The Seventh Fleet Descends
"Ha, fuck. I can't take this shit anymore."
Having returned to his transport ship to begin the Gareld's refit work, Jincheon wore an expression of pure, murderous frustration.
"Hehe. You've worked hard."
"You must have really been through it. I've never seen you look this tired before, Jincheon."
The two women who came to greet him scurried right up. Jincheon roughly yanked them both into his arms by the waist.
"Kyaa!"
"Eek!"
"Sniiiff— Haaah—"
"W-wait, Jincheon…"
"If you keep smelling us like that…"
Heliane and Calsira flushed with embarrassment at the way Jincheon was so blatantly inhaling their scents. It wasn't even the sensual kind of nuzzling—he was sniffing them out like a genuine beast, pure and raw, and that made it all the more mortifying.
But after the rewards ceremony had ended and the party begun, Jincheon had been forced to plaster on false smiles and exchange forced greetings with countless nobles. Right now, he was desperately washing that filthy feeling away with the scent of his females.
"If it weren't for that bitch Beatrix, I would've just assassinated the whole damn lot and left."
"How is killing everyone an assassination?"
"There's a saying on Terra: no matter how you kill them, if there are no witnesses, it's an assassination."
"Terra's more extreme than I thought, huh?"
It was obviously a joke, but Jincheon said it so seriously that it didn't sound like one.
"Sniff sniff— Haaah—"
"Haa…"
Heliane let out a sigh at the sight of Jincheon caressing their waists while greedily taking in their scents. Then she pulled him in by the nape of his neck and buried his face between her breasts.
"Feeling better now?"
"Huuuhhh… Heaven…"
"You're so many times older than us, and yet you act completely like a child."
Jincheon's age had to be measured in multiples of theirs, but the way he lived entirely by his own whims made him feel like a peer.
"Unnie, me too, me too!"
"Here."
"Eii. How about here?"
"This is heaven too…"
Calsira took over, burying his face in her own cleavage.
"Heliane's…"
"Hm?"
"Has a bit of a fresh, green scent to it, but there's also this cozy warmth."
"Wh-wh-wh-what are you even saying?!"
Heliane's face went white as he evaluated the scent between her breasts, and she started kicking at his knees.
"What about mine?"
If she was going to get rated anyway, Calsira decided she might as well take it head-on and asked about her own scent.
"Hmph. Ask after you get rid of that milky smell first."
"What did you just say?!"
Thwack!
Having thoroughly enjoyed himself only to receive the scathing review of "milky," Calsira went all out and started wildly kicking at Jincheon's joints.
"Hahahahahaha! Hit me all you want! Your feet'll hurt before mine do!"
"Auuugh! I really hate you!"
Calsira pounded on his back—still wearing her nano-suit—to vent her rage, but Jincheon's arrogant grin never faded.
Even so, the fact that Jincheon had recovered his usual condition, and the way he couldn't bring himself to express his gratitude honestly, like a child, drew smiles to both women's lips.
"So now it's time to refit our mechas, right?"
Of course, the mecha refits for Jincheon's group had already been agreed upon, and each of them had already thought through the direction of the modifications to suit their own styles.
"Yeah. Some guy called Duke Hamilton told us where to go."
"Hmm… Well, since we have the Empress Dowager's orders, they should do the job properly, right?"
"That's why I put so much effort into acting the whole time."
If Jincheon had behaved as he normally did, even with the Empress Dowager's orders, the technicians might have been given some quiet command to produce defective work. To prevent that, he had maintained a consistently humble posture throughout, conducting himself like a noble who understood honor.
No matter how much money one had, every technician in this empire was, directly or indirectly, under the influence of the nobility. There was no helping it.
His only interaction with Duke Hamilton had been a brief greeting, but when Jincheon declared he would not accept a noble title, the duke had looked down on him with the satisfied air of a man who thought Jincheon knew his place.
Unless something special came up, they probably wouldn't produce defective goods.
"But…"
Still uneasy, Calsira carefully spoke up.
"Refitting all the mechas we have is going to take at least a few weeks. If the loyalists win in the meantime, won't the whole plan fall apart?"
Jincheon's plan for this war was to make Beatrix his female as well, then—depending on the situation—either become a noble and acquire a territory, or take a large ship as compensation, kidnap the sisters, and vanish without a trace.
The details would need further observation, but that was the overall framework.
But what if, as Calsira said, the refit work finished only to find the loyalists victorious or holding a clear advantage? That would leave only Jincheon in a strange position.
"That won't happen."
"How can you be so sure?"
"The side that starts a rebellion is putting their lives on the line, so they usually prepare for the worst-case scenario."
"And if they're idiots who don't even know that?"
"Then their rebellion plans would have been exposed long before this. You can't pull off a rebellion without ability. If you're stupid or too impatient, you usually get found out halfway through."
To rebel, you first had to persuade those who would join your plan, then manage them so their anxiety didn't make them spill everything. At the same time, you had to prepare while dodging or deceiving the eyes of surveillance that any nation would naturally have in place.
That alone was already daunting, yet the rebel emperor Galdoorn had brought nearly half the empire's nobles over to his side. He must have promised considerable rewards, but fundamentally it meant he had the ability to unite them.
And even if he captured the emperor and gained legitimacy, the fact remained that he had seized the throne by force—so a civil war with the resisting loyalists was already a given.
"They would have already been preparing for civil war. And the nobles on the rebel side will fight to the death, because if they lose, every last one of them dies for treason."
"Even if our side offers to pardon their crimes?"
"That only works when you say it from a position of advantage."
"So you're expecting them to fight fiercely at least until our mechas are refitted."
Jincheon nodded and headed for the transport ship's cockpit.
"So we just need to focus on the refit work that suits us. There'll be ground combat ahead, so we need to train for that too."
"Gareld may be a training mecha, but that means it can be modified broadly—I'm looking forward to it."
Ordinarily, refitting a low-performance training mecha for combat was a waste of money, but Gareld was no ordinary trainer—it was a training mecha of the ancient Calsorn Empire. Nations that possessed Garelds often used their wide modification potential to create custom units for ace-class pilots.
The Giranlek Empire held mid-to-upper-tier technology in the galaxy, so barring major issues, it would be upgraded to mid or high B-class.
For reference, Saisalas was a space-only unit, so in preparation for the coming ground battles, they had decided to refit all three Garelds.
And so Jincheon's group settled in to wait for the refit work, biding their time until they could take the field—but the situation was heading somewhere far worse than they had imagined.
Ten days after the civil war officially began, the seventh fleet of the galaxy's strongest mercenary force—the Resili Mercenary Group—joined the rebel side.
Ten days earlier.
"You called for me, Captain?"
"Dolche, how long would it take your fleet to reach the Giranlek Empire?"
Russelion Iliyan Resily—white skin and scales, reptilian hands and feet—lay arrogantly sprawled across a top-grade leather sofa as she held a video call with a man named Dolche.
Green-skinned and boar-like in appearance, he was a member of the Getschel race and the fleet commander leading the Resili Mercenary Group's seventh fleet.
For reference, the Resili Mercenary Group had a zeroth fleet led by Resily herself, and the fleets were assigned in descending strength the farther their number got from zero. The zeroth was permanently hers, so the other fleet commanders competed fiercely to claim the first.
"Please wait a moment."
He looked like an orc from a fantasy novel, yet the composure radiating from his every action was more than enough to make one feel he had been born into the wrong race.
"About ten to twelve days."
"You've heard that a civil war has broken out in the Giranlek Empire, I assume? Go and declare your intention to join the rebel side. Handle the fee negotiations yourself."
"Yes. It will be done."
He might have been expected to ask why, but the man called Dolche simply stated he would carry out Resily's orders without a single question.
"The mercenaries who performed great deeds escorting the emperor for the loyalists are few in number, but every one of them is strong. Fight with caution. In particular, the red Gareld moves nearly three times faster than a standard Gareld and displays remarkable accuracy and evasion—treat it as a one-man army and eliminate it. I'll send you the footage we've secured."
"Yes. Then we will depart immediately."
"Mm. I expect your victory. Handle this properly, and I'll bestow several of the Calsorn Empire mechas we obtained from the recent relic expedition under your command."
"My advance thanks."
"Move at once."
After issuing her final command, Resily switched off her Bio Device and settled comfortably into the sofa.
That red Gareld's speed is definitely Jincheon piloting it. He's overcoming the G-forces with martial arts.
Unable to accept Jincheon's existence, Resily had taken an interest in his every move and continuously tracked his path. Thanks to that, she had learned that Jincheon's group had performed great deeds escorting the emperor, and she had even secured the footage circulating among the Giranlek Empire's rebel forces.
Dolche needs to kill that man in space combat…
Even if only a tenth of the memories of that filthy Terra bitch Im Hayeon—memories she didn't even want to think about—were accurate, Jincheon would clearly not die just because a mecha exploded.
He'll never die in ground or naval combat. But if his mecha explodes in space…
No matter how powerful martial arts might be, unless one belonged to a special race like the Draconians, surviving in space was impossible. Even if he endured the explosion, once he was adrift in the airless void of space, even a monster of his strength would clearly suffocate.
But if I specifically order him to finish the red Gareld in space, even Dolche would ask why.
Dolche led the seventh fleet with outstanding ability and command skill, but a large part of his value also lay in his steadfast loyalty—following her orders without question. Yet if she ordered him to absolutely deal with the red Gareld in space, even Dolche would inevitably grow suspicious.
With Dolche's fleet, they can overwhelm the battlefield. And there's a self-proclaimed genius strategist with a working brain among the rebels—given this much force, they should be able to win easily.
Even if Jincheon survived a defeat in ground combat, sooner or later both sides would have to fight a large-scale decisive battle to firmly settle or reverse the war situation. And that decisive battle would naturally unfold in space, so Dolche—having heard her warning—would eliminate the red Gareld and turn Jincheon into space debris.
Throb!
"Kh…!"
Suddenly her head began to pound, and Resily scowled. The memories of Im Hayeon were resisting.
Disappear from inside me! I'd rather turn that man into cosmic scrap than live a life of fawning over some man like you!
If she just killed Jincheon, she could erase the existence of Im Hayeon still resisting within her mind. That was why she had sent the seventh fleet, the one closest to the Giranlek Empire.
Jincheon himself would never even imagine that the difficulty had skyrocketed because of him.
As an arrogant Draconian, Resily was a model of the self-made—having claimed this position without anyone's help. In contrast, Im Hayeon was a woman who had fawned over the man called Jincheon, relying on him and loving him to endure the storms of the world.
The damnably irritating part was that Im Hayeon's happiness was so vast and immense that one had to wonder whether it even belonged to this world. That vast happiness was crashing over her, trying to absorb her and turn her into the woman called Im Hayeon.
For Resily—who had thrown away even a single pair of underwear received from another and started from bare flesh—she could not endure the memories of that Terra bitch Im Hayeon trying to swallow her whole.
Today, once again, she began her defensive battle against the past-life memories that sought to claim her body.
"This is more serious than I expected."
Participating in the roughly month-long refit work and trying to create a dedicated unit suited to himself, Jincheon frowned at how much worse the war situation was than anticipated.
He had already expected the enemy to be better prepared, and for them to be united by the fear of losing everything if they were defeated. But the current situation was worse than even Jincheon's expectations.
There were two main reasons.
The first was that the Resili Mercenary Group's seventh fleet had been hired. The Resili Mercenary Group had a total of ten independent fleets, and a single independent fleet was said to possess combat power rivaling an entire army.
At first, courageous nobles had charged in saying mercenaries were still just mercenaries no matter how strong, but the Resili Mercenary Group had taught them through their sacrifices that they were qualitatively different from other mercenaries.
The second was a young head of a count's house and strategist who had joined the rebels: Sherdon Mills Gaden. A man who had always called himself a genius strategist, he had judged that the rebel side would better allow him to fully display his abilities and joined them.
While everyone else had joined the rebellion for all the benefits they stood to gain, Sherdon Mills Gaden was a case who had entered the rebel forces solely to exercise his own talent. And he truly had the skill to confidently call himself a genius—in every large-scale battle he participated in, the loyalists were thoroughly defeated, and their forces were dwindling by the moment.
"Well, it's still better than being openly shoved out as sacrificial lambs to die."
But at least their allies were trying hard to fight, so Calsira judged the situation better than the battlefields she had been through until now.
"The Resili Mercenary Group's participation is too big. If we don't do something about them, we'll be overwhelmed in terms of force."
Over the past month, through ground combat training combined with steady martial arts practice, Heliane had become able to withstand more intense G-forces than before. She was focusing on the participation of the Resili Mercenary Group—something no warring nation could afford to be ignorant of.
"Don't worry too much, Unnie. With us, we can handle those guys easily."
"Right. We'll be able to take the field ourselves soon enough."
Jincheon smiled at the sight of his Gareld, which had once been overall blunt and unstylish, now transformed into the form of a knight clad in armor in the Giranlek Empire's style.
It wasn't just the exterior that had changed—the interior had been overhauled as well. Overall performance had been upgraded from C-class to B-class, and it had been converted into the attack-specialized unit he wanted. Once the finishing work and final adjustments were complete, it could be deployed to the battlefield immediately.
I should send word that the refit work is almost done.
And the time had come to reunite with Eirin. He had spent a month of unwanted abstinence, so the prospect of reuniting with her put a smile on Jincheon's lips.