The Mech Touch

Chapter 3475: Undermining a Castle

Against an opponent like the Ginetzy Battalion, the Larkinson Clan had little choice but to meet force with force.

The enemy did not engage in maneuver warfare at all. This was usually bad because remaining rooted in place made it easy to bombard their stationary mechs.

Yet the Ginetzy Family had an answer for this. They brought along a lot of auxiliary mechs that weren’t good at fighting but could perform one job well.

They carried powerful wide-area shield generators that could project strong energy shields over an area.

While one of these shield mechs weren’t that particularly strong, it was a different story when there were over a hundred of them! What made the auxiliary mechs even more impressive was that the tech of the shield mech allowed for them to merge with each other.

Instead of overlapping their energy shields like the scales of a dragon, they instead linked up with each other and merged their efforts into a single, powerful dome that was supported by all of the shield mechs involved!

The advantages of this were obvious. Gaps in the massive shields wouldn’t occur just because one of the supporting mechs malfunctioned or ran out of energy.

The drain on the energy shields was also shared among the entire group. If the collective energy shield ever came under heavy attack, the energy control systems of the shield mechs made sure to share the burden as equally as possible.

This way, every mech would be able to contribute to the upkeep of the energy shield without any of them dropping out prematurely!

Shield linking technology was fairly common in first-class combat. Counters to it were also fairly common, so it was not that impressive.

However, this form of high technology was a lot less common in second-class combat. The main shortcomings were that it was too inefficient. The strain on the mechs was too great over time and the energy requirements were extreme. It was too impractical to be employed on a real battlefield!

Only an arena environment and other special circumstances could make this tech viable. If a typical match only lasted up to an hour, the shield mechs could fulfill their function for a significant fraction of that time!

That was enough for the missileer and cannoneer mechs of the Ginetzy Battalion to wreck hundreds of mechs with impunity!

Even if the energy shield eventually broke from all of the strain, so what? The attacking force would have lost most of their combat strength by then and could no longer fight on equal terms against the fully-intact Ginetzy mechs!

The Larkinsons were quite disgusted at being forced to fight such an opponent. The Ginetzy Battalion’s strategy was simple, stupid but effective. Larkinson Battalion had already lost over 50 mechs and they still hadn’t reached the enemy position!

Missiles and explosive shells kept pouring down from above. Although the power of an individual payload wasn’t too great, when a dozen of them impacted a mech in quick succession, not even a knight mech could remain unscathed!

“Damnit, how the hell can the Ginetzys carry so much ammunition with them?! Will they ever even be able to run out? This is crazy!”

“Shut up and keep going forward. We’re almost there, now. Those Ginetzys may have the upper hand for now, but soon we’ll be able to turn the tables on them, hehe. They’re not the only ones who possess advanced technology.”

Commander Casella Ingvar remained stoic as she continued to keep up with her men. Her mech along with all of the other ones flew low to the ground, not hesitating to overload their flight systems a little bit in order to close the distance faster.

The downside to that was that flying at such intensity caused their mechs to rapidly heat upl. This increased their energy signatures and made it easier for the enemy to lock on to their machines.

“It can’t be helped.” She sighed.

The enemy specialized in ranged bombardment. The Gintetzy ranged mechs would have ways of making sure their attacks landed on target.

The only way to stop the damage from piling up further was to stop the Ginetzy mechs as soon as possible.

This was also why Casella opted to go for an all-out offense rather than a more conservative strategy.

She could have asked the Avatars to bring a lot more knight mechs to this fight. They could mitigate a lot of incoming firepower with their thicker defenses and heavy shields.

The problem with that was that it would slow down their offensive.

Not only would the knight mechs drag down the advancing speed of the main force, but they also took the place of rifleman mechs armed with luminar crystal rifles.

Under these circumstances, the only role that knight mechs could play was to delay a defeat. Greater offensive power was needed to quickly chew through the defenses of the Ginetzy Battalion, so the Larkinsons had made the difficult but correct decision to bring a lot of rifleman mechs instead.

The only way for the Larkinsons to beat the Ginetzys was to bring a lot of attack power!

“We’re finally in place! The collective energy shield is just behind those rocky outcroppings!”

The rocky and sandy desert terrain favored the Ginetzys more than the Larkinsons. If there weren’t so many hills and slopes in the current environment, then the Larkinson ranged mechs would have been able to fire their weapons at the opponents from kilometers away.

It was too bad that the Larkinson Clan’s entire ranged arsenal could only fire straight for the most part. They lacked the missiles and howitzers of the Ginetzys that could fire over hills and other obstacles.

Even the Transcendent Punishers and the Eternal Redemptions had to march forward and occupy an elevated position in order to get a viable angle on their targets!

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Due to their slower traversal speeds, the Eye of Ylvaine wouldn’t be able to join the battle at this time, but Commander Casella didn’t intend to wait for the Ylvainans to get into place.

“We don’t need our heavy guns to take down this shield.”

Many of the participants in the G-Aena League would probably despair after encountering such a strong and all-encompassing energy shield.

Not the Larkinsons. They happened to have the right tool for the job. Without any further delays, the Larkinsons quickly opened fire on the domed energy shield!

Hundreds of Bright Warriors and Valkyrie Redeemers fired their luminar crystal weapons at the same time.

What was special about their guns was that they had already loaded the crucial disruptor beam attack phase crystal.

This crystal type modulated the energy output of the luminar crystal rifle in a special way. When the odd energy beams instantly struck the massive energy shield, the Ginetzy mech pilots became alarmed when their protective barrier visibly wobbled!

“It’s working!” Commander Casella grinned as she commanded the Quint to fire another shot at the energy shield. “Our disruptor beams are wearing down the enemy energy shield five times faster than normal. Keep up the pressure and don’t let the enemy ordnance stop you from getting off another shot!”

The situation of the Larkinson Battalion was especially grave now that they had entered into line of sight of the Ginetzy mechs.

Before, the Ginetzy ranged mechs needed to rely on the targeting data transmitted by their scout mechs in order to hit their targets.

Now, they could just rely on their own sensors to guide their attacks to the right destination! The effectiveness of their massive projectile volleys increased remarkably, causing over a hundred mechs of the Larkinson Clan to crumble!

Even so, the harder the Ginetzys fought, the more the Larkinsons smelled blood!

The Bright Warriors and Valkyrie Redeemers that were armed with luminar crystal rifles took the brunt of the enemy firepower, but the energy shield drained so quickly that the Larkinson melee mechs were already beginning to charge forward!

[Those crystalline energy weapons are insane! How can they possibly drain the famed Ginetzy energy shield so quickly? The energy beams are inflicting far too much damage considering how much power is being expended. Those rifles aren’t even building up that much heat!]

The efficiency of the luminar crystal rifles impressed the expert commentators, but the real value of the weapons lay in their ability to tear down an energy shield with ludicrous effectiveness.

Another commentator finally figured it out. [According to my analysis, the energy shield isn’t being worn down by brute force. The strange energy beams that are impacting the Ginetzy shield are destabilizing the energy field that sustains the shield.]

[What does that mean, exactly?]

[Think of the energy shield like a castle. The most conventional way to break it is to attack its walls. This is difficult to do because castles are made to resist damage in this way. What the crystal rifles are doing is not just attacking the walls. The disrupting energy beams are also wearing down the foundation of the castle! The more they attack the castle, the faster the ground it rests upon will collapse, thereby tearing down the walls with it as well!]

Although this analogy didn’t accurately describe the effects of the disruptor beams, it still gave the laymen in the audience an easy way to understand their power.

The Ginetzy Battalion became a lot more flustered now that its main form of defense and key element of their battle strategy was faltering before their eyes!

Their shield mechs, which had all been rooted and anchored to the ground, showed visible strain as they struggled to stabilize their collective shield.

Their missileer and cannoneer mechs fired their weapons as fast as possible at the Larkinson ranged mechs.

The Ginetzys were actually in a dilemma as well. The enemy ranged mechs inflicted a lot more damage to their energy shield than expected, but they weren’t the true killers of the Larkinson Battalion.

The waiting and eager Swordmaidens and Penitent Sisters were just waiting for the enemy’s castle walls to go down before they could charge into the enemy ranks without encountering any obstruction!

Still, the Ginetzys opted to direct all of their firepower towards the Larkinson ranged mechs.

This caused the energy shield’s deterioration to slow down a bit as there were less mechs with luminar crystal rifles still in the fight.

Regardless, the Larkinsons brought too many ranged mechs for the Ginetzys to take them all down in a short amount of time.

“The shield… it’s breaking!”

The massive energy shield didn’t break in an explosive or spectacular manner. Instead, the disruptor beams hitting it from multiple angles caused it to become so unstable that it simply fizzled out as if someone cut the power cord!

The shield mechs that had all tried their best to sustain the collective energy shield looked as if they had all been cooked until they began to steam!

The auxiliary mechs had overloaded their shield generating systems as much as possible in order to keep the protective barrier up. Now that they had reached their limits, they were unable to play any role in this battle, thereby making their presence useless in the coming battle!

“The Ginetzy Battalion is vulnerable now! Follow the plan and attack in waves! Be cautious about surprise attacks and try your best to draw out their subsequent responses!”

Although the Ginetzy mechs looked incredibly vulnerable now, the Larkinsons tried their best to remain steady. They were wary of any traps their enemies might have prepared.

The Flagrant Vandals moved first. Although they had lost a hefty chunk of Ferocious Piranhas, they still had enough machines left to test the waters.

The light mechs rapidly zipped forward and attempted to close in on a squad of big and juicy missileer mechs.

Yet before the Ferocious Piranhas could get close enough, the Ginetzys finally unveiled their next surprise.

Many of their missile artillery mechs fired special rockets into the surrounding terrain. A huge amount of sensor-blocking smoke and particle dust obscured the entire Ginetzy Battalion!

“This again!”

“What the hell are they doing?!”

“I thought we were fighting against the Ginetzy Battalion, not the Quizlam Battalion!”

“CAREFUL! The Ginetzys must be doing something inside this obscuring field! Get in there and find out what they are doing next!”