The Mech Touch

As the demonstration battle proceeded onwards, the endurance of the mechs started to reach their limits.

The rifleman mechs could barely be considered hyper mechs. The differences in E energy absorption and conversion were so much that these machines could already be regarded as lastgen mechs in front of the Fey Fianna!

Nonetheless, the advantage of numbers had the potential to trump any technological edge.

It was extremely common for more powerful and sophisticated mechs to get defeated by swarms of lesser adversaries that might not even cost as much in total.

The rifleman mechs may be weaker in every aspect, but they had numbers by their side. That not only increased their firepower, but enabled them to surround and flank the outnumbered Fey Fiannas.

This started to make an increasingly greater difference even if the rifleman mechs started to get picked off over time.

The mechs all fought hard against each other. All of the machines kept flying across the expansive arena perimeter that was completely enclosed by strong energy shields.

After getting struck by so many laser beam attacks, the Fey Fiannas and their defensive feys had been stretched to their limits and more.

Each of their energy shields had been depleted. No matter how much water-attributed E energy they attracted from the environment, it was hard for them to do anything useful when there was no foundation for them to enhance!

The only way the Fey Fiannas could persist for a longer time and resist more attacks was to rely on their adaptive modular armor system to consume incoming attacks.

Fzzt! Fzzt! Fzzt! Fzzt!

Fire laser beams continued to strike water modular armor plating, depleting the latter at a steady but concerning rate.

The rifleman mechs tried their best to penetrate or bypass all of the water-empowered armor so that they could inflict serious internal damage, but time and time again they got stymied.

The Fey Fiannas made the best use out of their maneuverability and modular armor to mitigate the incoming attacks in absence of their energy shields!

In this kind of situation, the artistic conceptions mattered less as there was not as much room for them to alter the properties of stating armor.

Nonetheless, the artistic conceptions based around a whirlpool, a human and a fish-whale wrapped around the mechs and seemed to give the Fey Fiannas an indeterminate blessing that elevated their overall performance by a slight margin!

The momentum had been on their side from the beginning, and never abated due to the fact that their mechs lasted for so long.

The dwindling number of rifleman mechs continually had to endure constant attacks from the different fey as well as the luminar crystal rifles in the hands of the drone mechs themselves.

The key to tipping this battle in the favor of the rifleman mechs was to eliminate a single Fey Fianna!

"Take one down, and the remaining two won't have as much firepower and cover anymore."

"Should we target the fey instead? They are smaller and more fragile."

"No! There are too many of them, and they are more difficult to hit. Wasting our firepower will only cause us to play into their hands. Focus your fire on the mechs directly!"

Alas, their wish was not easy to fulfill. In many cases, the fey physically interposed themselves between their principals and an enemy ranged mech.

Unlike the small and skinny spurs of other popular drone mechs, the fey happened to be large and chunky enough to serve as adequate shields!

Many times, the rifleman mechs found their attacks landing on the more disposable fey rather than the crucial mechs themselves.

Getting rid of the drones was not that easy either.

"Those modular armor plates keep filling up the gaps made by our weapons!"

As long as attacks continued to pour from the same direction, the Fey Fiannas could patiently draw out modular armor plates from other fey and bolster the defenses of the one under attack.

The mercenary mech pilots strengthened their efforts to focus their firepower on a single Fey Fianna and encircle it from multiple directions.

Yet their attempts constantly failed to produce the desired results because the fey and their shared modular armor plating always got in the way!

Every Fey Fianna had 4 fey at their disposal. Disregarding their main functions, each of them could effectively serve as 4 physical shields that could potentially block the attacks of at least 4 rifleman mechs.

The difficulty of doing so was high in practice because it took a lot of effort to change the positioning of four fey at once while at the same time anticipating the aim of the opposing rifleman mechs.

Yet for whatever reason, the Larkinson mech pilots and the living mechs controlled their fey so well that the rifleman mechs only sparingly managed to land their shots onto the main bodies of the drone mechs.

The Fey Fianna that developed an artistic conception based on a human appeared to possess the weakest defense among the three.

However, it also happened to be the trickiest mech to defeat!

Its control over its fey was considerably better than the other two Fey Fiannas. The energy manifestation of its artistic projection grew increasingly brighter and more solid as the living mech enthusiastically learned a lot of practical lessons in actual combat.

The human illusion actually started to become more animated after a while!

It gained life and began to make gestures that made it seem as if it was coordinating the movements and actions of the fey.

The aim of the offensive fey improved even further, enabling them to eliminate another rifleman mech after successively hitting the same weak point.

The space suppressor fey functioned as the primary 'physical shield' of the Fey Fianna, as its main function was not relevant in this particular matchup. It steadily sacrificed all of its modular armor plating and endured steady attacks to its internal components, but still it stubbornly clung to life in order to prevent the main body from incurring any damage!

The other three fey started to donate a portion of their own modular armor plating, yet the focused attacks caused them to get depleted at a rapid rate.

The scorched and half-molten space suppressor fey still did not give up at this junction. Instead of compromising the defenses of the main body, it instead began to borrow modular armor plating from the fey belonging to the other two drone mechs!

Ves had already warned his audience that this was not a recommended setting. However, the Larkinson mech pilots intrinsically trusted each other. They did not fear that anyone would abuse this feature at the expense of the lives of their fellow clansmen.

"They are actually doing it! The other two mech pilots have agreed to lend their own modular armor plates to their colleague."

"How long can this single spur last? I have counted the amount of times it has been struck. This single device has endured enough damage to destroy four to six mechs on average. That is far greater than what I can ever expect from any other spur!"

"These illusions aren't as empty as they seem. They are affecting the living mechs in a profound manner."

The rifleman mechs had been whittled down to half their number, and many of the ones who still remained operational all bore many marks of damage!

The Fey Fiannas might be outnumbered, but they actually possessed three ranged weapon systems each!

With the combined output of a luminar crystal rifle, a small luminar crystal cannon and a small gauss cannon, the three Fey Fiannas actually possessed the capital to come close to matching the firepower of the rifleman mechs!

The biggest difficulty was that every Larkinson mech pilot had to be responsible for the control and targeting of the mech and the fey that possessed these crucial armaments.

Yet for the Fey Fianna that produced a human artistic conception, the living mech and its mech pilot were able to coordinate their available resources much better!

It even gave people the illusion that the Fey Fianna was not a composite between a multi-spirit mech and a human mech pilot, but a single united 'human' entity that possessed complete command over its own 'body'!

"What an imaginative direction!" Ves couldn't help but praise this living mech. "The benefit of allowing living mechs to choose their own growth directions is that they can always give us surprises every once in a while. The greater the quantity of living mechs, the greater the occurrence that you will encounter one that has attained greater success! I believe that this particular living mech can serve as a model for other machines of its kind."

He was very serious about this. Perhaps this artistic conception may not be useful for every living mech, but the focus on coordination and unity happened to be an excellent for a drone mech with multiple moving components!

In fact, this cultivation approach was actually a lot more suitable for a drone mech that commanded much larger quantities of spurs.

Regardless, the excellent control of the human Fey Fianna combined with the unlimited sharing of all of the modular armor plating between the 3 drone mechs caused the demonstration match to swing decisively in their favor!

"They're losing... they're actually losing."

From the moment the rifleman mechs had lost half their number while the opposing side still retained three healthy mechs, the outcome had almost been set in stone.

People were basically waiting if the Fey Fiannas and their living fey suffered any sudden and drastic breakdowns due to being squeezed to their limits, but that never happened.

Though a couple of fey that had been stripped of all of their modular armor plates eventually suffered fatal strikes that caused them to collapse, their elimination hardly reduced the overall combat effectiveness of the 3 Fey Fiannas.

The constant modular armor reinforcement effectively caused the firepower of all of the rifleman mechs to get dispersed across a much larger surface area.

It was the equivalent of firing a lot of individual shots once onto the entire exterior of a mech! None of the attacks managed to strike the same location twice, which meant that the attacks were unable to effectively take advantage of any weak points and inflict serious damage.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Fzzt! Fzzt! Fzzt!

Overcoming a squad of 12 rifleman mechs was not easy, no matter how well the Fey Fiannas managed to distinguish themselves in this bout.

The gauss cannon fey started to run out of ammunition. The only other way they could contribute to the battle was use their physical forms as an additional shield, but even that became less tenable since the Fey Fiannas were rapidly running out of spare modular plates.

The luminar crystal cannon fey never inflicted the most damage, but they were so efficient and steady that they were still able to fire their weapons with hardly any difference from before.

Yet it was not until the energy shield fey reluctantly managed to restore their functionality and redeploy their energy shields that the victory and defeat became certain!

The mercenary mech pilots did not give up and admirably fought to the very end, allowing their actions to emphasize the superiority of the Fey Fianna model just as the last rifleman mechs succumbed to all of the attacks.

A few seconds of silence ensued. It was as if hardly anyone could accept that this outcome had turned into a reality.

"WOOOOOOO!"

"FANTASTIC!"

"THIS MECH MUST BE MINE!"

Millions of people stood up from their seats and expressed their utmost admiration and enthusiasm for the Fey Fianna model in every way possible!

Ves smiled as he took in the huge amount of respect and acknowledgement from so many people. This was why he became a mech designer. There was nothing that could satisfy him more than for his earnest works to receive the validation of the masses.

He already knew that no matter, the momentum of the Fey Fianna mech line could no longer be stopped!