I have to admit, being a giant feels incredible.
Especially when that giant is wrapped in a steel shell thick enough to shrug off anti-tank fire.
I remember hearing someone say that as technology advances, the threshold for killing gets lower and lower, and people get numb. Stabbing someone face-to-face with a knife hits you like a freight train.
Watching someone bloom with blood and collapse under your gun doesn't shock you nearly as much. And controlling a drone through a screen to blow people to pieces feels purely like playing a video game, almost no feeling at all.
They were right.
I've been alive for more than twenty years. Before this, I'd never even killed a chicken. But in the past half hour, I've indirectly gotten who knows how many people killed, and aside from the same nervous excitement I had the first time I played Counter-Strike as a kid, I felt nothing real at all.
Try to picture it. You're standing in a cramped, noisy, swaying little space, like the platform of a dance machine at an arcade. You've got a VR headset on. It's like playing a light-gun shooter in an arcade, watching shrieking enemies on-screen get blown apart by you or your teammates. Every so often you even hear the "bang bang" of bullets striking your body, like your controller has vibration turned on. Honestly, it's kind of fun.
That is the sum total of my feelings about my first war: me, a former washed-up gamer, now a Gundam pilot, experiencing combat for the first time.
We rode down in several huge transport landers, big as flying bricks, dropping straight into Donigaton's central plaza. This had been the first place I saw when I woke up, but now the grand medieval-style statue was toppled, and the square was littered with burning barricades and graffiti.
The fight began the moment the ramp doors opened.
Our troops, a mix of soldiers in black armour and blue uniforms, surged out like a tide of vengeance from hell, clearing streets with unmatched efficiency. They were disciplined, frighteningly capable, and with support from brutish-looking armoured vehicles and armed flyers, the resistance from rioters and cultists might as well have been made of paper.
And me?
I was mixed into this steel flood… and basically slacking.
In the end, I still never learned to operate this insanely cool power armour on my own. But it didn't matter. With three floating skulls "driving for me," I only needed to do a few simple inputs.
Left-hand fingers tapping the rune-plate to steer and adjust speed.
Right thumb holding a button to move the reticle in my view and aim.
Index finger pulling the trigger to fire.
As for my legs, I didn't need to exert anything at all. I just relaxed and let my body follow the armour's gait.
With difficulty this low, I honestly feel like Professor Hawking could've driven it.
I even saw my "old friend" again on the squad channel: Arbitrator Kairen. He and the surviving soldiers under his command were listed among the forces for this suppression operation. Seeing that they hadn't vanished during the fortress's mysterious chaos on the first night was genuinely a relief.
He seemed to have heard about my "sortie in Gundam mode" too. The moment he spotted my signature ivory-white power armour, he sprinted over with his people.
"Sir!" He stood at attention and performed a solemn salute I couldn't understand but instinctively felt was formal and serious, his rough, iron-hard voice packed with barely restrained excitement and reverence. "You're here as well! With you present, these heretical scum will surely be purified!"
From behind my helmet, I looked down at him like he was a kid.
Not long ago, this huge man had treated me as someone who needed close protection. Back when we were suffering together, his strength had felt like a tank: reliable, immovable, and solid. But now, the way he looked at me, the posture, the fervor, it was like a boy with starry eyes worshipping a superhero who'd stepped out of a cartoon.
"Ahem." Through the external vox, my voice came out as a processed, low, authoritative electronic rumble. "Kairen, I'm glad to see you again. Do your duty. For the Emper— uh, for justice."
I'd tried to copy their signature slogan, but for a second I genuinely couldn't remember whether it was Emperor, God-Emperor, or Tsar or whatever. So I improvised at the last instant.
Kairen obviously didn't notice my tiny slip. Like he'd been massively inspired, he saluted again and led his people into the next district with an even more fanatical intensity.
Tch. This feeling of being worshipped… it's pretty damn good.
Especially for a nobody, an invisible office drone like me.
I raised the "boltgun" in my right hand, a so-called bolter that was basically a short, twin-barrel autocannon, and hosed a burst at a machine-gun emplacement still stubbornly holding out in the distance. A few massive rounds later, the position and the wall behind it went up together.
"Beautiful!" I cheered for myself inside the power armour.
…Later, when I watched the battle record playback, I found out that emplacement had actually been deleted by a passing gunship with rockets. My precious bolts hadn't done anything except blast a few big craters into the wall next to it.
But that didn't stop me from feeling amazing in the moment.
I even developed a bold, heroic delusion: I could solo-speedrun this battlefield.
A civilian like me, with zero military training, should've been pure cannon fodder. But inside this steel shell, protected by a crowd of professionals, I somehow became the flashiest guy on the field.
Slack off, fire a couple of shots now and then, and enjoy the admiring looks from friendly troops.
This war felt even better than getting paid to take a dump.
The push through Donigaton's urban core went smoothly. The first half of the fighting felt like an armed parade. Through the control plate, I drove my "driver" skull, the servo-skull I'd nicknamed "Turnip," letting it pilot this steel giant in heavy steps, automatically following behind the armoured vehicles.
Meanwhile I enjoyed the "scenery" of this dark Gothic, Europe-flavoured city at war, while casually having my "gunner," the servo-skull I'd named "Potato," lock onto and shoot any unlucky idiot who popped their head up.
Gunfire, explosions, screaming…
In reality, those sounds could drive a person insane. But filtered into the power armour, they became nothing more than soft background noise. To me, right then, it was the most exhilarating BGM imaginable. I wasn't scared at all.
All I felt was excitement, rising and rising.
But…
I'm sure you can guess what comes next. Just like General Patton said:
"If your battle is going too well, you're overlooking something."
(End of Chapter)
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