Chapter 446 - 434: The Glory of Domestic Products
Chapter 446: Chapter 434: The Glory of Domestic Products
The pilot selection for "Wandering Danger" had reached a deadlock.
This seventy-nine-meter-tall mountain of steel, like a silent ancient god, stood quietly in the deepest part of Hangar Seven, looking down on all the humans who came to challenge it.
Its piloting requirements were absurdly strict—a Spirit Core frequency difference of less than 1%.
It was the equivalent of two souls sharing a single will.
King William issued the highest directive, launching an unprecedented, nationwide sweep of inspections across the kingdom’s thousands of towns and cities.
Every registered Spirit Mage, from Level 5 to Level 1, from white-haired veterans to newly awakened youths, was required to report to the nearest recruitment office for a precision scan of their Spirit Core frequency.
The results all came to nothing.
The closest match came from a pair of twin sisters from the Royal Spiritual Arts Academy, whose Spirit Core frequency difference was 2.4%.
As a result, less than ten seconds after entering the simulation pod, both suffered from Spirit Core shock, bleeding from their mouths and noses before being forcibly ejected.
They were only 1.4% off from the 1% threshold set by Allen, yet it was like an impassable chasm.
One month, two months, six months...
Hope was eroded away by the daily reports of "no match."
The kingdom’s most powerful weapon might be sealed away in its hangar forever, reduced to an expensive sculpture, all for the lack of a suitable pilot.
This was even more despairing than never having had it in the first place.
William sat alone at his desk, clutching the reports one by one, and even began to wonder if Allen was playing a cruel joke on him.
Just as he was about to give up completely in the seventh month, an urgent report from a mining area on the Southern Border bypassed all normal channels and was delivered directly to his desk.
A sudden mining accident had occurred—a cave-in that sealed a mine shaft three hundred meters deep.
After digging for five days and five nights, the rescue team found a pair of survivors in a small air pocket at the very bottom.
They were a pair of fraternal twins of commoner birth, Rein and Leia, both eighteen. They had been kept hidden by Count Wayne.
In an environment of extreme fear and oxygen deprivation, they had both awakened their Spirit Cores simultaneously, directly reaching the strength of a Level 2 Spirit Mage.
This in itself was a minor miracle.
But what truly made the border officer report this, casting all caution aside, was a single line written at the end of the report, hastily jotted down by the accompanying Spirit Mage after a quick test.
[Target Spirit Core Synchronization Rate: 99.3%]
William stared at the report, silent for a long time.
"Bring them to me."
...
「One year later.」
The Aiselan Kingdom had poured all of its national resources into building three Mecha bases at an insane speed.
The first, codenamed "Gate of the Deep Sea," was located on the western coastline.
An entire coastal mountain was hollowed out from the inside, transformed into a magnificent steel fortress.
Thirty thousand combat engineers spent eight months blasting away four billion cubic meters of mountain rock and pouring twenty-seven million tons of alchemy-reinforced concrete.
The mountain’s interior was converted into a five-level structure: the top level was a communications array disguised as a watchtower; the three middle levels housed repair workshops, an armory, pilot dormitories, and a combat laboratory; and the bottom level contained recreational space and storage.
Three colossal, side-by-side vertical shafts, each eighty meters wide and one hundred and twenty meters high, ran through all five levels, their inner walls lined with strips of Magic Lamps that shone as bright as day.
Enormous elevators, massive repair arms, a secret launch rail leading directly to the seabed... everything here was built to serve three behemoths.
"Gale Red," "Eureka Striker," and the ultimate trump card—"Wandering Danger."
On the cockpit transfer platform in the deepest part of the base, the siblings Rein and Leia silently put on their pilot suits.
In just under half a year, the two greenhorn miners, a boy and a girl, had transformed into warriors with resolute eyes.
"Are you scared?" Leia asked softly, her voice coming through the built-in communicator.
Rein glanced at the seventy-nine-meter-tall Steel Giant beside him and grinned, revealing a set of white teeth. "I was more scared waiting to die at the bottom of that mine. Right now, I just want to crush those monsters."
They exchanged a look and, with a silent understanding, entered their cockpits simultaneously.
"Deep Synchronization, initiating."
Countless streams of psychic information, like red-hot steel needles, stabbed viciously into their minds.
In an instant, memories, emotions, pain... there was no longer any distinction between them.
Rein felt Leia’s near-death terror during the mine collapse, and Leia experienced the excruciating pain of Rein’s back being crushed by falling rocks as he shielded her with his body.
The sheer volume of information almost tore their consciousness to shreds.
But just as they reached the breaking point, the desperate will to survive that had bound them together in the dark mine transformed into an indestructible dam, forcibly holding back the torrent of psychic energy.
"Synchronization... complete."
Light flared in the eyes of "Wandering Danger."
Watched by dozens of the kingdom’s high-ranking generals and Alchemy Engineers, the Steel Giant slowly raised its right arm and, inside the mountain base, threw a sudden punch forward.
The pure physical force generated a wind pressure that scraped and compressed within the massive cavern, finally forming a visible, miniature hurricane that roared out of the open hangar doors!
BOOM—!!!
A hundred meters outside the base, a five-meter-high seawall built to withstand tsunamis was struck head-on by this hurricane. As if hit by an invisible sledgehammer, it instantly spiderwebbed with cracks!
In the observation room, all the kingdom’s assembled generals gasped in unison at the sight.
’So this... is the power of the ultimate trump card.’
...
The second base, codenamed "Azure Sky Wings," was built in the western suburbs of the Royal Capital, Golden Stone City. It served as the exclusive garrison for the "Zaku" and "Unicorn" model Mechas, as well as a cradle for pilots.
Compared to the northern mountain fortress, this place was more like a giant campus, complete with three simulation training halls and a massive live-fire range.
A Zaku stood on the open tarmac, surrounded by pilot candidates preparing for their first hands-on training exercise.
On the training field ahead, Peram was sitting in the cockpit of the "Unicorn."
"Requesting permission for takeoff."
"Permission for takeoff granted."
As the alchemy thrusters shot out azure afterburns, the streamlined mecha let out a roar. It shot up from the ground like a sharp sword, trailing a long sonic boom cloud as it pierced the heavens!
Peram’s blood was boiling.
He maneuvered the mecha through an incredible climb, followed immediately by a high-speed turn. The white vapor trail left by the machine drew a perfect circle in the sky.
He had become the first true "Flying Knight" in the history of Aiselan.
On the ground, countless Zaku pilots undergoing basic training looked up at the steel figure soaring freely through the sky, their eyes filled with yearning and fanaticism.
...
The third base had no codename, but it was the core of the entire project.
It was hidden deep in a canyon in the Eastern Mountain Range, its public designation merely "Military Industrial Zone."
Here, tens of thousands of Alchemy Engineers, metallurgists, and apprentices worked in shifts on the assembly lines.
From steel rolling to mold casting, from Rune etching to welding Spiritual Energy Circuits, every step of the Zaku’s production process could be found here.
The blueprints provided by Allen were being replicated here piece by piece, and even... modified.
Today was a day that would be recorded in the annals of history for this base.
Inside a massive final assembly workshop, everyone stopped their work and turned their gazes toward the center.
There stood a brand-new "Zaku."
Its paint was still the gray of a primer coat, but unlike the prototypes in the hangar, every piece of its armor, every circuit, and every screw had been smelted, manufactured, inscribed, and assembled in the Aiselans’ own factories.
An open area to one side of the workshop was packed with people.
Leo—the young man who had once calibrated spider-like Mechanical Bodies back in university—was now the chief engineer of Workshop Twelve.
He clutched a test report in his hand. It contained the best possible news: all data was within acceptable parameters.
His voice filled with excitement, he said into the communicator, "Reporting to Your Majesty, King William... The first ’domestically produced’ Zaku has completed final assembly."
"Requesting permission to begin final testing."