episode_0302

The entrance to Alkesia Forest was bustling with trucks and workers today, too.

On one side, students visiting for practical training stood in a long line.

Only Crawltides inhabited the dungeon. Mutant cockroaches were a manageable opponent for practice.

“So, we decided to start here today. Sound good?”

“Those are cockroach monsters. I wonder if they’ll burn well.”

“Crawltides? They flap their wings and fly around. Do we have to shoot them like clay pigeons?”

After casually presenting my Helios ID at the entrance, I entered. Since Sophieel Unnie had some matters related to Trinity’s research lab to handle, Daphne was our guardian today.

Before entering, Daphne unfolded her backpack-shaped exoskeleton and put it on.

On her back, in addition to the exoskeleton suit’s power pack, she carried something large.

“So that’s what Irene gave you. Does it fit well?”

“Yes… This kind of strength is new to me.”

Daphne moved her limbs around curiously. The low mechanical hum of the attached exoskeleton suit’s auxiliary motors and artificial muscles could be heard.

Soon, one female student and three smaller girls stepped hand-in-hand beyond the shimmering space.

“Look at the trees… Memories are surging!”

“Wow!”

The sight before us was a forest of thick, enormous trees, endlessly stretching, large enough for many people to embrace around them with plenty of space left over.

The glorious Alkesia Forest Fortress Defense Battle with Irene came to mind. A glorious history also recorded in the Violet War Memorial.

Perhaps due to significant damage from the last Crawltide Nest attack, the outpost’s defenses were considerably reinforced, and menacing turrets were placed throughout. The number of armed hunters guarding the area had increased severalfold.

“Here! We fought hundreds of Crawltides here, and at that path, we fought the Nest!”

Outpost Unit 442 incessantly recounted the battle of that day, telling Levi and Enrica about it.

“Violet has abundant practical experience.”

“W-wow… hundreds of monsters and a s-siege? How on earth did you catch the Nest?”

“Right. Last year’s Violet wasn’t as strong as now, and probably didn’t have powerful weapons or magic.”

Daphne’s emerald eyes, full of curiosity, turned towards me.

Daphne had been with me for a long time, so she must have become curious watching my growth process.

What was the hardest thing back then, I wonder.

“Hmm… Now that I think about it, what I regretted most back then was the firepower.”

Irene was powerful, but ultimately, she had the limitation of being a melee tank supporting allies. Her attack power was insufficient to deliver a fatal blow.

In a shooting battle, sweeping away minor foes was a piece of cake, but to defeat the Crawltide Nest, we ultimately had to madly dig into its weaknesses in close combat.

“I see. Bu-bugs…they’re scary…”

“They’re big? Then just blast them. Isn’t it enough to just blow them up?”

Listening to my friends, my worries were groundless. Because we could just blast them.

“Now that I think about it, you’re right. I hope we meet that monster again!”

“…Hey, why is everyone saying such ominous things?”

Daphne, who had been watching the three of us, sighed and led the way. Just a moment ago, there had been many people around us, but after walking for dozens of minutes, it suddenly became quiet.

There was no birdsong, no wind, only the sound of footsteps on branches and the faint hum of the exoskeleton’s motor seeping through.

“We’ve probably passed through the anomalous zone by now, so something should appear…”

Rustle!

“They’re coming! Prepare for battle!”

No sooner had the words left my lips than a swarm of Crawltides came flapping and rushing through the trees.

Hiss!

The Crawltides unfolded their sharp forelegs and flew in. Just as their forelegs were about to swing, hexagonal, finely fractured force fields unfolded before our eyes.

Thrum!

The Violets scoffed at the attacks blocked by the force fields and swung their swords.

“I’ll take the lead!”

With a light metallic clatter, something unfolded from Daphne’s back and slid down to her left arm. It was a foldable large shield.

Daphne held the shield forward and swung her staff with one hand.

With a popping sound like a balloon bursting, the staff, wreathed in a force field, swept the cockroaches away as if it were a broom sweeping leaves.

“Whoa. A home run!”

Excellent. There wasn’t much damage, but the creatures flew away comically.

“Alright, Trinity, get that ready!”

“Got it!”

Enrica busily moved around, tapping the Violets’ swords with her staff.

All squads, simultaneously one step, two steps.

In three steps, they drew a diagonal trajectory with their one-handed swords in the air.

“Attack!”

A large, curving sword trajectory, like a wave, flew towards the chests of the disorderly flying Crawltides.

The sword technique used was Polaris.

Magic defenses tore easily, and an explosion erupted from the blade that crushed through chitin.

Boom!

The Crawltide shattered into pieces.

“Oh, gross! Daphne, thank you!”

“Be careful. You’ll get bodily fluids on you.”

Saved. If she hadn’t put up the force field in time, I would have been covered in that disgusting bodily fluid and gotten filthy.

A crunching sound was also heard. A bus-sized one was seen crawling out from among the trees.

A gigantic insect with a stomach swollen as if it would burst. It was a Crawltide Nest.

“It’s smaller than what we learned in class. It’s not an adult, is it?”

“Looks like it.”

Then we can deal with it quickly, right?

Screech! A giant cockroach!

As I casually swept away the minor foes and prepared to face it, a scream erupted from behind me. The source of the voice was Levi.

“Ugh… Sc-scary… Dozens of antennae… All wriggling…!”

Frightened, Levi pulled out a ballista and loaded an arm-sized large bolt.

“Th-th-that’s… too… d-disgusting! We have to kill it quickly!”

“Good idea!”

A white flash gleamed. The large bolt pierced the head of the approaching Nest from afar and exploded inside its body.

Bang!

The Nest trembled violently and then collapsed onto its side. The fortress made of branches and junk on its back rolled off and shattered into pieces.

Levi mumbled with a relieved expression as she watched the scene.

“Haha, I killed the vermin…!”

“Well done!”

We applauded the majesty of ending the bus-sized cockroach in an instant.

I was about to lift Levi up and celebrate excitedly, but Daphne lightly shook the shoulder of Unit 545 beside her.

“I don’t think this is the time to celebrate. Look at that.”

“Huh? Oh?”

The belly of the instantly killed Crawltide Nest began to shake violently.

“Come to think of it, Crawltide Nests carried a large number of eggs in their abdomen. We should take care of them.”

Gasp!

It seemed I had forgotten that crucial fact. Catching the leader wasn’t the end. Just as we were about to prepare our magic, Enrica, who had been listening from behind, tilted her head.

“Can’t we just blow them all up?”

“Yeah, that’s true. Wait, what are you doing?”

“Oh, this? I’m going to blow them up right away. I’ll shoot gently!”

From the tip of Enrica’s staff, a colorful blue flash flared up and began to form a spherical shape.

A bowling ball-sized plasma sphere was fired from the tip of her staff.

Boom!

After the explosion, nothing remained. Only a small crater and thick, unstable swaying trees.

“See? How’s that? I’m confident in explosions!”

A brief silence, then the forest was filled with the Violets’ cheers.

“Whoa-ah-ah-ah!”

Amidst the cheers, for some reason, only Levi looked at Enrica with a strange glint in her eyes.

“I could do better…”

“Huh? What was that?”

**

After that, whenever we had time for several days, we roamed through dungeons of various environments for delightful destruction.

Cities, hills, forests, even barren lands.

Whiz!

“L-look at this. I caught five, five at once!”

Bang!

“What’s that? I caught thirty.”

Tsk…

During that time, Enrica and Levi were engaged in a fierce, inexplicable competition with each other.

It seemed Levi started it, but before long, Enrica was also actively engaging in explosions.

As a result, the deep areas of Pastella Snowfield were plastered with colorful craters and monsters riddled with holes of all sizes.

“See? My magic is the best!”

“B-but the projectile speed is slow, isn’t it? See? Hehe…”

“Huh? That’s the monster I was aiming for! Don’t take it without permission!”

Seeing the two squabbling, it seemed my idea of having them cooperate to fire radioactive fin-stabilized discarding sabot rounds had to be put on hold for a while.

In the first place, both of them could perform long-range bombardments in kilometers, so they felt no particular reason to cooperate with each other.

“A-and. I’m good at close combat too.”

“Oh come on, you’re a marksman. What close combat?”

As a large wolf-like monster charged, Levi lifted her ballista.

“Like this!”

Thwack! Thwack!

“Die! Die! Die!”

The monster was half-crushed by the ballista. I never knew that ballista could be used like that.

“Hehe, see?”

“I can do that too. What’s so great about it…”

But if they keep fighting like this, it gets a bit difficult.

If those two become too unfriendly, it will be hard for them to work together as a team later.

“Alright, girls. Just a moment! Look here!”

I needed to divert their attention first. I had something to show them, after all.

“Is this it? Violet, you’ve been making something for a while now…”

As Daphne asked curiously, the girls who had been growling next to her briefly turned their heads.

Where the three pairs of eyes turned, stood a complex A-shaped steel structure resembling a scale.

At both ends of the structure, long pillars swayed gently like a seesaw.

This structure was the result of a company-sized group of Violets assembling tirelessly in the middle of the snowfield, completing it in just 30 minutes.

“It looks like a tower.”

Enrica mumbled as if she had encountered a strange sight.

Levi carefully observed what we had made, and her expression gradually changed. A face that seemed to have realized something.

“Ah, I get it. Violet, this is a medieval siege weapon, isn’t it? Similar to my ballista.”

“That’s right. It’s a catapult!”

The Violets’ groundbreaking weapon showcased its majesty for the first time on the vast snowfield.

Its official name was the Human-Powered Ground-Based Violet Guided Bomb Launcher.

Its purpose was to launch Violets instead of rocks or masonry.

I wanted to call it the ‘Violet Thrower’ or ‘Thrower-V,’ but the pronunciation was strange, so I gave up.

“I’m going to throw myself with this!”

“Violets?”

Existing aerial guided bombs had a weakness. An airplane had to be kept in the sky to generate Violets.

If air superiority was lost, they couldn’t be launched. So, we devised a new weapon in preparation for such situations.

“Above all, it’s cheap!”

The result of trying to build it after mastering welding and simple metalworking techniques was successful.

While Enrica and Levi let out short gasps of admiration at its size and precision, Daphne’s complexion turned slightly pale.

“Violet. Who are you throwing?”

“Yeah, I’m going to launch myself with that. Then I’ll go flying, conduct reconnaissance, infiltrate enemy lines, and attack. How’s that, isn’t it good?”

“Th-that’s right. It is, but…”

Daphne wore a troubled expression but said nothing more. She looked like she had a lot to say, but I was relieved she understood.

Suddenly, I felt a bit disappointed. What if Irene were here?

She would have surely given serious advice on the ground-launched Violet Guided Bomb Launcher from a rational perspective.

“There’s nothing we can do about this, right? It’s an emotional issue.”

“You’ll get used to it if you see it often!”

That’s right, you have to get used to it. To fight alongside us Violets, you have to get used to our deaths.

“Alright, Enrica. I told you before that my ability is replication, right? Cast the support magic you always used on me!”

And there was something else I wanted to try.

“On your body? Uh… that might be dangerous. Alright.”

Enrica gently tapped Unit 4357’s head with her staff. Immediately, Unit 4357’s entire body glowed blue. So brightly that it was clearly visible even on the white snowfield.

“Wow, girls. I’m glowing brightly!”

“Violet, your skin looks rough… And it seems like your hair is falling out a bit…”

“It’s fine! It’ll be over soon!”

I quickly climbed onto the launch platform. Other me’s tied ropes to Unit 4357’s body and secured them to the end of one of the catapult’s arms.

“Now, then…”

I quickly donned the newly made bomb vest and bomb belt from my inventory.

The new bomb vest I was about to use was equipped with anti-monster fragmentation liners purchased through Helios.

With this, I could expect penetration power against magic defenses and magical defense systems.

“Alright, get ready!”

Meanwhile, the other Violets headed to the opposite side of the launch platform.

On the other side of the seesaw-like arm, a rope for pulling was installed.

“Watch closely!”

“5, 4, 3, 2, 1!”

Launch phase. The target was the black rock far in the distance.

A fierce flow of magic coursed through my entire body. As the body-strengthened Violets pulled hard on the rope, the catapult’s arm swung violently and shot upwards.

Unit 4357, tied to the opposite rope, soared high into the sky.

“Fly! Violet of Justice! Like a phoenix!”

Ascension phase.

Unit 4357, as always practiced, pulled out a bag from her inventory and put it on. The flight-assist jetpack, which had been used during the last pirate base infiltration, was equipped and began operating.

“The dream of flight never fades!”

I soared even higher.

Flight phase.

Now, having gained propulsion, Unit 4357 spread her limbs and unfurled the wings of her wingsuit. I flew even further than the original distance.

“Getting higher!”

After flying for quite a while, the rock I had set as my target came into view.

I put the jetpack back into my inventory and began my descent.

Terminal phase.

The blue-glowing Violet collided with the rock like a meteor.

Boom!

As unstable magic and explosives combined, the power of the Violet aerial bomb became even more intense.

“It’s a success!”

“Wow… It’s amazing…”

“So a person can explode like that.”

Levi and Enrica watched our flight with sparkling eyes, seemingly captivated by our invention.

While all the girls marveled at the successful flight, only Daphne stared blankly into the air.

“Haha… Violet… she’s glowing…”

Her mind seemed very complicated, but I decided to believe that Daphne was trying to understand us.

**

Upon returning from Pastella Snowfield, good news awaited us. The Inspectorate seemed to have finally located the affiliated research lab Enrica had mentioned.

“Cutlass Valley?”

Sophieel Unnie explained the situation in a serious tone.

“That’s right, for some reason, several clans are gathering there. They might be targeting the research lab.”

“Then we should hurry and go!”

Good. We should depart immediately.