The Mediator's Power

"What?!"

Le Creuset jolted, because the voice had not been transmitted through vibrations—it had acted directly on his mind.

Then, in the next instant, a wave of dizziness struck him.

For a moment, he thought he had returned to that laboratory reeking of disinfectant, where people in white coats used electrodes to stimulate his upper body and scalpels to harvest tissue from him for experiments—

Bzzzt—

A high-frequency alarm rang out in the cockpit. Providence Gundam's life-support system had detected a violent, abnormal alpha-wave spike in its pilot's brain activity.

This—how was that possible?

In the second before he lost consciousness, Le Creuset instantly realized that this was a mental attack targeting him directly.

Then the hereditary sixth sense passed down through the Flaga Family activated, driving his body to press a button on instinct.

[Time and Space Ripple Phase System · Activated]

Accompanied by a cold synthesized voice, Providence Gundam's pure-white outer armor plates slid apart layer by layer.

What was exposed beneath was not a cold mechanical skeleton, but a crystal framework glowing faintly blue, densely interwoven like a neural network.

A psychic-sensing framework.

As that dim blue radiance flowed across the entire machine, it was as though an invisible barrier had been raised.

The abyssal pressure crushing his brain vanished in an instant.

He regained control of his body. But in the mere fraction of a second it took for him to recover consciousness, the two green dots representing his wingmen on the tactical display had already turned into glaring red "LOST" signals.

"Unit 2! Unit 3!"

The terrified shouts of the pilots of Units 4 and 5 came through the comm channel, followed by violent explosions and the static of signals being forcibly cut off.

Two more brilliant fireworks blossomed over the gray sea