Chapter 129 – The Battle Between Ethan and the Hyper-Speed Machine!

"You're persistent!"

Ethan's Rude Custom: Ribast deflected the rapid-fire barrage from Adelina's high-speed heavy-armor Radure's large Photon Machine Gun with its shield, without the slightest difficulty.

Adelina tried using her prized hyper-speed to close in on Grain's Riese, hanging back further behind, but as though her destination had been read completely, a well-placed shot from Ethan came flying in at exactly the right moment, every time.

She'd already taken four hits. Thanks to her extra-thick specialized armor, none had done serious damage -- but for Adelina, piloting a concept machine that was supposed to run circles around opponents at hyper-speed and never take a single shot, this maddening accuracy was nothing short of astonishing.

--And then.

On the friendly data-link inside Adelina's cockpit, Ranses's machine signal suddenly cut out.

"Eh--?! Ranses got... taken down?!"

The shock of losing a dependable senior colleague. A man like Ethan was never going to miss the single, fleeting opening Adelina let show.

"There!"

What Ribast leveled was the prototype Photon Rifle, the Arcian. Its performance in the simulator was slightly detuned, same as Riese, but since it was originally a cutting-edge prototype to begin with, it still boasted more than sufficient output and precision.

The charged burst shot fired from the Arcian struck true against the right-side armor of Adelina's machine.

Amid a burst of flame, the side armor blew apart spectacularly, and the explosion spread into a chain detonation with the missile pod embedded inside. But even after taking that much of an impact, it wasn't enough to strip away the thick layered armor entirely, and the machine's overall specs showed no major drop.

"To do this much in a general-purpose Rude... just who ARE you?!"

Adelina unleashed that otherworldly speed once more, swinging around in a single burst into Ribast's blind side. Deploying a Photon Cutter blade of light along the front of her machine, she committed to a hyper-speed body slam, putting her full mass behind it.

"Just a humble member of the Vigilante Corps, Sergeant."

Ethan answered with an air of composure, instantly drawing two Photon Sabers and crossing them to guard against the frontal charge. The raw output gap between the two machines was simply too vast to take the frontal push head-on. Ethan instantly tilted the angle of his Photon Sabers, "deflecting" the impact and energy off into his blind spot, and slipped sideways to dodge by a hair's breadth.

As sparks flew in the moment they passed each other -- Ribast fired the Arcian in its hand, while Adelina's machine simultaneously unleashed its two built-in beam cannons.

Adelina's attack was a wide cross-fire pattern, fired with her opponent's evasive maneuver read completely. -- But Ethan, through the sheer nerve of a deliberate choice not to move at all, held perfectly still right between the two beams and evaded without the slightest difficulty. And the shot Ribast fired from the Arcian struck exactly where aimed, shattering the generator for Adelina's machine's Photon Cutter.

"I can't believe a monster like this was hiding in some local vigilante corps...!"

Adelina gritted her teeth in frustration.

--The next instant.

Adelina's entire Radure began releasing a dazzling stream of photon particles.

At the extraordinary surge of energy, even Ethan didn't carelessly close the distance, instead holding back cautiously to watch how things developed.

"...Honestly, this is my first time using this even in the simulator. Um... Vice-Captain Ethan, was it. Please be ready!"

The armor locks released one after another, and the heavy outer plating peeled away sheet by sheet, purged and sent tumbling off into space. What emerged from beyond the smoke and drifting light particles was -- with part of the purged armor instantly reconfigured and reattached as weaponry -- the refined silhouette of the machine's true form: Adelina's personal Radure.

"Transformation, combination -- now that's romance. I'm almost jealous."

Ethan reset his stance with the Arcian and shield.

◆

With its armor purged, the base body had a sleek silhouette -- but once the reconfigured additional equipment was mounted, it took on a form that was somehow warped and menacing. This was Adelina's machine's true form, one that could only be called its "second form."

The output figures Ethan's sensors picked up for the enemy machine were nearly double that of a Rude.

"The missiles are gone, but this is still very much alive!"

With Adelina's voice, the Photon Beam Cannon mounted on the back of her hand -- built from the purged armor -- opened fire. An enormously thick beam of light swept through space as if to mow everything down.

"--!"

Ethan returned fire with the Arcian while breaking into evasive maneuvers, but the long beam pursued him as though his path had been anticipated.

"No choice, then."

Realizing he couldn't escape it cleanly, Ethan changed Ribast's posture, deliberately letting the beam graze its leg to force his way through the encirclement. He took a damage ruling for the loss of his right foot, but succeeded in breaking free. And at the same moment, the round he'd fired from the Arcian struck Adelina's beam cannon and destroyed it cleanly.

"Not done yet! I was entrusted with this Radure for a reason, you know!"

So saying, Adelina's machine charged straight at Ribast. On the arm that had held the now-destroyed beam cannon, a large Photon Saber had, at some point, already been deployed.

--But her real intention lay elsewhere. Hidden in the shadow of the charge, a grenade launcher mounted at her waist closed in on Ribast.

"Sergeant, that machine of yours is splendid, but--"

Ethan calmly activated his machine's shoulder railgun. The solid round that roared out struck true, piercing the grenade launcher the instant it leapt into the open.

"-- A hastily improvised fighting style seems to lack a little 'familiarity.'"

So saying, he fired the already-charged Arcian without a moment's delay. The massive photon round struck the Radure's large Photon Saber dead-on, and a violent energy backlash slammed into the Radure.

"Whoa--!"

By the time her posture broke, Ribast had already closed to point-blank range against the Radure.

"You're wide open, Sergeant."

Ribast drove its solid blade deep into the Radure. This was the choice forced on him because Ribast's generator, drained by the continuous energy cost of firing the Arcian, had hit its limit and could no longer deploy a Photon Saber. As a result, the strike wasn't enough to burn through the core in one blow -- Adelina's machine could still move.

"I can still fight!"

With the solid blade still lodged inside her, Adelina's machine ramped up its remaining output and drove the massive Photon Saber straight into Ribast's chest with brute force.

"...Whew. Guess raw machine toughness and specs are the one thing you just can't argue with."

Just as Ethan spoke those words with a wry laugh, both machines were swallowed by explosions beyond their limits, and both were ruled destroyed simultaneously, falling silent.