I came back but the world is still a fantasy!? – Garesto Academy – Exam Arc: Chapter II – Those Who Take Advantage of the Test – 04-28: Garesto’s Ladies Are Weak to That (1/4)

The floating city of Kutoria was divided into two sections, the urban areas made of a mix of Garesto and Earth architecture and the various man-made nature of the fields.

In between those two areas was the Garesto Academy, making it the only connection between the urban areas and the fields.

Any one else would have to forcefully break through the barrier to enter the fields.

But someone(・・・) had left it open, so the guard robots were free to enter.

But with the guard robots unequipped for field operations and the terrain in the fields, even just moving was difficult for them.

Despite that most of them were still able to find their way and progress deeper in. As for the rest, they wandered off course not far from the entrance.

The mixed class avoided the raybeasts and made their way for the eastern part of the river.

The river was not named and it did not lead to the sea either.

The environment of the fields was special and was artificially altered through Garesto’s technology.

Fearing that the river water from the fields would have a negative impact on Earth’s seas, they made it so that the waters here would not flow out.

Of course, all sorts of tests showed that the river water wouldn’t affect Earth’s seas negatively, but the construction of Kutoria happened around the time the cultural exchange was starting, so they wanted to avoid any possible sources of friction.

Because of that although all the water in the river came from the mountains, once it approached the entrance, it would go underground and make its way back up.

Because of that the rivers of the fields were actually a path connecting the mountains and the exit.

It was because of those two facts that brought about the meeting between two people.

Some of the guard robots were also following the river upstream.

There were rivers in the urban areas as well, and when it came to patrolling the coasts, nothing could be more suitable than the water-proof robots.

But of course, whether that was exactly what the commander had intended, only he would know.

 

When the mixed class noticed the guard robots, they took formation at the river and waited.

Although they had managed to defeat guard robots earlier, there were only three of them back then.

This time, however, a squadron of 14 machines were moving along the river upstream, behind which were another 22 machines.

In the face of all that their commander(Shinichi) casually told them to lay a trap.

“Break their legs and crush their gun turrets! But don’t try to force it! There’s no need to take unnecessary risks!”

The vanguards struggled in the front lines to buy the mixed class time.

The people that excelled in agility leaped at the enemy to confuse them, while the people that specialized in resistance protected the now fewer rear guards who supported everyone with their skills. As for their commander, Shinichi…

“Photon Burst!”

—He went with the agility specialists and supported the whole class.

Some of the students tripped on the pebbles and wet sandy soil near the river, so he stepped up and used the pile bunker on his left hand to blow four guard robots away.

At the same time, he used his Snake Belly Sword to deflect the guard robots trying to crush the resistance specialists.

“Now! Aim for the joints!” Shinichi said.

“On it!” A student said.

『Cast a wind spell at 3’clock! Yamanaka, retreat! Leave the skies to me!』 Shinichi said.

“Affirmative! ‘Air Shot’!” A student said.

“Ku, understood!” Yamanaka said.

Even as he fought, he made sure to give orders with his voice and Thought Transmission.

It was as though his right hand, his left hand, his two eyes, his head, and his mouth were all independent organisms as he covered for the students in places where they lacked.

Photon Burst and the Scatter Mode of the Compressed Air Gun made it possible to keep the enemy in check, while the giant slithering snake that could extend and move as he willed played a central role in making everything work.

This situation continued for around 15 minutes.

“What’s the matter, tired already?” Shinichi asked.

“W-Who is!?” A student said.

“Please don’t look down on us!” Another student said.

Shinichi called out to the students whose breaths were gradually getting quicker, but perhaps because they hated losing or were merely rebellious, they all reflexively yelled that they were fine.

“Yeah, you’re already much better than yesterday. You can do this, guys!” Shinichi said.

“Of course we can!”

With a yell the students crushed the gun turrets of the guard robots and cut their forelegs, immobilizing them as they forced them to prostrate.

They managed to do that to a few machines, but there were still 30 machines left that were about to catch up soon.

The small front line that was continuously pushing and pulling was being maintained by the boundary between the edge of the river and the wet river bed(・・・・・).

“…Hey, isn’t it ready yet?” Shinichi said.

『Well, excuse me we took so much time! I was just about to report that we were done! Now stand back!』

“You heard her. All units withdraw to the safety line! It’s coming!”

The agility group that was responsible for causing a disturbance among the enemy all simultaneously withdrew to the river edge, while the resistance specialists all advanced and the rear group erected a hemispherical barrier that covered the entire class.

It was curious what the battle program of the guard robots thought when they saw that, but they all lined up and started advancing like a moving wall, and then all of the sudden, a sound and a vibration akin to that of an earthquake erupted from upstream, and the guard robots all stopped to find the cause, not knowing that this was exactly what their enemies were aiming for.

With a ‘rumbling’ sound, what came pushing down from up stream was an intense flash flood.

In one fell swoop, the guard robots that had braced themselves along the river were all washed down.

Although they were built to be waterproof, they were not designed to move in water.

And even if that were the case, the currents of that violent torrent would still be too much for them to resist.

The machines were powerless in the face of nature, and all too quickly, they vanished from sight.

Wherever they’d been washed to, sporadic sounds of explosions could be heard coming from its direction.

“…Calamities sure are scary, huh,” Shinichi said as though he’d learned something as he calmly watched the whole thing unfold.

A strange expression appeared on the students as though they were wondering what they should say.

“Hey, can you really call this a calamity?” A student asked another student.

“What about calling it a man-made calamity? Kinda weird?” A student said.

“Actually, that’s perfect! I mean it is a man-made calamity, isn’t it?” another said.

—That’s it!

The mixed class unanimously agreed with that opinion.

After all, a part of the skills group separated from the class to stop the river and then waited for the right timing before releasing everything in one powerful stream.

They lined up barriers and shields to narrow the width of the river, and then concentrated the river into a single direction. Which is why the term man-made calamity could only be apt.

The sight of the thirty guard robots being so easily swept away by a stream of water was somewhat melancholic, but as terrifying as mother nature was, what was really terrifying was the man who took advantage of her.

“I’m surprised you could come up with this. This has already gone past the level of taking advantage of the terrain, you know,” Yamanaka said.

“I’ve done it plenty times be— I mean isn’t flooding a castle a popularly known tactic?” Shinichi said.

‘This guy sure can do anything,’ the class representative of 1 – D, Yamanaka, thought, in astonishment.

Shinichi had almost made a huge slip-up there, but fortunately, he managed to recover and argue instead that anyone could’ve come up with the same idea.

“…I don’t think that was the same castle flooding that we’re all too familiar with,” Yamanaka said.

“By normal, I guess you mean the one Hideyoshi did? Turn everything around the castle into a lake to isolate it, then starve the enemy out?”

The ‘Siege of Takamatsu’ was likely the first thing that came to mind when the topic of using a flood as a weapon came up.

However the flood tactic employed then didn’t involve causing a flash flood to wipe out the enemies.

Hideyoshi had merely used the water to isolate his foes before starving them out.

“Don’t sweat the small details. By the way, have you gotten used to your new weapons already?” Shinichi asked.

For the record, Shinichi wasn’t trying to change the topic here, he really was just curious.

If one were to take a closer look, one would realize that some of the weapons used by some of the students were different from everyone else’s.

They were somewhat roundish and held a different sharpness from the rest.

“More or less. As you’d expect from ex-military stuff, though, the power of these things are on a different level,” Yamanaka said.

“But they demand that much more from their user, so it’s not easy to use them. Personally, I’m getting by by adjusting the output,” a female student said.

Those weapons were stored in the terminals that Shinichi stole from the soldiers.

After putting them into their initial state, he passed them to the students that had lost(・・・) their weapons, making it easier for them to destroy the limbs of the guard robots, but since the students were yet to reach the rank required to use the new weapons, they found them hard to use.

“Sorry, I didn’t think they’d break just from something like that,” Shinichi said.

Abusing the Theft-Prevention System didn’t come without repercussion.

The weapons were originally equipped with the system with the intention of making the thief let go immediately, so when the weapons were made to release that much electricity for over 10 seconds, the internal mechanisms overloaded and the weapons lost all function.

Without specialized knowledge in repair, even storing the weapons into the fosters had become impossible.

Apparently, the Snake Belly Sword that Wernher had created were much more tenacious than normal. Using it as the standard for what Garesto’s weapons could do was one of Shinichi’s few mistakes.

That’s why he meekly apologized and bowed his head.

“It makes sense that the weapons were a lot more fragile compared to the invention of a 3rd Year B Class,” a student said.

“If anything they actually came out a lot less damaged than what you’d expect given that we used them against exoskeletons. An apology from him is kind of a weird feeling, though,” another enemies.

Shinichi had apologized to them earlier too back when he gave them their new weapons, but seeing him so meek was so unusual that the students just felt strange.

“I’ll talk to the teachers about doing something about your weapons after the exam, so make sure that you return those to the academy after everything’s over, understand?”

“U-Understood… As I thought, it’s much better he’s like this,” a student said.

Despite Shinichi’s pressuring aura as he told them that he won’t tolerate embezzling the weapons, the students’ image of the man known as Shinichi solidified.

The reason why Shinichi told them not to embezzle the weapons, though, was because he didn’t want them drawing unjust suspicion, not to mention possibly risk their lives by using weapons that didn’t match them.

Given Shinichi’s normal behavior, however, he only had himself to blame.

“Hmm?”

Shinichi could figure out what they were thinking from their expressions and found it regretful, but then something seemed to attract him and he turned to a certain direction.

The direction he turned to was bare. There was nothing there but the vast land that they’ve traversed, and yet Shinichi took a few steps and then crouched.

“…It’s not nice to peep, ladies.”

Shinichi said as he casually flicked the surface of the rocky ground with his finger and chuckled, then he told everyone to rest until the dam team(Tomoe’s group) returned.