Levels—the wall no shipgirl can simply walk around.
Shipgirls have datafied bodies with EXP bars and HP bars like game characters. Fight, drill, grind, and they level up; hit a bottleneck and they can still wear it down. Their growth is, comparatively, smooth—and they won't actually die.
Not so for Magi-corrupted humans. They train with their lives. Every realm is a ghost gate: fail to kick it open and you come away with broken bones—or you don't come back at all.
But while levels make a shipgirl's life "easier," they also shackle her growth. 79, 89, 99—each is a hurdle; and breaking past level 100 is an even bigger divide.
That's why you often find Magi-corrupted beings above 100 in practical strength, while shipgirls struggle. To avoid falling behind in the long war, the Abyssal Main Base devised various ways to break the cap.
The Airfield Princess's officer cap—and the strange horn of the Abyssal Yamato—are one such method.
Another is the N-class flagships: special-brewed Abyssals "born" already at 101 and higher.
So when the Airfield Princess hears that Hikaru's base has a bunch of 100+ shipgirls—that's a first for the human side—she can't help suspecting they've found a new kind of boundary-breaking power.
"I'd like to know the trick too," Abyssal Musashi said coolly. "You could always go ask him yourself."
The Airfield Princess shrugged. "In that case… we shouldn't kill that human?"
Lady M (Abyssal staff officer) replied, "That's what the Red-Haired Lord instructed. But steel has no eyes. If he dies, that's fate."
After all, the Abyssals already have ways to break caps. If they can't steal Hikaru's method, burying it works too.
"Then what are we waiting for?" The Fortress Princess clapped once. "We're both here. Let's hit the island and bag Hikaru alive."
Musashi asked, "How many exclusive-type flagships did you bring?"
The Airfield Princess and Fortress Princess traded a look. "Exclusive? None. We do have twenty or thirty standard types—DDMs, battleship-types, that lot."
Abyssal flagships—especially the exclusive archetypes—tend to be proud to a fault. These two travel together because their strengths complement, but most other exclusives won't play second fiddle. It's not about pouring tea; it's that these two are so overpowering that subordinates get few chances to "earn" growth. Over time, only the less ambitious, less cunning standard-type flagships remain content under them.
Which is why Musashi asked.
"In that case, we don't have enough power."
Her ironclad verdict made the Airfield Princess doubt reality.
She jabbed a thumb toward 544 Base behind them—over a hundred square kilometers of platform. "Say that again. The base is here. We've got fifty-plus nameless flagships and between three and four million troops. And we're still 'not enough'?"
The convoy that came with 544 Base pushed the Abyssal host past four million. Even if the enemy had multiple Bismarck-class monsters—say ten of them—each one could still be swarmed by 400,000 Abyssals and five standard flagships, while Musashi and the other heavy hitters picked them off in detail.
With a lead like that—dragon riding your face—and she says it's not enough? Has she lost the plot?
The Fortress Princess stared at Musashi, suspicious. "You're not some fake J-Faction ship, are you?"
It wasn't baseless snark. Everyone knows Abyssals are born from the world's ugliest emotions, and in WWII the J-Faction's stereotype was madness—overreach—hubris. First they tried to swallow the Chinese Faction whole, and even while being ground down they had the nerve to jab the US-Faction in its most vital artery.
Hubris to the point of self-destruction.
[End of Chapter]
[100 Power Stones = Extra Chapter]
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