The moment I opened my eyes, I felt only one thing.
The urge to kill myself.
“Guh,”
I want to die. I want to just die already. This useless life—I needed to end it, quickly.
How did it go again?
When Gregor Samsa woke one anxious morning from anxious dreams, or something like that.
Grit.
The instant I clenched my teeth, I smashed my fist into my own cheek. My body, already collapsed on the ground, collapsed all over again. My head went blank, and I couldn’t think at all.
What is this?
My pupils trembled. I crawled forward across the floor on dry hands and feet, then belatedly stopped. Just as I was too dumbfounded to even laugh, my hand closed around something.
A card.
I had seen it countless times. The ID card that had sat in one corner every time I opened the inventory in the previous game.
It was scratched and crumpled all over, to the point that even the face in the photo was unrecognizable, but the name alone could still be read.
Deep.
A hollow laugh escaped me on its own, and I raised my head.
Beyond the towering heaps of garbage, the miscellaneous wreckage, and the bulkheads dividing the space, something came into view.
Its official name was Titan.
A giant robot, seventeen meters in overall height.
***
What I realized on the first day was that this was not a dream. It might have been better to have my organs harvested while enjoying a pleasant dream instead.
What I realized in just three days was that there was no water here.
Washing wasn’t the problem. There simply wasn’t any water to drink. Naturally, there was no food either.
Every morning, as I watched cockroaches scuttle past my eyes, I wondered if I should eat even those. I felt like I’d heard they tasted similar to shrimp, but still, that was a bit much.
And what I realized every time I woke up was that the restrictions placed on this body were creating an incredible synergy effect.
Otaku.
My thoughts turn negative.
Low self-esteem.
I cannot regard myself positively.
Lowborn.
My birth is base.
The combination of no fewer than three restrictions bore down on me. Every minute, every second, they made me perceive myself as a useless human being and tried to kill me.
You could say someone inside my head was sending me a 5,700-character suicide recommendation letter every single second.
If they could be controlled, I might be able to get along with my restrictions, but if they could be controlled, they wouldn’t be restrictions.
In just three days, I had experienced the urge to kill myself over twenty times. When I woke up this morning, I slammed my head into the floor five times just to come to my senses. I nearly died trying to hold back from killing myself.
Of course, before that, I might die of dehydration or malnutrition.
Even so, there was only one reason I held back from suicide.
Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeng!
The sound of a siren. It rang out from every direction at once, but my gaze turned toward the nearest siren. My vision swayed.
“Today at twelve noon, there will be an academy entrance qualification exam.”
A random special qualification exam for commoners and the lowborn. A special admission track for the lower classes.
The first event.
I hadn’t experienced any other events, so I didn’t know about those, but I was certain that the first event existed. More precisely, I hoped it did.
“It will be held at the bulkhead entrance.”
The bulkhead entrance.
I knew where that was. It was near the place where I had seen the Titan walking around on the first day. With this body, which hadn’t had food or water, getting there would take a long time.
But my body wouldn’t listen.
My hands and feet trembled, and I sprawled on the floor again. Oily dirt soaked deep into my body. A stench rose from me on its own. My knees hurt.
Huh, am I dying?
I had not the slightest desire to die. Sure, there were the suicidal impulses my restriction friend inside my head was spitting out, but I wanted to live badly enough to slap my own face to cut them off.
No, am I really dying?
What happens if I die here again? Do I go back to reality? What if I wake up and the person beside me says, Hyungnim, this bastard’s smiling, or something like that?
In the first place, can I even pass the exam in this state?
No, there’s no way. I’m just a lowborn, and I’ve never piloted anything like a Titan.
My eyes slowly began to close. As if to suit the moment, rain began to fall. The rain smelled somehow sour and fishy. At the very least, it was clearly extremely harmful to the body.
The thought of wetting my parched throat with the rain vanished, but as my body cooled, strength actually began to return. Even so, it was still far from enough to stand.
“We will additionally announce that lunch will be provided to exam participants.”
Food.
My upper body shot upright.
The power of food. A ghost who died while eating has something-or-other good fortune. If I was going to die from starvation, it was better to die from acute indigestion after shoving food down my throat.
My limbs pushed my body up from the ground. My feet planted against the earth. For me, it was a great leap; for mankind, it was a small step.
Even so, my heart beat harder than ever.
At the thought of food and water.
***
Bethesda Academy.
That place, whose name meant House of Mercy, had been named after the pool in the Bible said to cure all illnesses and make people anew.
True to its name, it was a place that tempered everyone who entered into perfect pilots.
The Empire was at war with the Union, and internally, it was in civil war against the rebels. War heroes were being born in real time. Before the word hero, things like class and economic circumstances were meaningless.
A land of opportunity that excluded class and economic circumstances, professionally taught Titan piloting, and raised Titan pilots who might become heroes. No, a school of opportunity. A dreamlike institution.
Or so I knew it.
“…This one is a genuine lowborn.”
Dreams are usually illusions. Even though they had been dispatched from the academy, their dislike of associating with the lowborn was the same.
The man in a suit stared hard at me. Thanks to having come through the rain, at least my body didn’t stink. Just a slightly sour, fishy rain smell.
“As for piloting… naturally, you wouldn’t know. A lowborn couldn’t possibly know in the first place. Even commoners don’t. Can you read?”
“I, I kn-know, know how.”
“Unexpected.”
Damn it.
I stuttered three times in a single sentence. Was this what happened when otaku, low self-esteem, and lowborn were all stacked together? I felt like I was going insane.
Separately from that, I had known from the start that I could read. Even when I read the ID card on the first day, letters I had never seen before were read as if it were only natural. It was strange.
Maybe it’s some kind of reincarnation privilege.
While I was distracted for a moment, the man in the suit took a thick bundle of documents from his bag and held it out. At a glance, it looked like at least thirty pages.
“It’s the piloting method. There are ten minutes left until the exam, but the bare minimum of controls is concentrated in the front. You should at least be able to manage walking.”
“Th-th-thank you.”
The bundle of papers I received was quite heavy. Part of it was because my body was so gaunt, but part of it was because the amount of material was more than a decent thesis. The print was tiny too.
“The rules are simple. At twelve, those who volunteer first will board the simulator first. Each time you make it operate normally, you’ll receive additional points, and if you defeat the enemy… well, that won’t happen.”
The man started to pat my shoulder, then lowered his hand as it was and walked off to the side. Since it felt like I might collapse if he so much as touched me, that was actually fortunate.
But what about the food?
It seemed the food would be provided after piloting the simulator. I was so hungry and thirsty that my vision was dim. I couldn’t focus properly, but I lifted the documents describing the controls.
The text flowed in.
My head began to throb. Though I didn’t want it to, the information written in the text seemed to slam directly into my brain. It didn’t feel like reading words, but like outputting them as information.
Why?
The moment I pondered it, I understood. Spatial perception and speed reading were operating at the same time. I wasn’t reading the text; I was detecting and recognizing the thing called letters.
If my body had been normal, it might have ended with a bit of stiffness. Right now, my head felt like it was splitting open. Like it would be crushed and turned into pulp.
And yet, for some reason, I felt as though I had been born to read this.
Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeng!
“It is now twelve o’clock. Volunteers, please step forward first.”
There were people all around me, but no one raised a hand. Of course not. There was no way anyone among commoners and lowborn already knew how to pilot a Titan.
Of the thirty pages of controls, it was written that just learning the basic operations in the first five pages normally required a month of basic training.
“The enemy in the simulation is an AI of the lowest level. As long as you run away well enough to survive, you are guaranteed to pass.”
Even after the man in the suit said that, still no one raised a hand. Only the sound of pages being turned and read spread through the area.
This was a chance to turn one’s life around. No one wanted to throw that chance away because they hadn’t learned the controls.
However, for someone, food was more important than opportunity.
“M-me, me, me.”
The moment I raised my hand, I felt countless gazes on me. My body flinched. It felt almost like being pierced by needles.
“What’s that?”
“Isn’t he just a beggar?”
“Looks like he came to eat.”
“They said there was one in the last exam too. He probably gets eliminated fast and eats.”
As my body trembled, the man in the suit approached and held out his hand.
“ID card.”
I quickly handed him my identification. I had found it by coincidence, but the name was the same as the one I used in the game.
“Deep. No surname, just Deep?”
“Th-that’s, ri-right,”
“Take the exam. You may give up immediately after it begins.”
When the man stepped back, a path to the simulator had opened before I knew it.
My body naturally climbed onto the simulation machine. It was funny, but the cushioning was so good that if I closed my eyes, I felt like I would fall asleep.
The man said in a low voice,
“Startup.”
With my left hand, I pressed the switch, and with my right hand, I turned the ignition key in the center. With a flash, the simulation screen lit up.
I felt a sensation of floating. The simulation machine had risen into the air through its magnetic system.
The man spoke again.
“Equipment.”
I grasped the sticks with both hands and pushed both feet onto the pedals.
From the moment I gripped the sticks—no. From the moment I read the controls, I knew. These handles were familiar. Not their shape or weight, but things like the positions and number of the buttons were familiar.
Two sticks.
The four basic input buttons on the right stick.
The four directional buttons on the left stick.
Three system buttons.
The bumper buttons pressed with the index fingers.
And finally, the trigger buttons meant to be pressed with the middle fingers.
Even if their appearance differed greatly, the configuration was exactly the same as a gamepad.
I felt as though I had been born to ride this.
“Now the real simulation begins. The vibrations and impacts you would feel while moving the actual machine will be transmitted identically. If you’re going to give up, before that—”
Deep.
Just like in the previous game, there was a system supported in this sequel as well. Fixed sortie lines. The reason my name was Deep was because of that sortie line.
“Deep.”
I had fallen deep.
“Dive.”
“What?”
I wanted to get inside this giant robot and move it perfectly.
Holograms covered every direction. The moment it began, the Titan across from me aimed its gun at me. There was no weapon in my hands.
I pushed both sticks forward at the same time.
“Wait, think about the state your body is in—”
It moves.
It moves. In the direction I command, just as I think. With heavy thuds, a giant made of massive steel moves. Its two feet shake the ground as they move. It’s moving.
Kakang!
Sparks flew from the shoulder armor. A bullet had grazed it. They said there were additional points just for successfully operating it. If I simply kept dodging like this, it might be fine.
I could not be satisfied with fine. I quickly looked around. There was no need to look with my eyes. My spatial perception discovered something embedded in the ground.
A sword of overwhelming mass.
“Hey, the simulator reproduces acceleration too! Stop right now!”
I ran at full speed. At a speed humans could not even imagine, both arms burst against the ground as I ran. Amid the rising clouds of dust, holes punched through with hollow thuds. Bullets. Bullets were flying.
“Stop—”
The simulator rotated once.
No, the Titan had rolled across the ground and grasped the sword, pulling it free.
“Urk,”
Nausea surged up from the abrupt movement. I swallowed it down. Since there was nothing but stomach acid, my mouth tasted sour. More disgusting and sour than the smell of the rain.
With the face of the sword raised, the Titan began to run toward the enemy. The enemy Titan moved backward and fired its gun. Bullets striking the sword’s broad face made dull thuds and fell to the ground.
My body was shoved into the cushion and crushed by gravity. Even while I could hardly move, both hands moved buttons and sticks, and my feet pressed the pedals.
A Titan’s feet can maintain hovering for a short time.
At the same time as a sudden acceleration, the enormous body wheeled around. In an instant, positions switched, and the massive form that had been in front of the enemy took its back. My body, swept up by gravity, bent sideways, and a crack rang out from my neck.
“Heh,”
I laughed at the pain.
It moves. It’s moving. It’s moving exactly how I want. So what if it’s a simulation? I made this Titan move. I can dominate a Titan!
I raised the massive sword high overhead. The moment the hovering ended, the ground rang out with a resounding crack. Both feet landed and kicked off the ground as it ran. The enemy’s reaction was slow. It hadn’t even turned its body toward me yet.
The sword pierced the enemy Titan’s chest and drove straight through.
Thud!
My whole body jolted, and the screen went dark. As the hologram ended and my vision blacked out, the simulator opened with a metallic clack.
“U-urk, weeegh!”
I stuck my head outside and vomited. Yellow stomach acid soaked the floor. Cold sweat dripped down, and both my hands trembled violently. The man in the suit grabbed my shoulders with both hands.
“Your eyes! Open your eyes! Can you see my face properly—”
“Food.”
Thankfully, when it came to the main point, I didn’t stutter at all.
“Give me food, qu-quick, quickly.”
Because I was so hungry I felt like I would die.
I received a high-calorie bar and clean bottled water.
Because I wolfed it down too quickly and collapsed from acute indigestion, I was carried away.