As soon as I entered the entrance, a Mechanical Puppet holding the controls turned its head 180 degrees to look at me.
And then, it released its grip on the cockpit and charged at me for an attack.
Well, not the brightest bulb in the shed, are you?
The best plan here is to jerk the controls around to make it lose balance before the charge. Getting attacked is like a handshake from hell.
Crunch!
Polaris, who was behind me, sprinted into position to deliver a hit. Every time Polaris hit the body and head with a fist, I saw the tin crumpling and thought, “No problem!” and headed over to where the corpse was.
I pretended to inspect the pilot’s corpse and sucked away the warmth.
Ah, it’s gotten quite cold. Should’ve come here first.
While I was rummaging through the pilot’s memories, Polaris completely dismantled the machine. Not Polaris, it’s more like Polar Bear at this point.
Hmm. The control methods.
It’s a bit hazy since a lot of memories have evaporated, but I figured out how to operate it. Looking through various memories, it seems like it can’t fall vertically like an airplane.
I guess it’s because it doesn’t gain lift by moving forward. Lifting is easy in this place, so things like aerodynamics aren’t well-developed, making it relatively slow too.
So, how did it land again?
“Do you know how to pilot it?”
“I only know it in theory. I’ll give it a try.”
The only living person on board right now is Polaris, so I have to do it.
Me?
I’m not a person, so I should be excluded.
“What the hell… Could that possibly be Bern City?”
A city filled with thick black smoke. If you’ve got decent eyesight, you’d see that it’s such a mess that no intact buildings can be spotted.
“What on earth happened here?”
Polaris asked with a trembling voice. I knew everything, but didn’t reply. It seemed like Polaris wasn’t looking to hear from me either, staring blankly outside.
In this moment, I act like I just figured it out.
“Looks like that letter sent to Victoria’s parents got returned for a reason.”
And the fact that the Mechanical Puppet just went berserk is different from what happened during the accident in Bern City.
Back then, the Mechanical Puppets lost control and went haywire… and simultaneously overheated and caught fire or exploded. But now, it was moving to kill people.
In other words, there’s intent behind it.
But is there a technology called cracking over here too?
If there exists something akin to a wireless network, it wouldn’t be impossible. Or maybe there’s a program inherently built from the start.
“It’s been a while since it was destroyed. What on earth happened? No, why isn’t this on the news?”
Polaris pressed against the window, muttering while looking at Bern City.
If you grab the controls and twist left and right, it would tilt that way, and if you push up and down, it goes up or down. The speed is pedal-operated like a car. If you lift your foot off the pedal, it slowly stops. No brakes.
The user interface is intuitive. But fundamentally, it’s not a plane that generates lift through engine thrust, but more like a lighter-than-air ship floating due to buoyancy with gas inside it.
Still, in the world of faded memories, the volume increased immensely relative to the mass, while here, it’s not gas but solid that can produce the same effect and float.
Even if attacked, there isn’t much risk of explosion, but if the connection device linking the floating material to the body breaks, the floating material rises, and the body crashes down.
In short, areas where weight is applied are weaknesses. Apparently, there are plans to create combat aircraft that minimize these weaknesses by liquefying solids to circulate inside the body, but that useless information can be ignored.
“Where do we move this to?”
“Ah, uh…”
Polaris, who was glued to the window, whipped their head around to look at me, and then turned back to inspect outside.
Unlike before, they now moved slightly while drawing a semi-circle with the front.
“We can’t go to Bern City. First, you. Can you move this ship?”
“Yes.”
Even with broken memories, if I have the memory of operating this ship multiple times, I can piece together the methods. It’s a bit tedious to analyze memories in parallel, but it’s not impossible.
“Vehicles? No, this is a special vehicle designed to break through the wilderness. I know it’s hard for ordinary people to operate, but what’s that above? That strange orb?”
Suddenly, Polaris dashed toward me.
“Bell! Get down now! The anti-aircraft guns are aiming at us. They’re probably coming to wipe out the evidence!”
Wiping out evidence?
Ah, I see. It means there are people who think it’s dangerous if it’s discovered that they used the Mechanical Puppets to kill people.
Following my memories, I lowered the altitude of the airship.
“This is dangerous… What do we do? How do we survive?”
Polaris looked around nervously, pale-faced. I glanced around the area where they manifested something and saw something pea-sized heading this way.
Polaris must have good eyesight. They sense something’s coming, but can’t really identify it.
“Ugh. Ah! Do you see the mountain up ahead? When the ship goes down beneath the mountain, turn sideways and spiral down.”
“Wouldn’t that go sideways?”
“Turn as much as you can, hide behind the mountain, and evade to the max. No, wait. The Mechanical Puppet is assuming it killed everyone inside. Since it wasn’t charged, if we flee, it might try another tactic.”
Polaris clutched their head with both hands. Occasionally murmuring “Think, think…” poured out.
“We’re already below the mountain’s peak. Should we turn?”
“Turn!”
I turned according to Polaris’s command.
Since it’s an airship, the turning radius isn’t that large, but still, it felt like we were spiraling outwards instead of turning in a clean circular path.
Polaris rushed back to the window, gazing intently at the approaching crowd.
“Turn even sharper!”
Here?
The balance is at risk, but I did as told. As it tilted sharply, centrifugal force made the floor feel like it became the wall.
Boom!
At that moment, a flash barely grazed where the ship had been.
“Crazy bastards! Are they really attacking? This is a royal ship; are they thinking about mutiny or something?”
Meanwhile, the ship was completely turned with the mountain behind us.
“Should we continue straight ahead?”
Polaris was staring ahead and then suddenly sat down, sketching something on the floor with their finger. Nothing actually formed, but it seemed to be something being drawn in Polaris’s mind.
“Bell, slow down. And do you know what happens if you take your hands off the controls?”
I tried letting go of the controls for a moment. Due to inertia, the controls began to slowly twist.
Since I took my foot off the acceleration pedal, the speed decreased as well. Polaris was watching this anxiously when they dragged over the remnants of the Mechanical Puppet, whose head had been replaced by a chair, from near the entrance.
Then, using their bare hands, they ripped apart the machine’s arm.
“Do you see that hill? We’re jumping off from there.”
They pointed at the slope visible outside. Then they approached me and fixed the controls using the debris from the machine.
No matter how brass it is, it shouldn’t bend that easily, but it twisted and locked into place.
They then dragged the remaining debris close by.
“We have to jump before crossing that hill. If we go over the hill, we’ll roll down and it’ll be dangerous. So we have to jump before crossing. Got it?”
“Yes.”
At my response, Polaris nodded with a proud expression and pointed outside.
“Go get ready now. I’ll be right behind you.”
“I see you’re planning to place this on the pedal.”
As I pointed at the Mechanical Puppet missing a head and an arm, Polaris nodded.
“Exactly.”
I figured out what Polaris was thinking. They planned to use this as bait. We’ll jump out to escape, and the ones chasing will go after the ship.
Climbing the mountain wasn’t just about dodging attacks but also about concealing our jump from the pursuers.
Smart thinking.
I nodded and immediately passed through the cockpit, moving to the room. I went through a room missing a few chairs and passed by the wreckage of the Mechanical Puppet to enter the corridor.
I walked through a corridor stained with corpses and blood, opening a door to the outside.
Clank.
Whoosh!
The door slid open, and wind rushed out.
The ground was getting closer as the trees loomed larger. The ship wasn’t descending; the terrain was just rising.
I held the door and looked forward; in under a minute, the treetops would be close enough to touch the hull.
I stepped back into the corridor. In the distance, Polaris shouted for me to jump. So, I immediately leaped.
There was a slight weightlessness feeling, and then I collided with the branches.
Thwack!
I was poked and prodded by branches as I fell to the ground.
Though I had a few scratches, I landed safely on the ground. Looking up at the sky, I saw Polaris jump off the increasingly speeding airship.
However, unlike me, colliding everywhere, Polaris grabbed a branch at the top of the tree and twisted their body like a performer, looking around from the treetop.
As if examining the surrounding terrain, they gazed into the distance and then climbed down the tree trunk straight to the ground.
In terms of the world of faded memories, it was superhuman physical ability. Such abilities might exist in another world, but…
Considering that magic power is used here, it seems that this place is a bit different from the world of faded memories…
By the way, the stinging pain vanished weirdly fast as I looked down at the scratched-up wounds that were healing.
Instead of filling in flesh, a thin thread dashed around the area of the wounds, sticking them together. I discovered this feature in Daegon’s memories under the artificial body functions section. It said that with enough calories, limbs can regenerate.
Ah, right. Since this body isn’t human, there’s no need to forcefully heal wounds.
If I stack the specifications of my corporeal form, I wouldn’t need to exert additional effort.
I’ve gained some wisdom.
“Are you okay? Are you safe?”
Polaris rushed toward me, and I nodded.
“Yes. Polaris, what’s the next move?”
“We need to keep moving. We don’t know when monsters will attack, so we’re heading to the beach first. As far as I know, there aren’t any dangerous monsters there.”
This region still retains some wilderness. It’s wild enough that Daegon’s vanguard failed to set up a position.
I nodded and immediately followed Polaris, adjusting my direction as they walked.
