The Mech Touch

The researchers over at the Dragon's Den played a crucial role in helping everyone understand what they currently faced.

Before, they thought that the Titania was a derelict bioship and that its flesh torpedoes were akin to conventional projectiles.

Now, they understood that both of them were actually complete living organisms that could think and act for themselves!

The Titania clearly proved its living qualities by adapting to the current situation. Not only was it squeezing out more out more ‘offspring' from its body in an attempt to overwhelm the expeditionary fleet, its contracting exterior was constantly being hardened in order to resist more and more damage!

The current state of the battle did not look that good at the moment. Even if a biocreature as enormous as the Titania had almost perished after fighting against an unknown adversary, it still possessed so many resources that it could probably keep up its offensive actions for a long time!

Currently, the mech forces deployed by the Golden Skull Alliance found itself at a considerable disadvantage in this battle.

There was no helping it. The Larkinsons, the Glory Seekers and the Crossers had all formed their respective combat units with human opponents in mind. While they were all aware that they might have to fight against alien forces if they continued to roam in the Red Ocean, they did not expect that day to come so soon!

The fact of the matter was that the expeditionary fleet had been caught with its pants down. Almost half of its combat assets consisted of melee mechs, which were considered essential in fighting against other mech forces but were seriously inadequate in this situation!

No one thought about dispatching melee mechs to the Titania in order to tear her enormous body apart up close. From what they could observe, the astral beast possessed a high degree of control over its own biological structure.

Any mech that dared to attack its flesh would probably get swallowed whole by many tons of flexible and responsive biomatter!

Even if that wouldn't happen, there was little point in dispatching them anyway. The damage they could do to the surface of the Titania was as trivial as a bunch of ants trying to chew their way through a human body.

The best way they could perform their role was to drill past the surface and deal damage to the Titania's internal organs. If the melee mechs could quickly work their way deeper and reach the areas where the ranged mechs couldn't damage, perhaps there was a way for them to cut off the Titania's energy supply.

Yet who would possibly take the risk to order such a dubious action? The most likely consequence of sending melee mechs on this suicide mission was that the enormous astral beast's bulk would crush any of the annoying mechs that attempted to dig into its body!

Just like how human bodies possessed immune systems that destroy foreign germs, General Verle and many other humans were afraid the Titania would have a similar answer against intruding mechs!

Fortunately, the melee mechs did not have to sit out this battle entirely. The alliance partners had stockpiled a sufficient amount of basic energy rifles in case they confronted supermassive threats such as the Titania.

The Larkinson Clan still retained a lot of old rifles that its Bright Warriors used to wield before switching over to their new luminar crystal weapons.

The melee mechs all returned to their motherships and quickly returned to space with rifles in their hands.

This was the advantage of fielding humanoid mechs. Even if they weren't built with ranged combat in mind, they could still manipulate an ordinary rifle with decent effectiveness!

Ironically enough, the rather lackluster Bright Warriors possessed a considerably greater advantage in this aspect than other mech models such as the Ferocious Piranha.

With ranged combat capabilities already built into its base platform, its targeting systems and other relevant systems easily synced up to the familiar rifles without any friction or technical complications.

"The last time I fired a rifle was years ago."

"It doesn't matter. Those squishy torpedoes aren't evading our fire at all. Just fire straight ahead. If your aim is so bad that you can't even hit these obvious targets, then fire at the Titania instead. That beast is much bigger but it hasn't moved at all. There are no excuses if your shots go wide!"

The weight of fire from the expeditionary fleet increased as a result of arming all of the melee mechs with ranged weapons.

However, the effectiveness of the additional fire was marginal. The marksmanship skill of the mech pilots were wildly inconsistent and they were unable to concentrate their fire on specific weak points. This led to a lot of dispersed shots that haphazardly hit different surfaces without achieving much.

It was better than nothing, though. As time went by, the melee mech pilots slowly became accustomed to handling ranged weapons and sharpened their aim, not that it was difficult to do so. The continued lack of lateral movements from their targets meant that they were hitting the equivalent of stationary targets.

"It's just like target practice, except there are real stakes in play this time!"

The difference they made was noticeable. The organic torpedo creatures were being blasted apart at a faster rate than before. None of them had ever come close enough to threaten the expeditionary fleet.

However, that did not make the humans happy. They were successful in intercepting the Titania's flesh torpedoes, but the astral beast simply sent out additional waves!

The big creature possessed so much organic matter that it could keep this up for hours. At this point, the human mech forces couldn't divert a lot of firepower in order to damage and accelerate the collapse of the Titania.

The torpedoes would just get closer if they stopped intercepting the incoming biomissiles as hard!

General Verle and every leader realized that they had landed in a battle of attrition against their alien opponent. Many of their ranged weapons could not sustain their rate of fire forever. Heat buildup, energy depletion, increased wear and tear and other factors would slowly cause these weapons to fall silent in an extended battle.

Which side would be able to outlast the other?

This question weighed in the minds of many mech pilots.

Even the mechs that were much more effective in ranged combat than others were finding out that their advantages didn't mean much against an immense creature that could easily absorb a lot more damage.

The Amaranto performed particularly dazzling in this battle. Even if the masterwork machine was a slender rifleman mech instead of a thicker and beefier artillery mech, much of her design was geared towards maximizing her firepower and precision.

Venerable Stark had set her powerful machine in a prepared defensive emplacement on the hull of the Gorgoneion.

There, the Amaranto calmly fired one resonance-empowered energy beam after another.

Considering that inflicting as much destructive energy as possible was more important at the moment, Stark chose to fire positron beams against the Titania.

Every few seconds, the Amaranto's impressive luminar crystal rifle burst out bright and radiant positron beams that almostly instantly struck the same weakened section of the Titania.

Large pieces of flesh burned to a crip if they hadn't been vaporized already. The heat and energy damage also affected the flesh surrounding the immediate impact area, thereby softening up this weak point for the subsequent strike!

After several minutes of intensive fire, the Amaranto had already managed to burn 120 meters into the enormous body structure of the rousing astral beast.

Sadly, the Titania still had many more layers in the way that could prevent the weapons fire from going any further. What Venerable Stark was doing was the equivalent of drilling a tunnel through a mountain with only a single hand pick at her disposal!

Was the Amaranto's luminar crystal rifle weak? No! Many mechs had personally suffered at the hands of this potent weapon.

Yet even if Venerable Stark was able to bend its energy beams, there was no point in doing so. The Titania was well-protected from all sides and did not easily allow any attackers from damaging its crucial internal organs.

Not too far away, the Everchanger was not doing much better. Venerable Joshua thought that his debut battle would proceed a lot more gloriously than… this. While this was a serious battle, the expert pilot could not help but think that his efforts didn't yield much results.

Sure, his hero expert mech's damage output was pretty close to that of the Amaranto, but they were still pinpricks as far as the Titania was concerned!

"We need to do more! We can't keep sitting back like this!" Joshua gritted his teeth.

Coincidentally, Venerable Joshua wasn't the only expert pilot who was debuting in this battle with a new mech.

The Glory Seekers finally solved their inability to field an expert mech by launching a brand new machine that allowed Gloriana's brother to channel his full might once again.

Venerable Brutus enjoyed the feel of his new expert mech. The Star Dancer Mark II was designed by a Hexer Master but also received contributions from Ves and Gloriana.

This not only made the mech alive, but also fit Brutus to a much better degree!

The Miracle Couple had recently fabricated the expert rifleman mech in the month after the expeditionary fleet departed from Vulit.

Though Gloriana found it regretful that she failed to create a masterwork mech for her brother, Brutus had nothing to complain about. The wonder of piloting a new expert mech and a living one at that was already sufficient in his book.

Still, as much as Venerable Brutus and the Glory Seekers celebrated the completion of the Star Dancer Mark II, the expert mech was clearly fighting the wrong opponent at this time!

"The Titania is a poor dance partner and my aiming skills are largely irrelevant in this battle." Brutus frowned.

The Star Dancer Mark II was not a sniper like the Amaranto. It was a mid-range duelist that could dogfight and outmaneuver its opponents while steadily whittling them down with sustained energy fire.

All of that meant nothing as the Star Dancer Mark II's repeated fire from its unique luminar crystal rifle simply sank into the Titania without much result.

None of this was truly working. The Crossers weren't doing any better either as their clan still hadn't made up for the loss of its last expert ranged mech specialist during the Battle of Reckoning.

As Ves and many people tried to figure out how they could break this unfavorable status quo, General Verle finally grasped a viable solution.

"Battle formations!"

"Pardon?" Ves asked as he turned to Verle's projection.

"Think about it, sir. We have fielded well over 8000 mechs between us and our alliance partners. However, quantity doesn't account for much as most of their rifles are geared towards fighting other mechs."

"So you're thinking about going for quality instead?"

"Somewhere along these lines." General Verle replied. What makes us different from other forces is that we have battle formations that can potentially allow us to launch attacks that are massively more powerful than any single mech can unleash. Think about how many mechs and ships have met their end at the hands of our battle networks."

Ves' eyes lit up. He should have thought about this solution sooner. He developed multiple different battle networks for the Larkinson Army's more cohesive mech legions.

Although he never developed them with the intention to circumvent the prohibition against warship-grade armaments, they effectively functioned like one! There was no other way they could unleash so much death and destruction in a short span of time!

Warships were best fought with other warships. That was the general consensus among humans in both the old galaxy and the new galaxy.

Though the Larkinsons didn't possess any of these great and powerful vessels, it could simulate the damage output of one under the right circumstances!

"Which battle formations should we employ against this beast?" Ves wondered as he rubbed his smooth-shaven chin…