Chapter 450: Close Combat

Neville’s mecha threw the second dagger.

Chk.

To conserve power in the chase, he did this while he was free falling quiet sharply.

This one, Neville purposely aimed at the densest cluster where three missiles flew tightly together.

Literally, three missiles in one dagger.

The dagger punched the lead missile dead center and detonated it. The shockwave punted the other two into a long, graceful corkscrew that ended in the ocean with twin geysers of foam.

Whump-fwoosh-fwoosh.

Two missiles left.

Neville smirked in satisfaction.

Everything was going according to plan.

The third dagger was already loaded and ready in Neville’s mecha’s hand.

But Neville didn’t throw it. He waited for the remaining missiles to burn through their power, chasing him as he wove a lazy, serpentine path across the water.

When the first one finally dipped close enough, Neville’s mecha flicked the dagger like tossing a coin.

The missile clipped it and folded in half mid-air. While the last one ran out of power ten meters short and dropped into the sea with a small, embarrassed ploop.

"Did he just tank my missile spread with three daggers?!" Lilianna said aloud, seat rattling as she suddenly stood up.

’Damn it, he used the daggers as a projectile-redirect tool rather than direct attack vectors. Really cunning!’

"What are we going to do now?"

’I’m thinking!’

"Damn." Lilianna gritted her teeth. "I can’t just stand here idly!"

Lilianna sent another set of missiles without noticing the red in the cooldown screen. She was busily sending projectiles and managing her thrusters while thinking how familiar this style of piloting was.

It felt eerily similar to Grayson’s piloting style.

If it wasn’t for the fact that she saw Neville enter the virtual pod, she would’ve suspected that Grayson was the one piloting that mecha.

But she was also sure that it wasn’t Grayson, since this kind of piloting just resembled Grayson’s academy days of piloting.

Even so, Lilianna couldn’t help but feel annoyed.

Whether it was Grayson, Grayson’s piloting, or Grayson’s attention, it was all hers.

Hers and hers alone.

Suddenly, Lilianna’s HUD began to pop up several red notifications.

[Cooldown Notice.

Beam launchers: 40 seconds.

Missile pods: 90 seconds.]

"Damn it, now of all times? What else?" Lilianna busily checked her mecha stats.

[Auxiliary projectile turrets: ready.

Great sword: ready.

Wing cannons: ready, but unsealing the wings burns fuel at six times standard rate.]

"F*CK! Is there anything that wasn’t bad news?!" Lilianna slammed the control panel in anger.

Just as her eyes began to narrow down in pressure, the voice in her head said, ’Don’t you dare panic at this time! We still have stuff we can use! Use your brain and attack!’

"Right," Lilianna took a deep breath and clenched and unclenched her hands. "I had just been away from the military for so long that I easily panicked."

But the voice in her head clearly knew it wasn’t because Lilianna had been away for so long. It was because her body began to notice ’his’ presence inside Lilianna’s body.

Her body didn’t know whether to provide extra attention to her brain so she could think clearly or obliterate this anomaly inside her body.

But the voice in her body only cared whether Lilianna could win this and be useful to him.

Lilianna’s mecha began to tighten its grip on the greatsword in her right hand. The mecha settled into a low hover, knees slightly bent. Its wings were outstretched to maintain balance and prepared for a quick charge.

Neville came close to watch Lilianna’s mecha make this stance. He had been planning for this move for a while, so it didn’t matter what Lilianna did next.

He just needed to land a hit.

Neville’s mecha sped up; he was going for a close combat. It didn’t matter how deep the cut was; as long as he repeatedly did that, he could do more damage than expected.

Lilianna’s mecha didn’t just take a stance and wait. It used several projectiles that weren’t as powerful as the ones before to fire at him.

Neville’s mecha seamlessly dodged it, moving left and right without stopping.

As soon as he entered the two-meter range, Neville’s mecha began to cry. Its twin wing thrusters dumped their full output. The heel thrusters chimed in with a clean stabilizing burn.

Neville’s mecha lunged forward in a long, low, skimming charge. It was so close to the water that the waves sprayed and fanned out beneath it in a constant white V.

In the cockpit, Neville’s body lurched against the harness. It was too fast for him to even feel the heat and pressure this move was doing. The HUD blurred with motion lines.

"Closing," Neville uttered, bracing himself for impact.

Lilianna’s auxiliary turrets snapped open at the kneecaps with a series of relentless click-click-click-clicks.

Brrrt-brrrt-brrrt-brrrt-brrrt.

A wall of solid-shot rounds chewed across the ocean in front of him.

Neville’s mecha banked hard right and kicked the heel thrusters in a quick stutter to break his predicted trajectory.

Then, he banked left twice as hard.

The rounds chased him again in slow corrections, and the turrets’ tracking program was working.

However, because Neville increased the speed of the mecha more than usual, it couldn’t track his mecha properly, unlike the missiles with a tracking program.

Three rounds grazed the pain in Neville’s mecha’s shoulder plating. The mecha didn’t even register the damage indicator flicker because there was no damage to register.

Neville dropped his mecha’s knife-edge and turn. He came up under Lilianna’s belly.

Lilianna’s sword was already swinging down as predicted.

FWWWWOOOOOM.

The blade came down in a horizontal cleave, and the air pressure rippled visibly into the water around them.

The strike was a perfect textbook-style counter. It had Neville’s center of mass dead in its path.

But Neville already knew that.

Lilianna’s right pauldron had begun rotating a third of a second before the swing.

Neville quickly maneuvered his mecha to drop. He killed his thrusters for one precious blink and used gravity as a free downward vector.