Leaving the special training room reserved for his sole use, Noah could see people on the training mat in the distance. The training center was an extremely large structure and could easily hold well over several thousand people without much problem.
Still, he was always surprised by how low the number of people training here was compared to the size of this place.
“This place is mostly reserved for the elites of my legion and to be honest, hand-to-hand combat is not something soldiers train much for nowadays.”
“Because of using Frames?” Noah asked.
“Indeed. Not everyone is a freak like you, no offense.”He winked. “If most other people get ejected from their knight frame and fall into the battlefield, then they are most likely already dead or soon to be captured by the enemy. Hard to say which one is unluckier, to be honest.”
Noah nodded his head in understanding. It was the same back on earth too, even far before the creation of mecha for that matter. Having self-defense skills was always a plus for a soldier, but from the moment guns and even more developed firearms were developed, the application of any form of martial arts was pretty much as good as dead.
But,
“Shouldn’t the Frame pilots learn even more hand-to-hand combat and weapon arts if that’s the case? How do you guys fight then?” Noah couldn’t help but ask with a hint of curiosity in his eyes. If operating a Frame was anything like operating a Mecha then they needed to have diverse knowledge in hand-to-hand combat to outmaneuver the foe.
“Why would martial arts be necessary to control a mecha?” Lion seemed confused and Noah was ready to answer but then stopped as he remembered one important fact he had forgotten about Knightframes.
“Ah, yeah, you guys don’t use Neurolink.”
Hearing his answer, Lion couldn’t help but frown. They had reached the exit door while having this conversation, “You do know… No, you wouldn’t… I won’t even ask how you know about Neurolink. Don’t care. But you should know that this system is outdated and mostly unlawful and that too for obvious reasons.”
While Lion was not the one who took care of the Knightframe armada, he knew enough about the different conventions and regulations to make the comment.
“Well, to start off— Full Neurolinks are simply impractical by all means. Never mind the fact that the pilot needs a special surgical operation to make the connection possible in the first place, it heavily limits the pilots as they need to bond with a single specific frame for the rest of their lives. Use anything else and it will simply not meet the specification of the user themselves and cause heavy conflicts within the systems.”
Lion waved his paw, “It isn’t a problem for very powerful and customized frames but nowadays, standard mass-produced frames are the most common type of combat arms there is. Who would go through an extremely painful, and most likely, deadly operation just to pilot one specific Frame? Nothing short of a madman I tell you.”
Lion shook his head, “Of course, the world is filled with darkness and the unknown. No matter how unlawful the procedure is, it wouldn’t stop determined people if it was at least efficient. However, the reality is different in that context.
“Let’s say someone did go through the operation, got lucky enough to survive, and got a powerful frame to pair up with. Then what do they do? Do you actually know how much information the CPU of a Frame analyzes in just a fraction of a second? Unless the person is from a race with a higher processing capacity, chances are, their brains would get deep fried the first time they even make the connection.”
He huffed at the end of his chattering. It wasn’t as if he had never seen a Full Connection before. Witches were some crazy ladies, and a few of them definitely tried controlling a Knightframe through a Neurolink. The results were mostly negative or a heavily specialized frame needed the combined efforts of two or even three witches to properly function. However, then they would face the oldest problem of humanity in real time, conflicting thoughts.
“The worst drawback is the nerve connection and sensation transmission. Frames are made to be used as a dispensable tool at the end of the day. They are armor, no armor can come out unscathed after a battle, much less a war. What is the use of armor if the one it's supposed to protect feels even more pain while they wear it?” This was perhaps the most stupid part of the Neurolink. Since the pain receptors of the pilot were connected to the Frame itself, it did not take long for it to become a glorified torture device for lack of better words.
From the information and secret tests done by many powers behind the scenes, the results were abysmal even in the best-case scenario. Only special races could bring qualitative change into the equation.
But then, there was no need to go through all this pain if you were going to use special races in the first place.
“So… Is it really a dead system these days? Are there any manufacturers who know how to install it?”
“Noah…” Lion frowned, understanding that despite his words and warning, Noah still wished to head toward certain ruin. Noah was smiling, but from the stubborn light in his eyes, Lion could guess that nothing of what he wanted to say would reach him in this situation.
“Ugh… I swear if Dorothy wasn’t interested in you, I would dump your ass here and not care if your brain gets fried.”
“Heheh… Acting shy does not suit you, Lion.”
“Humph.” Lion snorted disdainfully and took a comb to work on his mane to suppress the frustration in his heart.
“Some systems do use it. Such as the Neo system. They believe that the ideal frames must be piloted not by one but by at least five pilots. Because of their position, the Neo system regularly faces high-level cosmic beasts, so they developed some interesting ways of going around the limitations of their races. Having 5 pilots, each of them taking a part of the burden while one pilot works as the leader and directs the fight.”
Lion laughed, he had seen some of the demonstrations of those fusion-type frames and while they were intriguing, Lion did not have a high opinion of them in the least. It was simply a waste of resources and forces in his honest opinion.
“The Neo system is… Well, they are quite eccentric and an isolationist bunch. They are not really part of the Empire or the Federation. Not unlike Oz in many ways. But unlike us, they are known worldwide as the kings of entertainment. You should try watching one of the animations they make when you are free. Very distracting and relaxing at the same time.”
The more Lion spoke about the Neo system, the weirder Noah’s gaze became as a certain picture was starting to form in his head. Chuckling to himself at the thought, he decided to steer back the discussion on the right track.
Noah gave the beast a bitter smile, “You said it was banned?”
“Unlawful in many places. Not outright banned.
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“In history, there was also the White Empire. They were more or less the predecessors of the Pendragon family. Didn’t survive long, since they fought against the swarm of Parasites at its very peak. During the war, they basically just created a bunch of clones based on their emperors, children who never grew up and would die as children, and used them as pilots with this Neurolink connection as the baseline. Well, in the end, the damage from the war was too high, and that empire died out pretty fast.”
Noah could more or less understand now. Be it from a practical, moral, or even historical standpoint, the system he was so proud of was considered obsolete in this place and if he had to be honest, he understood why.
He had seen for himself how many people died in those experiments and he was happy fewer people would have to go through the torture that made them the constellations.
“Of course, if you really want the best of the best, then you should visit Geppetto. I am sure Dorothy already informed you, but he is known as the father of machines and that’s due to far more reasons than what you and even I can imagine. It’s no wonder that he is one of the most brilliant minds of the current era. In a way, many consider him as a power not any weaker than the Empire or the Federation.”
“I have heard his name many times by now and I only become more curious with each mention. Though, shouldn’t meeting such a man be complicated.”
“Well, yes and no. Geppetto is a strange man. He asks for a fair price when building a machine, but he has no care for money in itself. All he cares about are ideas. If you ask him for something he deems as boring, even the emperor wouldn’t be able to force him to create what they envision. But inversely, if he considers your project interesting, then nothing will stop him from building it. Not even a galactic war.”
“Does he have no objectives or goals? Or is he simply living based on his interests?”
“No. He does have one goal.” Lion scratched his mane, making a troubled expression as he uttered, “Making machines that can grow and feel emotions like organic creatures.”
Noah stopped, feeling a little confused, “Isn’t it…”
“Crown and Tin, as well as myself really, are accidents of nature. What he wants is a truly scientific and replicable way of succeeding. Why else do you think he is friendly with Oz?”
A frown covered Noah’s face, ever so subtly, as he finally gleaned a bit about Geppetto’s true goal. He did not want to see this with a prejudiced mindset but after everything that happened to him, he was understandably quite hesitant to trust or even believe in scientists and researchers… people who were just a tad bit too zealous in their research for optimal results which fuelled their desire for discovery and creation.
From experience, such cases more often than not ended in some human experiments and child trafficking. In essence, Geppetto dealt with machines and the integration of the non-living with the living, however, to understand life, you needed to study life and for that, you required live specimens to test. Things gradually went more and more toward the dark from that point.
“Is he some kind of mad evil scientist or something?”
“Well… It depends on your definition of mad and evil at the end of the day.” Lion simply waved his hand in response, “He is a war veteran who has fought and managed to stay ahead of the two strongest forces in the entire Milky Way Galaxy. He also retaliated against their rule when they came looking for trouble with him. Even though he never targeted innocents, the number of people who died directly or indirectly because of him can hardly be counted in numbers. It’s not even quantifiable in my opinion, we are talking about Solar System scales here— one of his weapons, most likely the reason the war stopped, was strong enough to wipe out an entire solar system composed of more than 12 planets. All the planets were habitable and housed more lives than we could hope to count and assess…”
Lion ruffled his mane, he was feeling famished right about now, “This is the reality of this universe. No one has clean hands in this place. Be it Oz, the Federation, the Empire, Geppetto, and many, many other people scattered throughout the Milky Way. We are all in the grey and in fact, would even be considered evil depending on the respective perspectives of the observer.”
Lion stopped as if he remembered something important, a piece of information that just went over his head till now, “Well, I do know one man who could be described as entirely white. A man who fights for his ideals, even if those ideals could bring him to his doom as well as the group of misfits he leads.”
“Oh? He must be pretty interesting for you to have such high praise for him. Who is he?”
“Alibaba, the de facto leader of the Dream Chasers.” Lion grinned, “The Dream Chasers helped us immensely during our earlier years and Dorothy owed her life to Alibaba as he saved her when she was in a period of weakness. He is quite the idealist. But he has the strength to back his ideals and teammates willing to follow him. What more can a man ask for?”
“Ideals, huh…” Noah muttered the word softly, as if tasting it on his tongue. It was somehow bitter. He was becoming more interested in this Alibaba as time went by. He seemed to be quite the individual.
———
Lion was the one who designed the training uniform and Tin considered them an atrocity. The fact that Noah found nothing wrong with the training uniform was all Tin needed to consider him illiterate… well, when it came to fashion at least. The end result… Noah was now wearing a simple white shirt paired with fitting black pants that oozed comfort. Though the choice was the height of monotony, as Tin repeatedly pointed out to him, it also had the advantage of being easy to wear.
On his shoulder perched a metallic crow whose head was tilting left and right as if it was scanning the surroundings with its eyes.
Out of Dorothy’s three most trusted companions, Crow was the one Noah was the least close to. He did not trust Crow and the sentient AI did not trust him in the least. Strangely though, this distance between them was also the reason why they formed a certain bond— a bond he could not form with the others.
It was different from his relationship with everyone else but in a way, it was also cozy.
— Do you think your Mecha or rather Frame is finally ready? Tin did say he wanted to give you a surprise.
Possible but honestly it doesn’t matter much. You know it right? The mecha I’ll receive now is just a placeholder until we can create Ouroboros again.
— You say that but your heartbeat accelerates just at the mention of Mecha.
…
Noah stayed silent at the retort. He had long realized that trying to hide anything from Eve was nothing short of pointless as they were now. The Parasite Queen could read nearly everything about him with how they were integrated both in body and mind. She was right once again.
The frame that Tin promised to make for him was just a standard model with some modifications that would be tailored to meet his personal standards and fighting style but that was about it. There was nothing particularly incredible about the machine that would be delivered to him. Not to mention, there was a high chance that Noah would just let Eve devour the frame to obtain the technology inside the frame and possibly replicate said technology to somehow remodel it when the time came.
But… Even so… It was still a new Mecha!
The sensation of piloting one of these behemoths was one of a kind and he had only managed to taste it briefly during his fight against Omid before Ouroboros was destroyed in the aftermath of the battle. No words could describe just how dearly he missed that distinct feeling.
———
On his shoulder, Crow silently observed Noah while observing the surroundings. The man had just about the most impassive and nigh-expressionless face it had ever seen, even though it was only a mask that hid his true feelings. But his detectors could not be mistaken.
[Detecting heightened brain activity.]
One of his detectors resounded within, reminding him of the changes in the man… and the change only served to heighten his confusion.
The readings he was receiving showed that he was thinking hard about something. In fact, this kind of reading was very similar to those of a telepath when they discussed their thoughts with others.
But then, just who was Noah discussing with right now? Through his countless inspections, Crow found no communication device on Noah, not even a shred of it. In the first place, it had entire control over the space of this planet and there was no way for a signal he did not know of to pass the atmosphere of this planet or even travel freely inside.
At the same time, even if Noah was a telepath, again came the question of who was he discussing with and just how was he able to do it. Projecting thoughts across space from one planet to another was not impossible if a telepath used the right equipment to amplify their inherent powers. However, once again Noah had no such equipment on him.
Then was this a case of multiple personality disorder? A skill akin to Parallel Mind? Or some other special power?
As many possibilities filtered through his mind to narrow down the unknown that was Noah, Crow found himself feeling frustrated for the first time in a long, long time.
Noah was an enigma and Crow hated such notions that had the potential to threaten him and by extension the entirety of Oz.
“Hello! Noah dear, you are finally here and I see you are not wearing that horrible uniform that you somehow find… tasteful. Great, we are starting on the right foot today.”
When they finally reached close to Tin’s zone, they could hear his voice being projected from the speakers in the area.
“Now come join me in Hangar #66. It’s time for you to see the results of our work.”
Noah grinned. It seemed like his expectations would not be betrayed.