Episode-836
Chapter : 1671
Mina looked at him, her eyes wide with a mixture of horror and awe. "Faster? Lloyd, we almost killed two of them. Their brain activity is spiking into the red zone. If we push them any harder, they will stroke out."
"And ten of them just became the most dangerous people on the continent," Lloyd replied, his eyes fixed on the machines. "That is an eighty-three percent success rate. In my line of work, that is a victory. Pain is temporary. Victory is forever."
He picked up the microphone again.
"Alright, Titans. You have your legs. You have your eyes. You have survived the handshake. Now comes the hard part."
The pilots looked up at the command deck, ten red visors glowing in the gloom.
"Walking is easy," Lloyd said. "Killing is hard. We are moving to Phase Two. Simulation. Prepare for digital insertion."
"Digital what?" Kaito asked, confused.
"I'm going to put you in a dream where I control the monsters," Lloyd muttered to himself, then spoke into the mic. "Just close your eyes and don't vomit. Initiating Simulation Protocol."
Lloyd typed a command into the console. The Lilith Stones pulsed with a deep, hypnotic purple light.
Inside the cockpits, the hangar vanished. The concrete floor disappeared. The ceiling dissolved into mist.
Suddenly, the ten pilots were standing in a barren, rocky wasteland under a blood-red sky. The wind howled, carrying the scent of sulfur and ash.
"Welcome to the playground," Lloyd’s voice echoed from the sky itself. "Try not to die."
________________________________________
The simulation space was a masterpiece of Lloyd’s engineering and the mysterious, reality-bending properties of the Master Lilith Stone. It wasn't just an illusion; it was a shared mental construct, a lucid dream where the physics were governed by Lloyd’s programming. The pilots weren't just seeing it; they were feeling it. The grit of the red sand, the howl of the wind, the heat of the binary suns overhead—it was all indistinguishable from reality.
The ten Aegis suits stood on a dusty plain. In the distance, jagged mountains pierced a crimson sky. The ground was cracked and dry, perfect for maneuvering heavy machinery.
"Sound check," Lloyd’s voice boomed from everywhere and nowhere, sounding like a deity bored with his creation.
"Loud and clear, Boss," Kaito said, looking at his digital hands. He flexed them, and the servos whined. "This is... weird. I feel the wind, but I know I'm in a box underground. My brain is confused."
"Focus," Lloyd barked. "This is not a sightseeing tour. This is a kill house. And you are the guests of honor."
Suddenly, a giant red grid appeared on the ground, dividing the terrain into tactical sectors.
"You are currently a mob," Lloyd said. "A mob is useless. A mob gets slaughtered. I am going to turn you into a squad. A squad is a single organism with ten heads and twenty guns."
He snapped his fingers—or at least, he executed the command code that represented a snap.
Fifty goblin-like creatures materialized on the horizon. They were crude, blocky constructs of red light, but they held spears and moved with aggressive speed.
"Enemies at twelve o'clock!" Vala shouted. Her instincts kicked in. "Charge! Get them before they spread out!"
"No!" Lloyd yelled, but it was too late.
Three of the Aegis suits—Unit 5, Unit 6, and Unit 8—drunk on their new power and eager to prove they weren't failures, surged forward. They raised their vibro-blades and ran towards the goblins, screaming battle cries that sounded distorted through their speakers. They moved like knights—individual heroes seeking glory, ignoring the rest of the team. They wanted to feel the impact. They wanted to be the first to kill.
"Idiots," Lloyd sighed from his control deck in the real world. "Predictable idiots."
The goblins didn't fight fair. As the three suits charged, the goblins scattered, revealing a hidden trench. Then, from the flanks, massive boulders materialized out of thin air and slammed into the charging suits.
CRUNCH.
The simulation registered the damage. The three suits flashed red and collapsed, their systems locking up.
"Dead," Lloyd announced, his voice dripping with disappointment. "Unit 5, Unit 6, Unit 8. You are dead. Congratulations. You lasted four seconds. Your families will be sent a very nice letter explaining that you died because you were stupid."
The remaining seven pilots froze. They watched the 'dead' suits flicker.
"Reset," Lloyd commanded.
The world flickered. The goblins vanished. The three 'dead' suits stood up, the red damage indicators clearing. They looked confused and ashamed.
Chapter : 1672
"Listen to me," Lloyd’s voice was ice cold. "You are not knights. You are not heroes in a bard's song. You are tanks. You are heavy artillery. If you charge into melee range without support, you are just a very expensive pile of scrap metal. You do not fight fair. You fight to win."
He projected a glowing blue line on the ground in front of them.
"Form a line. Intervals of ten meters. Do not cross this line. If you cross this line, I will drop a dragon on you."
The pilots shuffled into position. They were confused. In their world, war was about closing the distance and hitting the other guy with a sharp stick. This concept of holding back was alien.
"Kaito, Ren, Vala," Lloyd ordered. "You three are the front. The rest of you, fall back to the ridge. You are support."
"But I have a sword!" Unit 5 complained. "I want to use it!"
"And you have a gun that shoots three thousand rounds a minute," Lloyd countered. "Use the gun. The sword is for when you have failed to use the gun. The sword is for when you are out of ammo and hope."
The goblins reappeared. This time, there were a hundred of them. And a troll.
"Suppressive fire!" Lloyd screamed. "Don't aim for the goblins. Aim for the area around the goblins. Make them keep their heads down! Deny them the ground!"
Ren squeezed the trigger of his rotary cannon.
BRRRRRRRT.
The sound in the simulation was deafening. The ground in front of the goblins exploded in geysers of dirt and digital blood. The goblins stopped, cowering behind their shields.
"See that?" Lloyd yelled. "They stopped! Now, Vala, flank left! Kaito, flank right! Pincer movement!"
Vala and Kaito moved. They didn't charge blindly. They moved from rock to rock, using the cover.
"Bounding overwatch!" Lloyd instructed. "Vala moves, Kaito shoots. Kaito moves, Vala shoots. Never stop shooting! One moves, one covers. If you are moving without cover, you are dead!"
It was chaotic. They stumbled. They missed. They accidentally shot each other a few times (friendly fire was turned off, thankfully, or Ren would have killed half the squad). But slowly, painfully, they began to understand.
They weren't fighting a duel. They were solving a geometry problem. It was about angles of fire. It was about pinning the enemy so someone else could kill them. It was about trust.
Lloyd watched from his command console, rubbing his temples. "They move like cows," he muttered to Mina. "Drunk cows."
"They've been pilots for an hour, Lloyd," Mina said gently. "Give them a break."
"The Devils won't give them a break," Lloyd said. "Reset. Increase enemy density by twenty percent. Add flying units. Let's see if they look up."
"You're a sadist," Mina noted.
"I'm a teacher," Lloyd corrected. "And today's lesson is pain."
Hours passed in the simulation. The pilots were exhausted, their brains throbbing from the strain of the neural link, but they were learning. The fear of Lloyd's "god-smites" (random lightning bolts he dropped on anyone who broke formation) was a powerful motivator.
Lloyd had stripped away their individuality. He punished "hero moves" mercilessly. If someone tried to show off, Lloyd spawned a dragon to eat them. If someone broke formation to chase a kill, Lloyd dropped a meteor on them.
"The suit costs more than your life," Lloyd drilled into them. "But the pilot is the brain. If the brain is stupid, the suit is worthless. Trust the sensors. Your eyes lie. The radar does not."
Slowly, roles began to emerge from the chaos.
Vala was the natural leader. Her voice on the comms was clear and calm, cutting through the panic. She had a gift for spatial awareness. She knew where everyone was without looking.
"Ren, suppress the left flank! Kaito, eyes up, we have harpies at two o'clock! Unit 4, stop drifting, tighten the line! Unit 9, reload! Unit 5, stop trying to punch the ogre and shoot it!"
She wasn't the best shooter, and she wasn't the best driver, but she was the best conductor. She made the orchestra play together. She saw the flow of the battle.
Kaito found his calling as the sniper. He didn't just shoot; he calculated. To him, a bullet was just a variable in an equation of wind, gravity, and target velocity.
"Wind speed variable," Kaito muttered over the comms, his voice detached. "Target moving at twelve meters per second. Leading the shot by three degrees... probability of hit... ninety percent."
BANG.