Chapter 130: The Genius of the Toyokawa Family
Hikigaya Hachiman remembered Gojo Satoru mentioning a company that had developed mecha capable of fighting cursed spirits. That company was Toyokawa Logistics. He had looked into the data before; it was the family enterprise of Sakiko Toyokawa, his "partner in destiny."
The current head of Toyokawa Logistics was presumably Sakiko's mother.
Seeing Sakiko's frugal lifestyle, Hachiman had assumed the company was on the brink of bankruptcy—otherwise, why would a young lady of her status be living in a rented apartment?
There was clearly a hidden story there, but as it was Sakiko's private business, Hachiman didn't pry.
The day after tomorrow, Saturday, Hachiman was scheduled to visit Tokyo Jujutsu High. On that same day, Toyokawa Logistics had invited the students and faculty for a tour. Hachiman planned to take a look then.
'Looks like this is a live combat test', Hachiman thought silently as he watched the staff busy themselves below.
In reality, several sorcerers had already appeared on the scene. Given their rank, they could have exorcised the Grade 3 curse easily, but they didn't act immediately. Instead, they moved at a leisurely pace, waiting for the heavy trucks to arrive.
Hachiman had personally experienced Titans during both the Great Crusade and the Horus Heresy. He knew the terrifying power of those war machines, hailed as the "God-Machines." Originally agricultural machinery from the Dark Age of Technology, once converted for war, these massive mechs were invincible and all-conquering on the battlefield.
In Hachiman's estimation, given the current world's industrial level, he wouldn't see a magnificent Titan standing on the horizon before he died.
Yet, a small enterprise had seemingly succeeded in research and development—it felt like science fiction. The R&D costs must have been astronomical. How could a company not even in the Fortune 500 pour such massive capital into this and achieve results?
It was strange. However, Toyokawa Logistics seemed to have secured funding from the Sorcery Association, which meant they had shown something persuasive enough to get those stingy old men at the headquarters to open their wallets. Hachiman's curiosity was piqued; he wanted to see what could make those elders pay up so willingly.
Hachiman parked his car nearby. He leaped onto the glass curtain wall of a skyscraper, shooting out dozens of vibrant blood lines from his fingertips like Spider-Man. These lines anchored to the top of the building. With a sharp tug, he catapulted himself upward, reaching the rooftop in moments.
From this vantage point, he saw the Grade 3 curse causing the traffic jam.
"I don't want to brew coffee... I don't want to brew coffee..."
The curse looked like a coffee cup. One hand was a coffee grinder, and the other was a milk frothing wand. It was likely formed from the collective resentment of baristas—workers who had to brew hundreds of cups a day for eight hours straight without a break. The curse stood about five meters tall.
"I don't want to brew coffee!"
It stood on the elevated highway, violently kicking and punching the abandoned cars left behind by evacuated civilians. For Hachiman, killing such a curse from three hundred meters away would be trivial. His real interest lay in the cargo of the heavy trucks.
Soon, the three trucks marked with the Toyokawa Logistics logo parked beneath the highway. Operators moved quickly, and the truck frames slid open. As Hachiman suspected, they contained single-pilot mecha intended for a combat trial.
"This is...?"
Three black mecha slid out of the trucks via mechanical rails. They stood approximately 3.5 meters tall, with humanoid heads and limbs. The thick, black armor plating made them look incredibly bulky.
'Why do these look so much like Astartes?'
The more Hachiman looked, the more they resembled a "knock-off" version of the Space Marine armor from his own writings. It was clear the designer wanted the aesthetic of Hachiman's Astartes, but due to industrial limitations, they lacked the smooth, rounded finish, resulting in a much coarser appearance.
The only difference from Hachiman's vision was that this armor wasn't connected to the flesh and nerves; it required a pilot to enter and operate it manually with control sticks.
Pshhh—
The back of the mecha was hollow and swung open. The internal space was cramped but enough to fit a person. The mecha knelt on one knee, bodies slightly hunched, waiting for their pilots. Three Grade 3 sorcerers stepped forward and climbed inside. Once they were positioned, the back armor hissed shut, sealing them in.
It really did require human pilots. Hachiman realized these weren't autonomous machines meant to fight curses, but rather wearable "power suits" designed to protect the user.
As the pilots finished their diagnostics, the silent giants slowly stood up amidst clouds of high-pressure steam. Hachiman initially thought they were electric, but he sensed something else.
"Hybrid drive? Cursed energy and electricity?"
He realized the power source was a hybrid. Making pure machinery run on cursed energy was an immense challenge. Given his experience with psionic power and the finicky nature of cursed energy, Hachiman was impressed.
"Wait."
He noticed something deeper. As the three mecha fully activated, he caught a scent of the truth. These mecha were... "alive."
A certain amount of cursed energy existed within the machine itself upon activation. And this energy didn't originate from human negative emotions; it was more stagnant and foul. It was a cursed spirit.
Hachiman discovered that the mecha contained significant portions of cursed spirit bodies. It was these "bio-components" that operated the mechanical limbs. The pilot's own cursed energy acted as a stimulus to move the internal spirit-flesh, thereby operating the machine.
An intriguing design. By using this "biological shortcut," the user could drive the machine via cursed energy—achieving what pure mechanics could not through a hybrid of machine and spirit.
The mecha were armed with massive katanas—Zanbato types, given their scale. They were clearly custom-made cursed tools. Once the pilots were ready, the charging cables on the sides of the mecha disconnected.
The three units charged at the curse in a triangular formation. Their feet were equipped with gears for high-speed movement, giving them an explosive initial burst. Their movements were surprisingly fluid.
"I don't want to make coffee!"
The curse vomited a deluge of corrosive coffee at the approaching mecha. The wave of liquid dissolved cars instantly, making the metal bubble. It was a lethal acid.
The mecha shifted. Thrusters ignited in their back armor, and the sudden flame propelled them into the air. They avoided the sulfuric coffee and closed the distance through the sky, moving even faster than they had on the ground.
"However, the cursed energy consumption is too high," Hachiman observed. He could see the Grade 3 sorcerers struggling; they were visibly shaking inside the cockpits. They were being drained rapidly. Yet, they persevered.
The three mecha converged from different angles, driving their blades into the curse's body and literally dismembering it.
The Grade 3 curse was neutralized. Toyokawa Logistics' machines had delivered a flawless performance: a 0% casualty rate. Though it was a three-on-one fight by Grade 3 sorcerers, it was a successful live-fire test.
While it was still negligible to Hachiman, it was a breakthrough from zero to one. These mecha had massive potential. They could drastically increase the survival rate of sorcerers and, if energy efficiency improved, they would be revolutionary. They could allow low-grade sorcerers to exert the power of high-grade ones.
From what he saw, Toyokawa Logistics was aiming for "Power Armor." Hachiman could create such things with his sorcery, but achieving it through technology on Earth—limited by materials and forging levels—was a monumental task.
Hachiman became deeply curious about Toyokawa Logistics' Sixth Research Institute.
Since they had already used his Astartes as a template for power armor, he suspected they were already designing "God-Machines"—Titans. After all, Hachiman had provided the concept; if they had the capability, they would try to realize it. Looking at the exterior design, he knew they were following the illustrations he had drawn for the Great Crusade series.
After tonight, this company's reputation in the jujutsu world would skyrocket. How had they stayed so quiet? Why did the Kamo family's intelligence network have nothing on them? Toyokawa's secrecy was impeccable. They had gone from a delivery service to mecha developers in the blink of an eye. It wasn't just "overtaking on a curve"; it was a rocket-fueled tech upgrade.
Tomorrow, Hachiman wanted to ask Sakiko what was really going on with Toyokawa Logistics.
But it went deeper than the "budget-milking" front-end projects Hachiman saw. Their true experiments had already reached the level of combating Grade 1 curses.
In a valley in Europe, a machine seven to eight meters tall, gleaming with silver-white luster, screamed through the sky at 300 km/h. Its surface bore the marks of many curses—it looked like a grotesque patchwork of cursed spirit and machine. Half-spirit, half-metal.
A massive Western Dragon curse had been forcibly restrained and converted into a mechanical puppet. Multiple turret batteries were embedded deep into its flesh, drawing power directly from the curse's core. It was unmanned, controlled via real-time signals from an AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control System) plane flying at 18,000 meters.
Inside the AWACS, the cabin was a giant mobile laboratory filled with massive conduits. Amidst the specialized machinery, a scientist in a white lab coat typed feverishly on a screen. He was writing the program. When he hit the "Destroy" command, the dragon-mech below opened fire.
Its back turrets drained the curse core's power through conduits, unleashing a dozen thick cursed-energy beams in a carpet-bombing run. Additionally, its back-mounted vertical launch systems fired high-explosive missiles specifically designed to harm curses. As the cursed energy beams hit the ground, a series of violent explosions erupted, and the Grade 1 curse hidden in the fire let out a pathetic wail.
This man was the Chief Designer and Chief Engineer of Toyokawa Logistics—Professor Inagawa.
"A failure," he muttered, shaking his head despite the dragon-mech's performance. "The cursed energy utilization rate is still too low."
The most shocking thing about him was his brain. It was massively distended, looking three or four times larger than a normal human head. It had mutated into a deformity, overflowing with a constant stream of inspiration and knowledge.
On the table before him lay Hikigaya Hachiman's published Great Crusade series. As Hachiman suspected, the professor's inspiration came entirely from these books.
Professor Inagawa was a fanatic.
The blackboard behind him was covered in formulas, conjectures, and structural breakdowns of Astartes and mecha.
The Chief Designer of Toyokawa Logistics was literally copying Hachiman's books for inspiration.
"It's coming... the divine revelation."
Above Inagawa's head, a black feather was enshrined. This feather was so dark it gleamed, its tip adorned with intricate, swirling patterns. It was a symbol of divine favor—the "God" who provided Inagawa with constant knowledge and wisdom.
If Hachiman were to see Inagawa's computer, he would see sketches for a machine designed to match the highest class of Titan in Warhammer: the Emperor-class Titan. According to the sketches, it would stand four to five hundred meters tall and cost billions of dollars.
"Damn it! Is there no core that can replace a Special Grade curse?"
Inagawa's supercomputer calculated that even a Special Grade curse could barely sustain the energy required for this "God-Machine." Fusing different Special Grades together would only overstress the structure. Furthermore, Special Grade curses were incredibly difficult to capture, and even the Sorcery Association lacked a living sample for study.
"Takamagahara... the Key."
Following a divine revelation, Professor Inagawa had begun collecting legends that spanned over a thousand years.
This was his true purpose for coming to and controlling the Toyokawa family.
"The one of the bloodline... I will find them."
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