The Real Daughter Just Wants to Pilot Mechas - Chapter 85

“This goes beyond talent.” The old soldier stared intently at the mecha’s movements on the screen, completely ignoring Jiang Momo’s second half of the sentence. “His luck is too good, he only had to face four alien beasts.”

Jiang Momo took a deep breath. “It’s been almost a day now. Has no one else gotten only four alien beasts in a match?”

She could tell E Mingjun wasn’t breezing through it just because of the low alien beast count. He really was skilled and it didn’t look like his first encounter with the alien beasts.

The old soldier replied, “Some have but you know the Capital Star’s forces have almost never gone up against real alien beasts. So…”

Jiang Momo understood. “So right now, how many people are on the leaderboard?”

“Not a single one,” the old soldier said, looking slightly embarrassed as he covered his face with one hand. “Which is why, if you want your earlier idea to actually make money, you’d better adjust the difficulty.”

Jiang Momo was confused. “This difficulty level shouldn’t be that impossible, should it?”

“The military is a special case. In Zone A1, those who can deal with the alien beasts solo are all people who’ve earned their way into leadership roles. Naturally, they won’t join this kind of training. The rest have never even seen the alien beasts. Before entering the force, there’s already screening and anyone with potential gets sent to the Border Star System where it’s easier to earn military merit and get promoted,” the old soldier explained.

Jiang Momo nodded. “Then doesn’t that make my suggestion even more suitable? Push it straight to military academies and recruit talent from there.”

“If it’s for recruitment purposes, it’s a great idea. But if you’re aiming to profit, it’s very risky.” The old soldier hesitated for a moment before continuing, “Military equipment distributed to academies is usually public and not for profit. If you put it out on the market as a game, the development costs would be massive. You might lose money.”

“Money isn’t everything,” Jiang Momo said after listening. She pushed down her budding dream of striking it rich. “What matters more is finding talented people to boost our combat strength.”

Jiang Momo knew herself. She might always seem cheerful but deep down she was a pessimist who liked to prepare for the worst.

To her, the military should’ve long been preparing for a large-scale alien beast invasion on the Central Star System. The fact that they weren’t was baffling.

“So selfless?” the old soldier blurted out.

“Isn’t it obvious?” Jiang Momo shot back.

The old soldier chuckled dryly and didn’t mention how just moments ago, he saw that unmistakable gleam of greed for money in Jiang Momo’s eyes.

As they chatted, E Mingjun’s voice came through the screen. “Momo, can you hear me?”

His tone was slightly tense, nothing like the ease he showed during the fight.

Jiang Momo immediately looked at the old soldier.

The old soldier pressed a button at the bottom of the screen and gave her a signal with a small tilt of his chin.

Jiang Momo leaned forward. “I can hear you.”

E Mingjun’s voice came again. “If I pass, will there be a public announcement or some other form of display?”

“There’s a leaderboard. As long as you win, your name will appear,” Jiang Momo looked to the old soldier again as she answered.

The next moment, she and E Mingjun spoke at the same time.

“Will my name show on the leaderboard?”

“Will his name show on the leaderboard?”

The old soldier nodded. “Of course it will.”

Just as Jiang Momo was about to relay that back, the mecha ‘made a mistake’ and collided with an alien beast’s claw mid-attack.

The battle ended.

“What a pity,” the old soldier said with some regret.

Jiang Momo stopped the recording on her light brain.

E Mingjun’s ‘mistake’ was convincingly acted. If not for the nervousness she picked up in his earlier questions, even she might’ve been fooled.

But wasn’t E Mingjun a mecha piloting student? Getting his name into the military’s records should be helpful for enlisting. Why would he choose to give that up?

E Mingjun climbed down from the mecha. Noticing Jiang Momo watching him, he casually brushed back his dry bangs and said, seemingly offhand, “I may be from the Chaos Star System but I’ve never actually fought an alien beast before. I didn’t think they’d be so cunning. I let my guard down.”

He’d just received word from a subordinate that the military might still have undercover members from unpacified interstellar pirate groups. If his name showed up on the leaderboard and one of them saw it, it could throw off his plans to unify the Chaos Star System.

Now that he knew the interstellar pirate hunter wasn’t the original thief, if he wanted to track down the one who stole the treasure years ago, he needed more power. In his view, consolidating the interstellar pirate groups was the most time-efficient and effective method.

Yes, the headlines about the interstellar pirate group’s war over control had been true. When he saw the journalist, it was too late to stop them from leaving. So he came back to Jiang Momo, hoping to explain once she saw the news report, as he didn’t want her to look at him with suspicion.

However, what he hadn’t expected was that her first reaction to the news was to think he had been caught up in trouble and to rescue him. It made him feel even more guilty.

Jiang Momo realized E Mingjun was saying that for her benefit. She looked up slightly and met his gaze, which carried a faint sense of apology.

She didn’t know where that guilt came from. She took a deep breath and patted his shoulder. “This battle is genuinely hard. It’s not your fault.”

“Momo’s right!” the old soldier chimed in.

E Mingjun accepted her comfort with some unease. “Do you want to practice with the simulation too?”

Jiang Momo shook her head. “No, I’ll just do some mecha drills here on the empty field.”

Fighting alien beasts wasn’t fun. She didn’t like it.

After saying that, she looked to the old soldier who froze for a second before reacting. He quickly pulled a mecha space button out of his pocket and released an S-grade mecha.

A crippled mecha appeared.

The entire lower left leg was gone, yet it stood steadily on one leg.

Jiang Momo turned her puzzled gaze to the old soldier.

“It’s broken and wrongly installed.” The old soldier slapped the back of his head with one hand and said regretfully, “A bunch of mechas were damaged in the fight against the alien beasts last week and they’re still not fixed.”

“How many are broken?” Jiang Momo asked.

The mecha’s left calf was busted. According to what Lu Feng promised her before, repairs would cost about six million.

“Eight. All are still down. We’ve been scrambling these past two days to grab repair slots released by the research institute but haven’t gotten any,” the old soldier sighed.

Originally, Major General Lu had said the mechas would be repaired by Jiang Momo but the number was too large and they were afraid it would wear her out. Since it happened to be graduation season for her students, they assumed she was busy, so they hadn’t contacted her.

“What are you still fighting for repair slots for? Just leave them to me!” Jiang Momo said immediately.

“Are you in urgent need of cash?” E Mingjun asked.

“Nope.” Jiang Momo raised her chin slightly and met E Mingjun’s eyes. “I just want to master S-grade mecha repair.”

She loved all things new. Anything she’d just picked up and wasn’t quite familiar with yet, she was ten thousand percent passionate about. Right now, she had just learned S-grade mecha repair and the novelty was even more thrilling than piloting mechas.

“Then I’ll bring you the rest of the mechas right now!” The old soldier turned eagerly to head for the storage room.

Jiang Momo quickly reminded him, “Bring two intact mechas, too.”

“No problem!” The old soldier gave a thumbs-up.

“Do you want to spar with me later?” Jiang Momo nudged E Mingjun’s side with her elbow as she watched the old soldier leave.

E Mingjun declined. “Sparring risks getting an injury.”

Jiang Momo raised an eyebrow and teased, “You’re so good at piloting a mecha, yet you can’t control your strength precisely?”

E Mingjun looked at her but said nothing.

Jiang Momo blinked. “You seriously can’t?”

Then she finally understood how that legendary military training instructor got beaten to tears. Last time, when she tried moving a mecha’s limbs using mental power, she’d found it easy to throw a punch but hard to pull back in time due to inertia. She’d thought it was because she was inexperienced but now it turned out E Mingjun couldn’t do it either.

“Nope,” E Mingjun replied.

That fight earlier had been his first time in years piloting an S-grade mecha and he immediately felt how clumsy it was. That was why he rarely piloted his own downgraded mecha.

After arriving on the Capital Star and shattering the academy record with his mecha, easily outclassing the instructor, he realized something was off about his strength compared to the people. He secretly investigated and discovered the Federation had no such thing as a super S-grade mecha. Before anyone else caught on, he found an underground mecha manufacturer to modify and downgrade his mecha to super A-grade.

It was called a downgrade but its performance still exceeded normal S-grade mechas. The Federation’s system just couldn’t detect the difference.

“What a pity. I was hoping with someone as skilled as you feeding me moves, I’d improve fast,” Jiang Momo said regretfully.

E Mingjun’s lips curled at the compliment hidden in her words. “There’s another way. I won’t strike back.”

“What do you mean?” Jiang Momo looked up immediately.

“You focus on attacking and I’ll dodge. While dodging, I’ll tell you what you should be doing,” E Mingjun said, lifting his chin.

“But if I hit you, you’ll still get hurt, right?” Jiang Momo asked.

“I’ll dodge.”

E Mingjun’s voice was full of confidence in his piloting skills. He seemed to glow with energy. He leaned in slightly, lowering his head toward Jiang Momo. “No one’s ever managed to damage my mecha.”

Jiang Momo stepped back half a pace. “Maybe I’ll be the first.”

“That’s possible,” E Mingjun replied. “After all, you’re someone who can freely come and go in the First Military District’s training base purely on your own abilities.”

Jiang Momo was a little surprised.

E Mingjun was the first person who, without knowing the inside story, believed she got in by merit alone.

“What’s that look for?” E Mingjun noticed her surprise and understood. “Did people doubt you before? Don’t mind them. What people say reflects their own hearts. If they think you’re unqualified, that just shows what kind of people they are.”

“So you think you’re strong?” Jiang Momo joked.

“No. I believe you’re an upright person,” E Mingjun replied sincerely.