"Avatars! Is anyone out there? Co on! Please respond!"
Imon Ingvar's Bright Warrior flew aimlessly in circles. Despite previously huddling behind an asteroid the rest of the Second ch Company of the Avatars of Myth, everything disappeared once the wave of darkness swept past their position.
His ch lost contact with the Bright Warrior chs that were huddling just tens of ters away from his machine.
It was as if the wave of darkness had all taken them away.
What was even odder was that the asteroid that Imon's ch previously used as cover disappeared as well!
"Is this an illusion?"
When Imon experintally directed his Bright Warrior to fly downwards, he found to his horror that the obscuring darkness wasn't just muffling his ch's sensor.
It had actually displaced him in a completely different space!
Questions continued to well up in his mind as Imon tried and failed to make sense of this abnormal change. His shallow understanding of science didn't help matters either. All he knew was that he had lost contact with every comrade, including his sister!
"Casella! Where are you?!"
In his haste to reconnect to his fellow Avatars, Imon failed to notice that the darkness around his ch slowly began to seethe. It was only when a strange chill ran straight through his body that he suddenly paused.
In the periphery of his vision, Imon suddenly noticed movent!
He withdrew so of his senses from his ch and looked around in the darkened cockpit. Even though Imon dialed up the lights to their highest setting, he could barely spot the cockpit consoles in front of his piloting chair.
"Did I imagine it?" He questioned himself.
A second chill struck his body!
"What is going on?!"
A strange soundless roar suddenly rang through his ears! Imon grabbed his helted head. A strange pressure kept mounting on his mind as if so enormous weight was pressing down on him. The most infuriating aspect of all of these weird events was that Imon was completely unable to block them. He felt as if so unfathomable existences were attacking at this very mont!
"I have to fight back!"
Imon ignored every uncomfortable situation and imrsed himself into his ch. As soon as his man-machine connection with his ch intensified, Imon found to his relief that his body was no longer subject to as many abnormal phenona.
He didn't know why that was so, but Imon was not in the mood to look at a gift horse in the mouth.
Sadly, soon after he took shelter in his own ch, the boiling darkness beyond his ch convulsed.
Suddenly, a strange apparition banged against the armor of his ch!
"What?!"
Though Imon was completely caught off-guard, his instincts were still pretty good. His ch imdiately retaliated with a sword, only to cut off so kind of strange grey transparent ch.
"The hell?!"
Another ghostly ch attacked his ch from behind. Fortunately, Imon had beco fully alert. Before the strange ghostly ch could thrust its half-transparent spear into the rear armor of the Bright Warrior, the latter turned around and cut through the apparition!
More transparent chs appeared with regular frequency. So of them even fired rifles that only dealt a fraction of the damage they were supposed to have if fired by physical chs.
Imon was forced to fly his Bright Warrior through the darkness in order to take out these strange chs.
All the while, Imon continued to guess at their origin. What was the deal with them? Were they real, or were they rely fignts of his imagination that had co to life?
"Wait a minute.. so of these chs look familiar."
Though the greyish chs had been stripped of all color, as a ch pilot Imon was trained to study the physical properties of the chs he fought.
He gradually recognized that the designs of the ghost chs matched the chs fielded by the pirates he had just fought!
He even guessed that these ghost chs all consisted of machines that the Larkinson Clan and Penitent Sisters had previously taken out in the previous rounds of battle.
This was because the grey chs each exhibited at least so battle damage!
This damage caused the ghost chs to function less optimally.
Slowly but surely, Imon managed to keep a grip on the situation. No matter the odd appearance of these hostile apparitions, they were considerably weaker than their actual physical counterparts.
First, their transparent nature caused them to inflict less damage than they should be capable of doing.
Second, that sa nature caused every attack made by his ch to deal amplified damage to the enemy chs.
In fact, much of the grey chs that weren't imdiately cut in half stopped functioning after suffering catastrophic internal damage!
Third, the enemy chs fought as stupid as bots. Even pirate ch pilots knew better than to launch plain and straightforward attacks. There didn't appear to be any human intelligences controlling these ghost chs!
Even so, Imon's optimism slowly began to make way for creeping worry, which soon beca supplanted by dawning horror.
"These ghost chs don't stop coming!"
It started out slow, but escalated over the course of the battle. The boiling darkness kept spitting out the sa grey chs that his Bright Warrior had cut to pieces before.
In addition, the longer this ordeal took place, the greater the darkness beca active!
Each grey ch that reford out of the darkness beca just a little bit stronger than before. Soon enough, Imon's Bright Warrior could no longer cut down these ghostly apparitions as effectively as before.
Though their driving intelligences hadn't increased a single bit, their solidity and force grew with every single reformation!
Imon tried to be clever and stopped trying to take out the ghost chs. Unfortunately, this caused their numbers to build up. If this kept on, his Bright Warrior would quickly be mobbed by more than a hundred ghost chs attacking from each direction!
Even if his Bright Warrior was clad with incredibly resilient Breyer alloy, that many attacks would definitely exceed its defensive capabilities!
"Ahhh! What will it take for you to stay down!" Imon yelled in frustration as his Bright Warrior's sword cut through one ghostly swordsman ch while stabbing through the chest of a ghostly space knight. "Casella?! Where are you?!"
His sister wasn't faring well. Captain Casella Ingvar deployed into battle with a Bright Warrior in its rifleman ch configuration. This ant that the all-obscuring darkness around her impeded her fighting ability even more!
Her ch's laser rifle kept shooting at the ghost chs, mostly managing to take them out in a single hit as long as she aid at so critical component.
In order to prevent her ch from getting hit, she kept her ch mobile. During her initial confrontations against the greyish chs, she also noticed that they didn't appear to be piloted by trained ch pilots.
It was as if a layman was puppeting them all by remote!
The attack and movent patterns of these chs were very simple and did not leverage their individual strengths.
They also did not employ any tactics other than attacking her ch in the most direct manner possible. This ant that even if she was being sward by multiple ghostly attackers, they did not employ any boxing formations.
Due to all of these factors, Casella managed to overco her disadvantageous situation by flying away and kiting her ghostly pursuers.
Since these stupid grey chs only thought of reaching her ch as fast as possible, they solely flew in straight lines, making them easy targets!
Despite this favorable condition, Casella kept growing more and more worried. The darkness surrounding her in each direction kept becoming more active. The ghost chs that chased after her fleeing machine were also growing stronger.
Who knew whether the darkness would introduce another danger?
Even if the situation remained the sa, Casella still worried about her continued survival. This was because even if the chs she fought were fake, her own machine was still very real!
"My energy reserves are dropping." She noted with evident concern.
Every ch only carried only so much fuel or energy. Spaceborn chs were especially notorious for their elevated consumption of energy.
So chs designed for efficiency could last for hours even if their flight systems were being stressed.
Other chs designed for peak performance were not as frugal! They were mostly ant to control their energy consumption until a critical mont had arrived.
The Bright Warrior's rifleman ch configuration consud more energy than the other configurations. Its laser rifle drained energy with every shot, and its constant maneuvering didn't help matters either.
Even though Casella dialed down the power of the laser rifle to a point where it was just enough to kill a ghost ch, how long would her ch's energy reserves last? If her weapon gradually demanded more power, she feared that her ch might not be able to last more than thirty minutes!
In this all-consuming darkness, there were no friendly chs to cover her back. There were no ships to get back to in order to replenish her machine.
She was completely on her own, and the continuously-intensifying darkness began to take a toll on her sanity.
"I'm a Larkinson now!" She reminded herself. "I can't give in to my fears!"
Though Casella managed to hold on, many other Larkinson ch pilots fared worse!
The Avatars, Sentinels, Battle Criers, Vandals and Swordmaidens engulfed by the anomaly all experienced the sa difficulties.
The skill of the ch pilot and the quality of their machines generally determined how well they coped with the neverending attacks.
Those who piloted regular premium chs managed to hold out for a ti, but as the power of the grey chs escalated, the damage kept accumulating.
Each premium ch suffered more and more scars. So chs, especially lightly-armored ones, exhibited serious damage that caused their performance to drop!
Once their firepower or mobility took a hit, the distressed machines beca less capable of fending off the next wave of hostile ghost chs.
So of the chs failed to kill off enough ghost chs or lost ability to outrun them. Once that happened, the ghost chs surrounding their victims kept growing in number until they finally tore apart their prey!
Already, an unknown but considerable number of Larkinson chs had succumbed in this fashion!
Perhaps the only good news was that so other chs were faring better!
The expert candidates stood out as the best perforrs. In another pocket of darkness, Commander Dise of the Swordmaidens maintained her iron will as the greatsword of her swordsman ch cut through three greyish apparitions at once!
"Begone, you fake chs! You are not a worthy challenge!"
Her battle intent rose even as a part of her worried about the condition of her fellow Swordmaidens.
Too many of her fellow sisters had died in the past few years! The small amount of Swordmaidens who survived all of the ordeals that preceded them were incredibly precious to Dise.
Though she was confident that her fellow Swordmaiden ch pilots would be able to deal with these endless ghostly chs with similar ease, she wasn't sure whether this would remain true for long.
"I have to get back to them!" She urged herself. Her growing desperation boosted her fighting spirit.
It was not in the nature of the Swordmaidens to shy away from a threat! No matter what kind of oddities took place, Commander Dise was determined to overco every obstacle!
"If this fog keeps hindering , I will cut it apart!"
Instead of cutting the constantly-reappearing grey chs, she collected herself and concentrated her ntality until her swordman ch unleashed a cut with its Breyer alloy greatsword!
A montary tear into the darkness had ford. The sensors of Dise's ch briefly glimpsed another Larkinson ch!
Even though the tear quickly healed in a matter of seconds, Commander Dise finally obtained so hope!
"If a single cut isn't enough, then I'll unleash more!"
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