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THE HERO LEFT BEHIND

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*****

It was a complete wasteland.

The desolate terrain stretched out all the way to the horizon, barely avoiding being categorized as an outright desert. And right in the middle of nowhere, Rob stood all by himself. Even though the sky was completely cloudless, it hung overhead in a gloomy, dim gray, and the wind blowing past kicked up an annoying screen of dust.

「...Son of a gun. I should've just left them to rot instead of trying to play the big shot.」

He grumbled to himself, venting about a cold-hearted choice he knew he never actually could have made, when he suddenly narrowed his eyes and listened closely.

Plumes of dust billowed in the distance. A low rumble shook the ground, growing louder by the second. Rob pulled the hood of his combat fatigues down low over his eyes and glared toward the edge of the wasteland.

What came into view was a horde of beasts and insects. Each individual creature was as massive as a horse-drawn carriage. Their mechanical bodies bristled with exposed pipes and prominent gears, and they were heavily armed with a mismatched assortment of cannons and blades. This legion of mechanical beasts and insects swarmed forward in perfect unison, looking for all the world like an invading army on the march.

「Dammit. There goes another chunk of my ammo count.」

Cursing under his breath, Rob manifested a pair of firearms in both hands.

They were twin Gatling Cannons. The four rugged barrels easily surpassed his own height, sporting a massive 50mm caliber. Under normal circumstances, the sheer weight and recoil would make it impossible for a human to wield one with a single hand—let alone dual-wielding one in each hand.

The moment the Gatling Cannons materialized in all their imposing glory, their barrels began spinning at a blinding speed. A relentless hail of artillery shells tore into the oncoming mechanical horde, erupting into a chain of violent explosions. The mechanical swarm, which looked capable of easily flattening any ordinary human, was sent flying through the air like cheap plastic toys.

Yet, lacking any semblance of emotion, the mechanical beasts and insects paid absolutely no mind to their casualties, continuing their relentless charge toward Rob. But suddenly, they ground to a halt. The shells spewed from the combined eight barrels unleashed a freezing blast of absolute zero, locking the front lines of the swarm dead in their tracks with solid ice.

Right on cue, armor-piercing rounds the size of canned coffees tore straight through multiple units at once. Sweeping his fire across the field, the armor-piercing rounds completely silenced the vanguard. Yet, climbing over the wrecked frames of their fallen comrades, wave after wave of metallic beasts and insects kept pressing forward.

Rob kept his fingers glued to the triggers, unleashing a wall of counter-fire. He didn't skimp on the ammo despite his earlier complaints, cycling through standard high-explosive rounds, shrapnel shells that showered the field in purple lightning, and corrosive shells that blanketed massive areas in acid.

「Well, can't be helped, I guess. Yep, totally unavoidable.」

Rob muttered an excuse to no one in particular, though a subtle, genuinely thrilled smirk played on his lips. It might have been an emergency, but precisely because it *was* an emergency, he could cut loose without constantly checking his remaining bullet count. His opponents were just mindless machines—no holding back, no hesitation required.

This was the exact same rush he used to feel back when he fought the Demon King in his prime. There was absolutely no way it wouldn't get his blood pumping.

However, the mechanical beasts weren't about to just sit there and take it. Realizing their vanguard was being utterly dismantled, the backlines assessed the threat and launched a synchronized volley of their own.

***

「――Now, regarding our next stop, the 961st World... it's a reality that once teetered on the brink of total annihilation.」

Arcelia began her briefing just a few minutes before the arrival announcement. She always carried herself with pride, but today she seemed exceptionally fired up.

「This world once reached the absolute pinnacle of prosperity, fusing magic and science to create autonomous magitech machinery. It's said they independently arrived at a system incredibly close to the modern magitech engineering utilized by advanced worlds today.」

Among the so-called advanced worlds, civilizations generally fell into three major categories: those that maximized magical culture, those that built up natural sciences, and those that hybridized the two into magitech engineering. The world housing the Interworld Alliance Headquarters was dominated by magitech engineering, which was exactly how handy gadgets like their communication earcuffs and the Interworld Train itself were created.

「However, a single catastrophic accident one day brought their entire civilization crashing down. They lost 90% of their total population, and every other living biological organism on the planet went completely extinct.」

The AI networks governing the military factories and the central command headquarters suddenly went rogue. They began mass-producing autonomous weapons known as Magitech Beasts, systematically hunting down and wiping out every single living organism. When the rogue outbreak first started, the Magitech Beasts were relatively weak. The local government was fully capable of handling the threat on their own, and it seemed like suppressing the glitch was only a matter of time.

However, the factory AI known as 'Mother' upgraded the Magitech Beasts with every single production batch, while the command AI known as 'Commander' adapted to tactical warfare at an alarming rate. Before anyone knew it, the tides of war had completely turned.

「The remaining 10% of the population lost both their technological legacy and their basic ethical standards, scraping by in a textbook post-apocalyptic wasteland. But the entire situation flipped on its head when an Alliance investigator from a completely unrelated world was suddenly summoned to their reality.」

It was a completely blind, random summoning from an entirely unknown world, enacted without a shred of the poor guy's consent. Arcelia rambled on at an enthusiastic clip, her face practically screaming *And here comes the best part!*

「As an Alliance investigator, he already possessed a unique special ability at the time, but the random summoning glitch somehow granted him a second one. Completely cut off from Headquarters without any way to communicate, he relied entirely on his dual abilities to lead the survivors. In the end, he brilliantly destroyed Commander—the AI ordering the extinction of all life—and saved humanity! Today, they are steadily rebuilding their civilization by utilizing the remaining Mother factory and the repurposed Magitech Beasts. This legendary achievement is widely considered fully equal to slaying a Demon King!」

Arcelia looked immensely proud of her colleague's heroic legacy and looked ready to keep gushing forever, but she was cut off by the automated intercom.

『――Next stop: the 961st World, The Docks.』

Hearing the announcement, Rob gave her a puzzled look.

「You'll understand why it's called 'The Docks' the moment you see it with your own eyes,」 Arcelia said with a smile.

But despite her words, the only thing visible outside the cabin window was a bleak, endless wasteland. Rob had no choice but to wait for the standard disembarkation announcement, but even after the train came to a complete halt, the intercom remained dead silent. Ten minutes passed, then 15. Just as Arcelia was beginning to get visibly anxious, the intercom finally crackled back to life.

『――We have taken complete control of this train. All passengers across all cars are to remain in their seats. Any resistance will be met with lethal force.』

It was a raspy, gravelly male voice. Arcelia instantly whipped open her book-shaped terminal, but the trainjackers had clearly prepared for this; all external communications were completely jammed. Rob tried to pop open their cabin door, but it seemed completely locked down from the outside. Short of blowing it to smithereens, it wasn't going to budge.

「...Well, we're completely boxed in.」

「This can't be... How could something like this happen?」

Arcelia frantically buried her face in her terminal to find a workaround, but neither her reference files nor the official operations manual contained a single guideline for what to do when a train was *completely* hijacked. While they were scrambling, the train suddenly began moving *upward*. It felt like they were being hoisted into the air by a massive crane or some sort of levitation magic, but without a clear view, it was impossible to tell. The train eventually ground to a halt again, and the intercom buzzed back to life.

『――Car Eight, "Demon King Slayer" Rob. You have exactly one hundred counts to step out of your vehicle and follow our instructions. If you resist, we will begin executing the other passengers. All other passengers are to remain where they are. The countdown begins now.』

Arcelia snapped her head up from her terminal, wide-eyed.

「...Well, it is what it is. This world has an environment I can handle, right?」

Completely at a loss for words, Arcelia could only offer a silent nod. Rob hoisted his backpack over his shoulders and chugged two quick cups of water from the cabin dispenser.

「...I am so, so incredibly sorry. At the very least, please take this.」

She handed him a piece of paper with a hastily hand-drawn map of the surrounding area.

「Hey, don't sweat it.」

Rob spoke with a completely casual, matter-of-fact tone, showing zero signs of dread or despair. He had been a Hero once. And even on this very train, people had praised him as one. There was no way a guy like him could just abandon innocent passengers here—if only to stay true to the person he used to be.

As the countdown ticked past thirty, Rob burst out of the cabin. He sprinted out of the train and paused for just a fraction of a second to yank off his communication earcuff, tossing it aside before kicking back into a full sprint. Right next to the temporary station sign manifested by the train's magical arrival system, a clear set of directions had been left, explicitly instructing him to drop his earcuff and follow an arrow pointing out toward the open wasteland.

Feeling the biting, dust-laden wind whipping against his face, Rob didn't even have the luxury to check his surroundings. He dashed forward at absolute full speed and leaped.

He hit the ground rolling to break his fall across the rough earth, quickly scrambling back to his feet. Pursuing the hijackers wasn't an option. The message left on the station sign had included a strict warning against any attempts at tracking them.

「...Ah, so that's why she called it 'The Docks.'」

The true meaning behind Arcelia's words finally clicked in his mind as he looked up. A colossal vessel was kicking up massive plumes of sand as it cruised away into the distance. It looked exactly like a luxury ocean liner, except it was hovering just a tiny bit off the ground like a massive hovercraft. The hull was a patchwork of rust and heavy weld repairs, bristling with heavy weaponry from stem to stern.

「Well, what now?」

And just like that, completely in the dark about what was actually going on, Rob found himself totally stranded in the middle of a barren wasteland.

***

Realizing their frontline had been completely obliterated and that a direct ground advance was no longer viable, the swarm of Magitech Beasts quickly pivoted to long-range artillery tactics. The subtle shift instantly altered the tension filling the battlefield. But there was absolutely no way Rob, a man who had survived 15 continuous years of brutal warfare, would miss a tell like that.

「Talk about sore losers. Just give it up already!」

He manifested a pair of massive cannons, propping one over each shoulder, and immediately let fly. His counterattack launched almost perfectly in sync with the Magitech Beasts' coordinated volley.

A deafening roar shook the atmosphere. The projectiles Rob unleashed—or rather, a relentless storm of scatter-shot rounds—intercepted the enemy's incoming artillery fire mid-air. Fireballs, shells, and guided missiles alike were shredded by the non-stop spread of scatter-shot long before they could hit their mark, their destructive energy harmlessly dissipating into the sky. Rob never let up his grip on the triggers for a single second. Swapping out empty weapon configurations on the fly, he went right back to tearing through the remaining Magitech Beasts with his dual Gatling Cannons.

The moment the very last Magitech Beast was reduced to scrap metal, Rob dispelled his manifested firearms. Right on cue, a slow, dry patter of applause echoed through the quiet wasteland.

『――Impressive as always, Hero.』

Berta Andele, the "World-Crossing Witch," floated down gracefully to the earth.

*****

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