The Mech Touch

The Vandals and the Swordmaidens left a light guard force of mechs around their legged transports. Yet they all positioned themselves around the supply train, not inside it. The ranged mechs didn’t dare to fire their laser rifles in fear of landing a hit on a vulnerable legged transports.

The fast and heavy transports possessed many merits, but durability wasn’t one of them! In order to produce them fast and quickly, Chief Dakkon made huge compromises with regards to their armor and internal structure.

Since they had no use in battle, why invest in their armor? It was extremely wasteful for the Vandals and the Swordmaidens to clad them in expensive battle armor when they could have used the same resources to improve their mechs.

Yet who would have thought a wild god existed with the power to teleport? This completely made no sense! The vast majority of human forces didn’t even have access to teleportation technology, so how could a wild god develop such a highly-desired ability?!

"The wild god is moving to attack one of our cargo transports!"

"Tell the legged transports to disperse! Get away from the exobeast right now!"

The wild god took some time to reorient herself in her new position. When she recovered her wits, she instantly roared while her crazed dwarf rider instantly pointed her towards the nearest heavy transport that tried to run.

Emphasis on tried. As a vehicle devoid of antigrav modules due to energy constraints, the heavy transport moved far too slow to escape the wrathful wild god!

The crew of the heavy transport evacuated far too late as the wild god slammed into the heavy transport. She outright crunched one of the legs of the transports with its maw. Her strong and heavy limbs battered the main body of the transports. The front of the heavy mech deformed from the fierce barrage of attacks. The containers in the ruptured cargo holds broke and spilled large amounts of spare parts and ingots of processed metals.

However, the savage attacks of the wild gods abruptly ended as an even larger exobeast slammed into the side of the wild god.

"Qilanxo has arrived!"

"Who is riding her right now?"

"Captain Orfan is currently interfacing with Qilanxo, ma’am!"

"Tell her to constrain the wild god! Don’t let their battle spill over the other transports!"

The wild god and the sacred god both entered into a furious close-ranged brawl. Since neither side possessed any offensive powers, they resorted to old-fashioned claw and bite attacks as well as slamming their bodies against each other to bruise their opponents!

The savage battle caused the two heavy exobeasts to be pushed back and forth, sometimes inching close to a heavy transport that vainly tried to flee the vicinity of the fighting. Only after Captain Orfan’s reminder did Qilanxo regain enough clarity to stop the wild god from damaging the vulnerable vehicles.

As the Vandals in the mobile headquarters became flustered to the point of considering whether they should evacuate, Captain Byrd forcibly slammed down her fist.

"There will be no running without my express orders! Are you Vandals or are you cowards? Qilanxo and Captain Orfan have the wild god well in hand. Get back to work and trust in our comrades!"

The fast transports already left the vicinity long ago on their swift legs. Several Vandal and Swordmaiden melee mechs crept in through the cracks, but they mainly placed themselves in front of the heavy transports.

Right now, the mechs didn’t see any opportunity to intervene in the wild brawl between Qilanxo and the wild god.

In any case, Qilanxo had the battle well in hand. As an older exobeast, she possessed a definite advantage in size and weight. She also entered the battle in a fresh state while her opponent already endured a significant amount of laser beams.

The energy levels of the wild god dropped into critical levels after a couple of minutes of mindless brawling. In contrast, Qilanxo still maintained a healthy energy level as she slowly drew upon the stored energy reserves of her god crystals.

The main difference between sacred gods and wild gods was that the former possessed a much larger pool of energy to fuel all of their abilities. Qilanxo possessed nineteen of them, which placed her in the upper range of her kind!

While she didn’t have time yet to call down an energy tornado, Qilanxo fared just fine with her current reserves. At some point, she finally managed to pierce through the faltering energy field of the wild god and raked her claws through the scales protecting her enemy’s neck.

The wild god suffered severe damage! Gouts of blood escaped from the screaming creature’s neck, but the wild god’s resilient physique forcibly stemmed the bleeding.

Yet that didn’t stop their allied sacred god from doing it again! Another claw strike brutally raked one of the wild god’s front limbs. The claws dug deep enough to scrape against the bones, eliciting another pain-wracked cry from the wild god and her beast rider!

"Qilanxo is going to town on the wild god!"

The battle in the middle of the supply train no longer held any suspense. A wild god without an energy field was like an expert mech without an energy field. They mainly relied on their bodies and frames to resist damage.

This might avail them for quite a bit against weaker opponents, but against an equivalent threat, such defenses stood no chance at all!

While Qilanxo treated the wild god as her scratching post, the battle at the frontlines took a turn for the worse for the attacking side.

Even if the Vandals openly questioned whether the Swordmaidens possessed a sound mind, they did have a magnificent intuition for timing. Their blunder against the wild gods aside, they hit the ranks of the Caged and the Red Tongs when their leadership became preoccupied by several matters.

First, the wild gods aligned to their forces suffered heavy laser bombardment. The Caged Tongs planned to employ the wild gods as their trump cards, but who knew they barely showed their strength before they drowned in continuous laser fire that rapidly drained their energy reserves!

Second, their ranged mechs rapidly diminished in number as the better-equipped and better-trained opponents outplayed them. Just the difference in maintenance alone proved to be the decisive factor!

Third, the Pale Dancer finally entered the field.

Through all of the chaos that went on in the frontlines and in the middle of the Flagrant Swordmaiden supply train, few people initially took notice of the lone white mech in the rear.

The Pale Dancer didn’t jump onto the stage. It glided onto it. Even though the bone-like coloration of the Pale Dancer should have attracted a lot of attention among the darker-coated mechs, Venerable Xie effortlessly weaved his expert mech closer to the rear of the enemy lines.

Hundreds, if not thousands of dwarves mounted on juvenile godlings stood in his way. The expert pilot took no notice of the ants underneath the feet of his mech and crunched their bodies flat with the sheer weight of his mech!

With bloodied feet, the Pale Dancer trod a bloodied path to the unsuspecting rear of the Caged Tongs.

It was not as if the enemy posted scouts that kept an eye to the rear. Due to the pitched battles happening in front, the undisciplined mech pilots diverted more than half of their attention to the action.

This allowed the Pale Dancer to strut forward into medium range from completely open terrain without alerting the enemy scouts at all. This subtle technique alone alarmed those who remembered the expert pilot’s existence!

How could such a bright mech stroll into range so effortlessly?

In any case, the Pale Dancer lifted up its customized laser rifle and instantly fired a high-powered laser beam right into a weak point in the rear of a leader mech.

There was absolutely no deviation in Venerable Xie’s aim! Despite the mild interference and other factors that could have skewed the Pale Dancer’s aim, the expert pilot somehow managed to land his laser beam exactly where he wanted with almost no discernable drift!

Venerable Xie’s judgement also proved to be keenly accurate, as even Ves could hardly identify a better weak point on that leader mech.

The rear of a mech often enjoyed the least protection. This time, though, a gravitic backpack sat in the way. Yet despite the hindrance of the backpack, the high-powered laser beam possessed enough strength to punch straight through the thin covering and the delicate internal components of the backpack and bore straight through the weak point in the armor before dealing catastrophic damage to the power reactor buried deep inside the stricken mech.

Before the leader mech even realized it suffered a hit, it shut down immediately as its power reactor underwent an emergency shutdown.

The mech got wrecked without any chance of retaliation!

"That initial shot is impossible to land for any normal mech pilot!"

Yet the Pale Dancer managed to do so while on the move! Even now, it continued to run a bloody path over the mindless dwarf tribesmen who mistakenly thought they contributed to the battle.

Even though plenty of dwarves cried out in pain or fear, the mech pilots of the Caged Tongs hadn’t noticed anything amiss as of yet. The Pale Dancer quietly positioned itself in the optimal angle before releasing another deceptively thin laser beam.

Another well-maintained enemy mech abruptly shut down.

By the time the Pale Dancer harvested the third leader mech, the Caged Tongs finally became aware of the threat at the rear. At first, they didn’t recognize the Pale Dancer as an expert mech. They dismissed it as a lone rifleman mech that somehow got lost or looped around.

A half-squad of light mechs received new orders and diverted from the reserves to pursue the Pale Dancer.

A medium rifleman mech could never outrun a light mech!

Yet this speed advantage never came to the fore. Before the light mechs got anywhere close, six rapid laser beams erupted from the Pale Dancer’s rifle. This time, Venerable Xie tuned down the power so that the laser beams carried just enough energy to pierce the thin armor of the agile light mechs.

No matter how fast they tried to evade or spoil the aim of Venerable Xie, the expert pilot unerringly struck them all right below the chest armor and bore straight into their cockpits!

None of the mech pilots survived as the powerful laser beams vaporized their bodies instantly!

The sudden deaths of the light mechs caused the already burdened leaders of the Caged and the Red Tongs a lot of distress. With the Swordmaiden mechs tearing apart their frontlines, the presence of the Pale Dancer stabbing at the rear proved to be especially fatal!

Fear spread among the leaders as the Pale Dancer resumed targeting their mechs. It took no discernment at all to separate the officers and champions from the rank-and-file. Venerable Xie merely had to see whether the mech he targeted looked clean and flawless. The vanity of the leaders became their downfall as the foreign expert pilot harvested their lives as effortlessly as a god!

At this moment, the Pale Dancer became the embodiment of the god of death!

The split focus of the enemy cadre along with the battering from both sides eventually broke the enemy. While the Caged admiringly persisted and held together even when their cause seemed lost, the much more cowardly Red Tongs broke away from the battle without any guilt. They ran and instinctively split up, forcing the Swordmaiden and Vandal mechs to run in pursuit.

"The battle is decided!"

"It’s not over yet, but we’ve got this in the bag!"

"Don’t get complacent yet! The Caged are still fighting and some of the wild gods are still alive. Tell the mech pilots to keep up their guard. The fleeing enemy mechs can still turn the tables against their pursuers."

No matter what the Caged Tongs attempted to do, nothing could save them anymore now that they lost cohesion and broke their ranks.

Ves quietly sighed in relief at the outcome of the battle. While they sustained a bit more losses than expected, the Flagrant Swordmaidens overwhelmingly stomped the attackers who misjudged their strength!