Needless to say, Keita’s actions weren’t born out of some grim sense of duty like Shibano assumed, nor had he lost control after fear got the better of him.
He’d done it simply because it was the scheduled time for the operation to begin.
“Target confirmed. Moving to eliminate!”
“Bweh!”
For one thing, Keita had just entered the military academy, so he had no clue how many monsters usually showed up during an assault. So even when more than ten large and over a hundred medium-class enemies had appeared, he’d simply thought that was the norm.
If anything, his half-baked knowledge of mech anime led him to think, Compared with the thousands of alien enemies you get in those shows—millions, sometimes—this is nothing.
“Talk about spoiled for choice.”
“Brp!”
Of course, he understood that being outnumbered was dangerous. If HQ had actually ordered him to wipe them all out solo, he probably would have screamed, “Screw that!” and fired a warning shot at the command center.
But right now, there were sixty mech pilots, over a hundred gunners, hundreds of tanks, and thousands of troops. They had more on their side than the enemy did.
What was there to be afraid of?
“Don’t worry, I’ll make it quick!”
“Bwam!”
He did find it odd that, even though the briefing said the others would open with a synchronized barrage before he advanced, no one else was moving. But he figured they must have been prioritizing his test run.
“Doo-doo-doo!”
“Wraaah!”
And if he was the priority, then he might as well focus on the test.
So Keita darted side to side, launching an assault on the monsters.
“No way this latest model’s going to lose! Let’s gooooo!”
“Kadoom!”
Naturally, he targeted the biggest ones first. After all, the whole point of the hybrid unit he was piloting was to take down large-class monsters solo. That was what it was built for, so it would be rude not to use it for that.
So he fired and fired and fired.
“Come and get some!”
“Dwooh!”
The biggest of the large-class monsters were, unsurprisingly, incredibly tough.
They were covered in muscle just to support their massive size—and that wasn’t even taking into account that they were enhanced with mana. Add to that their constant mana field and their firepower, which was capable of vaporizing a mech or tank in one hit, and it was obvious they were no joke.
“You bastards don’t deserve to see another day!”
“Mrrgh!”
They shouldn’t have been easy. But Keita was mowing them down like it was nothing.
Statistically, there was no way he should have been able to dominate like this. And yet he remained untouched while systematically hunting down the large-class monsters.
How? Simple—he and his mech had been growing stronger, and the monsters hadn’t.
“Your aim’s off!”
“Kabrah!”
After the last battle, Keita had trained more in the simulator to get used to the hybrid unit.
And the mech was always stored in his magicite core except during maintenance, so it had been continuously optimizing itself to respond more precisely to his commands.
As a result, its recoil absorption during firing, its landing stability, its shock dampening, and even its aerial control had all improved.
The monsters, though?
Sure, their return fire was fast and accurate. But that was it.
“Good aim. Too bad it’s predictable!”
“Hngh!”
Their shots didn’t track or home in on him; so as long as he moved the moment they fired, he could dodge everything. And since they only attacked after visually confirming their target, they couldn’t react to sudden changes in direction.
Plus, since the monsters lacked any real intelligence, they couldn’t anticipate where their opponent would be with their shots or lay traps. That meant Keita, who was constantly moving midair while firing, was essentially untouchable.
The only real threat was the sheer number of mid-sized monsters. Their suppressive fire might have posed a problem, but even that was failing under the current conditions.
Because Keita was prioritizing the large monsters and wiping them out one by one.
To the mid-sized and small-sized monsters, it was like towering thirty-meter buildings were collapsing right beside them. Sniping was the least of their concerns.
If they were as big as the ones being taken down, they might have been able to ignore the friendly fire and go on fighting. In fact, the larger ones were retaliating against Keita.
But the fact that they were large enough to avoid friendly fire also meant they were easy to see and even easier to hit.
“And you’re the last of the big guys!”
“Dwaoh!”
“Gotcha!”
Ten large-class monsters, each said to be worth ten mediums, were wiped out in under ten minutes.
“Next.”
But Keita wasn’t done. There were still countless mediums and smalls left.
“Hmm. The large monsters’ corpses are making for some nice cover and obstacles.”
The monsters’ ranged attacks were mostly laser-like, straight-line shots. So unless the remaining mediums maneuvered around the corpses, they wouldn’t be able to draw a bead on Keita.
Of course, the same applied to him. He could aim at the large ones because they stood out, but the mediums were all under ten meters tall.
It seemed like his onslaught might be over…but that was assuming Keita could only fire in a straight line.
“This is all part of the plan!”
His hybrid unit wasn’t just armed with a 120mm smoothbore cannon for direct fire—it also had a howitzer for indirect fire.
By design, the howitzer was just a backup weapon meant for thinning out mid-sized and small-sized monsters. But either the engineers had rethought their strategy after it had overperformed in his debut, or the mech itself had leveled up enough from that battle to carry something heavier. In the process, things had gotten a little carried away.
Now the gun prepared by Mogami Heavy Industries was a full-on 155mm heavy howitzer. (For comparison, last time, it had been a “light” 80mm howitzer.)
“I won’t stop firing until the barrel melts!”
The previous howitzer was strong enough to take down mediums. But not only was the caliber bigger on this one, the amount of mana packed into each shell was also on an entirely different level.
The firepower raining down on the monsters, which clustered among the corpses of their larger brethren, was nothing short of catastrophic.
“Time to wipe this place clean of monsters!”
“Groooaaarrr!”
“There we go!” Keita declared as the sky lit up with a relentless barrage of incendiary shells. He fired until the barrel of his howitzer was glowing red-hot.
Watching the monsters writhe in the flames he had unleashed, Keita gave a satisfied nod.
“…”
And so, in less than ten minutes, the black mech had transformed the battlefield into a flaming hellscape, leaving the entire force of onlooking soldiers completely stunned.
“Hmm? Oh, I’m out of ammo. Command, this is Special Ensign Kawakami of Task Unit 2099. Requesting permission to return for resupply.”
“…”
Having expended all his ammo before the gun overheated, he radioed for permission to temporarily withdraw.
He did have close-range weapons, and he understood that testing those was also part of the trial, but even Keita wasn’t crazy enough to jump into a sea of fire just to try them out.
That said, falling back on his own could be seen as desertion, so he’d radioed HQ not to retreat but to return for more munitions.
Still, the expected “Permission granted” didn’t come right away.
“Command, do you copy?”
Did I jump around too much and break the radio? Or is Mogami trying to force a resistance or melee-combat test on me…?
If it was the former, well, accidents happened. You live and learn.
But if it was the second… Screw him.
Keita could only imagine that sadist grinning somewhere in the background.
“Command, please respond.”
If they give me some sort of unfair order, I’m firing a stray shell into HQ.
Even as he suppressed a growing urge to commit a minor war crime, Keita waited for a response. Not that his paranoia was warranted, though—the command center was simply frozen in shock at everything he’d just done.
Thankfully, even the greatest shock faded a little with enough time and repeated prodding.
“…W-we’re reading you! Roger that! We’ll take it from here!”
“Huh? Oh, okay. Got it.”
Unaware of their own mistake, the command center issued new orders.
“All units, attack! Standard models, stay on defense! Beast types, surround the battlefield! Don’t let a single one get away!”
“Roger!”
The interception forces, waiting on standby, swallowed their shock and sprang into action.
High on adrenaline, Command didn’t realize that telling Keita he didn’t need to go back onto the battlefield again meant they had effectively given him permission to reteat.
If Keita had been the type to chase glory, he might have blown up at them and yelled, “Are you trying to hog all the credit?!”
But luckily, he wasn’t like that. Deep down, the only thing he wanted was to live a peaceful life.
“So…they’ve got it from here? Which means I’m done, right?”
What had looked like a hopeless battle to everyone else had just been another test to Keita.
And everything had happened in a mere ten minutes.
For his standpoint, hearing Command say “We’ll take it from here” was like clocking in, doing ten minutes of work, then getting told, “Nice job. Go on home.”
If he was being paid by the hour, he might have complained. But the military paid monthly, with the occasional performance bonus.
“Not sure what’s going on, but lucky me, I guess.”
Officially off duty now, Keita pulled a water bottle from his magicite storage, taking a sip as the battlefield echoed with constant cannon fire and monster screams.
“I never knew how good water tastes when you’re watching other people do all the work,” he murmured under his breath.