The White Reaper.
Lucia quickly checked the Titan’s information with her eyes.
Sixteen-meter class.
In terms of size alone, it was on the same level as the auxiliary-type French.
Small.
That was normal.
The Titans used by the Allied Forces consumed less fuel, were smaller, and had weaker output.
In the end, they were nothing more than custom specifications built on the basis of mass-produced models.
“Even so, it’s just an old Allied Forces Titan!”
Lucia shouted as she pushed the sticks and pedals.
The thruster output drove Huntress forward.
Even if it was called the White Reaper, there was nothing different about it.
It was just a mass-produced Titan with a few custom modifications and camouflage draped over its entire body.
It wasn’t an ultra-high-performance Titan like Fafnir, built by pouring every resource the Allied Forces had into it.
By the Empire’s standards, it was a Titan that didn’t even reach ordinary.
The only thing that bothered her was the White Reaper’s route.
Lucia’s gun was a shotgun.
If she fired like this and the White Reaper dodged, there was a chance it would hit Ailey directly.
“Tch.”
Just before the distance closed, she reverse-thrusted.
Firing stakes beneath her feet, she retreated.
It surely hadn’t seen that.
“What?”
Just like that, the White Reaper fired its side thrusters.
Even though it was a mass-produced model with insufficient generator performance, it was quite fast.
No.
That was—
“A wire anchor.”
The white wire connected to its waist belatedly came into view.
It was definitely similar to what Karina’s White Bunny used.
If she knew that, dealing with it was simple.
She just had to shoot it down.
On the opposite side, Deep’s Ailey was also aiming its gun at the same time.
If one of them shot the wire, and the other shot the thrusters—
“Rapid acceleration?”
The White Reaper hovered briefly.
Its body accelerated as it reeled in the wire, then hid behind Huntress.
At the same time, it drew a submachine gun and landed every round on Huntress’s left knee joint.
“Kh!”
The armor over the core was thick, so it intended to disable her from the joints first.
“Hover device malfunction.”
At the same time as Huntress’s voice, the damage status appeared as a hologram.
With the knee joint destroyed, the power line leading to the hover device had also been severed.
“Deep!”
It was impossible to respond to the White Reaper behind her.
Then all she could do was trust the ally in front of her.
“I’m going!”
Ailey accelerated toward the White Reaper.
Its turning speed was practically like flight.
When it came to the talent for acceleration, turning, sudden stops, and re-acceleration, it was second to none.
The moment Ailey’s rifle turned toward it, the White Reaper turned its body toward Huntress.
Thung!
The fired wire anchor embedded itself in Huntress’s body.
“Wait…”
That wasn’t a wire anchor.
“Kyaaaagh!”
Bzzzzzzzt!
A high-voltage current erupted.
Her electrocuted body clenched the sticks tightly as she gritted her teeth.
Most of the current was designed to flow toward the Titan’s generator, but it couldn’t prevent the residual current from electrocuting the pilot.
Nor was it something to be glad about just because the generator had absorbed the current.
An overloaded generator was more terrifying than enemy bullets.
“The sen… sors…!”
The main sensor crackled, and noise filled the screen.
The magnetic field sensor was probably already broken, and the drive system was faulty too.
Once the overloaded generator regained stability, it would recover, but the White Reaper was already accelerating toward the immobilized Huntress.
Craaaang!
The accelerated White Reaper slammed into Huntress.
As Huntress rolled across the ground and her entire body trembled, a question came to her first.
Why isn’t it killing me?
***
Lucia was a top-class pilot everyone acknowledged.
But Lucia had been taken down without even being able to respond properly.
The White Reaper hadn’t stopped still even once.
Of course, Ailey was also constantly moving, but the White Reaper moved even more spasmodically, using cover without pause.
Sometimes gunshots rang out from the research lab, and trees near the White Reaper were shredded by a hail of bullets, but that was all.
Revan’s Alex must have taken control of the turret.
Its accuracy was incredible, but there was no way it could hit the White Reaper on a battlefield with this much cover and such a narrow field of vision.
On top of that, the White Reaper’s movements were similar to White Bunny’s.
If anything, it changed course even more frequently and faster than White Bunny.
“I-I can’t see it?”
The snow was growing heavier and heavier.
The moment I took my eyes off it, the White Reaper vanished.
Finding the White Reaper, wrapped in camouflage, in this curtain of snow was impossible.
If I relied on my eyes to find it.
“Found you!”
I quickly predicted its movement paths and fired the rifle at the one closest to the thruster noise.
Ddadadadang!
I hit it.
It wasn’t an effective hit. I could tell just from the sound.
At the same time, unease struck me, and I twisted Ailey’s body to the side.
The wire anchor embedded itself in the tree behind Ailey.
Kiiiiiiing!
“It’s coming!”
The White Reaper accelerated and fired its submachine gun.
Given Ailey’s armor characteristics, blocking the core with an arm or something would actually be stupid.
It was better to let the core armor take it.
Kagagagak!
Even as the horrifying sound of armor being ground away rang out, I trusted the ricochet armor Ian had designed.
There was nothing else I could do.
“Th-that’s seriously creepy!”
“It really is!”
Piercing through the falling snow, the White Reaper appeared.
It wasn’t absurdly fast.
But I couldn’t get a feel for where it would move.
Still, there was at least one thing I could tell.
“We need to cut the wire first!”
I threw away the rifle that had run out of bullets without hesitation.
At the same time, I drew the Whip Blade from my right forearm and aligned it.
If the wire was held taut, I could cut it as much as I wanted.
I swung.
“Ugh.”
It didn’t cut.
The wire bent and wrapped itself over the Whip Blade.
It had released the anchor fixed to the tree.
As soon as the anchor wrapped around the Whip Blade and embedded itself, I cut off the Whip Blade with the Heat Blade on my left arm.
Bzzzzzt!
It sent chills down my spine.
The Titan it was using was a low-grade mass-produced model, but every single action was as precise and fast as Professor Zeke’s.
I had made a mistake in judgment too.
Because I was used to having a pile bunker on my left arm, I’d used the Whip Blade on my right arm.
If I’d used the Heat Blade from the start, I could have cut it regardless.
On top of that, my whole body had been tingling for a while now.
It was similar to when Rob betrayed us.
I was uneasy.
“Ailey, tell me the battlefield situation!”
“More importantly, it’s coming from the front!”
“I’ll handle it, so tell me!”
Craaaang!
The White Reaper’s body struck Ailey directly.
“Titans from the Allied Forces are also infiltrating toward the research lab’s main gate, but Karina and Ayla are holding them off!”
So enemies had come over there too.
And yet, out of all the traps we’d installed in such numbers, only one had gone off.
I immediately swung my right arm.
With a zhing, the sound of the submachine gun’s barrel being sliced through rang out.
The White Reaper reverse-thrusted without hesitation and opened the distance.
That was the direction where Huntress was.
It was trying to take her hostage.
I could understand what Revan had said.
The White Reaper was proficient in guerrilla warfare, disabling multiple enemies one by one, using them as shields, and actively exploiting lines of sight.
No matter how many enemies there were, they would only be sniped or disabled by electric shocks, so it was better to use only a skilled few.
“Revan and his subordinate soldiers are also stopping the personnel infiltrating from above! It sounds like there aren’t that many Allied Forces personnel on either side!”
There weren’t that many on either side, so they could hold them off somehow?
That couldn’t be.
If the White Reaper was here, then this side should definitely be the main force.
Since both Lucia and I had been tied down entirely by the White Reaper, this side should naturally be at a disadvantage.
The Allied Forces were up to something separately somewhere else.
The White Reaper, holding Huntress, aimed its gun at her core.
It wasn’t a submachine gun, but a sniper rifle.
If it fired, she would die.
Huntress’s main camera sensor flashed, sending a signal.
An optical signal.
KILL.
It was a signal telling me to kill the enemy, that she didn’t matter.
I knew.
I’d studied, so I could understand that much.
Understanding and acting were different things.
Forget aiming my gun—I couldn’t even raise it.
If I moved, Lucia might die.
The White Reaper stared straight at me in that posture.
The White Reaper’s sensor flashed.
Belatedly, my eyes went to the communication signal.
I couldn’t even tell how long it had been flashing.
At the signal indicating short-range communication, I hesitated briefly before pressing the communication button.
The communication came through immediately.
“I’ll give you a chance to run, so run now.”
What?
“What did you say?”
“You’re not from the North, are you? Seeing how you can’t respond to the current situation. You’re not someone from the Luna family either. If you’re an outsider, you’re probably an academy student. There’s no need for a student who has nothing to do with this situation to get dragged into it. Just say you lost track of me and leave the battlefield for a bit.”
That was insane.
But it seemed sincere.
Why on earth?
“I can give you exactly ten seconds. After ten seconds, we’ll have no choice but to begin the operation. It’s an operation that’s been planned for a long time, so there’s nothing we can do. It has nothing to do with my will either. It’ll just begin, no matter what.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You don’t seem to know what’s inside the Luna family’s research lab, but that research lab is…”
Kuuung.
A tremor came from far away.
A sound that should not have occurred rang out.
“It’s begun. I definitely gave you time.”
“You gave me ten seconds, how am I supposed to run?!”
“Then run starting now.”
“What did you do?”
“We detected all the traps you installed, retrieved them, and we’re going to detonate them all at once.”
So this was why the Allied Forces soldiers had been moving separately.
Kuuung.
Thud.
Thud.
Thud.
The impact sounds grew stronger and stronger.
They were getting closer.
Rurururung.
It wasn’t the sound of explosions.
It was the sound of something rolling down and pouring over.
“Then an avalanche starts.”
“Fuck.”
It came pouring down.
The White Reaper’s feet clicked, then spread out like skis.
Just like that, it began descending below, avoiding the snow.
By the time I turned on the thrusters and grabbed Huntress, it was already too late.
The snow swallowed us.