Master of Close Combat
Rendel was a master of close-quarters combat and a formidable force in mid-range battles as well. Because these were Aindium-versus-Aindium fights rather than human-versus-human, the power gap between machines of the same class was negligible. What made Rendel overwhelmingly stronger than everyone else came not from well-honed muscles but from somewhere else entirely: his eyes, his mind, and his hands. With his exceptional dynamic vision, he read the opponent’s movements, reflexively calculated the optimal line of attack, and executed it through motions polished by endless training. That was the secret to his strength. Layered with his acceleration ability, it produced a truly unfair level of combat prowess.
I had only just risen above the level of an ordinary person. Without the fairy’s support, I was in no position to face him one-on-one. I knew that perfectly well and had prepared a countermeasure of my own. All those dozens of daily thrashings I took from Rendel in the virtual training room had not been in vain.
I switched the gun to its widest shotgun mode and scattered a broad spray. Rendel’s Aindium tried to slip past the muzzle at the last second but still took several solid hits. As expected, without acceleration he couldn’t dodge everything. The shotgun had been the correct choice. Unless he carried a shield, any damage I landed would register fully. For Rendel, stuck piloting a mass-produced unit that couldn’t freely use acceleration, a reckless approach would be far too risky.
He answered with his submachine gun while circling me. He was probably waiting for me to run dry. My shotgun held a twelve-round magazine. The ten shots I had already fired had only inflicted minor damage. I had taken roughly the same in return. Fortunately the training submachine gun lacked real power, and my Aindium—loaded with every piece of protective gear I could wear—held up surprisingly well.
Once he had a better feel for the distance, Rendel stopped allowing clean hits. But as my ammunition ran low, he began preparing to charge.
Bang! Baaang!
Rendel’s Aindium dodged the twelfth shot and rushed in at the same moment. He had discarded the submachine gun and now charged with a sword in each hand. The sight sent a cold shiver through me.
I slammed the reverse pedal to the floor and hurled the grenade I had been holding in my left hand straight down, exactly as I had rehearsed. Rendel swerved around the grenade on my left and came in from the right. His strike was fast, heavy, and merciless. The sword dropped vertically in front of my eyes just as it always had. If things continued this way, I would lose the head and the main camera with it.
But I had already predicted the highest probability lay along that exact path. I was already flowing into the next motion.
“Hold together!”
Shotgun in my right hand, tonfa in my left, I crossed both weapons above my head in a guard. The short but sturdy tonfa caught Rendel’s horizontal slash. In the same instant I fired the shotgun that still held its final pre-loaded round.
Boom!
The point-blank buckshot shredded the head parts of Rendel’s Aindium into scrap.
“Got you… ah!”
Even with his head destroyed, Rendel countered calmly. His sword slid down the tonfa and slammed into my Aindium’s head. The strike carried the full weight of acceleration—far beyond what any standard training blade could produce—and obliterated the main camera in a single blow.
The screen went black before I could even savor the success of my surprise attack. I switched to the auxiliary camera at once and began swinging the tonfa and shotgun like clubs. The auxiliary camera sat just above the cockpit, so the lowered viewpoint made it difficult to deal with attacks dropping from above.
Crunch!
A sudden thrust smashed into my left shoulder and damaged the actuator. The status display lit up with the left arm glowing red. I swung the shotgun-turned-club in a wide arc to drive him back, but the recoil disrupted my balance. Rendel immediately landed two more strikes.
“Ugh!”
The cockpit shook violently. I realized all over again just how magnificent the Limpie’s posture stabilization system truly was. I ripped the ruined left arm free and hurled it aside. While Rendel casually batted the severed limb away, I opened the distance, reached with my remaining right hand, and pulled every pin on the grenades strapped to the Aindium’s waist at once.
Even for training ordnance, a detonation at the waist would deliver a massive shock to the cockpit. Rendel, apparently worried about me, discarded his swords and reached out in a hurry.
“Let’s go together, senior.”
I unfastened the belt loaded with live grenades and hurled it straight at his Aindium.
Kwaaaang—!
A thunderous explosion roared, and every light inside the cockpit went dark.
“Oh dear. This route is blocked as well.”
Teicia murmured to herself, slipping deeper into the underbrush. Several military Aindiums were patrolling the shoreline. Their numbers had increased noticeably compared to the information she had acquired and the observations she had made over the past several days.
“Is it because of me, I wonder?”
They would not have deployed this much force merely to catch a competitor who had left the match. It seemed they had already realized an outsider had interfered. The cadet who had “lent” her the Aindium appeared to have been discovered sooner than expected.
“What should I do? The Phantom is still in the sea.”
Teicia’s personal machine, the Sacred Phantom, waited for her beneath the waves beyond the barbed wire.
“It would be a shame to use that function. Yet being captured would also be troublesome.”
After a brief moment of thought, Teicia shrugged and rose abruptly to her feet.
“I suppose I shall simply push through.”
The instant a gap opened in the patrolling Aindiums’ sightlines, she burst from the bushes at full speed. Roughly a hundred meters remained to the barbed wire ringing the coast. No matter how fast she ran, detection was inevitable.
Whirr—
As expected, before she had covered even half the distance an Alitus military Aindium spotted her and raised its weapon. Because she wore a cadet pilot suit it did not fire immediately, but a booming voice echoed from its speaker.
HALT!
“I must decline.”
Teicia poured mana into the pendant clutched in her hand. The instant before she reached the barbed wire—
Bang!
The ground right beside her cratered under an Aindium round powerful enough to leave nothing of a human body. Yet Teicia did not even feign fear.
“You should have aimed properly.”
She tapped her forehead with a finger and gave a playful smile, then took one light step backward.
Splash.
“Eh?”
Without any prior warning, an Aindium surged from the sea. The three military units spun toward it at once.
No identification code! Target judged as unknown!
Fire!
Ratatatat—! Autocannons and rifles roared. Human-torso-sized shell casings rained down with heavy clangs.
While every eye was fixed on the new arrival, Teicia leaped lightly and cleared the three-meter barbed wire in a single bound.
“It really does feel heavier on Galaxia. Still, this much is nothing at all.”
After a brief reflection on the gravity difference between the Moon and Galaxia, she slipped beneath the waves, leaving only a small splash behind her.
The match had ended. My all-or-nothing mutual destruction turned into an absurd self-destruct when Rendel leaped backward at the last moment. Thanks to Rendel continuing to fight even without his main camera, the blue team claimed victory.
Rendel had been the star of the match, yet the cameras had also captured Carson’s main force—cutting down numerous blue-team units while Rendel was occupied—and my own effort in pinning the senior down for those precious seconds.
“They said it might air on TV later, so I should check the news.”
“There’s nothing good about being on television.”
Carson flared up at Rendel’s comment. “That’s only because you’re already famous.”
“Well, appearing once or twice wouldn’t be so bad, right?”
Rendel narrowed his eyes and moved only his lips, muttering something. I haven’t learned lip-reading, you know.
Huh? Wait. Looking closer, I think I can make it out.
Will it be all right?
Even if I appeared on the news, I doubted anyone would immediately realize I was the princess of Karmanu. Still, the information could spread quietly. But the principal was personally ensuring my identity remained hidden, so there was no problem.
It’s fine.
When I answered with nothing but lip movements, Rendel gave a small smile. The sight warmed my heart, so I smiled back.
“……”
For some reason Senior Kirié was watching us with a distinctly unamused expression. I rolled my eyes, wondering what we had done this time, and realized both Rendel and I were at fault.
“Sorry for wrecking the Aindium during the match.”
“No, well… match units are meant to get broken anyway.”
Then why was she looking at us like that? Senior Kirié really was impossible to read sometimes.
After the match, the discovered second-year cadet from the blue team had no memory of the moment he was attacked. It seemed someone had called him behind the locker room during preparations and ambushed him there. The fact that he had been found safely—wrapped tightly in a soft blanket and sleeping inside a warehouse—was pure luck.
It was fortunate no cadet had suffered serious injury, but the incident had clearly been the work of an outsider.
The reason I had reported the intruder’s existence only to the principal was the possibility that external forces had already planted a spy among the enrolled students. If the intruder turned out to be a legitimate cadet and no connection to outside powers could be proven, I would simply be labeled a strange person trying to cause trouble during the match. I could endure being seen as odd, but losing credibility for every future statement I made would be far worse.
That was why I was truly grateful the principal was willing to help me personally.
“You missed them.”
It was within expectations. The enemy would not have sent someone easy to capture.
“There’s no need for you to apologize. However, we must strengthen school security.”
“The sea side?”
The intruder who had attacked Yui had escaped by summoning an Aindium waiting underwater. In the process, three of Alitus’s military Aindiums had been rendered combat-ineffective.
“Principal, would it be possible for me to see the combat data?”
Since the data had already been forwarded to the Aindium research institute under the Windsor Grand Duke, we would soon learn the enemy’s combat capabilities.
Lively discussion about the intruder continued on the bulletin board, but only a handful of posts were visible to me.
On Galaxia? Not in Alitus, but on Galaxia. I might have just obtained a very important clue. I should speak with the principal about this soon.