“Won’t you say something? Hm, hm? I’m called A12. They say I was the twelfth Titan purchased out of the ones here.”
“I’m called Deep.”
“Wow. You’re the type of person who uses honorifics with an artificial intelligence? I heard that’s super rare.”
Artificial intelligence. At those words, my stunned brain finally began to move.
The system assist unique to console games.
Titan Core was fundamentally a console game. Compared to games played with a mouse and keyboard, precise control was at a disadvantage, but in exchange there were assists like aim assist to compensate for it.
The setting used to rationalize things like aim assist and input buffering was that each Titan was equipped with an artificial intelligence.
The reason a Titan could easily perform complex movements with only a handful of buttons. The reason precise shooting was easy. It was all thanks to the assistance of artificial intelligence.
But.
“Why, why are you talking?”
At least, as far as I knew, the artificial intelligences installed in Titans didn’t talk to their pilots. Had the setting changed in the sequel?
No, let’s say they could talk. Artificial intelligence was still intelligence, after all. It did seem like software had developed far too much compared to hardware technology, but I could vaguely let that slide too.
But.
“Wait, what on earth are you talking about? What’s wrong with me being able to talk a little?”
An AI could handle this level of precise personality and character?
“Why, what? Or maybe, since you’re a pervert otaku, you prefer a Titan that can’t even speak and gets shy when someone looks at it?”
“Please, that is absolutely not it.”
I didn’t stammer because the other party was an artificial intelligence. I was just struggling because of a conversation I had never imagined.
The level of her remarks made my head spin. When I pressed a hand to my forehead and let out a sigh, the cockpit’s internal speaker laughed with a slightly crackling sound.
“I’m kidding, kidding! You know it’s a joke, right? Hm? If you connect your smart watch to the connector in front of you, the personal unit registration will be complete. If you put it in all at once, it hurts, okay? Slowly and gently—”
“Please.”
Should I just leave?
This was a little too badly out of sync.
Even if it wasn’t this Titan, there were still forty-nine other Titans. This one was absurdly to my taste, but there had to be another Titan with a similar appearance.
When I seemed to fall briefly into thought, the speaker, which had been waiting quietly, vibrated.
“Is it because my personality is like this?”
For a moment, my breath stopped.
“It’s possible our personalities don’t match. Maybe my way of speaking is the problem.”
Personality, way of speaking, direction, values.
“If we don’t match, it’s okay for you to go. Mm, that’s how it is, after all.”
There are tens of thousands of reasons why people push other people away and ostracize them. But among those, very few become rational reasons.
How much did I know about this artificial intelligence right now?
At the very least, I knew that it was easier than facing a person. Perhaps the best way to break through my disposition was to be together with an artificial intelligence like this.
Click.
“Uh, huh?”
The moment I plugged the smart watch into the connector, text flashed onto the screen.
Registration complete.
This Titan sincerely welcomes new student Deep as its registered pilot.
In the cockpit core, where silence lingered for a moment, one sentence rang out.
“Otaku-kun, you really are a pure and easy pushover.”
Huh.
Did I just get played?
Just as I was about to say something, another line of text appeared on the screen. A12 quickly read the text being displayed.
“The entrance exam will be held two days from now. Among the new students, one from the Pilot Department, one from the Operator Department, and one from the Engineer Department will form a team of three and take it together.”
It was a kind of team battle, and in other words, a group project.
I had never been to university, but I knew the infamy of group projects well. As some sage once said, one out of five people is trash, and so group projects could never be happy.
More than anything, I hated the fact that I had to communicate with strangers.
As long as they weren’t people who knew less about Titans than I did.
“What, what are the team selection criteria?”
“The priority is making sure disputes don’t happen within the team, so the thing you’re worried about probably won’t happen, Otaku-kun. Are you curious who’s on your team?”
“Please tell me.”
It wasn’t as if I would recognize them just by hearing their names, but if I at least knew their names, I could go look for them.
Of course, whether I could actually talk to them after finding them was a separate matter.
“A new student from the Operator Department, Ran.”
One was called Ran.
“And a new student from the Engineer Department, Ian. Those two. Do you happen to know them?”
The moment I heard the two names, I instantly understood what it meant to form teams so that disputes wouldn’t occur within them.
“I, I can’t not know them.”
Isn’t this just blatant discrimination by class?
Is this really an academy where class doesn’t matter?
“If you know them, that’s great! From now on, this unit’s AI main body will be in the Titan Core, but we can still talk through your smart watch. If you get bored, you have to tell me right away, okay?”
So a Titan’s artificial intelligence could be called from a distance too.
If that was fortunate, then it was fortunate.
***
“Ah, ah, h-hello.”
The dorm room was spacious and clean. It was nice that each person was given their own room, and it was nice that hot water came out.
It felt like the first time I had showered in hot water since coming to this world. At the sudden feeling that I had regained my human rights, tears streamed down my face.
After sleeping and waking up in a clean bed, feedback about how useless a human being I was and how I ought to die quickly was jammed back into my head, and I slammed my head into the wall.
Today must have been worse, because blood was actually dripping from my forehead. I wiped the blood off the wall properly, but in the end I had no choice but to stick gauze on my forehead.
If the smart watch hadn’t detected the external injury midway and A12 hadn’t spoken to me, it might have been even more dangerous.
“Um, are you all right?”
Ran looked at me with worried eyes. Ian was just staring out the window as if he had no interest.
“I-I’m fine.”
A team play meeting.
After I spent a long while smashing my head and finally came to my senses, a message had arrived from Ran, though I had no idea how she knew my contact information.
She suggested we gather at an on-campus café around lunchtime and hold even a short meeting. I thought it was a reasonable opinion, and since it was a message from Ran, whom I at least recognized, I felt relieved.
And I was relieved because it was a message. If she had called, I wouldn’t have been able to say even a single word properly.
The other academy students around us were wearing various kinds of casual clothes, but only the three people sitting here were wearing the issued academy cadet uniforms.
The reason was simple. Commoners had no money to buy clothes.
What was fortunate, at least, was that the academy cadet uniform was made of extremely good material. It looked high-class, and as I moved around, it even seemed comfortable.
The only downside, I suppose, was that it reminded me a little of a German military uniform with a mustache.
The three of us sat in a corner of the café without even ordering drinks, maintaining silence. More precisely, Ian and I maintained silence while Ran’s gaze moved here and there.
After reading the room for a long while, Ran sighed and spoke.
“They said information about the entrance exam is only provided to the Operator Department. May I brief you right away?”
“Yeah.”
“G-go ahead.”
When Ran raised her smart watch over the table, a small hologram was projected. It was the image of a woman I was seeing for the first time. Blonde hair and blue eyes. Just from her gaze, I could tell she was overflowing with confidence.
Blonde hair and blue eyes?
Before arriving at the café, I had looked up some basic information about this world. I especially looked up a lot about nobles. Because I absolutely couldn’t afford to catch their eye.
There was only one noble house symbolized by blonde hair and blue eyes.
Ran took a short breath, then swallowed nervously and said,
“Our opponent is the imperial princess of the Aslan imperial family, Saya Aslan. She’s been deployed on battlefields since she was sixteen, and she’s a leading candidate for top of the class.”
The Aslan imperial family.
Since the previous work of Titan Core, if you were to name the highest-difficulty artificial intelligences, that name would be among the top five.
I knew because I had fought against the Aslan imperial family’s AI many times already. They were true battlefield maniacs who fought by wielding a massive greatsword as tall as a Titan.
I had beaten them plenty of times, and I had been destroyed plenty of times too.
When I won, it was usually by absolutely sticking to long-range combat, and when I lost, it was when my Titan’s build was still in the early stages or when I was forced into close-range combat.
Ian, who had been looking elsewhere since earlier, belatedly looked at the hologram. As I sat there with my mouth open in disbelief, Ran continued.
“The team on the other side is made up of an operator and engineer who have worked with her for a long time, and apparently she’s been riding her personal unit since before as well. Since she’s from the imperial family, I suppose that’s only natural.”
“There is a severe output difference compared to an issued personal unit. The imperial family’s personal unit has extremely thick armor and excellent mobility as well.”
Ian continued after Ran.
An overwhelming difference in the number of times they had coordinated. A difference in machine output. A difference in skill. Everything was nothing but disadvantageous. Not only was victory impossible, there was a bigger problem.
“It, it would be better to lose.”
If we drew or even won, we didn’t know what kind of retaliation we would suffer.
Noblesse oblige? That was something that only happened on the battlefield. The gazes that had looked at me during the academy procedures represented exactly how nobles looked at commoners.
The top seat wasn’t important. What mattered was survival.
“To, to oppose an imperial princess—”
“I’m out.”
The words I was about to say caught in my throat.
Ran looked at Ian in surprise. Ian, as if he had lost interest, looked back out the window and muttered barely audibly.
“I never came to the academy intending to lose. Rather than belong to a team trying to lose, I just won’t take the exam at all.”
“Th-that’s not what I—”
“Scared?”
Blood rushed straight to my head.
Ian looked at me expressionlessly.
Scared?
Me, who had reached the ranks in Titan Core, scared against the Aslan imperial family, who weren’t even other rankers but merely top-difficulty AI enemies?
“Fu—”
No.
“Fuck, wh-who the fuck is scared?!”
The moment I shot up from my seat, countless gazes turned this way at once. As if I had been hit by those gazes, my body immediately collapsed back down into the chair.
Ran stared at me with startled eyes, then looked back at the hologram.
“It isn’t as if we have no advantages. Just as we don’t know each other, that side knows absolutely nothing about us. On the other hand, the Aslan imperial family’s combat style is extremely famous.”
When Ran moved the hologram, various weapons for long-range combat appeared.
“As an operator, my recommendation is that what we need most in this engagement is superiority in long-range combat. Since the opponent’s output is exceptional, it will be difficult to create distance, but instead—”
“N-no.”
Fuck, who the hell is scared?
You think I’m scared?
No, I’m absolutely not scared.
“What we need is additional thrusters, that is, propulsion units (推力機). And a catapult that can accelerate us, that is, a launch device (射出機).”
We would definitely win.
Ian, who had been expressionless, grinned.
“I’ll find and install decent thrusters within a day.”
“Th-then I’ll look for something like a catapult too!”
Looking at Ian’s expression, I had an intuition.
Somehow.
It felt like I had been played again this time.