One-Man Army
"It's the red Gareld!"
"Just as reported! Watch that thing's speed!"
The red Gareld had already been flagged as a high-priority threat — a single machine that had smashed through an encirclement and held off an entire knight order on its own. When the reports first claimed it was roughly three times faster than a standard Gareld, most of them had simply stared in disbelief.
In a fantasy novel or a wuxia tale, some mid-tier hotshot would have scoffed, I don't buy that crap. I'll put the rumors to rest myself, charged in, and died. But in a world with functional communications, nobody was that stupid.
They hadn't believed it at first either — until the black-box footage from the knight order that had actually fought Jincheon arrived, and every face in the room went hard.
So the rebels threw every fast cruiser they could scrape together into the Empress Dowager's path, and while the ships moved into position they worked out how to deal with the red Gareld.
"Counter team — stop the red Gareld!"
The rebel noble commanding the fast cruisers launched a unit formed for one purpose only: killing that machine. The knight order's footage had made one thing clear — concentrated fire alone would not bring the red Gareld down. So the eight-mecha counter team was loaded with specialized counter-equipment designed to target that single machine and nothing else.
They hadn't had time to train with any of it, of course. But every pilot had handled the gear at least a few times before, and that would have to be enough.
"Now!"
The moment Jincheon's red Gareld entered effective range, the counter team's leader gave the signal.
Missile pods locked to the mechas' shoulders spat warheads in every direction. Mid-flight the missiles burst open, scattering cluster munitions that bloomed into a vast net of fire and steel, all of it screaming toward Jincheon.
They're starting to develop counters for me. Good. You don't get called a one-man army without breaking through this kind of thing.
What made a one-man army a one-man army?
Raw skill? The galaxy was crawling with skilled pilots.
Between an ace pilot and a one-man army lay a gulf that simple rankings of "good" and "better" could never measure. Destroying a lot of enemy mechas mattered, sure — but it wasn't enough. A one-man army shattered every scheme aimed at him alone. He made the enemy's tactics and strategy come apart at the seams. That was the difference.
"Hup!"
Jincheon focused his power with a sharp shout and threw the Gareld into a hard dash — body stretched into a straight line, the way superheroes flew in the old comics.
Found it!
Martial arts power slowed the world to a crawl. Jincheon spread his qi-sense, hunting for the thinnest stretch of the cluster net.
Now!
The blade carved through the swarm of cluster munitions as the Gareld spun, punching a hole clean through the net of fire.
A few rounds scraped the shoulder, the leg, the flank — denting the armor, nothing more. Cosmetic damage. Nothing that would slow him down.
"What the hell — he punched through that fire net!?"
The counter team leader had expected Jincheon to pull back and open the distance. Watching the red Gareld smash through the barrage with barely a scratch left him stunned.
"He's better than we thought — but the bastard has no ranged weapons! Stay calm and fire the flash shells! Number One, then in sequence!"
The leader had confirmed the enemy was more of a monster than expected, but the fact that the monster was charging in with no long-range armament at all was a relief. He issued the next order with cold precision. The red Gareld's marksmanship was something to watch for — but charging bare of ranged weapons was clear proof the enemy was running short on supplies.
The mecha designated Number One raised a 350mm recoilless cannon and fired.
What?
They should have been pouring on simultaneous fire, and instead this was a shot even a green pilot could dodge? Jincheon, closing on the counter team, shifted slightly aside to slip past the unguided shell.
The shell detonated. A searing blaze of light flooded his monitors.
"Kh—!"
The displays snapped into low-luminance mode almost instantly, but the light was still bright enough to sting. What had once been an ordinary signal flare had been overdriven far past its design limits — a weapon built to blind a pilot's eyes.
"Number Two! Number Three! Sequential fire!"
The rest of the team followed, slamming flash shells into Jincheon's monitors until even low-luminance mode was nothing but white. The entire display was drowning in light engineered for signaling — and now used to erase a pilot's vision.
"Now! EMP — fire!"
The red Gareld's speed dropped. Its movements turned sluggish. The counter team leader saw it and gave the order. Mechas Six, Seven, and Eight switched from flash shells to EMP rounds and lobbed them along the red Gareld's projected path.
The EMP shells burst. Jincheon's monitors dissolved into the static snow of an ancient television set.
"Damn it—!"
Even as a training frame, it was still a Calsorn Empire mecha — that was the only reason it was still moving at all. Any ordinary C-class would have locked up completely. But the Gareld was famous enough that the counter team already knew the EMP would only knock out the main monitor and radar for a short window. Nothing more.
"All units — open fire!"
Blind the pilot with flash shells. Blind the machine with EMP. The moment they confirmed the red Gareld was fully inside the EMP radius, the counter team poured fire into it.
Lasers lanced toward a machine that could no longer see.
And the red Gareld simply flew forward and slipped through every shot.
"Wha—?"
"Last thrashing of a dying animal! He's just a fast blind man!"
The leader wasn't wrong. Jincheon genuinely could not read enemy positions from radar or main monitor. And that was exactly why the galaxy had plenty of ace pilots and almost no one who earned the title of one-man army.
In the ancient world, warriors like Xiang Yu or Lü Bu could smash an army apart with raw strength and turn a battle single-handed. Once guns ruled the battlefield, even a monster of skill could no longer change a war alone. This universe was a little kinder than modern Earth — one-man armies were still possible — but the bare minimum requirement was an A-class or S-class mecha from the Calsorn Empire. Below that tier, machines were close enough in performance that the idea of a one-man army simply didn't exist.
And then everyone watching the counter team's performance started doubting their own eyes.
"Leader! Our fire isn't connecting!"
"That's impossible… how…!"
The red Gareld wasn't just throwing raw speed at the problem. It was moving in short, precise bursts — the bare minimum of motion — as if it could still see every shot coming. Anything that looked like it might hit was caught on an anti-beam shield looted from a knight, layering defense on top of already monstrous evasion.
"Scatter guided missiles and open the distance! Rebuild the fire net!"
Multi-launch missile ports on the ankles spat a swarm of guided warheads that curved toward Jincheon.
"Guided missiles, huh. Sorry — that call was wrong."
Main monitor still crawling with static, Jincheon closed his eyes and spread his qi-sense, reading every enemy movement. He banked hard, and the missiles locked onto his trail like rats behind the Pied Piper.
"My Gareld is faster than your missiles!"
Confirming the entire swarm was behind him, Jincheon lit the engines to maximum and shot straight at the counter team. Laser rifles stitched the space ahead of him; he slipped every beam with the smallest possible corrections, guided by qi alone.
Yeah. This is way more comfortable than using my eyes.
Vision was a narrow cone. Eyes shut, feeling the world through qi-sense, he had the full three hundred and sixty degrees. It was one of the foundational elements of Woohwadeungseon — Ascension: sensing the world with the body instead of the eyes, and in doing so slipping free of the body's chains. For Jincheon, who had already reached that realm, radar and main monitors were handicaps more than tools.
The counter team had stripped those handicaps away — and in doing so, they had woken the monster.
For the record, years after every one of his wives had passed, Jincheon had come within a hair of true Ascension. He failed only because he still couldn't let go of his attachment to lust.
"S-stop him! Fire the cluster munitions — now!"
The leader ordered another wave of cluster missiles. This time there was no proper fire net — just a desperate scatter at close range. They didn't need a net anymore. Jincheon was already on top of them.
Even with a trail of guided missiles still locked to his back, Jincheon threw the Gareld through sharp vertical cuts, weaving through the cluster bursts. The munitions tore into the trailing missiles instead, thinning the tail he was dragging behind him.
"D-don't come closer! Stay back—!"
One of the counter team pilots finally let Jincheon inside his guard. The Gareld's laser sword cut him clean in two.
Jincheon drove a wire into the bisected wreck, swung the corpse behind him like a flail, and smashed it into the surviving guided missiles. The chain of explosions lit the void.
"Damn it — disperse and withdra—!"
A cobbled-together team with cobbled-together gear could not fight the red Gareld in close quarters. The leader made the call — and Jincheon put a laser rifle, looted from the pilot he'd just cut down, straight through the leader's back as he tried to run.
"E… engine—!"
Jincheon had simply shot the nearest easy target. It just happened to be the leader. He closed in, severed both arms, and wrecked the engine — but left the cockpit intact. Then he started rifling through the mecha's hardpoints.
"Nothing beats battlefield resupply."
"Y-you're looting my weapons!? In the middle of a war!?"
The leader thrashed in pure humiliation, thrashing the ruined frame as an enemy stripped him bare mid-battle.
"I was going to be decent about it — take what I needed and let you live. You're making this annoying."
Jincheon drove the laser sword through the cockpit. The thrashing stopped. He stripped the laser rifle, the recoilless cannon, and every round he could grab in a few seconds.
Enemy lasers poured in the moment the leader died and the rest of the team stopped holding back. Jincheon pulled clear before the wreck detonated and checked his haul.
One laser rifle with a power pack. One 350mm recoilless cannon and two shells he'd managed to snatch.
"Oh yeah. I like the weight of this thing."
He'd never bought heavy weapons — they didn't suit his hit-and-run style. Holding one now, though, feeling the kind of mass that could actually hurt a capital ship, he found he liked it a lot.
Are these all flash shells? EMP? That guy fired flash, so probably flash…
Dodging incoming lasers, Jincheon loaded the recoilless cannon and charged the enemy line. The counter team and every other mecha in range opened up with laser rifles; he slipped the fire net like it was nothing. The rebel flagship ordered the counter team to reform and rebuild their barrage — but by the time the broken formation managed to regroup, Jincheon had already climbed above them and was driving alone into the heart of the enemy.
Then the Imperial Guard, arriving a beat behind him, opened fire from the rear. The counter team, still half-hypnotized by the red Gareld's impossible performance, tried to turn and fight — far too late.
"Eat flash!"
With allied cover freeing him from rear threats, Jincheon casually weaved through rebel fire and touched off the recoilless cannon.
White light bloomed. Flash shell, not EMP — confirmed. He drove straight into the searing glare that would have blinded anyone at close range.
"Aagh! My eyes!"
"My eyes—!"
Most of the pilots managed anti-flash protocols in time. The slow ones went temporarily blind. Their mechas drifted like drunks, and Jincheon's laser rifle tore them apart before they could even react.
"Hahahahaha! Slaughter time is back on!"
With the counter team wiped out, all the enemy had left were ordinary mechas. Jincheon cackled at the thought of carving through the line now that their carefully built counter was scrap, and he went to work.
"Hm?"
The enemy ships suddenly grew frantic. Mechas started peeling away from Jincheon and the Imperial Guard, trying to put distance between them.
"Hmm…"
Jincheon spread his qi-sense to find out why — and felt killing intent, far off. Not aimed at his side. Aimed at the enemy.
"Allied escort fleet has arrived! All units — pursue the enemy from the rear!"
The operator's voice rang with joy. Jincheon's eyes held none of it.
They were waiting for this.
To anyone else it would look like the loyalist escort fleet had raced in to reinforce a desperate fight. Jincheon could feel the orderly, disciplined qi radiating from the loyalist side — not the ragged energy of a force that had scrambled to arrive, but the calm of ships that had been sitting in position the whole time.
The plan was to stage a dramatic rescue right when we were in real trouble, wasn't it.
Linking up with the escort fleet under ordinary conditions was one thing. Sweeping in mid-battle left a much stronger impression of having been saved.
Politics already. What a pain.
Still, thinning the enemy numbers now would only help the fights ahead. Jincheon chased the retreating rebels and privately hoped the noble backstabbing wouldn't go too far.
If it did, he might just kill every last one of them — ally or not.