In that case, maybe the answer was to not pay him?
But that wasn’t right, either.
If they promoted him without offering any financial reward, Keita might feel undervalued. And then what? Another country would no doubt make an offer. His sister’s safety would be guaranteed, and the payout would be massive.
He’d probably take it… Ugh. If we give him the money, he might lose his motivation. If we don’t, someone else might poach him. A kid with no pride as a soldier, no sense of duty as a noble, and this much power… What a nightmare…
“Well, let’s put that aside for now. I’d like to hear what his homeroom teacher, Major Kuga, has to say on the matter.”
“Agreed.”
At that moment, a very unfortunate meeting for Major Shizuka Kuga was officially scheduled.
“Now, regarding your request for personnel support to be dispatched from the other factions…”
“Yes, ma’am!”
“We’re willing to reallocate personnel from the other divisions, starting with the Sixth and the Eighth.”
“Understood!”
Neither Asaka nor Ogata believed the National Defense Forces were so weak that they couldn’t hold the line without Keita.
What had made the last battle so dangerous was that they’d been outnumbered—or at best, evenly matched—and couldn’t risk an all-out counteroffensive from the enemy. That was why Shibano had hesitated.
Their usual strategy of amassing overwhelming numbers and blasting the enemy wasn’t flawed in and of itself. That was a matter of doctrine, not competence.
So when Shibano had proposed pulling in gunners and defenders from other divisions, Ogata had fully backed the plan and brought it to Asaka.
And she’d agreed immediately.
With the Third Division already decimated, she wasn’t about to risk losing the Second because she’d withheld reinforcements.
Besides, once word got out about the scale of the enemy’s assault, many in the other divisions had realized they also needed more real-life combat experience. That was another reason the request for reinforcements had been so readily approved.
Good. Whatever the other divisions’ motives, this ensures he won’t have to charge in alone again, at least.
“So… That’s it for the formalities, yes?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Ogata, visibly relieved that the worst of it was over, let out a quiet sigh.
Seeing that, Asaka finally relaxed her shoulders as well. “Now then, Ogata. There’s something I’ve been dying to ask you.”
“Yes. I think I already know what it is. To tell you the truth, I have no idea, either.”
“Oh? You don’t know? All the more reason to ask, then. This thing… What in the world is it?”
Asaka, reverting to the upperclassman personality Ogata remembered from his time in the academy, pointed to the footage of the battle. To Special Ensign Keita Kawakami’s feats in action.
The hybrid mech he was piloting was doing something clearly, indisputably wrong. Something that defied every bit of conventional military logic.
“…It’s flying, right? I’m not crazy. That thing is definitely flying.”
Yes. It was flying.
A machine that weighed over thirty tonnes.
A black, insect-like beast with four legs and a grotesquely muscular torso, unnerving just to look at, was somehow flying through the air.
“How exactly is it doing that?”
Of course, Asaka had been briefed beforehand. She knew the hybrid unit made frequent use of jumps to facilitate horizontal movement, and she was aware of the provisional adoption of the Command System as an effective method for operating the mass-production model based on it.
But no one had said anything about it extending its airtime by emitting some strange light from its back and legs after jumping, or changing direction midair, or suppressing recoil from its heavy cannon. At the very least, Asaka hadn’t received reports about any of those things.
The first time she’d seen the footage, Asaka hadn’t been able to stop herself from muttering, “What am I even looking at here…?”
It was unfathomable. And Asaka, unable to hold it in, had to react.
Still, Ogata had already been down this road.
“Well, according to Mogami, the hybrid model isn’t equipped with a flight mechanism. And when he confirmed this with Special Ensign Kawakami—excuse me, Ensign Kawakami—he said it was simply employing numerous jumps.”
“Come on. It’s clearly flying.”
“That’s a reasonable impression, but the ensign repeatedly insisted they were jumps. These were his exact words, or so I’m told: ‘Those were jumps. Yeah. The mana discharge just extended my airtime and helped me change direction… You thought I was flying? Ha-ha-ha. Good one. The unit doesn’t even have a flight module. You don’t call what a sugar glider does flying, do you? So no, it wasn’t flight. If anything, it was hopping. Or leaping. All right? Leaping, not flying. There’s a big difference.’”
“He sounds very insistent. Mogami is an engineer—he can’t give up there! Who cares whether it’s leaping or flying? If he’s doing it unconsciously, then it’s instinct, no? What kind of instincts does he have, to move like that?”
“I agree, but I’m not the one you should be asking.”
“…I get that, but come on. There has to be a limit to this.”
Indeed. The logic, bizarre as it was, wasn’t entirely beyond comprehension.
The unit clearly had more than enough power to take down four large and numerous medium and small monsters all on its own, so maybe it did have enough mana stored up to pull off that kind of thing.
It was a strange way to use mana, but if you thought of it as being based on the same principles as how large or mid-sized monsters fired their energy blasts, then it could stand to reason.
But just having mana—or the fact that monsters could do it—didn’t mean pilots could. And more importantly, what kind of mental state did it take to instinctively emit blasts of mana from your back and legs without even thinking?
What were Keita’s mental processes while piloting the unit?
And if that was really the mechanism, then didn’t that mean other units could do the same thing, too?
If so, how, exactly?
Was there a way to stabilize the output?
There were plenty of other things she wanted to question, but Asaka understood that grilling Ogata, who wasn’t directly involved, would get her nowhere.
But she also knew she couldn’t casually summon Keita—a mere student and ensign—when she was royalty, head of General Headquarters, and a full general, especially not just to satisfy her curiosity and nitpick something that had nothing to do with his behavior or performance.
And yet as a soldier with a decent amount of knowledge and experience, she also couldn’t leave it alone.
What do I call this? It’s like emotional indigestion or something. Yes. For now, I’ll have to have Kuga give us a thorough report! She’s probably closest to the situation.
…Later, Major Shizuka Kuga would be saddled with one headache after another simply for being Keita’s homeroom teacher, and she would end up subjecting Class A in its entirety to a special training program. But that’s a story for another time.