Why Did You Summon Me?

“Mayday, Mayday!” The Engineer Walker yelled when he realized that the sky-riders planned to pull his new scout like a cowboy on a bull. He placed his controller aside and pulled up a holographic screen. On the screen, multiple crosshairs locked onto targets; the Engineer Walker seemed intent on showing off the scout’s full capabilities.

 He was about to push the square button on the controller, but Baiyi stopped him. “No need for that. It’ll be better for us if they bring the marionette to their ship.”

 “Damn. You’re asking me to give up an opportunity to show off my Full Burst Mode[1], man! It took a lot of effort to install new armaments…” The Engineer Walker pouted, but he did, albeit reluctantly, retract the crosshairs on the holographic screen.

 ‘Wait… This is the reason it took you so long to get this scout up-and-running?! Why would a marionette on a recon mission need a “Full Burst Mode”? Why didn’t you add Fin Funnels¹ while you were at it?! Besides, I thought “green with a single eye” is the entire package of the mobile suit you’re trying to emulate! The extra junk you added made it more of a bizarro than an imitation now,’ Baiyi ranted inwardly.

 The Engineer Walker switched the marionette into its inactive mode as the sky-riders continued to work on their big hunt. When the sky-riders secured their lassos around the scout and fastened it to their snowmobiles, the Engineer Walker turned off the scout’s propulsion system.

 The massive increase in mass proved to be too much for the sky riders. Even at full throttle, the sky-riders were unable to keep the scout afloat. Despite rapidly burning fuel to propel themselves forward, shrieks rang out a few minutes later as the sky-riders’ snowmobiles began to plummet.

 “Ugh!” The Engineer Walker snorted in contempt and switched the propulsion system back on, saving the sky-riders’ lives.

 “Huh, this is weird. How heavy is this thing?” Baiyi asked. “They have the technological capability to make a colossal steamship ascend to great heights, but they can’t pull up the scout marionette despite working as a group?”

 Before the mission, the mass of the marionette in question had undergone a drastic reduction to maximize its mobility and flight capability, and even if the Engineer Walker’s unnecessary armaments had increased the total mass a bit, Baiyi was sure that his levitation spell had mitigated them. In reality, the marionette was not that heavy; it weighed three tons at most, making it just as heavy as a compact car.

 Any mid-sized truck on Earth could have easily hauled it, so it was quite surprising that a dozen sky-riders working together were unable to. This brought another question to light: how did the sky-riders make a million-ton ship hover in the sky?

 The Engineer Walker was bemused at the irony. He had resorted a pretty scummy “experiment” for his dark amusement.

 When the sky-riders recovered from their shock, they called for backup, as they needed more people to prevent the marionette from falling back down again. After more sky-riders joined the group pulling the marionette, the Engineer Walker turned off its propulsion system again, causing the group to fall — screaming as they did so. After a while, he would turn the propulsion system back on, and when more people joined the sky-riders pulling the marionette, the same process would repeat itself.

 When the number of snowmobiles pulling the marionette increased to twenty, turning off the marionette’s propulsion system no longer caused the sky-riders to fall; it only made them move forward slower. Thus, the flight back to the steamship was a long and stressful one.

 Despite being repeatedly toyed with by the Engineer Walker, the sky-riders beamed at the success of their hunt. The prey was so heavy, twenty snowmobiles were needed to pull it home! This was the sort of treasure that would end them enough to acquire an endless amount of drinks, as well as get an innumerable amount of ladies to act as their pillows every night they get knocked out. However, the engines of the snowmobiles had sustained so much damage from the mission, they may never work again. This was no trouble, though, as the prey was bound to fetch a great harvest!

 The sky-riders arrived at the ship, SS Meryl, and placed the marionette carefully on its deck. An eager crowd had already arrived with the captain, who was more moved than the sky-riders. He could already imagine his darling Meryl transform into Meryl Gold with the money from selling this treasure.

 “How wise rising above the clouds again, after our last trip, turned out to be!” The Captain beamed in satisfaction. He then ordered the crowd to back away from the marionette. The Captain stared at it for some time, aware that his biggest payday ever was close.

 “Sir, you might need to stand back a little; it could be dangerous,” warned an engineer, who was watching the marionette with expressions of fear and awe. As someone that had inherited something similarly monumental, the engineer felt that there was more to the marionette than what they all saw.

 “Why worry? Our riders said it wouldn’t move anymore,” the Captain said, dismissing the advice. He walked over to the marionette and rubbed its flashy green coating with a finger.

 The marionette’s only eye suddenly glowed.

 In a flash, its gigantic hand had grabbed the Captain’s head and lifted him, as one would lift a chick. A sinister green light burst out of the gigantic hand.

 The poor Captain trembled as though he was having a seizure. He was foaming at the mouths, and blood trickled down his eyes and ears. When the green light disappeared, the man no longer moved.

 The marionette dropped the corpse as though it were a piece of trash.

 This happened so quickly, a brief period of silence passed before the crowd regained their bearing. Screams of terror rang out, but no one fled; instead, everyone grabbed whatever they could find closeby and attacked the marionette.

 Different attacks were carried out all at once. Muskets were fired; knives were thrown; javelins were hurled; arrows were shot, and a few people even threw muck forks at the target. These attacks did nothing to the target, though; only the sounds of metal being hit could be heard. The marionette stood still as it braced the assaults.

 The engineer, who had warned the now-deceased Captain, was the only one to notice that the marionette’s flashy-green coat was not damaged in the attacks. remaining pristine and untarnished as ever despite the barrage. Having failed to convince his comrades to stop, he fell to his knees in desperation as though he were pleading for mercy.

 A scene the engineer would never forget suddenly happened. The metal monster raised its hands, bent its knees slightly, and spread its arms wide open. A moment later, beams of different colors shot out from the marionette’s fingers, feet, shoulders, and knees¹, instantly incinerating every crew member that had attacked it.

 SS Meryl fell silent. The crew members were assaulted by the sight and smell of the smoking corpses that now littered the deck. This caused the survivors to approach the matter in a different manner: they screamed and fled the deck.

 Amid the madness, the marionette took a few heavy steps toward the kneeling engineer. A flat, mechanical voice boomed, “Who’s the second-in-command?”

 The poor man was shaking like a leaf. “T-The F-F-First M-Mate…”

 “Bring him. To me.”

 With that, the marionette stood. It was utterly motionless saved for that single red eye glancing around its surroundings swiftly, as though it was watching everything.

 While the engineer scrambled to his feet to look for the First Mate as well as trying to establish some form of order, the Voidwalkers were analyzing the dead captain’s memories. As it turned out, the sinister green light emitted from the marionette’s palm early was, in truth, the expression of the oft-used necromancy technique used to extract memories from a live being. In a bid to understand this new world sooner, Baiyi had enchanted this spell on the marionette’s hands before it launched. It was also only through the captain’s memories that the Fifth Walker was able to command the engineer in his language.

 The people of this world had been living on a ship since birth. No one had ever seen Land, and all they knew about it was from oral history and scarce written records. According to these sources, the Land is a perilous place fraught with undying flames, lethal explosions, and an unknown but lethal force that could kill anyone instantly.

 Humans had lived all their lives on skyships like these. They spent their days drifting around aimlessly and hunting for flying animals. Occasionally they raided other ships, making them a mix of fishermen and pirates.

 There was no central government in this world, so the order was thinly established by having captains formed a pact together over shared goals. These factions soon developed into forces known as guilds; it was common for different guilds to be at each others’ throat.

 Any settlement this world had was similar to the floating islands in Gouve. There were limited plots of cropland, water, and shipyards, making these places incredibly vital to humans to survive. Thus, guilds often wage wars to lay dominant over them.

 As for the burning question behind the Engineer Walker’s head: the captain had no answer as to how these steamships were made. Perhaps the engineer would know more, but he was unavailable since Baiyi had sent him for his errand.

 “And that’s all there is. Honestly, this place is no different from a post-apocalyptic world. We might not have seen whatever was driving this big steamship to the sky, but from our observations, it’s pretty obvious that they have a gigantic gap in their current technology and when these ships were built. They probably had a sufficiently advanced civilization before, but due to some conflicts or other disasters, this was all there was left,” Baiyi concluded. “Maybe we should try to visit the Land to see what really happened.”

 After summarizing whatever they currently know about this world, Baiyi and the Walkers were ready to discuss more. It was then when the terrified engineer had scurried back to him with the First-Mate-turned-Captain, both of them on their knees.