“There’s quite a lot of people here,” Aziz noted as he stared inside the room, his eyes fixed on the small crowd of Knights. “Did they centralise the fitting location?”

“Probably,” Marie replied. “Well, the best place to do the fitting would naturally be the command ship that I’m on, right? I’m the biggest boss in the military right now, so—”

“I dare you to repeat that in front of Pauline,” Aziz replied. “Go on.”

“Bah. Party-pooper.” Marie rolled her eyes, and then strode boldly into the room. “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.”

“Good morning, marshal.”

Aziz looked around the place once more. Most of the people here were the Republic’s Knights, although there were a few distinct foreigners here and there. He didn’t know if they were allied Knights here for some extra-special treatment, or if they had been scouted by the Republic, but either way, the number of people here made it clear that the Republic was intending on rolling out the Exo-Skeletons on a far larger scale.

Pauline probably rolled this new tech out to make up for the Republic’s withdrawal of their infantry, but Aziz found himself agreeable with such a move. Knights generally had a higher survivability. Besides, enemies that could kill them would definitely slaughter normal troops en masse. In that case, in absolute terms…

“That’s odd,” Aziz muttered. “Say, Marie.”

“What?” Marie whispered back.

“In your eyes, is a Knight more important than say, a company of Soldiers?”

“A Knight’s more important, duh. Why are you asking—” Marie’s words cut off mid-sentence. “Wait. Yes. Why, then? It would make more sense for Pauline to send out the common troops, no?”

“Exactly,” Aziz whispered.

Marie’s eyes clouded over for a moment, and then she nodded. “We’ll talk about it later. Let’s get those Exo-Skeletons fitted…wow, everyone’s really nice to let us go first. Still, why did everyone make a point to come this early? I don’t think there’s any rewards for showing up nice and early, right?”

Aziz glanced at the other Knights, and a shiver ran down his spine as the entire collective glared at him. He could hear some dark mutters, and for a moment, Aziz thought he was back with the First Aerial again, acting as the target board for curses like ‘Go explode’ or ‘Get away from her’.

If only they knew the truth.

Anyway, it was quite the reminder of Marie’s popularity in the military, but Aziz couldn’t help but feel peeved. She was popular only because the others didn’t know what she was like — if they had to deal with incessant amounts of paperwork over and over, they wouldn’t be thinking the same thing. After sighing to himself about just how important appearances were, Aziz decided not to say anything. At least he had an express pass in the form of Marie, which was decidedly a benefit.

“ID, please.”

Aziz exchanged nods with Marie as more people led them into a room, and the long procedure of fitting the Exo-Skeleton began. Unfortunately, the quirky little old man that had done the procedure for them last time wasn’t here, but from the looks of it, he didn’t need to be here either.

“Hey, colonel.” A familiar old man waved at him. “Remember me?”

“You’re….oh. You’re Shiki, right? You helped me and Marie wear the Exo-Skeleton back then.” Aziz nodded his head. “Must be rough, to follow this expedition.”

“Rough?” The old man guffawed. “I get to collect combat data firsthand; I would not call that rough for anything in the world, buddy. Without your contributions, we wouldn’t have been able to come up with improvements this quickly.”

“The only contribution” —Aziz made some quotes in the air with his hands— “I made was sending a damaged Exo-Skeleton back to you guys to repair.”

“And that’s a contribution. It’s crystallised combat data! Stress and damage! Without this information, we couldn’t have made improvements this quickly!” The old man patted his shoulder. “All thanks to my early users, really!”

“Improvements?” Aziz found himself hung onto one particular word. “What types of improvements are we talking about?”

Shiki smiled, before clapping his hands. His assistants, who had been busily emulating a wallflower, approached and took out a

“Let me explain the changes made to the next-generation Exos. First, we’ve made it easier and more intuitive to wear and remove these supports. The mechanism to do so is now universal, you just need to…”

After his minute-long explanation was done, Shiki prompted Aziz to try wearing the Exo-Skeleton himself. It wasn’t too hard, and the colonel couldn’t help but feel a small, childish glee at being able to don something with so many moving parts by himself. The load-bearing second spine felt more comfortable too, and the limb supports felt like an extension of his body.

Punching out a few times, Aziz let out a low whistle. “This is quite the upgrade from the original. It doesn’t actually feel like I’m wearing anything.”

“Isn’t it great?” Shiki smiled. “Got to thank the North, though. They sent two old men like me over to help out too.”

“Old men, huh?”

“Yeah, don’t look down on us elderly fellows, young ‘un.” Shiki walked around Aziz, and nodded. “Yeap, looks fine. Do remember to send us your trashed Exo when it needs repairs, okay? We’ll do it for free and even make some improvements too!”

“I understand.”

“Good, good. Now, on to the peripheral attachments.” Shiki chuckled. “You’re in luck, kid. The load-bearing portion has been upgraded with some new add-ons. There’s a Sigil Printer embedded inside; you’ll be able to improve your lethality with them. We’ve prepared some default sigils, and…”

As the old man continued on with his little lecture, a corner of Aziz’s mind wandered off into old memories. The sight of a little kid, wielding a long Shot artefact, with tens of sigils floating in front of the barrel…

“Colonel?”

Aziz jumped. “Sorry. Was just thinking of someone who helped in defending the East, back when the God of Water attacked it. Back then, he liked to stack many sigils together and fire through them.”

“That sounds very familiar,” Shiki noted. “Ah! You must be talking about my sponsor! Gaius, the Pint-sized Railgun! Hmm. I wonder what happened to him…he’s been gone for years.”

What would the old man say if he knew the truth?

“He’s probably still quite well, I guess,” Aziz replied. “Yeah, quite well.”

“Oh?”