The collision of chs in the center of the battlefield was slower but much more impactful!
Sturdy chs collided against each other with their shields up front! Other lee chs either swooped past each other while trying to rake their opponents or stopped in the middle in order to start killing as many chs as possible.
After a long ti of waiting and advancing, the mainstay chs of the two forces had finally clashed!
The Molten Hamrs were especially eager. The oldest and most storied ch division in the Ferril punitive fleet had waited for a long ti in order to show their prowess once again. Now that they were allowed to fight against human chs for the first ti in decades, the ch pilots did not want to sha their predecessors who managed to defeat the previous rulers of this star sector!
"Slaughter the tall folk!"
"Our hamrs will smash them to pieces!"
"My shield shall never break!"
The first units to oppose the Molten Hamrs were the Avatars of Myth and the Cross Clan!
The latter tended to field sturdier and more solid chs than the Glory Seekers. The Crossers also favored chs with more resilience, endurance and staying power, which made them suitable to fight in standing battles.
Ves had already caught plenty of glimpses of the chs fielded by the Cross Clan. Many of them were designed by Professor Benedict though the majority were still rather generic.
There was nothing wrong with their performance, though. They were solid and perford well in all of the basic paraters that mattered.
As for the Avatars of Myth, many of their chs consisted of Bright Warriors.
The rifleman ch configurations were still further in the back and were already locked in an exchange of fire with the Slug Rangers.
The lancer ch configurations had not yet built up a charge. It was too risky for them to dive into the formidable dwarven ch formations.
The swordsman ch configurations were already hard at work trying to deal damage without exposing themselves too much to the deadly dwarven chs.
The space knight configurations were the main focal point at the mont. They were the only chs of the Larkinson Clan that could stand up to the heavy assault that the Molten Hamrs excelled at! The pressure they had to endure was incredible and it only grew worse as the unique ch models fielded by the dwarves began to show their worth.
The most iconic dwarven ch model was the space knights fielded by its elite ch regint. The overstrength Vulcan's Chosen fielded 3000 Molten Furies, which was the signature shield-bearing chs of the Molten Hamrs!
The low stature of the Molten Furies quickly gave the Avatars of Myth and the Cross Clan a lot of headaches. None of them had much experience with fighting chs that were so short but so resilient at the sa ti.
The Vulcanite ch pilots were well aware of the pros and cons of piloting dwarven chs. They made good use of their lack of height to make it more difficult to land effective attacks on them. At the sa ti, they also concentrated their attacks on the mid-sections of their opponents. This often resulted in awkward exchanges where the taller humanoid chs had to employ neglected moves in order to defend against such low blows.
Of course, the Avatar and Crosser chs tried to lower themselves in order to fight against the dwarven chs on an equal basis, but this only prompted the Molten Hamr chs to do the sa.
The clash in the center was by no ans a static crush between two massive forces. The huge distances in space along with a need to maintain distance from too many chs lest they collide against each other ant that the actual battle line stretched out across many kiloters.
chs were quite big, after all! With the high degree of effectiveness of ranged chs in space warfare, lee chs tended to avoid clumping up too much in order to prevent themselves from becoming easy targets.
"Stand your ground! Our clan is depending on us. Do not let a single dwarven ch pass!" Commander lkor exhorted his n as his ch constantly fired positron beams at suitable targets.
In front of him, the lee chs of his Avatars were struggling to contain the dwarven chs.
The Bright Warriors they piloted all exuded identical glows that provided the Avatar ch pilots with both comfort and strength. Yet that was not enough to resist the pushing power of the Molten Hamrs.
Commander lkor quickly grew grave as he witnessed the performance of the signature chs of their opposition.
The Molten Furies that were the main dwarven chs responsible for absorbing the blows of their opposition were hardy and difficult to deal with. In a one-on-one fight, it took too much effort for an offensive lee ch to break through their defenses.
So far, the only way the Avatars managed to overpower these hardy machines was to gang up on them and attack them from multiple angles. The Molten Furies and their thick shields were too difficult to overco from the front!
"Argghh!"
"Careful!"
"Don't stay too close!"
As the Avatars and Crossers began to destroy the Molten Furies, they suddenly learned why they were called this way. Anyti a Molten Fury got wrecked or ejected its cockpit, the machine in question blew up with so much force that any chs in front of it got blasted with such violence that they inevitably incurred damage.
This presented a major problem to the chs up front. Aside from the space knights who were still able to bear the explosions, every other lee ch had to make way and make sure they did not face any of the Molten Furies head-on. This constrained their choices and quickly caused their performance to drop.
"Hah! They're too afraid of our molten surprise!"
""Push them back, laddies!"
Commander lkor darkened. Despite the stable performance of the Avatars of Myth, these final surprises severely caused his ch pilots to beco unbalanced.
"It's just like fighting against the Holvein Grenadiers during the Battle of Reckoning." He muttered.
Fortunately, their prior experience in fighting against explosives allowed the Avatar officers to form a suitable response. The space knights largely tried to keep the Molten Furies in place while the other lee chs sought to harass or destroy the dwarven chs from above and below.
"The Molten Furies can't shield as well from multiple angles at a ti!" Gloriana concluded after she analyzed their design. "Don't attack their sides. They can easily pivot their shields to deflect attacks from their left or right. You need to attack them from a vertical angle. Attacking from below will definitely make them flustered!"
After just a few rounds of fighting, the Larkinsons confird Gloriana's analysis. It appeared that typical dwarven chs were much less capable of defending themselves against attacks from the top or bottom of orientations.
Their shields were thick and they were able to defend well in horizontal directions. However, if an attack ca from above, they had to angle their shields to cover their exposed top profile, which inevitably made it easier for enemy chs to bypass the dwarven ch's defenses.
The Molten Furies were especially bad at defending against attacks from below. Their arms were short, so the only way to deal with this situation was to rotate their fras so they faced downwards.
Of course, the problem with that was that they exposed their upper sections to the enemy chs that were previously to the front.
Humanoid chs had difficulties defending from below as well, so this was not a unique weakness to dwarven-shaped machines. It was just that the Molten Furies were so sturdy that the expeditionary forces were desperate to grasp any possible advantage.
Since attacking their rears was too difficult in this large-scale engagent, then attacking from below was a good alternative!
Due to this, the battle beca increasingly more three-dinsional as the chs moved along the z-axis. The chs were drifting further apart but not so much that they exposed too many loopholes to their opponents.
Commander lkor tried his best to maintain situational awareness. He was constantly trying to keep his units together and occasionally issued orders to direct more chs in areas where the dwarven chs slowly gained an advantage.
Despite the various responses made by the expeditionary forces, the Molten Hamrs were steadily pushing forward. Not only was it difficult to damage the dwarven chs in set battles, the dwarven ch division also outnumbered its foes!
With several thousands more chs than the Larkinson Clan and the Cross Clan could muster at the center, it beca too difficult to rely on positioning and tactics to hold the line.
The defense effort was faltering!
This wasn't entirely the fault of the Molten Furies. These dwarven space knights were good at withstanding attacks but weren't nearly as good as dishing them out. They were all ard with one-handed axes that did not possess a lot of reach.
They had one advantage, though.
Axes were great at damaging shields!
The Molten Furies did not even bother to bypass the shields of the defensive Bright Warriors and other space knights. They just hacked at the shields right in front of them with such enthusiasm that their victims were definitely feeling a lot of pressure!
"Damnit, we can't hold!"
"Our swords can't overco their defenses fast enough!"
"We need help or else we can't hold the line!"
Though the offensive chs of the Larkinsons and Crossers tried their best to work around the strengths of the tricky dwarven space knights, the Molten Furies responded by tightening their formation so that they ford overlapping shield walls that looked like giant half spheres!
No matter whether the Larkinson or Crosser chs tried to attack from the front, left, right, above or below, there were always thick and sturdy in their way. The amount of attacks that were actually able to land on the fras of the Molten Furies were distressingly few, and even if an attack went through the thick base armor of the dwarven space knights always limited the damage to just shallow marks.
"This is a real defensive ch regint!" Commander lkor gasped.
The Molten Furies belonged to the Vulcan's Chosen, which was the premier ch regint of the 7th ch Division of the Ferril Provincial Army. They were all extrely well trained and proud of their heritage and illustrious record.
Venerable Orthox De Massie, the expert pilot of the infamous Gatecrasher, had risen up from the Vulcan's Chosen!
"Hold fast, Avatars! No defense is impregnable! Help is on the way!"
Although the dwarven formation left an obvious weak point at the rear, none of his Avatar chs took advantage of this opening.
This was because they had to fight through the offensive chs of the Molten Hamrs first!
Though the offensive lee chs of the Molten Hamrs didn't seem to be in a hurry to go on the attack, a number of them had already collided with the human chs and showed off a frightening degree of threat despite their shorter stature.
None of the dwarven chs were easy to deal with! The Molten Hamrs were so good at frontal warfare that fighting a battle on their terms was no less than suicide!
"We need a way to break their cohesion." Commander lkor concluded.
His heart ached whenever he saw another Avatar ch going down after getting overwheld by axes and other heavy weapons. The Molten Hamrs were not only fighting in their elent, but also had the advantage of numbers at their side!
Though the latter wasn't so obvious at the mont, when lkor looked at the deep ranks of dwarven chs just waiting to have their turn at hacking the human chs, he couldn't help but feel that his Avatars were inadequate.
They perford well against smaller and less disciplined units, but now that they were fighting against a real heavy assault ch regints, the difference between a private ch legion and a professional military ch division had beco very obvious!
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