I Got a Monster Spaceship from the Tutorial Tower - Chapter 11

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Episode 11
11
— Ah…… yes.
Awkward silence flowed between them through the screen.
Yeon-woo’s temperament was one thing, but Ha-yoon didn’t seem any easier to deal with.
So she was the captain of a space battleship — and?
At least to Yeon-woo, Ha-yoon’s cold face and gaze seemed to say exactly that.
‘So?’
Yeon-woo too wore an expression powerful enough to derail the moment.
‘So what? What do you mean by that, you fool.’
Yeon-woo steadied himself and pressed on.
“Could you draw the Orc Cruiser out to sea?”
— The Orc Cruiser?
Only then did Ha-yoon show a proper reaction.
Drawing an enemy boss out to sea.
It was certainly a safer way to conduct the battle.
— The aftermath of combat will be minimized, but even with my full strength alone, it won’t be enough. If you could assign Thunder Hound as well, the other pilots could…….
“No, that’s not it.”
Yeon-woo’s expression turned grave alongside his tone.
His demeanor shifted, but Ha-yoon didn’t catch it.
The battle was still raging.
She had to focus on evading the enemy’s attacks and retaliating.
“Once you draw them out to sea, I’ll handle the rest myself.”
— Handle it yourself? What do you…….
Click.
And that ended the transmission between Yeon-woo and Ha-yoon.
Perhaps because there was nothing to gain from dragging out such petty conversation in a desperate situation?
“Hey, Urelka, you can’t just cut the line like that!”
“Yes? Haven’t we covered everything that needed to be said?”
But shouldn’t you at least say goodbye, thank you for your help, or something like that when you cut a transmission?
‘If this turns into some interview where they ask if Ha-yoon’s character as a space battleship captain got ruined, what then!’
As Yeon-woo voiced such concerns, Urelka waved them off with a chuckle.
“Don’t worry too much. That’s exactly the right tone. Pilots communicate not through words, but through their hearts.”
“Is that so?”
Urelka’s cool reassurance somehow convinced Yeon-woo.
— Cock-a-doodle-doo! Cock-a-doodle-doo! I’m terrified! I can’t hold it back anymoreeeee!!
— Hapi, quiet. Gudru ending transmission.
……It really did seem like communicating through the heart alone might be the better option.
In any case, as Urelka said, the rough outline of the operation had been shared.
If Ha-yoon played her part, then as Yeon-woo said, the rest could be finished from his end.
‘It’ll work, right? Or rather, she’ll do what I said, won’t she?’
Yeon-woo peered down anxiously at the battleship below.
Hades’ performance had been impressive, but whether it could draw enough attention from the Orc Cruiser was honestly uncertain.
It was a task he could only ask of Hades — the one under Gudru’s protection.
And then, moments later.
“……What?”
In Hades, which Ha-yoon piloted, something Yeon-woo hadn’t anticipated happened.
* * *
“Draw it out to sea?”
Ha-yoon murmured quietly.
— Hades, is something wrong? The transmission cut off for a moment.
“My apologies. I needed a moment to think.”
Click.
A hurried question came from the clan’s command center, but Ha-yoon cut herself off from that channel entirely, along with the squadron’s communications network.
An unidentified space battleship.
She didn’t know why its commander suddenly contacted only her, but.
To carry out the mission of drawing the Orc Cruiser away, she needed to pour all her concentration into the battle.
‘I should use it, the skill…….’
Hades’ unique skill — one she’d been saving until now.
Despite its power being beyond question, she’d never used it because of the equally devastating recoil.
There seemed to be no further need for restraint.
Shhhhh…….
Around the jet-black hull of the Hades, dark energy slowly gathered.
As a black sphere began to form around the Hades, it soon compressed into a pair of wickedly sharp, elongated wings.
The sight was like two wings wrapped in an even longer shroud of darkness.
‘Deathside.’
A close-combat form wreathed in the same antimatter that the cannon had fired.
Once deployed, no other weapons could be used, and close combat itself carried enormous risk.
Moreover, once the casting time expired, the craft would be immobilized for a while—a true killing blow made in the face of death.
Yet now was precisely the moment to use it.
Whoosh!
With the technique complete, the Hades rocketed forward with tremendous force.
The acceleration was entirely different from before.
Even the Fullmail, which had kept pace so well until now, lost track of the movement for an instant.
But.
Crack! Boom!
The overwhelming majesty of cleaving the Slime Fighter charging straight ahead in two—
—spoke as if the God of Death needed no escort whatsoever.
Though the Slime Fighter, with its characteristic mucus-covered metal hull, could repair most damage in moments, split in half and ravaged by antimatter, it plummeted helplessly.
Hostile aircraft still lurked menacingly in the vicinity.
Screeeeeech!
Yet the Hades paid them no mind.
It accelerated at full speed toward the Orc Cruiser, a vessel far larger than itself.
* * *
“E-Emergency! The Hades is making a high-speed charge toward the Orc Cruiser!”
“What?”
Tae-geun was startled by the report.
The Hades, which had seemed to be holding back for a moment, now advanced with speed incomparable to before.
Looking at the display, he could even see that Deathside had been deployed.
‘That should still be a classified skill…….’
Tae-geun had learned of it through the Maenho Clan in secret.
But this was certainly not an action authorized by the Maenho Clan.
“Report: Communication with the Hades has been cut off by the Maenho Clan!”
‘Someone made contact with her.’
There had to be a reason Ha-yoon was suddenly acting this way.
She would know that even deploying a trump card skill wouldn’t be enough to face the Orc Cruiser alone.
To commit like this regardless…….
Tae-geun gazed at the massive space battleship displayed on the sub-screen.
‘Could it be?’
If his suspicion was correct—
—then there was reason to anticipate what came next.
* * *
Another function of Command Enhancement, gained through technical specialization.
He could see not only the pilots of the deployed carrier aircraft, but the surrounding environment as well, displayed on screen.
Though the movement was so swift and elusive it made him dizzy, he could see clearly enough how Ha-yoon’s Hades was moving.
“What do you make of it? The Hades and this pilot, Ha-yoon?”
Yeon-woo asked Urelka.
Naturally it all looked flawless to his untrained eye, but Urelka might see it differently.
Urelka answered admiringly.
“To be frank, she doesn’t look like a pilot of that tier at all. ……She must be among the most elite talents in the entire universe. The craft suits her perfectly as well.”
So the discerning eye is the same whether it belongs to human or monster?
Ha-yoon had already closed in on the Orc Cruiser.
She seemed to be playing in an entirely different world from the common fighters and allied craft.
The Orc Cruiser appeared to have reached the same conclusion.
Fwoosh!
Steam erupted from the port and starboard sides—so intricate it was impossible to tell which system served which function—and six missiles shot forth.
“Gudru!”
At Yeon-woo’s call, Gudru answered in a measured voice.
— Gudru understands. Gudru protects.
Despite the measured tone, his response was swift.
Crash-boom!
With a tremendous blast, the Fullmail intercepted four missiles head-on at Hades’s bow.
Thanks to the barrier, the craft sustained no major damage from the defense.
— Barrier’s down. Regenerating now.
Markros and Gudru’s primary objective was to keep the craft intact.
It was the obvious response.
Simultaneously.
Whoom!
As if choreographed, Hades burst forth from within the explosion of the missiles the Fullmail had blocked.
Screech!
One of the remaining missiles caught a wing, tearing it half-severed.
Crash!
The other passed over Ha-yoon and struck the enemy fighter that had been pursuing her without knowing any better.
In that brief instant, had she read the missile’s trajectory?
“Do S+ rank fighters come equipped with projectile path prediction or something…….”
“Mass-production models have no such thing.”
Urelka answered the question Yeon-woo had muttered aloud.
If that were true, her skill was all the more formidable.
‘Wait — is she just going to clear this whole thing on her own without me?’
The thought had seized him so completely.
And Ha-yoon, having pierced through the missile barrage, pressed on.
Screech!
She carved cleanly through the barrier the Orc Cruiser had deployed.
Even so, the gap was too narrow to slip through, making entry impossible.
Shriek!
Threat detected, the Orc Cruiser hastily pivoted its hull away from her.
The size difference was as stark as that between a giant and an ordinary human.
Yet in terms of momentum, Ha-yoon had already seized the advantage.
Screech! Screech!
With brilliant, dazzling movements, Ha-yoon began to systematically shred the Orc Cruiser’s barrier.
Pulse! Pulse!
The cruiser hurried to loose several laser bursts, but they couldn’t keep pace with Ha-yoon’s razor-sharp focus.
If anything, her massive hull only hindered her in this close-quarters dogfight.
Screech!
At last, Ha-yoon didn’t merely cut through the barrier — she shattered it and drove straight through.
In the same motion, she succeeded in slicing away a portion of the cruiser’s protruding hull.
‘My God…….’
It was pure astonishment.
Yeon-woo found himself imagining what it would be like if he were piloting Hades instead.
……On second thought, it seemed better for Earth’s peace that he wasn’t.
“I’m just a pushover.”
At the same moment, confronted with the chasm between their skill levels, he grew despondent.
To own a space battleship, surely one would need to reach that caliber of excellence.
Then Urelka countered with passionate fervor.
“What are you saying?!”
“Aren’t I right?”
“No matter how extraordinary that pilot’s skill, she remains merely a pilot. You, Captain, are the captain who deploys such a pilot.”
“Ah!”
Only then did Yeon-woo allow himself a quiet smile.
Of course.
I’m not a pilot — I’m a captain.
A point well taken.
‘So I’m not a pushover — I was born to give the commands, wasn’t I?’
He found he agreed entirely.
“Then what’s my talent as a captain?”
“That is…….”
…….
“You’ll come to understand in time, sir.”
Still, with the situation pressing, it seemed best to concentrate on the battle at hand.
Meanwhile, Ha-yoon’s mission to drag the Orc Cruiser into the sea was proceeding flawlessly.
Screeeech!
Ha-yoon carved away a section of the cruiser and slipped smoothly from the combat zone, heading toward the waters off Incheon.
Grrrrrr…….
The cruiser, too, seemed to have its blood up; it gave chase at full throttle, its massive bulk straining forward after her.
A speed so fast that even Gudru’s Fullmail couldn’t hope to match it.
In seconds, both machines burst free from the battle zone and rose above the sea.
“That’s it!”
Yeon-woo clenched his fist and called out to Urelka.
“Re-establish contact with Hades!”
Any awkwardness had vanished.
They’d already spoken once, hadn’t they?
Hades was currently circling the perimeter of the cruiser.
The movements seemed to ask: Is this enough?
More than enough—perfect, in fact.
But at the same time, Hades couldn’t stay there any longer.
‘If she gets caught in the main cannon’s blast…….’
Catastrophe.
And there was one more reason to pull Hades out at once.
“The cruiser is preparing to launch a Net Spear. I’ll establish the connection immediately.”
A Net Spear.
Similar to the air-to-air javelins fired by standard Orc fighters, but a weapon that detonated near its target to deal area damage.
Its power was different in kind, but it served a role much like a space warship’s main cannon.
Without Gudru’s escort, such a weapon was lethal.
Even with the Fullmail under Gudru’s control, it made no difference.
Among all the fighters currently engaged, there wasn’t a single frame that could withstand a Net Spear head-on.
Just as before, Ha-yoon’s face appeared on the suddenly enlarged communication screen.
“Pilot Ha-yoon, evacuate the sector immediately!”
— Eh? But…….
Ha-yoon hesitated.
If she fled now, the cruiser would simply follow.
All the effort of drawing it away would be wasted.
But Yeon-woo was resolute.
“Don’t worry—do it now!”
— ……I understand.
Ha-yoon pressed her lower lip tight and took control of Hades.
Hades, which had been circling the cruiser, suddenly broke from the sector.
As she’d anticipated, the cruiser gave swift chase.
And yet.
‘Aim. Stay steady.’
Yeon-woo had nearly completed his own preparations.
His hand rested on the Master Ball’s firing controls, the main cannon trained and ready to discharge at any moment.
The expected blast radius of the cannon shimmered faintly in his vision.
Somewhere along the way, he had begun manipulating the Master Ball with no sense of strangeness—as if it were his own limb.
It was less the sight picture of a Master Ball operator than the focus of someone born with the instinct of a space warship itself.
It rivaled even the concentration Ha-yoon commanded, which had left Yeon-woo in awe.
But in the heat of the moment, he hadn’t yet noticed.
‘He truly is a captain.’
Only Urelka had perceived it.
“More!”
Ha-yoon still hadn’t quite cleared the cannon’s effective range.
— More from here?
“More!”
Not yet.
— How much further exactly…….
“Farther still!”
Still not enough…….
And the moment Ha-yoon burst back past the coastline.
Whiiiine……!
“Now!”
Booooom!!!
At last, the beam fired from the space vessel’s main cannon struck directly through the Orc Cruiser.
A hole tore open through the center of the massive Orc Cruiser.
As if that weren’t enough, the remaining section snapped clean in half.
The cruiser’s wreckage, broken into fragments, sank into the sea.
It was perfect destruction.
There was no room for doubt about the Clear message.
「Incheon Raid Portal, Republic of Korea — Cleared.」
「Raid Portal Clear Reward.
All participating Pilots receive 50 Scrap.
Additional reward granted to the Top Pilot.」
Of course, even so, the Clear message and the reward that followed were always sweet.
Along with it came a Summon Opportunity, as if he’d cleared a floor of the Tutorial Tower.
And before Yeon-woo’s eyes—
「You have been selected as the Top Pilot of the Raid Portal.」
Alongside the message of his selection as Top Pilot, the nature of the additional reward hung displayed before him.
“What? This…?”
Yeon-woo smiled as he confirmed the reward.
‘If I use this on Floor 5, isn’t that jackpot?’

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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