Super Mothership
“Damn it! These guys are complete lunatics!”
A mecha belonging to Chloros's personal guard emerged from the explosion in a sorry state, looking battered and covered in soot.
Unlike the elite Knights of the Round Table, other players weren't wealthy enough to lavish expensive yet devastatingly powerful works of art from the “Hades” series on a mere cannon-fodder mecha.
Nevertheless, even an ordinary mecha's power core could produce an explosion comparable to that of a nuclear bomb.
This was the first time the Locke Consortium's pilots had encountered players who normally acted harmlessly enough, serving as human shields, only to look for an opportunity to take their enemies down with them the moment things went south.
After a long career of fighting wars, they had certainly encountered two-mecha tactics before.
However, this was the first time they'd seen a combination in which one mecha focused on attacking while the other specialized in blowing itself up!
They couldn't understand it. Judging from their controls, these were clearly manned mechas, so why did their pilots care so little about their own lives?
With the players providing fearless cover, the Ghost Pirates' mecha units managed to make up for their equipment disadvantage to some extent. The price, however, was a rapidly rising death toll among the Earth players.
Fortunately, this situation didn't last long. Gemini's pincer attack soon began to take effect, forcing the enemy to divert part of its combat strength to deal with the threat coming from the other direction. This greatly eased the pressure on the Ghost Pirates.
But before long, another unexpected development occurred on the battlefield.
At some point, a mecha had appeared in the middle of the battlefield. With its arms folded across its chest, it moved as though taking a leisurely stroll through a garden. Its pace seemed unhurried, yet it was surprisingly fast as it passed between the two fiercely engaged forces, heading straight for the Ghost Pirates' main formation!
The machine was predominantly dark gold, with sturdy bone spikes at its elbows, knees, and other joints that served both offensive and defensive purposes. Eight long, menacing, sharply pointed appendages extended from its back, each tens of meters long and composed of multiple segments resembling spider legs.
Its outrageously arrogant, cool, and intimidating appearance immediately caught the attention of several nearby players.
“Holy crap! A BOSS! This is definitely a wild BOSS!”
“It's got to be a high-ranking enemy officer!”
“Merit points! I can see a mountain of merit points waving at me!”
“Nobody move! I'll test its strength first!”
“Why should you get to go first? First come, first served! That BOSS is mine!”
However, just as the first excited player rushed toward it, the tips of the eight long appendages on the mecha's back suddenly flashed red. Red spikes, resembling crystalline structures and several meters long, emerged from their ends.
Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!
All the players could see was a blur as the appendages behind the mecha moved at an utterly terrifying speed, almost fast enough to leave afterimages. They pierced through space, leaving behind countless dense red trails resembling sword strikes across everyone's retinas.
The player's shield failed to withstand even a single instant of the assault before being effortlessly pierced. The unfortunate mecha began shaking violently as though it had been caught in an earthquake. In less than three seconds, it had become a mangled wreck riddled with holes, as if a Gatling gun had been firing into it for several minutes straight.
One moment, it had been a mighty steel beast full of life and energy. The next, it had become countless scattered components drifting slowly through space...
Even the three player mechas that had charged closest to the enemy failed to escape their fate.
Zzzzt! Zzzzt! Zzzzt!
The energy spikes at the tips of the appendages instantly fired thin beams of energy. With a flick of its limbs, the almost imperceptible beams swept through space like whips.
The three players hadn't even realized what was happening before their mechas suddenly split into pieces. A moment later, their vision went black, and the system notification rang in their ears.
[You have been killed.]
Yet the terrifying mecha continued flying toward the Ghost Pirates' fleet, arms still folded across its chest, moving at a leisurely pace as though it had done nothing more significant than swat a few flies.
“Hiss...”
Everyone nearby drew a sharp breath.
“A Legendary! That's a Legendary Mecha!”
The signature crystallized energy left no doubt about the machine's identity.
The players who had just been swarming toward it, hoping to grab an easy reward, scattered like startled birds.
In their field of vision, the mecha had turned a terrifying blood red, indicating an extreme threat. Even more frightening was the combat-power assessment provided by the central AI:
30,000–???
A combat power of at least 300,000?
That elite enemy with the gunblade had only possessed a combat rating of 3,000. Against this monster, they would probably need to sacrifice hundreds or even thousands of mechas just to break through its shield.
And on a chaotic battlefield like this, the enemy could still receive coordinated support from its own mechas and warships. Trying to surround it under ideal conditions was already wishful thinking, let alone here.
Even the central AI offered a friendly warning:
[Maintain as much distance as possible.]
The accompanying description—[After encountering this enemy, abandoning the mission and immediately retreating is permitted.]—felt eerily familiar and made the terror inspired by these top-tier mechas all the more apparent.
A few players who refused to believe the warnings continued charging forward. However, they couldn't even see the enemy's attack trajectories before being sliced into seventeen or eighteen pieces, meeting truly gruesome ends.
“Hmph! Know your place!” Chloros sneered contemptuously.
The Crypt Lord was an authentic product of the imperial royal family. Unlike those Legendary Mechas that had long since fallen into private hands and gradually deteriorated with age, its mecha core remained close to its peak condition. Its frame had also incorporated the empire's cutting-edge technology.
Even among the surviving Legendary Mechas, the Crypt Lord unquestionably ranked among the very best in combat strength.
These mass-produced pieces of junk weren't even worthy of forcing him to “make a move.”
However, before the contemptuous sneer had even faded from his face, a massive beam suddenly shot out from the Ghost Pirates' main formation.
The piercing, high-energy warning alarm instantly drowned out his arrogant bravado.
Chloros's expression changed. Almost instinctively, he twisted his mecha aside with all his might to evade the attack.
Zzzzt!
The high-energy ray passed in front of Chloros by the narrowest of margins. Yet even the energy radiating from the beam caused ripples to spread across the Crypt Lord's crystallized shield.
Chloros's heart pounded violently.
What energy level had that shot reached? Level Ten? Or even Level Eleven?
If the Crypt Lord had taken that attack head-on, even a Legendary Mecha's shield might have collapsed!
Chloros stared in utter shock at the seemingly inconspicuous warship at the heart of the Ghost Pirates' main formation.
Was this the flagship mentioned in the intelligence reports—the one capable of matching a Karon Beast in combat all by itself?
It was terrifyingly powerful!
“What a shame. I was actually hoping to test whether the fifteen-times-compressed World-King Cannon could punch straight through a Legendary Mecha in one shot... In theory, shouldn't a BOSS this arrogant take the first attack from an enemy without even changing expression, catching it with one hand?
“You're not following the script!”
Nie Yun couldn't help complaining.
Since the first shot had failed, he very sensibly decided not to waste any more energy.
If his opponent had truly been arrogant enough to stand still and tank the attack, Nie Yun might have scored a direct hit and taught him exactly what happened when someone got too full of himself.
But now that the enemy was on guard, locking onto a Legendary Mecha with a battleship's main guns would be about as difficult as trying to hit a mosquito with artillery.
For starters, as long as the enemy avoided the flagship's painfully obvious straight-line firing trajectory, all the World-King Cannon could do was stare helplessly at the opponent's receding tail lights.
Against a Karon Beast, which relied on straightforward, mindless charges, the solution was simple: increase the caliber of the main guns and blow it away.
But against a small, highly maneuverable target like a Legendary Mecha, the World-King Cannon needed a few more technical tricks. Otherwise, it would be all too easy to waste its ultimate attack on empty space.
“Looks like I'll have to look into the legendary art of curved projectile trajectories...” Nie Yun stroked his chin thoughtfully.
That said, he had no intention of letting the enemy run wild across the battlefield, putting on some personal performance involving “charging into the enemy formation seven times and emerging seven times unscathed.”
As the World-King Cannon's shot missed, the silhouette of a mecha soon appeared in front of Chloros...
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