Center on the target, fire.
Confirmed hit.
Jump to the side, center, fire.
Confirmed hit.
Center on the target while landing, fire.
Confirmed hit.
Again. Jump to the side, center, fire.
Confirmed hit.
Center on target before landing, fire. Center again while landing, fire.
Confirmed hit. Aaand…confirmed hit!
Hmm. As expected, storing preloaded weapons in the magicite core let me shoot without having to reload each time. Swapping weapons in and out of the core took a bit of getting used to, but it was something I literally had to get used to.
The one drawback was the strain on my legs from all the jumping and landing, but that was where the beast-type frame with its high flexibility really shone. So far, there were no issues.
Still, I had to admit: The mech must have looked pretty creepy from the outside.
If I was in a standard bipedal model, it wouldn’t have been out of the ordinary to jump or roll sideways—assuming, of course, that you’d trained for it.
But on a quadruped? That was a whole different story. Just think about it: If a wild animal suddenly jumped sideways with no warning, you’d be terrified, right? Now imagine that same animal having a human upper body. Nightmare fuel.
Taking it one step further, imagine that same abomination jumping sideways while shooting. The manual said that you could move immediately after firing, but I seriously doubted even the designers had imagined this kind of movement.
At this point, I might as well have been rewriting the rulebook for snipers.
It was said that the most important trait in terms of piloting mechs was your ability to visualize your actions.
The pilot wasn’t connected to the mech through their nerves or anything; instead, everything was done through the magicite core.
The basic theory was that a mech couldn’t do anything its pilot was unable to imagine. So when someone with martial arts training started using a mech, the first thing they were taught was to visualize their entire nervous system connecting to the machine.
Basically, your weapon became an extension of your body.
The clearer the mental image, the more precisely the mech could mirror your own movements.
For beast types, the image you were supposed to focus on was crawling on all fours.
Yes. Like a baby.
Apparently, most training involved getting down on the ground and crawling on your stomach. If you didn’t want to do that, you were supposed to pretend you were playing horsey or something. But in the end, it all came back to crawling.
While it might look silly, crawling is hardwired into our biological instincts. And since it’s instinctive, it’s apparently easier for the mech to replicate than martial arts, which requires conscious control.
So with all that in mind, how did my mech fare?
Well, I couldn’t exactly envision myself as a quadruped; I simply wasn’t that imaginative. And there was no way I could send neural signals to just the top half and cut off the bottom.
In fact, when I tried to imagine crawling, my upper body simply got in the way.
Pulling off something like a sideways jump with only the lower half while sniping with the upper half wasn’t something a normal person should be capable of doing.
So why could I do it, despite not being particularly gifted?
Because I had a secret weapon: the leftover memories from my past life.
They were only fragments, really. Most of them were faded. But one thing that had stuck with me was robot anime series and video games.
Think about it—how could I possibly forget all that after being reincarnated into a world with actual monsters and robot suits?
That said, I didn’t know any technical details or maintenance knowledge. All I had was a vague, general idea of how to do it. What helped was my knowledge of a certain obscure, by-fans, for-fans robot action game I’d waited more than five years for a sequel to come out for, only to die before it happened. Its name: Armored Core.
Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately), in this world, they hadn’t discovered those special particles, so there was no hovering. But what they did have was powerful springs in the mechs’ legs, so it was pretty much the same idea.
In other words, I’d decided to pilot this thing the way you would control a mech in a video game.
Instead of imagining nerves and muscles, I imagined using a controller (and claw style, at that).
The results spoke for themselves. Even if my brain had forgotten, my body—or my soul, perhaps—remembered.
It’d taken a little time to get back into the groove, and obviously, it wasn’t exactly like the game, so there were some hiccups. But overall, it was working out pretty well.
I could probably even tackle some late-game missions now. Not that I’d be able to clear them necessarily, but it would be worth a try.
That said, I’d be in trouble if an enemy got up close. I could manage, most likely, but in melee combat, where every millimeter counted, there was a chance I might fall behind.
That was fine, though. This mech was designed for long-ranged sniping with high-powered weapons. It wasn’t intended for close combat.
Why not? That was like asking a prototype Guntank to hold up in a melee battle.
Of course, I couldn’t ignore the problem. It was still something that needed to be addressed at some stage down the road.
—Mission Complete—
“Huh? That’s it?”
The simulation had ended while I was still going over all sorts of things in my head. That must have been the last objective.
The final tally was eight large-class and six medium-class monsters eliminated, with twenty-two small-class targets caught up in the incendiary blast radius.
It was just a simulation, so I wasn’t sure how much this would affect my evaluation, but it wasn’t a bad showing. Actually, it was pretty good. More than good.
How could I be so sure? Because I’d been able to take down several large-class enemies. Solo.
Monsters were artificial life-forms created by demons and demonkin, built from raw materials like humans or animals found in demon-infested areas. No one quite knew exactly how they did it, but apparently, it involved implanting the subjects with magicite cores or demonic elements.
The military categorized them into four sizes.
First was the small-class monsters, at under three meters—goblins, wild animals, things like that. These were the most common.
Next were medium-class ones, at three to ten meters. The humanoid variants included things like the bull-headed Gozuki, while beast types were mutated bears, tigers, and the like. Most of the corpses used to build our mechs came from these.
Then there was the large class, at ten to thirty meters. These were the fantasy monsters—yokai-looking creatures like the Gyuki, giant insects, massive beasts. It was also where you started seeing super-strong giants and dragons capable of shooting laser-like beams.
And finally, extra-large—thirty meters and up. Monsters could be a hundred or five hundred meters long, and they would still count as extra large. A few such creatures had been spotted in Europe. Some were manifestations of mythological creatures like Fenrir or Midgardsormr, while others served as carriers for smaller monsters.
Once monsters hit medium class or larger, they started generating something called a “mana field.”
These fields had the power to significantly reduce the effectiveness of attacks that didn’t contain the equivalent amount of force or mana. As such, taking down medium- or large-class monsters with regular weapons that couldn’t channel mana was a considerable hassle. It wasn’t impossible, but it definitely required a lot of effort.
Think of it like a weaker version of an AT Field.
That was why we needed mechs that could channel mana through their attacks via magicite cores.
The bigger the monster, the more of that “demonic element” it possessed and the stronger its mana field was. Their attacks also went from physical to magic, like those laser beams.
Given the circumstances, taking down a large-class monster usually required multiple mechs or specially designed defense units (basically giant cannons on legs that could barely move or defend themselves). They were high-risk, high-reward, and often didn’t come back.
Well, that about covered monsters and mechs.
Basically, whether you were talking about multiple units or specialized defensive weapons, the National Defense Forces expected some level of damage when going up against large-class monsters. So the fact that I’d taken down multiple of them entirely on my own—and come out without a scratch, no less—meant I had no doubt provided them with valuable data.
Then again, that was just my take, and I’d only done a little bit of reading before I enrolled. Maybe soloing big monsters was standard now? Still, even if that was the case…I wanted to think my results weren’t half bad.
Setting aside those wishful thoughts, if I had to point out one area of concern from a test pilot’s perspective, it was that those incendiary rounds were great for cleaning up small fry, but you really had to watch out for the splash zone. The last thing anyone wanted was to pull the trigger and accidentally take out a teammate.
As a suggestion, maybe we should get some armor-piercing rounds for single-target sniping, or we could just slap a tank turret on this thing.
The real problem, though, was what happened if the enemy closed the distance. Even if I put aside thinking about larger monsters for later, I still needed a plan for medium and small ones.
Ideally, the situation would allow for a clean retreat. But if I had no allies around and couldn’t get out on my own, I would effectively be boxed in.
The only solution was close-range combat gear—some kind of melee weapon or mounted gun.
Of course, that would add extra weight on top of what was already a hefty setup. Plus, switching from long-range sniping to close-quarters fighting was far from a speedy transition. If we were talking about mass-producing these units, that complexity might be a hard sell.
Honestly, if you were going to use them for sniping alone, you might as well use modified heavy tanks with specialized cannons. That would be faster and easier.
Regardless, my job here was just to report.
The rest would be for the higher-ups. And for future me.
“Let’s leave it there for now,” I told the mechanic. “This was my first test run, so I’m sure I overlooked a few things. Do you think you could help me tweak it a little?”
“Y-yeah. Of course.”
Huh?
The man looked rattled. Sure, there were some issues, but that was to be expected with a prototype. It wasn’t like I was in live combat, where one mistake could kill me. He should have been pleased; that was why we’d identified the flaws in a safe, controlled simulator.
What’s wrong? Cheer up a little.