Karina Luna does not like beings other than nobles.
Because they are, by birth, those who have never experienced the life of a hero.
Bethesda Academy’s claim that anyone can become a hero is empty talk, an illusion. To become a hero, one must be noble from birth above all else.
Heroes rising from garbage heaps exist only in fairy tales.
Only those who have devoted their lives to the Empire become nobles, and only those born noble become heroes who devote their lives to the Empire.
No human is born good. No human can overcome their evil nature by their own strength. Nature is something that, from the beginning, cannot be overcome.
It is a miracle not permitted to mankind.
And the worst among them are the baseborn.
They are not human to begin with, but property. The Empire’s property is not human. After repeated wastes of time, they were eventually granted the bare minimum of human duties, but Karina’s opinion differed.
The baseborn are baseborn because they can be nothing but baseborn.
The Empire could not possibly be wrong, so it is they who are wrong.
One could tell just by looking at their expressions, their conduct.
Even after being insulted right in front of his eyes, he could not even properly think to resist, and then let himself be swept along by the words and actions of the commoner beside him and ended up boarding a Titan. It was so miserable that one could hardly think of him as a fellow citizen of the Empire.
And what of his skill?
Karina, too, had seen that Titan facing the Imperial Princess. To the eyes of the unskilled, the Titan moving at high speed would have looked as though it had fought fiercely against the Imperial Princess.
In reality, it had not landed a single blow, had failed to make use of its weapon’s characteristics, and its Titan customization had been dreadful.
The sight of a pilot with no heroic birth, no qualifications, no history, entrusting detailed control to an artificial intelligence and receiving attention was so repulsive to Karina that she could not stand it.
With the thought that she wanted to trample him underfoot, she ended up reacting emotionally, unlike herself.
“Karina, will it really be all right? If the Titan were to be damaged, it might interfere with the joint training.”
“Are you implying that I would allow that baseborn to attack me, Ellen?”
“No. But that baseborn is still part of our squad.”
It was a reasonable point, but.
“Even if he’s intact, will he be of any help?”
Operator Ellen fell silent without replying. It meant yes.
Clack.
Karina secured her limbs to the sticks and pedals. The hatch slowly closed automatically.
“That baseborn will do his utmost to prove himself as well. Then I will simply teach him a lesson.”
That the baseborn could never become like nobles.
That if one did not know orthodox combat, one could never win.
“That high-mobility Titans are absolutely not used that way.”
However much that baseborn might be trembling, she intended to teach him without mercy.
***
Bzzzzzz. Bzzzz. A fly. A fly. How does a fly stick to a wall? It’s so tiny, but its suction is amazing. Are its legs structured in some unusual way?
As I was spacing out for a moment while staring at the Titan, Reuban approached and bowed his head deeply.
“Deep, I’m sorry. I said something unnecessary.”
It was true that he had said something unnecessary.
But I couldn’t say that what had happened because of it was unnecessary as well.
In any case, as someone from the baseborn class, I had to prove myself without pause. This was a chance to prove myself.
Even better than that, it was a chance for someone like me, with little real combat experience, to gain experience.
Just as I was about to answer after thinking for a moment, Ian smacked Reuban on the back.
“It’s fine. He likes fighting.”
“H-huh?”
“A mad dog who even picks fights with Aron, the third seat. It’s fine.”
No, I fought Aron because of that bastard, and now he was suddenly fabricating things.
Well, separate from that, it was true that I liked boarding Titans. You could even say it was the only good thing about coming to this world.
Ran approached while putting an audio device in her ear.
“Deep, as you said, Ian moved the core to another Titan. The academy gladly lent us a spare Titan, but how did you manage that?”
It was a little hard to answer the question of how I managed it.
Because, as Ian always said, I had used a few connections. Besides, strictly speaking, I wasn’t the one who did it.
“I-I con, contacted P-Professor Sumeragi.”
It wasn’t as if I had said much. In fact, I wasn’t even the one who contacted him; Ailey did.
“What did you send him?”
“Ailey…”
“I sent, ‘I mean, seriously, Titans are piled up in the hangar, so if you lend us just one, I’d be so, so grateful I might even stop by the professor’s research building for a bit?’ and he immediately sent one over.”
I never told her to send it like that.
I had only said, why don’t we try contacting Professor Sumeragi, and apparently she sent it right away. And Professor Sumeragi, who checked it as soon as it was sent and readily approved the Titan loan, was hard to understand too.
No one was normal. Aside from Ran, who was looking at me with a worried expression, it really felt like there wasn’t a single normal person here.
“But Deep. Is it really all right to suddenly change Titans like this? And this one isn’t even a high-mobility type. This is…”
“B-because I absolutely can’t w-win with a high-mobility type.”
I did not know the noble named Karina Luna.
But I did know what kind of Titans the Count Luna family used.
Unlike many noble houses, which adopted heavy-armored Titans as their general-purpose dedicated machines, the Count Luna family used high-mobility Titans of their own unique standard.
Karina’s Titan was the same type of Titan as my Ailey. It could not engage in long-range combat, but it excelled in speed and precise movement.
If we both used the same high-mobility type, what mattered was proficiency.
Then I couldn’t win.
I was feeling it more and more. The fact that I was a veteran player of Titan Core was not that important. I, who had only played the game, did not know war, but the cadets here were people who had truly boarded Titans.
I knew more about the irregular movements that were only possible in the game, but I had far less ordinary experience. I must never challenge her in a head-on fight.
In that case, I just had to work through the matchup.
“So that’s why it’s a heavy-armored type?”
“Yes.”
Despite their outstanding performance, high-mobility Titans were not often chosen as dedicated machines by noble houses.
Because most enemies were made up of heavy-armored types that were easy to master, and high-mobility Titans had difficulty defeating heavy-armored Titans.
The moment they sacrificed some firepower for mobility and weight reduction, they lacked ways to break through heavy armor or shields.
Once the distance was closed, all that remained was to finish them with the heavy-armored Titan’s superior firepower.
Ian, too, nodded as if my opinion was reasonable, then opened his eyes wide.
“Ah, but there’s one minor problem.”
Those were words that should never come out of an engineer’s mouth.
“They only lent us the Titan. The weapons didn’t come.”
Ran and Reuban both turned their heads in surprise at the same time.
“Not a single one came?!”
“Not one.”
Reuban grabbed Ian’s shoulder tightly.
“I-I’ll lend you mine, then! Wouldn’t that work?!”
“I figured you’d say that, so I already checked.”
Ian quickly nodded.
“The weapon Reuban’s Titan uses has Titan recognition built into the handle, so it takes time to disable that. The shield can be borrowed right away.”
Reuban frowned slightly. It was an unwritten rule that another engineer should not interfere with another pilot’s Titan.
“You didn’t ask me.”
“Saved time. Big win.”
Reuban opened his mouth slightly, then looked at me with an expression that said he had nothing to say. In any case, it was clear that he intended to lend me the shield.
Ian continued without paying any attention to Reuban.
“There are few weapons you can use. The standard pistol mounted by default on the Titan, the standard knife, and the borrowed shield are all. We don’t have the money to rent other weapons, and even if we did, it’d be a waste to rent them.”
If we had that money, it would be better to rent or buy equipment for the joint training. Ian was right.
“Then let’s g-go like this.”
“Confirmed.”
“Then I’ll open the hatch!”
At the same time as Ailey’s words, the hatch opened. Just before I climbed into the core, Reuban urgently grabbed my wrist. It hurt a little.
“How are you going to fight?!”
How? What did he mean?
“I know you’ve been exercising a lot lately and managing your stamina well! But your opponent is a senior who handles high-mobility types much better than you do! If you move too violently…”
So he meant I might collapse from exhaustion before the joint training.
I stared at Reuban’s face, then, feeling a little burdened, turned my head and answered.
“B-by the book?”
For the people truly living in this world, it would not be so, but in the Titan Core I played, the way I moved a high-mobility type was the textbook method.
Always, I had fought by the book. It was just that my textbook did not match this world’s average.
However much that noble might be sharpening her blade, all I thought about was trampling her without mercy.
I just had to bleed her dry.
***
“…Is that guy insane?”
Ian muttered. Ran stared at the screen with an exhausted expression. Reuban, too, had become speechless and was staring blankly at the screen with his mouth slightly open.
Ten minutes after the start of combat.
Deep had yet to fire a single shot.