Chapter 141 – This… Just Who Are You…

Out of the darkness leading to the structure's underground loading entrance, a machine burst out as if flung loose and came charging straight ahead.

The instant she burned that rapidly closing navy-blue silhouette into her eyes, a vivid sense of déjà vu flashed through Letaria's mind.

"That is... the machine of that scoundrel from before...?!"

Her memory snapped awake. It was the Makina piloted by that rogue raider who had once ambushed a civilian transport ship and fought the Vigilante Corps. A bulk so overwhelming it was nearly twice the size of an ordinary Makina; thick armor built for heightened resistance to ballistic fire. The color of the armor had changed from red to a deep navy, but its overall silhouette was unmistakably similar.

-- But there was one decisive difference. Its impossible speed.

At a glance, the colossal frame looked the very picture of sluggishness. Yet clusters of high-output thrusters added to its back and legs scattered raucous energy particles, and with a terrifying mobility utterly unimaginable from its heavy exterior, it closed on Arden in a straight line.

"Ngh... but an attack that wide will not hit me!"

From the navy-blue heavy machine's right arm came a massive, weighty solid blade. Letaria read its opening motion with sharpened focus and slid Arden smoothly sideways to evade it.

The greatsword cut through empty space, and the colossal body swept past in front of her -- in that instant.

A jolt of pressure ran down Letaria's spine.

From behind...!

As it passed, the heavy machine's back block unfolded, and an ultra-high-speed railgun round fired from her blind spot.

"--!"

Letaria sharpened her senses, read it at once, and pulled her machine back diagonally. But the enemy's aim had not been a simple direct strike.

The railgun's pressure-hardened round, having slipped past, accurately struck through several space mines floating behind her.

A chain of mine detonations. Dazzling blasts of light and violent shockwaves filled the space. Yet the heavy machine slipped nimbly into a gap in the blast smoke, using the explosion as cover, and circled once more into Arden's blind spot.

"Using the mines as a shield... how troublesome...!"

The enemy machine kept up its hyper-fast, hesitation-free maneuvering as though it knew the position of every mine scattered through the darkness.

"Hmph. If the enemy knows where everything is, then so can I!"

Letaria let out a deep breath and gathered the magic deep in her chest all at once. Through the Arden System, Letaria's magic spread outward in every direction like ripples, relaying the information around her straight into her mind.

"-- Found it. There!"

A safe turning zone with no mines placed anywhere in it. Letaria spotted that "path" in an instant and slid Arden into it.

-- That was when it happened.

"...?! W-what was that just now...?"

The net of senses she had spread to detect the layout of the mines and the distortions in space snagged on something at its edge -- a powerful sense of wrongness.

A dark, eerie pressure. Almost like -- the presence of a person's small, ragged "breathing."

It was not the sound of machinery running, nor electronic noise. It felt as though something human was unmistakably being given off by the navy-blue heavy machine in front of her.

"This... just who are you..."

At the very moment a shiver ran through Letaria, the heavy machine bared its fangs. The armor on both its shoulders and both legs opened, and built-in high-output photon lasers all fired at once in dazzling beams, aiming to pierce Arden through.

"Shots of that level will never reach me!"

Arden dodged the oncoming barrage of lasers effortlessly, with minimal movement. But the enemy machine, as though it had perfectly predicted where she would dodge to, roared its large hand cannon on its left arm.

"Ngh... how thoroughly nasty you are!"

Just before a direct hit, Arden grazed the cannon shell's warhead with its Photon Saber, forcibly bending its trajectory, and slipped through the fireball.

"So you intend to keep your distance and stay purely in a shooting match, with no intention of closing in... -- Then I shall drag you out myself!"

Letaria worked the console and, rather than aiming her right-hand Photon Rifle at the enemy machine itself, poured continuous fire into the cluster of space mines surrounding it. A chain of massive explosions erupted. Wide-ranging flames and shockwaves swallowed the navy-blue heavy machine as it hid in its zone of safety.

The heavy machine, tossed by the blast and robbed of its hiding place -- but then, tearing through that very fireball, ultra-high-output wide-width photon beams deployed from both of the enemy's arms as enormous blades of light.

Scattering pale blue high-energy particles in violent sprays, the heavy machine, its enormous blades raised high, charged head-on to shatter Arden.

"I do not know who you are... but if you mean to violate our territory, you had better prepare yourself!"

Arden's main thrusters flared with the light of a limit break, producing output powerful enough to warp the space around it. Letaria firmly readied the Photon Sabers in both hands and, as a flash of deep indigo, drove straight at the looming navy-blue colossus.

The blades of Arden and the navy-blue heavy machine collided.

Parry the enemy's Photon Saber, then land a kick...

Just as Letaria moved to act, a dull-gleaming solid blade shot out from the heavy machine's foot.