Anshan

After enduring countless hardships, Rosen finally found Angie in the Jaeger storage bay. Just as he had expected, she was standing beside her beloved "Anshan," supervising its maintenance.

So absorbed was she that she had yet to notice Rosen in the distance. She simply leaned blankly against the railing, head tilted up as she gazed at her steel companion—like a child looking at a beloved toy.

Angie rarely showed such a quiet side of herself. Rosen paused in surprise and followed her gaze—

Then the enormous "Anshan," filled with his own painstaking effort, instantly occupied his vision, towering before him.

Anshan—the most powerful 7th Generation Light Jaeger. He was unmatched, extraordinary in every aspect.

That was Rosen's assessment of him.

This white-painted Jaeger was not tall. He could be considered the shortest Jaeger in the Hong Kong Shatterdome, standing only 130 meters high. He was also the lightest, weighing just 3,750 tons at full fuel capacity—not even half the weight of an 8th Generation Jaeger. His power core was an X14 Super Monomer Processor with a built-in nuclear reactor, while his operating system was the "Vanguard" all-purpose tactical response cockpit. Both were far more advanced than Kunlun's.

Anshan had an overall humanoid silhouette and curved armor plating to reduce air resistance. He was the Jaeger whose appearance most closely resembled a human's. In addition, modeled after the Eureka Striker, he carried a pair of massive T-18 mechanical shoulder-blade fins on his back, commonly known as Angel Wings. Like a pair of fins, they extended from behind his shoulders to above his waist and used aerodynamics to maintain the Jaeger's balance in close combat.

Every one of those design choices existed to pursue Anshan's ultimate attribute—the maximization of speed.

Anshan was absolutely the fastest Jaeger in history.

A total of twenty-four omnidirectional vector-thruster nozzles of various sizes were installed across his body, commonly known as Hell Divers. They were distributed across his shoulders, elbows, back, lower back, behind his knees, ankles, and soles. These nozzles could rotate freely through 360 degrees in every direction.

In theory, if all of them fired backward at once, they could accelerate Anshan from a standstill to a Hiss-impact state within five seconds. Of course, that was only in theory—

No creature in the world could withstand that kind of acceleration.

When those nozzles propelled him in different directions, Anshan could perform far more movements than even humanity's greatest gymnasts. He could even use them to glide through the air for brief periods.

No other Jaeger could surpass him in maneuverability—absolutely none.

Perhaps flying monsters could exchange a few moves with Anshan, but they would always tire eventually. Anshan would not.

The thought made Rosen thrill with excitement. Piloting a flying Jaeger had been his greatest childhood dream. Though it still seemed far beyond his reach, at least he now had something to hope for.

But pursuing ultimate speed came with a corresponding price.

First, Anshan could not carry large quantities of conventional or ion weapons like a heavy Jaeger. He had only two weapons—the wrist blades on both hands and the Tathas Impactor.

The two hooked, silver-white wrist blades were made of corrosion-resistant metal. Normally, they retracted into metal sheaths along the outer sides of his forearms. Their blades were fitted with carbon nanotubes for heat dissipation; the frictional heat generated while cutting monsters would be rapidly absorbed and dispersed by the nanotubes, greatly extending the blades' lifespan.

The Tathas Impactor was a large electrostatic collector. It was as large as a truck and installed inside Anshan's forearms. Whenever Anshan began moving, the impactor would completely gather the static electricity generated by friction between the machine's parts. Then, when Anshan's fists came into contact with a monster, that static electricity—at a voltage of up to forty million volts—would be fully released in pulse form. No monster could withstand such a pulse. They would fall into a brief daze and ultimately be left at Anshan's mercy.

Angie had used this method to take down at least three monsters.

But the biggest problem was...

Both weapons were close-combat weapons.

In other words, Anshan was helpless against enemies beyond a certain distance.

Second, those nozzles inflicted far too much wear on the Jaeger. Every time Anshan returned from battle, he had to be sent back to the workshop for extensive maintenance. This drastically reduced both his deployment frequency and combat efficiency. That headache-inducing problem remained unresolved to this day. The total maintenance cost spent on Anshan had nearly exceeded the Jaeger's original construction cost.

Perhaps Anshan was the last light Jaeger built with speed as its core.

As he looked at the enormous white figure, Rosen thought to himself.

At that moment, several technicians hung by safety ropes in front of Anshan's left hand, inspecting the wrist blade extension mechanism. Another work crew had secured a mobile scaffold beside Anshan's right knee, inserting hoses into the various feed ports there to fill them with coolant, lubricant, and anti-oxidant agent.

A third work crew operated drones from a work platform. Their drones carried metal detectors and slowly scanned Anshan's exterior inch by inch, checking for fractures or hollow sections beneath the armor that had not been discovered in time.

Angie tilted her head and watched without ever interfering. She was only responsible for piloting; she knew nothing about anything else. Meddling would do neither side any good.

Just as Rosen was wondering how to greet Angie naturally, someone else beat him to it.

"Hey! Angie!"

Not far away, two agile figures ran toward Angie. One was broad-shouldered and heavily built; Rosen recognized him immediately as Tang Jia. The other was lean and slender—that was Tang Yi. They were twin brothers.

Rosen remembered that the two brothers had become trainees a year later than he had. But he had already noticed the tattoos on their respective right arms—"River" and "𫚉."

In Rosen's memory, the right arm of the 7th Generation Light Jaeger FL was also painted with the character "River," while "𫚉" had always been the designation for the 6th Generation Jaeger Dongting.

"..."

Rosen suddenly felt that everyone in this world except him was a Jaeger pilot.

The two brothers quickly ran over to Angie's side and began fawning over her.

"Angie, how about some simulation training together?"

"Or we could grab something to eat first."

The brothers' combined offensive clearly flustered Angie. Her little face instantly turned red, and she hurriedly waved her hands.

"Um... I'm still waiting for Anshan's maintenance acceptance report."

"Then we'll wait with you."

The two brothers seemed to have planned this in advance. They plopped down on either side of Angie, then turned to glare at each other as if in provocation. Rosen felt certain that they had made some secret agreement, with Angie as their target.

How could Angie handle being treated like that? She hurriedly looked around in panic—

And happened to meet Rosen's eyes!

"Rosen!"

Angie immediately waved and ran toward Rosen.

"Rosen, what brought you here?"

"I... I came specifically to see you."

Rosen had not yet figured out how to say what he wanted to say, so he could only answer awkwardly.

At the same time, Rosen immediately sensed that the brothers did not think much of him. When they saw him, they did not even shift their seats, and their pairs of eyes glared fiercely at him as though they were about to spit fire.

Great. One trip out, and he had three more enemies.

Rosen felt his headache getting worse.