The Mech Touch novel Chapter 816

Having exhausted half of their bags of tricks, the Vandals began to grow concerned about their ongoing battle against Pairixan and his coterie of god beasts.

The sacred gods hostile to the Flagrant Swordmaidens continued to crawl their way forward under continuous and intense shelling. Their artillery cannons and artillery mechs already expended half of their ammunition, and would soon run out if they kept up their frantic rate of fire.

The laser rifleman mechs poking Qilanxo’s incredibly strong space barrier started to build up a large amount of heat. Their energy reserves emptied out at an alarming pace as they continued to fire their hot barrels while maintaining a constant distance. Their heavy gravity backpacks also groaned under the extensive amount of time they remained active.

What the Flagrant Swordmaidens needed was some way to break through the space barrier shielding the entire attacking force from attacks fired from afar.

The Vandals and Swordmaidens each unfolded gimmick after gimmick, but nothing seemed to faze Pairixan and his subordinates.

They tried to blast their ears and deafen the beast riders by launching incredibly loud noise generators near their positions. Pairixan caused the entire terrain to submerge the noise grenades and stifle them beneath layers of soil.

They tried to displace the oxygen in the air by launching subsequent waves of incendiary shells. The beast riders managed to hold their breath for up to ten minutes until the sacred gods took care of the fires.

The exobiologists outright broke a taboo and quickly synthesized a lethal airborne poison so deadly that it might wipe out a quarter of the population of Samar if released into the city!

Yet deploying such a highly concentrated poison didn’t appear to affect the beast riders in any substantial way.

It was as if they were just as tough as the incredible sacred gods they rode upon!

Each time the Flagrant Swordmaidens failed to take out the sacred gods or their chosen, the attackers became more determined that they would win. Their morale soared!

As for the Flagrant Swordmaidens, while their morale hadn’t plummeted to rock-bottom due to their discipline and experience, none of them held out any hope of winning an easy victory anymore.

The enemy forced possessed considerably more defenses than anyone had anticipated. In their first proper clash against an organized force of sacred gods, the Flagrant Swordmaidens learned that their previous duels against Hokaz and Naeduvis weren’t indicative of their actual battle performance.

Just like how a mech force grew stronger than the sum of its parts by leveraging the synergies between the different classifications of mechs, so did the Eastern Pantheon achieve greater results.

In truth, out of the four subordinate sacred gods who followed their leader, three of them outright didn’t matter. They were so young and weak and their powers were so unimpressive that they were only a little stronger than a wild god.

Only Pairixan and Qilanxo mattered, as their combined defensive and offensive power was enough to wipe out the Flagrant Swordmaidens if they came into range!

Though every mech scrupulously maintained a constant distance, the same couldn’t be said for the artillery cannons and the camp.

It had been a mistake to camp out so close to the ancient city of Samar!

Nothing the Flagrant Swordmaidens came up with worked. The sacred gods continued their slow but inexorable march to the camp.

Pairixan would soon come close enough to see the camp and all of its artillery cannons. Though some of the heavy salvos caused the procession of exobeasts to slow down or halt, they never incurred any actual battle damage.

Both Commander Lydia and Captain Byrd fell into a heated argument as the shelling which came predominantly from the Vandals failed to achieve any effect.

The Swordmaidens didn’t fear the sacred gods! Perhaps the ranged attacks might not have achieved any effect, but melee combat was another story altogether.

If hundreds of Swordmaiden mechs stormed the sacred gods, would Qilanxo’s energy field still hold up?

The two commanding officers argued whether to unleash their melee mechs or not. Captain Byrd felt very apprehensive about this course of action because they couldn’t predict whether Pairixan would have the time to bury them all in a landslide or an earthquake!

"It’s too risky!"

"We have already tried every other solution." Commander Lydia retorted over the comm. "Many opponents that pretend to be invincible always fall short as long as you confront them with overwhelming numbers and might. We aren’t as adept in ranged combat as you, but we know how to slaughter exobeasts up close. We’ve been hunting all kinds of beasts for decades."

"These aren’t your average exobeasts. I hate to admit it, but calling them gods isn’t entirely undeserved."

Once a sacred god grew old enough and embedded enough god crystals into their hides, they became as formidable as expert mechs or ace mechs!

It took more than a hundred regular mechs to defeat a single expert mech, though the exact outcome differed widely depending on various factors. Still, this loose rule of thumb applied just as well against sacred gods!

And the Flagrant Swordmaidens weren’t just facing one of them, but five of them at the same time! Even though only two out of the five really mattered, the synergy they displayed so far countered everything they threw at them without any signs of faltering!

"Qilanxo’s energy reserves have halved!" Someone reported.

"That’s too slow!" Captain Byrd barked. She was starting to lose her composure as the pressure of the battle got to her. "We need to intensify the damage and exhaust her energy reserves before the sacred gods get into range. That is the only way we can win this battle without sending our melee mechs into a suicidal charge against Pairixan!"

The formidable earth manipulation powers gave Pairixan an unprecedented amount of control over the surrounding terrain. Engaging it in melee gave the sacred god the perfect opportunity to devastate all of the melee mechs at once.