035. Rinne (1)
035. Rinne (1)
Krädel Command and Control Room.
My steps as I headed into work were unusually light.
It wasn't that I particularly enjoyed sitting at a desk doing paperwork. If anything, fieldwork suited me better.
Despite being born with that temperament, these past few days I'd been running around outside far too much.
Taking a day or two around now to handle some light paperwork and rest didn't seem like a bad idea.
With that perfectly human thought in mind, I hummed a tune as I entered the command room.
What greeted me soon after was a mountain of documents stacked on my desk.
......Well, normally there were documents piled up when I came in too.
Alicia handled most of the administrative work on her own, but some documents couldn't be processed without the commander's approval.
The problem was the volume this time. At a rough estimate, it was about ten times the usual amount.
"......Why is there so much?"
Had Alicia gone on strike from paperwork too?
Puzzled, I glanced over at Alicia's station, and she was working as usual.
Not only that, she spotted me and even called out a cheerful greeting.
"You're here? I missed you."
"Uh, yeah. I missed you too......."
Huh?
"What's this? What's gotten into you all of a sudden?"
She wasn't the kind of character who said she missed someone.
Come to think of it, she rarely even greeted me first.
"What do you mean? I have always admired and respected you, Commander."
Alicia even drew a peace sign in the air.
What on earth was up with her. My bewilderment was brief.
I noticed that at Alicia's station, there were far more documents stacked up than the ones on my desk.
And I only now saw that Alicia's face was strangely haggard, and that her pupils were completely hollow.
In other words, it seemed...... she'd gone mad from the murderous workload.
That explained her behavior, but...
"Why has the workload increased this much?"
When I asked, Alicia answered in a voice faintly tinged with emotion.
"Good question. Whatever could it be? It is not as if someone took down a Lord Legion without any prior coordination, then immediately brought back a Commander who had been listed missing for a year, then stormed the Inspectorate to get that Commander's Cyborgization Surgery approved and even got into a shoving match with the generals. Surely none of that could have created all this cleanup. A real mystery."
......Hm.
"I'm sorry."
"Just hurry up and help me."
And so I did.
Mostly, I skimmed through the documents Alicia had already handled and signed them.
But that wasn't all. Mixed in here and there were reports I had to draft from scratch, and every time I ran into one, I got briefly stunned....
That pattern repeated maybe ten times. By then I'd barely managed to clear out the accumulated documents.
And then, right afterward, Alicia handed me a stack of documents slightly larger than what I'd just cleared.
I stared at the refilled paperwork, my will to fight draining away for a moment. Alicia asked flatly.
"What do you plan to do from here on out?"
"......Huh?"
"You are working as a Commander to find your childhood friend, are you not?"
I had told Alicia a fair amount about Sion early on after moving into Krädel. Since she handled the administrative work, I'd judged that failing to clearly explain my objective could cause problems down the line.
And yet Alicia almost never brought up Sion. Alicia basically had no interest in other people's private lives.
So the fact that she'd proactively asked how the search for Sion was going meant I could take it as proof that her trust in me had deepened considerably, right?
"No. I am simply asking so I can keep track of where you are likely to go before you cause another incident."
"...Give me back my emotional moment."
"So what will you do?"
Well.
"Basically, the plan's the same. Sion is still in the same place."
Whitehead Point.
Sion's signal remained there.
As if calling out to me—come find me, come save me.
So my plan was still the same as before: strengthen Krädel's available combat power as much as possible and make my way to Whitehead Point.
And I'd already confirmed the most efficient—and the only somewhat realistic—route for that.
"Do you mean directly?"
"Obviously not."
Whitehead Point was deep in Legion territory, impossibly far even from human-controlled areas.
Just reaching Ice Shell, which was right beyond the front lines, had come with numerous complications; getting past that wasn't going to happen overnight.
Nevertheless, the route itself existed.
It was just that I would have to cross several major hives along the way.
My plan was to break through those hives, establish bridgeheads or outposts along the way, and advance.
In that sense, the first bridgehead was already secured.
"Are you referring to Ice Shell?"
"That's right."
Whitehead Point was at the northeastern tip of the Korean Peninsula.
Ice Shell was situated in the highlands of the eastern front, making it ideally suited for advancing toward Whitehead Point.
"Now that you mention it, let me ask—the first person to conquer a hive is granted the right to establish a base camp there, correct?"
"Yes. Although Ice Shell is somewhat isolated, so I don't believe it can generate particularly large revenue......."
"Even so, having a camp we can freely come and go from is a big advantage."
Alicia seemed to agree.
But only for a moment.
"However, how do you intend to further strengthen our forces here?"
"Why are you so negative?"
"I believe I'm being realistic. Laika has already reached her growth limit, and the remaining members are just myself and Rinne, but neither of us can be counted as combat strength."
Why was she describing her own refusal to fight like a natural disaster beyond human control?
I already knew that pointing that out wouldn't get through to her.
More than that, before pointing out Rinne and Alicia's level of cooperation, there was one fact that needed addressing first.
"Who says Laika can't grow further here?"
"Well. She is an A-rank biodroid by overall evaluation metrics, so I believe she has reached her growth limit in the conventional sense......."
"Maybe she doesn't have to grow in the conventional way."
"Well, one is free to imagine."
It wasn't imagination.
I held out the screen of my PDA to Alicia.
Having glanced at it indifferently at first, Alicia tilted her head a moment later.
That was because the following message was on the screen.
[Biodroid 'Laika' has absorbed the 'Unique Phase' of Frost Phantom using the skills <Phase Blood Absorption> and <Synchronizer>.]
"......Unique Phase?"
"A special ability that only Lord Legions possess."
"I know that, but what does it mean that she absorbed that Unique Phase...?"
"I don't really know either."
I didn't know the details, but...
"I suspect Laika absorbed Frost Phantom's ability."
As I said this, I scrolled down the PDA screen.
The message that appeared next.
[Biodroid 'Laika' has a new Unique Phase.]
Unique Phase — Frost Feet
Materializes phase energy into massive ice.
"......Is such a thing possible?"
"No idea. I'm telling you, I have absolutely no clue what's what."
To venture a guess, as the message window stated, Phase Blood Absorption and Synchronizer activated simultaneously, causing this phenomenon.
It wasn't entirely impossible. There were occasional cases where multiple skills sort of combined and produced a new effect.
Some of those synergy effects had recognizable patterns and were known as 'formulas.' So there were plenty of cases where people set their skills aiming for those formulas.
But in Laika's case—that is, the combination effect of 'Phase Blood Absorption' and 'Synchronizer'—there was no known data. Phase Blood Absorption was a skill customized by Sumire, and Synchronizer was a discontinued item that had never been properly circulated on the market.
Judging by what I saw, it seemed to work by absorbing a Legion's Unique Phase and stealing a portion of the defeated Legion's power.
How efficient this would be, and how useful the absorbed power would be in the first place, was still unknown.
We'd find out from here.
"From the way you are talking, I take it it is not much use yet."
"......That's true."
I'd run a brief test with Laika on the way over, and at most she could produce a few drink-sized ice cubes.
That wasn't even enough for an iced Americano.
"But it does mean she has room to grow again, right?"
So Alicia's claim that Laika couldn't grow any further at Krädel was wrong from the start.
"And your statement that you and Rinne can't be counted as combat strength is also incorrect."
I had absolutely no intention of stopping after making only Laika combat-ready.
I planned to rehabilitate and develop both Rinne and Alicia somehow, then use them in combat just like Laika.
When I revealed those ambitions, Alicia fixed me with a sharp glare.
"I do not understand why you are so fixated on me and Rinne. If Laika can grow further, would it not be better to invest everything into her? Especially Laika. I believe she would work two or three times as hard as someone in the same weight class for you, Commander. Her Phase Resonance Rate is high as well."
"Just a moment ago you were running down Laika, and now you're hyping her up because you don't want to work."
Alicia offered no retort to my remark.
Even she seemed to realize that was a little shameless.
Regardless of Alicia's intent, it was also true that Laika was more useful than a typical A-rank.
No, to be blunt, I thought Laika alone would fight better than two A-ranks who only half-listened to orders.
So rather than wrestling with rehabilitating Rinne and Alicia, wouldn't it be much simpler and more efficient to pour all our resources into Laika? It wasn't as if I'd never considered that cheeky tactic.
Even so, I'd concluded that I had no choice but to raise another biodroid to A-rank.
The reason was very simple.
"With just Laika alone, I can't even enter the next hive."
"......You can't?"
I couldn't.
The military had set entry requirements. To carry out missions in the hives beyond Ice Shell, you needed at least two A-rank biodroids.
More precisely, that was the requirement for the hive immediately beyond Ice Shell, and additional requirements would be added the farther we advanced.
So the conclusion was.
"To find Sion, I have no choice but to get both you and Rinne to A-rank."
"......Well, that's quite a predicament."
Alicia murmured as if distressed.
I shrugged and answered.
"Don't worry. I'm not asking you to help right now."
"Oh? Then......."
"Rehabilitating Rinne comes first."
At those words, Alicia made a sullen face.
"Do you think Rinne would be easier to rehabilitate than me?"
"You say that like you think it's a pretty questionable call."
"......Wouldn't it be?"
It seemed she was under the impression that she was more normal than Rinne.
To be honest, I basically thought so too.
Neither of them could really be called a proper soldier, but if I had to choose, Alicia was still better than Rinne. At least Alicia handled administrative work like this.
On the other hand, Rinne holed up in the basement and hardly ever came outside.
If I'd been asked, 'Choose the one that seems easier to rehabilitate first,' with no preconditions, I would have picked Alicia without hesitation.
Even so, I'd decided to start with Rinne because she had strongly requested it herself.
"......Excuse me?"
"Rinne herself asked me to make her a bit stronger."
The story went back to the day Seo Se-rin visited Krädel after completing her corporification.
In other words, it went back to yesterday.