Chapter 2202 Venerable Kris Asmeran
The Battle of the Marrakath System became a focal point of the Komodo War once the Hexers initiated their assault on Marrakath III.
The renowned Dosth Orbital Defense Matrix had taken out thousands of powerful second-class mechs, but paid a grievous price in return. Much of its surface structures whittled under concentrated firepower, thereby exposing more and more Fridaymen mechs to enemy fire.
The struggle between the Devos Maniacs and the Trivaxis Helldoves only made up a small portion of the huge confrontation.
Large amounts of broken mechs and debris sailed in every direction. Some of them slowly began to fall through the atmosphere of Marrakath III.
Since much of the wreckage consisted of hard and resilient alloys, they did not burn up that much after falling from space.
This meant that they crashed on the surface of the planet with considerable force!
A lot of untamed wilderness endured a continuous rain of falling trash, many of which caused impacts that disrupted areas that stretched on for several kilometers!
Fortunately for the Fridaymen defenders, they were already prepared to block or repel the debris that fell onto cities and fortified locations. Considerable amounts of turrets shot down much of the falling objects, with the large city district-sized shields resisting anything that made it through.
The defenses of the cities and fortifications on the surface were anything but average! The shield generators expended energy accumulated over several generations!
Hundreds of thousands of dazzling mechs, many of which cost as much as several hundred third-class mechs, confronted each other with nothing but animosity in their minds.
The Fridaymen hated the bigoted and tyrannical Hexers to the core!
The Hexers detested the stubborn and foolish Fridaymen to an extreme degree!
Neither side could live with each other any longer. After roughly four centuries of living in tenuous peace, the two dominant second-rate states of the Komodo Star Sector finally moved to conclude the rivalry that had started at the very start of the Age of Mechs!
During the assault, some portions of the Dosth Orbital Defense Matrix fared better than other portions.
The Hexer mech divisions that assaulted these sections weren't too exceptional. The leaders of the Wrathful Doves essentially threw these units on several random points to split the focus of the Opal Tridents.
The section which the Trivaxis Helldoves attacked was one of the more serious goals of the Hex Army!
The Devos Maniacs, as enthusiastically as they were in taking out Hexer mechs, were slowly beginning to realize that they failed to prevent the Helldoves from closing into melee range.
Once the Hexer mechs fell right on top of their positions, much of the defensive works became ineffective!
This was also why the Helldoves did not hesitate to sacrifice so many space knights and other valuable assets to get in close. They knew that no amount of defenses would be able to stop so many melee mechs at once.
Only the melee mechs of the Devos Maniacs posed a hindrance, but this Fridayman mech division was substantially poorer in both training and funding!
I was at this time when a new variable entered the battlefield.
"Damn you, dogs! Are you so eager to let these women step on your face?! Fight harder! Don't go down unless you have taken out at least two Hexer mechs!"
A radiant presence shifted into battle!
"It's the Untouchable!"
A blood-red coated light skirmisher zipped into the battlefield with a speed that far exceeded ordinary second-class light mechs.
This was the Sulvar Mark III, a distinct expert mech of the 363rd Devos Maniacs!
The Maniac who piloted this deceptively slim but incredibly mobile light skirmisher was not a Fridayman at birth.
Like many members of the Fortune Legion, Venerable Kris Asmeran had initially risen up in Vicious Mountain. He even managed to break through to expert pilots and wielded a lot of power in his heyday!
Unfortunately, expert pilots could fall as well, and Venerable Asmeran took a gamble and lost.
How he ended up in the Fortune Legion and how long he planned to fight for the Carnegie Group remained unclear.
Despite owing little affection to the Carnegie Group or the Friday Coalition, most expert pilots abided by clear principles. The expert pilots who originated from Vicious Mountains were famed for taking their oaths seriously.
Though they were not as extreme as Kinners, even a deviant among expert pilots just as Venerable Asmeran enjoyed the Fortune Legion's trust!
The reason for all of that attention became apparent as his Sulvar Mark III dove straight into the leading formations of Helldove mechs!
When expert mechs entered the fray, they rarely chose to approach the ranks of enemy mechs by themselves.
It was too dangerous!
As amazing and fearsome as expert mechs might be, they were still machines in the end.
The resonance shields that protected them and the excellent exotics used to increase their defensive capabilities to amazing heights could still be overwhelmed when focused upon. A typical expert mech may be able to defeat a hundred regular mechs, but it was a stretch for them to withstand the attacks of more than thousand enemies!
Yet Venerable Asmeran was bold enough to lead the charge against the Hexer mech anyway!
It soon became clear why. The Helldove rifleman mechs, marksman mechs and cannoneer mechs urgently received orders to fire upon the expert light skirmisher mech.
None of them except for a lucky few Hexers succeeded in landing a hit!
In fact, the Hexer ranged mechs landed far more accidental hits against the backs of the mechs that belonged to their own side!
The Sulvar Mark III was not only insanely good at evasion due to its extreme acceleration capabilities, but also used the mechs fielded by the Helldoves as cover!
Wherever the Sulvar Mark III passed, the mech stabbed out with a knife that just so happened to slip straight through the weak points of the Hexers mechs.
The expert mech moved too fast for attackers to pose a threat, and it launched its attacks so rapidly that its opponents never had the time to put up their guard!
"Slaughter these Hexers!"
The impressive martial feats demonstrated by Venerable Asmeran quickly buoyed the flagging morale of the Devos Maniacs.
None of the mech pilots could remain calm when they saw one of their own massacre the Hexers single-handedly!
"Hahaha! Kill those boys and uptight women!"
What was horrible about Venerable Asmeran's insanely swift but incredibly precise attacks was that he always managed to puncture the enemy mech's cockpit.
It took a lot of force as well as a lot of accuracy to stab the Sulvar Mark III's dagger onto a point in the frontal armor that just allowed Venerable Asmeran to kill off the enemy mech pilot in an instant!
Yet out of every stab attack he made, only four or so lucky Hexer mech pilots managed to escape the fate of getting torn into pieces by a mech-sized blade!
The discipline and courage of the Trivaxis Helldoves was not frail. Some of the Hexers serving in this mech division even met the standards of elites, and they constantly urged their fellow Hexers to adopt the specialized tactics and formations that expressly countered these kinds of rampages!
"Hahaha!" Venerable Asmeran broadcasted in the open as his Sulvar Mark III effortly sneaked up to an officer mech and left an entire squad of Hexer mechs temporarily leadless! "No cage can hold me captive! No matter how many mechs you throw at me, you feminists are too slow!"
The Sulvar Mark III might not offer amazing defenses or attack power compared to comparable expert mechs, but its speed advantage was truly strong enough to offset many shortcomings!
Its unique, custom flight system was not only capable of accelerating very quickly in any direction, but could also be empowered by Venerable Asmeran's true resonance, thereby achieving even a greater level of evasion!
A mech that couldn't be hit might as well be invincible. No matter how much firepower the Hexer mechs threw at the Sulvar Mark III, the expert mech still remained unscatched even as it managed down more than fifty in a short amount of time!
"Where's Venerable Emdis?" Some of the Hexers desperately asked. "We need someone to stop this uncouth mutt!"
The disruption caused by the enemy expert mech risked throwing the Helldoves into disarray.
Once the Hexers became unable to deploy their mechs in specific formations, their overall assault against Dosth would definitely lose momentum!
At that time, the Helldoves would fail their mission and be met with a lot of shame by their Hexers after the battle.
Such an outcome couldn't be tolerated!
By the time Venerable Asmeran slaughtered over thirty additional Hexer mech pilots, the response 363rd Devos Maniacs finally arrived!
The male and female mech pilots of the Trivaxis Helldoves all erupted into cheer!
Venerable Maysha Embdis was one of several notable expert pilots of the Helldoves. Her expert mech flew forth with speed that did not lose out too much from that of the Sulvar Mark III.
With so many Hexer mechs regaining some of their ferocity, Venerable Asmeran knew that he could no longer defeat the Hexers so unscrupulously.
"I am Venerable Kris Asmeran, of Vicious Mountain!" The Maniac expert pilot barked. "To whom do I have the pleasure of fighting?"
"Do not speak your foul words at me, dog! Rabid animals like you should have been put down a long time ago! Since your mother refused to raise you properly, let I be the one who will teach you a lesson!"
Venerable Asmeran scowled with great intensity!
"Don't talk to my mother that way! You're the dog!"
With tempers flaring up, the two expert pilots ignored the inconsequential mechs around them and immediately began to engage in a high-speed duel!
The Sulvar Mark III was almost unsurpassed in terms of mobility. Its extreme acceleration alone gave Venerable Asmeran the capital to be called the Untouchable!
Yet Venerable Emdis and her expert mech were not that weak either. Surprisingly, Emdis managed to fend off every attack launched by her opponent, mainly because she piloted an expert light skirmisher mech herself!
Her Zeon Blademaster focused more on offense than mobility. Its design and resonance materials were all geared towards increasing its attack power and attack methods.
For example, with one attack pass, the arm that held one of blades began to shudder and glow in green, causing the stabs it made to be repeated seven times in the same instance!
Not a single opponent of the Zeon Blademaster remained undamaged when struck by this deadly resonance ability!
Yet there was one instance where Venerable Emdis failed completely.
Even though the simultaneous stabbing attacks unleashed by her Zeon Blademaster covered a small area around the elusive Sulvar Mark III, the latter machine nimbly managed to dance between the attacks before almost managing to launch its counterattack!
If Venerable Maysha Emdis hadn't anticipated the counterattack, her Zeon Blademaster would have suffered a severe blow against its defenses.
The two light skirmishers did not let this exchange of blows slow them down. Both expert mechs excelled at speed, so they quickly turned around and swapped another series of blows!
The mechs surrounding them quickly gave them room and retreated from the duel. It was not as if the regular mech pilots from both sides wanted to assist their heroes.
It was just that they would only get in the way if they rashly intervened!
Rather than poking their noses into something that could easily lead to pointless debts, the regular combatants instead turned back to fight each other.
This gave both expert pilots the opportunity to explore the weaknesses of their opponents and adjust their fighting style.
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As the minutes began to pass, it slowly became apparent that Venerable Asmeran's Sulvar Mark III entered into a disadvantage.
Its energy reserves were depleting faster than those of Zeon Blademaster.
All of that acceleration and maneuvering consumed a huge amount of energy. In terms of endurance, the Sulvar Mark III had never been designed to excel in any battles of attrition.
Venerable Emdis on the other hand did not fight as frantically as her opponent. Instead, her Zeon Blademaster adopted a defensive posture and efficiently fended off lethal attacks while expending as little energy possible.
She did a far better job of conserving her mech's energy reserves!