Discovery - The Fall of Touimai (Part 6)

"Here." I said while giving Heodia a piece of cloth. "This isn't much but at least it should wipe away the blood. And by the way, is it even real blood or something else?" 

To my surprise, Heodia didn't have the answer. 
"Thank you. And for the answer for your questions, I don't know actually. It may be an animal's blood or something but I can't confirm it since biomimetic technology has evolved so far that even I can't tell." She replied to my question. 

"Oh okay." 

Wrapping up our quick conversation while she wiped off the blood, we began moving to North Touimai. 
Along our way to North Touimai, we saw no one. Which is strange even if Touimai is a lawless city, there should be at least some people walking or searching for food. But it's close to dawn after all so maybe people are sleeping. 

Something's up... I can feel it.
We were now at Greygor Bridge, the main bridge for crossing the small yet powerful freshwater Heulus River, which flows throughout most of the city. 

This bridge is a massive local battleground yet no one is here? It is like everyone is too scared to go here. Even now and before dawn, several hundred people would be here. 

But still, we moved towards North Toumai, crossing over Greygor Bridge. Along the way, we passed a working clock hanging on one of the bridge's support beams, I saw it was 7:07 am.

Turning my head around and slowing down my speed a bit, I asked Heodia how long until the next round was coming.  

"Well, according to my information, even with the latest reloading technology and other equipment, artillery would usually fire about once every 10 minutes." Heodia explained. 

"Oh. Well, how accurate is your information though?" I asked back. 

"The accuracy of my information you say?" She replied "Well it depends on how much you trust Uto. If you trust him completely, then it's 100% accurate, and so on." 
She glanced eastward. I bet she was using her magnifying eye or something. 

"Tsk. The eye's lenses are ... damaged ... I only zoom up to 50 times .... and the quality is bad as well ... Oh well, I'll repair it once we take a break." She whispered under her breath.

I wasn't able to catch everything she said but that didn't matter. The next instance I knew, Greygor Bridge, the one we were running across rocked. Both I and Heodia were thrown quite high into the air (6 metres to be exact) and thrown back down. Heodia was able to land on her feet while I... 

"My back! Ack!." 
Yes, I landed on my back. I don't know how but my back was perfectly fine (no broken bones and such) but the pain was the most deadly part of that fall. 

"You alright Void? No broken bones or anything?" asked Heodia. 

Checking,
"Yeah, I'm pretty sure that nothing broke. You good?" 

She nodded back and then turned around. 

"Something big and heavy must have hit or fallen onto the bridge. Do you want to check it out? It may be something extremely important." 

Still trying to numb the pain, I replied. 
"Having a quick glance wouldn't hurt would it?" 

And thus it was decided. Getting a hand to get up from Heodia, we carefully walked to the site of impact. 
What we found was a gigantic material artillery shell. A metre in diameter, and if made from standard materials of a material shell (brass, plastic, etc.) along with microtechnology, it would have weighed a hefty 125 tonnes (125,000 kg) at least. 

"An unexploded artillery shell, and a large one indeed." Heodia remarked.  

Meanwhile, I was doing some calculations in my head. 
The shell looks around a metre in diameter and if you times that by 50... crap. Does the SEA mainly the mighty Cloud Empire, already had created a weapon with a 50-metre barrel?! 

I had gone pale just from that thought of a nation already creating a super artillery unit that fires metre-wide shells at the enemy, probably at a max range of up to 50-55 km depending on the type of shell. Though the effective firing range is much lower than the max range, it is still a scary thought. 

After Heodia finished examining the shell, she noticed my pale face. 
"By from your pale face, it looks like you also noticed right?" She said. 

"Yeah. I can't believe that the Entanian Alliance, most likely the Cloud Empire, already created a super artillery unit this early in the war." 

"I see. This 'Cloud Empire' seems to be very troublesome." 

"Yes, they are troublesome indeed." I replied back, agreeing with her. 

"Anyway, this is very important info we just got here. I saved it to my memory storage for later use so let's continue." 

Memory storage? Oh right. Heodia is an android. I completely forgot due to her actions being way too human-like. 

"So shall we hit the road now?" I asked. 

"Yeah, let's go." 

It was 7:10 am by the time we continued and the second wave of artillery was about to be fired.