(Heartfelt thanks to 'Youyouzi's Lament' for the reward!)
How could they not feel stifled?
As creations of Professor Grunewald, the strongest mind whom even the Four Sages admitted they could not compare to, the mechanical soldiers here all considered themselves superior, better than the mechanical soldiers created by the other three strongest minds.
This was not arrogance. It was fact.
Hadn't Sumire Muroto said that there were parts of Grunewald's mechanical soldier modification blueprints that even she completely failed to understand?
Moreover, Sumire Muroto had even admitted that if it were her, she would have no confidence in reviving Howaki Takuto from a fragment of his brain, converting his entire body into machinery until his degree of mechanization approached one hundred percent.
That was no longer modification. It was creation.
Sumire Muroto's current technology was limited to converting only part of a human body into machinery. The other two chief directors of the mechanization project were at the same level, utterly incapable of mechanizing a person to nearly one hundred percent. They could not even reach fifty percent.
This showed just how terrifying Grunewald's technology was.
Mechanical soldiers modified by someone like that were naturally far more powerful than those modified by the other chief directors.
Of course, that was only in terms of performance. Combat skills still depended on the individual.
Take Howaki Takuto. His body was nearly one hundred percent mechanized, allowing him to wield tremendous power. Yet during his previous encounter with Tina, even when cornered, he only knew how to endure attacks with his body. His own attacks consisted solely of throwing punch after punch. He relied entirely on his performance in battle, and compared to true masters, his combat skills were so poor they were unbearable to watch.
If Howaki Takuto's combat skills had been