Chapter 36: Kidnapping XII - The Collection Underground

The director led them to a bookcase and pulled out two books. Then he pushed one in and pulled out a third. With a rumble, the bookcase sank into the wall and then slid to the side, revealing a hidden chamber within. The lights turned on immediately. Inside was a whole suite with a couch, small table, and even a wall-mounted commscreen. 

“I knew it,” Belevere muttered under her breath.

The director turned around. “Did you say something?”

Belevere quickly shook her head. “No, nothing.”

With a suspicious narrowing of his eyes, he turned around and continued his way.

Although it felt like she was entering some kind of forbidden zone where no student or former student of AMI should ever find themselves in, Belevere couldn’t help but look around. She wasn’t even sure what she was looking for. Some kind of dirty secret, perhaps, or because she was just curious about how the much-feared director of the school lived. But she found nothing. 

Oddly disappointing, honestly. It was just a normal looking place.

Oblivious to her snooping, the director led them down a small hallway to an... elevator? It was a clear glass door with nothing on the other side except an empty tube. There was a button beside the door. The director pressed it.

Sure enough, the elevator chamber slid up silently and stopped with a ding, and the door slid open. 

“Was this always here?” she asked.

“Of course not. I had this whole place installed when I took this office,” Director Saquest said proudly. “Is this not the peak of efficiency, having your workplace right next to your home?”

“Y-yeah.” Belevere looked away. She had to admit it had a certain appeal to it. In the future, with her and Annabelle in an office, and then...

Stop.

She mentally berated herself for not focusing. She still had to save Annabelle. Thanks to Alecto’s help, she had the chance to. There was no way she was going to waste it.

The elevator was small, probably built for one person, or two at most. Three people was a tight squeeze. Alecto began fidgeting soon after she squeezed in. 

“Stop moving,” she hissed. Alecto stopped, though he was still as tense as a wound up spring.

Aside from that incident, the elevator descended smoothly and slid to a stop. The door didn’t open automatically; the director had to key in a code for the door to slide open. They spilled out of the elevator, out of a support pillar in the Academy Building’s underground parking lot, and they all breathed a sigh of relief.

This late, there weren’t many cars.

In their vicinity, there was just one, a sleek black sports car. It beeped as it unlocked.

The director strode over and got into the driver’s seat. Alecto headed toward the back, but Belevere stopped him. “You should sit in the front. It’s all thanks to you after all...”

“No, no. I could never! It would be inappropriate for me to sit in the front seat with a knight,” Alecto said, waving his hand. He looked at the ground. “But if you don’t mind, we could—”

The car suddenly let out a loud honk, making them both jump.

“Will you two get on already?!” the director shouted impatiently.

The two of them stared at each other a bit longer before Alecto resolutely pulled open the back door. Belevere could only get into the front.

Seatbelts sprang from the side and locked them in. Having secured all of them, the director stepped on the accelerator; the engine roared and the sports car flew forward. Instead of using the AI, the director manually drove them out of the parking lot and onto the road.

Surprisingly, the director’s driving wasn’t bad at all. It was a bit more unstable than an AI, but that was to be expected. In this day and age where people were overly reliant on driving AIs to get around, people like the director were a black sheep of sorts.

Not only was a human more fallible, they couldn’t go as fast as AIs. The director probably couldn’t even bring out half of the car’s top speed. That discrepancy made human drivers hated thanks to their tendency to cause traffic accidents.

The sports car raced down the empty academy roads at a mere two hundred kilometers an hour, its large engine blaring its presence. Compared to the quiet tram or other less flashy cars, the noise of the sports car grinded on Belevere’s ears, though the director didn’t seem to even notice.

“Director. Wouldn’t it be faster to let the AI drive?” Belevere finally couldn’t take their snail’s pace anymore. Besides, she was reasonably certain that the AI would maximize the efficiency of the engine and would probably engage the sound mufflers as well on top of making it to their destination faster. Win win win situation.

The director grimaced and sighed. “You’re right.”

He turned a mechanical key that booted on the AI. A few moments later after when the AI was ready, he transferred control of the vehicle from manual to automatic without a hiccup, and the vehicle began to accelerate smoothly

The blaring rumbling of the exhaust disappeared, leaving only a low, smooth hum as the car practically flew over the road, breaking past the original two hundred kilometers easily. The surroundings turned into a blur.

According to the director, his actual permanent residence wasn’t too far from the Academy, sitting just outside the limits of the city-sized campus. However, it still took them around a dozen minutes before they came into view of a large mansion fit for a noble. It was situated on a hill.

Long before they got there, the car had already sent an authentication signal to the front gate. The open gate welcomed them and the car parked itself into the garage once inside.

“Well then, come on. I’ll take you to my mech collection,” the director said after they all got out of the car and stood in the large space. Belevere looked around, seeing several other cars. He doesn’t just have a mech collection, but also a car collection, huh? I wonder what else he collects?

Mechs took up way more space than cars did. She didn’t see anything behind the mansion that looked like it could comfortably hold more than one or two mechs, which meant it had to be in the hill itself.

The director led them to an elevator. It was much bigger than the one they crowded into in the academy. No, this one was made for a large group, possibly even over ten people with plenty of space left over. 

Probably so he could bring his friends down and showcase his collection?

Perhaps keeping a collection is a symbol of status for nobility and the director wasn’t as eccentric as she thought. 

The elevator descended and opened its huge double doors, revealing a vast underground chamber—longer than it was wide. Steel lined the walls and huge lights turned on to illuminate the interior. A huge, thick red and gold carpet that must have cost a fortune to make was rolled out on the floor between them. It was as if the whole hill beneath the mansion had been emptied out. Massive support beams made sure the whole thing didn’t cave in under the combined weight of the earth and building above.

But more impressive than the chamber itself was the mechs that stood side by side on either side of the corridor-like chamber. They were organized meticulously by size from light at the front to heavy in the back, from melee mechs in the front to the ranged mechs in the back.

Belevere didn’t recognize the specific models of many of them, but Alecto did. His eyes were wide and practically glitterings as he beheld the metal giants that lined up like guards along the carpet. A hangar door sat at the end, emblazoned with Director Saquest’s Knight Crest—a book crossed with swords behind it.

Director Saquest turned to them and made a sweeping bow. “Welcome to my collection.”

He looked fondly behind him. “Unfortunately, we don’t have much time, so I can’t introduce many of them, so let us skip to our destination. A ballistic rifleman mech, a spearman mech, and temporarily borrowing an aerial mech of Odis’s choice, right?”

As the deal was struck by Alecto, Belevere stepped back. Alecto nodded. “Belevere will be piloting it.”

The director winced. “She will, huh? How about this, let’s revise our agreement. If the mech gets damaged more than twenty percent as rated by the BME, the mech is yours, but you must pay me back the cost of the mech at just one percent interest compounded annually?”

What the director was worried about wasn’t damage from battle, but damage sustained when putting an expert candidate or pilot inside a normal mech. 

Everyone knew that expert pilots needed to pilot expert mechs that could weather the damage caused by oversynchronance and driving the mech past its physical limits. Such mechs always incorporated expensive exotics and variant elements. If the mech didn’t have them, then the expert pilot often caused more damage to themselves than the enemy did to them.

Although she took nearly no damage in her battles against Alecto and Jeremiah in the tournament, her mech was still in much worse shape than it had started in. The real miracle wasn’t in her breakthrough, but the fact that the Avald managed to last until the end of everything.

On the other hand, oversynchronance also made mechs more resilient to structural damage for as long as the effect was active, so that may have been why.

Personally, she thought the deal wasn’t bad. An average aerial mech could cost maybe twenty-five million marges. While that was a lot of money to most people, the status of knights meant that even mildly successful ones of them still could still bring in multiple millions annually according to her research.

She wasn’t sure, though. Annabelle would know.

Alecto, someone she had decided to tentatively put on the same level as Annabelle, looked like he was still hesitating.

“Twenty percent total isn’t much to work with,” he finally said. “You also have to consider the fact Belevere is just a candidate....”

He looked at her nervously and she stared back in confusion.

“Ahem... It is just as likely that she does not enter oversynchronance and will suffer damage from the enemy,” Alecto said. “Twenty-five percent internal or fifty percent external, trading half a percent of external damage for each percent internal.”

“BME standards?”

“Of course.”

The director rubbed his chin. “That’s acceptable, then. And for the two other mechs, you may choose from any combination of current-gen mechs with a combined cost of under forty million. Is that acceptable to you?”

“Yes. Thank you, Director,” Alecto said with a low bow.

“In that case, please sign the document. It’s our verbal agreements recorded and transliterated.” With a swipe of his hand, the director sent a virtual document to Alecto’s comms. As Alecto read through the document, the director beckoned to Belevere. “Come. Let us pick out while of the aerial mechs you will be piloting.”