The Royal Military Academy's Impostor Owns a Dungeon [BL] Chapter 1222: A Veteran’s Experience

Yes, that "confirmed" distinction was important.

Because there’d already been an unimaginable number of attacks thrown Owen’s way, and visually speaking, almost every single one of them looked like they should’ve hit.

People throughout the audience had long since risen from their seats, their collective breaths catching in their throats as Oliver Mylor’s pitch-black mecha was utterly bombarded from seemingly every direction. The tension hanging over the arena had grown so thick that hardly anyone felt like they could breathe properly.

Many were undoubtedly worried about the young cadet, hoping against hope that he was alright inside that mecha.

His siblings were already bracing themselves, and it was honestly a wonder how the Mylor Marquis couple had managed to remain sane when even the teenager’s own Academy professors were out there praying in different tongues.

See, Owen had gained an incredible lead almost immediately after the race began, pulling so far ahead that the other pilots had been forced to maximize their thrusters just to have any hope of catching up.

And apparently, that’d offended them on a deeply personal level.

Instead of attacking one another like they normally would’ve in this kind of race, almost everyone had collectively decided to ignore the rest of their competition and hunt down Owen Mylor instead!

Concentrated particle beams tore through the course while heavy antimatter tracking missiles relentlessly chased after that pitch-black figure.

Attack after attack practically swallowed the mecha.

Yet, infuriatingly enough, it simply kept moving forward as though absolutely nothing had happened.

What made the whole thing even worse was that Owen’s mecha didn’t appear to be dodging.

Not once.

As though deliberately trying to rage-bait every struggling pilot behind it, the newly constructed engineering marvel maintained its course without making a single evasive maneuver or showing the slightest concern for the attacks coming its way.

And oh boy, was it working.

Because from the pilots’ perspective, that damned mecha was seriously traveling in a straight line.

And yet they were STILL missing.

Every single time.

Their targeting systems would lock on, their calculations would predict an impact, and yet somehow their attacks would still fail to register as confirmed hits against that seriously dubious chunk of darkness.

Naturally, they could only blame that absurd speed.

The faster their target moved, the harder their respective systems had to work to accurately calculate its position, and with each supposedly perfect shot that somehow failed to connect, the participating pilots became increasingly frustrated.

Ivan Zorath was certainly no exception.

"Is that kid actually as crazy as those guys?!" he couldn’t help but mouth off, gritting his teeth as he pushed his own mecha’s thrusters even harder.

His eyes remained firmly fixed on the black figure ahead, desperately searching for the slightest opening he could exploit.

There had to be one.

No mecha could simply keep charging straight ahead like that while twenty professional pilots actively tried to blast it out of the race.

__

But perhaps this was exactly what separated veterans like Duke Caius from the rest.

With experience came the ability to recognize when something simply wasn’t working, and the Duke had no problem admitting that continuing to attack normally wouldn’t get him anywhere. Their automatic targeting systems clearly weren’t accustomed to dealing with a mecha moving like this, and relying on calculations designed around conventional machines was only making things worse.

So he disabled his.

If the mecha’s AI couldn’t properly predict where Owen Mylor would be, then he’d simply stop asking it to.

And his next move?

He attacked the ground.

The entire arena seemed to collectively hold its breath as Duke Caius suddenly angled his weapons backward and unleashed several heavy projectiles against the course behind him.

The resulting explosion violently propelled his mecha forward, giving him a tremendous burst of momentum that temporarily pushed his speed beyond what his own thrusters would’ve normally managed.

For the first time since the race began, someone was actually gaining on that pitch-black machine.

No.

He was overtaking it!

The moment Duke Caius pulled far enough ahead, however, he did something that would’ve looked absolutely ridiculous to anyone who didn’t understand what he was trying to accomplish.

He fired.

Not at Owen.

Not even anywhere close to him.

Instead, Caius mentally approximated the path of that mecha, which had stubbornly maintained the exact same forward trajectory and speed since the beginning, then fired three consecutive shots far ahead of it.

The first projectile tore harmlessly through empty space.

Miss.

The second looked like it was going to do exactly the same thing.

At least, that was what everyone thought.

Because unlike every attack that’d come before it, the black mecha suddenly ran straight into the projectile’s path.

The entire arena gasped.

A visible explosion swallowed the front of the pitch-black mecha, sending thick smoke and debris billowing across the course.

A hit.

A real, confirmed hit!

Duke Caius felt an almost forgotten rush of adrenaline surge through him.

It’d been far too long since he’d experienced this kind of thrill, and as the second projectile successfully found its mark, the corner of his mouth nearly pulled upward.

He’d gotten it.

And the third shot was already coming.

Considering the firepower behind the newly installed weapons he’d specifically wanted to test, Caius was already wondering what kind of damage two consecutive hits would’ve inflicted on the mecha.

Except the second impact never came.

His budding smile froze.

Because just before the third projectile could collide with the same straight path Owen had stubbornly maintained from the beginning, the black mecha suddenly dipped.

It moved.

For the first time since the race began, it actually deviated from its course!

The massive machine dropped low with startling precision, allowing the projectile to tear straight through the space it’d occupied only an instant before.

But strangely enough, that wasn’t even what left everyone speechless.

The mecha had naturally disappeared into the smoke created by the previous explosion, but when it came bursting out below, what emerged was no longer black.

"?!"

Duke Caius’s eyes widened.

All across the arena, countless people stared in complete disbelief at the machine racing ahead of them.

Because instead of that impossibly dark mecha that seemed to swallow every trace of light falling upon it, what tore through the smoke was something so luminous it was almost blinding.

Gold.

The entire mecha was gold.

Not merely painted gold, nor covered in some dull metallic coating, but radiating such an intense golden brilliance that the machine almost seemed to have been forged out of light itself.