[201-400] THE MECH'S TOUCH

Chapter 327: Hatred

With only a little less than half a day away until they could transition into FTL, the two military fleets had already fallen out.

The amount of damage inflicted on both sides surpassed a value of billions of credits. Mechs continued to be destroyed at an unsustainable rate.

Sometimes, a combat carrier or two sustained major damage that caused them to drift out of formation. These losses were much more severe because the carriers had been constructed with premium materials that made them many times more expensive than a regular mech.

The loss of so much strategic assets on both sides grew more frigid once the expert mechs started showing up. The handful of expert pilots like Venerable Stanton Drake fought above the the general battle as their mechs possessed the capacity to inflict ruinous damage against a group of standard mechs.

The Fire Worm especially received a lot of attention from the Vesians. They couldn't afford to let the Fire Worm devastate a huge swathe of the Mech Legion's ships with its wide-area flamethrowers.

Despite the intense clashes, neither side expected the battle to end quickly. Most fights between expert mechs lasted at least an hour or more if they held back their trump cards. For now, the experts mainly tried to constrain their counterparts from the other side.

This put the onus of the battle on the masses of regular mech pilots.

Melkor who stationed his Stanislaw next to the opened hangar hatch of the Happy Jelly mainly stood by and shot down any stray missile that flickered in his view. As a small and rusty converted carrier, the Happy Jelly hardly attracted any attention from the Mech Legion.

The two average mechs that guarded the carrier also impressed no one. Dietrich piloted his old Harrier and kept his mech's rifle in a tight grip as he looked at the explosions happening in the distance.

"This is crazy!"

Walter's Whalers experienced a handful of large battles before on the Glowing Planet. The pirates never really put up a decent fight due to their lack of discipline, training and quality.

This was different.

The Mech Legion consisted of several ducal regiments of similar quality to their counterparts of the Republic. Highly ambitious commoners made up the rank-and-file while officers trained from birth to command and lead these mechs were hungry to earn merits.

As long as commoners destroyed ten mechs without losing their own, they'd be elevated to knights, which was the first and lowest rank of nobility within the Vesia Kingdom. Once a commoner became a knight, many privileges and opportunities fell into their laps.

Thus, the mech pilots of the Mech Legion fought with much greater passion than the Mech Corps. The Bright Republic's mech pilots mainly served out of duty, and while they enjoyed a fair amount of rewards for each mech they took out, they paled in comparison.

"Larkinson! Focus on the squad of cannoneers. They're trying to take out our carriers!"

Ghanso Larkinson listened to the instructions of his captain and shifted the Vhedra's rifle until it lined up with the cannoneers. Even from this distance, he managed to cripple two mechs at once before they pulled back.

"Man, your aim is getting better and better!" One of his colleagues praised. The shots of the rifleman mechs barely scarred the armor plating of the cannoneer mechs.

Another volley of lasers spat out of the Vhedra's laser rifle. This time, Ghanso managed to nail a swordsman mech in the back just as it was about to assail a defenseless mech from the Volari Starhawks.