"You have the advantage?"
Roland raised his eyelids slightly. Even now, there was still no trace of fear on his face.
It was as though what came charging at him was not a formidable enemy that had broken past its limits, but an aggressive puppy.
When he leisurely voiced the thoughts of the AIM Burst, whose horsepower far surpassed his own, his composure became all the more chilling.
Suddenly, less than a third of a second later, the ground beneath Roland surged and churned like the sea.
As though trampled by thousands upon thousands of iron-shod horses, rocks and soil shot in every direction amid the exploding turbulence, forming dozens of vortices of gravel and debris that spiraled upward into tornadoes dozens of meters tall.
Like a malfunctioning meat grinder, it occasionally spat out currents of air mixed with finely pulverized gravel, slicing distant buildings whose skeletal frames still stood clean in half.
Across the surrounding ground for dozens of kilometers, countless crisscrossing ravines appeared, their bottoms nowhere in sight.
They were collapsing little by little, swallowing buses and trees indiscriminately like a great maw that could never be satisfied.
The earth truly shook and the mountains trembled.
At the center of the tornadoes, a shadow kept growing amid the roar, like a satellite thrown out of orbit.
It was not Roland's shadow, but... the AIM Burst's figure.
Its abdomen had caved in completely, while its back bulged like an inflated balloon.
The shape of a footprint could still vaguely be made out in that indentation.
"Yaaah-!"
Because it had yet to learn how to speak, the AIM Burst could only express itself through indistinct cries.
But anyone could clearly see the profound astonishment in its bulging eyes.
What happened?
The AIM Burst's mind was filled with confusion.
The situation