“How can you cover hundreds of civilians with just two Wanderpanzers? Unfortunately, you don’t.”

- Excerpt from Lieutenant Hans Hoffman’s Journal Entries

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+++ Lieutenant Hans Hoffman +++

Ygeian Countryside

AUG 27, 1538 CE

“I got it on my sights!”

“Open fire!”

Adelyn and Hans both opened fire at the charging demon from the hilltop. The force of their shots shook the early morning’s landscape, with the grass below their mechs feeling the shockwave, and the birds resting on the trees beside them flying in distress.

The demon, still in its X-shaped form, found itself surprised when the shots struck it. Hans’ and Adelyn’s Wanderfalkes were extremely accurate even at extreme distances due to the digital fire control systems on its well-stabilized guns, and both of their shots struck the core of the demon hard.

A high-pitched screech of what Hans imagined must be rage emanated on the battlefield, as the demon flew up, blood falling from the closing hole.

Why does something like that even bleed?

“I’m firing another sabot on it!” Hans said on the comms, and so did Adelyn.

“Second round is being reloaded!”

“Let’s get this in the bag! Priestess, are you and your companions in position?!”

There was a brief delay in her response, as Hans imagined that the woman still had to fumble with the radio he lent to her. He briefly remembered how Adelyn first outright refused their assistance, believing that using such youngsters to fight would be a liability at best and a moral failing on their part as adult soldiers at worst. But in a brief second, he heard her voice respond, showing their resolute desire to fight side-by-side with Hans and Adelyn.

“I can see it now!” Laura shouted before Hans saw a massive blue runic light in a triangular shape appear from her position. He could even hear how she chanted many unknown words, which again, reminded him of Sicilian soldiers, as the two more of the runic lights appeared on the side, this time colored orange. “In the name of the Goddess of Purity—Pulirae!”

Three beams of light slammed into each other, forming one white beam that went straight into the demon that was hovering above the fields. Hans and Adelyn both froze, watching as they finally saw for the first time what kind of magic Virtus was capable of.

Then, it slammed into the beast’s core, the beam slicing from one end to the other end. An explosion of blood from it followed, nearly flooding the environment around it with the strange red liquid it seemed to release before it crumpled down on the ground. The flying weapons around also disappeared in a flash of light.

There was silence on the battlefield. Hans and Adelyn didn’t really count on taking it down like that, what they were really just doing was rearguard action for those fleeing. But…but if they did it at last…

That would be nice.

“Is…is it over?” Hans asked, almost like a fearful child. It was something he didn’t expect to blurt out, but, to be fair, he died to it once. Well, most specifically, he had to shoot himself once because of it. So to see it be defeated so well. “That’s it?”

“I…I think so?”

He checked his thermals if it was still warm. For a second, he doubted his assessment—judging its black signature on the thermals as a ruse. That was when its center suddenly turned into an intense white again, indicating that it was warm. Extremely warm.

“No, no, no! It’s coming back up!”

He zoomed in as best as he could with his sights, finally seeing the truth laid bare to him. They hit its core—yes, but they hadn’t managed to fully destroy it. Somehow. The demon was still alive.

Suddenly, a flash of light struck the hill that Hans and Adelyn were parked on. But he had shouted to her to dodge it, and so did he, pulling on the control sticks hard as he pressed his feet on the gas. His mech nimbly lowered its body as it did a sudden right-ward turn, just enough to dodge the beam of light that was about to hit him.

“Damn it! Why do they have these kinds of weapons? This is worse than sci-fi plasma!”

“Get a sabot in! Aim at the core! We need to destroy it absolutely!”

Hans and Adelyn scattered away from the hill, as the demon reformed its X shape, turning its metallic surface back into gold again. Hans instructed Laura and her team to get the hell out of the battlefield area, but he wasn’t able to, as she didn’t respond on his radio hails. When he looked at them with his turret’s sights, he saw that her companions were already dragging her unconscious form away from the battlefield.

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Must be that AP burnout thing they mentioned. Hans thought, reminding himself of one of the problems with expending AP magically with one’s body. It was an energy-intensive activity to the mind, not so much the same with him imbuing his AP into his mech for its upgrades, which seemed to have a reduced strain on his body.

He then heard Adelyn’s Wanderadler fire off its main gun in the distance, and Hans watched as a round sliced through the side of the demon as it dodged. He gripped his mech’s control stick hard as he placed his foot on the break—orienting his main gun straight into the center mass of the demon.

He pulled the trigger.

Once again, the demon moved out of the way for a few dozen centimeters, causing his shot to miss just enough that there was no effect. Suddenly, the weapons flying around it reappeared—all of them aimed at Hans’ mech.

Sweet melons…

His random brain fart aside, he pulled his mech into a quick jump backward as the shots from it all converged at him, dodging it well enough. He returned on the move, driving in circles around the demon to avoid giving it even an inch of an opportunity to kill him.

“That was way too close!”

“I’m going to try again!”

He watched as Adelyn’s mech stopped, and opened another shot on the demon. But it once again dodged it, before firing a beam at Adelyn, forcing her another emergency dodge to get out of the way. Hans banged his fist, pissed at how difficult it was to kill.

Damn it! If this was a modern tank, it would have been dead ages ago! How is the spall damage not killing it? Those sabots carry so much energy per shot that it’s impossible for that thing to survive our shots!

Hans tried to steady his main gun on the center of the demon, but it moved again, which forced Hans to break off his attack by diving into another depression on the terrain, hiding just in time for the shots from the floating guns to hit him. But some certainly did—as the fire went out from his fuel tank, momentarily stopping his Wanderfalke on a dead drift down the hill.

“Damn it! Put it out!” Hans shouted as the automatic fire control system opened up to control the fire. Unfortunately, his engine gave out, and Hans panickedly began checking his damage control interfaces. “Captain! I’m immobilized! Give me thirty seconds. I’ll try to restart the—”

He heard another boom from the distance, certainly from Adelyn’s Wanderadler before she replied to him.

“It’s retreating,” Adelyn said. “Again, it’s retreating.”

“Why?”

“Seems like we hurt it enough again,” Adelyn replied. “That thing. It’s too resilient.”

Hans continued to check things until his computers gave the final report—his radiator was also damaged. Crap…

“I see then…” Hans said as he frowned, looking at his screens. “I…well, I need to repair my mech. The radiator and fuel tank are out. I got myself mobility killed.”

“Crap.”

“No worries,” Hans pressed a few things as he gave himself a breather. “I kept my skill slot open for this. Seems like I have no choice but to take the upgrade now. And use it for the first time. That’s just what I’ll do. Protect me please.”

He chuckled a bit on the comms before the tenseness in Adelyn’s voice turned more relaxed.

“Alright. Take your sweet time then.”

“Thanks.”

+++

I’m never going to magically recover from this.

Twenty minutes after Hans picked ‘UPG: Arcane Maintenance System’ as his upgrade, and after he commenced the repairs on his mech’s fuel tank and radiator (damn was his mech glowing a pale white during the process something cool to look at), Hans despaired like a bankrupt man as he looked at his remaining AP available when he willed his stat screen to appear.

From one thousand to six hundred.

He certainly felt like a broke man now.

That’s just fun ain’t it?

“Did it work?” Adelyn curiously asked below, as Hans opened his hatch. Already, the Priestess woke back up from her impromptu unconsciousness, and she and her friends were also watching Hans’ Wanderfalke which was stuck in an awkward pose on the ground, with its legs obviously dead and its hull buried front-first on the soil like a crashed aircraft.

“Yeah, I think it did. Steer clear of my way everyone!”

Hans dropped down on the hatch and back inside his mech’s crew compartment. He immediately gave his modules a structural integrity check, even when he already checked their physical conditions a minute earlier.

Seems like it’s green. Magically green. Normally, fixing the damned radiator would take the techs days.

Unfortunately, Hans despaired again at his remaining fuel. It seemed that most of it had been eviscerated by the fire, which meant he was going to burn even more AP for the fuel.

Damn it! It was just two stupid shots that clipped me! I can’t believe it has to eat up nearly half of my desperate reserves just to fix crap.

Then again, he also silently thanked the heavens that as Vanus, he had no cap with his AP. Adelyn in comparison, with her four hundred AP cap, might have the ability to, yes, regenerate a good amount of AP per day, but boy, would she be unable to pull off these kinds of crazy AP consumption at the drop of a hat.

Especially if a more important component was struck (like the autoloader).

Hans soon pressed his feet on the gas, and immediately, his mech’s legs raised the hull back up and drove it forward. For some reason, an uncontrollable smile suddenly appeared on Hans’ face as he did it, holding his control sticks as he drove. It was working! Almost in pristine condition even. He remembered that his engine was already having random split-second breakdowns due to the lack of proper maintenance on it.

But now it was driving almost as good as he remembered during the last time he visited the battalion’s workshop!

But more importantly, it was something that gave Hans a surge of satisfaction. Sure, there would be no help coming from his homeland—but from now on, they had both of the things they needed to keep their mechs on the fight so long as they had the necessary AP to keep things going.

They could use the auto fabricator for fuel and munitions.

And they now had this upgrade to also fix their mech whenever needed.

I guess some things can work out well in the end if you work hard enough, huh?

He pressed his speakers as he stopped his mech.

“Alright! It’s working now!”