Now I Know How to Use You
He's good at marksmanship and high-speed maneuver combat, but that's all. He has no idea how to deal with an opponent's attacks.
Having delivered that assessment of Jincheon, Jezer gripped his laser sword and charged straight at him.
If this bastard gets into real danger, the other one will almost certainly jump in. I have to put him down in a single stroke.
When you throw prey to a cub so it can learn to hunt and the cub gets taken down instead, no mother stays still. That was why Jezer preferred not to play it safe—he needed to at least cripple Jincheon in one decisive blow.
But Jezer did not know.
Jincheon's true specialty was not ranged combat or high-speed dogfighting. It was close-quarters combat.
Jezer drove deep inside the rifle's effective range, already braced to dodge the moment Jincheon leveled the muzzle.
Instead, Jincheon simply lowered the laser rifle, as if inviting him to come ahead.
"So your buddy's watching and that gave you a little courage, huh!"
From Jezer's perspective, having never heard the two of them on comms, the assumption was only natural.
Jincheon made no attempt to flee. He met the charge head-on, and the instant the distance closed, Lexerei's laser sword came scything in.
By ordinary mecha standards the strike was fast. To Jincheon's reflexes it might as well have been a snail crawling.
I trust the mecha's performance. To do that, I need to know exactly how well this thing can keep up with my movements.
Trust only worked when both sides knew each other. Jincheon pulled every sense in his body to its peak and began a pure evasion drill, feeling out the limits of the Gareld he had until now only swung around by raw power.
A low, rising whine filled the cockpit.
With the super-senses that had been sleeping until this moment, he poured out his inner energy and felt every sound the frame made as it moved.
Reaction speed… I've got a rough idea.
Dodging Lexerei's laser sword again and again, Jincheon confirmed the absolute maximum response the Gareld could deliver. He kept weaving through the relentless attacks, letting his entire body drink in every last scrap of the machine's specs.
In a mecha fight the pilot's skill matters, sure—but the side that knows how to wring every last drop out of the mecha's specs has the real advantage!
Taking Calsira's advice seriously, Jincheon's movement no longer looked like a man scrambling to survive each blow. He was riding the absolute edge of the machine's performance, dodging with almost leisurely precision.
His movement just changed!
Jezer felt the Gareld's motion grow impossibly smooth and broke out in a cold sweat.
Is he growing? In that short a time?
At first he had been furious at being treated like a training dummy. Now that not a single attack had landed, fury had given way to a crawling chill down his spine.
"Now I get it. I know how to use you."
In that moment, after feeling every limit of the Gareld through pure evasion, Jincheon smiled as if something had clicked—and the counterattack began.
A laser sword skimmed so close across the main monitor that the edge of the frame screamed. Jincheon lit the boosters and shot forward.
A brutal impact rang out.
"Ghk—?!"
The Gareld's fist smashed into Lexerei's head. The main camera inside the head unit crackled with static, then thankfully recovered.
"You little shit!"
Jezer swung the laser sword in a furious counter, but his opponent had already read it—upper body dropping in advance, the blade whistling harmlessly overhead.
Then, like a boxer, the Gareld's fists hammered Lexerei's head in a relentless flurry. The continuous shocks spiderwebbed the main camera; the cracks began to bleed into the monitor itself.
Goddamn it… no choice, is there…! If my partner gets in real danger that bastard will join the fight, but I have to go back to square one!
The opponent was clearly a skilled pilot. Yet the way he had fled one-sidedly from the smart guns without landing a proper counter told Jezer the man still lacked experience.
Pirates tore open every weakness without mercy. The only price was accepting a two-on-one the moment he seized the advantage.
Jezer deployed Lexerei's booster unit and rocketed upward.
"Wha—?!"
What he saw next was impossible.
As if it had been waiting for exactly that, the Gareld deployed its own boosters and came right after him—movement that looked like it had predicted the escape before it even began.
In truth, Jincheon, now fully at ease, was using every scrap of his dynamic vision, reading the booster unit's rotation and thruster exhaust down to the comma. That was how he had done it.
Even if Jezer had known the truth, he would never have believed it. He slammed thrusters and booster angle hard right for a sudden turn.
A laser cracked past.
"Ugh!"
Jincheon, who had already read the move with his eyes, fired the laser rifle. The beam sheared away part of the booster unit and chewed a chunk out of Lexerei's shoulder on the way through.
With part of the unit destroyed, overload warnings screamed. Jezer jettisoned the booster unit and dropped clear just in time.
The discarded unit detonated in a massive bloom of fire—and something came flying straight through the flames at Jincheon.
A grenade loaded with a smart tracker.
The smart trackers lost effect after a set time; Jezer had used the explosion itself to fling a fresh grenade at the Gareld and re-tag it.
Red particles burst outward as the grenade went off. Jincheon did not dodge. Whether the particles clung or not, he drove straight through them.
Trust the Gareld's performance and use it! Just not getting hit by enemy fire doesn't make you the best!
Until now Jincheon had been fighting the way he remembered from mecha anime—dodge every attack and shoot, float like a butterfly and sting like a bee. That style worked for protagonists whose machines were simply superior.
Translated into this world's balance, you needed at least a top-tier B-class, preferably S-class, one-off machines. What Jincheon had was a mass-production frame that merely ranked high among its peers. Trying to play anime protagonist in something like that was bound to create problems.
I'll give what I have to give!
He had hauled a mountain of Gareld spare parts with him—what was there to worry about? Break it, fix it. Completely wreck it and there was still a spare Gareld waiting.
Trusting the Gareld's shield and armor, Jincheon lit the boosters and drove straight at Lexerei with stubborn, unyielding force.
Jezer had lost the booster unit, but Lexerei still had its native thrusters. He kept maximum distance and sprayed smart-gun fire in every direction at once.
Rounds that had been fired wild suddenly bent mid-flight and hammered the Gareld from every angle. Jincheon never slowed.
"Keep chasing my ass if you want! You think losing the booster unit means I'll fall behind in speed?!"
Lexerei's booster unit had boosted top speed, yes—but its real strength had always been the thruster role, the ability to change direction. Because of that, the gap between the Gareld and Lexerei refused to close easily.
A laser cracked out.
"Kh—?!"
Jincheon's laser rifle fired and the beam skimmed so close along Lexerei's body that the paint blistered.
He shot from that posture?
Jezer could not believe his own eyes.
Jincheon had locked the rifle stock against his side and arm at chest height—pure point-shooting stance—and still nearly hit him. Normally the aiming system required the laser rifle's scope to sync with the main monitor; the gun had to be visible on the main screen. Jincheon had thrown accuracy out the window and fired the way you did in a sudden close encounter or an FPS game—charging and shooting—and he had almost landed it.
Two more lasers followed in rapid succession, both hunting Lexerei's torso.
"Kh!"
Jezer, cybernetically enhanced, ran the trajectories through his information processor, confirmed both beams were aimed at his body, and kicked thrusters hard left—
A third laser, fired along the exact path he had just come from, punched clean through Lexerei's flank.
Jincheon had watched the thrusters fire and thrown a prediction shot.
"Th-that's impossible! How the hell…!"
"Thanks. Without you, I wouldn't be who I am right now."
Lexerei's balance shattered; its speed dropped. The Gareld, still accelerating from behind, bunched both fists and drove them straight at the cockpit section on the back.
"W-wait! Waaait—!"
Jezer screamed, but the Gareld's fist, already carrying full momentum, punched clean through Lexerei's torso first.
Jincheon yanked the crumpled fist free, then used the laser rifle to shear off the arm still holding the laser sword.
A rising hum filled the cockpit.
He had wondered about compatibility, but the moment he fed energy through the connector, a crimson laser blade bloomed to life.
"Hraatcha!"
Having finally obtained the weapon of his dreams, Jincheon let out an exaggerated battle cry and split the already-breached Lexerei clean in half.
The laser's searing heat carved through metal; the severed edges glowed cherry-red as the machine came apart.
Lexerei exploded. Jincheon watched with a satisfied smile and swung the laser sword a few experimental times through empty space.
"Hahahahahaha! The hand feel on this thing is killer!"
The sensation of carving Lexerei apart with a laser sword had been so perfectly satisfying that Jincheon's laughter went on for a long time.
"Jincheon! The enemy cruiser is running!"
Calsira, who had been scanning the surroundings after confirming his victory, shouted urgently over the comms.
"Hm? Right, there was one of those. If they start sniping with the main guns from range it'll be a pain, so we'd better finish it properly."
"What do we do? Destroy it completely, or capture?"
Operating a cruiser required at least twenty to thirty people—even assuming heavy automation. Jincheon's group had no way to crew the thing no matter what they tried. That did not mean it lost all value. A high-speed cruiser was worth tens of millions of credits; sell it to the Jotala family and they would walk away with a serious payday. They could always dump the temporary operation on Kader's freeloading crew.
"Good—we're capturing it! Today is turning out to be one hell of a haul! Oroororohi~!"
It was a vulgar battle cry no one would ever have imagined coming from the same man who had once been the absolute master of Murim, the object of countless people's hatred and terror.
"Kyaaah! Capture! Jincheon, should we just turn pirate already?!"
Calsira seemed to be enjoying the looting and capturing so much she was already talking about switching from mercenaries to pirates.
"Hahaha! I get the feeling, but it's impossible right now. Even pirates need connections before they can operate."
In his younger days, chasing money, Jincheon had once helped the Hao Clan with smuggling out of Guangzhou in the Murim era and even taken the helm of a smuggling ship himself. Those few years had taught him that both smuggling and piracy required serious preparation and the right network of people.
"I've finished cleaning up over here. Enemy cruiser's running—what are we doing?"
"Obviously we thrash it!"
"Obviously we thrash it!"
"……."
Heliane, who had only just finished dealing with the remaining pirates, found herself speechless at the two of them spitting out the exact same line in the exact same tone.
What is this? Am I the only one who can't keep up with the mood?
The three of them nevertheless charged after the cruiser to capture it. The ship, however, poured everything into defense and resisted with stubborn tenacity; in the end the capture attempt failed. They had at least destroyed the main guns, and Jincheon's group decided they could not afford to burn any more laser-rifle power packs. They pulled back with lingering regret.
Jincheon briefly considered simply carving the cruiser apart with the laser sword, but once the main guns were gone he saw no real value in forcing a total kill and withdrew. Whatever happened after this was no longer their problem, so Jincheon's decision to cut losses came quickly.
"……."
"……."
Meanwhile, Kader's crew, who had watched the entire thing, were left completely speechless.
"That thing that just blew… that was Lexerei, right? Jezer Golmon's machine… the Confedon Family's second-in-command…?"
"Yeah… and that high-speed cruiser was Jezer's mascot ship…"
The moment they realized Jezer himself had shown up, Kader's people had been so terrified they nearly slipped into delirium.
The Confedon Family was only a mid-tier pirate group, but Jezer was famous throughout the region—not for the cruiser or the mecha, but as a pilot. Large pirate organizations had actively courted him. He had fought and beaten every strong opponent that came his way. Even the rare fights he lost were never truly his losses; the people around him had simply failed to support him.
In these parts, the name Jezer Golmon meant a heavyweight everyone knew. That heavyweight had just been defeated and killed by a pack of no-name mercenaries.
"Who the hell are those people? You don't stay unknown with skill like that."
Training hard did not turn a soldier into an elite. You became elite by surviving real combat, by walking the line between life and death and coming back. To reach that level of ability you should have been active on battlefields for a long time—yet no matter how they checked, the man called Jincheon remained a complete unknown.
"…Fuck. We're screwed…"
Then Kader finally understood exactly what kind of situation they had landed in.
"What's wrong, Cap?"
"For the next few years at least we can't even go near the Began System, let alone Confedon pirate territory…"
"Ah…"
Whatever the reason, Confedon had targeted them, and the mercenaries they had hired had just killed the second-in-command Confedon valued most. A man who prized loyalty and responsibility as highly as Confedon did would go berserk and try to tear them apart. Dreaming of operating anywhere near this region for the next several years was pure fantasy.
"That aside—why did even Jezer show up just to snatch our cargo?"
"I don't know either. The only thing I'm sure of is that bitch Jotala used us."
At the crew's question, Kader let out a long sigh, convinced they had walked straight into a trap Jotala had built.
"Fuck. Now I'm worried whether she'll even pay us properly."
Jotala had almost certainly not cared whether the bait lived or died. If they died, fine. If they came back empty-handed after losing the cargo, she could demand compensation or simply dispose of them. Whether she would actually welcome them with open arms after they somehow succeeded and arrived alive was another question entirely. Kader swore to himself he would never get greedy for money like this again.