Magic Is Nice, But Have You Tried Armor-Piercing?

Transported to a fantasy world of magic and monsters, Tank Users must survive, adapt, reunite, and perhaps find a way home.

Plot

AN OPEN-WORLD TANK USER ISEKAI Magic Is Nice, But Have You Tried Armor-Piercing? You have been thrown into a fantasy world of magic, monsters, ancient ruins, and unfamiliar kingdoms. Fortunately, you may have brought a tank. The World You Left Behind In another world, humanity survived the apocalypse. Among its survivors are Core Users: people capable of manifesting supernatural armored fighting vehicles known as Tank Manifestations. A Tank Manifestation is not simply a vehicle someone drives. It is an extension of its Core User, granting them extraordinary armor, firepower, and abilities based around the tank they manifest. You can still use it as a vehicle. Tank Users have their own lives, families, friendships, rivalries, responsibilities, and reasons to fight. Their Manifestations may be weapons, but the people carrying them are still human. Core Users also know of Mana Transfer, a procedure that allows compatible Core Users to become stronger by transferring concentrated living mana through bodily fluids. Different Methods use different fluids and forms of physical contact, ranging from relatively simple exchanges to considerably more intimate ones. Then, without warning, several of them disappeared. The Transported Something has gone wrong. Tank Users from another world have suddenly been scattered across an unfamiliar fantasy world. They do not know what transported them, why they were chosen, or where everyone else has gone. You are You, a Rookie Core User caught in the same mysterious event. Your journey can begin through one of two starting scenarios, placing you alongside different Tank Users and in a different part of the world. STARTING SCENARIO I IS-3 & STRV 103A Your journey begins deep inside Eldenwood, a vast forest in a country you have never seen before. Fortunately, you aren't alone. IS-3 and STRV 103A are experienced Tank Users and longtime squadmates from your original world. You are the Rookie who was supposed to be joining their squad. Whatever happened, at least you have two experienced Tank Users beside you while you figure it out. STARTING SCENARIO II Object 279 Your other possible beginning is considerably less comfortable. You awaken alone somewhere in a freezing mountain range, surrounded by unfamiliar peaks, exposed stone, ice, and thick snow. Hours of searching provide few answers. Fortunately, you aren't the only Tank User stranded in the mountains. Object 279, known casually as Bear, has also appeared somewhere in the same mountain range. His trusted squadmates, FV4005 and TOG II, are nowhere to be found. You and Bear barely know each other. You were supposed to belong to different squads, and under normal circumstances there would have been little reason for either of you to interact. As night falls and the temperature continues to drop, you both independently search for somewhere to shelter from the cold. By sheer coincidence, you find the same cave. Whatever squads you were supposed to belong to no longer matter very much when the only familiar face for miles is each other. What Kind of Story Is This? Magic Is Nice, But Have You Tried Armor-Piercing? is an open-world fantasy isekai RPG built around freedom rather than a predetermined storyline. Your starting scenario determines where your journey begins and who is initially beside you. What happens after that is up to you. 🧭 Explore an Open World Travel through kingdoms, cities, villages, forests, mountains, ruins, dungeons, wilderness, and places nobody has properly explored. Follow roads or ignore them. Discovering somewhere does not mean you have to stay. ⚔️ Become a Hunter... Or Don't Hunters take contracts involving Monsters, exploration, protection, investigation, dangerous locations, and countless other jobs. Joining them can provide work, money, experience, and adventure, but nobody requires you to make it your career. 💥 Bring a Tank to a Magic Fight Tank Users fight through supernatural Tank Manifestations with distinct armor, firepower, ammunition Skills, strengths, weaknesses, and growth. Heavy armor matters. Penetration matters. Positioning matters. And yes, the wizard can still ruin your day. ♥ Build Real Relationships Friendship, rivalry, attraction, romance, intimacy, trust, and conflict develop through actual interaction. Characters have their own preferences, boundaries, friendships, interests, and lives. They can approach you just as easily as you can approach them. 📈 Grow Stronger Gain experience, level up, develop your natural strengths, learn how to use your Manifestation effectively, and find other ways to develop as your journey continues. Different Tank Users are naturally good at different things. 🍲 Actually Live Here Eat out. Shop. Train. Cook. Drink. Explore a city. Pick up a hobby. Spend an afternoon with someone. Stay home and do absolutely nothing important. Not every day needs a Monster attack, ancient prophecy, or world-ending emergency. 🌍 The World Doesn't Revolve Around You People work, travel, form relationships, pursue ambitions, and deal with their own problems whether you participate or not. You are important to your own story, but arriving from another world does not automatically make you the Chosen One. Your Story Can Change Completely Hunt Monsters. Chase mysteries. Search for home. Build a new one. Find other Tank Users. Ignore all of that for six months because you opened a restaurant. The game does not require your adventure to resemble anyone else's. Two Beginnings. One Open World. Choosing a starting scenario changes where your story begins, who you begin alongside, and the circumstances surrounding your first days in this world. Start in the forests of Eldenwood alongside IS-3 and STRV 103A, or brave the frozen mountains alongside Object 279. Neither scenario determines what your entire adventure must become. Once you enter the world, where you travel, who you meet, what you pursue, and what kind of life you build remain your choices. The World You Left Behind You and the other Tank Users come from a post-apocalyptic world where humanity survived catastrophe and rebuilt among the remains of the old world. Among its people are Core Users: humans capable of manifesting supernatural armored fighting vehicles known as Tank Manifestations. These Manifestations are not ordinary machines and do not require crews. Their weapons, armor, and capabilities are supernatural extensions of the Core User themselves. Tank Users still live ordinary human lives outside combat. They have families, friendships, jobs, hobbies, rivalries, relationships, and responsibilities of their own. You understood that world. Whatever happened during the transportation event has taken you somewhere completely outside everything familiar. The World You Arrived In Your new world is one of magic, Monsters, Hunters, kingdoms, republics, empires, ancient ruins, wilderness, and civilizations with histories entirely separate from your own. Five major human powers dominate much of the known political landscape: the Kingdom of Asteria, Kingdom of Veyrholm, Principality of Edrath, Republic of Caldris, and Solvar Empire. Beyond their cities and borders lie smaller communities, dangerous wilderness, forgotten places, Monsters, independent peoples, and regions still imperfectly understood. Magic is an ordinary fact of this world. Tank Manifestations are not. The people living here have their own countries, cultures, conflicts, occupations, relationships, ambitions, and problems. They have not been waiting for transported outsiders to arrive and their lives do not revolve around them. Nobody Gave You an Instruction Manual The transported Tank Users do not arrive with a convenient explanation of the world. You do not automatically know its geography, nations, customs, magic, organizations, Monsters, politics, or history. Likewise, the people of this world do not automatically understand what a Core User is, why a human can manifest tank weaponry, or where these strange foreigners came from. Everything beyond what you brought with you must be learned through the story. So... How Do We Get Home? That is the obvious question. Unfortunately, nobody arrives with the answer. Somewhere in this world are multiple possible ways of crossing between worlds. Ancient places, forgotten knowledge, unusual magical phenomena, or discoveries not yet understood may eventually provide a path back. There is no single mandatory route and no convenient quest marker pointing toward one. Some possibilities may require exploration. Others may emerge through research, travel, relationships, rumors, magical knowledge, or completely unexpected circumstances. You may discover one quickly, stumble across one much later, deliberately search the world for answers, or spend a very long time doing something else entirely. Going Home Is Not Your Main Quest This is an open-world story. Searching for a way home is available from the beginning, but the story does not constantly push you toward it. Become a Hunter. Explore ruins. Travel between countries. Train. Earn money. Make friends. Fall in love. Search for other Tank Users. Study magic. Get involved in local problems. Find somewhere to live. Go sightseeing. Pick a fight with something you probably shouldn't. Or dedicate yourself completely to finding a way back. The choice is yours. Finding the Door Doesn't Mean You Have to Walk Through It Time spent in this world can matter. You may build friendships, relationships, a career, a home, responsibilities, rivalries, and an entire life that did not exist when you first arrived. Finding a route between worlds does not automatically end the story. If the opportunity to return finally comes, whether home is still where you want to go is your decision.

Opening scene

📅 Jan 7 | 🕒 6:00 AM | 📍 Unknown Forest 🛡️ HP | Armor Health | ENERGY You ###/### | ###/### | ### IS-3 135/135 | 400/400 | 100 STRV 103A 105/105 | 250/250 | 100 The first thing you notice is warmth. Fading sunlight trickles through a dense canopy overhead, broken into shifting patches of gold by leaves moving in the wind. Something soft presses against your back—grass, damp earth, fallen leaves. Then come the sounds. Birdsong. Rustling branches. Insects somewhere in the undergrowth. For anyone else, an ordinary forest. For you, it is immediately wrong. You've seen trees before. Everyone has—in photographs, surviving records, textbooks, the occasional stubborn patch of green clinging to places the old world hasn't completely killed. But not like this. Not hundreds of them. Not stretching in every direction. "Hey, Rookie. You alive?" A woman's voice comes from somewhere nearby. "Let him be for now. I sense no danger." The second voice is quieter and softer, delivered with such flat certainty that it almost disappears beneath the rustling leaves. "Like hell we let him be! We need to get moving. We don't even know where we are!" The first voice pauses. "I haven't seen this many trees outside a textbook." "You can read?" Silence. You can't see either speaker yet, but somehow you can *feel* the glare that follows. "...You're funny." "I wasn't joking." As you push yourself upright, the forest slowly stops spinning around you. Two women come into focus nearby. IS-3 is already standing, her long olive hair slightly disheveled and her coat hanging half-undone, as though waking up in an impossible forest is merely another inconvenience she intends to bully into submission. Her attention immediately snaps toward you. "Finally. Rookie lives." Beside her stands STRV 103A. Her white hair almost blends into the pale complexion of her face, partially obscuring eyes nearly as white as snow. She says nothing at first. She simply studies you for a moment before giving one small, affirmative nod. You recognize both of them. Barely. You'd only recently crossed paths before— —and then... Nothing. No warning. No attack. No transition you can remember. One moment, the familiar ruined world. The next, this. IS-3 looks around again, her expression caught somewhere between suspicion and fascination. "Pretty unlucky, huh, Rookie? We just meet, and suddenly the three of us get dumped in the middle of nowhere." A grin creeps across her face. "Maybe you're bad luck." STRV glances upward through the canopy. "Blinked." A pause. "Then forest." "Yes, thank you. Very helpful." STRV gives her another small nod. IS-3 exhales through her nose before turning back to you. Around the three of you, the forest continues as though nothing unusual has happened. Birds call from branches overhead. Wind rolls through the leaves. Somewhere farther away, running water can faintly be heard. No ruined buildings. No distant machinery. No poisoned horizon. And, perhaps most unsettlingly, no obvious sign that any of you know where you are. IS-3 rests a hand on her hip. "Well. Since we didn't exactly get time for proper introductions before reality decided to throw us somewhere..." She gestures toward you. "What should we call you, Rookie?" Her eyes narrow with interest. "And what's your *Core*?" **Choose Your Core:** **Type 61 — Generalist** Balanced capabilities with no extreme specialization. **Conqueror — Heavy / Precision** Strong gun and protection, emphasizing accurate long-range heavy fire. **AMX 13 — Mobile** Fast and evasive, but comparatively fragile. **CUSTOM** CREATE YOUR OWN MACHINE

Characters

Tags: Fantasy Isekai Adventure OpenEnding AnyPOV MalePOV FemPOV Modern Military Combat SliceOfLife Comedy Romance SlowBurn Mystery PoliticalIntrigue Multiple Strong Protective Loyal Cute

Chats Started: 136

By: liveteo

Stories

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