“Deep? You mean that Deep who fought Fafnir?”
“Yeah, that’s right. The Deep who was on our side during the joint training last time.”
Rod nodded. Of course he remembered.
Deep, huh. Deep.
Back then, he had only seen him fighting in a heavy-armored unit of a rather ambiguous size.
The battles after that, he hadn’t witnessed with his own eyes; he had only checked the footage.
Of course, the sight of him overwhelming Karina Luna while piloting a heavy-armored unit had been impressive.
But the way he had slipped through Fafnir’s attacks in a high-mobility Titan and landed effective blows was even more impressive.
Others might have forgotten the feat of making it lose its charged-particle cannon and wings, but Rod remembered.
And there was no need to even mention what he’d seen in the most recent midterm.
“Then check the thermal imaging sensors first.”
“Yes. I’ll start the inspection right away.”
Not installation. Inspection.
Anyone who had watched Deep’s midterm footage would have already mounted thermal imaging sensors on their Titan.
A Titan that didn’t stop at firing smoke grenades to obscure vision, but spewed smoke from its entire body.
A strategy that said he didn’t care if his own fight couldn’t be seen, as long as he won.
Rod liked it.
That efficient, murderous strategy matched the Rose family’s methods to perfection.
“Any other customizations we can try?”
“I do have a few ideas.”
“What are they?”
“Something like increasing the output of the reverse-thrust thrusters to blow away the smoke.”
“Adopted.”
“That one can only be used when the enemy’s already too close. Considering the smoke, we could swap targeting missiles for heat-seeking missiles.”
“Adopted as well.”
“No, do you know how much harder the work gets if you adopt all of them?”
When the engineer looked ready to cry, Rod burst out laughing.
“Hey, hey. Think about it carefully.”
Rod gripped the engineer’s shoulder tightly.
“Can you imagine what our opponent’s going to do?”
At those words, the engineer shut his mouth.
“I can’t imagine what Deep’s going to do.”
At first, he introduced himself as a high-mobility pilot.
What he actually boarded was a heavy-armored unit.
After that, he got into a high-mobility Titan again.
And then, in the midterm, he threw away mobility and overwhelmed his opponent with a smoke-based strategy.
Considering he was a commoner who had never properly rolled around on a battlefield, there was only one conclusion.
“That guy’s a genius, and the engineer behind him is a genius too. Compared to them, you and I are probably just ordinary.”
Over the past few years, this year’s first-years at Bethesda Academy were a generation where overwhelming geniuses kept appearing one after another.
For Rod, who ranked 22nd even among those first-years, the word ordinary didn’t suit him.
But he could say it with certainty. Compared to his opponent’s genius, Rod was ordinary.
“He absolutely won’t bring the same strategy as last time.”
“What if he does bring the same strategy?”
Why did he have to talk back?
Rod narrowed one eye slightly, but at the same time nodded as he answered.
“Well, then Deep is being way too complacent.”
He shrugged.
“We’ll win, and I’ll be very disappointed.”
***
“Heavy Machine, Rod.”
“Deep.”
“Launching!”
“Dive.”
The moment Heavy Machine left the catapult, it charged forward.
The battlefield was a wasteland.
But it was a wasteland with clear differences in elevation, part of it formed like a canyon.
“Before Deep, the high-mobility unit, can hide, I need to quickly seize the high ground.”
Given the terrain, full of rocks that could serve as obstacles, there were certainly aspects of the battlefield that favored a high-mobility unit.
“I calculated the shortest route and uploaded it as a hologram.”
“It’s much closer to Deep, damn it!”
The one fortunate thing was that Deep was in the lowlands while Rod was on the high ground.
Either way, in the end, the most important thing in a firefight between Titans was elevation.
Effective range, field of vision—none of them were unimportant when it came to determining advantage.
The moment he used up all the power available for hovering, Rod pulled the stick.
Clank!
The instant Heavy Machine’s two feet touched the ground, it fixed its anchors.
It stretched forward both arms, which had been replaced with weapons, and opened every port of its multiple missile launchers.
Then it aimed its sensors at one point.
“How disappointing.”
Smoke.
Deep appeared not to have moved.
In a battle where elevation mattered, he had simply remained still in the lowlands, scattering smoke.
“No, wait. Deep’s human too, right? Is he in bad condition?”
“If you have time to worry about the enemy, you’d be better off shooting…”
“I know, I know, but still.”
Even so, he couldn’t help feeling that something was off.
When the sensors detected visual obstruction caused by smoke, they automatically switched to thermal imaging.
On the screen that had switched to thermal—
There was nothing inside the smoke.
Rod gritted his teeth and wrenched the stick.
Boom!!!
The earth trembled.
He detached the anchors and fired the side thrusters. He dodged, barely.
If his reaction had been even a little slower, the sensor would have been blown off, but the situation was not particularly good even now.
“Damage report. Right shoulder joint damaged. Bullet trajectory confirmed to have originated from the left lowlands.”
Heavy Machine spoke with a hint of bewilderment.
The left lowlands?
“You crazy bastard.”
He had drawn Rod’s gaze with a smoke grenade and sniped him from a completely different direction.
No, more importantly—
“Sniping against me, a bombardment type?”
Against me, the one in charge of sniping and bombardment?
He turned his sensors toward the right lowlands.
A streamlined black Titan raised one hand and gave a light greeting.
Rod was dumbfounded. Was he greeting him because they knew each other, in his own way?
Did he not realize that in this situation, it was nothing but provocation?
“How inspiring.”
No, there was no way he didn’t know.
“Open all ports.”
Because Ailee was a pitch-black streamlined unit, the red additional parts plastered all over its body stood out even more.
The multiple homing missile launchers attached to its legs and shoulders, and the railgun connected to a sub-arm and stored on its back.
The sub-legs meant to withstand the railgun’s tremendous recoil.
And the machine gun that boasted enough firepower and rate of fire that Ailee had to hold it with both hands.
Deep slowly inhaled, then exhaled.
“Full burst.”
The two Titans opened fire at the same time.
Crimson warheads revealed themselves as they flew toward each other.
Heavy Machine’s feet fixed their anchors into the ground, while Ailee’s two feet rose upward with its hover.
“Open!”
“Shot.”
Ailee accelerated forward and, at the same time, began pouring out homing missiles.
Missiles embroidered the air as they began charging toward each other.
Even as they collided and exploded in midair, every remaining missile rushed toward Ailee.
It was only natural.
“There’s a big difference between us, who added missile pods, and that side, which focused on firepower from the start.”
“But, but Deep!”
Ailee smiled brightly.
“You kept your promise!”
Someday, together with Ailee, he wanted to project firepower like Rod Rose’s Heavy Machine.
He had said that during the joint training, while watching Rod’s Heavy Machine compete with Zeus in firepower.
He thought he was the only one who remembered, but apparently not.
Even as he watched the missiles approaching, a smile came to his face.
“I’ll leave interception to you!”
“Yeah! I’ll leave movement to you!”
High-mobility type and bombardment type.
At first glance, the two Titan types seemed like they would never mix.
It wasn’t as if they could project firepower and then leave the battlefield at tremendous speed like bombers or fighter jets.
Nor could they endure enemy fire and continue bombarding from their position like a bombardment-heavy-armored type.
At first glance, this combination, which seemed incapable of canceling out each other’s weaknesses, was instead a hidden gem used only by those who knew how.
Because the feel of it was incredible.
Deep gripped the stick tightly with both hands and pulled.
At the same time as reverse thrust, Ailee began accelerating backward.
The fundamental difference between a bombardment-heavy-armored type and a bombardment-high-mobility type was simple.
Did you bombard while enduring enemy attacks, or bombard while evading them?
“Let’s go!”
“Let’s!”
He pushed the stick.
The main thruster ignited.
Ailee fired the machine gun upward in succession, shooting down the missiles one by one.
Even so, the remaining missiles rained down toward the ground.
He couldn’t see and dodge them.
And he had no intention of doing so.
He had spatial awareness.
He ignited the side thruster briefly. An explosion erupted where he had been.
Ailee accelerated backward to extend the flight distance of the missiles it was trying to intercept.
The instant the interception ended, it accelerated forward again.
Feeling a chill, he stopped accelerating, and Heavy Machine’s machine gun, whose trajectory had changed, grazed past in front of him.
Reading the trajectory of the bullets, he restored his original acceleration again.
The trajectories of the homing missiles began to grow chaotic. The more they did, the faster his acceleration became.
Just because he was on the ground didn’t mean he had to move like he was on the ground.
Now that the triple generator system had been established, hovering was infinite.
He only had to avoid getting hit by even a single missile.
In that case, he just had to dodge them all and blow them all up.
“Ha, haha!”
Deep laughed.
Rod laughed.
“You crazy bastard. What a sight!”
He was accelerating and bombarding at the same time, while even reading the trajectories of his own missiles and bullets.
“It’s like he’s flying!”
“Rod! This isn’t the time to be admiring him!”
“No! How could I stay still after seeing something that inspiring?”
Deep was not the only one who had layered customization upon customization.
The two machine guns stored on Heavy Machine’s back moved along the sub-arms and positioned themselves on its shoulders.
He could not allow an approach. And he would not.
For that purpose alone, he had doubled the firepower of his machine guns simply by increasing their number.
“Open!”
He fired.
Boom!!!
He fired not the machine guns, but the railgun.
Before he could even attempt to shoot, he realized that one arm had been burned away.
“He saw what I was trying to do during high-speed high-mobility movement and sniped me?”
That kind of movement was like—
“Are you the top-ranked student or something?”
It was something only Levan, who had faced the princess, could show.
No, even so, he wasn’t as good as Levan. At least Levan had fired while hovering.
Even so, the very act of making such a precise shot while moving was absurd.
He had lost his right shoulder and his left arm.
The firepower he had added was blown away in an instant.
Ailee broke through the firepower net and began moving even more violently.
Saying it was gradually getting closer didn’t fit. It was closing in with increasing ferocity.
“Ailee!”
At the moment the elevation difference disappeared, Deep quickly pressed four buttons in sequence.
“Yeah!”
He purged the now useless multiple missile launchers and railgun, then raised the thruster output once more and accelerated.
At the same time, the moment he fired the grenade launcher he had drawn, Heavy Machine’s sensor moved as if reacting.
The instant Rod instinctively adjusted the angle of the micro-missiles and intercepted the grenade in front of him, he belatedly gritted his teeth.
“This is…”
The same thing that had been done to Joshua Otto.
At the moment of interception, the grenade exploded, spewing out thick smoke.
As his vision was blocked, the sensors switched to thermal imaging. He released the heat-seeking missiles he had saved and began firing them toward Deep inside the smoke.
Deep knew that much too.
How to respond to both heat-seeking missiles and thermal imaging sensors at the same time.
Though it wasn’t academy ranking, Deep was also a pilot who had been hit by countless meta counters and had used them himself.
As he drove the sub-legs into the ground and reduced speed, he pressed a button.
“Flares!”
That was why he had replaced all the smoke from his entire body with flares.
Heavy Machine’s screen turned completely red, as if it had malfunctioned. He could no longer distinguish what was ahead.
“A genius to an obnoxious degree.”
He had used smoke grenades in the previous engagement.
Then his opponent would use thermal imaging sensors.
Then he would fire flares so they couldn’t see because of the thermal imaging sensors.
That was what talent looked like.
Before Rod’s hands could move urgently, the AI spoke calmly.
“Activating reverse-thrust thrusters.”
He had forgotten. They had customized it.
With the sound of ignition, the smoke scattered. The thermal sensor rapidly switched to the image sensor. His vision brightened, and he could barely see what was in front of him.
The words that described what appeared in his sight slipped out naturally.
“A black flash.”
At the same time Ailee purged its sub-legs, it immediately recovered its original acceleration.
Acceleration, then stopping, then accelerating again. He could feel his body straining.
As Ailee accelerated, Heavy Machine revealed its chest-mounted machine gun at the same time.
It was not a desperate struggle.
Out of respect for a strong opponent, it was merely bringing out its final move.
As if he had known it was coming, Deep ignited the reverse-thrust thruster, then fired the side thrusters and dodged to the side.
With a rattling roar, bullets poured out.
The moment Heavy Machine tried to follow Ailee as it circled around him, its waist stopped.
A chronic weakness of heavy-armored and bombardment types.
The very weakness that made it necessary to learn the technique of throwing off the output sync of hovering.
“It can’t turn quickly forward and backward, that thing.”
The bullets were not chasing him.
The moment he realized that, Ailee cut off the side thrusters.
The main thruster ignited, and it accelerated forward.
Clank!
Boom!!!
The rupture of the pile bunker rang out, and the dust slowly cleared.
Beep.
“I lost, I lost. Weren’t you a noble in your past life or something?”
As he pulled the pile bunker out of Heavy Machine’s main sensor, Deep answered.
“I-I was unemployed.”
“What kind of answer is that?”
But it was true.