18 Just a Forward Post 3
Third time.
This is the third time Jin faces the Black Knight.
The first time, it could have been chance.
The second time, he might still have claimed it was chance.
But the third time.
Jin cannot dismiss this as mere coincidence.
Then there must be some necessity.
Unconsciously, Jin looks away from that answer.
He is the only one involved in all three instances.
And since Jin feels no connection to it, he wants to insist it is still chance.
— Really?
The question rising from the core of his mind.
Jin cannot ignore it.
In all three cases.
There is one thing in common.
— No.
He must not notice.
He must not notice.
Such a thing cannot be possible.
First time. What happened just before?
Second time. What was Jin like at that moment?
Third time. What did the Black Knight do first upon appearing?
——In all three instances, what truly mattered was.
A faint scraping sound as the Black Knight’s Long Sword grazed the armor.
The delicate chime of metal rubbing against metal.
Jin’s Raven shifted its stance slightly.
Strong.
This unit is undeniably overwhelming.
The size of an ASID correlates roughly with the output of its Reactor.
As size increases, so does Reactor output.
The same holds true for human-made Ether Reactors.
Generating high output from an Assault Frame-sized Reactor is not easy.
Thus, ship-mounted Reactors alone are massive structures, tens or even hundreds of meters in size.
But the Black Knight—no, the humanoid form is different.
It achieves outputs of 100 Lami or 1,000 Lami using a Reactor of Assault Frame scale.
The logic behind this is incomprehensible.
The truth is, attempts to analyze debris left over from the recent large-scale assault have not gone well.
Yet when combined, high output and Assault Frame-scale compactness result in an immediately monstrous presence.
Queen-class units measuring hundreds of meters or several kilometers thickly coated in etheric sheathing.
Condensed into a mere twenty meters or less.
One could say, by surface area alone, it possesses tens of times the strength.
This applies to all other aspects as well.
Attack power and maneuverability are far more concentrated than those of large Queen-class units.
First encounter: even pouring all spirit into the effort, still fell behind.
Second encounter: no battle even occurred.
Distance cannot be maintained.
At this close range, proximity combat is not ideal for Jin.
He desperately parries the descending Long Sword with an etheric dagger.
Occasionally, the blade grazes the armor.
Each scrape of metal against metal felt as though Jin’s lifespan shortened.
He should have no room in his mind for Mio.
The result of carrying unnecessary thoughts into battle was the near miss a moment ago. This situation now.
Even against a Black Knight, such one-sided dominance should not occur.
If Jin could focus, could read the enemy’s movements ahead.
But that focus fails to settle.
Distractions intrude.
Who was the humanoid ASID’s first target?
Whose voice reached even the Leopard’s cockpit that day?
Where did the high computational ability and exceptional memory originate?
Why did the Black Knight come to rescue Jin, adrift as he was?
How did the breach of the training school’s supposedly secure gate occur?
Why could the complicated calculation Shirley mentioned be solved instantly?
The sudden awakening of the Queen, and why her swarm targeted her first—
Jin’s eyes had been closed. That fact kept surfacing, one after another.
The one who had been involved in all of it was not an ordinary human.
A partial version of that suspicion had already been resolved within the refugee fleet.
The Mother Factory installed aboard the fleet’s flagship, Ship One—
a copy of the ASID itself.
Thus, control required misidentification as ASID.
Hence the hidden faction of the refugee fleet, deliberately infecting bodies with ASDI nanomachines to create living fusion constructs.
A method ethically questionable, information isolated from the general populace.
Jin had learned of its existence from Shirley.
Its characteristics:
Exceptional computational capacity.
Surgical intervention performed early in childhood to suppress rejection responses.
The ability to interfere with electronic devices.
Thus, Jin had long suspected that this might be the case.
The commonalities were too numerous to ignore.
Yet, even if he wished to probe further, there was no connection to do so.
Effectively, waiting for the other party’s move—and that move had not come at all.
Still, countless inconsistencies remained unexplained.
If that could not be explained...
The remaining possibilities were few.
All of them dismissed as absurd—bordering on delusion.
After all, such a thing could not possibly exist.
The Black Knight’s Long Sword seized Raven’s shoulder.
The shoulder armor, designed to serve as a balancer, split halfway, exposing a smooth fracture surface.
The detached armor embedded itself into Merce’s surface.
The cost of thinking of anything other than battle amidst the battlefield.
It was fortunate that it ended with just that.
It might have ended there, depending on the opponent.
Jin thinks it’s unacceptable.
He will die like this.
The reason is unclear—really?—but he senses anger from the Black Knight.
Same as when they faced each other before.
The fury of having wounded kin.
He does not lack will to fight, not like the second time.
If he shows weakness, that fury will take his life without hesitation.
“Does it matter…?”
Jin raises his voice, severing his own torment.
That’s right. It doesn’t matter.
Even if he possesses extraordinary calculation ability.
Even if he had some connection to humanity.
“If I defeat you, everything is resolved!”
The Black Knight, overwhelmed by the barrage unfolding before him, leaps backward.
Guarding against Jin’s sudden counterattack, he hesitates to close the distance—instead, begins circling around Jin’s machine.
Maintains distance, continuing suppressive fire.
Third encounter.
Whatever the reason, it does not matter.
If results are eliminated, causes become irrelevant.
A conclusion that reverses causality.
Since Jin cannot choose to eliminate the cause—
There is no option but to erase the effect.
Call it palliative treatment, if you must.
If this were someone else’s situation, Jin would surely say—root treatment is required, meaning the fundamental cause must be severed.
But that is impossible.
It cannot be done.
Because that would mean eliminating—her.
"If I’m going to do something like that, then I’d rather—"
The words do not come.
What would Jin do, he wonders.
If it were truly so.
What must be done.
What he wants.
—No.
He does not want to make that choice.
He does not want to weigh the past few months against the last twenty years.
Doesn’t want to fire—again, closes his eyes.
Concentrates solely on annihilating the outcome.
The Ether Cannon erupts.
A firepower incomparable to the previously conserved Ether Rifle.
The Black Knight, caught off guard, takes fire across the armor’s surface. The forearm armor melts—yet before Jin’s eyes, it regenerates.
Nanoskin armor. Since it originates from ASID technology, it follows that ASID possesses the same capability.
Nanomachines derived from ASID can accomplish various tasks.
This is particularly evident within the Third Fleet.
Jin himself has benefited fully from this advantage.
Thus, no one within the Third Fleet questions the presence of nanomachines inside the body.
Nanomachines perfectly mimicking organic tissue cannot be distinguished by standard inspection.
If they could be distinguished, the purpose would be lost.
Something that cannot be identified without specialized equipment.
Thoughts clouded with distraction.
Shouting as if to erase those scattered thoughts.
"He is my daughter!"
Nothing else.
Even without blood ties.
Jin shouts that he and his daughter are family.
"What good is a parent who abandons their child? What good is a parent who doubts their child?"
Jin has never seen his parents' faces.
Does not know what a parent is.
So this was also the cry of Jin in childhood.
The cry of one seeking that truth.
"A parent should protect their child."
Or perhaps this cry is simply what Jin himself most wants to believe.