"Sayla, stay here, or drive straight back to White Base."
Stepping on the boarding rope, Eli, who had not even had time to put on a pilot suit, shouted to Sayla, who stood with both hands anxiously clasped in front of her chest.
Sayla, who had followed him all the way without contributing much, understood very well that now was exactly the time when she should not do anything unnecessary and distract Eli.
Sayla's gaze followed Eli as he climbed the boarding rope to the chest of Unit 6, Mudrock. After the two exchanged one last look, Eli slipped into Mudrock's cockpit.
As the hatch closed, the instruments and screens throughout the machine lit up, signifying that this unit, freshly assembled and still in the testing phase, was ready to be deployed in actual combat.
Mudrock's twin eyes lit up, and the outside view appeared before Eli.
Eli immediately looked down and saw that Sayla had already gotten into the driver's seat of the jeep and was looking in Mudrock's direction.
Her gaze shifted from the twin-eye monitor to the chest area where Eli was.
Eli could understand that Sayla had returned to the jeep because she still wanted to go back to White Base and fight alongside everyone else.
Fortunately, from the communications, he learned that the enemy was still being held at the entrance, and the Pegasus-class manufacturing factory was still safe.
Eli operated the machine, raised its left hand, and gave everyone in the hangar a thumbs-up before piloting it out.
That was right—floating.
As a unit equipped with fixed low-recoil cannons, Mudrock compensated for its mobility shortcomings through thrusters added across its whole body, achieving a hovercraft-like movement effect.
In this way, Mudrock would be able to become a truly fearsome mobile gun platform.
When Eli