Chapter Sixty: You Are All My Wings

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PS: I am trying to resume my update speed; don’t expect too much.

“Damn it! It’s just an MS—where has your courage gone?” Duel abandoned his entanglement with Strike, preparing to attack the Black Wing Warrior.

“Yzak! Calm down! Didn’t you see that last attack? Clearly, ordinary MSs can’t do something like that!” Athrun, neglecting his fight with his friend, stopped the impulsive Yzak.

“Athrun, don’t project your cowardice onto me!” Yzak had long been dissatisfied with this model student.

A line of red text appeared on the screens of Athrun’s group.

“The Vesalius has been hit!?”

“They want us to retreat?”

Mu, who had been preparing to ambush the Vesalius, started cursing when he saw another battleship by its side. What he didn’t expect was that a huge yellow beam had just swept over his head, destroying the unexpected ship and grazing the Vesalius’s left main engine.

Mu didn’t hold back. He launched a surprise attack, firing several shots at the already smoking engine before departing.

“Mu~~~~~~” On the Vesalius, resisting the impact, Creuset clenched his fist.

“Yzak! We’re retreating. That’s the captain’s order,” Athrun dodged Strike’s beam attacks.

Inside Strike, Kira noticed that, for some reason, the machine’s energy occasionally surged on its own, roughly once per minute. Kira was delighted—now he didn’t have to worry about running out of energy and getting captured, and he could shoot freely. But what if he accidentally hit Justice’s engine?

“Shut up! Coward!” By now Yzak was totally fired up. He drew his beam saber and charged blindly at the Black Wing Warrior.

The Black Wing Warrior seemed hesitant, never striking decisively, just dodging and weaving. Even the combined missiles launched from afar by Storm were sliced apart one by one, causing no damage.

“The energy here is running low!” Nicol, only just recovering from the shock of total reinforcements’ annihilation, found his machine’s energy already near depletion.

“Damn it!” Because Yzak was recklessly boosting his beam saber’s output, Duel’s energy gauge dropped below red, phase shift armor failed, and the machine turned gray.

A beam suddenly shot over, severing Duel’s beam saber hilt.

Kira would show no mercy to any enemy outside his circle of friends.

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Taking advantage of the moment, Black Wing Warrior seized the energy-drained Duel and headed toward Archangel.

“Yzak!” Seeing their comrade captured, the three youths panicked. But their phase shift armor was also about to fail, and charging into Archangel’s firing range now was extremely dangerous—they might end up captured too.

“Let’s go, report to the captain,” Athrun gritted his teeth and chose to retreat.

“But, Yzak…” Nicol wanted to protest, but Athrun cut him off.

“He was too aggressive—this is the consequence. He needs to take responsibility for it.” It wasn’t easy for Athrun to say these words.

“Nicol, let’s go. Captain Creuset will surely find a way to save Yzak. Staying here won’t help,” Diego tried to persuade Nicol.

“To think they’d underestimate me!” Yzak, hearing the whole conversation, veins bulging, tapped in a string of codes and pulled the self-destruct lever.

But—

Nothing happened.

“What are these black things!” Seeing his screen, keyboard, joystick—everything being consumed by black, Yzak cried out in horror.

Black tendrils stretched from the seat, binding Yzak tightly.

“Let me go! Let me go!” Thanks to his helmet, Yzak could still scream, but the terror of having his vision swallowed by darkness was something few could comprehend.

“Enemy MS team retreating.” Athrun and the others withdrew, as per the captain’s orders.

“We have captured one MS, model X102 Duel!”

“What!” Murrue stood up from her seat, utterly astonished.

“Quick, open the hatch and let Kira and Black Flame return.”

Archangel, maintenance bay.

Yzak felt a tremendous force toss him out, and his vision brightened once more.

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Even Yzak, for all his arrogance, could only accept his capture obediently when confronted by a dozen gun barrels.

With his hands bound, Yzak was escorted to the brig. Unwilling to give in, he turned to see who piloted that hateful black MS.

At that moment, the Black Wing Warrior’s wings and rifle disintegrated into particles, and the machine reverted to the Black Astray form. A young man and three girls emerged one after another from the Black Astray’s cockpit.

To be defeated by such people! Seeing the youth’s smug expression, Yzak silently clenched his fists. Everyone tacitly ignored the bizarre state of Hao Ren’s machine—it didn’t matter, as long as they won.

Hao Ren accepted everyone’s praise as a matter of course, though he was inwardly sighing in relief.

He glanced at the system messages.

“Black Wing Warrior Gundam, the second form of the blackened Red Astray, can only transform when the player ‘Black Flame Dragon’ and summoned creatures ‘Nemesis,’ ‘Yaya,’ and ‘Golden Darkness’ are all present in the blackened Red Astray and perform ‘Dual Fusion.’”

Because of Nemesis’s ‘Dual Fusion,’ Hao Ren shared the girls’ combat awareness and experience. The sword-drawing techniques he had learned were perfected under their influence, which explained why Black Wing Warrior fought so ruthlessly.

As for the machine’s transformation, it was due to Hao Ren being in a synchronized state with Black Astray; the bio-weapon abilities of Golden Darkness and the others were perfectly reflected in Black Astray.

The black wings were simulated and controlled by Golden Darkness; the twin burst rifles by Yaya; the black particle force field was a special ability derived from Nemesis’s emission of black particles.

Regarding machine energy… Hao Ren had a skill called ‘Energy Fortress,’ which he had almost forgotten about, but surprisingly, it worked for his Black Wing Warrior as well. Well, he was part of the allied forces, after all.

In truth, Black Wing Warrior resembling Wing Zero EW was simply Hao Ren’s playful taste. Thanks to the ‘Bio-Weapon’ skill, the second form of Black Astray was not fixed and could be freely changed—he could even give it a pair of big angel wings, or turn it into an eight-winged Angel—sending out the Strike Freedom Gundam to scare people would be no issue.

Hao Ren shouted, “You are all my wings!”

Counting the number of girls, and including the girl on his left hand, Hao Ren could at most be a twelve-winged archangel.

Kamijou’s mother, the ten-thousand-winged archangel, merely smiled without saying a word…