Chapter 128 – …You Are Rather Good, Aren’t You…!

"I have you in my sights!"

A stretch of space with only faint debris drifting through it. Ranses's Radure, painted in a dark-green camouflage scheme, came into clear view within Letaria's sights.

Letaria instantly leveled Arden's Photon Rifle and fired a warning shot.

But Ranses's machine evaded the beam with an unhurried, fluid maneuver. And in the next instant -- Ranses's machine vanished from Letaria's sight entirely.

"--?!"

It wasn't that she'd lost track of it through sheer speed. It had, quite literally, vanished from sight.

An instant later, she sensed a presence directly overhead. Letaria pushed Trace Mode's output to its absolute limit and threw herself into an emergency retreat backward with an explosive burst of thrust.

The instant she cleared it by a hair's breadth, a fierce rain of light-rounds poured down from her left -- and, with no gap at all, from her right as well, each accompanied by that same eerie presence.

"Ngh--?! What is happening?!"

Neither the main monitor nor her own naked eye showed so much as a shadow of the enemy machine. Her sensors crackled with static from the jamming.

No shape to see -- and yet the presence was closing in from several directions at once. Could it be...!

Letaria sharpened every nerve and focused her magic across the entire space around her. Even in a simulator environment where Arden's own special system couldn't function at full capacity, her own exceptional magical senses reliably caught the faint ripples of presence stirring through the space.

"...Optical camouflage, is it!"

Letaria swung Arden's Photon Saber in a sharp arc, aimed at the coordinates of the nearest stirring presence. The instant the Photon Saber cut through what should have been empty space, the air itself seemed to warp, and a small explosion erupted.

"Not bad at all. Just like the rumors say -- that instinct of hers is terrifying."

Ranses's voice, tinged with admiration, came through over the static-laced comm.

"Lord Ranses... is it! Sneaking about and attacking from hiding -- prepare yourself!"

Letaria instantly leveled her Photon Rifle at the largest presence lurking within the space and fired.

The impact felt certain -- surely she'd caught the real body of Ranses's machine this time. But what happened at the point of impact was the same small explosion as before.

As the smoke cleared, countless small floating gun turrets, arranged all around Letaria, came into view -- along with Ranses's Radure, its optical camouflage now disengaged. Among the drifting debris around her, several charred, silent turret wrecks tumbled.

"Whew... quite a few of them got wrecked by that missile barrage earlier. Not enough firepower left to corner you completely, I'm afraid."

Ranses said this with a wry laugh, even as he began charging the energy of the slender Photon Rifle in his hand.

A custom sniper build, one that pushed the muzzle velocity of an already near-light-speed photon round to its absolute extreme through a high-output charge. A shot that, once fired, was physically impossible to dodge by sight alone.

The instant the charge completed, a flash tore through space.

"It will not hit me--!"

But Letaria had already sensed the telltale motion of her opponent's finger on the trigger beforehand. She'd already begun her evasive maneuver before the round even left the muzzle, and the beam sliced through empty space without so much as grazing Arden's armor.

"...I can't begin to imagine how she manages a dodge that complete, but..."

Just as Ranses murmured this, a violent impact and a blaring alarm tore through Letaria's simulator pod.

"--?!"

The Photon Rifle gripped in Arden's left hand suddenly exploded and shattered.

"A simultaneous strike with the turret."

Caught in the Photon Rifle's explosion, her left arm took critical damage.

"Arden--! ...You are rather good, aren't you...!"

With its left arm disabled, Arden faced off against Ranses's Radure.

"Against most opponents, I'd have scored three kills by now with all that. ...To throw this much at someone and only manage to damage one arm -- that's frightening."

Ranses let the words slip out in his usual breezy tone, inside his cockpit.

"Even if this is only a simulator, Arden -- I am sorry. But it shall not go this way a second time!"

Letaria sharpened every one of her senses to their absolute limit. If the same kind of invisible simultaneous attack came again, could she dodge all of it? -- No. With that much firepower and that many lines of fire saturating the field, a perfect dodge would be difficult. Which left only one path to take.

"A swift finish, then!"

Even as the alarm kept blaring from her ruined left arm, Arden opened its main thrusters to full and drove forward in a straight, furious charge at Ranses's machine.

"Figured you'd try that."

Ranses calmly read her opening motion and swept the firing lines of another hidden group of turrets across Letaria's approach path all at once. An instant later, a merciless rain of light-rounds poured down from her blind spots.

"Those rounds alone do not carry enough power to stop me!"

From among the many converging lines of attack, Letaria instantly "selected" the one least likely to prove fatal. Keeping her exposed surface area to an absolute minimum, twisting the machine's posture to the very limit to shield the Photon Saber in her right hand -- her one remaining weapon -- she pressed forward without ever slowing her stride.

A harsh, grinding barrage of impacts rang out, carving fresh scars into Arden's already-crushed left arm. But neither Letaria nor Arden paid it the slightest mind, and they kept closing the distance.

"Picking the route with minimum exposure...?! Come on -- is she psychic or something?"

At this abnormal behavior -- pushing straight through the shortest path without any fear of being hit -- Ranses pulled the trigger of his Photon Rifle, a mix of shock and disbelief in his voice.

"Just a little... just shift a little...!"

The instant Letaria willed it, Arden slid sideways with the barest minimum of thrust. Slipping past the line of fire with a motion so small it was almost impossible to see, it plunged straight into point-blank range against the Radure.

The blade of light from the Photon Saber gripped tight in her right hand blazed out with explosive brilliance in the darkness.

"Photon Saber--!!"

The finishing blow cut diagonally across the upper body of Ranses's machine at point-blank range.

"...Whew. Completely botched that one. Lieutenant Priscilla, Adelina -- rest is up to you two."

Leaving those wry words behind, Ranses's Radure was ruled destroyed by the simulator and went down, eliminated.