030. Ice Shell (1)
030. Ice Shell (1)
※ This chapter contains sexually suggestive illustrations. Please be advised before reading.
The next morning.
The birdsong beyond the window sounded strangely loud. Jjaek-jjaek, jjaek-jjaek, jijibaebae.
And for some reason the sunlight, even though the window faced north, felt exceptionally bright.
Why?
More importantly, what was this sense of fulfillment and accomplishment?
And it felt like there was something incredibly warm and soft inside the blanket.
"......Ah."
I lifted the blanket slightly.
Inside was Laika, completely naked and looking a little softer than usual.
Awake, of course.
"What are you doing in there?"
"Reflecting on the intense things we did together last night."
"...Why are you reflecting on that?"
"Because that was way too intense for Laika. I need time to process it slowly."
......It wasn't really anything to that degree.
Seeing my baffled reaction, Laika poked only her face out from under the blanket and complained.
"Laika can't get married now."
"No, you absolutely can."
"Can't. I got completely taken in by the Commander's sweet talk last night and casually gave away my precious virginity..."
"Hey, hey. Don't say things that'll give people the wrong idea."
Because all I did last night was give her a massage.
Except Laika was naked, and that led to a minor accident.......
Anyway, I swear to the heavens that Laika's virginity is intact.
"Sure, my body is still a virgin. The problem is my heart. Laika lost her heart-virginity. For the record, Commander was my first. So, in return for taking Laika's heart-virginity, what are you going to do for me?"
"......What am I supposed to do?"
Laika threw off the blanket.
And without the slightest care that she was naked, she spread her arms wide.
"Hug me tight—"
I did just that.
A little while later.
I spoke to Laika.
"Laika, I have a gift for you too."
"A gift?"
Laika practically had a question mark floating over her head.
I pulled out the object I always kept in the inner pocket of my uniform and showed it to her.
A crudely shaped biodroid component.
"This is......?"
"It's a skill module."
Its name was the Synchronizer.
"Synchronizer? What kind of skill is it?"
I answered simply.
"A skill that allows a human to fight against Legions like a biodroid."
"......Euhye?"
Laika didn't understand.
Or rather, she seemed to think my words were some kind of metaphor or exaggeration.
Because humans couldn't fight biodroids head-on.
Laika took it as a rhetorical flourish—that it wasn't literally a skill module capable of doing what I'd said.
But that wasn't the case.
"If the biodroid equipped with this module meets certain conditions, that biodroid can share its phase with its Commander."
"......Share their phase?"
That's right.
Put another way, if Laika equipped this module and activated 'Synchronizer,' I would receive Laika's phase power and be able to fight Legions directly, just like her.
Synchronizer was a single-level skill module that required no separate mastery process.
Once equipped, it could be used immediately.
By the time I finished explaining, Laika's reaction was exactly what you'd expect.
"That's amazing......! Where did you get such an amazing thing?"
Laika spoke excitedly.
But I had no choice but to shake my head.
Because this module wasn't actually all that impressive.
First of all, meeting the 'certain conditions' I mentioned earlier was nearly impossible.
"To activate Synchronizer, the Phase Resonance Rate has to reach 100%."
"Euhh......?"
Laika was taken aback.
By now, after training with me and studying biodroids along the way, even Laika knew that a Phase Resonance Rate of 100% was practically a theoretical realm.
It was only natural.
I'd always compared it to an affection score, but strictly speaking, Phase Resonance Rate wasn't simply a measure of 'how much you like someone.'
At its core, it measured 'the degree to which one identifies the other person with oneself.'
For a human, identifying someone else 100% as oneself almost never happened.
Even if it did reach 100%, it would only touch it for a moment, like a spark, before immediately dropping again.
That meant Synchronizer would stay active for only a few minutes, and the user couldn't even properly control when it activated.
And the payoff wasn't particularly impressive either.
For a very brief time, it amounted to having one extra biodroid in the fight.
That was why production of this component was halted before it could even be mass-produced, and it wasn't registered in the military's item database.
The only units circulating on the market were prototypes leaked out of the factory through a backdoor.
All that aside.
"Even so, I thought it might be useful to us right now."
Because of what happened last night, Laika's Phase Resonance Rate toward me had surpassed 90 percent.
It was a slim probability, and it would only be for a very short moment...... but reaching 100 percent wasn't impossible.
And on top of that, Laika happened to have one empty skill slot right now.
And more than anything.
"......This thing, it's a gift Sion gave me."
As an Academy entrance gift.
She said she found this peculiar item at a place that sold used parts.
She'd said that someday our Phase Resonance Rate would reach 100%, so we should equip it in preparation for that day.
"I refused."
I judged that there were more efficient skill modules for Sion.
I thought a skill that could only borrow a biodroid's phase for a few minutes at best was meaningless.
So I didn't let her equip it.
That judgment and that thought itself might have been valid.
Numerically and objectively, it had clearly been the right choice.
But on the other hand.
But setting aside numbers, probabilities, and objectivity... in one corner of my heart,
I couldn't help thinking:
—If this skill module had been equipped on Sion that day we parted.
—Would we still be together?
—Could I have saved her?
There was no clear answer.
But if there was one thing I knew for certain, it was that I never wanted to be left with this kind of regret again.
So.
So that if the worst ever happened, we could join forces and fight together.
So I'd never have to think about 'what if' again.
"I want you to equip it."
Perhaps my will and my feelings got through.
Laika showed me her tiny fist clenched tight.
"Okay."
With her fist still clenched, Laika spoke.
"Thank you, Commander. I'll treasure it... so I don't do either of you a disservice."
With that, the last preparations were finished.
Now it was truly time for departure.
***
After equipping the third skill module and packing the finally usable Last Bloom, we boarded the train.
It wasn't a normal passenger train, but a frontline train headed toward the front, one that only Commanders and biodroids could board.
Thanks to that, the atmosphere inside the train was quite quiet.
But among all that, there was one place that was especially quiet,
and that was Seat 11, where Laika and I sat facing each other.
Let me make this clear: it wasn't like this normally.
Maybe not other units, but Laika and I usually chattered while traveling. We'd even gotten our share of dirty looks a few times.
Honestly, I'd given her a few dirty looks myself. Laika loved sightseeing and would start chattering the moment she spotted anything unusual.
But at this moment, Laika sat perfectly upright and said nothing.
Her eyes weren't unfocused either. The eyes she normally kept half-closed were now wide open.
She practically looked like a cool, elegant beauty.
It was a beautiful sight... but at the same time, it made my heart ache for her.
Because it meant she was that tense.
So I reached my hand out behind Laika's back.
"Euhye?"
I started massaging the back of her rigid neck.
"Eu, eu-nyahhat—?!"
Laika freaked out.
"Wha, what are you doing giving a massage in public......! Massages are only for when we're alone......!"
Let me repeat: I was only massaging the back of Laika's neck. That much physical contact was perfectly normal anywhere.
It seemed last night's experience had somehow taught her that massage = something sexual.
Well, I decided to correct that later.
"Feeling a little less tense?"
"......I wasn't tense."
Yeah, right.
I let out a sigh and said.
"Laika, it's still an hour until Base Camp Station. Even after we arrive, we have to clear customs, check our equipment, and move again... We've still got more than half a day before we even reach the vicinity of Ice Shell."
"Laika knows that."
"Then you must also know that handling that schedule in this stiffened state is impossible, hmm?"
I continued massaging her nape while mimicking Laika's speech pattern.
Laika writhed her waist this way and that.
Then maybe the tension finally broke—or maybe it was simply ticklish. Either way, Laika burst out laughing.
"Euhyat......! Euhyahyahyat......! I, I said stop iit......!"
Hmm.
Now she was acting a little more like the Laika I knew.
The Laika I knew, the one who tried to appear carefree even if she had to force it.
The Laika who wanted to be laid-back.
I spoke to that familiar Laika.
"Don't get eaten by old memories. I'm right here."
"......Okay."
Laika answered quietly, then suddenly sprang up.
Then she took a seat right next to me.
I wondered what she was doing, but soon Laika whispered into my ear.
"Laika's right here too."
And then she hugged my waist tightly.
I considered scolding her, but let it go. At least this was far less tiring for her than sitting bolt upright like before.
"Euh-heh-heh..."
Though it might be taxing on my stamina...... since Laika was so happy like this, I decided to endure it.
***
And exactly half a day later,
we reached Betelgeuse Point, the approach to Ice Shell.
In a word, it was a vast snowfield spread across mountainous terrain.
It was breathtaking at first glance, but in reality it was an extremely dangerous place.
As if to underscore that fact, Laika fiddled with her receiver and murmured.
"......Comms are down."
"Because this is an unconquered zone."
Even among battle zones, not all battle zones were the same.
There were conquered zones where the nest's data pack had fallen into humanity's hands and a communication network was secured, and unconquered zones where it hadn't.
Operations in an unconquered zone were naturally twice as difficult because we couldn't receive real-time information from the main force's operator.
We had to observe everything with the portable radar we'd brought and our own eyes.
And any response had to be improvised on the spot.
For example, like this.
"Phase power at eleven o'clock. Can you see how many?"
"Four. All around C-rank."
Laika answered.
They were too far away for me to see clearly, but Laika could sense phase power, and apparently she could distinguish each individual unit's shape.
Anyway, four C-ranks, huh. It's not easy from the get-go.
"Let's avoid them if we can. No point drawing aggro and tiring ourselves out."
"Yeah."
"And especially, absolutely no engagement with the Frost Phantom."
Maybe I didn't need to warn her about that one.
Because Laika knew the danger of the Frost Phantom better than anyone.
Frost Phantom.
The A-rank Lord Legion of the Ice Shell Nest.
In other words, a type of boss monster directly connected to the nest that commanded the other units.
It was also the reason the highlands where Laika and I now stood had become a frozen hell where even a padded coat barely helped,
and it was the mortal enemy that killed Laika's first Commander, Seo Se-rin.
Because of that, Laika seemed to harbor deep enmity toward it in many ways.
But the problem was that at our weight class, we couldn't take it on.
And besides, there was no need to.
Our objective wasn't to subjugate Legions. Nor was it to occupy anything. We just needed to extract Ice Shell's data pack.
And we didn't even need to infiltrate the nest to secure that data pack.
We only needed to find the data pack Laika had stolen back then but never managed to bring home.
Laika remembered the location of that data pack.
"Seo Se-rin's remains...... were around here, was it?"
I took out the map and asked Laika.
The Ice Shell region spread before us in a basin that looked almost picture-perfect.
The nest was located at the center of the basin, and the surroundings were a mix of snowfields and forests.
According to Laika's memory, the location where Seo Se-rin was injured and collapsed was the massive forest to the southeast.
The data pack had been with her, so if we wanted to find it, we just had to head for that forest.
Except, to enter that forest, we had to pass through a hilly area——
"And that hilly area was completely carpeted with Legions, right?"
"Yeah. So I remember struggling from the very beginning......."
Similar testimony appeared in other exploration data too.
I didn't really need the other expedition data to tell me that. When I turned on the radar, phase pressure was visibly concentrated at three o'clock, in the direction of those hills.
That was why the usual route into the hive avoided this side and approached from the west.
For us, though, taking this route should still be relatively safer.
That was our plan up to this point.
So.
"Laika, prepare for combat."
"Euhye~— Can't be helped then~—"
Laika sluggishly pulled out the shield she had slung behind her back.
But that easygoing attitude ended there.
Laika's eyes sharpened and she fired off a string of questions.
"Commander, what about Rampage?"
"Hold off for now."
"How far from you should I stay?"
"Within 30 meters if possible."
"Anything else I should know?"
"I'm going to activate the Phase Distorter so we don't get spotted. Don't be surprised."
After countless missions together, we'd become a team that moved almost perfectly in sync.
...Even so, the question Laika asked next was a new one.
"What do I get if I do well?"
Hmm.
"I'll praise you generously."
Perhaps that answer was unexpectedly effective.
Laika pushed forward, beating the living hell out of every Legion blocking the path.