Editing City Series:Volume1 Chapter 4 (section)

===Part 3===

Else opened her eyes and found she was alive.

“Eh?”

Nothing had changed inside the cockpit. Paul was looking her way and Walter was staring at a scrap of paper in his hand. She could see the sky through the window beyond them.

…''I’m alive?

As she thought that, Walter stuck the paper in his lab coat pocket and muttered to himself.

“It looks like I’ll be able to get there soon. I mean it.”

Then he turned around.

“Are you okay, Else?”

She realized the paper he had stuck in his breast pocket was a photograph, but she was not crass enough to ask whose photo it was. Also, she had a more important question.

“We’re fine? But I saw fire…”

“Yeah, the fighter craft on top of us exploded, so you probably saw the flames from that.”

This had to be a sturdy ship if that was not enough to sink it.

“Were you scared? Sorry about that.”

“I-I was not scared.”

As she put on a strong front, she heard a slight metallic creaking. She floated up slightly, returned to normal, and heard the ship shaking somewhere.

“Wh-what is that? Is this thing broken after all?”

“No. The metal parts are growing for the transformation as it evolves.”

She must have given an unpleasant look at the number of unreasonable terms Walter used because he smiled a little.

“To put it simply, all of the ship’s components have healing spell emblems carved into them. Not only does that allow it to repair itself, but it lets it modify itself.”

“And?”

“When activated too nearby each other, the Kaiserburg’s emblem engines resonate with each other and stop working, but that’s just because the engines aren’t used to each other.”

“You mean the ship’s self-modification ability will adapt the engines to each other?”

“Yeah, you’ve got the picture. Your heart beats without you telling it to, right? In the same way, the Kaiserburg realizes its own deficiencies as it fights and is injured, so it tries to unify all of its components toward a single goal.”

“…”

She had no words.

The ship was completely ridiculous. It was a collection of metal parts, and yet it almost seemed alive.

Previous technology was all about strengthening the armor or putting in a more powerful engine. In other words, the people determined the machine’s traits and created it that way.

But the Kaiserburg was different. The ship strengthened itself. Paul and Walter had simply helped by loading it with the parts it would eventually use. And the Kaiserburg was living up to their expectations.

…''I see.

“It seems that collision showed the Kaiserburg the need to combat a greater number of opponents. You could say this is like a fistfighting child growing into a young man who wields an actual weapon.”

“Two of the emblem engines are running. Just one more.”

“It will evolve further?”

“Yep. According to our predictions, the next evolution will take it to space.”

Walter then faced forward.

Else gently crossed her arms and brought a hand to her chest. Her pulse was racing.

…''Why?

She did not know.

She felt a new kind of excitement or joy that was not quite the same as during a festival or after scoring well on a test. She felt a powerful urge to tell someone about this incomparable excitement.

She may have been approaching her answer, little by little.

…''But I’m not there yet, am I?

She bit her lip and nodded.

The ship angled up just a little and gave her a view into the sky.

There, she saw a number of aerial aircraft carriers with many small shapes flying from them.

“Don’t they know they’re no match for us? They’re persistent, I’ll give them that.”

“Some people will never understand until they’ve been beaten. Let’s get this over with.”

The Kaiserburg shot forward as if responding to Paul’s words.

Its acceleration was more stable than before.