Die as a Human
Loyalist and rebel fleets tore into each other, painting the dark void with cascading sparks and brilliant lances of laser fire.
Warships on both sides traded broadsides while, whenever allied mechas opened a gap, main batteries punched through to hammer enemy units.
And far from that roaring melee, the ones who would decide the war’s fate were locked in a duel to the death.
CLASH!
A crimson laser sword several times more powerful than any standard blade slammed against a monomolecular blade forged by the ancient Calsorn Empire.
WHIIING!
Elongated bits immediately answered, spitting beams equal in force to a laser rifle and raking for the red Gareld’s flank.
ROAR!
Jincheon slammed the engines to maximum and rocketed upward, slipping past the barrage.
Yet Grancion—superior in every metric—had been waiting. It surged after him and swept the monomolecular blade mounted on its right arm in a wide, killing arc meant to cleave Gareld clean through.
CRACKLE!
Jincheon caught the blow on his laser sword, then deliberately cut the engines so the force of the clash flung his machine away along the enemy’s own vector.
Now!
In that instant he worked the controls in a blur, thrusters flaring in seamless sequence, and Gareld described a smooth downward circle without a single hitch in momentum.
Judging that he could not finish Poltein in one stroke, Jincheon aimed to sever Grancion’s legs and shatter its balance—
CLUNK!
Controlled solely by brainwaves, Grancion transformed into fighter mode with a reaction speed no ordinary ace could match, shot upward, and opened distance in a heartbeat.
The bits that had been climbing from below seized the opening and laid down a lattice of beams, fencing Gareld in.
Tch. Whatever principle those things run on, they’re cutting my timing with perfect precision.
If he wanted the general, he first had to shoot the horse.
Until now Jincheon had simply carved general and horse apart together; once he was sealed inside a mecha, that brutal shortcut was gone.
The bits still held a range where head-mounted vulcan fire could not reach them, so he snapped up the shotgun as a stopgap.
Killing intent—!
At that moment Grancion, still in fighter form high above, dove hard. A massive laser lance erupted from its nose.
Apparently the laser buster built into the back of the left hand could fire even while the machine was transformed.
Jincheon dodged the buster and lined up on the bits again, but Grancion—far faster than Gareld—had already completed its dive, snapped back into mecha form, and swung the monomolecular blade once more.
SCREEECH!
“What are you on about? You’re barely trading blows with me on pure machine power.”
There was no denying Grancion’s raw power.
But to Poltein—who had discarded his own flesh and ceased to be human for that power—Jincheon’s complaint was noise not worth hearing.
While the two mechas were locked at close range, the bits fired again, seeking Jincheon.
He slipped downward this time, yet Grancion stayed glued to his tail, and the pressure began to tell.
Damn it. He’s matching my reaction speed. If this keeps up, I lose.
The enemy used the bits to steal every window of attack, methodically cornering him.
On Jincheon’s side, unless he destroyed at least one bit, the only real offense left was the close-quarters clash itself.
Simply shooting the bits sounded easy—until Grancion’s superior speed either blocked the path or struck from behind the moment he tried.
Two bits down would have been ideal, but the ones destroyed earlier had already been resupplied; six again.
Keep the melee going and wait for an opening!
He ran the options and settled on two plays.
If both failed he would be truly finished, yet any crack he forced could still be widened into a killing blow.
So he repeated the same sequence several more times, deliberately letting himself be pushed back, feeding Poltein a pattern.
Jincheon dodged, raised the shotgun toward the bits—exactly as before—and Poltein came charging in with the monomolecular blade.
CRACKLE-CRACK!
High-output laser sword and monomolecular blade locked in a contest of strength—
Now!
WHIIIIINE! RAT-A-TAT-TAT!
The instant the range closed, Jincheon opened up with the head vulcans straight into Grancion’s head unit.
Close combat → bits force a dodge → Jincheon targets the bits → Poltein exploits the gap for another melee strike.
That loop had been burned into Poltein’s mind; the sudden vulcan fire hammering Grancion’s head unit shocked him completely.
And the flaw of pure brainwave control revealed itself.
A human whose eyes are attacked flinches or shields them by reflex. Poltein, who saw the world only through the main camera, jerked into an instinctive evasion—and the brainwave link stuttered.
It was the same reflex that makes a person watching a GIF flinch when something is suddenly thrown at the camera.
To any human, an attack on the eyes is raw, primal threat.
(The second plan had been far riskier: take the damage, snare both machines with high-voltage wire so they could not separate, then carve the enemy open with the chainsaw.)
What the—? Whatever. Opening!
The moment the main camera was hit and Grancion reacted like a living man, Jincheon drove the laser sword through its right shoulder.
A machine this superior would have armor to match; he would settle for taking one arm.
HISSS!
His judgment proved exact. The shoulder plating melted under the blade’s heat far more slowly than ordinary mecha armor; the sword punched through a full beat late.
“Haaah!”
Jincheon twisted Gareld’s entire frame and ripped the shoulder free, severing the arm completely.
Only when the damage signal from the monomolecular-blade arm finally registered did Poltein claw back a shred of composure—and explode in rage.
“First thing I always wanted to try against a zombie!”
Jincheon only stoked the fury higher.
CRACK!
He feinted a sword swing, then snatched the severed arm with his free hand and smashed it into Grancion’s head unit.
Hit by two unforeseen blows in succession, Poltein howled pure hatred.
WHIIING-WHIIING!
That hatred translated into the bits closing range and opening fire.
At least he had not drowned completely; he used the bits’ barrage as cover and pulled away.
With the close-combat weapon gone, the fight had shifted fully to long range.
Even without melee it doesn’t matter! Hold him and Count Sherdon will handle the rest!
The iron certainty that Sherdon Millsaden could crush the loyalists without Jincheon kept a sliver of reason alive inside the rage.
BANG! BOOM!
Jincheon, however, ignored the retreating Grancion and poured shotgun fire into the bits that had drifted too close.
Shit—when did they get that near?!
Rage had collapsed the safety distance the bits had maintained; Poltein realized it a heartbeat too late.
CRACK! BOOM!
Jincheon’s second volley shattered two more bits.
Perfect. And an unexpected bonus on top.
He had only needed two bits gone; he had taken an arm as well.
All that remained was to drive a blade through the next opening and finish it.
“Hahahahaha! Tables have turned! Time to play tag like kids again!”
Jincheon lit the engines and charged straight at Grancion.
WHIIING!
The remaining bits fired and pursued, yet without Grancion’s melee pressure their long-range shots were no real threat.
Missing the monomolecular blade, Poltein transformed into fighter mode, stowed the bits, and began to withdraw.
“Running this time? Smart! Go fetch your friends!”
Jamming shortened the effective range of their communications until neither could hear the other.
The sole mercy was that the bit link remained intact; control was still possible.
Buy time. Buy enough time and Count Sherdon will come—
The thought died mid-stream as a wave of self-loathing crashed over Poltein.
He had abandoned his own body to kill this man.
He had sworn vengeance over the corpse of the Reinforce Knights’ commander—his benefactor.
And now he was running?
Waiting for someone else’s help instead of his own strength?
In cold strategy, stalling for reinforcements was the correct move for victory.
But after discarding flesh itself for revenge, was this not simply more of the same cowardice?
Jincheon’s final taunt clung to his mind like tar.
I lost my body—I can’t even feel anything—why am I still running?
In that moment Poltein understood that the rage he had carried toward Jincheon had never been pure.
Vengeance born of a benefactor’s death.
Jealousy toward overwhelming talent.
I threw away my flesh for this? This is all it was?
The jealousy fed on the sight of his own retreat and grew blacker still.
I lost my body to bring you down! For the first time in my life I learned how endless a night can be! I paid that price—and this is all I get…?
He wanted to scream, but he had no mouth.
He wanted to beat the ground in fury, but he had neither hands nor feet.
It’s stifling! So damn stifling!
The sensationless machine body closed in like a coffin.
He craved sensation—softness, warmth, cold, pain, anything—until the hunger itself became madness.
Every buried emotion, denied even after the sacrifice of flesh, erupted the instant he failed again to kill Jincheon.
BEEP-BEEP-BEEP!
Grancion’s sensors screamed that an enemy was closing from behind.
Reflexively he “turned.” There was the red Gareld, still hunting him, angling toward the rebel fleet.
“Hm?”
Negative emotion detonated. Poltein poured every weapon he still possessed into a headlong charge.
ROOOOOAR! WHIIING!
Laser buster and bits together—an all-or-nothing suicide rush.
Emotion-driven attacks, of course, meant nothing to Jincheon.
He redlined the engines to 120 percent, slipped the buster beam, threaded the bit fire, and closed on Grancion like a spear.
Poltein shifted the remaining arm and swept the laser buster like a sword, holding the beam as a continuous blade.
CLASH!
Jincheon simply avoided the thick column of light and severed the last hand.
Only the bits remained, and they were far away.
Both arms gone, Grancion was nothing but openings. Jincheon raised the laser sword to carve open the cockpit—then the memory of Poltein’s human flinch when the main camera was hit flashed through his mind.
Life signature is there… but it’s strangely small.
Something important would be lost if he simply killed the pilot now. He shortened the blade and split Grancion’s chest without touching the brain case.
“!!”
And Jincheon finally saw what he had been fighting.
The reason the main monitor’s destruction had produced a human reaction.
Only a human brain remained—wired, suspended, reduced to a pure vessel of hatred.
“You fool. A person only finds meaning when they die as a person.”
In that instant the flippant tone that matched his youthful face vanished. The voice that spoke was the heavy, measured speech of a man who had lived far too long.
With Grancion’s destruction the sealed chamber ruptured; Poltein’s brain was exposed to hard vacuum and began to die at once.
The most delicate organ in the human body had no chance in open space.
Ah… so this is death…
Through the fading light of consciousness Poltein felt himself slipping away.
Then the “eyes” still linked to Grancion’s main camera beheld something impossible.
Gareld’s cockpit opened. A black-haired man in no pilot suit stepped out into the void.
Hallucination…?
“Lay down joy and sorrow alike, and return to the flow of the world.”
Strange—brains have no ears—yet the voice struck directly into what remained of him.
“And in the next life, be born human, and choose to die as a human. When a person ceases to be a person, they forget themselves. At the end of that path lies only emptiness that cannot even recognize its own existence.”
Every word left Jincheon’s lips in the vacuum of space.
Ah… warm…
Jincheon’s hand passed lightly near the brain. Poltein felt warmth one final time, and the organ dissolved into dust.
Jincheon watched the dead man’s soul mix into the great current of the world and drift away.
If only I had discovered that current before all my wives died…
He shook his head and gave a bitter smile.
Idiot thought. I just told him to live and die as a human, yet I would have set my own wives on a path beyond humanity.
Still the regret lingered: he had never been able to follow that current and learn what they had become.
By the time he first sensed it, decades had already passed since every one of them was gone.
Having granted a human death to the man who had tried to become something else, Jincheon stepped on walls of pure Inner Qi and climbed back into the cockpit.
More than a full minute in hard vacuum, yet his face was perfectly calm.
“All right—time to get back to it!”
The seasoned soul hidden inside a young body flashed its usual battle-hungry grin, left the wreck of Grancion behind, and floored the engines toward the enemy fleet.