Descent Through Fire
Leaving Beatrix's mecha trailing behind him, Jincheon felt their rate of freefall climbing by the second.
As if answering that plunge, Gareld's armor began to heat, and the temperature inside the cockpit started to rise.
For now it was only a mild, huh, getting a little warm in here kind of heat — but left unchecked, it would climb all the way to temperatures that killed people.
No choice. If it were just me, I'd tough it out — but if I want to keep Beatrix alive, I have to use my power.
A proper combat mecha would have come with heat-resistant film built in for situations like this. Gareld, though, was a training unit; installing thermal film would have required a separate retrofit. And for a man who could drop through atmosphere bare-bodied without breaking a sweat, Jincheon had never once considered wasting money on something that useless.
So he spread a barrier of protective qi across Gareld's forward surfaces and shielded them from the friction heat that kept climbing higher.
If anyone asks how we made it through, I'll just say we used heat-resistant film.
With that settled, he opened a channel to check on Beatrix.
"Hey, lady. If you're still breathing, answer me."
—…….—
No reply came back.
Passed out?
She had only survived because he'd managed to snag her with a wire and haul her down — and when Poltein had kicked her mecha toward the atmosphere, the impact had clearly slammed through the cockpit. There was no other reason she would fail to answer a call.
That aside… the drain on my protective qi is higher than I expected.
An ordinary Hwajeong-level master would already have burned through their internal energy. The sheer scale of the barrier needed to wrap all of Gareld, and the force of the friction heat chewing at it, were both enormous.
"Ohh. So this is the plasma sheath you get on atmospheric reentry?"
Jincheon, however, was watching the eerie plasma phenomenon bloom around them with the leisure of a man on a scenic flight. The power he carried was far too vast for a descent like this to meaningfully deplete him.
The real problem arrived once they punched through the cloud layer and dropped toward the surface.
The ocean?
Of all places, they were coming down over open water. Better than landing in the middle of an enemy stronghold, sure — but keeping himself and Beatrix alive in the middle of the sea would still force him to show his hand.
He checked the monitors, sweeping for options, and found a stretch of scattered islands tens of kilometers out.
Head that way first, and then— huh?
BEEP— BEEP— BEEP— BEEP—
LOCK-ON DETECTED
Something tore through the sensory field he had unconsciously extended — and the cockpit lock-on warning screamed to life.
Missiles!
They had been launched from a considerable distance. Jincheon bit down on his lip. Whether the enemy ground forces had received advance intelligence, or whether they had simply decided this was a loyalist supply drop worth intercepting, they had clearly sent surface-to-air missiles to shoot them down.
Shoot them down? No. Do that and they'll send a search team straight here.
Allied ground forces were present on this planet, but the enemy still held the advantage. A search party was more likely to be hostile than friendly — and if he ran into them, he would have no choice but to use his real power. For a man who only truly enjoyed a fight while wearing a mecha like a set of restraints, bare-handed combat against ordinary troops was about as dull as it got. He preferred to avoid it whenever he could.
But dumping Gareld still feels wrong.
The ideal play was to climb out, extract Beatrix alone, and let both mechas take the missiles. A search team combing wreckage would poke around a little and leave. But abandoning the Gareld he had spent so long breaking in felt far too wasteful — so for this one occasion, Jincheon decided to cheat.
He slipped out of the cockpit into a wind so violent it threatened to hurl him skyward on its own, hair whipping wild as he crossed to Beatrix's machine.
CRACK!
Faster and easier than hunting for a release handle, he simply tore the canopy open and looked inside.
Passed out, just like I thought.
He slung Beatrix's limp body over one shoulder and carried her back to Gareld. In a movie or a comic, the sequence would have been dripping with tension. Jincheon made it look so smooth that not a shred of danger registered.
Before climbing back into his own cockpit, he used Heogongsbeomul and the principles of Sword Control to start ripping armor plates off Gareld's exterior, scattering them here and there.
If the debris field is too thin, they'll get suspicious.
He left the torn fragments to drift naturally, climbed back into the cockpit, and wrapped the whole of Gareld in protective qi.
Here they come!
As the missiles closed, he layered a second barrier inside the cockpit as well.
BOOM— BOOM— BOOM!
The warheads slammed into both his machine and Beatrix's, and a wall of explosive flame rolled over them. Protected by the qi barrier, Jincheon and Gareld barely felt the shock.
Now!
The instant the blasts went off, he unfurled a different kind of protective qi entirely.
Radar worked by firing electromagnetic waves and measuring the reflections that bounced back. So Jincheon shaped a barrier that absorbed those waves — rendering them invisible to enemy sensors.
This once. And never for combat.
Used freely, the technique could have dominated entire wars. He drove a stake through that temptation and told himself it existed for survival alone. Apply his martial arts to a mecha and even an F-class machine could topple an S-class — and then the electric thrill he lived for would vanish completely.
Barrier active, he flew for the distant island chain. Behind him, the armor plates he had torn free and the wreckage of Beatrix's detonated mecha bobbed across the sea.
Hide on a nearby island and they'll find us for sure.
So he pushed to a range that should have been impossible, set down on a suitable island, and then sank Gareld until only the head broke the surface — staging the aftermath of some catastrophic crash. Finally he soaked both himself and Beatrix in seawater, completing the alibi. He already had his story straight. All that remained was to haul the two of them up onto the beach.
Wash— washhh—
"Nn… ngh……."
The sound of waves pulled Beatrix back toward consciousness.
"Where… is this……?"
She had been in space. Why was she here? She looked around in confusion.
"Jincheon? What on earth is— ah……."
Seeing him collapsed nearby, she remembered everything from before she blacked out — the fight against the knight Levin Poltein, the defeat, the boot that had kicked her cockpit free and knocked her senseless.
How am I still alive?
She remembered the direction of that kick had been toward the planet. She scanned the surroundings again. Some distance off, Gareld lay half-submerged, armor torn away in places until the frame showed through.
Don't tell me—
Herself, falling toward the planet. Gareld, wrecked by something. Jincheon, collapsed at her side.
He saved me? Why?
The realization only scrambled her thoughts further. She had made her dislike of him so blatantly obvious — why would he go out of his way to save someone like her?
"Urgh… hh……."
A short while later, Jincheon opened his eyes, carefully performing the act of coming to. He forced his upper body upright, checked Beatrix and their surroundings, then flopped straight back down.
"Haaaah! We're alive! I really thought we were dead……!"
He groaned as if he had just crawled out of some legendary ordeal. Beatrix found the performance grating — but she still had to ask.
"Why?"
"Hm?"
"Why did you save me? I hated you that much……."
Jincheon swallowed the honest answer — because you're a candidate for my harem — and delivered the line he had prepared.
"Because we're on the same side."
"What?"
"We eat together, sleep together, fight together. Do I need a reason to keep one of my own alive?"
"Th-that's all it was?"
"And if you died, the Empress Dowager would be devastated. That much was obvious."
"Ah……."
As her head cleared, she saw how recklessly she had behaved. A woman whose duty was to protect the imperial family at every moment had courted danger for the sake of battlefield glory — abandoning the most basic, most vital mission of the Royal Guard.
She was sinking into that grim realization when something else struck her as wrong.
"Wait. Why have you been speaking so casually this whole time?"
The tone had been so natural she had nearly let it slide. She called him on it.
"So what? We're trying to survive on a planet the enemy controls. You really want to stand on rank right now?"
"You… h-fine. You saved my life, so do as you like. More importantly — what exactly happened?"
She already knew this was simply how he was. What she needed was the rest: why they were here, what had happened to Gareld, what had become of her own machine.
"It was a hell of a scramble."
Jincheon launched into the story he had prepared. Heat-resistant film had gotten them through atmospheric reentry, but then they had picked up what looked like enemy intercept missiles. He had considered shooting them down — until he realized that would only draw a search team. So he had decided to abandon Beatrix's mecha. He had opened her cockpit, found her unconscious, hauled her out, used her machine as a shield, and slipped Gareld toward a nearby island. He had installed a short-range radar-masking device on Gareld for emergencies; he had used it to submerge the mecha, then the two of them had swum for shore — only the whole sequence had been so frantic that he had briefly blacked out himself.
"……."
Beatrix, confronted with the sheer volume of events that had unfolded while she was out cold, found herself speechless.
"Whew. All right — time to get up."
"What? Get up?"
"You planning to sit here forever? We have no idea when our side will come looking."
"Hah… but……."
"But what?"
Thrown into a sudden survival situation, Beatrix glanced around in a fluster.
"A survival kit? You at least have a survival kit, don't you?"
"Hey, Captain. After everything I just told you, you really think we had time to pack for a picnic?"
"Then your mecha — it must have at least one……."
"I don't carry that stuff. I don't get shot down. And none of this would have happened if it weren't for you."
"Ngh……."
The knowledge that all of it traced back to her made Beatrix lower her head in silence. The rage had burned off; cold clarity had taken its place, and with it the full weight of how badly she had failed. She had nothing left to say.
Jincheon left her standing there and started inland. The island was a ring of beach around a dense, heavily wooded interior.
Pretty big island, all right.
He had chosen it deliberately for its size — a fact Beatrix had no way of knowing as she scrambled after him.
"W-wait! I'm coming with you!"
Allied rescue might arrive at any time. In the worst case, the enemy would get there first. But either outcome required them to find food and water first.
And so the survival diary of Jincheon and Beatrix began.