It's Farming Time
Meanwhile, Rosetta was tearing through the temple at the head of eight Titans. Today was, without question, the most important day of her life. Not for any of those lofty reasons — world peace, ultimate strength, an adventurer's spirit... obviously not. She just needed to plunder a handful of artifacts, and she'd never have to work another day in her life.
"You do remember, don't you? We're done by nine o'clock."
"Y-yes, I know..."
And so she answered Marcus's fretting with her chin held high.
Naturally, I'd made my own meticulous preparations, too. I'd packed two whole bottles of coffee milk, no less. I'd even considered brewing it with espresso — but my tongue went numb the instant I tested a sip, so that idea died on the spot.
Better wake the hell up, and fast.
To shave seconds off the clock, I took the controls of the Titan Marcus was riding as well. And so eight Titans charged into the temple at a full-power sprint.
Fwoooosh—!
Before long, the fog of the Abyss had swallowed our every line of sight. In truth, the mist was nothing. A pulse of mana detection gave me the number and position of every enemy nearby, easy as breathing. With the obscene surplus of mana sloshing around inside me, I could even fire off mana-comms and Emergency Recall from deep within the fog.
"Found it..."
Thanks to that, we'd made the run in with barely a fight. Luck was with us, too: Doggy No. 2, out on remote recon, had sniffed out the shaft punched straight down into the underground artifact chamber. We made straight for that spot—
So why was the hatch already open?
The moment I peered down into the hole, a thin blade of unease slid between my ribs. My eyes can pierce the fog of even the nastiest mana fields — and there, crouched in a corner, was a pack of Titans that had no business existing.
Someone beat us here!
A small outfit, five machines or so. Kingdom models and Holy Theocracy models thrown together in a mongrel mix — definitely no national knight order.
Damn loot goblins. Say this much for them — their intel is scarily good.
In a lawless zone like the Abyss, it was a familiar sight. Two-bit punks who'd stolen their machines from somewhere and papered over their identities with illegally modded parts.
And they actually think they can compete with me.
I checked their positions again. Vrrrrm— Their tier lift was only just beginning its descent, and I let out a breath. They'd only just located the boss room themselves. Which meant that, by the Abyss's one iron rule, the loot belonged to whoever ate first.
Time to show them what a real hog looks like.
Before their lift could touch down, all eight Titans dove through the opening.
THOOOM—!
They planted their claim dead center in the temple — brazen, shameless, absolute. A pyramid-shaped altar speared up from the very heart of the colosseum, its elevation changes and terrain sharply drawn: prime real estate, custom-built for a drive hunt.
Good. All the aggro's mine now.
The moment we made a showy landing at dead center, crimson eyes ignited on every side at once. Like piranhas that had scented prey, the armored magic beasts swarmed toward the altar, jaws agape, flowing in like a pack of feral dogs. But actually climbing up to it? Not a chance — the instant I crooked a finger, six Titans snapped into a gapless line across the entrance slope.
Seal the entrance first. Basics.
It was a cheese spot proven by the memories of my past life. Any raid of five or more was guaranteed to have at least one useless troll mixed in — but when I piloted every single Titan myself, that could never happen.
It's a prime spot for a reason.
And simply plugging the door wasn't the whole trick. The detail that mattered: bending both ends of the line in by a hair, turning it into a crane-wing formation. That let every stretch of the front engage at one-and-a-half times coverage or better — no serious micro required. Click the same three buttons a few times, and the whole arena transformed into the perfect hunting ground!
At this point it's basically auto-hunting.
Greatswords for anything that got close. A switch to spears to skewer the midrange. And for anything farther out, a baptism of long-range mana cannons.
KWA-KA-BOOM!
I was reducing them to scrap so fast that, before long, the Watchers in the rear lost their nerve and started hesitating behind the fog.
What in the...
Watcher corpses were piling up at the foot of the temple faster than he could track. Marcus, spectating, swallowed drily.
How is this possible?
Honestly, right up until they'd entered the dungeon, his worry had been a mountain range. He'd guessed the kid was strong. He hadn't guessed this strong. The fog was so thick that even he had no idea where the enemies were leaping out from.
How is she hitting every single one?
KWAANG! KA-AANG—!
Zero visibility. Yet every time all six Titans fired into the fog in unison, the only thing that came rolling back out was shattered wreckage — each piece with precisely its head blown apart, like it had been picked off by a sniper.
"Old man... you're not slacking off on me, are you?"
He'd been tucked behind the six Titans, spectating the sorcery, when— THUD! The wreckage of a dead Watcher crashed down beside him. He turned to find the carcasses he was supposed to be butchering heaped into a small mountain.
"My wages... you're seriously docking them?"
"Getting right on it."
He scrambled to work the Titan's pincer arm. Lop off the useless limbs first; handle the core-laden torso with a delicate touch.
No doubt about it — high-grade mana stone.
Before long, the blue jewel set near the heart lay bare. According to her, these machine-beasts condensed mana into a core only in the fleeting instant they answered the moonlight — and conversely, the moment their movements stopped, that mana scattered to the winds. So the second one of them dropped into scrap, he had to finish dressing the carcass faster than his hands could move.
Clank— clank—
Marcus flayed the bones from the scrap with the speed of a chef with twenty years at the knife.
Now then, let's see...
Rosetta, with her auto-farm humming along, wasn't just goofing off either. Even mid-click, she had long since laid a dense weave of mana-sweep across the battlefield — and out of the swarming horde, she'd isolated three signatures pulsing with something distinctly alien.
The question is how to take down those elite mobs.
The pack leaders, each cradling an artifact. Those had to be the real jackpot. But she couldn't move rashly. Not yet.
Those bastards are bound to try something.
The five Titans crouched in the corner bothered her. One in particular stood with its sword planted, brazenly primed to dive in. She didn't need to see their cards to know the play: with all the aggro pulled onto me, the moment I dropped an elite, they meant to come boiling out together for the shared feast.
And they think that'll work on me?
The counter to that kind of dirty play was simple: never give them stealing distance in the first place. In other words — just delete the boss parked on the exact opposite side from where they were hunkered. Better still, she had a certain finishing move stashed away, tailor-made for precisely this occasion.
At last. Its maiden run.
The instant her finger pressed the hidden red button on the panel— CLUNK—SHRAKKARAK! —the rear armor plating of Rosetta's own Titan began splitting apart, left and right.
She had vivid memories of robot movies from her past life, watched with her heart pounding. Mechanical lifeforms that shed their shapes in a blink — car to truck, truck to helicopter, helicopter to humanoid. Old films even by then, yet in a child's heart they had remained pure, undiluted romance.
A transformation that thorough was beyond her, of course. But reshaping a single section of the frame? Her mana could manage that easily. The frame squirmed as if bone were moving of its own will— SHRAKKARAK! —and colossal steel wings unfolded along both of the Titan's shoulder blades.
Ignition.
KWAAAAAAA—! Six jets of light burst from the wings' every joint. Vivid blue flame roared out like the exhaust ports of a rocket, and the fog wavering in from all directions was blasted apart by the wash.
This was my masterpiece — born of illegal modification. All the money and parts I'd scraped together like a madwoman had been for this one moment.
Wh-what in the hell is THAT now?!
KWAAAAA! At the wondrous sight of blue fire gouting from the machine's back, Marcus abandoned his dismantling yet again and stared blankly up into the air. No — everyone was staring at the same point.
Insane...
A mountain of iron weighing dozens of tons was flying through the sky. By this world's every rule, an impossible miracle no one had ever witnessed.
But Rosetta, in the cockpit, had no leisure to savor her own swagger.
"Uwaaah...!"
If anything, a sob was climbing up her throat on its own.
BEEP! BEEP-BEEP! The fuel burn strobed crimson across her dashboard — because her specialty fuel, condensed from the finest mana stones, was being consumed at a rate of 3,000 rip per second!
"My money's melting awaaay...!"
That's right — for all that it was her first-ever mana rocket, it was so ruinously expensive she'd only dared test-fire it for the briefest of moments. Put in concrete terms: a commoner household's entire yearly income, evaporating with every tick of the second.
I seriously have to finish this as fast as humanly possible!
Like a flash of light.
KWAAAAA! The blue flame carved a straight line through the arena — a strafing run so low it nearly kissed the ground. Armored magic beasts whipped across her view along the charge path; she ignored every one. Her eyes were for a single target only: beyond the curtain of fog, threading through the seething swarm of Watchers, the lone figure standing in the farthest corner of the rearguard.
There!
Found it at last. A few meters out — the leader beast, its skull crowned with massive ram's horns. Even through the shimmer of silhouettes, she could feel the singularly grotesque pulse it radiated.
Hold this speed!
She spiked the acceleration in the same breath — KWAAAAA, the mana flame igniting like an explosion — and hurled the tail coiled behind her back straight forward. Flight thrust, tail spring, and mana amplified to the very tip, all compounding into one strike! KRAK—! It punched clean through the leader's belly. Impaled on the tail, the ram-horned boss became a gigantic lamb skewer.
But the momentum didn't stop there. Having run the boss through in a single pass, the Titan wheeled through the air and settled back down, boomerang-like, onto its pyramid altar.
KUUUNG!
In the blink of an eye, Rosetta's Titan touched down in the temple once more, the spoils dangling from its tail.
That's stage one done.
Vmmm— Only then did the wing-flames gutter down.
Marcus hadn't managed a single blink through all of it. Even the hand pulling a core free had frozen mid-motion. It had taken mere seconds — his brain simply couldn't accept the impossible scene that had unfolded in that heartbeat.
KRRASH! Only when the horned beast's corpse — still skewered on the tail — came slamming down right in front of him did he snap back to his senses.
"Botch the carving and... you know what happens, right?"
"Ah... y-yes'm."
The horned beast, still twitching, slowly went slack. Only at that frosty summons did the entranced Marcus jolt, shoulders snapping back to life.
"That one alone is worth 100,000 rip at minimum..."
"Y-yes—wait, WHAT?!"
Leaving Marcus frozen solid behind her, she hauled back on the controls once more.
Of course, entrusting the artifacts to him made me nervous too. I wanted to hover at his shoulder and supervise every cut, but there was no slack for that right now.
No more cheese, then.
Perhaps because one pack leader had fallen, the blue fog that had been smothering every direction thinned a shade. Which meant there'd be no more moving without the others noticing. Those bastards still had fire in their eyes, just waiting to steal my rewards — not one moment of carelessness allowed.
Guess there's nothing for it but to eat right in front of their faces.
Plan settled, I moved at once. This time the strategy was to gut the artifact in full view and make those loot goblins feel their own powerlessness. To display force that overwhelming, even I would need to draw out a measure of my real mana.
KWAAAAA—! The rocket engines roared back to life, spewing blinding flame, and with them the colossal steel body soared into the sky — higher, and higher still.
...!
Wings?!
With the fog thinned, this time everyone in the colosseum could see it plainly — the unreal sight of what looked like a dragon wrought of machines ascending to heaven.
Impossible...
A Titan... is flying?
Rosetta's senses caught a second pulse overhead. A tiny thing, hiding in the shadow of the giant machines — screened by its Watcher escorts, invisible to the naked eye. But if you could feel a mana wavelength, that meant nothing.
That's a monstrous amount of mana!
Krkrk-KRRK—! The roused machine dragon began spitting bolts of mana lightning. A prickling charge crawled over every spectator's skin, raising goosebumps in waves. The sparks sheathing its whole body condensed, gathering toward the very tip of its tail—
"Brace! Impact incoming!"
FLASH! The bolt came down in a single stroke — from high above the colosseum, straight into the fog-choked ground.