"There are actually two busty ones?!"
Derek Su froze and blurted it out.
When his gaze focused on that Mecha Girl, her stats panel appeared as well.
[Drifting: 77]
[Acceleration: 82]
[Cornering: 74]
[Boost Charge: 0]
[Stability: 97]
[Impact Resistance: 99]
[Endurance: 91]
It was a panel very similar to Imperial Scale's, with the same high Impact Resistance and Stability. Her straight-line acceleration was even better than Imperial Scale's, though her Cornering and Drifting were far below Imperial Scale's. Add in her appearance and military-style outfit, and it was hard not to suspect she was Imperial Scale's twin sister.
He could not see any special skill, so he had no idea whether this Mecha Girl had already signed a contract or simply did not have one.
Derek Su was just about to ask Imperial Scale whether she knew the Mecha Girl outside.
But the mysterious Mecha Girl who had been pressed against the glass suddenly took two steps back.
She made a throat-slitting gesture at Imperial Scale.
The corner of her mouth lifted into a cold smile.
Facing everyone in the meeting room, she slowly backed away step by step.
Then she turned and left.
She moved quickly, and before long, she was already far away.
"Uh, Imperial Scale, do you know this..."
Before he could finish, Imperial Scale suddenly stood up.
Under Derek Su and Absolute Shadow's stunned gazes, she chased after her with a serious expression.
"Hey, Imperial Scale!" Derek Su called out, but he could not stop her.
He chased after Imperial Scale out of the club, but by the time he reached the entrance, Imperial Scale and the mysterious Mecha Girl had already almost vanished into the distance. He could only faintly make out two black dots.
"This is ridiculous! Why are they running so fast?!"
They had been just about to sign the Core Contract.
He had been about to say it to Imperial Scale, and then this happened.
There was no way he could catch up. Fortunately, Imperial Scale's combat strength was more than enough, so he did not have to worry too much.
He turned and went back into the club. Absolute Shadow was still seated where she had been, her eyes lowered slightly, her expression full of thought.
"Absolute Shadow, do you know what just happened?"
Absolute Shadow lifted her gaze, stayed silent for a moment, then chose her words carefully. "Boss, do you know how Mecha Girls are born?"
Derek Su sat down across from Absolute Shadow and said blankly, "Is that something I'm supposed to know?"
"Most pilots don't know, and they don't really care, but if they ask their own Mecha Girl, she'll usually tell them... You never asked?" Absolute Shadow's mouth twitched, and she seemed a little speechless. She held her forehead and sighed. "It seems you're not the kind of pilot who cares all that much about Mecha Girls either. Sigh!"
That was a serious misunderstanding.
Derek Su quickly waved his hands. "I just thought these were private matters for you, so I didn't want to pry. When you want to tell me, you'll tell me. Like now."
"Normally, we don't tell pilots these things, because the birth of Mecha Girls may be difficult for you humans to understand. First of all, we are not mechanical creations. We simply have some traits that resemble mechanical creations. Like humans, we are an independent species, but our birth does not rely on the union of male and female. What we rely on is a tree."
"A tree?!" Derek Su seemed to hear a crack, the sound of something shattering.
"Zuanka, which we call the World Tree, is the mother who nurtures us. That tree is on Mecha Island. It feeds on raw Sodium Fiber Ore, and the fruit it bears becomes a Mecha Girl's AI Core. The true birth of a Mecha Girl goes through three stages.
"First, an AI Core forms on Zuanka. That is equivalent to the soul in your human theology. After that, it is taken to the World Wall to learn. Most AI Cores need half a year to fully absorb knowledge, but a small number absorb knowledge extremely quickly. AI Cores that absorb knowledge especially fast are born as high-performance Mecha Girls or top-tier Mecha Girls.
"Once their knowledge is saturated, the AI Cores are sent back near Zuanka to form their bodies. After that, they become what you see before you."
Derek Su sat frozen in place, unable to recover for a long time.
No wonder Stella had never said where she came from.
That was an overwhelming amount of information. Just the fact that mechanical cores were not made by humans or by Mecha Girls, but by a tree called Zuanka, was enough to make most people find it hard to believe. After that would come endless questions and doubts. Maybe the Mecha Girls had already gone through that kind of interrogation before, so as long as their pilots did not ask, they chose not to say anything.
As for Stella, with that silly personality of hers, she probably had never thought about it at all.
"All right, I accept your setting now. You were born from a tree." Derek Su clicked his tongue and let out a long breath. "Then what does that have to do with the mysterious Mecha Girl just now?"
"Zuanka is the mother who nurtures us, and each of its branches represents a certain Mecha Girl family, which is what you humans call a model. Imperial Scale is the first Mecha Girl of the DL family. The Mecha Girls born after her will be generated using her attributes as a framework, becoming DL-02, DL-03, and so on. Most of those Mecha Girls will perform below Imperial Scale, but there may also be individual cases where their performance surpasses hers."
After hearing Absolute Shadow explain it, Derek Su understood.
"So that Mecha Girl who looked so much like Imperial Scale was DL-02? She was born based on Imperial Scale's performance framework?"
"You can understand it that way, more or less." Absolute Shadow nodded. "Mecha Girls of different models are competitors, but the competition between Mecha Girls of the same model is even more intense, especially between the first and second models. If the second model believes the first model cannot represent the honor of that model, she will mock the first model, and may even challenge her."
Hearing Absolute Shadow say this, Derek Su suddenly remembered when he had taken Stella to a training race before and happened to run into Leo Li and Comet.
Comet and Stella were Mecha Girls of the same model, and Comet had been hostile toward Stella, believing Stella had disgraced the XC model.
At the time, he had found it baffling, but now he more or less understood.
Comet's model was XC-76, while Stella was XC-99. Comet had been born earlier than Stella.
The way Comet looked at Stella back then was probably similar to how an elder in a family looked at a useless junior.
"And I'm afraid that Mecha Girl may be another situation entirely." Absolute Shadow rubbed her chin with her finger and frowned. "You know the second stage of a Mecha Girl's birth is entering the World Wall to learn driving knowledge. Suppose two AI Cores both studied your race recordings, and both of them were top-tier. In that case, they would be born almost one after the other. The one born first becomes the first unit of the DL model, while the one born after can only rank second. In that situation, the second-model Mecha Girl is not created using the first model's performance framework as a template."
"So?" Derek Su vaguely felt that something was wrong.
"So in that case, the rivalry between them is almost impossible to resolve. They'll fight until one side submits to the other. The defeated side will usually choose to be sent back to the Recycling Yard or become a functional Mecha Girl."
The air in the meeting room turned cold and stagnant.
To make it easier for Derek Su to understand, Absolute Shadow continued, "You know wolf packs, right? A wolf pack can only have one wolf king. When two wolf kings are born at the same time, one of them is bound to leave the pack."
Derek Su understood.
He shot to his feet and rushed out of the club without looking back.
He had to find Imperial Scale.
No matter who ended up putting an end to this so-called battle between wolf kings...
He would protect his Mecha Girl.
...
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