6

When Winter left, after our eye-opening conversation for Winter, and a bitter reminiscing for myself, I was left to dwell on what I said...

And found myself wrong, at least from how I looked into it, as what I told Winter was my bitter wounds speaking for me. Now that I thought about it, I couldn't help but just shake my head.

Even if there wasn't a reason to, I knew that I wronged Willow in Winter's eyes, something I needed to remedy. Willow was at fault just like me, or rather not.

Willow never was mine, and thus, there wasn't anything wrong with her rejecting my advances and taking Jacques, no matter how wrong I thought of that.

In the end, it was me, James Ironwood, who was in the wrong for trying to pursue a girl who always rejected me, her reasons were her own, but she clearly told me no, and I should accept it for the first time.

There wasn't anything to feel bitter about, even if my feelings told otherwise, but then...

Game or not, I should have moved on when I was first rejected. Alas, Ironwood was nothing if not stubborn at that age, something he tempered greatly...

Thanks to Willow, I gained my semblance, which helped to fuel that bitterness and anger into productive work, learning, studying, training, and just advancing in my life.

And truly, I was just an orphan, being doted on by Nicholas or not. I was just an orphan without any connections, lien, or fame to my name, whereas Willow had all of it...

The sole reason I was even able to move in similar circles as she was because I earned sight of Nicholas Schnee, who introduced me to Willow and then practically took me under his wing.

I heard the rumors, one worse than another, how I was lucky, how I was a little toy for Nicholas, that I didn't belong to Atlas' higher circles, and so on. The rumors never ended, not even after I became general. All that changed was that now they didn't dare to speak about them to my face.

After all, I'm James Ironwood, and there wasn't any wealthy or prominent Ironwood family to my name.

Im a blemish on the higher circles of Atlas society, no matter how they try to hide it.

--------------------------------------------------------------

Looking at the reports from the months of work made me almost sigh.

Maybe I made an error, but that wasn't something I could foresee.

The thing that these months with a new perspective from Earth made me realize was that Remnant people, both human and faunus, were direct-minded.

Why else would they still try to go into close combat when they were already in the age of powerful firearms, other than to fuel the need for adrenaline or increase their feeling of invincibility thanks to their Aura?

And so, it wasn't so surprising that not many actually thought of uses of cyber warfare, hacking into banks, and so more, when there were more direct's threats than an invisible line of codes in the terminals?

Something I may have changed.

As the new reports of the arrested rookie hackers were delivered to me, arrested by the newly formed division of talented technicians and programmers...

Most of the arrested weren't anything more than identity forgers, or in rare cases, a few hackers who, until now, could be said to be talented hackers, until I budgeted the newly made IT department of Atlas, with both lien and talented personnel...

Just time will tell if I introduce a more powerful way of using hacking.

Still, those few geniuses already know of this, as Watts or Merlot served as best examples, using the network as their playground where they were gods...

------------------------------------------------------------------

I didn't spend these three months just investigating SDC, one of the more needs I saw that needed to be taken care of was the stormtrooper shooting...

When I looked and remembered, I could see that soldiers had good aim, and Atlas Knights, or AKs short, too, had quite a good aim but still missed more than they hit the target.

The reason they seemed just always to miss is the fact that they can't be compared to huntsmen, whose aims were mostly abnormal, thanks to their Aura.

The most straightforward fix I could think of was an aim assistant, as soldiers already had helmets with HUDs in their visors, and Atlas was known for its advanced technology.

As such, a month or so ago, I sent a dm with my idea and instructions on how it should work to the R&D section.

And it seemed their primary work was already done as they moved to test their work,

That is good, and aim assistant could serve as a boost to both my soldiers and AKs and other Atlas mechanical weapons.

God knew that we needed it.

The enemies, Grimms, and huntsmen, just moved too fast for my non-Aura awakened soldiers.