MAINGUN -Ash Hound- PREBIEW EDITION

1. Hunter Riva

“Today’s wind tastes like rust.”

His machine’s generator growled low as Riva muttered to himself.

...That sounded kind of cool.

The wind carried particles like dry iron filings. They flashed white when they caught the light.

In this world, they were called Haiki.

When too dense, Haiki weighed on the lungs like dust and corroded even machines. At the same time, it ran deep through the life cycle of the beastkin.

Damp red earth and salt. Old iron and oil.

The generator’s exhaust heated the Haiki, leaving a trail of pale phosphorescence.

To Riva, they were all familiar scents of the wasteland.

Riva was seventeen.

His beloved Dusty was an off-road bike he had dug out of the sand as a child and repaired with the help of Old Giz and Lyra.

Despite its rust-covered appearance, its mobility across the wasteland rivaled even that of heavy tanks. Its power came from an Old Civilization Hybrid Core Generator—an HCG.

Dusty got temperamental sometimes, but she never let him down when it mattered.

Riva’s keen nose could pick usable parts from piles of junk. He could even distinguish the sterile scent of a relic.

“...The relic’s still too far away.”

Riva eased Dusty down.

Today’s objective was high-durability alloy wire.

The request had come through Hunters’ Hub, commonly called the Hub. The wire was needed to repair a food storehouse in the settlement of Donville.

To obtain it, Riva had no choice but to search among the remains of Old Civilization structures.

The ruined city of Oldgran.

Commonly known as Orgra.

Beyond it lay Oldgran Canyon, a dangerous region shrouded in Haiki mist throughout the year.

Today’s destination was closer: a scattered field of ruins where the remains of metal structures lay exposed across the wasteland.

This was the Vast Ash—the vast land of ash.

No one remembered who had first called it that.

Centuries had passed since civilization collapsed.

The earth had dried red. Haiki swept endlessly across it. The remains of massive steel frames and concrete structures pierced the sky like grave markers.

The beastkin grew crops in their settlements and lived on the materials and relics they recovered from the wasteland.

Riva’s work helped sustain those lives.

Without moving his head, he checked the coordinates displayed on his goggles’ HUD.

The wind shifted.

The Haiki haze might clear.

Dusty cut through the gray mist.

Once again, Riva raced across the wasteland.

2. A Father’s Words and the World’s Secret

It was when Riva was still very young.

“Hey, Dad.”

On the morning his parents were leaving for another distant survey, he asked them a question.

“Why do you and Mom always go so far away?”

His father—a canine beastkin like Riva—smiled gently and rested a hand on his head.

His gaze was fixed on the distant wasteland.

“We’re searching for a secret, Riva. A very big secret hidden somewhere in the Vast Ash.”

“A secret?”

“Yeah. I want to know why we’re here. And why this world... came to be the way it is.”

At the time, it had sounded like nothing more than grown-up talk he could not understand.

Now, those words still smoldered deep inside him.

Whenever the gray mist brushed his cheek, his father’s voice returned with the wind.

We’re searching for a secret.

There was a trace of something unseen in the air of this world.

Large-scale conflict was rare among the beastkin.

Anger never lasted long.

It was almost as if Haiki gently drew away the heat of their emotions.

Part of Riva thought that was for the best.

Still, something about it bothered him.

Anger and the urge to kill seemed to be held back by something.

It felt less like instinct and more like control.

Like the resistance he felt when he pulled Dusty’s brakes.

As a child, Riva sometimes wondered what role the insects and fish he caught were meant to serve. Before long, he would let them go.

Other children had called him a coward for it. Sometimes that led to a fight.

But the moment someone shouted, “Stop,” the heat drained out of them.

Riva had never chosen to calm down.

It simply happened.

One day, he took that unease to Old Giz.

The old man kept polishing a tool as he answered.

“What? You wanna get hit?”

“No! It’s just... I don’t know. It feels weird.”

“Pain or no pain. Which do you want?”

“No pain, obviously.”

“Right? That’s all there is to it.”

“Come on... you’re dodging the question.”

Old Giz laughed.

“No need to keep hurting someone who’s already surrendered. You get mad, trade a hit, and call it done. Nothing wrong with that.”

That was all he said.

But for one brief moment, Old Giz’s hands had stopped.

Haiki drifted beneath the workshop lamp.

The beastkin did not know why they had been born or how they had adapted to this world.

Few of them ever questioned it.

But Riva’s father had.

“We fit this world too well. Like someone decided from the beginning that we were meant to live in this wasteland.”

The beastkin were too resilient.

Against hunger.

Heat.

Conflict.

Had they truly developed that strength naturally?

Haiki was more than part of the environment. It acted upon life like some kind of memory.

After telling Riva that, his father had set out into the wasteland once more.

His mother and father were still somewhere out there, pursuing the answer.

And now Riva was trying to find it in his own way.

Dusty leaped over the remains of a crumbling building.

Metal groaned. Sand burst into the air.

Fine particles of Haiki shimmered within it.

The vibration of the generator and the sound of Dusty’s drive pulled Riva back to the present.

Ruins stretched before him.

Orgra—the iron graveyard of the Old Civilization.

A fragment of the secret his father sought might be sleeping here too.

3. What Fell from the Sky

Riva reached the interior of a massive Old Civilization pipeline buried beneath Orgra.

The smell of iron and oil hung thick in the air. Drifting Haiki caught the faint light and reflected it back. The air felt heavy, and even the wind echoed dully through the pipe.

“...The wire—there it is. This is the place.”

Riva dismounted Dusty.

“Beginning retrieval of high-durability wire.”

He murmured into his tag. The record was required as proof that a hunter had completed the job.

Riva took a multitool from his bag and began extracting the wire.

The sound of metal against metal echoed through the silent space.

Then—

Riva’s ears caught a faint vibration traveling through the pipeline.

It was not a tremor in the air.

It was a dull pulse crawling up from underground through the structure itself.

“...Ferro-worm. So much for an easy trip home.”

An unnaturally hard shell covered its massive subterranean body. One bite from its fangs would inject enough paralytic toxin to leave him unable to move.

Hunters’ Hub classified it as a recommended capture target. The high-purity biomaterial inside its body fetched a good price as an ingredient in medicine and generator stabilizers.

Its outer shell also incorporated high-durability alloy wire as structural material.

Capture was recommended, but how a hunter dealt with it was their choice.

“Same as always. Let’s have you settle down.”

Riva put away the multitool, detached the charge rifle from Dusty, and raised it.

The barrel could be removed from the frame in a single motion. While mounted, he could fire it with a switch on the handlebars. On foot, he could use it as a handheld weapon.

The five-round magazine held armor-piercing paralysis rounds. Lyra’s refining system extracted usable compounds from Haiki residue, allowing him to produce part of his ammunition himself.

His waist pouch held adhesive rounds and, for emergencies, the Talisman Armor-Piercing Round.

The rifle had been assembled from scrap left over from Dusty’s restoration and Old Civilization parts he had received from others.

By now, it felt like an extension of his right arm.

A detector Lyra had built was attached to the scope. Through it, Riva could see a faint band of light shifting beneath the soil.

How did the detector work?

He had no idea.

Lyra had explained it to him, but he honestly had not understood. He vaguely remembered her talking earnestly about energy or something.

Well, it worked. Good enough.

“Come on, then. If I can capture you cleanly, that stabilizer will make a good present for Lyra.”

She would probably light up the moment she saw it.

The sound beneath the ground drew closer.

The Haiki-laden air trembled. Sand jumped faintly against the floor.

Riva’s tail stood straight.

A low growl escaped his throat.

That was when—

His ears twitched.

Long before he could think.

At first, it sounded like static.

In the next instant, it became a high-frequency shriek that tore at his ears.

The wind stopped.

The Haiki drifting through the air flowed away as if pushed by the wave of sound. The space around him seemed to tremble with the noise.

“...Interference from the Skymesh? No. This is too strong.”

The Skymesh was the satellite communications network left by the Old Civilization.

Riva was familiar with the high-frequency noise that sometimes leaked from it and set the Haiki vibrating.

This was nothing like that.

The Ferro-worm’s vibration stopped at once.

Even a monster instinctively avoided the sound.

Riva leaned out through a collapsed opening in the pipeline and stared across the wasteland.

The ash haze had been swept aside, opening his view.

Far ahead, above the boundary of the mountain range, a silver streak of light fell through the sky.

Its burning tail scorched the air.

Haiki particles caught in its wake scattered the light like stardust.

A moment later, a faint breeze carrying Haiki brushed Riva’s cheek.

The wind should have been still.

The lingering resonance in his ears sounded almost like a voice.

“...A relic? No. I’ve never seen anything fall like that.”

Riva sniffed the air.

Beyond the scorched smell was a kind of metal he had never encountered before.

“...This could get interesting.”

He secured the rifle to Dusty’s frame and swung into the saddle.

Riva gripped the throttle and urged Dusty forward.

“The wire can wait. I might be late, so forgive me.”

The generator roared, and Dusty kicked up red soil.

Glowing Haiki particles trailed through the exhaust for a moment.

Riva accelerated toward the horizon where the light had vanished.

It was the first time since becoming a hunter that he had put a job aside.

He drove Dusty toward the direction where the streak had fallen.

Beyond the open, desertlike wasteland, a shallow crater gaped in the ground. Haiki drifted above it in pale spirals.

From its center came the scent of metal that was almost too clean.

Riva stopped Dusty and approached the crater.

At its center lay a black rectangular object small enough to fit in his palm. It had no seams or terminals. Its shape was flawless.

Rust, dust, even Haiki seemed unable to touch it.

Every relic Riva usually recovered was ravaged by rust and corrosion.

The object before him did not have so much as a speck of dirt on it.

It looked brand-new, as if it had only just been made.

Riva raised his goggles and reached toward the black object.

“Hot—...No. It isn’t. What is this?”

Cool metal touched his fingertips.

At that moment, his heart gave a single hard beat.

The Haiki drifting above the crater stirred faintly.

Riva picked up the black rectangular object—the cube.

There was no visible power source.

No light. No sound.

Even so, he found it difficult to let go.

His father’s words returned to him.

We’re searching for a secret. A great one.

Riva stared at the cube for a while, then released a quiet breath.

“...This is no good. It’s not today’s job.”

Without the wire, Donville’s storage facility could not be repaired.

He started to put the cube in his bag, then stopped.

After a moment’s hesitation, he slipped it inside his jacket instead.

Its cold surface pressed directly against his chest.

“I’ll take a proper look at you later.”

Riva mounted Dusty again and turned back toward Orgra.

“First, I finish the job.”

The generator growled, and Dusty moved off.

Even after Riva returned to the wasteland, the cold against his chest did not fade.

4. A Strange Sensation

By the time Riva returned to Orgra, the wind was driving clouds of dust across the wasteland.

As soon as he arrived, the worm’s scent struck his nose.

“Did you surface after I left?”

The wire he had found earlier was buried beneath the soil. Several trails around it marked where the Ferro-worm had passed.

Riva tested the air with his nose and checked the sensors in his goggles.

Ferro-worms did not travel in groups. With no way to know where one might surface, he needed his sense of smell, his hearing, and the sensors.

Digging the wire out from underground would take time. The best exposed sites had already been disturbed.

There was a faster way.

He could take the wire from the Ferro-worm’s shell.

Finishing it off might make that easier.

But that was not Riva’s way.

“Do this right, Riva.”

He checked the contents of his bag.

Multitool, ready.

All he needed was enough wire to take back to Donville.

After he traveled a little farther, the ground beneath him shook.

Riva applied the brake. Dusty dipped low as she slowed, then came to a stop.

The ground ahead began to rise.

The Ferro-worm burst through the soil, revealing its massive body.

“...I can’t carry something that big.”

It was far too large to bring back with Dusty alone. He would have to give up on the stabilizer and take only the wire.

Riva picked up his tag.

“Engaging a Ferro-worm.”

Something vibrated against his chest.

The cube.

A faint tremor reached him through his jacket. Riva instinctively pressed a hand to his chest.

The Ferro-worm pushed through the soil and raised its head.

Too slow.

Its jaws opened.

Its massive body scraped across the ground.

Just before it lunged, its head dipped slightly.

Every movement appeared clearer than usual.

A thin line ran between the plates of its shell.

Riva could even see where the wire had been incorporated beneath them.

“...I can see it.”

The Ferro-worm opened its jaws and lunged.

Riva twisted the throttle and lowered his body. Dusty surged forward, slipping past the closing jaws by the narrowest margin.

The fangs snapped on empty air and threw Haiki into the air.

Riva turned right and circled behind the worm.

The thin line along its shell remained visible.

“There.”

He drew the multitool and took aim.

The Ferro-worm raised its head again.

As they passed, Riva wedged the tool into the gap between its shell plates.

Then he accelerated Dusty.

The tool caught against something hard.

A long length of wire tore free from the shell.

The Ferro-worm twisted, kicking up Haiki as it retreated. It slipped back into its hole and disappeared underground.

“And that’s the job done.”

Riva checked the length of the recovered wire.

It was more than enough for the request.

“...What was that?”

He placed a hand against his chest.

The cube had stopped vibrating.

As if nothing had happened, it gave back only the same cool touch.