First, let me give you a general overview of the Second Savior Project.
It all started a few decades ago, when a child was born to a group known as the Symbiosis Faction.
One day, the child’s parents decided to perform a ritual that had unfortunately become common practice among members of the Symbiosis Faction. It involved offering a sacrifice to summon a demon, with the goal of turning a human into an intelligent monster known as a demonkin.
The child was chosen as the sacrifice, and a piece of magicite—a magic crystal left behind by monsters when they die—was implanted into them.
If a demon responded to the summoning, or if the child absorbed the magicite and became a demonkin, the ritual would have been considered a success.
However, before the ritual could be completed, a group from an opposing organization stormed in. The child, desperately resisting the magicite’s influence, was left behind as their parents and other Symbiosis Faction members were killed.
The child, writhing in pain from the ritual, was rescued by the group.
Thanks to their naturally strong vitality, the child—who should have lost both their mind and body to the magicite and turned into a mindless monster—did the unthinkable instead. They absorbed the crystal.
This shocked those in charge of the child’s rescuers—the upper echelons of the National Defense Forces.
The child gained unique powers from the magicite. And so, for the sake of the nation—or rather, for the future of humanity—they willingly cooperated with the military and participated in a series of experiments.
Over the next decade, the military was able to repurpose the data gathered from the child’s voluntary experiments. Eventually, we succeeded in developing a relatively safe form of artificial magicite.
That was the greatest achievement of the Second Savior Project.
Today, those compatible with this artificial magicite serve as the core of our national defense.
No magicite-compatible individual can ignore the contributions of the original child, who made it all possible.
Moving on, the artificial magicite developed by the National Defense Forces serves two main functions.
The first is that it acts as a kind of pseudo–item box.
The mechanism behind how it functions isn’t fully understood, but the magicite can retrieve items linked to the user’s mech.
Mechs are equipped with a container, and any food and water stored in there can be easily accessed, making it much simpler to resupply. You can try this out for yourself. It’s especially useful to fill your item box with mana-infused water, as this can even serve as fuel.
However, be aware—once an item is absorbed by the magicite, it becomes infused with the crystal’s mana. This means supplies can only be consumed by whoever put them there, and fuel will be rejected if it’s used in another mech. Simply put, it only boosts your own survival capabilities, so make sure you remember that.
There’s one more important thing to point out. The pseudo–item box doesn’t have a hard limit on size or weight, but the user still bears a portion of its weight.
Specifically, one-thousandth of the total weight stored is added to your own load. If you store ten tonnes, for example, you’ll end up carrying an extra ten kilograms. So be smart about what you put away, as overloading yourself will only wear you down faster.
The magicite’s second function is that it serves as the key to your mech.
Essentially, mechs designed for fighting larger monsters are made from the biological components of a variety of different monsters—meaning that no matter how advanced the mechs are, at the end of the day, they’re just stitched-together corpses. To make them move, they need a pilot carrying a magicite crystal.
Technically, mechs can move without a pilot if they have a magicite crystal; however, they just go berserk until they’re destroyed. You’re basically giving fuel to a corpse without a brain, so this is a natural consequence.
Keep in mind, though, that this can actually be a very effective form of sabotage. This is why you should never let anyone but yourself or designated maintenance personnel near your mech.
That concludes the basic explanation of magicite and the mechs that use them.
For more in-depth information, speak to the commanding officer of your assigned unit.
Now that you have successfully adapted to the magicite and become one of humanity’s saviors, we sincerely hope you all find yourselves in a battle worth fighting.