The Mech Touch

The Battle Criers was one of the least notable mech legions of the Larkinson Clan.

Much like the Avatars of Myth, the Battle Criers got outshone by the much more impressive Swordmaidens and Penitent Sisters in the battles that the Larkinson Clan fought in the past.

It didn't help that the Battle Criers were smaller in scale and notoriously insular. Their background, martial traditions and subculture deviated so much from the rest of the clan that few Larkinsons took them seriously.

This was despite the fact that the Battle Criers were also responsible for organizing the honor guards of important clan figures such as the clan patriarch and his immediate family!

Naturally, Ves did not wish to see the Battle Criers suffer in neglect. He had spent a considerable amount of time during the Larkinson Clan's stay in Davute to help with reorganizing Battle Criers and finding a new role for them that allowed them to stand out within the Larkinson Army.

The decision that Ves had made was to orient the Battle Criers towards countering extraordinary threats.

None of the other mech legions were especially geared towards fighting against dark gods, expert mechs and other extraordinary threats.

The only solutions that the Larkinson Army could deploy against these kinds of powerful opponents were its modest amount of expert mechs.

Though the Larkinsons invested heavily in the development of their expert mechs, it was impossible for Ves to put all of his eggs in a single basket.

What if they ended up in a situation where they ran out of expert mechs? What if the strength of  an enemy spiritual entity was too strong?

If Ves had the option to expand the amount of options for his troops to respond to these kinds of overwhelming threats, then he would be stupid to ignore it in favor of investing all of his hopes on his expert mechs!

As such, Ves supplied the Battle Criers with an experimental mech model that possessed a couple unique features that made them particularly suited to fight against expert mechs!

"The Nullifier mechs have come!"

Though Venerable Jannzi and Venerable Isobel weren't certain whether the reinforcements dispatched by the Battle Criers could pose a sufficient threat towards the Skorpion Kommando, their firepower at least spread the burden and help with constraining this powerful machine even further!

As the distant Battle Crier mechs continued to fire at the Skorpion Kommando with repeated attacks, it became more and more clear that their attacks weren't like the ones fired by other mech units.

For example, the attacks launched by the Rifle Warriors missed their mark most of the time as their mech pilots simply weren't able to track and predict the Skorpion Kommando's fast and erratic movements.

The Transcendent Punisher Mark II's fielded by the Eye of Ylvaine were able to attain a considerably higher hit rate, but Skorpion Kommando easily resisted the cannon fire by relying on its transphasic armor system.

As an expert space knight, the Skorpion Kommando's defensive systems were among the best of all of the Sundered Phalanx expert mechs on the battlefield!

Though Venerable Oskar was no longer able to put up a resonance shield for the time being, he was still able to reinforce his expert mech's armor system with true resonance, thereby drastically weakening every mundane attack that did not have the support of extraordinary willpower.

In short, these defensive enhancements practically made the Skorpion Kommando immune to regular firepower!

Venerable Oskar wouldn't have dared to travel so deeply behind enemy lines if he did not have the confidence to evade or withstand so many attacks!

The best way for the ranged mechs of the Larkinson Army to pose a serious threat to such a powerful high-tier expert mech was to employ transphasic weapons.

The Larkinson Clan was not comfortable with expending its finite reserves of phasewater to augment its ordinary mech units. The Avatars of Myth and the Eye of Ylvaine didn't get their wish of being able to field ranged mechs armed with transphasic weapons.

Therefore, General Verle had already decided long ago that there was little point in wasting the firepower of his ranged mech units on an expert mech like the Skorpion Kommando.

Perhaps this might make Venerable Jannzi and Venerable Isobel feel abandoned by the Larkinson Army, but Verle believed that the two Larkinson expert pilots should be smart enough to understand the reasons behind his decisions.

That did not mean that General Verle neglected their plight completely. It just took a bit more time than expected to reposition the special mech units that he had tasked with reinforcing the Shield of Samar and the Promethea.

The mech officer in charge of the newly-arrived mech unit opened a communication channel to the two Larkinson expert mechs.

"Venerable Jannzi, Venerable Isobel. I apologize for our delay. We helped with taking down several enemy expert mechs and attracted a lot more retaliation from the Sundered Phalanx than we expected. We were forced to split up half of our mechs to keep our attackers at bay."

"That is not important, Major Dietrich." Venerable Jannzi immediately said as she took charge of the situation. "I need you and your fellow Battle Criers to reposition your Nullifier mechs so that you can cover for the Promethea. Do not allow the Skorpion Kommando to approach Venerable Isobel's expert mech. Its condition is so bad that it cannot endure another attack."

"Understood. We will attempt to discourage the Skorpion Kommando from taking action against the Promethea as best as possible." The Battle Crier officer replied.

They no longer needed to exchange any words as they all knew what they needed to do. While the two expert mechs were adjusting to the fact that they had backup, the special ranged mechs fielded by the Battle Criers began to spread out across a wide fan that was opposite to the Promethea.

When the ranged mechs brought their heavy luminar crystal rifles to bear on the Skorpion Kommando, their piercing slicer beams began to dig into the more vulnerable rear armor, flight system and most importantly the Skorpion Tail with remarkable efficiency!

Though an armored expert mech like the Skorpion Kommando was still able to endure the incoming attacks with no immediate alarm, Venerable Oskar was not comfortable with exposing the most vulnerable side of his machine to sustained enemy attacks, especially when they were both accurate and more capable of damaging his expert mech's transphasic armor than normal.

A quick analysis caused the Fridayman expert pilot's heart to quake.

It turned out that the 100 or so Battle Crier mechs wielded transphasic heavy luminar crystal mechs!

The new Godkiller rifles that Ves had developed in cooperation with Melmen Advanced Systems were substantially different from the more ordinary luminar crystal rifles utilized by most Larkinson mechs.

Just as their name suggested, Ves developed these specialized guns with the aim of taking down threats like the dark gods that he had faced in the past.

His overall premise for this weapon and its accompanying mech design was simple.

"If gods do exist out there, then they can be killed! As long as we kill enough gods, then none of them will exist anymore, allowing humble humans like myself to inherit the cosmos! I just need to come up with enough firepower to overwhelm their defenses."

With that in mind, Ves invested a lot of time and ingenuity in completing his long-stalled Fearless Project.

One of the key aspects that made his Nullifier mechs so threatening were their Godkiller rifles.

They were larger, heavier and incorporated much more expensive materials than normal. Ves had to invest a lot of effort into adding strong spirituality-based security methods in order to meet the demands of the MTA and prevent these potent armaments from falling into the wrong hands.

Ves' original intention for the Godkiller rifle was to make it powerful enough to allow his Nullifier mechs to take down enemy expert mechs by themselves!

In order to ensure that his Battle Criers could truly pose a threat against enemy expert mechs, Ves had made the remarkable decision to integrate 5 grams of phasewater in each Godkiller rifle.

This was not a large amount of phasewater compared to the weapons utilized by typical transphasic expert mechs, but the modest addition was enough to weaken the transphasic effect of the Skorpion Kommando by up to 50 percent!

In other words, the Godkiller rifles already possessed the capital to wear down the Skorpion Kommando's defenses, especially if they concentrated their output on the weaker rear of the Fridayman expert mech!

The uncannily effective slicer beam salvos caused Venerable Oskar to become so uncomfortable that he consciously tried to turn the rear of his expert mech away from the Battle Crier mechs as much as possible.

Unfortunately for him, orienting his expert mech in these ways prevented it from pursuing the Promethea as effectively as before. Oskar's hopes of quickly finishing off the Promethea became dashed!

"You annoying ants! What is your identity?!" Venerable Oskar demanded on the open channel. "You are not a regular mech unit!"

"You have the honor of attracting the attention of the Nullifier Battalion." Major Dietrich responded in a neutral and utterly fearless tone. "Your reign of terror will come to an end at our hands."

"Heh, with just a hundred mechs?"

"Our mechs have already contributed to the downfall of three of your Sundered Phalanx's precious expert mechs."

"Those were low-tier expert mechs, am right?!"

"Whether your Skorpion Kommando is a low-tier or high-tier expert mech does not matter to us. As long as we can make it bleed, we can take it down. Even ants like us can defeat an elephant like you. Look at how much damage your expert mech has already sustained."

The Nullifier Battalion did indeed help with defeating a number of enemy expert mechs, but that was when they cooperated with other friendly expert mechs.

Major Dietrich did not think that the Nullifier mechs under his command were capable of defeating the Skorpion Kommando by themselves. The enemy expert mech could easily close in on the Battle Crier mechs and cut them down one by one regardless of how much they tried to distance themselves from each other.

However, the Shield of Samar and the Promethea were already doing a decent job at constraining the Skorpion Kommando.

It was impossible for this dangerous enemy machine to attack the Battle Crier mechs without exposing its rear to the Ignitron rifle of the Promethea!

As such, the Skorpion Kommando's situation continued to deteriorate as it became sandwiched between two powerful ranged threats.

On one side, the Promethea did its best to pelt the Skorpion Kommando with exploding energy beams. Each strike not only chipped away a small but significant chunk of armor, but also made it vulnerable against follow-up attacks launched by the Battle Crier mechs!

On the other side, the dispersed mechs of the Nullifier battalion completely ignored the intimidation factor of the Skorpion Kommando and fearlessly tracked its movements while targeting its more crucial sections as much as possible.

Even if the effective hit rate of a single single Nullifier mech did not exceed 30 percent, that still amounted to a dozen hits per salvo due to the numbers brought by the Battle Criers!

Though Venerable Oskar increasingly wished to smash apart the two potent ranged threats, the Shield of Samar doggedly tried to keep the Skorpion Kommando in place.

"I won't allow you to leave!" Venerable Jannzi exclaimed as her mind became more and more strained as she continually tried to lock her opponent down with the help of gravitic power.

The steady downpour of incoming shots were slowly stripping away at the Skorpion Kommando's formidable transphasic armor system.

Its front received the bulk of the damage but its rear wasn't looking all that great either, especially when a multitude of slicer beams had landed on its crucial flight system!

It became increasingly clear that the Skorpion Kommando couldn't endure this situation much longer. Let alone taking down the Promethea and the mechs of the Nullifier Battalion, Venerable Oskar wasn't even sure if he would be able to return to friendly space!

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