While Ves worked together with the Golden Cat to boost her signal propagation, the Larkinson mech pilots trapped inside the artificial anomaly were still fighting for their lives!
Strange echoes rang in their minds even though their ears heard nothing. Strange flickers winked in their views. Whenever the mech pilots tried to look at them, they failed to notice any additional presences aside from the grey, transparent mechs that formed out of the dark fog on a constant basis.
The grey mechs were growing stronger. In the beginning, their attacks only dented the armor of the weakest mechs. This gave every mech pilot who had become confused and distressed at the sudden turn of events some time to become accustomed to their new situation.
Yet as time went on, the pressure increased, much to the detriment of weaker and less resilient mechs and mech pilots.
Those who piloted the stronger mechs were usually clansmen who had earned the right to pilot them. Joshua and many other Avatars did not experience as much pressure as many of the other trapped comrades because their Bright Warriors were incredibly resilient to damage. Their combat instincts and piloting skill also allowed them to remain on top of the situation!
The Penitent Sisters fared even better. Not just the armor but also the offensive capabilities of their mechs were vastly superior to third-class mechs.
Since the ghost mechs were derived from the pirate mechs that had fallen in the battle, their power level was very low. Even so, the way these grey mechs constantly returned stronger than before already started to worry many Penitent Sister mech pilots.
Each of them began to employ measures to reduce the power consumption of their mechs. No longer did their second-class mechs inflict overpowering attacks that caused them to waste huge amounts of energy. Instead, they dialed down their power settings in order to stretch out their operating times.
Other Larkinsons lacked these advantages. Their premium commercial mechs acc.u.mulated more and more damage as every mistake caused the grey mechs to land increasingly painful blows.
The small number of Swordmaiden mechs fought just as cunningly and ferociously as Commander Dise!
Though the regular mech pilots of the Swordmaidens weren't expert candidates, their veterancy, elite training, mental resilience and mastery of swordsmanship caused each and everyone of them to show strength in this time of adversity!
"Cut!"
A swordsman mech swept its Breyer alloy greatsword through the torsos of three approaching ghost mechs. The mech subsequently boosted upwards in order to dodge a lancer mech charging from behind.
Just as the grey lancer mech missed its mark and flew onwards, the Swordmaiden mech quickly struck it from underneath!
The broken ghost mechs tumbled back into the darkness, providing the Swordmaiden mech pilot with a tiny retrieve before the next attackers arrived.
"No matter how many times you come back, I'll cut you down like the vermin you are!"
The Flagrant Vandals experienced greater difficulties. A significant proportion of their mechs fell into the light weight class, which meant that their mechs possessed very little margin for error. Their energy reserves were also limited which meant that their mech pilots were very constrained in what they could do. Several Vandal mech pilots had already fallen as their mechs suffered crippling damage too quickly!
"I have faced worse in the Sand War!"
The Battle Criers fared decently well in comparison. While they piloted generic medium mechs, the mech force led by Commander Cinnabar largely consisted of steady, experienced Kinners who had lived through various crises in their former mercenary careers.
"My life belongs to the clan patriarch!"
The mech force that fared worse was unquestionably the Living Sentinels.
Many of their mech pilots didn't possess a lot of battle experience. While the Sentinel mech pilots managed to make up for this shortcoming during the excursion into the Nyxian Gap, they still had a long way to go before they truly became steady mech pilots!
The Sentinel mech pilots who lacked confidence in themselves or piloted vulnerable mechs died on a regular basis. The grey mechs that continually assaulted them did not stop until they harvested human lives!
In one moment, a vulnerable rifleman mech tried and failed to fend off the ghostly light skirmishers attacking it from multiple directions.
The Larkinson mech dropped its rifle and pulled out a knife in desperation. With a hasty slash, the ranged mech managed to take out one of its assailants, only for another grey light skirmisher to stab its half-solid weapon deep into the rear armor of the vulnerable ranged mech!
Due to the lack of protection afforded to its rear, the Larkinson ranged mech sustained serious damage to its power management system. Its flight system already started to sputter!
"My mech! Ahhh!"
Without sufficient mobility, the mech could no longer distance itself from the next wave of fake mechs. Less than a minute later, three grey mechs fired their ethereal rifles at their heavily-damaged target, blasting the c.o.c.kpit and the clansman inside into pieces!
Tragedy continued to unfold throughout the artificial anomaly. The isolation imposed by the boiling darkness forced each mech pilot to rely on themselves and their mechs to survive.
This resulted in a brutal cleansing where the weak and inept among the mech forces were cleaned up first!
What added to everyone's difficulties was that the darkness not only cut the mechs off from each other, but also diminished the glows of every mech designed by Ves!
Fortunately, the Larkinson Clan already learned the perils of developing a dependence on glows. Plenty of Larkinson mech pilots had received training in fighting their battles without the assistance of glows.
For the first time since he piloted the Quint, Joshua no longer experienced the familiar Larkinson warmth from his own mech. Its vitality had dimmed, causing him to feel considerably worried.
"Shine for me, Quint!" He uttered as his mech accelerated and impaled a duo of ghostly ranged mechs with its lance! "Hahaha! I knew it! There is still life left within you! You are more than your glow! Let us pierce this darkness and seek our way back to the source of your life!"
Joshua honed his willpower and began to immerse himself deeper into his masterwork mech. He wasn't satisfied with remaining trapped in this shadowy cage!
His Bright Warrior soared ahead and attempted to pierce through the fog. Its charge seemed to have collided with something a bit more tangible, causing a small hole to form in space.
Even though it closed immediately afterwards, Joshua's eyes lit up. He had stumbled upon the same phenomena as Commander Dise!
Throughout the dark sphere, the other expert candidates found out that they were able to attack the dark fog in their own ways.
Commander Orfan of the Flagrant Vandals scowled as she found that her strange mental connections to Commander Dise and some others were cut off! The absence disturbed her a bit, but not to the point of disturbing her combat rhythm!
Her spearman mech impaled an attacking swordsman mech and slammed into a light skirmisher that approached a second later.
"Vandals! Momma is coming to get you all! Hang on as long as possible!"
Just like Commander Dise, Rosa Orfan did not worry about her own safety. Instead, she wanted to break the isolation imposed onto her mech in order to relieve her fellow comrades.
Empowered by her desire to rescue the other Vandals, her spear stabbed with greater force and momentum! Slowly but surely, her attacks against the void began to tear greater and greater holes in the mist!
"It's working!"
The greater the holes, the more encouraged she became, thereby causing her to inflict even larger holes in the isolating darkness! Her battle intent rose and became more and more honed as she single-mindedly struck down every grey mech that approached her mech as it slowly overcame the intangible barrier that separated it from the nearest friendly mech!
Of all of the expert candidates engulfed in the artificial anomaly, Jannzi Larkinson was the only one who resisted the darkness in a different manner.
Her large and sluggish Shield of Samar steadily cut down each and every approaching grey mech with precise, strong blows.
The ghostly ranged mechs posed the greatest to her mech. If not for the fact that the enemy mechs floated in the same place, the super-medium space knight would have been flooded by a sea of attacks at this time!
Jannzi's mind wasn't on the grey mechs that continually pressured her mechs. Her urge to reach out to her fellow Larkinsons was stronger than every other mech!
As a space knight specialist, she trained to embody the role as a protector and guardian of her fellow mech pilots.
A space knight that was taken away from the mechs it was supposed to protect was a great indignity! There was no meaning to its existence if it solely fought in isolation!
None of the previous battles caused her to feel as distressed as now. Her face continually frowned as her willpower increasingly urged her to unravel her forced isolation.
WIthout the reassuring presence of Qilanxo, Jannzi was left on her own. Her Shield of Samar felt considerably dimmer than normal, yet the heart that beat inside of it grew stronger as her need to link up with her fellow Larkinsons pushed her to an unprecedentedly desperate state!
"BREAK FOR ME!" She roared.
Though no visible phenomena emanated from the Shield of Samar, a whole portion of darkness disappeared!
An Aurora Titan from her Shieldbearer squad bore increasingly more scars as its sluggish attacks failed to take out the grey mechs in a timely manner. Unlike the Shield of Samar, the regular Aurora Titan's armor wasn't made of Breyer alloy, thereby making it considerably more vulnerable against the ghostly attackers!
"Ma'am! You're here!"
As soon as the Shield of Samar arrived by the mech piloted by the Shieldbearer, the pressure imposed on the latter decreased!
Even though the ghost mechs that haunted Jannzi's mech had followed their original target, Jannzi and her squadmate were able to coordinate their defenses and fend off the flood of grey mech with greater efficiency!
"We can't stay here. We need to link up with more of our clansmen." She stated.
"Lead the way, ma'am! I will cover your back even if it costs my life!"
With some of the Larkinson mechs beginning to break free from the shadowy cages that kept them separated, Ves finally achieved a breakthrough of his own back on the Scarlet Rose.
He worked together with the Golden Cat to reconfigure the Larkinson Network. The spiritual network she supported through her own existence was not comparable to a normal network. Much of its workings were shrouded in mystery as Ves hadn't really thought of the details when he initially created the ancestral spirit.
Though it took a lot of fumbling, Ves managed to 'teach' Goldie how to accomplish more with the Larkinson Network. One of the capabilities she gained was the ability to allow him to gain a direct means of mental communication towards any other member of the Larkinson Network!
He tested it out immediately with James.
"Can you hear me?" He mentally communicated through the Larkinson Network.
The Ylvainan nodded. "You are heading into the right direction."
Such a novel accomplishment should have been a cause for celebration to Ves. He invented a completely new means of communication with his fellow Larkinsons that couldn't be blocked or intercepted with conventional technology!
Sadly, this was not the time to bask in his latest invention.
Ves knew that the range of this spiritual communication method wasn't unlimited. For example, he tried to pass on a message to Gloriana, but evidently his signal decayed before it could travel very far through the network.
However, Ketis and the Larkinsons trapped inside the Citadel were much closer!
"Let's see if we can boost our signal to overcome the anomaly's dampening effect. We can do it, Goldie!"
Nyaaa!
