The Mech Touch

The Hex Army welcomed a new mech model!

Since the main military branch of the Hexers only employed around 600 mech models, this was big news!

For a very long time, the Friday Coalition's intelligence services kept a very close eye on the Hexadric Hegemony's mech industry.

One of the disadvantages of the high amount of control and restrictions the Hexers imposed on their mech designers was the ease in which their efforts could be tracked.

The Hegemony only possessed so many Masters and Seniors, and the Fridaymen developed a great understanding of their work and design style.

Many of the mech models currently in use in the Hex Army were continuations of existing lines. The same team of mech designers constantly iterated on them and released new revisions every decade or every few years.

As a mature mech military, the Hex Army's mech doctrines and customs were highly developed! They already developed almost every possible mech they predicted that they would need in order to defeat the Friday Coalition.

These days, it was extremely difficult for Masters to propose an entirely new line of mechs to the Hex Army. At the very least, the Masters had to engage in years of lobbying in order to build up support among every important stakeholder such as the mech industry, the matriarchs and the mech pilots themselves.

To build up such a comprehensive amount of support was not something that could be done in a month! The Coalition's spies and observers were very proficient at observing any major influencing activities in the Hegemony's ruling society.

Oftentimes, even before the Hex Army finally rolled out a new line of mechs, the Friday Coalition already developed a detailed breakdown of its weaknesses!

Yet this time the Hexers caught the Fridaymen by surprise!

For once, the Hex Army unveiled something new without causing any alarm.

The lack of forewarning combined with the widespread deployment of the new model caused the situation on Marrakath III to change incredibly quickly.

Prior to the change, the Opal Tridents and the other elements of the Fortune Legion put up a lot of resistance against the Wrathful Doves. The aggressive Hexers constantly had to commit considerably more mechs and assets in order to overcome the prepared defenses and fortifications occupied by the Fridaymen.

Even though the Hexers eventually pushed the Fridaymen back, the female supremacists lost considerably more mechs and mech pilots than their foes. Every fortification they took was littered with the blood of hundreds, if not thousands of prime, valuable mech pilots!

Though the Hexers were able to salvage the wreckage and debris from the battlefields they wrestled from the Fridaymen, in the Komodo War, losing resources was no issue. With centuries of accumulation, neither states would run out of exotics anytime soon!

What truly mattered were the mech pilots. Every state could only foster so many potentates and mech pilots, and taking them off the board was the best way to win the Komodo War!

Therefore, the Friday Coalition considered everything else such as planets and star systems to be expendable resources. It hurt to lose territory, but as long as they could exchange it for enough enemy blood, it was worth it to make this trade!

So far, the Fridaymen's battle plan for Marrakath III largely went according to plan. Even if the Hexers constantly nibbled at the territory occupied by the original owners, they suffered way too much casualties for every victory.

The endless reinforcements pouring into the star system helped mask the incredible losses the Hexers sustained. The fact that much of the deaths consisted of unimportant boys who piloted less resilient and less important mechs also caused the female commanders to turn a blind eye to the losses.

Obviously, the higher ups of the Wrathful Doves Mech Army Group largely belonged to the militant camp! To them, sacrificing the lives of their male mech pilots was hardly any loss at all! They believed that the Komodo War would instantly swing in their favor if they managed to conquer the Marrakath System and the Crestfallen Stars as quickly as possible.

The Hexers disdained the attrition warfare that their enemies were fond of! As the superior and more enlightened state, the Hegemony ought to be able to defeat an inferior state head-on without dragging conflict for too many years!

Even so, the losses suffered by the Wrathful Doves and other elements of the Hex Army was still unsustainable. If the fighting on Marrakath III stretched on for months, then it was doubtful whether the mech army group would still be able to fight without undergoing an extensive, time-consuming reorganization!

All of this changed after the Hexers unveiled their surprise!

"What is this new mech model?! Why can it affect so many people at the same time?!"

"Reporting, sir! The new knight mech is called the Blessed Squire! It's a supportive knight mech that possesses ordinary defenses, below average mobility, low offensive power but considerable utility. Its energy transferring abilities allow it to provide fantastic support to offensive Hexers, thereby significantly allowing them to prolong their peak output in battle! As for the mind-altering field they are surrounded with, this so-called glow is capable of elevating the morale of Hexers while exerting minor pressure on our own mech pilots!"

"What?! A glow? That mech isn't glowing at all!"

"It's a figurative term for a specialty developed by a famed mech designer called Ves Larkinson…"

A lot of Fridaymen who never paid attention to the news of lesser states suddenly became familiar with a rising star in the mech industry. Known as the Devil Tongue, his products had already taken the third-class mech market by storm!

Now that he extended his hand to second-class mechs, this forgettable figure to most Fridaymen suddenly turned into an incredibly powerful enemy!

"Why didn't we eliminate him before he could affect Marrakath III with his work?!"

"We did try, but our attempts have failed!"

"Idiots! The CRC is led by a bunch of bureaucrats who have no idea what war is truly like!"

The Fridaymen weren't the only people who became astonished. The Wrathful Doves and the other Hexers on Marrakath III became fascinated by the Blessed Squires as well!

Technically, the Blessed Squires wasn't deployed by the Hex Army. Instead, an obscure, forgettable auxiliary force silently worked to gain permission to ship the new mechs to a single destination in order to serve as a trial.

DIVA prepared a very careful plan to introduce the Blessed Squire model to the Hex Army. The intelligence agency had tested the mech internally for a lengthy period in order to understand its true value. The information provided by Calabast also assisted DIVA in understanding how to maximize the use of the new mechs.

The fact that the mech was inescapably tied to a male mech designer presented a huge hurdle for its adoption. Therefore, DIVA remained patient and waited for the best opportunity to showcase its use.

In the meantime, the agency secretly reached out to a small number of matriarchs and important Hexer stakeholders to lay the groundwork for the Blessed Squire.

With the help of the Little Angel, the sole masterwork copy of this innovative Hexer mech, DIVA finally received permission to field the Blessed Squire on Marrakath III!

As expected, the manner in which DIVA abruptly slipped the Blessed Squires into the main combat units of the Wrathful Doves went well!

Even if the Hexer mech pilots initially showed distrust and hesitation at fighting alongside a completely new mech model, they soon accepted the Blessed Squires once they felt the glows!

Many Wrathful Doves did not have it easy on Marrakath III. The hard fighting and the grueling attrition warfare affected both males and females alike.

Therefore, these stressed mech pilots became unusually receptive to the Blessed Squire. The mech's glow, which reminded every Hexer of the Superior Mother, seemed to be able to soothe their nerves and grant them confidence.

"It's as if my mother is cheering me from behind!"

"The Superior Mother has blessed the Wrathful Doves!"

The change in mood and the easing of worries affected the Wrathful Doves on a wide scale. With the large amount of Blessed Squires deployed on the surface, hundreds of thousands of Hexer combatants suddenly regained the confidence and illusion of superiority they initially possessed at the start of the Battle of the Marrakath System!

The mech divisions and mech regiments of the Wrathful Doves assaulted the Opal Trident positions with twice as much ferocity!

Even though the Hexers mechs hadn't grown stronger and even if the energy transfer abilities of the Blessed Squires was not omnipotent, the improvement in mindsets alone resulted in a lot more breakthroughs!

Hardfought sieges that usually lasted for weeks suddenly ended in a decisive Hexer victory in a matter of days!

The defensive lines of the Opal Tridents that were usually capable of repelling multiple waves of Hexer offensives began to fall apart after just a single determined attack!

The Fridaymen soon became familiar with another insidious aspect about the strange new mech model.

Any enemy of the Hexers experienced some form of mental suppression!

The influence wasn't very strong. Fridaymen researchers who began to study LMC mechs noticed that the Doom Guard model was considerably more impactful in this regard.

However, as long as anyone who did not agree with Hexer ideology came within range of a Blessed Squire, they experienced a very specific form of discomfort.

It was as if their mothers disapproved of their hostility towards Hexers!

The negative effects of this sensation wasn't very strong, but it couldn't be blocked or ignored. Anyone who came under the influence of a Blessed Squire felt as if their mother was observing all of their actions.

No one liked to be watched all the time. Who enjoyed being stared at by their own mothers when they ate a meal, used a toilet or slept in bed?

It was quite unnerving!

The mech pilots of the Fortune Legion were highly trained and very disciplined. None of them were weak-minded in the slightest as every second-rate state knew the importance of training mech pilots who could endure many difficulties.

The problem was that mech pilots were still human in the end! The highly emotional component of the Blessed Squire's glow evoked their own thoughts, feelings and memories towards mothers!

Only expert candidates and expert pilots remained unaffected by the Blessed Squire's glow. Everyone else, even the elite crack troops of the Fortune Legion, still possessed chinks in their armor which the so-called Superior Mother exploited!

As long as the ordinary mech pilots of the Friday Coalition became affected, they no longer found their mental balance. They were unable to enter into their most optimal battle moods where they felt as if they fought as one with their comrades. They could no longer reach the states which allowed them to fight without conscious thought and display their battle skills at their best.

Since battles between mechs were actually fought between mech pilots, the widening differences in morale completely accelerated the takeover of Marrakath III.

"The first of the Crestfallen Stars shall fall to the hexagon!"

"The Superior Mother wants us to crush the Coalition!"

"We shall liberate the unjustly oppressed women of the Friday Coalition!"

Even though a short amount of time had passed, the drastic shift in balance completely dominated the news in the two states!

This was just as DIVA and the supporters of the Blessed Squire intended. Instead of introducing the Blessed Squire cautiously across many battlefields, it was best to make one explosive good impression!

Already, other army groups in the Hex Army cast jealous eyes at the Wrathful Doves.

They clamored to obtain this new wonder mech as well! The other Hexer commanders heard so many stories about the Blessed Squire that they began to bombard high command with requests to ship the Blessed Squire to their respective mech forces.

All of these urgent requests put high command and the matriarchs in charge in a difficult position. Normally, it shouldn't be a problem to approve of the use of a fantastic new Hexer mech, but this time they faced a very big problem.

"The Blessed Squire is mainly designed by a boy! Not only that, he's also a foreigner!"

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