By the time the interview was over, it was quite late.
They said the other cadets had all eaten after finishing their interviews and gone to their quarters, so I did the same.
It was slightly shriveled combat rations, and honestly, it wasn’t very good.
The best part was soaking the flat pound cake in coffee and eating it.
Whatever they gave us was better than starving, and since each cadet was even given a private room, the treatment wasn’t bad.
I quickly changed out of my cadet uniform and took off the assistive apparatus. It was convenient because I could walk while wearing it, but it was still fairly heavy, and it made me sweat, so it was uncomfortable.
The moment I lay down on the bed to rest for a while, my head grew troubled.
Ailey’s past, which neither I knew nor Ailey remembered.
“Ailey.”
“Yeah?”
“Do you want to know?”
Then was it really something we needed to know?
“Uh, me? Honestly, I’m not sure? I don’t think it has that much meaning.”
“That’s exactly what I was saying.”
If Ailey had been human, that past might have affected us somehow or brought about some great danger.
But Ailey’s exterior had been modified, and now she was a Titan from some black market that even the people of the Luna family could no longer recognize.
No matter where she had been or what she had done in the past, there was almost no chance that past would affect Ailey and me now.
Was there?
There wouldn’t be.
More than anything, I didn’t want to accept an offer like that.
I didn’t like Charlotte Keria’s attitude.
If I didn’t like something, I had to say I didn’t like it.
I didn’t like seeing Charlotte Keria act as if she had somehow seized our weakness.
I had already stolen and fought against my will because of Levan. I didn’t want to do something like that again. There was no need to take on more risk just to do something I didn’t even want to do.
And even if Ailey’s past really did affect us somehow.
“We can handle our own business ourselves!”
“That’s right.”
It was something we could handle on our own.
Well, if the Luna count’s family moved to retrieve Ailey, we could probably avoid them by defecting to the Allied Forces if we had to.
That was a method that assumed the absolute worst-case scenario, so it probably wouldn’t actually happen.
Ding-dong.
At the sudden notification sound, I looked down at my smartwatch.
“Ailey, this ringtone doesn’t stand out that much, does it?”
“Huh? That’s not my ringtone.”
“It isn’t?”
Ding-dong.
My body stiffened.
Only belatedly did I realize the direction the sound was coming from. It was the door.
“Couldn’t it be the professor?”
“Then they would’ve called me through the smartwatch.”
“Isn’t it the commander?”
“Then she would’ve called through the broadcast control.”
There was no one who would go out of their way to come find me.
Cold sweat broke out on my palms, slowly soaking them. Because of the thoughts I’d just had, I began to feel uneasy for some reason.
Could I be certain there were no people from the Luna family on the Western Front?
What if someone from the Luna count’s family on the front had seen my Ailey in the hangar and realized she was an item leaked from the Luna family?
“What, is he not in his room?”
The moment I heard the voice outside the door, the strength drained from my body.
It was a somewhat familiar voice.
“That’s weird. He’s not the type to wander around.”
I staggered over and opened the door, and a familiar face stepped back and stared at me.
“If you’re in your room, you should open up quickly. Why take so long?”
“A-Allang?”
Allang Keria.
The one who had discovered Fafnir first during joint training with a support-type Titan, and the Allang who was probably related to Charlotte Keria.
“Your Titan moves absurdly fast, but your own movements are so sluggish….”
Allang flinched when he saw the assistive apparatus lying on the floor, then looked back at me.
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
“I-I know. Of course.”
So Allang was on the Western Front too.
No, thinking about it, it was only natural.
The Keria family was in charge of the Western Front, and Allang had disappeared as soon as vacation began.
Like most nobles, if he had gone to the front his family protected as soon as vacation started, the timing matched perfectly.
Allang dragged over the chair in the corner and sat down. I also took a seat opposite Allang, sitting on the bed.
After looking around for a moment, Allang belatedly opened his mouth.
“My sister said something unnecessary, apparently.”
Sister?
When I gave him a puzzled look, Allang continued as if he had expected it.
“Ah, the commander is my sister. Charlotte Keria. We have the same surname. Same hair color and eye color too. I figured you’d noticed.”
“A-ah. I thought she was a r-relative, but she was your s-sister.”
Allang nodded.
His sister? That was a little unexpected.
Usually, the head of the family served as the commander of a front.
No, wait. She could be the head of the family at a young age.
“Is your s-sister the family head?”
“No, that’s not it. The Keria family transfers command early. As you know, the Western Front is in a somewhat different situation from the other fronts. Even now, she isn’t the official commander yet. She’s still in the middle of the handover.”
Aha, so that was it.
Because the environment was unfavorable, the family head who served as commander could die at any time, so they handed over command even faster.
Allang nodded.
“My sister is a graduate of Bethesda Academy. She became a commander right after graduating, and the front is growing more and more disadvantageous. We need something to overturn the front.”
So that was why they wanted to bring me, whose rank had risen rapidly recently, into the Western Front?
But it wasn’t a battlefield that could be overturned by just one person.
“C-can’t you just fire missiles?”
As one certain red man with a mustache once said, artillery is the god of war.
That was true in this world as well.
The reason most viscount families used bombardment-type Titans was ultimately because bombardment-type Titans were what controlled war.
“This is the Western Front. There’s no way to reliably secure a firing angle.”
“Ah, th-that’s true.”
If only it weren’t the Western Front.
The Allied Forces weren’t on ships or underwater. They moved between the small islands beyond the Western Front’s coastline and attacked by launching large numbers of drones.
It was a state where we couldn’t accurately determine the enemy’s position, nor could we find their position and eliminate them with bombardment-type Titans.
But if we launched ships or aerial drones, they would be shot down instantly by the enemy, and trying to cross the sea with Titans was too far and too dangerous.
We didn’t have enough cannons to drop missiles on every island at the same time.
“But isn’t it the same for them? Is there any particular reason the E-Empire is at a disadvantage?”
“There is.”
“Wh-what is it?”
“The ones who made the Fafnir on the Eastern Front able to fly were the Allied Forces on the Western Front.”
My smartwatch vibrated briefly.
“When it comes to flight, the technology of the Western Front’s Allied Forces surpasses the Empire’s.”
The Empire stood at the cutting edge of technology.
To defeat the Empire, the Allied Forces had chosen to advance in a different direction rather than try to follow the Empire’s technological power.
Charged particle cannons, and even aerial drone technology.
If there was a difference in performance between aircraft in an aerial battle, the inferior side had no choice but to suffer an overwhelming defeat.
They said a single American-made F-22 Raptor, if it had unlimited ammunition, could shoot down 144 previous-generation fighters.
“If there were a Titan with power to spare, it might at least be able to cross to the islands using hovering, but there’s no way a Titan like that exists. And even if it did, it couldn’t avoid that many bullets and drones.”
The smartwatch buzzed again.
It seemed Ailey and I were thinking the exact same thing.
Allang stopped talking and looked at me.
“What’s that sound?”
There was one.
A Titan with power to spare.
A Titan with so much power to spare that it could hover constantly, and because it was a high-mobility type, it was fast too.
A Titan that had dodged countless bullets and missiles without allowing a single effective hit.
I kept feeling the vibration on my wrist.
When I pressed down firmly on the smartwatch with my other hand, Ailey finally quieted down.
“I understand what you’re trying to s-say.”
“Ah, good. As long as you understand. Anyway, seriously consider what my sister said. She didn’t say it lightly either. In any case, what I wanted to say is….”
Allang stood up from his seat, but I still had something I wanted to say.
“All I have to do is o-overturn the situation on this battlefield, right?”
“Right. If you come after graduation, or even next semester, like my sister said.”
“Within two weeks.”
“What?”
“I just have to do it within two weeks.”
“This isn’t a war situation where you can joke….”
Allang pressed his mouth shut, then slowly opened it again.
“Are you saying that seriously?”
I shrugged.
“Because this isn’t a war situation where I can joke.”
Allang sat back down.
“It’s not something you can do just because you want to. Do you think you’re a genius or a hero?”
“I’m not a hero.”
Who was I?
A man who had risen 150 ranks in a single semester.
“But I am a g-genius, aren’t I?”
Just for now, I could ignore every restriction I had chosen and let my self-esteem pour out.
Allang’s expression twisted slightly, then he thought for a moment, stared hard at me, squeezed his eyes shut, then stared hard at me again.
“If you only look at the circumstances, that is true, you know?”
“Right?”
“But regardless of your status, why do you piss me off so much?”
If you envy someone’s talent, it’s only natural to get spiteful.
I thought it, but didn’t say it.
“I don’t know what you’re planning to do, but this is a front, not the academy. You do know you could die, right?”
“O-of course I know.”
Allang narrowed his eyes.
“Then why on earth?”
The reason was simple.
“Because I want to.”
If I wanted to do it, I had to do it.
And since it was a request coming to me first from a count’s house, I might be able to build up a debt with them through this opportunity.