Infinite Dendrogram - Volume 20 - Chapter 9

Chapter Nine: The White Rose and the Corpse of Glory

Eltram, Power Block

The current situation was the result of multiple factors.

A landdragon-type semipermanent energy core. A unit built by the wealth of the imperium and The Triangle of Wisdom’s technology—their Embryos included. The unprecedented development of a mind through the use of Over Pilot’s final skill.

The combination of these had turned Imperial Glory into a monstrous creature like no other.

Being recognized as a UBM hadn’t changed its appearance. After receiving the UBM designation, it still had the hole in its chest, along with all the other damage, and maintained the exact same functions as it had possessed before.

However, the Resource injection had increased its output even further.

This UBM was only a fledgling, but it was already far too strong for Hugo and Cyco.

Still...I can’t just let it do as it pleases, Hugo thought. There was also something that flashed to his mind as he looked at Imperial Glory—the UBM made of the grudge and flesh of the dead—Revenant Ox-Horse, Gouz-Maise.

He felt that the golden unit was now—a murderous machine-soldier driven by a dead man’s grudge and powered by an inexhaustible source of energy—extremely similar to that horror.

There was nothing for Hugo to hesitate about here. He knew he had to stop Imperial Glory right here and now.

“Rose...!” Hugo’s unit had been heavily battered by the barrage, but he somehow forced it to stand up again. Cyco also manipulated her icy armor to support the damaged White Rose. The injuries on its legs were so extensive that they were only questionably capable of supporting the unit’s weight—and yet they did.

It was as though Rose itself was trying to heed Hugo’s will...as though it also wanted to prevent the rampage of its “sibling”—a fellow mech built by The Triangle of Wisdom.

“D-Do you think th-th-th-that hunk of scrap can d-d-defeat me?” Glory asked.

“I dunno,” said Hugo. “But I can’t just ignore you. Doing that would make it hard for me to sleep at night.”

The power gap between their units was vast.

Imperial Glory was stronger than it ever had been. On top of that, Hugo’s La Porte de l’Enfer was useless against it, and he’d already used Purgatorial Slash.

He had no advantage over Imperial Glory this time, but Hugo simply couldn’t choose to not fight.

Think...! There has to be something...just one thing that might let me win...! he thought, but Glory attacked him ceaselessly regardless.

Glory threw its fists at Rose, fully intent on destroying it. This was an onslaught of pure power that didn’t need any MVP rewards or armaments to be devastating—the attacks weren’t even delivered with the incredible skill that Curtis had displayed in life.

“GHA-GHA-GHA-GHA-GHA-GHA-GHA-GHA-GHA-GHA-GHA-GHA!”

But despite all that, he and his unit were the strongest they’d ever been—and it wasn’t even close.

One swing, and the Mythical metal alloy bent. Another, and it shattered.

There was no skill or special weaponry aiding anything here. The attack was nothing but pure STR—and it now exceeded White Rose’s defensive capabilities.

A single hit would be enough to turn generic Marshall IIs into piles of scrap. Rose may have been the toughest Magingear, but not even it could withstand a hundred hits of that strength.

I need to...fight back...! Hugo thought in desperation. Alas, this monster had just been born. With its kinslayer count at 0, not even La Porte de l’Enfer Deuxième could work against it.

He tried taking out and firing Rose’s weapons, but they seemed to do nothing. They didn’t even make it flinch, and it retaliated with another relentless assault.

Then, Glory grabbed and held up Rose by the head.

The sound of creaking metal filled the space as it began to bend.

“Damn...it...!”

“Mmrrgh...” Hugo and Cyco tried resisting, but swinging the ice blade in White Rose’s left hand didn’t seem to do anything. They hit Glory with it a number of times, but it broke before dealing any damage.

“I-I-I-It’s o-o-o-o-over...!”

And with that, Glory pushed its left hand—the barrels that fired its Missile Darts—against Rose’s cockpit.

A brief silence followed. And then, inexplicably, it retracted the tubes, straightened its hand into a spear-point, and raised it, ready to swing it down.

In only a moment, those metal fingers would most certainly pierce White Rose’s chest armor and kill Hugo.

But, in that moment where Hugo thought it was all over for him...

“G h e?”

...as though they had arrived just to stop this attack, several silhouettes fell over Glory.

The shadows belonged to a flock of mechanical birds. There was an owl. There was a murder of crows. There was a pigeon. There was a pelican as big as an airplane.

“That’s...!” Hugo cried. The birds were all Niala’s Embryo, Simurgh.

“D-D-Don’t get in my way!” As the giant pelican tried to swallow Glory up into its mouth, the golden unit swung the left hand, instantly splitting the bird in half.

“Hugo—now!”

“Yeah...!” Cyco took that moment to undo the frozen armor she’d placed over the unit’s head and Hugo took control of Rose, using that opening to free its head from Glory’s tight grasp.

But at the same time, Simurgh’s flock continued to dwindle. The combat-oriented Falcon and Condor were already gone. The birds that were left could do nothing but buy time.

But that was exactly Niala’s plan.

She was standing at the edge of the hole above, aiming the magic rifle in her hands. As the metal birds distracted the hostile unit, she fixed her sights on it and pulled the trigger.

What she fired was an explosive bullet—the sniper round with the highest damage potential.

It sped between her birds’ many wings before striking its target and exploding on Imperial Glory’s head and neck area—the “barrel” from which it fired Draconic Burn.

Though it was heat-resistant, this location didn’t have the tough protection of its Ancient Legendary outer armor, and the explosion was enough to make it crack.

“G h e g h e g h e...” But even this critical hit wasn’t fatal. Seemingly unfazed by this damage, Imperial Glory turned and jumped.

A moment later, it appeared right in front of Niala, over the hole she was standing next to.

Niala sighed. The sight of the mech made it obvious to her that getting the death penalty was inevitable.

That was when she began to wonder why she’d gone out of her way to help Hugo. She could’ve easily escaped if she tried.

However, she found her answer soon enough.

“You go support him, Niala.”

She was doing the job given to her by her dear clan leader, of course. But there was another reason—when she watched Hugo and talked to him, he somehow reminded her of a student she taught.

Because of that, helping him came naturally to her.

He’s not even the same gender, Niala thought with a wry grin on her face. But as absurd as it seemed, she didn’t regret her actions whatsoever.

A moment later, Imperial Glory swung its arm down, instantly crushing her.

“Niala!” Hugo screamed.

As she vanished into bits of light, so too did the remaining Simurgh mechbirds. With the nuisance gone, Glory once again landed in the energy area.

“I-I-It’s o-o-o-ver-ver...!” Repeating itself, the golden dragon-headed unit once again approached White Rose.

Hugo’s defeat, briefly delayed by Niala, was swiftly approaching yet again. The gap between them was evident. There was no area in which Hugo outmatched it.

“Still...!” He knew he couldn’t give up here. The chaos this creature would cause if left unchecked was unimaginable.

More importantly...

“Ray...he didn’t run!” Hugo’s newbie friend had not only stood his ground against a powerful UBM, but also turned aside the tragedy it threatened to unleash.

That’s why...I won’t run either...! Hugo—Yuri—had already decided not to hesitate on this point.

Thus, he thought about how he could seize victory against this monstrous machine.

“G h e, GHA-GHA-GHA-GHA...!” Even so, the massive dragon-headed unit approached him, bringing certain death with it.

From its maw, Hugo saw sparks flying—the result of the damage from the explosive bullet.

“Hm...?” Hugo was on the verge of realizing something, but Glory then struck Rose, the blow deforming the chest armor.

A rain of attacks followed, shattering White Rose’s armor further in a frenzy of utter destruction.

Why...? Hugo wondered. Why is it only using its arms? Weathering the onslaught, Hugo realized that ever since the transformation, Glory had been fighting using only its fists. Part of it was because its MVP rewards had vanished, of course—but it wasn’t using the items it had installed either. Even when it had tried to use Missile Darts, it had stopped for some reason.

“G h A a a A h H!” With a roar, Glory thrust its left hand into Rose’s right shoulder.

“I-It’s...!” The arms of the dragon-headed unit possessed overwhelming attack power that could pulverize even Mythical metal.

However, even they were now cracked either from Genocide Condor’s bombings or the battle against Sardonyx in Heilige Trinität mode.

The damage was immense, and it had affected the Missile Darts mechanism. Glory had realized that before firing and chose not to use it.

This meant two things...

As it is, Imperial Glory can’t use its installed weapons...and it didn’t know that until it saw for itself!

Hugo didn’t know many details about the creature now that it had become a UBM, but given what he’d just seen, he could now assume that it couldn’t gauge the extent of its damage through pain like living creatures did.

Even as a UBM, it’s still a machine, so it doesn’t feel pain, Hugo thought. What else is there...?

Hugo felt as if he was overlooking something important, but while he tried to remember what it was, Imperial Glory swung its shattered tail to attack Rose’s torso.

The unit’s chest armor suffered more damage, finally falling away. Even the internal armor holding up the outside monitors detached, and Hugo now saw Imperial Glory with his own two eyes.

“Ah...?!”

“H e h, H a h A h a h A h a H A h a h A h a H a!”

Glory laughed as it threw a sideways fist toward the cockpit. Hugo’s eyes widened before he quickly pulled up Rose’s left arm, where Cyco then focused her ice armor.

The sound of the impact reached Hugo’s ears at the exact same time as the sensation of floating washed over him.

After a flight that lasted less than a second, Rose crashed back-first into the wall of the energy zone.

“Guhh...!” Air rushed from Hugo’s lungs. He didn’t fall out of his seat thanks to the harness strapping him in, but the powerful attack still hurt him. It also damaged the internal systems, and the cockpit was now full of sparks.

Even so, Hugo made Rose stand up and face Glory. Even with hazy vision and fading consciousness, he looked straight at the enemy.

Just like Rose, Glory had a large hole in its chest area. Beyond it, Hugo could see its pilot—Curtis’s corpse. He was already dead, and even the will he’d entrusted to his unit had begun to bend and shatter.

The dragon-headed unit was no longer his dear combat companion, but a monstrous creature—Curtis had become his own casket. The remains within had been heavily damaged by all the combat that had happened thus far.

At the sight of the corpse, Hugo was lost in thought for a moment.

Curtis was someone that he had to defeat at all costs. That man was behind the terrorist attack on this ship that had resulted in many deaths already, and his DLG had almost certainly caused a great deal of destruction since it was formed.

Hugo didn’t regret fighting him and fatally wounding him at all. However, Curtis knew about The Triangle of Wisdom and used a unit that they’d made. To Hugo, he was nothing but an enemy—but to the Triangle’s members, he must’ve been something else.

Thinking about that and seeing Curtis dead in the exposed cockpit, knowing that he had dealt the final blow, filled Hugo with a sense of bitterness. And though he felt rage toward Curtis for murdering his own soldiers, Hugo definitely understood his complaints about the antics of The Triangle of Wisdom.

Perhaps this was the only way things could have played out between them, but Hugo couldn’t help but find it disheartening.

That may have been what made Hugo think back to their conversation from when Curtis was alive...

“Ah...!”

...and sudden realization, caused by the memory of that conversation and what Curtis had said, snapped Hugo back into the present like an electric shock.

“Wait...! Is it actually...?” Hugo strained his eyes to look at the console near Curtis’s body.

As someone with a pilot grouping job, Hugo possessed enhanced eyesight—and because of that, he could see the words “Installed Armaments. Currently Used: None.”

Barely a moment later, Hugo took a deep breath and let out a scream.

“PAINT NAPALM!”

He shouted the name of his enemy’s weapon, and his voice traveled through the hole in the armor and reached the console near Curtis.

“G h e...?” The dragon-headed unit was confused by the strange words at first and stopped for a moment...but then, its shattered tail made an activation sound.

The console within it now read “Installed Armaments. Preparing to Use: Paint Napalm.”

Indeed, it had actually reacted to Hugo’s words and began powering up the weapon. Obeying the voice activation, the tail of the dragon-headed unit tried to release its liquid explosives.

That had come up in the conversation Hugo had remembered—the words Curtis had said while still alive.

“It doesn’t even care who says it, so it cannot even act as protection in case of theft.”

The weapons were activated by voice—and it didn’t matter whose. This was the intentional “bug” left in the mech by the hobbyist engineers of The Triangle of Wisdom.

Hugo wasn’t sure it would work, as it was likely that becoming a UBM might have resulted in the loss of this function.

And yet, the “feature” was still active. Perhaps that was only to be expected, though, as it had been there since before Imperial Glory attained a will of its own—since its very creation.

UBMs that were “set” as UBMs typically did not change their essential natures.

And thus, Hugo’s voice could reach Glory’s cockpit and control its weapons.

“Wh-W h a t...?! S...Sto-o-op!”

But it could not be stopped. The Triangle of Wisdom engineers who’d installed the armaments hadn’t even thought about how they’d be stopped.

Perhaps Curtis himself might have been able to counter this somehow, but Glory wasn’t Curtis—only his shattered fragments. He was already dead—just a corpse inside his golden UBM coffin.

The knowledge needed to deal with this situation had already been destroyed, and the empty box that flailed its fists like a feral animal wasn’t able to replicate it.

Thus, Paint Napalm activated.

The tail balancer had been broken in the battle against Sardonyx, and the liquid fuel couldn’t even reach its tip because of that. Instead, it began spraying out through the cracks in the shattered balancer, flying in every direction.

The napalm quickly covered Glory itself and was set ablaze by the fires left by Condor’s bombing.

“Gh, a h...A a aA a aAa A aaA AA A AAA!” The fuel seeped in through the broken cockpit and ignited the remains within. The golden unit itself was starting to melt away.

“Paint Napalm!” Hugo spoke the weapon name, activating it once again. Even more liquid fuel began spraying out as the fires followed it back to the tank and began burning the internal systems.

“G h oOo oa OOo OoA aAa A aA a Hhh HH h...!” Imperial Glory let out a sound that resembled both a dying scream and the howl of an engine. But despite looking like the victim of some hellish torment, the golden unit still charged toward Rose.

The flames didn’t stop it. It still sought to fulfill its swiftly crumbling goal, and would do whatever it took to destroy its enemy—this obstacle between Glory and its objective.

Imperial Glory raised its fist, ready to deliver the most powerful blow yet. However, the white unit braced for a strike...and withstood it.

It was as though White Rose itself was declaring it would not fall beneath Imperial Glory’s fist.

“Draconic Burn!” Hugo spoke and activated another weapon. A moment later, the golden unit transformed the energy in its core into heat.

However, the repeated battles and the roaring flames had left its internal systems heavily damaged, and perhaps most importantly, Niala’s explosive bullet had left a crack in the head cannon’s “barrel.”

The heat began to worsen the damage, spreading in every direction.

“G o o O oOoA AaA aaa A Aa aaA AA!” However, the Epic-tier Corpse Dragon Mech was able to prevent an explosion.

Despite being on the verge of death, it somehow retained control over its own body. The amount of heat should have been enough to obliterate the unit, yet it was somehow able to keep it at a manageable level and even subdue it.

Hugo gasped. Imperial Glory’s weapons were not equipped with a means to stop them once activated, but Draconic Burn was the sole exception. As it had done when it had clashed with Sardonyx’s Blast Flare, this weapon could be stopped at any specific time.

Intense heat spread wildly throughout Glory’s frame, but it managed to restrain its spread.

The Corpse Dragon Mech was now like a dam ready to burst.

Hugo silently watched it for a moment. This was the watershed moment.

If he didn’t finish it off right now, the golden unit would overcome this flaw, most likely by destroying the voice-activation system.

Or perhaps the flames and the energy leaks had destroyed it already.

Either way, this was his final chance.

“Cyco! White Rose! Let’s go!”

“Oui, ma’am!” Cyco replied with an unusual level of energy, while Rose responded with a roar from its engine.

And so, despite their exposed cockpit, they rushed toward the golden unit, now surrounded by overflowing heat.

Frozen armor covered the cockpit just as it had during the final battle in Gideon, but the immense heat quickly melted it all away.

And when the heat began to rush into the cockpit, Hugo’s skin began to burn.

“Hugo...!”

“Not yet!”

Hugo had a friend who pushed on forward despite the flames raging all around him. That was why Hugo also couldn’t—wouldn’t—stop. He chose to keep moving ahead.

And this time, he wouldn’t hesitate or doubt anything.

As Hugo moved, the damage on his unit exceeded the tolerable limit. The legs, heavily damaged by the Corpse Dragon Mech, finally lost their function.

“BOUCLIERS PLANETEEEES!” Before his unit fell to its knees, Hugo activated his skill.

The next moment, a floating shield that had fallen off returned to Rose. The pale mech then grabbed it with its left hand—the last limb that was still functioning.

“This...is the end!” Before its legs shattered completely, Rose poured the last of its power into them...and jumped. “Fly...White Rose!”

The force of the unit’s final jump combined with the propulsion of the floating shield to grant it the power of flight, like a petal on the wind. It flew straight, carrying all its weight and power straight toward the golden corpse.

“G h e, g h a, g h a...”

The attack was weak—it couldn’t even compare to the golden unit’s ordinary punches. However, this attack that they had gambled everything on was enough to finally unleash the heat it had stored up.

“G h a A a A a a a A a a A A a A a a A A A!” With this final push, the Corpse Dragon Mech’s maw and every other part of its body released immense amounts of energy. Impossible to hold back, it consumed the entire unit...

And, as though it were in the center of a fiery rose blossom, the UBM that also served as a coffin was dragged into a burning embrace.

This was the end. The heavily damaged unit didn’t have the strength to withstand its own firepower, and the remains it carried were claimed by the inferno.

And with this act of cremation, the incident on Eltram reached its conclusion.