“Are you awake, Lord Groom? Your face is a mess! Here, anti-inflammatories!”
One of the old-timers from the Imperial Guard jammed a needle directly into my face, injecting nanomachine anti-inflammatories.
It hurt more than I cared to admit.
“That’s horrible, Veronica! How can you be so cruel to him?”
Claire was protesting my inhumane treatment.
That’s it. I’m joining House Claire! I’ll be her pampered little pet forever!
“Pity won't save us! The Lord Groom has to give it his all! And that goes for you too, Claire!”
“I know!”
“Now, Lord Groom, listen well. I’ve tuned this machine specifically for the close-quarters combat you love so much.”
Wait, what?
“Hold on a second. My ‘love’ for close-quarters combat?! I only fought like that because I didn't have a choice!”
“Liar. Every move you made suggested you were looking for an opening to get in close.”
You’re wrong! I’m telling you, I literally had no other options!
I hauled myself up with the help of the Imperial Guard veteran’s hand.
Then, they rolled out a machine absolutely caked in heavy armor.
You have to be kidding me.
This was my personal unit.
“I’ve dubbed it the Jester CQC Custom. I’ve reinforced the knuckles, arms, legs, elbows, and knees with hull plating stripped from a warship. The internal gears have been swapped for high-durability modern parts. The machine’s output isn't high enough to run a modern chainsaw, so we’ve reused the old one.”
“What about guns?”
“You have the Abdominal Cannon! Everything else is for melee combat!”
No way!
“And the system?”
“We didn't have time for software patches. Keep using the stable version.”
“Safety limiters?”
“There are… none!”
“Of course there aren't!”
Yeah, I should have seen that coming.
“What am I supposed to do with this?!”
“Punch them! Tear them apart! Hack them to pieces!”
Hiee!
“And the enemy?”
“Nothing on the radar yet!”
“Headquarters?”
“Communications are still dead.”
We were backed into a corner.
I suppose it was a mercy that the Zork hadn’t shown up yet.
Several hours passed.
We tried every trick in the book to establish a link with the Imperial Officer Academy.
Just as we had finally given up and started prepping dinner, Megumi Okita came sprinting in with a thundering heavy-footed pace.
As usual, her extreme slenderness was weirdly sexy. Erotic, even.
“We heard from the school!”
“Really?! How?”
“I managed to intercept an analog transmission via satellite!”
I had no idea what that meant!
Apparently, Okita was an engineering wiz. She was probably enrolled in the Engineer Course.
“Now listen! Your Highness, you too!”
I followed my wife over to the device.
It was a jury-rigged mess with the circuit board completely exposed.
This wasn't just 500-year-old tech; this was the kind of stuff you learned in Engineering I back in primary school.
When she flipped the switch, static pierced my ears.
“It’s monaural and the quality is garbage, so bear with it.”
She cranked the volume.
A transmission from the Imperial Officer Academy crackled through.
“Repeating! Headquarters is currently under attack by hostile lifeforms! Students currently in Drop Training are ordered not to return; remain at the schoolyard and wait for further instructions! The Imperial Guard is currently engaged in combat! We are scheduled to rendezvous with a reinforcement fleet in ten hours. Repeating! Students in Drop Training are not to return; wait at the schoolyard! The underground shelter has been configured to open via the Princess’s biometrics.”
Ten hours?!
We didn't have the combat endurance to hold out that long!
My wife immediately started shouting orders.
“Non-combatants, get to the underground shelter and wait!”
“What about you, Your Highness?”
“A commander does not tuck tail and run! Lord Groom! You had better protect me!”
She sure knew how to ask for the impossible.
But I didn't hate it.
“Understood. I’ll keep you safe, no matter what.”
“Heh. I quite like that side of you, Lord Groom.”
We shared a quick smile.
But in reality, rescue wasn't coming anytime soon.
I’d hoped that with the Imperial Guard here, the Zork wouldn't be able to reach us, but…
Ren, who was monitoring the radar, suddenly twitched her beast ears.
“Unidentified objects incoming from the air!”
Then Kevin, one of the guys, screamed.
“We’ve got hostiles swarming up from the ground over here!”
The Zork.
We were officially beyond screwed.
“Combatants, man your heavy machinery and take your positions!” the Imperial Guard veteran roared.
We had machine guns deployed.
They were effective in games, but I had no idea how they’d perform in reality.
Regardless, we chose to fight.
I climbed into the Jester-exclusive machine with Claire.
[Jester CQC Custom: System Start.]
An unnecessary system voice and the roar of the engines filled the cockpit.
The gears groaned, and the vibrations rattled my teeth.
“Leo! Roller Dash is online!”
At Claire’s signal, I kicked the Roller Dash into gear and took off.
The moment we cleared the garage, Zork began crawling out of the earth.
“Lord Groom! I rigged a Pile Bunker into the knuckles! Use it!”
That’s my wife for you!
She really understands the beauty of raw power!
“Uoooooooooh!”
I charged.
I closed the distance with a Crab-type Zork.
It had one massive claw, just like a fiddler crab.
“Gishaaaaaaa!”
I had plenty of speed. I didn't even need the chainsaw.
I drove my fist forward with everything I had.
The impact was heavy.
The sickening sound of a shell shattering echoed through the frame.
“Now!”
The explosive charge in the knuckle detonated.
The spear hidden in the fist drove deep through the cracked shell.
“It’s on a wired detonator! Trigger it manually!”
“Blow it!”
The spear exploded from the inside out, peppering the Zork's internals with shrapnel.
The creature stopped moving instantly.
A clean kill.
I had severed its central nervous system in a single blow.
However, the feedback hit us hard too.
It was better than a standard gunpowder hammer, but the knockback still rattled the cockpit.
The Roller Dash wheels spun uselessly against the dirt for a second.
“Hell yeah!”
The first strike was a success.
Distracted by me, the rest of the Zork were met with a hail of machine-gun fire.
Even though they were 500-year-old relics—ballistic weapons that were practically extinct in the modern era—they worked against the Zork.
Holes opened in their shells, and the monsters sprayed ichor across the ground.
I swung the chainsaw to follow up.
But then, the unexpected happened.
The chainsaw bounced off a shell with a jarring clang.
“Knockback!”
With my balance broken, a Zork lunged, trying to drive its claws into me.
“Fire!”
Boom! The Abdominal Cannon roared.
Claire had fired the secondary turret from the back seat.
A massive hole opened up in the Zork directly in front of us.
The firepower had definitely been buffed.
Between the knockback and the recoil from the cannon, I was forced down to one knee.
But I wasn't done.
I braced myself with my free hand and lurched forward.
I forced the machine up and buried my fist into a Zork that was swarming toward us.
Then, pushing the Roller Dash to its limits, I delivered a brutal shoulder tackle to a Zork further back.
The machine guns shredded the creature as it was sent flying.
Once they stopped moving, they were riddled with holes in seconds.
We can do this!
Our coordination was flawless.
Sweat dripped down my forehead.
The adrenaline or the tension made my breathing shallow and ragged.
“Support the Lord Groom!”
The Heavy Machinery Unit moved in with a hammer suicide attack.
Those machines were a grade smaller than the Jester unit.
Their armor had to be paper-thin.
If even one of those old guys got hurt, Veronica would be devastated.
After all… they were basically my fathers-in-law.
I took a deep breath and pinned the Roller Dash to full throttle.
I charged in, grabbed a Zork by its larger claw using the momentum of the dash, and swung behind it.
It was a move I’d learned in martial arts class.
It never worked against humans when I did it barehanded, but at the speed of the Roller Dash, it was devastating.
The monster was hauled through the air and slammed into the ground.
“Impact! Now!”
One of the boys shouted, and a mortar shell detonated.
I dove through the smoke and sawed through a Zork that was closing in on them from behind.
“Leo! Behind you!”
Claire spun the turret and blasted the Zork directly at our six with the main gun.
“Haa… haa… Nice one.”
“…It’s so hot.”
I hadn't realized it until we were in the thick of it, but the cockpit temperature was rising rapidly.
“Blasting! Three, two, one… Fire!”
The ground erupted with a massive explosion.
A whole swarm of Zork was swallowed by the collapsing earth.
…In the end, as long as they had a plan, they were remarkably capable.
The students of this academy were something else.
And the Imperial Guard was on an even higher level.
They were methodically dismantling the Zork one by one with their hammers.
Anyone who got injured was quickly pulled back for treatment.
We were winning.
For now.
But the reality of the situation was starting to set in.
There was no way we could hold this for ten hours.
The Zork just kept coming.
No matter how many we killed, more crawled out.
They wouldn't give us a second to breathe.
And most of the students were still just amateurs.
If even one person died, the whole formation would likely crumble.
The only ones who could really hold the line were the instructors and the Guard.
As the intensity of the assault momentarily dipped, I realized the depth of our despair.
…This is bad. Really bad.
Veronica’s voice crackled in my helmet.
“Lord Groom, fall back! Rest while the attacks have subsided! If you fall, the front line collapses!”
Wait, am I actually being counted as a key asset?
I retreated from the front as ordered.
I downed an electrolyte drink and stepped into a particle shower to disinfect.
I smeared recovery gel over the minor scrapes on my body and slumped into a chair to catch my breath.
“Lord Groom! Claire! Take these, just in case!”
Veronica arrived and tossed something at me.
It was a capsule in a suspiciously vivid, poisonous-looking color. I had a bad feeling about this.
“Is this for suicide?”
“No! It’s a stimulant used by pilots to ward off sleep! Take it if you feel yourself nodding off!”
“What is with this lethal color scheme…?”
It looked exactly like a poisonous mushroom.
“It’s designed so you can find it even in the dark!”
I wasn't sleepy yet.
I tucked it into my pill case next to my stomach medicine.
A quick check on my terminal confirmed it was a civilian-grade stimulant.
I appreciated the gesture, but I’d probably stick to the stuff from the infirmary.
“So, do Claire and I have any relief pilots?”
If everything hinged on just the two of us, we were in trouble.
Veronica surely knew that.
“Of course. Melissa!”
“What is it, Your Highness? Is it finally ready?”
Melissa—the boyish girl with the ore pronoun and more tropes than I could count—stepped forward.
“Yes, it was finished just moments ago.”
“What was?” I asked.
“A close-combat custom based on the training units we always use.”
“Wait, hold on. Did you print an entire machine from scratch?!”
I knew they had the blueprints for the trainers, but building one from the ground up should have been impossible for students.
“Yeah. I customized it with extra-thick armor.”
Wait, who did the maintenance and assembly? They must be insanely talented!
I knew the tech in this world made it possible, but there was a huge gap between possible and actually doing it.
Plus, a machine that size would require a mountain of resources.
Was my drop luck really enough to cover all that?
“We secured the materials by feeding the defeated organisms into the reduction furnace,” Veronica explained.
That was enough?!
That had to be the Jester’s ability…
If we were going for quantity over quality, we had an overwhelming advantage.
We couldn't craft high-end legendary gear, but…
“To think we could mass-produce old ballistic weapons like this. Even those crab monsters turned out to be useful.”
I see. We couldn't get rare drops, but we could get an infinite supply of common materials.
Even the weakest training unit could be a threat if you had enough of them.
I realized then: my survival had rewritten the very rules of the game.
This wasn't just an RPG anymore; we were playing a tactical strategy simulation.
“We’re heading out too!”
The rest of the guys showed up.
“W-Wait, you guys are going out in training units too?”
“Yeah. Better than those heavy machinery rigs. They’re built for combat, after all. Even the Guard veterans are switching over to the trainers.”
“Hey, then I’ll—”
“Leo, you stay here and rest.”
“…Don't get yourself killed.”
“Leave it to us!”
With that, Melissa and the boys headed for the front.