The Monster They Almost Provoked
As the atmosphere turned ugly, the guards began raising their weapons.
Losing pilots strong enough to overwhelm Jezer would be a waste… but if they won't listen, they're worthless.
Faced with Jincheon's defiant attitude, Jotala was already filling her head with thoughts of killing him and seizing the Gareld for herself.
Hm?
Just as she was about to give her men the signal to open fire, she noticed something strange.
What is this? Why is he so calm?
She had seen anger-management cases like Jincheon plenty of times before. But the Zabalcan woman and the Orobece woman at his side showed not a flicker of tension. They simply waited for Jincheon's next move—neither frightened nor coiled to strike.
That composure came from what they had already witnessed while Jincheon was servicing the mecha. Maintaining a machine whose individual parts weighed hundreds of kilograms each normally required specialized equipment. Jincheon had casually lifted those same parts with one hand and walked around with them, displaying monstrous abilities in other ways as well—and never once looking strained while he did it.
The two women had already intuited that what they had seen was only a fraction of what he could do. Even if they had been unconscious at the time, raw strength and speed alone could never have been enough to take on an elite Zabalcan squad in state-of-the-art battle suits.
A pack of freaks flocking together? No—teams like that don't even form in the first place.
While Jotala was still puzzling over Calsira and Heliane's easy composure—
"Hahahaha! Boss, these ones don't take a joke, do they?"
"Hm?"
A man laughed with exaggerated heartiness, trying to clear the air. He was one of those who had come with Jotala, and high enough in rank that he could speak freely even in a moment like this. Blue-skinned, with the same racial features as Kunlo, he shot Jotala a one-eyed wink.
"Ahem. We were only trying to mess with you, but you took it no fun at all. Kader."
"Y-yes?"
"The amount we promised."
Jotala transferred the agreed commission from her account to Kader's.
"Th-thank you!"
Kader had already sensed she had no intention of paying, so he expressed his gratitude outwardly even as he wondered what had changed. The subordinate who had picked the fight returned looking awkward, and those who had leveled their weapons lifted their muzzles with equal uncertainty. The whole flow of events had gone the exact opposite of what they had been told beforehand, and everyone was clearly rattled.
"What, that was a joke? Don't pull that crap next time. It's not funny."
Jincheon gave a dry snort of laughter and fixed a look on the man who had forced the mood to shift, quietly letting a thread of killing intent bleed out.
The man flinched hard enough for his shoulders to jump and tried to avoid Jincheon's eyes.
Confirmed. That one can read Qi.
Same race as Kunlo—so that species was either innately sensitive to Qi or found it easy to cultivate. Jincheon had already spread his energy through the surrounding space so he could suppress everyone at once the moment a fight started. The quiet man had only jumped in so urgently after that energy went out because he had felt the presence of a force ready to strike them at any second.
"Mr. Jincheon, here is the amount we agreed on."
Kader transferred the promised three hundred thousand credits to Jincheon without further delay.
"So what are you lot planning to do now? Your engine's shot."
"We'll have to ask these people to help us buy a new one and swap it out. It'll cost, of course."
They would naturally try to gouge him with inflated prices to claw back the reward money they had just paid—but that was something he would simply have to accept.
"How many days do you figure?"
"With repairs and everything else, about two weeks."
"Two weeks, huh…"
Jincheon fell silent, turning something over in his mind.
In that case, I might as well take the map data he has, at least.
He had charts of the Began System, but nothing on pirate activity ranges or territorial claims. Moving alone under those conditions meant walking straight into every kind of incident imaginable.
"When I took the job earlier, I said there was one condition, remember?"
"Yes. I remember."
"I'll state it now. At first I was going to have you guide us to any safe star system, no matter where. But if it's going to take that long, I want the map data instead."
"What? But…"
Kader's words died in his throat. The charts stored on his ship were not ordinary maps—they marked hidden routes known only to his people.
"I'm not asking for everything. Like I said, just the route to a safe system is enough."
"Mmm… if it's only that much…"
Fortunately, Jincheon wanted only the data leading to a safe star system, not the full set of charts.
"Would you give us a moment?"
The blue-skinned man cut into the conversation.
"You've come all this way as guests. It would be a shame to send you off empty-handed. Why not stay a few days?"
"Hm?"
"And leaving with a misunderstanding from our little joke wouldn't look good for the family, either."
"…Heh. You've got a sharp head on you. Name?"
"Ah, my apologies. My name is Rondo Gebel. Family name first."
Jincheon turned the proposal over for a moment and quickly saw how shrewd a move it was.
"Ahem. Well, our family's not like those other brainless pirate scum, so we ought to clear up any misunderstandings."
Jotala clumsily fell into rhythm with Gebel's words and agreed.
"Let's rest a few days ourselves. And if we can buy some food while we're at it, even better."
Calsira, clearly tired of filling her stomach with energy bars left behind by the Calsorn Empire, suggested they stay a few days, stock up on provisions, and then leave.
"True, the food situation was getting a little shaky. And when a host invites you like this, a guest can hardly just ignore it."
Having decided to spend a few days at the Jotala Family's fortress, Jincheon's party headed inside to be shown to the guest rooms. Kader returned to his freighter to haggle the engine replacement costs as low as possible and discuss the matter with his crew.
Once they were alone, Jotala turned on Gebel with a glare—or rather, she was about to.
"Uweeeegh! Weeeegh!"
The moment Jincheon was gone, Gebel dropped to his knees and began to vomit.
"Bweeeeeegh!"
He heaved as if he meant to turn his insides out, and only after bringing up stomach acid itself did he finally stop.
"Haaah…! Hah…! Hhuh…!"
Then, as if he had been locked alone in a freezer, his whole body began to shudder. He dragged in one ragged breath after another and turned his eyes toward Jotala.
"Ge… Gebel?"
She had been ready to snap at him; now she asked the question with real concern. Gebel looked half out of his mind with terror.
"We… we almost died… All of us… almost died…!"
"What are you talking about? Why would we die?"
Tears welled in Gebel's eyes. His face was rigid, and he trembled even harder.
"Bo… Boss… You… know my ability… right…?"
"Of course I know, but…"
As a child, Gebel had nearly been killed by bandits—and ever since, he had carried a strange gift: whenever danger approached, his body turned against him. Others had laughed it off, but eight times out of ten, anything he judged "bad" ended in failure or some unforeseen interference. People had called the ability unlucky and driven him out again and again. Jotala, then just another pirate, had been certain it was nothing to dismiss. She had taken him in as a comrade and built her piracy around avoiding whatever Gebel said felt wrong.
Over more than a decade, that caution had grown them into a mid-tier pirate outfit with a fortress of their own. Forced to think in order to survive, Gebel had also become skilled at laying plans—and had risen to become the undisputed second-in-command of the Jotala Family.
The moment he learned that a maintenance accident inside the rival Confedon Family's fortress had cost them a large share of the fuel that kept the place running, he had tightened the pressure. At the same time, he had carefully leaked word that a shipment of generator fuel was on its way. Because Jotala and Confedon were nearly equal in strength, the plan had been to lure Confedon into committing troops only as far as they could without losing the standoff—and then grind those forces down. The unexpected arrest of the crude pirates who could not control their greed and caused a scene had forced a hasty pivot toward hiring a smuggler, leaving the plan's success uncertain.
Everything after that had unfolded exactly as Jincheon's party had experienced it.
"We… just now… almost all died…! That man… is a monster…! He's not human…!"
The instant Jincheon had asked how many people were inside the fortress, Gebel had felt a chill he had never known in his entire life. And he had known, with absolute certainty: no matter what answer left his subordinate's mouth, every one of them would die. That was why he had forced his way into the conversation, desperate to turn the mood and claw the situation back from the brink.
He sobbed the words out as if wringing them from his own throat—then collapsed, unconscious.
"…"
Jotala could not remember ever seeing Gebel this badly affected. Only then did the thing she had failed to see come into focus.
Surrounded by guns pointed at him… and he asks how many people are inside the fortress?
No matter how brave a man was, once he was surrounded deep in enemy territory he calculated where to strike first to stay alive. He did not ask how many people the fortress held. In other words, this man had never been operating on the same level as them at all.
A cold shiver ran through her.
If they had kept picking a fight with someone who made Gebel react this violently… what would have happened?
Jotala felt the fear of the unknown crawl over her skin, every hair on her body standing on end.
Even pirates were not completely cut off from the outside world. Clients who wanted a rival company hit, or a specific item stolen and delivered, often came in person to avoid the risk of hacking. The rooms set aside for such guests were cleaner than expected, and the beds were soft.
"Waaah~! The bed's so soft!"
It was the first truly luxurious, yielding mattress Calsira had felt since childhood. She rolled back and forth across it, savoring every bit of the plushness.
Heliane, however, turned to Jincheon with a worried look.
"Are you sure about leaving the ship with people who were trying to kill us a minute ago?"
They still held the master key, but the facilities here could run the mecha without it—or strip it down entirely.
"Then we just take the fortress, don't we?"
"…"
The sheer difference in scale left her speechless. Fortunately, Jincheon was not a simple brute who relied on violence alone.
"Relax. One of them has sharp instincts—they won't try anything stupid. And they'll need our strength soon enough, so their real plan is to feed us well and earn some goodwill in the meantime."
"Need our strength? Why?"
"That Jezer we killed held a bigger share of Confedon's power than I thought. With their core combat strength gone, Confedon has two choices left."
Jincheon stretched out on the luxurious soft bed and raised his index finger.
"Either they weather Jotala's pressure and somehow fill the hole Jezer left…"
He raised his middle finger next.
"…or they attack before time slowly pushes them back."
"Pirates aren't going to pick the gentle first option."
"Gebel thought the same thing. That's why he asked us to stay—so that when war breaks out, he can put the skill that took down Jezer to use."
Of course, once Jincheon understood his own value he would demand a considerable sum. But if it meant crushing a rival pirate outfit and gaining another fortress, they would swallow almost any price that was not outright absurd.
"So next we're joining a battlefield?"
Until now Calsira had treated fights as take-it-or-leave-it affairs. Now, hungry for Jincheon's praise, she showed real eagerness.
"Probably. We can't completely write off the chance they pick the first option."
Unaware that Confedon's fortress was already in a fuel crisis and running out of time, Jincheon made that assessment and settled in to take things easy—then suddenly sat bolt upright.
"No. This isn't the time to be lying around."
"What is it?"
"If the pirates want to mount new weapons on their mechas, there have to be technicians inside the fortress, right?"
Fighting Jezer had driven home the need for a wider arsenal. Laser rifles were powerful, but the power packs they used were limited in number, and the recharging fees he had checked on the galactic network were nothing to shrug off. Hybrid guns, attachable multi-launch missile pods—having a variety of weapons was the only way to handle a variety of situations. Until now he had papered over the gaps with raw ability; the fight with Jezer had shown him the hard limits of that approach. And since the Gareld was so freely customizable, building something like a head-mounted vulcan for suppression fire would not be a bad idea either.
"But with the money we have now, we can't buy anything really good, can we?"
Jincheon currently held three hundred ninety thousand credits. That was barely enough to modify even a single Gareld.
"We'll buy a variety of weapons even if they're outdated. Looking at the pirates' mechas, everything except Jezer's was so trash that using a laser rifle on them felt like a waste."
On that point, Heliane fully agreed. Aside from Jezer's unit, the pirates' mechas were D-class at absolute best. Using laser rifles against machines like that was pure extravagance.
With everyone's approval secured, Jincheon decided there was no rush—they would wait until faces were a little more familiar, then make the purchases.
A few days later, exactly as everyone had expected, word arrived that Confedon was pulling every ship together into a single fleet, preparing a full-scale counterattack.