章 7: New Ride

Hanns ignored the incessant stare of Blake who was still standing around awkwardly while he kept thinking of what those functions meant. He gulped mentally as he couldn't keep his engines from roaring out from excitement at the new functions he gained.

'It seems I have received what is called a power spike.'

Hanns was ecstatic and immediately willed his help page to understand what each ability meant. He was going to save the one question for the moderator later. What caught his eye the most was the [Perspective Change], not because it sounded great or anything but because he didn't know what it meant. The other functions he could get a general idea on.

Hanns looked through the wall of text and found the page dedicated to Perspective Change and scrolled through the details.

'Ho, ho, ho. This is game-changing.'

[Perspective Change]

[Description: Why limit yourself to one perspective? Look through the eyes of your driver or gunner, maybe even more!

No longer stuck to the commander view, you can now switch to other views, not including the third person.

Interacts with [Squad] feature, takes control of another tank in your squad.]

[Notice: Destruction of Flag Tank will result in all tanks in your squad being destroyed.]

Blake was concerned at the tank rhythmically engaging its engine for, what looked like to her, no reason. Hanns meanwhile was still cackling maniacally at the newfound powers he had available to him not knowing he was involuntarily revving his engine. He clicked each and every page that had information on the changes.

[Crew management]

[Description: What's a leader without their crew? Take charge of a small platoon or command an entire battalion! For a price of course…

Unlocks the ability to switch vehicles, recruit crews, train crews, upgrade qualifications and accelerate training. Hud will now display vehicles being used.]

'A price? Let's hope it doesn't cost an entire planet's economy.'

Hanns navigated through his now updated hud, looking at the bottom he saw that a bar with recruit crew was now available right next to his own tank with a small white flag on the top right of the image of his current tank. Clicking on the recruit crew it displayed the following:

[Notice: Unavailable. Defeat World Boss 0/1]

[1# Crew Status:]

[Notice: No vehicle assigned to this crew]

[0/??

Afflictions: ??]

'Darn, I assumed for a price meant SL or RP didn't expect needing to defeat a world boss. So does that mean just Salem? Or other things considered a world boss?'

Hanns closed the notice and focused on another page.

[Squad]

[Description: You found your crew and assigned your tanks, now it's time to organize them and lead your tanks to victory, Panzer Vor!]

'As expected. You could invite people into your squad to play a game in warthunder, so the description wasn't far-fetched.'

Hanns skimmed through the rest, they were obvious as to what they did so he only took one glance at each of them.

[Events]

Events the player can receive are at random and vary in difficulty.

[Daily Tasks]

Player is given a set of easy and medium tasks. Once easy tasks are finished, medium tasks will appear in their place. 22h reset time.

[Special Tasks]

After finishing both easy tasks and medium tasks, players can buy a special task from the marketplace and redeem it for special task.

[Gaijin Marketplace]

Buy, Sell, and Trade items with the Gaijin Marketplace.

[Inventory]

Can only store items from warthunder itself.

[Simulator Battles]

Able to fight AI control tanks for the same amount of rewards will scale based on progression.

'Looks like I got the gist of everything new I got.'

"Are you still there?" Blake asked with a concerned tone. He had been constantly revving this entire time, she didn't know what it meant so it creeped her out.

'Oh, I forgot about her. I was too engrossed in the game for a while there.'

'Before I forget I should change to my new tank. Changing in front of her would let her know that it's still the same tank roaming around.'

Looking through the crew HUD at the bottom, he clicked on the change vehicle option and selected the Pz.III Ausf. F. What he expected was the bright light that happened from when he did the Pz.II C's modifications. What came though was different.

Blake felt her eyebrows raise as she heard the sounds of metal breaking apart from inside the tank.

Metal plates started sliding around his frame with a hiss accompanied by the sounds of pipes turning and banging around his body. The sounds of sharp edges grated along the corners of his armor while his barrel lengthened and widened with a distinct metal groan from inside the turret.

She stared gobsmacked at the process as she slowly saw the already intimidating weapon turn into a larger war machine.

The hull started to shift and opened slots from each of the sides while armor plates were ejected from said slots, steel rubbed against steel in a soothing symphony and magnetically welded itself to the hull. His suspensions were brought inside to the hull as it broke apart and added unto itself new pieces of metal, bringing it back out of the tank, enlarged and brand new.

Blake didn't notice her raised eyebrows transition into both eyes dilating as the rest of the machine started adding new parts to itself.

His tracks detached themselves from the whole hull and raised to the sky, it landed with a loud stomp on the ground to a new shape and lengthened before bending the edges of the individual plates and creating extra protrusions before making a whipping noise and tightening itself around the new suspensions.

Meanwhile, the cat Faunus finally let her jaw drop as what looked like the final moments of the transformation happened right in front of her.

As the transformation drew to the end the final piece, the turret itself, hinged itself open. More plates were drawn up from the inside of the hull and melded itself into the turret that was now getting larger. As the final piece of the exposed turret joined, it snapped shut with a loud metallic clang.

For Hanns, the experience was quite relaxing, almost like getting massaged. The newly transformed tank let out a final hiss as it sealed every open hatch close and Hanns felt his control and body change significantly.

He felt sturdier, heavier, and more powerful.

Blake was a statue, she didn't know what to say. She could bear the fact that a foreign-looking machine was apparently sentient but now that it could literally grow new metallic parts as if it was alive left her with nothing else to say.

'...'

Hanns tested his movements, feeling out the new body he had after he switched vehicles.

'Feels like I have a crick in the neck with how slow this turret traverse speed is.'

'Lemme see how perspective change works in this.'

As he felt a tug within himself he was suddenly looking through the periscope of the Pz. III F. as if it were a human looking through them.

He could be more accurate with each shot. Unlike before his autocannon was now the more powerful KwK L/42 (50 mm) cannon. It only had one shot but it was three to two times as powerful as the last shell he used albeit in fewer volumes.

'I have to test this out on something.'

He turned around and prepared to embark on a journey to find some poor beowolf to evaporate into mist with his new armament. Just as he found a direction to go in, Blake, who snapped out from her surprise, spoke to him in a mellow voice.

"Are you going?"

Hanns nodded. He still had to be much stronger if he wanted to kill every grim he could find. He doesn't need rest yet, the new missions gave him more motivation to grind out some new daily quests available to him. He was planning on activating those and checking the rewards.

"Well, you can find me at Beacon. I'll be off on my own. Hopefully, the people there aren't too bad."

"By the way, the name's Blake Belladonna."

Hanns took one last look at the city of Vale while Blake dashed towards the gates.

'I wonder if team RWBY would be weirded out by the fact that Blake apparently talks to machines. Ruby herself might feel a kindred spirit with her.'

Hanns checked his hud and accepted two easy missions for him to do.

[Activist: Win required amount of battles with needed activity percent 0/3]

[Bird Hunt: Destroy airborne targets 0/15]

Hanns looked at the tasks and sighed deeply.

'The second one is going to be difficult. Hitting a target in the sky is going to be a pain in the ass.'

'Oh? That's helpful.'

A compass was now visible on the top of Hanns' hud. With multiple red arrows pointing in different directions.

'That certainly makes things easier. It seems like missions can be tracked depending on what mission I receive.'

The sun was still shining in the distance although the shattered moon of the remnant was beginning to show itself in the amber sky. It was going to turn night soon, last time Hanns reached this time he immediately felt his mental state tire out. Now that he had some motivation to fuel him, he could grind out even more SL and RP.

The daily missions didn't show what rewards he would get after finishing them. Hanns disliked that part of the daily missions but he had no choice but to finish them to find out more. He had been thinking that the moderator made this much harder than it has to. It won't stop him from obtaining more armament though. So he had to quickly make his way towards the arrow the compass pointed to.

He picked the closest arrow and spotted an area he could travel through. The path was covered less with trees and the random stones on the forest floor could now be ignored by Hanns unlike before. Each time he would travel he could feel the smallest bumps on the road despite his old Pz. II C weighing in at 9 tonnes. Unlike being in the driver seat, he was the vehicle itself so the shaking and vibration could be felt even more.

He let himself get used to the new height of the tank he was now in and carefully went around, crushed bushes and medium-sized stones. He had now weighed almost 23 tonnes, two and a half times more than his previous tank. He could drive over and topple down trees if he built up enough speed to do so. He passed over some fallen stone and felt it break apart into dust under his treads.

'I wonder if I could directly ram into something to kill it. I might not even need to shoot and waste ammunition at them at this point.'

As he followed his compass he could hear the distant screeching of nevermores in the distance. A flock of them stayed perch on the red trees of the Forever Fall forest, their talons were honed and sharpened. Being made of bone it could easily injure humans without aura. Their grip could subdue those who had an aura, a tank, on the other hand, they would barely be able to lift up.

Their feathers would be a problem, they could shoot them out like spears and they had numerous amounts of them. Normally he would be confident that his armor would be impenetrable to the normal grimm but airborne enemies were different.

He was kind of worried at this, with a 90 degree angle they could probably pierce through the very top of his armor. His tank had almost 30 mm thick steel covering almost everything with one of the plates on his back being 20mm thick but the least were everything on top only being 10mm.

If the nevermores shot their feathers at an angle it would most definitely bounce harmlessly. Hanns was confident that the nevermores he would fight would be young.Their sizes were smaller in comparison to the giant nevermore team RWBY fought in the initiation.

'All right, I have an Idea of what to do.'

Nevermores generally strayed far away when it engaged enemies, using their altitude difference and flight to distance themselves. What they don't know is that they were going to face 23 tonnes of Kruppstahl and a tank shell to the face.

Hanns turned his hull so that the rear was facing the nevermores. The Pz.III F's reverse speed is atrocious so he'll exploit his faster forward speed by turning around instead. He couldn't do this before because he was facing away from obstacles and could accidentally hit something, especially now that his turret rotation was rock bottom.

Perspective Change negated that since he could now look where he was going while his turret was turned to the opposite side.

Hanns finished his preparations after his turret finally went in place aiming directly towards one of the nevermores. He gauged the distance using his rangefinder and switched to his gunner view to adjust his aim.

'They're gonna immediately back away from the threat but once they recognize their feathers won't work on me their instincts should take over and try to grab me instead.'

He felt the mechanisms for the cannon turning as he unloads a shell from the breach of his gun. The sound shook the nearby leaves and the cries of birds were heard as the cannon let out a thunderous applause.

The shell ejected from the barrel and left smoke in its wake. It traveled through the air morphing the surrounding air inwards as it spun towards the unaware nevermores staring blankly into the reddening sky.

The impact was instantaneous as the shells deformed its body inwards and severed a nevermore in two before a click was heard inside the shell as it started to spark the millisecond long fuse.

As the nevermores tried to react by lifting their wings, a spray of shrapnel and explosion ripped apart their appendages as the searing heat of the explosives wrapped around the flock of grimm ending their lives in a single moment.

To anyone outside it took only seconds as the group of nevermores were blasted into oblivion, their pieces scattering and decaying in the atmosphere as the shockwave created from the blast reached Hanns. Months of continuous grinding in warthunder made him think earlier tanks were weak but he had now known how strong tanks were against non-armored opponents. After suffering to ursae, deathstalkers and tougher boarbatusks he couldn't help but admire what he had obtained.

'This… is power.'

[Bird Hunt: Destroy airborne targets 8/15]