“Can I be honest?”
“Yes.”
Ran wore a strange expression.
“I didn’t think you’d arrange a duel this quickly. You didn’t pick a fight with some noble, did you?”
Uh, um.
“It m-might be something similar.”
“I’d rather you hadn’t.”
Beep-beep.
“No! No, that’s not right! We’re the ones who got picked on! We’re ranked twenty-eighth too, you know—how does it make sense for her to look down on us like this?!”
Ailey shouted, stamping her foot against the floor.
Well, even if she stamped, she was a hologram anyway, and even if she shouted, the sound was only about as loud as the tiny speaker on a smartwatch.
Still, it wasn’t exactly quiet, so the moment the beeping started, I covered the speaker with my hand.
The reason Ran had come all the way here was simple.
She said that the moment Lucia left the café, Lucia’s operator had contacted Ran.
It was a message to schedule a duel, and the date they settled on was three days later.
There was no time to buy proper equipment and prepare, or to put anything through customization.
We had to make the most of the Ailey we’d customized during the remaining vacation time.
At best, if we went through Darcha, we might be able to buy one firearm we needed.
Judging Lucia from what I’d seen so far, my impression of her wasn’t all that good.
She had a strong sense of pride, liked looking down on others, and was short-tempered.
“Just from what she says, honestly, she’s not that different from Joshua Otto! I bet her skills are totally inflated too!”
“That’s not true.”
Ran immediately shook her head at Ailey’s words.
“The Allied Forces on the Northern Front are as fierce as those on the Eastern Front.”
They said the Southern Front was on our side, but apparently that didn’t mean they were just as mild.
“There’s nothing like Fafnir there, but the average skill level of the Allied Forces is considered high.”
That was also why Reuban’s achievements during this deployment had spread so unusually far as rumors.
He had single-handedly taken down more than ten members of the Northern Allied Forces, whose individual physical abilities were outstanding. No, to be precise, he shot thirteen and smashed two in close combat.
If you put it in numbers, that was fifteen kills, zero deaths.
Again, the Northern Allied Forces weren’t weak. Reuban had simply overwhelmed a powerful Northern Allied Force unit.
“And Lucia von Dis Pater is a young lady who’s active on that Northern Front. The Titan she uses is quite unusual too.”
“Unusual?”
Ran raised her smartwatch.
A hologram of a Titan immediately appeared.
The name floating near the Titan’s feet was Huntress.
A hunter, huh.
Ailey circled around the hologram several times, checking it carefully, then lifted her head.
“I don’t really get what’s unusual about it. Isn’t it just an ordinary heavy-armor, high-mobility Titan?”
On the surface, yes.
At the same time Ailey spoke, Ran manipulated the hologram on her smartwatch.
Several pieces of external equipment and armaments appeared at once and began merging onto the Titan.
“Th-that’s cheating, doing that after I already looked it over!”
“That wasn’t my intention.”
“Then I accept it!”
There was a lot.
Not as much as Perfect Ailey, but this was easily as much as Bombardment Ailey.
“She doesn’t simply use a large amount of equipment. Lucia is known for employing many bold strategies against the Allied Forces as well.”
The main strategy of the Dis Pater family was setting traps, counterattacking, and controlling the battlefield.
The reason could be found in the environment.
In the north, not only was snow always blowing, but snow was also piled up on the ground.
The Allied Forces took advantage of an environment with poor visibility where heavy-armor types had difficulty moving, choosing a strategy of using high-mobility types to move more quickly and stealthily than the enemy.
Conversely, instead of responding to those Allied Forces every time, Dis Pater covered the ground beneath the snow with traps to limit the movement of high-mobility types itself.
The Titan used by Lucia, a member of Dis Pater, was a little different from that.
“This isn’t just a heavy-armor, high-mobility type, is it?”
“That’s right.”
If you looked closely, you could tell.
Among the various types of armaments, the additional parts attached to the backpack and the sides of the shins stood out in particular.
They looked similar to anchors, but in reality, they were parts meant to shoot stakes into the ground and fix the Titan in place.
For example, the kind of stakes used by Ayla’s Frenchy.
“This is a heavy-armor, high-mobility, support-type Titan, isn’t it?”
“You saw that exactly. As expected, someone who nearly became a teaching assistant from putting together builds since day one is different.”
“Why are y-you bringing that up now?”
“Just because. My operator brought me a ton of information, but I didn’t like seeing you figure it out on your own before I could explain.”
That was just pure criticism.
In any case, Lucia’s Huntress was a Titan that could directly engage enemies at the front while also operating traps, which were likewise Dis Pater’s specialty.
In order to kill high-mobility types, she had customized her Titan so it could do everything high-mobility types hated.
“Uh, huh? Isn’t that a little weird?”
Ailey hopped up.
“There are four total Titan classifications, right? But it belongs to three of them? Then why do classifications even exist?”
“Because the classifications were created after Titans came into being. There’s no reason to produce Titans to fit the classifications.”
“Aha! Deep, you’re really smart!”
A versatile Titan, huh.
The most efficient Titan was one that could perfectly fulfill a single role by itself.
Princess Saya’s Kaiser and Aaron’s Icarus were clear vanguards, Lord’s Heavy Machine was a thorough rear-line bombardment type, and Allang’s Arbiter was a complete support type.
Because war wasn’t something fought alone.
Unless you were overturning the situation on an unfavorable front, carrying out guerrilla operations, or launching a surprise attack, the ideal was to form a squad of Titans that each perfectly fulfilled one type of role.
In other words, Lucia’s Titan was one that didn’t rely on her squad.
At a glance, it was similar in form to Reuban’s Alex, which was well suited to playing alone, or Perfect Ailey, which had been used to fight alone on the Western Front.
You could say it suited Lucia’s strong pride.
That kind of Titan was the most troublesome in a one-on-one.
Anything it wasn’t thoroughly specialized in could be covered by the pilot’s skill, and the increased number of variables could simply be utilized even more actively.
“In the end, the main weapon is probably this shotgun.”
Akimbo shotguns.
In truth, a shotgun was a very practical weapon.
Unlike in countless games, the pellets didn’t magically disappear once you passed twenty meters.
In reality, they could still deliver lethal force beyond forty meters.
By Titan shotgun standards, even four hundred meters was a sufficient engagement distance.
Of course, against heavy-armor Titans, rifles with superior penetration were more effective, so it wasn’t a weapon that was often adopted.
“It’s a troublesome weapon for high-mobility types. She really must hate them.”
Against lightly armored high-mobility types, it was a lethal weapon.
Its range was longer than it looked, and its spread was wider than expected.
For Lucia and her Huntress, who fought on the Northern Front where most enemies were high-mobility types, shotguns were probably the most effective weapon.
And for me and Ailey, they would be the most threatening.
Naturally, aside from that, we also had to pay attention to detonation mines, smoke grenades, flashbangs, flares, and everything else.
“Hmm.”
What should we do?
“M-maybe we can just fight as we are?”
No.
What did we have to do?
Maybe there was no need to do anything in particular.
“What?”
Ran looked stunned, then laughed as if she couldn’t believe it.
“Aren’t you at a disadvantage?”
“I am. I-it’s true that I’m at a disadvantage.”
I was at a disadvantage.
Lucia wasn’t a fool. There was no way the pilot ranked nineteenth was a fool.
Not only did a pilot like that have plenty of experience fighting against high-mobility types, but her Titan had been built from the start to kill high-mobility types.
Of course Ailey and I were at a disadvantage.
“B-but it’s not like I’ve ever really been in an advantageous position before.”
So what?
I had never fought because I had the advantage.
When I fought Kaiser, all I could do was struggle; I couldn’t win.
When I first fought Icarus, my body hadn’t even recovered.
When I fought White Bunny, I fought in a heavy-armor type that hadn’t even been properly adjusted.
When I fought Levant, my body still hadn’t recovered, so instead of my specialty—mobility—I chose a meta counter.
When I fought Heavy Machine, I challenged a firepower machine to a firepower battle, and in the end, I couldn’t win with firepower.
On the Western Front, I had sortied alone to face countless enemies.
Of course, I had lost twice, but against unfavorable battlefields and unfavorable opponents, I had stubbornly found weaknesses, broken through them, figured them out, and won.
“Until now, I was the one attacking the problem. N-now I’m just the one being attacked.”
It was something I had experienced often while playing Titan Core.
A certain meta would become popular, and builds meant to counter that meta would start becoming popular as well.
Then builds to counter those builds would begin to emerge.
In the end, counters to the meta, counters to those builds, and counters to those builds would appear.
Deep knew how to make use of that environment too.
Because he was a pilot who had ridden countless metas, been beaten by meta counters, and used meta counters himself.
“A high-mobility killer or two…”
Was old-fashioned.
By Deep’s standards.
“A high-mobility killer?”
“Ah, th-there is such a thing.”
Then.
“Shall we start by thinking about what to do with the shotguns?”
Ran answered immediately.
“I have something in mind.”