they just holding back, or do they truly have none?"
Uchiha Tekka pondered aloud: "Is it possible that, like most mages in the Zero Magic World, their magic simply doesn't work in other worlds—let alone something like Void Magic users such as Louise?"
"Then how did they even get here?" Yakura countered.
"Well—"
Uchiha Tekka faltered, then shook his head helplessly. "Forget it. We've already reported it. Let those above figure it out. For now, things have just gotten more complicated."
Meanwhile—
The five Apache attack helicopters that had reached Ginza first had already locked on to the dragon knights circling in the sky.
[DADADADADA————]
The M230 30 mm chain guns mounted beneath the aircraft roared, spitting out thick tongues of flame.
"Raaagh!!"
In an instant, one dragon's body was riddled with a dozen massive holes, its rider torn in half along with it.
"Prepare rockets."
"Fire!"
Two other Apaches fixed their sights on the cavalry below.
[BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM!]
Air-to-ground rockets, designed specifically to annihilate light armor, erupted in blasts of fire, smoke, and thunderous concussions, consuming whole ranks of horse and rider alike.
And farther off, Hyūga Kōryō spotted yellow-and-green armored infantry vehicles rumbling toward Ginza in formation.
The ground forces of the Ground Self-Defense Force's 1st Division had finally arrived.
...
The overlapping sounds of M249 light machine guns, M2 heavy machine guns, M4 assault rifles, along with explosions from small rockets and grenades, echoed across Chiyoda and Chūō wards for half the day.
The strange battle didn't end until around 01:00 in the early hours of today.
At last, the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force barely managed to bring it to a close.
Fortunately, the operation went smoothly. Whether it was those terrifying-looking monsters or the ancient army clad entirely in armor, none could withstand the onslaught of modern weaponry.
The only real threat came from the enemy archers.
Almost all of the casualties among nearly a thousand troops here were caused by their arrows.
As for infantry, cavalry, or even dragon knights—under the sweep of machine-gun fire, they were nothing but live targets.
Those long shields and suits of armor, which looked as if they were forged from fine steel, turned out to be as fragile as paper. They couldn't block bullets at all; every time, the rounds tore straight through man and shield alike.
Yet even though the battle was over, the civilian death toll from the incident had reached more than sixty thousand.
The enemy side had also suffered nearly sixty thousand dead, with more than five thousand soldiers taken prisoner.
Japan, both domestically and abroad, was thrown into an uproar.
This was the very heart of the capital of a developed nation.
Everyone was stunned. Everything had happened far too suddenly.
Parliament was thrown into chaos, unable to regain its order.
Clearly, it would take some time before an official statement could be made to the outside world.
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