"How can the Valkyrie Redeer lose?!" Gloriana complained.
The ch she favored the most had put up a good fight. Carter Day even adopted a more aggressive approach and tried to pull off a few charges.
Yet the relatively small fighting area prevented the Valkyrie Redeer from being able to perform at its best. The ch was much more suited to fight in open space where there was virtually an unlimited amount of space to work with. Without enough room, there was no way for the Valkyrie Redeer to build up a sufficient charge!
"It’s the hair." Ves muttered. "The Frokyn is very tricky to deal with. I don’t know what it’s made of, but it is exceptionally resilient against physical attacks."
The hairs moved like tentacles and entangled the Valkyrie Redeer’s spear whenever it ca close. Not only that, but they functioned as a damage cushion that negated a lot of damage.
It was as if the ch was surrounded by a permanent energy shield!
The end result had beco increasingly more clear. After the Valkyrie Redeer exhausted its Starburst grenades, it was only able to rely on its death-based glow to induce a lot of discomfort towards Mireilla Linschoten.
Yet even if the Valkyrie Redeer was able to accept the presence of a male, there was no way to forge synergy between the two. The Valkyrie Redeer’s performance was only adequate, which wasn’t enough to overco the disadvantages it faced.
"It’s all because they put a male inside the c.o.c.kpit!" Gloriana complained. "This isn’t fair! Now, the Valkyrie Redeer has incurred a lot of blows from the axe that are difficult to repair!"
She was right to feel upset. The Valkyrie Redeer got struck several tis by a biotal axe. The powerful weapon damaged large portions of the ch’s frontal armor before the female ch finally succ.u.mbed.
All of that battle damage would take a lot of ti and effort to repair.
"It’s okay." Ves said as he placed his hand on her palm in an attempt to calm her down. "The Valkyrie Redeer will rise again. The damage looks bad but large portions of it can easily be replaced. I think the Frokyn doesn’t look so good either. If there is one lesson that I have learned from witnessing the transformation abilities of biochs, it’s that they always pay a price for their power!"
Once the duel had ended, the Frokyn didn’t outright collapse, but it didn’t look healthy either. Its bushy hair all turned grey and shed from the ch within a minute. The bioch’s flesh looked shrunken and drained as if it had sacrificed its own health to generate all of that animated hair.
While it probably didn’t take much effort to restore the ch by feeding it with nutrients and allowing it to grow back to its peak, this was not an instant process.
Once the arena operators cleaned the battlefield, the fifth and final match of the day comnced.
This ti, the chs that erged from the sides possessed no significant flight capabilities.
They were too heavy to be able to lift themselves under their own power under standard gravity conditions.
"The heavy chs have co."
Even layn were able to recognize the last pair of chs as heavy machines. They were larger than anything that had entered the dueling ring. Compared to slimr and lighter machines such as the Ferocious Piranha, the chs about to fight the fifth match of the day were several tis more massive!
The Transcendent Punisher exuded a holy presence as usual. Just like the chs that ca before, its usual constraints no longer applied anymore, allowing it to accommodate any ch pilot, even soone who wasn’t an adherent of the Ylvainan Faith!
Even though Ves didn’t expect the ch pilot to synergize well with the heavy artillery ch, he at least hoped it was enough to activate the ch’s iconic ability.
It’s ch pilot was a heavy artillery specialist called Gwineth Ulser. Her brief record did not reveal much. Aside from informing everyone that she was an active serviceman, her public profile only revealed that she was good at multitasking.
The ch pilot of the bioch was also a woman. Ilse Lieberman was also a heavy artillery specialist, but she belonged to a different ch division. Her profile noted that she achieved high marksmanship scores.
This was quite a frightening claim. Accuracy mattered a lot to artillery chs. Even though the distance between the two chs wasn’t much, it was still useful if a ch pilot was able to target the weak points of an opposing ch.
In order to down a ch, it was already sufficient to destroy the internal components that were vital to allowing the ch to function. Trying to destroy the entire armor system of a ch was not that useful in itself.
The two heavy chs possessed several similarities.
They were both hexapods. Six legs extended from the underside of their fat and broad torsos. The legs not only provided the chs with exceptional stability, but also allowed the ch to move its prodigious mass without worrying about losing its balance like bipedal chs.
The two artillery chs also boasted similar performance paraters. Even though their shapes diverged, they were both slow, massive, weighed down by armor and carried several potent weapons.
Yet this was where their similarities ended.
The Transcendent Punisher was a familiar sight to the Larkinsons. Its main armant consisted of a pair of gauss cannons and a pair of positron cannons. Together, these weapons were able to inflict heavy damage onto any immobile target, particularly other heavy chs!
Yet the opposing ch didn’t look like a vegetable either.
"It looks like a beetle." Vincent sumd up. "A fat beetle."
Dr. Navarro gave his heavy artillery ch an imposing na. The so-called Swarm Monarch looked like a larger, more combat-oriented version of the utility beetles that usually perform the role of cleaning and maintenance bots in LRA society.
Unlike many of his other chs, the Swarm Monarch was covered by a hard exoskeleton that offered solid protection from attacks that ca from every direction, even below.
Four big nozzles extended from the back of the Swarm Monarch. Two of them were able to swivel directly forward but the other two were only able to maintain an upwards angle.
It seed that the latter two cannons were capable of lobbing shells in order to bombard targets from above, thereby bypassing any terrain or other obstacles in the way.
This wasn’t very relevant though. The dueling ring was completely flat so there was nothing standing in the way between the two chs. Both of them possessed a clear line of sight against each other and they had already trained their weapons to fire as soon as the signal was given.
[Let the final match of the day comnce!]
Both chs instantly exploded into action!
Both six-legged chs had already begun to move. They slowly moved in a circle. This not only allowed them to maintain their current distance towards each other, but also prevented the ground at their position from collapsing or becoming unstable due to excessive bombardnt.
In the beginning, the Transcendent Punisher imdiately unleashed a lot of direct firepower.
Gwineth Ulser did not hesitate in firing all of the Ylvainan ch’s armants!
Gauss cannon slugs slamd against the front of the beetle’s exoskeleton plating. Positron beams struck the beetle’s organic plating as well, causing significant sections of its surface to heat up or deform!
The Swarm Monarch did not let the classical ch beat it up without hitting back. Two of its organic muzzles imdiately unleashed positron beams of their own!
Of course, the thick surface of the Transcendent Punisher easily withstood the initial strikes. One of the reasons why heavy artillery chs possessed so much armor was because they were designed to take out enemy counterparts!
An artillery ch that boasted little armor usually didn’t last very long on the battlefield!
A ch with high threat such as an artillery platform with lots of guns always needed a way to mitigate damage.
Since all of the heavy weapon systems weighed the artillery chs down, it was not feasible for them to rely on mobility to evade incoming attacks.
The only solution left was to pile as much armor as was feasible and hope that the ch was able to last a little longer than the opposite ch!
Ves expected to witness a straightforward slugging match. It wasn’t as if the chs could do anything else such as closing in on each other in order to trample their opponents. They were too slow and unwieldy to perform those moves!
"Look! The beetle is firing its second set of guns!" Realla pointed out.
Ves imdiately sensed sothing wrong. The arcing projectiles didn’t seem like regular shells. They only soared for a short amount of ti before descending on top of the Transcendent Punisher.
No explosions ensued. The projectiles didn’t appear to be explosive at all. Instead, Ves and the other Larkinsons looked astonished as the ’shells’ ca to life!
"They’re.. they’re beetles!" Gloriana shrieked!
The small and squat beetles moved quickly and jerkily. They seed to possess so rudintary intelligence because they imdiately moved to the relative weak points of the upper side of the Transcendent Punisher.
Once the pair of beetles found their positions, they began to bore through the relatively weak armor sections with a strange drill extended from their mouths!
Not only that, they also released acid that softened up the upper layers, allowing the drilling beetles to achieve faster progress.
"Damn!" Ves slamd his fist against the armrest. "The Transcendent Punisher can’t shake those beetles off! We never thought to implent any counterasures against insects of all weapons!"
Even Gloriana found the situation to be absurd. "Those beetles are too effective! How can they drill so fast when they’re so small?!"
The answer soon beca evident. The beetles slowly deflated as they continued their drilling. Eventually, they exhausted all of their reserves, causing them to fall over and die.
It didn’t matter. The Swarm Monarch had already fired several volleys of additional drilling beetles during this ti!
Soon enough, the Transcendent Punisher hosted a dozen drilling beetles. Ves figured that the Swarm Monarch could have lobbed additional beetles onto its target, but Ilse Lieberman was clever enough to realize that she would quickly exhaust the ’ammunition’ reserves of her bioch.
The Swarm Monarch could only carry so many beetles! Launching too many of them at once would only cause a lot of surface damage to the Transcendent Punisher because the beetles weren’t able to occupy the sa position at once!
While the Swarm Monarch let its drilling beetles do the work, it continued to apply pressure by firing its positron beams at the legs of the Transcendent Punisher.
The legs weren’t as resilient as the torso, so they were relatively easier to damage!
Targeting the lower half of the Transcendent Punisher also prevented the Swarm Monarch from killing its own beetles. Although they seed resilient to both heat and physical damage, they didn’t look like they could survive a direct hit.
It was too bad that none of the weapons carried by the Transcendent Punisher was able to aim its weapons along its own surface! They simply couldn’t angle the cannon muzzles so low!
"I’ll definitely fix this shortcoming." Ves vowed.
Even though the Transcendent Punisher looked as if it was getting stung to death, it was not the only ch that was suffering.
Its prodigious firepower was heavily savaging the Swarm Monarch! The constant, direct volleys savaged the front of the ch so much that it was forced to angle itself in order to avoid exposing its heavily-injured sections!
Not only that, but Gwineth Ulser finally achieved the right conditions to activate the signature ability of the Transcendent Punisher.
Its glow beca more active as a different presence reluctantly lent its power to a non-believer!
"It’s starting!"
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