007. Physical Examination (2)
007. Physical Examination (2)
== Biodroid Precision Analysis Results ==
[Basic Information]
Designation: Laika
Model Name: Angela TYPE-15 (Halo Company)
Role: Forward Assault Type (Defense Specialization)
Phase Resonance Rate with Commander: 29%
[Primary Stats]
- Endurance: B+ / A
- Strength: C / B+
- Agility: D / C
- Phase Sensitivity: B- / S
- Combat Proficiency (Overall): D+ / B+
* Shield Operation: B / A+
* Melee Strike (Shield): C- / B
* Tactical Judgment: D / C+
- Synchronization Rate (Primary Weapon: Training Shield): 88%
[Primary Components]
- Skeletal Frame: HALO-15
- Sensor Unit: Delicacion (Sensitive Type)
- Core: AT-10
- Phase Resonance Circuit: Red No. 3 & Blue No. 1
- Skill Module Slot 1: <Rampage> Lv.1
- Skill Module Slot 2: Empty
- Skill Module Slot 3: Empty
== ==
......These were Laika's stats.
To reiterate, the results were both impressive and alarming.
To put it more plainly, her primary stats had high potential, but almost none of it had been developed.
Her Combat Proficiency, in particular, was a waste of what her body could do.
But that could wait. There was something even more absurd to deal with first.
The way her components were configured.
"Just to check, have you ever had any components replaced?"
"Euhye? Nope?"
That figured.
All of her components were intricately fitted together for a single purpose.
I had to assume she came off the production line this way.
Once I'd figured that out, I muttered with a sigh.
"Then you shipped from the factory with a full Rampage setup."
"Euhye? Rampage setting?"
"Your body."
I transferred the data onto my PDA and held it up for Laika to see.
Of course, that alone wasn't enough for Laika to understand what I meant. Biodroid component configuration was a field so complex and diverse that even three years of Academy study could feel insufficient.
Not that it was supposed to be a biodroid's area of concern in the first place.
So I started pointing to each component in turn and explaining it for Laika.
First, the HALO-15 installed as the skeletal frame was specialized for strength and endurance despite her small physique.
The sensor unit, Delicacion, was a type that reacted acutely to stimuli, just as its supplementary description stated.
The AT-10 core normally had low output, but under the right conditions it produced an explosive response. Its biggest drawback was that it finished embarrassingly fast.
On top of that, the resonance circuit mixed the opposing red and blue types. The intent was likely to control the surge of energy.
Putting all that together, one conclusion followed——
"What? What can you tell?"
"......From here on, try thinking about it yourself a little."
Even as I grumbled that, I gave her the answer.
"Every component in your body is designed around withstanding brief bursts of extreme output."
"Eue, which means......."
Exactly.
The biodroid named Laika had been manufactured from the start with the explicit expectation that she would go berserk in an emergency.
A so-called Rampage setting.
And to enable that Rampage, the manufacturer, Halo Company, had even kindly slotted in the skill module.
"See this module here called 'Rampage'?"
"Uh-huh."
"When you activate this skill, your stats increase drastically for a brief moment."
Specifically, every stat rose by 1.5 ranks.
Considering how much work and money it took to raise a stat by even half a rank, it was an incredible skill.
That being said.
Skills had drawbacks too.
A skill was manifested by distorting reality with phase pressure. And distortion came at a price.
Rampage, for example, let the user unleash tremendous power for its duration.
But once it ended, the resulting energy drain could leave the user weaker than before or even unconscious.
However, there was a point that was even more problematic.
"It's difficult to control."
All skills were difficult to control to some extent, but Rampage was especially so.
When activated, the user completely lost sight of their surroundings. It was all too easy to forget the original purpose for activating the skill and simply go berserk.
At low levels, the user might not even be able to control when it activated.
It could trigger on its own in response to intense emotions, even when the user had no intention of activating it.
"......Then when Laika loses her temper and goes berserk, that's...?"
Laika asked in a blank voice.
I answered with a shrug.
"It was just the skill activating."
Laika looked like she couldn't believe it.
"But... if that's what it was... what about before? When the first commander was alive... that sort of thing never happened...?"
"You were probably more emotionally stable back then."
From what I had heard, it seemed Laika would unconsciously activate Rampage in situations where she felt anger beyond a certain level.
But while Seo Se-rin was alive, situations like that would have been rare.
More than that, back then, she wouldn't have known the anger that came from 'failing to protect someone'.
The first time she'd felt that much anger was probably——
"During that final operation, right?"
"......Yeah."
Laika answered quietly.
"I couldn't see my surroundings at all back then, either."
That would have been the case.
The later rampage incidents were the same.
All of it was simply the skill activating in response to Laika's emotions.
But Laika had reduced it to a simple matter of having a nasty personality.
The commanders who took charge of her hadn't made any effort to rehabilitate and make use of her, either.
The more those mistakes and bouts of bad luck piled up, the more Laika convinced herself, 'I'm the problem.'
Eventually, she'd probably reached the point where she really did start causing problems on her own.
But fundamentally, there was nothing wrong with Laika as a biodroid.
There was nothing particularly wrong with her body, either.
It was simply built around a rather unusual skill.
And there simply hadn't been a proper commander to tell her that fact.
"......Hey."
Laika, who had been listening quietly, suddenly opened her mouth.
"I more or less get what Commander means. So basically, Laika's body is built to go wild when she gets mad, rather than her mind being rotten, right?"
"That's about right."
"Then isn't the rampaging itself still the same, just with a different cause? If anything, isn't that even worse? It means it can't be fixed......."
She had it wrong. It could be fixed.
"Eue. It can be fixed?"
"Of course."
If there were no way to fix it, nobody would have designed a body around such a useless skill in the first place.
In that sense, Laika's problem was simply that the level of her Rampage skill was far too low.
"The skill level is low...?"
"Here."
I pointed to the skill module on the data sheet once more.
The point wasn't to get her to look at the name 'Rampage', which Laika was clearly already aware of.
What I wanted to emphasize was the level written next to it.
The Rampage skill level recorded on Laika's data sheet was only 1.
"What changes depending on the level?"
"The higher the Rampage level gets, the more control you have over yourself during the Rampage state."
At the maximum level of 10, 'Rampage' became a name more than a description; the user was about as controllable as someone amped up on adrenaline.
On the other hand, at level 1, there was zero control.
The user didn't even retain the basic objective of defeating the enemy; all they did was vent energy.
Beyond that, the user couldn't even control when Rampage activated. It simply triggered whenever an intense emotion spiked.
In Laika's case, Rampage had probably been triggering most often when an ally was injured—the situation that left her emotionally most vulnerable.
Looking at it from that angle, I couldn't definitively say Laika's belief that her own mental state was the problem was entirely groundless.
I wasn't sure.
"Anyway, all you need to do is raise the Rampage level. That's all it takes to solve the problem."
Concretely, if she could just raise the level to about 5, she'd be usable in the field, at least passably.
That alone would solve Laika's rampage problem.
"......I see."
"Feeling a bit deflated?"
"Yeah. Maybe a little deflated."
Laika smiled with an Euhye.
A moment later, she added,
"Setting other commanders aside... even the first commander didn't know. That Laika's body was set up to go on rampages... that raising the skill level would fix everything. How should I put it... I feel like I've been doing something stupid my whole life."
"That might not necessarily be the case."
Just because a body was designed with a specific goal didn't mean it had to be operated in that specific way.
The best choice simply depended on the situation.
Especially since the Rampage skill was prone to negatively affecting the user's emotions and hormonal balance.
Seo Se-rin might have decided that since Laika already followed her well, there was no need to activate Rampage just to improve her performance; she could simply use Laika as she was.
"......Well, to be blunt, it was probably because she didn't know much about biodroid operation methods."
The Seo Se-rin listed in the military records was a 'Supplementary Commissioned Officer'.
Supplementary commissioning was a system created to meet the demand for commanders being chewed up on the battlefield.
True to that purpose, supplementary commissioned officers received no specialized education. They were just thrown in and told to sink or swim on their own.
So Seo Se-rin must have lacked a lot of specialized knowledge.
Despite that, Seo Se-rin had formed a close bond with Laika and operated her well for a year.
She had done so purely through raw stats and on-site command, not through any specific skill.
It was common for supplementary commissioned officers to be ignored even by their biodroids, and more often than not, they ended up dead within months.
Taking that into account, Seo Se-rin had been admirable in a certain sense.
And that one year spent with Seo Se-rin was by no means a waste of time, either.
"......Commander, you're really good at putting a positive spin on things. Euhye."
"I'll take that as a compliment."
With that, I circled back to the main point and summarized.
"Regardless of what her intentions were in operating you, your situation is urgent. On top of that, your Rampage is currently going off at the slightest provocation. From my perspective, the only practical option is to assume we'll use it and refine it until it's controllable."
"So, you're saying we should raise the level?"
Something like that.
To be precise, it was technically an option to just remove the module entirely and use her without Rampage, but...
Besides, it'd be a waste of the module they went to the trouble of installing.
And since the body itself was set up around the Rampage from the start, there was also a concern that her growth ceiling would become lower.
"Hmm-hmm. I see, I see."
Laika signaled that she understood, though her vacant expression made me seriously doubt it.
Then, a moment later, she tilted her head and asked,
"So, how can the level of that module be raised, then?"
As for that—
"You have to train."
"Eue."
Laika looked as if her already nonexistent motivation had somehow vanished again.
"Whyyyy...? Isn't there an efficient and rational method... like just buying a high-level module from the beginning and swapping it in?"
"That's not efficient and rational; that's just solving it with money."
Besides, there wasn't even a way to solve it with money. High-level modules simply didn't exist straight off the production line.
More precisely, the level of a module wasn't an ability stat of the module itself in the first place.
Rather, it was simply a measure of how well the biodroid equipped with it had synchronized with the module.
To raise that synchronization, the biodroid had to keep the module installed and accumulate combat experience, including training.
"Even without the module, you still need to train some. You've got way too much stat loss."
"Stat loss~?"
"It means your current performance is far short of the maximum output your body is capable of."
For example, Laika's Endurance was listed as B+/A rank.
That meant the maximum Endurance estimated for her body was A-rank, while Laika's actual Endurance was only B+ rank.
In other words, she had lost half a rank of Endurance.
And even that Endurance stat loss was in relatively good shape compared to the other stats.
Agility had a maximum of C but had dropped a full rank to D, and Strength was in even worse condition.
This was unheard of for a standard military biodroid.
When I pointed that out, Laika let her already-slumped shoulders droop even farther, making a show of it.
"Heugeuk, how did that happen......."
"Don't ask when you already know the answer."
There was only one reason for stat loss: laziness.
When I told her that, Laika scratched the back of her head and laughed. For once, she had no comeback.
"So, I've gotta start training hard now, right?"
"Yeah. Can't be helped, huh. I'll start slowly getting around to training... starting the year after next."
"Don't casually slip in an absurd condition like that."
"Was Laika training the outrageous part after all?"
She knew perfectly well what I meant.
"What do you mean, training the year after next? When you can't even guarantee you'll be alive three months from now."
"But~ It takes ages for Laika to recharge her motivation~"
"Then cut it down."
"By how much?"
"I'll give you five minutes. That's about how long it'll take to get to the simulation room."
I answered without a moment's hesitation.
Likewise, Laika started whining without a moment's hesitation.
"Uheeng~ It's obvious you're planning to work me to the bone under the excuse of helping me overcome my sad past~ A villainous gaslighter who exploits a girl's vulnerabilities to manipulate her~"
Even while saying that, Laika neatly put away the electrodes one by one.