While it wasn't unheard of to deploy aerial chs in larger numbers at the sa ti, it was not conventional.
Aerial chs were more fragile than landbound chs, and flying high easily exposed them to enemy fire. The greater their numbers, the more enemy fire they attracted.
This was why they generally tended to shy away from the areas where the heaviest fighting took place.
With potentially hundreds of not thousands of rifleman chs and artillery chs on the field, a significant proportion of aerial chs would get chewed up before they managed to deal any damage.
Even if the aerial ch units outnumbered the enemy, enough of them would still get shot down to make any victory bittersweet!
However, at this stage of the Komodo War, neither sides wanted to back off. The emotions of the Hexers had always run high, and the fervor they drew from the Blessed Squires only exacerbated their aggressive tendencies!
The Fridayn also fought back harder. The constant defeats in the initial stages of the Komodo War seriously damaged their morale. If the Fridayn kept fighting cautiously, public confidence in the soldiers of the Coalition might drop to a precarious level!
Not only that, many of the Fridayn ch pilots had begun to lose confidence as well. If they developed an impression that the Hexers were truly superior in battle, then it would only be a matter of ti before the Hegemony won the war!
For these reasons, even if it cost the Fridayn dearly, they decided to ramp up their aggression.
The confrontations between the two sides beca more heated. The Konsu Clan's ch forces no longer tried to cover as much terrain. Instead, they grouped their chs more and more until clashes involving thousands of chs at a ti beca a regular occurrence!
At the scale of these kinds of battles, expert chs always showed up. Due to the slight numbers advantage of the Fridayn, the Hexers always suffered a disadvantage!
During one engagent, a ch regint of the Hex Army ca under assault of the Oni Guard!
The Fridayn prepared well. They not only brought at least 1000 more chs, but also gained the assistance of a foreign expert pilot.
As the Hexer ch pilots on the ground desperately fought to fend off the enemy chs, in the air three chs were tangling against each other!
The Hexer expert ch desperately fended off the Konsu Clan's two chs through various ans. The outnumbered ch managed to hang on by relying on its resonance shield and energy shield to block the enemy attacks, but both of them were already reaching their limits.
Once the Hexer expert pilot lost the protection of those shields, her opponents would make quick work of her ch!
Though the regular Hexer ch pilots deeply wanted to help one of their heroes, the 3000 Oni Guard chs advancing on their positions didn't give them any room!
"Hold, sisters!" A Hexer commander shouted. "Reinforcents are on the way! Don't let these Konsu boys break through our lines!"
Artillery shells exploded in mid-air as they were intercepted. Laser beams and positron beams raked the shields of the defensive chs up front. Auxiliary chs threw off the aim of the enemy ranged chs. Blessed Squires all endured focused attacks as their glows infused friendly ch pilots with determination. An increasing amount of craters and downed machines complicated the terrain.
As the losses on the Hexer side mounted, a large cloud rapidly approached the battlefield.
"Help has co!"
"Take heart, sisters! Command has not abandoned us! Fight on and keep these Fridayn in place!"
Over 500 Hexer chs approached. As they neared the battlefield, the Oni Guard commanders beca confused.
According to the observations of their scout chs, the approaching aerial chs consisted almost entirely of Valkyrie Redeers!
No one had ever seen so many copies of the new ch model in one place!
"Where did they get all of these Valkyrie Redeers?"
"That's not important! We must shift our ranged attacks against the incoming threat. The Hexers in front of us are already flagging. It's this new threat we need to guard against!"
Many Oni Guard ranged chs no longer assaulted the beleaguered Hexer ch regint. The damage they managed to inflict on the landbound Hexer chs was already significant.
Instead, the Fridayn chs began to turn their guns towards the approaching cloud and fired!
A large number of Valkyrie Redeers ca under attack. Owing to their shields and armor, they initially managed to hold on. The small number of auxiliary chs in their midst also helped foil the enemy attacks, but with so many chs, their effectiveness was limited!
"Focus fire! These aerial chs are tougher than the other ones!"
The Fridayn ranged chs each received specific targeting instructions. With ten ranged chs aiming their weapons at one Valkyrie Redeer each, a small number of aerial chs quickly beca overwheld!
Individual chs fell out of the sky. Many tis, their ch pilots managed to eject without problem, but there were so cases where the cockpit had already been breached!
With the sheer amount of firepower the Oni Guard had at its disposal, the rate of losses for the Hexer reinforcents quickly mounted.
Aerial chs were aerial chs after all. In order to make them fly, all sorts of compromises had to be made. Aside from imposing limitations on their mass, much of their capacity was taken up by their flight systems and nurous other auxiliary components such as energy cells and heatsinks.
Yet despite this fact, the Valkyrie Redeers still did not drop as fast as the Oni Guard liked. After losing a hundred chs, at least 400 of them had arrived close enough to begin their attack run!
"Watch out! Those witches will dive on us! Disperse and prepare to et their charge!"
Even though the Oni Guard ranged chs intensified their fire, the Valkyrie Redeer chs did not relent!
As the swarm of aerial chs swooped downwards, their third eyes each emitted a narrow beam at the ranged chs!
Several hundred Fridayn ch pilots beca discomfited.
Ordinarily, they should have been able to continue their attacks sowhat, but the rapid descent of so many aerial chs cast a growing shadow on their hearts. Their fire slowed as they felt personally targeted by the diving Hexer chs.
Shells burst in the middle of the diving swarm. Several Hexer chs spun out of control, yet the remaining ones showed no sign of relenting. As the diving machines were just about to reach ground level, each of them simultaneously launched all of their Starburst grenades throughout the enemy formation at once!
"Teach them humility!"
In the final descent, the Valkyrie Redeers each broadened their glows until they encompassed almost the entire enemy formation!
Each Oni Guard ch pilot paused for a mont. Just an instant later, the Starburst grenades exploded!
At the sa ti, the Valkyrie Redeers simultaneously unleashed their shock pulses!
The combination of three different disruptive effects finally overwheld the fad determination of the Konsu Clan. Almost every affected Fridayman ch pilots blanked out for a couple of seconds.
Such a pause was fatal!
"DEATH HAS CO!"
Over three-hundred spears ran through three-hundred Oni Guard chs!
Whether it was lee chs or ranged chs, hardly any of them were able to resist the force of a diving ch. If the struck chs weren't downed in a single hit, then the follow-up attacks quickly took care of them permanently!
As the combined effects of the broadened glows, Starburst grenades and shock pulse slowly wore off, the Valkyrie Redeer chs rapidly lifted up into the air, thereby preventing the recovering Fridayn chs from mobbing them from every direction!
"Damn!" A Konsu ch commander cursed. "Our lines are disrupted!"
The dive attack dealt a devastating blow to the order of the Oni Guard chs. Many of the ch pilots were still trying to regain their wits, all the while the besieged Hexer regint gained so valuable room to breathe!
What was worse was that many of the Valkyrie Redeer chs were still intact! Even though hundreds of aerial chs had already fallen, the remainder still posed a considerable threat, especially when they were already diving in for another charge!
The Valkyrie Redeers didn't give the Oni Guard enough ti to reorganize their defenses. While they hadn't climbed high enough, their dive still ca across as threatening.
Having seen nurous friendly chs getting impaled without being able to muster up a resistance, the Konsu ch pilots beca more and more apprehensive.
As the glows of the Valkyrie Redeers enveloped the entire formation again, the shadow in their hearts grew even more!
"Shock them again!"
Just before the aerial chs struck their opponents, they released yet another pulse. With so many chs releasing all of these pulses, not even the most prepared Konsu ch pilots were able to hold themselves together.
The shock attacks were too strong!
Due to the reduced force of this second dive attack, only around 200 Oni Guard chs suffered a fatal hit. The Valkyrie Redeers did not linger a second longer and imdiately pulled out their spears and launched into the air.
The Konsu Clan ch pilots beca incredibly frustrated by this hit-and-run attack.
This ti, the Hexers specifically targeted the enemy ranged chs, thereby reducing the Oni Guard's ability to shoot down any aerial targets!
"Protect our ranged chs! Don't let us lose our ans to shoot them down!"
It was hardly any use. When so many Valkyrie Redeers swooped down in unison, there was no way to avoid any damage!
Spears continually impaled into hapless chs whose ch pilots couldn't fully concentrate.
Though the Valkyrie Redeers eventually exhausted their capacity to release their Shock And Awe Pulses, their glows were already sufficient to disrupt their enemies.
More than a thousand chs had fallen in rapid succession! This was a devastating loss to the Oni Guards!
Not only that, the Hexer ch regint that used to be under siege had suddenly surged forward again.
Despite their battered and exhausted state, the Hexer landbound chs ferociously assaulted the ragged Oni Guard chs!
More casualties fell among both sides, but the Fridayn were by far the worse off as they constantly needed to watch for attacks from above!
Though only 200 Valkyrie Redeers were left by the ti the Oni Guard sounded the retreat, not a single Hexer among them believed that they had lost!
The only tragedy that caused them to pause was that their side had lost their expert pilot. Another Hexer had sacrificed her life in order to stall the enemy expert pilots.
Though the two victorious Fridayn expert chs could have unleashed a slaughter, it was a bit precarious for the two of them to attack so many intact chs.
The Valkyrie Redeers had made too much of an impact for them to feel any confidence in taking down the Hexers entirely!
This was not the only engagent where the Valkyrie Redeers were deployed in greater numbers. Across multiple planets, many Hexer commanders experinted with grouping them together in larger and larger numbers.
To their utter surprise, it was considerably more effective than they thought.
The suppressive glows they emanated was not only versatile, but also extrely effective when employed in large numbers. Though there were so instances where the Fridayn ch pilots managed to resist the heavy suppression, these cases were too few and far in between.
As long as the Valkyrie Redeers combined their glows with their Starburst grenades and their pulse ability, hardly any prepared defense managed to hold together!
The Hexers beca more accustod to the Valkyrie Redeer's capabilities. After using them in many different scenarios, the Hexer commanders eventually concluded that they were much more useful in the thick of battle!
When large groups of Valkyrie Redeers were paired together with other units, the combination often resulted in overwhelming victories!
The Friday Coalition's montum slowly stalled again. Despite the help of so many foreign expert pilots, the Hexadric Hegemony finally regained their optimism!
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