The Mech Touch

Avatar Commander Melkor no longer thought about failure.

He needed to win.

He had to win.

As a Larkinson, Melkor bore the responsibility of upholding the honor and prestige of the clan.

No alien was going to kill his men and get away with it. So what if the puelmers were known as the smartest and most technologically advanced race in the Red Ocean?

Melkor was not about to let them defeat his mech force!

His brain began to heat up as he started to make a lot more calculations.

He used the processing power of his advanced Fey Fianna to help him simulate the movements of different mechs and phasefighters. He used his intuition and gut feeling to issue orders that would hopefully nudge the different elements to the locations he wanted.

The placements of every piece on the chessboard needed to close to perfect in order to produce the effect that Melkor wanted.

They were in the wrong locations at the moment.

If he wanted his new plan to produce the best possible effect, then they needed to move forward and take a small turn in order to enter the range of the spell array.

In order to lure them forward, the Larkinson mechs under his command began to perform dangerous maneuvers.

As the dogfights intensified, the battle lines began to blur, causing many mechs to move back and forth around the asteroids.

The puelmer combination gunships were the exception. They only flew at a relatively low pace as they did not need to engage in any maneuvering. The surrounding phasefighter escorts blocked the vast majority of mechs trying to attack the key assets. Any ranged attacks that did manage to get past simply crashed against their powerful azure energy shields.

Melkor was not looking to defeat the combination gunships at the moment. He only wanted them to advance, and that was what they did.

The battlefield was not a static box that remained completely fixed until the battle had run its course.

Battlespace constantly shifted back and forth.

Melkor had to make sure the fight drifted to the area that was most favorable to his plan. At the same time, he had to make sure that specific friendly and enemy units ended up in the right place at the right time.

It was extremely difficult to make this all happen by issuing orders alone. There were many occasions where mech units suffered losses and had to flee backwards, thereby messing up one of his arrangements. He would be forced to issue another series of orders in order to compensate for the disruptions.

The old Melkor could have never kept track of so many different units and knew what to do in order to advance his demanding plan.

This time was different. Cultivating the Commanding Controller Auxiliary Qi Cultivation Method for a number of months had vastly increased his raw cognitive capabilities. Now that he had gained more confidence in his abilities, he became more efficient and adept at ordering his subordinates around.

It also helped to have more confidence in himself. He regularly beat himself up in the past, causing him to place himself at a lower position relative to other prominent Larkinsons.

This was not a healthy mindset. Melkor was much better off if he recognized his current strengths and relied on them to work his way towards victory.

It did not take long for the situation to move towards his ideal state. If he wanted to trap a portion of the enemy phasefighters without thinking any further, then he could have activated the spell array a lot sooner.

Instead, he purposely delayed this step and waited for his mech forces to subtly position the enemy phasefighters without making the native aliens suspicious about his true intentions.

All of these demands added to the delay, causing dozens of mechs to get destroyed and more to sustain serious damage.

The longer he waited, the greater the balance of power would shift towards the enemy.

Wait too long, and the battle became unsalvageable.

Though Melkor wanted to wait longer in order to improve the variables even further, time was running out. He could not let the current situation drag on for too long.

"It's time."

Commander Melkor took a deep breath before he retrieved a special artifact. The small disc looked like a strange black dining plate, but it was actually the standard shape of a formation control artifact.

Not only activated the artifact, but also allowed it to sync up with the formation anchors and trigger them online!

At the same time, he began to close his eyes and began to repeat a mantra whose meaning he did not fully understand.

The surroundings began to change as lots of E energy began to alter their behavior due to external stimuli.

The space that encompassed a part of the current battlefield immediately began to

Change.

Much of the space had already become less visible due to the spread of debris, the discharge of energy beams and all of the dust and pebbles that exploded from the nearby asteroids whenever they got struck.

However, as soon as the spell array went to work, visibility dropped even further as a strange white mist began to develop numerous mechs and phasefighters.

They were all pulled into the confinement array, which had taken on the shape of a giant cube!

Everything that happened to fall inside this giant cube of white mist had lost complete contact with friends that had been left outside of the confinement spell array.

With just a single move and a lot of preparations, Melkor successfully sowed confusion while also splitting the enemy force in half!

The alien fighter pilots did not understand what they were dealing with! The ones caught outside of the mysterious spell array quickly disengaged from the human mechs and tried to make sense of the area that had become engulfed in white mists.

They soon found out that the mists was a byproduct generated by especially high concentrations of E energy!

What was also interesting was the units that became engulfed by the mysteriously impenetrate white mists.

Over two-thirds of the standard alien phasefighters had disappeared!

That was not all. A more serious consequence was that one of the combination

Gunships had also been swallowed up by the mists!

As for the humans, only a quarter of the mechs in the field had disappeared into the strange white mist, and nearly all of them consisted of Avatar and Swordmaiden

Mechs!

They were the strongest and most formidable mechs when fighting at close range.

The Redaxes, Second Swords, Storm Swords and Stormblade Samurais and so on would clearly fare a lot better in a tighter and more confined space than any ranged

Mech!

This suggested that the white mists was not a natural phenomenon, but was instead generated by the humans!

The aliens began to open fire on the mists. They made sure to shoot the edges and the far sides of their targets for fear of causing friendly fire, but these disruptions were beginning to make it a lot more difficult for Melkot to control and sustain the spell

Array!

"Intercept the phasefighters that have remained behind!" Melkor barked. "You don't have to go for the kill, but just keep them occupied so that they don't shoot at the spell array from the outside. The one that is currently deployed is not that great and is known to be vulnerable to external shocks. Do not let the puelmer combination gunships fire all of their guns at this active array!"

It would be hard to force the deadly alien gunships from focusing their multitude of

Weapon barrels at the obvious target. The only way to force them to aim their guns in another direction was for the remaining mechs to fly forward and threaten to hack their way past the azure energy shields.

That was what the Larkinsons were doing. The Penitent Sisters jumped at this opportunity to 'serve their penance'. Their origins and traditions compelled them to do the jobs that required the greatest sacrifice.

Their Valkyrie Redeemers and Maidens of Adversity were no longer in the best conditions anymore, but they still tried to force their way past the phasefighter screen and threaten the two remaining puelmer combination warships!

Although their assignments were extremely risky, they managed to pressure the alien phasefighters without suffering too many losses at this time.

The alien phasefighters that were left outside of the confinement array were unable to

Repl their opponents with as much ease as before!

This profoundly changed the dynamic of the battlefield.

The remaining two combination gunships had lost a significant portion of firepower.

It no longer became as unbearable for human mechs to approach their positions as

Before!

What was also impactful was that many of the escort phasefighters disappeared as

Well!

By locking away two-thirds of the enemy phasefighters, the remaining third were much less numerous than before.

Since their numbers had dropped by such a large extent, they were unable to provide effective screening for the two remaining gunships as before.

The ranged mechs of the Larkinson Army were able to focus their fire onto the

Priority targets much easier this time!

And tried to occupy the enemy screening elements as much as possible! While the battle outside of the confinement spell array had yet to swing decisively

Towards the Larkinsons, they had definitely gained an advantage this time!

"It's working! There's not as much cannon fodder in the way this time." "We need to take out a combination gunship as soon as possible. Even if two of them

Are left, their damage output is still too great!"

More and more mechs tried to bypass the diminished number of phasefighters and

Attack the clite puelmer craft directly!

Now that the Larkinson melee mechs were finally able to get close, they were able to

Subject the alien gunships to space suppressors.

This had a very noticeable effect on the layered azure energy shields of the two

Combination craft!

Their defenses weakened significantly, causing every sword strike and energy beam attack to inflict much more effective damage than before.

Even though the melee mechs came under heavy attack as they circled around the two

Alien gunships, their mech pilots chose to persist as long as possible in order to make the greatest possible contributions.

Even if their living mechs shattered into pieces and their lives came under threat, the

Larkinson mech pilots gritted their teeth and drew out all of their potential just to keep them active for a few seconds longer!

The desperate and costly measures were taking effect.

Since the mechs focused all of their efforts on just one of the gunships, its defenses.

Deteriorated at an alarming speed to the puelmers.

Eventually, its energy defenses broke, causing the high-tech frames to become

Exposed!

The puelmer fighter pilots apparently panicked, because they hastily split up from each other and fled in different directions!

"Hunt them down! Do not let a single of those craft escape!" Although the high-quality materials used by the puelmers caused their phasefighters

To resist attacks a lot better than usual, their relatively thin armor ultimately doomed

Them to a quick demise!

"We did it! Our pressure has instantly dropped by half! We need to finish off the other

One as well."

The Larkinsons outside of the spell array finally felt relief now that they had tilted the balance further in their favor.

Revenge on the remaining combination gunship that was left outside!

Melkor no longer paid much attention to what was taking place around the spell array. This was because he became much more concerned about the conditions inside.

The melee mechs that had been trapped alongside the alien phasefighters initially gained an advantage, but the confined aliens quickly made adjustments and had begun to fight back with all of their power!

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