The blast from that plasma compression cannon was still too loud, and it alarmed the base.
In the end, Kouzuki Yuuko forcefully brushed it off and covered it up.
For now, she had no intention of exposing these machines outright. Otherwise, tomorrow's operation might not proceed smoothly.
Because some people would immediately set their sights on machines like these and try to obtain them.
They would never accept any one side suddenly gaining machines this absurd, creating such an enormous technological gap. To seize them, all kinds of schemes and conspiracies would likely come sweeping in at once.
The human world had already been driven to this point, yet humanity still wanted to fight among itself?
That was exactly how it was. This world was simply that rotten.
Humanity still could not truly unite.
Especially those countries that had not yet been threatened by the BETA, or had only faced a minor threat. They could not stand seeing other nations possess power that surpassed their technology, so they would do everything possible to sabotage or steal it.
Sometimes, seeing humanity drag one another down made Yuuko think that maybe the world should just end already.
Originally, Yuuko would only have focused on her own field. As for political power, she had always been too lazy to bother with it.
But now, it seemed that if she did not use some methods to gain power of her own, it would be difficult for her to conduct proper transactions with him.
Thus, half a month ago, she had officially begun extending her feelers into a field she herself had once despised.
She had also set up interference long ago to keep anyone from noticing this place.
When they came here, she had said she was conducting a special experiment and warned them not to casually send other machines in. If something happened, she would not be responsible.
As for whether the base would listen, it probably would.
After all, during the previous test of the XG-70b Susanoo II, a few idiots who refused to listen had gotten themselves killed by approaching and being caught up in it.
However, many people were watching her, especially those who desperately wanted to push the Alternative V plan.
Those people would keep staring at her, ready to seize on any problem she caused so they could suppress Alternative IV.
With the commotion here, those people would definitely still find a way to infiltrate and take a look.
In that case, if they continued training here, they would inevitably be discovered.
They had no choice but to change locations.
They had already set out for a remote uninhabited island, where they could torment that island instead.
"Then let's head back, Kasumi. While we're at it, help me see which malicious bastards have shown up this time."
…
Inside the cockpit of XV104 Battlesuit Unit One, Takamura Yui removed the last triangular piece of intimate clothing from her body and placed it inside a storage compartment beside her.
At the same time, she took out a combat suit similar to the ones they wore when piloting TSFs.
The difference was that the suit in her hands was even thinner than her TSF pilot suit. It was like a skintight rubber suit as thin as stockings.
Only the final three fasteners felt rather subtle when she secured them.
"Mm!"
The C-shaped fastener released a faint current the instant it clicked into place, nearly making her let out a strange sound.
And this combat suit was genuinely suggestive. Somehow, it felt even more provocative than being seen naked.
Fortunately, there was another outer combat suit to wear over it. It was better described as an exoskeleton suit, and it also came equipped with a helmet.
Inside the cockpit, there was no need to wear the helmet right now. But if something went wrong with the machine, putting on the helmet and activating the combat suit's survival functions would allow her to survive for a time in harsh environments, such as high heat or oxygen deprivation.
After putting it on, she confirmed everything according to the prompt. Her body was then magnetically locked to the pilot seat. It was equivalent to being strapped in by a safety belt, preventing her body from being shaken back and forth while piloting the machine.
"A master-slave follow-motion battlesuit system?"
Yui murmured to herself.
After the explanation, she also understood just how different this machine's operation was from that of a TSF.
With this system, in theory, any movement a human could make, the machine could also perform.
And making those movements did not require complicated button inputs. Instead, it would follow the movements of her limbs.
Right now, however, this XV104 battlesuit was not being operated by her. It had been taken over by the larger machine and was following it in flight toward an island for testing.
Yes, this thing could actually fly.
Most importantly, flying to that island would normally consume half of a TSF's fuel.
Then how much fuel would this thing use to fly there?
No. This battlesuit probably was not powered by chemical fuel.
Energy shields, plasma beams, and plasma cannon fire. Chemical fuel could not provide the energy required for high-output attacks like that.
She thought of one possibility. Its power source might be the same as the XG-70b Susanoo II's.
About half an hour later, a protruding point finally appeared on the empty sea horizon.
"That is the island, Mr. Kain."
Jinguuji Marimo confirmed that the island growing larger before them was their destination.
She was not in an XV104 battlesuit. Instead, she was inside the cockpit of the larger battlesuit with Mr. Kain.
"Good."
One minute later, the Supremacy Battlesuit piloted by Kain and the four Riptide Battlesuits landed on a relatively open patch of ground on the island.
Next came instruction on how to pilot them.
This was different from the SEED world. While the Ho229 also used a similar control system, the master-slave follow-motion battlesuit system, the Ho229 was primarily used for flight operations. It did not need to run around much on the ground, so operating it was simpler and did not require his personal instruction.
In the Muv-Luv world, humanity had lost air superiority and could not fly freely through the skies. That meant they needed to maneuver on the ground, and there was still a certain level of difficulty to operating the machines.
To help them learn quickly, they needed to share his operational sensations.
This so-called sensation-sharing meant that, for example, when he controlled the machine to turn around and completed a 180-degree turn in one second, they would feel how much force he twisted his waist with inside the cockpit.
That twisting force would be transmitted to the students through the teaching mode.
It was like guiding them hand in hand through piloting.
Of course, this required attaching sensation-sharing equipment to their bodies.
There were five pieces of sensation-sharing equipment in total. Two resembled over-the-knee boots, one for each leg. Two resembled long patent-leather gloves, one for each hand. The last resembled a posture-correcting back brace.
These five pieces transmitted the movements he made to the wearer, allowing them to understand roughly what amount of force and what kind of motion would make the machine perform a certain action.
To wear those five pieces, the trainee could not wear the second-layer combat suit. She could only wear that stocking-thin rubber suit.
This really was a little too likely to distract the instructor.
Even worse, the person wearing the sensation-sharing equipment had to be in front of him. The equipment could not be detached independently. It was part of the cockpit's integrated structure, and after putting it on, the trainee would be positioned in front of him in an extremely awful posture.
This was definitely something 6O had designed on purpose. It could clearly have been moved behind him, yet it had deliberately been placed right in front of him.
So what kind of posture was it?
There was an anime known as Darling in the Franxx, where the machines had to be piloted by one man and one woman.
The woman piloted from the front, in a posture where her upper body was almost lying forward while her hips were raised behind her.
The four XV104-model battlesuits, known as Riptides, currently looked rather ridiculous.
They were like toddlers learning to walk. Their steps were unsteady, and if they were not careful, they would fall over.
However, this situation did not last even three minutes before Unit One could barely walk.
At a glance, it seemed easy to get started and freely control the battlesuit's movements.
Watching this, Marimo began to wonder whether she really needed to undergo sensation-sharing instruction herself.
Looking at Yui, who had managed to walk in such a short time, Marimo hesitated over whether she should end the lesson and simply get into a machine to explore the controls herself.
But after thinking of Yuuko's warning that she must listen to Mr. Kain, she decided to focus properly on sensing his operation.
So she also tried not to think about the fact that she was currently wearing a rather subtle combat suit and positioned in front of him in a terrible posture.
Hm?
The machine had begun performing complex movements. It was jumping forward, left, and right along a lightning-like path.
The sensation transmitted by that motion made her legs move along with it, which meant her hips were shaking violently in front of Mr. Kain.
No. What was she thinking? Hadn't she told herself not to think about that?
Concentrate. Focus on the amplitude of the tremors being shared with her. This told her how much force was required. At the same time, she carefully sensed her toes, because there were slight changes there as well.
For example, pressing the big toe forward in a motion that looked like curling it inward would trigger the micro-thruster on the machine's foot.
The strength of that toe curl was equivalent to how far the accelerator was pressed down. The harder the force, the greater the thrust.
In addition, there were also certain hand gestures. She needed to understand which function each gesture activated.
As for why she had to learn to pilot this when she was clearly the pilot of the XG-70b Susanoo Mk. IV, it was naturally for contingencies.
If a special situation arose and the pilot had to be replaced, she also needed to know how to operate this type of machine.
Half an hour later, Marimo was already piloting in practice.
Although she still could not operate as flexibly as Mr. Kain and still could not perform special maneuvers properly, ordinary movements were mostly no problem.
Next came operating the two waist-mounted quad cannons.
Originally, there was an intelligent targeting system, but when engaging targets, if there were too many targets, intelligent targeting might prioritize the nearest ones.
At times like that, if some special individuals among the many targets needed to be attacked first, manual control would be required.
So Marimo switched to manual operation and fired at the target she had manually calibrated ahead of her.
In an instant, eight warheads shot out at supersonic speed. Across a distance of one thousand meters, they struck faster than the blink of an eye.
There was no explosion like she had imagined. The area that was hit simply melted locally.
Clearly, the destructive effect of these warheads was the same as the missiles from before.
After testing them a few times, she moved on to shooting while running, and her accuracy while running dropped considerably.
As for the three giant cannons on the head of this machine, they were not within the scope of the test. Their power was simply too enormous. According to Mr. Kain, they were more than ten times stronger than the plasma cannon mode of the smaller battlesuits.
However, aside from the two waist-mounted quad cannons, the waist also housed two particle accelerators, particle beam weapons. They were the same type of beam guns mounted on the XV104.
In addition to firing particle beams, they could also change the gun body's form and compress a plasma sphere as a projectile before launching it.
Those two particle beam weapons were permitted for use.
After she depleted the ammunition in both quad cannons, her training ended. She would disembark and activate nearly half of the smaller machine's systems.
Another member would come up and learn next.
"Takamura Yui, you're up!"
"Understood. Coming, Instructor."
Yui climbed down from her own machine and headed for the cockpit of the larger one to receive instruction.
When she arrived in the cockpit and was told how to put on the sensor equipment, her face instantly stiffened.
Th-this really was far too embarrassing.
Biting her lip, she still removed her outer suit, exposing the thin combat suit underneath.
It felt more humiliating than wearing nothing at all.
But this was not the time to be delicate. Nor was it the time to be shy.
Time was tight. There was no time to waste on these things, and no time for her to explore how to operate the machine by herself.
Although she could now roughly run, walk, and jump, her current operation was still less agile than how she handled a TSF.
She still had to avenge her comrades. She had to avenge the cadets from her same class who had all been killed after Kyoto was invaded by the BETA.
She had to avenge nearly one-third of her countrymen who had been slaughtered.
The flames of revenge overwhelmed her embarrassment, and she positioned herself in the sensor equipment, assuming an indecent posture before Instructor Kain.
She secretly glanced at him. He was not paying attention to her at all. That made her feel relieved, but it also nurtured a sense of guilt.
Because that secret glance of hers meant she had not trusted him. She had doubted his character and suspected that he might look at her in an inappropriate way.
In the blink of an eye, she qualified and disembarked after taking ten minutes longer than Instructor Jinguuji.
Meanwhile, Instructor Jinguuji, operating her own Riptide Unit One, had already reached a level of performance comparable to her handling of a TSF.
Next-
"Isumi Michiru, you're up."
Marimo was not choosing people at random. She was selecting whoever was currently best at figuring out the controls on their own. That way, they would learn faster and return sooner to master the smaller machines.
There were still differences between operating the smaller and larger machines, but once they were familiar with operating the larger one, they could quickly grasp the operating rhythm of the smaller one as well.
In the blink of an eye, the instruction for each of them ended.
Marimo personally took forty minutes. Yui took fifty minutes. Isumi Michiru took sixty-three minutes. Suzumiya Haruka took sixty-nine minutes. Hayase Mitsuki took seventy-seven minutes.
By the time all the instruction was finished, the sky had entered night.
Afterward, Marimo operated the larger machine while the other four familiarized themselves with operating the smaller machines for one hour. Then they spent another hour attempting mutual combat drills, bringing the time to past eight in the evening.
There were roughly eighteen hours left until tomorrow's 1400 operation.
Now, it was time to rest and eat.
So when Marimo and the others saw the steaming hot food in front of them, they froze.
No matter how they looked at it, this was not food that could have been cooked on this island, right?
They had not seen him leave either. In that case, had he prepared it in advance and stored it on the larger machine?
Was he just reheating it now?
But it looked very fresh, as if it had just been made.
There were also all kinds of drinks, fruit, and desserts?
Had they come here for a vacation?
"…Eat."
"What are you all standing around for? Eat your fill so we can continue training."
Marimo spoke as well. Otherwise, the others would have remained somewhat restrained.
Only after she began eating first did the others follow.
In the blink of an eye, the meal was over. Just as everyone's mental state was at its most relaxed and comfortable-
"Instructor Kain, what power source does that machine use?"
Isumi Michiru could not help asking out of curiosity.
The next second, she immediately received Instructor Jinguuji's death glare. Cold sweat broke out across her body, and she wanted to slap herself.
That was probably classified information she could not casually ask about. She had made a mistake.
"A Nova reactor."
Huh? He could answer that?
But Marimo's gaze on her became even sharper.
"It is an antimatter-driven power system. The energy it produces is close to the scale of a small star."
He then added this explanation.
It was actually powered by antimatter?
Wasn't this technology far too advanced?
Wait. What had the second half of that sentence been?
Everyone's faces changed sharply, because they unconsciously realized the terrifying meaning of his latter statement.
The energy it produced was close to the scale of a small star.
(End of Chapter)
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