Riches and Bitches: I have a gate to an isekai and leveling-up system!

Chapter 282: Breaking point (2!!!)

"What the hell is this?"

This one question appeared in the mouth of everyone who got to take a look at its strangely aerodynamic shape.

A long, ball of glistering skin, with one long yet narrow, black eye filling the front third of its shape.

'So her warnings were on the point!' Etaria thought, recalling all the urging of the spy to go and stop whatever that strange, young man was doing.

For a moment, though, everyone appeared to freeze.

And then…

The strange, ball-like monster suddenly raised its… flaps? Hands? Wings?

Etaria couldn't even tell what were those strangely square pieces of the monster that it brought up, revealing dark insides filled with… even more shapes that had no right to exist in anything created by nature.

'Wait, not a monster but… a golem?' Etaria's thoughts rushed to figure out the secret behind this strange, air-floating monster… Right as it started to poop out some small, black shapes out of the holes it opened up in its body.

'Is it pooping?'

A single thought flashed in the princess's thought… Only for what she took to be merely poop, to explode with a dull noise, refiling the cloud of smoke that was already starting to dissipate with far more of said smoke than there was in the area before.

"BEEEEEEEEEP"

A high-pitched, brain-drilling sound filled the entire area as the monster uttered its cry, nearly forcing the princess and the madam down on their knees.

Their keen senses which usually gave them a great edge over all those below their rank, now proved to be nothing but a hindrance and a source of pain.

Dropping her head down and covering her ears with her hands, Etaria uttered a muted, pained scream, struggling to endure the prolonged noise made by this foreign monster slash golem.

'FUCK! LET IT END ALREADY!'

Irked to a degree she never expected herself to be capable of reaching, Etaria couldn't even tell whether she was only screaming out in her mind alone, or if her voice actually came out from her mouth.

The noise finally ended…. Only to then reappear again, as the monster swung in the air, turning the very middle of its long, singular eye to where the two supremes covered on the ground, struggling to stand upright under the onslaught of this mind-piercing noise.

'Now, what?'

Right as the princess posed the question in her battered mind, the monster started to raise more of its strange, square flaps… This time clearly about to pee after pooping, given how it pushed out a series of strange, metallic penises out of the holes it revealed.

'Are they trying to disgrace me?!' Etaria's cheeks burned with livid fire when all the dicks of the monster… suddenly turned and aimed right at her!

***

'What the hell is this thing?!'

Freaking out no less than her opponent, Madam slowly managed to raise up from the ground where she tried to hide her head under the ground to save herself from this pain-inducing noise.

But after seeing how this strange entity simply continued to hang in the air after dropping an insane amount of smoke over the position of her kin… Madam didn't need to stretch her analytic ability to figure out the answer.

'Oh Peter, you are full of surprises, aren't you?' she thought, suddenly relaxing, despite how tense the situation was.

After all, there was only one plausible explanation of this strange entity's origin. The only place it could come from was Peter's world. And as his loyal ally and a mother-in-law, she surely had nothing to worry about when it came to whatever Peter produced, right?

Madam relaxed and even managed to breathe a small sigh of relief… When a single detail disturbed her peace.

For past the darkness of the entity's eyes…. She noticed a strangely disfigured head… No, a peculiarly looking helmet worn by what could only be a humanoid being!

'It's not a monster… It's a weapon!'

As this realization struck the Madam, another one was quick to follow.

'If it's a weapon, it likely has to be operated by someone. And that someone…'

The sides of the strange, round entity opened up, revealing several long, black rods that appeared from its insides. And all of them to the last one, turned towards where Madam and Etaria were too stunned by the being's appearance to make even a single move.

'And that someone has no idea which side I'm on!'

As the realization settled in, Madam strangely… calmed down. Now that she had a problem to solve, she could actually start working towards its solution.

'He had to tell them something to let them recognize friend from foe. And he would tell something he saw himself happening…'

Bit by bit, Madam's thoughts moved from the problem and arrived closer and closer to the solution… As risky as it was.

'I guess I don't have much choice,' Madam thought, rising from where she stood, ignoring the monster to her side and turning her eyes towards the princess.

"Let's end this," she spoke out loud, finally forcing the princess to turn her eyes away from Peter's entity and back to her adversary.

And as Madam took a step forward… Rather than channeling the near-endless sea of her aura, she simply dropped the intent that allowed her to keep her human form.

Madam's aura condensed in front of her, allowing her to talk in and allow it to wash away her human form, revealing her actual looks of a massive, perfectly white fox.

'I'm weaker like that… So I need to hope this thing is as anywhere as powerful as it looks…'

The entity… continued to open more and more strange covers over his sides, revealing more and more metal rods of all sorts emerging from within and peeking out, only to turn in a way no metal should be allowed to only to end up pointing right at the two supremes.

And then…

The entity suddenly wobbled first to the right and then to the left, ending in the exact same place and position it was in before.

'A signal?' Madam thought, tensing all of her muscles and lowering her center of weight as she prepared to leap forth…

Only to decompress all of her muscles in a single, powerful leap… to the back.

***

"Support the white one, he said," the main pilot of the maglev muttered under his nose, leaving it to the microphone integrated into his headset to pick his words out, clean them from the noise, and then repeat them clearly to the secondary pilot on the seat to his side.

"And suppress the golden one," the secondary pilot filled in the part his colleague missed. "I think that girl to the right… doesn't she have a golden aura around her of sorts?"

The main pilot raised his hand and flicked a whole row of switches, arming the main batteries of their battle vehicle.

"They are not moving for now, so there's no need for us to fire the first shoot," he pointed out, moving his head down to the row of the switches grouped for the self-defense mechanisms of the vehicle.

The point-defense guns of the maglev were nothing more but a scaled-down version of the ship's main cannons, where the rapid-fire feature replaced the braking power of the higher caliber. And while the active defense systems were much weaker than their main-line cousins…

When it came to destroying any sort of projectile heading for the ship, they had no equal.

"First, let's start with the simplest signal," the main pilot suggested, moving his hand back from the arming switches to the maglev's steering rod. He gently jerked it to the left and right, replicating the ages-old gesture of waving the wings of one's plane.

The maglev was a round vehicle using the power of overmagnetism to stay afloat in the air. As such, it was free of the simplistic technology of wings… And yet, its pilots keep some of the old Air Force traditions true.

After all, there were no major wars when the militaries around the world moved on from using something as unreliable as planes, preventing the development of a culture based on the plane's modern and improved version.

The pilot jerked the steering rod, causing the ship to veer slightly to the left and then to the right, returning right back to the spot it continued to hover over. And this finally forced the parties they observed to react.

The more mature-looking woman to the left stood up, finally shaking off the shock of the air horn the ship used to attract everyone's attention. She then did something to the air around her, making it thicker and harder to see through.

"Is she heating up the air or something?" the secondary pilot muttered, baffled by the sight on the other side of the protective glass of the cockpit. Yet, as he took a look at one of the screens displaying the magnified image of the area he observed, his eyebrows twitched.

"Are you seeing this?" the man asked, tearing his eyes out of the video feed and turning them over to his colleague.

"Yeah, I do," the main pilot muttered. "And I think that means we finally know who's who," he added, turning the magnified video into an overlay on their display with just a few clicks of a few buttons.

As a school-bus-sized white fox appeared where the elegant lady stood, the pilots finally understood their assignment properly.

"Support the white, he said," the main pilot muttered, before gritting his teeth pressing another series of buttons, and flicking several more switches. "Your stick!" he commanded, removing his hands from the steering device and moving them up and slightly to the side, taking over the twin-stick of the aiming systems.

"My stick!" the co-pilot replied, instantly reaching out for the steering stick and focusing his eyes on the various data displayed directly on the cockpit's bulletproof windshield. "I suggest a third pattern," he muttered, leaving the job of picking up and clearing his voice to the microphone embedded into his headset.

"Will do," the commander of the airship sighed in response before fixing his grip on the aiming device, quickly bringing the cross-hair from dancing all over the windshield's display and fixing it on the golden girl.

Even though the pilots were shocked by the woman's transformation into the white fox… their main target appeared to care about it even more than them. And all on its own, that woman's transformation forced the golden girl to turn her attention away from the maglev.

"Third pattern, starting in three, two, one…"

The secondary pilot muttered, taking a deep breath as he counted while moving his left hand to the secondary steering stick, giving him much greater control over the ship's movement than what he could do with just the main stick alone.

For if the main steering only allowed a displacement within the space itself, it was the job of the secondary stick to control pitch, yaw, and roll.

The pilot took a deep breath… before pulling hard on both of the sticks, turning the front of the maglev down… only to steer it back, making it retreat higher up into the air.

"You ready?" the man asked, sparing a short glance at the ship's commander.

"As ready as I will ever be," the man replied, focused on his task of keeping the crosshair on the golden girl for long enough for the onboard computers to process the information and register her as a target. "It's done."

The crosshair on the windshield display turned from its usual gray color to a green one.

"Let's begin. Third pattern…"

The secondary pilled raised the ship's nose a bit before reverting the main stick and sending the maglev into a slow advance forward.

In the current position, all of the maglev's main cannons could freely rain hell at the ground below, well within the limits of the angles they could take.

"The third pattern starts now!" Experience exclusive tales on M V L