The following day Ector woke up in Negi's bedroom. He stretched his arms and lazily opened the wardrobe just to find that there were only women's clothes inside.
"Oh, yeah, this is not my base..."
The day before Ector and his troops had arrived at Negi's camp. The place was desert, with only a couple dead bodies laying around.
At first Ector thought it was a trap, and even after seeing no reaction on the mini-map he was extra careful, sending scout troops to comb the place for any sign of anything wrong. He ended up wasting the whole day, but by night fall he was sure the place was safe, so he decided it would be a good place to set a forward base before proceeding with his conquest, but there was a single problem... none of the buildings were working anymore...
The reason was obvious, all crystal cores from all buildings had been taken away, so, unless he replaced them, he wouldn't be able to get any of them online again. Well, at least doors could still be opened manually and the buildings provided a safe shelter for the night...
"Ugh... But still... I wonder what happened here..."
Ector troops had found many corpses in the forest, there were also corpses in this camp, but they were both from different... should he call it species? or models? Anyway, they were both from different Masters.
"The report states that these two were working together... there is also a third type of servants whose corpses were not found... Did he attack them while they were sending troops to fight me? If so, it would explain why the crystal cores were taken..."
"Master! The new troops have just arrived!"
"Perfect! Have the scouts discovered the enemy tracks?"
"Yes. It was quite easy, actually. The enemy made a road right in the middle of the forest, so it's easy to see."
"Road?? Hmm..."
"There are signs of wheels as well as many footprints."
"Yeah, then this must be it. All right, prepare all troops to depart and don't forget to refill our water and food supplies."
"Yes, sir!"
-/-
Mine didn't know what happened with Master while he was away but for some reason her Master appeared scary now.
"So that bastard attacked here while we were away?"
"Yes, well, technically it was not him who attacked us, but his troops..."
His eyes looked cold and his smile lacked warmth, it felt like he was so pissed that he didn't even act angry anymore...
"And then, all cat girls fought against them, along with the boar girls, while you hid yourselves below your desks?"
"We are not brutes, I mean, fighters, so yeah, instead of contributing negatively for the battle we decided to stay out of it..."
It didn't help that she felt all answers she gave him were mere excuses that tried to hide how much of a coward she truly was, making her feel his anger was justified and that she deserved to be punished, though, because she was a coward, that was a situation she wanted to avoid with all her might.
"And as a result every cat girl aside from Nyau and Penny died?"
"No, ranger Yuu and soldier Tiana who arrived late with the boar girls also survived as well!"
Why the room felt so cold? Why was she shivering like she was frozen in this place?
"..."
"I'm sorry! Wahhhhhh!!!!!!!!"
Unable to take it any longer, the supposed drone created for war started to cry like a little kid.
It was not like Apollo was angry at her. If anything, he was grateful that she survived, and the one he was angry was Jaylee who had been taken away.
(I really really really should have punched him at least once when I had the chance.)
"...Sigh...Rose, take care of this."
"How should I punish her?"
"No need to punish her... but from now on all girls need to join the morning training. This way if something happens again, at least they will have higher chances of defending themselves."
"I-"
Before Rose could accept her orders, Hayate interrupted with a louder voice.
"Are you sure? Even if they train, these girls will be useless against any soldier, ranger or maid..."
"Which means they will be able to keep other occupied, right?"
"Eh? Well... yeah, but who would use scientist to attack another base?"
"Dunno, but even if they do, we will be prepared."
Hayate shook his head in denial, but answered anyway.
"As you wish..."
"...Hayate, you were a butler before, right? Now that you have reverted back to a maid, do you still retain anything from before?"
"Eh?? Well, the things I learned I won't forget, but the advanced knowledge that I had no time to master are out of my reach until I'm promoted again..."
"So you mean if someone masters a technique, he is able to use it even if he changes profession?"
"...Well, yeah, isn't that obvious???"
"That depends on how you see it. For me and any human, we don't automatically learn a huge amount of skills as we change professions. We have to experience it and study to learn those things-"
"Then it's the same, right?"
"Eh?"
"We also don't learn those things instantly. The only thing that happens when we change profession is that we gain access to a library of knowledge that we can access anytime."
"Then how can soldiers and maids fight like that?"
"Our bodies are made to fight. As long as we know how to move, we can do it..."
"Then you don't need to learn?? Sorry, I'm getting confused here."
"I don't know how to explain as well... It's like, we just have to follow the recipe, right?"
"...?"
"As long as we follow the recipe, we will get the cake. After doing it a few times, we won't need the recipe anymore. So even without the recipe we are able to make the cake. Do you understand? Profession is a collection of recipes, our body is the ingredients and the cake is the skill."
"I think I get what you mean... but if that's so, the thing I want to do may be possible..."
"What do you want to do??"
"Instead of specializing in a single profession, I want all girls to rotate between professions so they can learn different skills. If we do this, they should be able to fight like soldiers even if they are scientist, right?"
"..."
Hayate frowned and contemplated the question for some time before answering.
"That's possible...but the only way for servants to change profession is either if they are promoted, or if they lose their job."
"Then it's easy. Don't you lose your job once I deactivate the facility?"
"Oh!! Yeah, we do! But if you reactivate it before we change, we recover the lost job."
"Then all we have to do is wait you change job."
"Right! You are completely right! This way even these girls will stand a chance! Let's do it right now!"
"All right. I will leave it to you to manage this. Just make sure the labs are working all the time. We need to increase our numbers as fast as we can."
"Yes, sir!"
While Apollo knew this plan wouldn't have much effect on the next battle, if he somehow survived, things would become easier if he had more versatile pieces on his hand...
"Now, time to check with Leilani how the preparations are coming."