The Tutorial's Final Boss
The final boss of the tutorial was the Giganoid GK-7. Commonly called the White Tiger-class, its identification name was Bagira. Approximately 9.8 meters in height, 160 tons in weight, and an output of 27 kilian. Its massive frame slowly rose from the trailer. The sight was nothing short of a miracle crafted by human hands in the modern age. Since it was a training unit, parts of the control equipment—including the regulator—along with navigation systems and firepower armaments had been stripped out, but its output matched the latest specifications. Han Seo-ah, serving as the operator, possessed the top control ability among all female cadets. It was the ideal condition for a first deployment.
Yet Lee Hyun-woo bit down hard on his lip.
“That bastard…”
What, run if it gets dangerous? Plenty of other people can handle it even if it’s not me? The words scraped at his insides.
“Hyun-woo, your sync rate is bad. Are you feeling sick somewhere?”
On the console monitor, a slight wrinkle formed between Han Seo-ah’s brows on her beautiful face.
“Huh? Really?”
“Yeah… a little… more than usual.”
Giganoids are fundamentally controlled by female operators. The male combatants only issue commands on top of that. The actual piloting sensation was similar to a woman moving her body while a man clung close and manipulated it from behind. Because of that, the sync rate between the man and woman was incredibly important. In a low sync state, movements grew sluggish and couldn’t even produce half the unit’s true performance. Worse, if the combatant forced movements while sync was poor, the female operator would feel tremendous strain—sometimes even outright pain.
That was why combatants were evaluated not only on their Giganoid piloting skills but also on their VP—Viril Performance—score, which measured how well they could raise sync rates with women. Lee Hyun-woo stood at the absolute top in both areas.
Normally, anyway.
Right now, Lee Hyun-woo was agitated. If today’s enemies had been nothing special, he might have managed somehow. But today, an opponent they could not defeat was about to appear.
I watched the Giganoids move from a safe distance away.
“Fuck… that’s cool as hell.”
It was far bigger than what I’d pictured while reading the novel, and it moved with a nimbleness that completely defied its size. The feeling was overwhelming. This was the Giganoid’s first sortie. A flashy debut should have been the standard. But the author of this novel was a total mech-illiterate.
“When the main mech shows up, it should at least win the first couple of times with absolute overwhelming power… clueless bastard.”
Every mech story does it. They emphasize the protagonist unit’s strength by having it dominate completely at the start. But this novel’s author is a fucking idiot.
Following the operator’s call signs, the rift gradually crumbled inward as monsters began pouring out from inside. Their size dwarfed anything human. Without Giganoids, the military and a massive number of hunters would have needed to launch a full-scale raid. But unlike our Giganoids with their artistic blend of curves and straight lines, the monsters had more biological designs, so they didn’t feel cool at all. If anything, they were kind of gross.
Our Giganoids were way bigger and way cooler. The units, twice the size of the 4-to-5-meter monsters, began charging straight at them. Their speed was impossibly fast for such enormous masses of metal. The basic armament of a Giganoid is a sword. People might wonder why a cutting-edge mech uses swords instead of guns or cannons, but it’s because attacks without supernatural power have their effectiveness drastically reduced against monsters, who recover almost instantly. A Giganoid, however, is essentially a lump of steel packed full of supernatural energy. The swords they wielded were the most effective means of attack against monsters.
The giant figures leaped into the air, stabbing and slashing. Simple, but the most effective method against these creatures. Of course the collateral damage to the surroundings was severe, but once monsters appeared, deploying Giganoids was the approach that minimized overall losses the most.
Lee Hyun-woo was fighting well. The other two units were also piloted by outstanding cadets, so their performance was flawless. Still, the one that stood out most was Bagira, carrying Lee Hyun-woo and Han Seo-ah. Yet Lee Hyun-woo was still nothing more than a complete beginner on his first real deployment.
“That stupid bastard.”
When the enormous sword in Bagira’s grip began to burn with blinding light, I clicked my tongue. Lee Hyun-woo had entered Brave mode. I’d warned him not to use it. Sigh.
...To be fair, I should hear his side of it too. Lee Hyun-woo looked like he was fighting well, but on the cockpit console screen, Han Seo-ah was moaning in terrible pain. Forcing movements with such poor sync must have felt like her body was being torn apart. The fact that he could still move like that despite the terrible sync showed that Lee Hyun-woo really was a monster. Han Seo-ah didn’t let any moans escape. She was enduring it. But the sight of her tightly clenched jaw made it impossible for him not to know how much pain she was in. That was why he pushed himself. To wipe out the monsters as fast as possible.
-Shukwak!
The brilliantly shining blade sliced monsters in two with the slightest graze. The massively extended sword energy tore through the air and space itself. Truly spectacular swordplay. But it was premature. The difference in power between swordsmanship performed by a human body and swordsmanship performed inside a Giganoid was on another level, and so was the consumption of supernatural energy. Lee Hyun-woo, who hadn’t calculated that, ended up completely drained even though plenty of monsters remained. And the rift that had seemed to close after all the monsters emerged… began opening once again.
“Kilian reaction… newly detected. The value is approximately…”
The operator’s voice shook with disbelief as she read the number aloud. Lieutenant Colonel Lee Kwan-yong let out a short groan. Even with his considerable experience, it was a figure he had never witnessed before.
“…Request reinforcements. Contact every available Master and Maternity from the prominent clans. This is a special emergency situation.”
Giganoids were treated as strategic assets, so the number of clans that possessed them wasn’t large. The Maternities who owned them and their partner Masters were all heavyweights. Although Lieutenant Colonel Lee Kwan-yong was the commander of this operation, these were people his position could not afford to treat lightly. Yet right now he was summoning them anyway. There was no time to worry about propriety. The Kilian value the operator had announced was that horrifying. It was a catastrophic figure that had never existed before.
The rift opened. From within it, a radial monster covered in countless tentacles began to crawl out. The appearance of pure white Brunhilde.
“Author bastard, your naming sense is shit… where the hell is that ‘pure white’… fuck.”
There were some white parts. Below the absurdly huge head, two pairs of wing-like appendages flapped on the lower body. The size was genuinely insane. I’d thought Giganoids were big, but this thing was on a completely different scale. It suddenly felt like the genre had flipped to cosmic horror. The fact that a monster like this showed up in the early stages already told me what a trash novel this was. The author probably imagined some overwhelmingly powerful enemy that would defeat the protagonist at the beginning and then say, “I’ll withdraw for today…”
“That cliché is ancient, you hack.”
Even we could feel Brunhilde’s presence from this far away, so there was no way the cadets inside the Giganoids couldn’t sense it. Their movements froze solid. Even the monsters that hadn’t died yet were trembling violently. And as if mocking our paralysis, Brunhilde’s lower body slowly began to open. A long-range, conical, ultra-high-energy cannon. Its target was the Giganoid carrying Lee Hyun-woo and Han Seo-ah.
“All cadets, full retreat order issued! Regroup after maintenance and prepare to reengage. Command center will also relocate further rearward.”
Lieutenant Colonel Lee Kwan-yong’s voice was thick with desperation. Then one of the operators shouted.
“Unit 1… communication severed!”
“Damn it! We have the auxiliary cam, you idiot! Connect that at least!”
Since it was a training unit, they had installed an auxiliary camera. At the frantic command, the operator hurriedly restored the feed. The screen showed Lee Hyun-woo and Han Seo-ah both unconscious. They were out cold, and there was nothing we could do from here. If that monster attacked again, they would die. The thought of losing his two outstanding students tore at Lieutenant Colonel Lee Kwan-yong’s heart, but there was simply no method available to him right now. A monster with those predicted Kilian values should have been impossible. Then again, it made sense. This was all the author’s manipulation. An irregular that completely ignored the laws of this world—how could any blame fall on the lieutenant colonel?
But I was running.
“Kang Jae-hee!”
I heard Lieutenant Colonel Lee Kwan-yong’s voice calling after me. To anyone watching, this was pure insanity. Running straight into the middle of fucking huge monsters and an even bigger monster boss with nothing but my own body. But I knew. The current lull would last for a while. There was more than enough time for me to rescue those two. Otherwise, why the hell would I run in like a madwoman?