I have never forgotten it, not even once.
Even now, when I dream, Fafnir appears.
It descends like a comet toward Zeus and crushes its core.
It cuts White Bunny’s waist in half.
The farther away I get, the closer the sight of Balmung’s armor being shaved away becomes.
If I so much as try to look away, Fafnir draws closer and closer.
Just before that massive body smashes mine to pieces, I wake up.
This isn’t a dream.
It’s reality.
“Ailee!!!”
“Yeah!”
I cut the hovering.
Ailee’s massive frame plummeted downward.
Kooong!!!
Fafnir slammed down onto Ailee.
The body that had fallen into the sea bounced up, then sank straight down.
The moment it descended and crashed into us, Fafnir shot back up toward the sky.
The Spear that had been staying near me was caught up in the descent and exploded.
“Report the damage!”
“The core section’s outer armor is damaged, but the waterproofing is fine!”
If Ailee’s waterproofing were measured by IP rating, it would be around level 8.
You could call it about the level of a smartphone with decent water resistance.
It wouldn’t break the moment it went underwater.
But it was the sort of level where the moment it fell in, you’d want to fish it out and check if it was okay.
Except for one part: the flight unit.
“I switched the flight unit’s output! It eats a lot of fuel, so be careful!”
Despite its name, Ailee’s flight unit can’t fly.
But it can move underwater.
It was a function made strictly as a stopgap measure.
And now we had to use it as our main means of movement.
“Ailee, Fafnir shot upward right after its descent!”
“Right! Fafnir probably isn’t waterproof!”
It wasn’t waterproof.
That was the only advantage I had against Fafnir.
When you thought about it, it was obvious.
Even ours, a simple high-mobility model, wasn’t perfectly waterproof.
There was no way Fafnir, with all those joints and even wings attached, would have waterproofing.
Though I had no idea whether I could actually make use of that.
I pushed the stick forward.
The flight unit ignited, and Ailee moved forward.
“This is slower than I imagined…”
“It’s slow.”
“Yeah.”
It couldn’t be helped.
The density difference between air and water is 800 times.
Even with a simple calculation, it was certain that the resistance Ailee felt was more than 800 times greater.
If anything, Ailee was better off than other Titans because it was streamlined.
We were safe like this, but we couldn’t stay underwater forever.
“Deep!”
“I know.”
I lifted the sensors upward.
I could see beyond the surface.
The drones were peeling away from me one by one.
The Allied Forces would have a radar network too.
If they judged that they had eliminated me, the closest target, then next would be our bombardment-type Titans.
Questions overflowed.
Why was Fafnir here?
Why had the countless drones that should have been on the eastern front come to the western front?
Even putting those aside, there was one problem I couldn’t avoid.
How do I survive?
How do I win?
Professor Sieg said it.
The answer was already inside me, but I always moved on muscle memory.
Think. Think.
Fafnir probably hadn’t left this place yet.
There was a high chance it had recognized me.
Would it want to leave behind the Titan that broke its wing?
If it were me, absolutely not.
It would keep watching the surface to see whether I could make it back out.
If I just held out underwater like this, Fafnir would eventually leave.
I couldn’t let that happen.
On the western front, swarming with drones, the most dangerous thing was Fafnir.
With its tough wing armor, it would ignore anti-air fire like it was nothing.
And each time Fafnir descended, one Titan would become a Ti/tan.
If I wanted to hold Fafnir here, along with the drones still remaining…
“We have to go up.”
“But if we go up now—”
“We have to go up!”
“Ugh, but with the flight unit’s thrust, it’ll take too long to break through the surface!”
“The method is…”
Already in my head.
I took out the grenade launcher and loaded a grenade, not a smoke round.
With the muzzle aimed at the seafloor, I pressed the pedal and pushed the flight unit’s output to the limit.
“Wh-what are you trying to do?!”
“I’m going to offset the underwater resistance with an explosion.”
Thump.
Because we were underwater, the sound of the shot was quiet.
The moment the grenade slowly touched the bottom, I curled my whole body in and aimed for the sky.
Kooong!
Explosion.
“De, Deeeeeep! This is way too dangerous—”
“I know!”
My whole body shuddered and shook.
The impact sent numbness through me.
The scenery in front of my eyes changed in an instant, and then there came a splash.
“It actually worked!”
I pushed the pedal and stick at the same time.
The hovering device came back on, and the flight unit quickly regained balance above the surface.
“How much fuel do we have left?!”
“About 40 percent!”
“That’s enough!”
The outer armor was crushed, warped hideously here and there.
No matter who looked at her, Ailee was in no normal condition.
Like a pack of dogs that had caught the scent of blood, the drones began turning toward us.
I hurriedly sprayed flares from all over the frame and lifted my head.
“Fafnir.”
Floating with both wings spread, it looked as though it were declaring that it would stand in the sky.
As if asking whether, with that wrecked body, I could dodge its descent.
It was looking at me as though saying exactly that.
“Switch display. Request additional buttons and controls.”
“Ah, Ian didn’t tell you, but you knew?”
This time too, Ian had put in an additional function.
Ian had definitely brought every single part of Ailee from the Academy.
And he had used all of those parts to customize Ailee.
Among that countless number of parts, there was one part I had never used even once until now.
“Of course.”
Core armor anchor off.
Shoulder armor anchor off.
Generator armor anchor off.
I switched more than a dozen anchors to off.
Ian had been right.
There were too many controls and too many anchors that had to be touched in order to purge the armor.
It would be impossible to check all of these every time.
“Outer armor, all purge.”
Clunk.
Armor poured off Ailee’s entire body all at once.
As though the hovering device had grown stronger, the frame rose slightly upward.
“Whew.”
The body had become lighter.
At the same time, the Spear drone that had detached from the forearm maintained its altitude.
“What should I do about drone control?”
“Keep them in orbit.”
Maintain a fixed distance from Ailee and focus only on interception.
As the Spear drone began moving, several explosions sounded in succession among the flares.
“I’ll take care of the drones! If it’s orbit maintenance, I can support you too, Deep!”
Then I wouldn’t refuse.
I stepped on the pedal.
The flight unit ignited, and acceleration began.
At the same time, a meteor fell from the sky.
“A descent is only scary when it’s a surprise attack you didn’t expect.”
I deployed the flaps and engaged reverse thrust at the same time.
Fafnir swept past in front of Ailee, who had come to a perfect stop in midair.
“How am I supposed to let that hit me when you’re glaring that openly?!”
With the weight shed, the body was faster.
There was no way I would be hit by an attack I could see.
Fafnir spread its wings and stopped above the surface.
I immediately urged the flight unit on and passed by Fafnir’s side.
A fierce sound rang out from behind, and drones ahead began spraying bullets.
They were drone rounds, so the firepower wasn’t strong, but they weren’t something I could completely ignore either.
“Move, damn it!”
Using the side thrusters, I skirted around a suicide drone.
I fired the rifle at a drone pouring out bullets and shot it down.
I deployed the flaps to halt my acceleration and dodged Fafnir’s tail blade.
I dispersed the hover output sync and spun once, then struck Fafnir with the flight unit’s wing.
“You’ve only ever hit people with those wings, haven’t you? Never been hit by one!”
With a sharp clang, Fafnir’s body tilted.
Even so, the fact that it never fell into the sea was definitely not because of Fafnir’s overwhelming performance.
The pilot over there had skill at least on my level, or maybe Revan’s.
It didn’t matter.
My goal from the start wasn’t to defeat Fafnir.
I folded the flight unit’s wing.
As I spun vertically once in midair, I let the fired shell slip past the gap by my side.
A shell.
Not a bullet.
“Did you see that just now?”
“Of course I did.”
I grasped and read the state of the battlefield.
I recognized the direction of the shell and immediately turned my gaze that way.
“That took long enough.”
It was much farther away than I had expected.
A bombardment-type Titan defending the base had revealed itself.
That meant there was something they didn’t want to show any more than this.
The Titan standing on the cliff fired another shell at me.
Its accuracy was so atrocious that I almost wondered if this was a joke.
As if it had never once fired at something moving this fast from such a long distance.
Aha.
“What the Eastern Allied Forces sent them was drones and Fafnir, and that’s it. No other Titans or pilots, huh.”
If reinforcements had come from the east, there was no way their shooting would be this bad.
Only the Western Allied Forces, who had never properly sniped with a Titan before, would be like this.
The situation slowly began to make sense.
Fafnir and the Eastern Allied Forces, who had been intensely active on the eastern front, had handed over plundered resources, drones, and the like to the western front.
Afterward, once there was room to breathe in the tug-of-war on the eastern front, the Eastern Allied Forces’ strength would move west.
Then they would strike the west all at once and swallow it whole.
Unintentionally, my operation must have screwed over the Allied Forces.
Screwed them over fucking hard.
If I were Fafnir, I’d want to tear to pieces the guy who kept getting in my way.
Sure enough, Fafnir, which had been holding out in midair by blasting the thrusters on its wings, immediately corrected its posture.
Fafnir threw its chest wide open and exposed the machine gun mounted there.
“Shit.”
I had assumed it had no long-range weapons.
I hurriedly banked the machine, trying to shake off Fafnir clinging behind me.
No, I was only trying to shake it off; I couldn’t actually do it.
It was the opposite of when the Spear drone dealt with the suicide drones.
Dead Six.
I had no way to counterattack Fafnir, which had gotten on my tail.
It was all I could do to shoot down the drones flying in from the front with the Spear and rifle.
I had discovered the location of the island the enemy was hiding, but I had no way to signal our allies.
If only I had time to load a signal flare into the grenade launcher.
“A signal flare?”
“Huh?”
“Get ready to fire!”
“O-okay, but fire what?”
No. There was one.
Not some weak flare that just fizzled and scattered.
A truly incredible signal flare that would emit a far more intense light.
The sub-arm moved and fitted the railgun against my left side.
At the same time, I deployed the flaps, momentarily stopping Ailee’s acceleration.
In that brief moment of stability, I aimed.
“Let there be light!”
KABOOM!!!
A flash of light split the dawn sky and struck the island directly.
I had no time to watch the island’s terrain collapse or the bombardment-type Titan fall into the sea.
At the same time as the recoil, I reverse-thrusted.
My body accelerated backward in an instant and took Fafnir’s rear.
Dead Six.
This time, it was my turn to shoot.