Xenophon brought the group to a lot in the rear of the workshop. It was being used as a storehouse for materials, and heaps of raw ore and Iron Bamboo stood high. Something else caught their attention, though.
“That’s─”
As soon as Kuklo saw it, his body stiffened, and a chill came over him like a splash of ice water. A humanoid form over five meters in height towered over him.
Why is one of those monsters here?!
Even as Kuklo reached for the controllers sitting in his holsters, confused, he realized that the figure poised as if to pounce on him was a paper Titan. It seemed to be made of some kind of wood product. He noticed a grain-like texture on its skin when he looked more closely.
“Pretty well made, isn’t it? I thought we’d be able to use it for training purposes,” Xenophon bragged. A terror-inducing level of finish seemed like overdoing it. Still, even though a crude caricature would have done, perhaps a target that closely resembled a Titan was preferable for simulating real combat. Five meters weren’t even enough; Ogre was twice as large as the dummy. That fact drove home what an incredible monster it was.
“All right, now try out the Vertical Maneuvering Equipment,” prompted Xenophon.
“You say that like it’s nothing…” Kuklo pulled the controllers from their holsters and looked up at the dummy. While it had flustered him just moments ago, the imitation was nothing like the real thing now that he observed it calmly. Even then, it was imposing, and Kuklo felt oppressed and outmatched by it merely as it sat there.
“Maneuvering in all three dimensions will be tough, but going in a straight line shouldn’t be beyond you,” Xenophon encouraged matter-of-factly, hardly putting Kuklo at ease.
I can’t kill Ogre without this, though. In order to strike at a Titan’s medulla oblongata, its weakness, he had to overcome the problem of height. Even more so in face of a ten-meter-class Titan.
“By the way, the machine uses gas extracted from Iceburst Stone as fuel. Those cylinders attached to your scabbards send fuel to the main unit.”
Kuklo looked at the scabbards on both sides and noticed cylinders ending in valves.
“This goes without saying, but it stops working if you run out of gas. Be quite careful not to run out─though I guess it won’t be an issue if you never get the hang of it.”
“I’ll try.” Kuklo put his fingers on the controllers’ levers and looked up at the towering Titan.
All right. The second he gathered his resolve and pulled the levers, the Vertical Maneuvering Equipment on his hips let out a bestial howl. Before he had a chance to be surprised, it ejected compressed gas to send two anchors flying like bullets from the devices attached to each side of him. It was almost like an air gun. Like a fang the left anchor bit firmly into the tip of the dummy Titan’s chin, but the right anchor just barely missed its mark.
“You might have hit the target if your right eye was fine. You basically have to eyeball it,” Xenophon quipped. He nodded with a satisfied look on his face, so it must have been a good result for a first attempt.
“I wasn’t aiming for anything in particular…”
“The harness attached to your body works in sync with the firing mechanism.”
“It aims on its own?”
“You just need to look at your target and work the levers on your controllers.”
In other words, the Vertical Maneuvering Equipment would do all the busywork for him. Kuklo returned the anchors to the firing mechanisms and glared once again at the Titan dummy. Though he might not be acquiring his target perfectly without his right eye, he felt he could compensate by making minor adjustments based on where the anchors landed before.
Kuklo stared at the tip of the Titan’s chin and pressed the levers. Both anchors shot out and hit the dummy’s chin, the taut wires attached to them giving him solid feedback.
I’m managing, but that’s all. He wouldn’t have time to modify his aim in a real battle. Using the Vertical Maneuvering Equipment against a Titan would require ever-perfect shots. If an anchor missed its target, he’d either lose his balance and fall to his death, or a Titan would grab and eat him.
As soon as he returned the levers to their original position, the machine began reeling in the wires at a fierce rate. Guided by the anchors, Kuklo soared into the air and headed toward the Titan dummy. The lightning velocity was such that his face distorted from the strain as his body was carried away. A moment’s lapse in concentration and he’d black out for sure.
“Nkk…” Despite letting out a groan, Kuklo gritted his teeth and kept looking ahead. The Titan dummy was already in front of him, and he needed to act right away to avoid a collision. He worked the levers in a panic, but his momentum not letting up, he continued to head straight into the dummy.
Damn it! he cursed and braced himself for impact. An instant later, a shock ran through his body as if a horse had galloped headlong into him.
“Ow…” The force of it seemed capable of pulverizing every bone in his body, but his injuries were not so bad as to render him immobile. Kuklo grimaced and tried moving his limbs and did not notice any problems in particular. His body was surely starting to bruise, but that was all.
I guess you can call that a success… It was, so long as the goal was to travel to a high place.
“You’re pretty good at it!”
Cardina clapped in praise, but Kuklo’s performance was hardly expert, given that he was now swinging in the air five meters above the ground. Unable to pilot the machine, he had simply been jerked up by it. A baby bird did a better job of flying.
But I can kill Titans with this. The issue was getting to their weakness. Getting behind a rampaging Titan and wielding his single-edged swords to carve out its medulla oblongata necessitated making full use of the Vertical Maneuvering Equipment.
Kuklo began to consider the details of defeating a Titan, but high in the air was no place to be tackling the subject. When he tried to loosen the wires to return to the ground, however, heaven and earth abruptly switched places. He started plunging headfirst before this even sank into him.
Oops… As soon as he noticed, he squirmed his body around like a cat. While the landing was not on his head, it was not a soft one, either. Kuklo rolled along the ground.
“Are you all right?!” Sharle asked in a panicked tone.
Kuklo replied with a smile, but the tumble had covered his fresh uniform in dust. He could expect more fresh bruises to form on his body, too.
“If you’d fallen on your head, you’d have been greeted by an angel instead of us. Being sent to heaven by Angel-made gear,” Xenophon deadpanned the grim words, “would be no laughing matter.”
“You’ll lose your balance and flip over unless you maintain your posture using your entire body,” Jorge said. “It’s fundamentally different from fighting on the ground. Hammer that into your mind.”
The problem, though, was that putting the idea into practice promised to be a challenge, as Xenophon elaborated: “Your senses need to adapt to coping with all three dimensions. Humans live on the ground, so we end up thinking about everything from a ground-based perspective. Naturally. But if you’re going to use the Vertical Maneuvering Equipment, you have to toss all of those notions out.”
“I think I get it. Or maybe not…”
“Well, it is a revolutionary change I’m asking you to make. Getting the hang of it will require some trigger.”
“Like what?”
“I think the fastest way is to learn with your body. And fortunately, yours seems durable.”
“It’ll break before I ever learn.”
“Well, yes, it would be inconvenient if the Vertical Maneuvering Equipment broke.”
“No, I meant my body.”
Kuklo sighed and looked again at the Titan statue, a fake only five meters in height whose oppressive presence still reminded him of the real deal.
Ogre is twice as big as this thing, too… Not only that, his enemy’s movements were quick, its stamina inexhaustible. Add to that powers of regeneration in a league of their own and you had a truly irrational monster. Standing against one was nothing short of reckless.
But I have to. And to do so he needed to be able to impose his will on the wild stallion that was the Vertical Maneuvering Equipment.
Rising to his feet, Kuklo stared daggers at the Titan dummy and gripped his controllers tight. Without pause, he kicked off of the ground and leapt into the air, then pressed the controller levers.