Chapter 1911 Tethered The battle on land turned more chaotic after the intervention of two additional groups of combatants. While the Living Prophet and Commander Dise did not bring enough mechs to overcome the numbers disparity, the timing and direction of their attacks profoundly disturbed the attacking force! The reserves covering the rear along with the vulnerable ranged mechs supporting the mechs at the front all came under heavy attack! Though the combined force of CRC mechs and foreign mercenary mechs still possessed more than enough mechs to address the newcomers, the influence to their morale was significant! No army liked to be surrounded from different directions. A mech force especially didn't want to be attacked from the rear which normally served as their fallback point or escape route! The Kronon defectors and Swordmaidens also exerted a lot of pressure in different ways that significantly impacted the confidence of the mercenary mech pilots. "OUR FAITH SHALL SHATTER YOUR WILL! TREMBLE BEFORE MY MAJESTY!" First, the glow exuded by the prototype Transcendent Messenger exceeded the glows of any mech! Its glow was so strong and palpitating that the defectors from the Kronon Dynasty wholeheartedly believed that the Living Prophet was truly the Great Prophet! Not only did the prototype exude a presence that would make any Ylvainan prostrate before the mech, its righteous fury and its piercing judgement caused every foreign mercenary mech pilot to quake. Many of the secularists among the attackers suddenly started to shudder in fear. Did gods exist? Was Prophet Ylvaine truly passing judgement on them? Even though these fears sounded absurd, many mercenaries couldn't help suspect that their actions had very real repercussions on their souls! As a consequence of this invisible suppression, the mercenary mechs lagged even further when they were pressing the attack. If not for the rich rewards and strict warnings given by the Coalition Reserve Corps, the mercenaries might have started to retreat by now! "Swordmaidens!" Commander Dise shouted over the command channel. "Chop these flimsy mechs apart and show them that the frontier still lives!" "Chop!" "Chop!" "Chop!" The swordsman mechs piloted by the Swordmaidens all stormed forward with blades held with both hands. Unlike other ordinary mech pilots, the Swordmaidens exhibited a passion and skill for swordsmanship that could not be equaled by an academy-trained mech pilot! The Swordsmaidens lived and breathed with their personal swords, carrying them everywhere and training with them until their sweat soaked their hard bodies. Their brutal physical conditioning and harsh drilling in the unique style of swordsmanship developed by the late Commander Lydia all yielded fantastic results when translated to mech piloting! The Swordmaiden Style had been geared towards giving human warriors a chance at slaying a ferocious exobeast while armed with nothing but a sword! Each Swordmaiden not only underwent a harsh regime of training that was equivalent to the training programmes for elites, but also passed a brutal graduation ritual that forced them to hunt and kill a deadly exobeast on an untamed planet! Though this strict training regime had always limited the growth of the Swordmaidens as an outfit, it ensured that every single mech pilot of theirs was extremely strong, skilled and determined in battle! With an expert candidate in the form of Commander Dise leading the charge, the Swordmaiden mechs sliced and diced their way through the hasty formation of mercenaries! Though the mercenary mechs still held the weight of numbers, most of them were directing their attention to the front! It took time for the commanders of the respective mercenary corps to order their subordinates to turn their mechs around and face the new threat! "Hahaha!" The commander laughed. "This is just like slaughtering Gizla Lizards! These mercs expected to lean on their Fridayman masters to do the heavy lifting! They're as spineless as the bottom feeders of the frontier when they have to face us alone!" Much of that had to do with the oppressive glows impacting the confidence of the mech pilots. The LMC mechs fielded by the Avatars and Sentinels along with the Living Prophet's Transcendent Messenger all showed how powerful Ves' design philosophy could be in the right hands! With the Swordmaiden mechs cutting a swathe through the rear lines of the mercenaries, the impact to their morale was particularly huge! With all of the blows the mercenaries suffered at the rear, their offensive truly started to stall! The Avatars and Sentinels defending the underground facility received a much-needed reprieve! The pressure exerted on them by the attackers reduced by a significant margin, allowing them to catch their breath and reorganize their formations to better cope with the challenges they faced! The ferocity of the Swordmaidens knew no bounds. Hardly any mercenary mech lasted more than a dozen seconds against the Swordmaiden mechs. Through a combination of unrelenting aggression, exquisite teamwork and undaunted momentum, the former frontier pirates became such an acute threat that even Colonel Jeivz began to frown in his command center! "Where do these rabble keep coming from?!" The senior officer banged his fist against the armrest of his command chair! "Why have we not accounted for their strength?!" "Sir, since we have been able to smuggle in our mech companies onto Kesseling VIII, other groups should have been able to do so as well. Most of our intelligence support was mostly directed towards blinding our target's intelligence assets. We neither had the time nor the resources to scout Kesseling VIII extensively." The CRC admittedly rushed this surprise attack ahead of time when they learned that Ves Larkinson would be undergoing surgery soon and depart from the planet shortly afterwards. Along with the lack of resources directed towards the conversion of the Ylvaine Protectorate to the Coalition's side, Colonel Jeivz made the decision to shore up his shortcomings by hiring mercenaries. Right now, those mercenaries should be supporting the main offensive while preventing any interlopers from disturbing their mission. The mercenaries weren't allowed to falter! If they all abandoned their mission, then his CRC mechs would become exposed! Not only would the Glory Battalion be able to direct their full attention towards his assets without any disturbance, but the lesser mechs would be able to intervene in the battle as well! Even if the remaining defenders only fielded third-class mechs, their quantity was still very considerable! As long as they ganged up on a couple of second-class mechs at a time, it was not impossible for them to whittle away the strength of the main attacking force! Any distraction that ensued would tip the balance in the favor of the Glory Battalion, thereby reducing the odds of victory by a significant margin! "These sword-wielding maniacs need to be neutralized!" Colonel Jeivz decided. "Allocate some defensive mechs to stand in their path. Once their momentum stalls, their threat level won't pose any problems anymore." "What about the so-called Living Prophet, sir?" "This charlatan needs to be squashed directly. Dispatch an elite squad to crush his mech! In fact, shoot down his cockpit if he tries to eject! This farcical terrorist leader will continue to hinder our takeover of this state if he is allowed to retreat!" The CRC Colonel's orders soon came into effect. As the mercenaries became increasingly less certain about their chances of victory, a number of Fridayman mechs suddenly split off from the main formations and rapidly advanced towards the hostile mechs attacking from the rear! With their powerful flight systems, the two squads closed the distance with prodigious speed! The mercenaries became a little more relieved now that their rear lines "Damn! Those Fridaymen are really angry now!" Commander Dise cursed. "Get ready, Swordmaidens! The true challenge starts here! Treat them like we're hunting exobeasts!" A squad composed predominantly of knight mechs landed on the ground with thunderous thuds! Every part of their design was wrapped in thick, protective shells. Their all-encompassing armor system not only covered every part of their frames with armor, but their integrated shielding devices also projected various energy fields over their shields but more importantly their weak points! No matter how well their opponents attempted to outmaneuver them, with their twin defenses, the Fridayman knight mechs could never be felled in a single blow! Yet their formidable defenses did not deter the Swordmaidens at all! Commander Dise's mech raised its huge sword in the air. "Look at these conceited Fridaymen. They only sent twelve of their mechs to us! Do they think we hit like little girls? Show these tin cans what our swords can really do!" The Swordmaiden mechs did not pull back their aggression at all! They charged at the prepared Fridayman mechs as if the tech and training disparity didn't exist! The second-class knight mechs were faster, stronger and more versatile than the mechs piloted by the Swordmaidens. Even before the Swordmaidens managed to close the distance, the knight mechs flew in the air to escape the reach of their adversaries while at the same time firing missiles from various ports of their frames! In an instant, almost a dozen swordsman mechs succumbed to the powerful missiles! They fell so fast that their mech pilots didn't have the time to eject before their cockpits was lost in the sea of explosions! Despite these losses, the rest of the Swordmaidens didn't falter. Even when the knight mechs flew far beyond the reach of their swords, their mechs never let go of their swords or brought out their backup pistols, if they even had any! Instead, once they closed within several hundred meters of the flying knight mechs, Commander Dise and her subordinates all activated the special function built within their mechs. "Did you think we're defenseless against flying mechs? Think again!" Hooks attached to thick cables suddenly launched from the Swordmaiden mechs. As the hooks all attempted to entangle the knight mechs, the alarmed mech pilots either tried to evade to cut the thick cables. Though the knight mechs managed to evade or intercept at least half of the tethered hooks, the other half managed to grab or spool around the limbs of the mechs! Though the CRC mechs were very much capable of shaking off these bonds, the Swordmaidens didn't give them the time! The swordsman mechs attempted to drag the knight mechs down! Though the flight systems built into the knight mechs were powerful enough to lift their weight under standard gravity, it was a stretch to think they could lift another mech! Though the swordsman mechs all strained to drag the flying mechs to the ground, by dividing the load among multiple machines, their tethering systems barely managed to keep working! Once the knight mechs were dragged within reach, multiple Swordmaidens laid in wait with their sharp and sturdy swords! None of the trapped Fridayman mechs could avoid the swift and powerful thrusts. Most of them avoided the thickest part of the armor and relentlessly hit against the shields covering their vulnerable weak points. Though the shields withstood the barrage with apparent ease, the Fridayman mech pilots noted with alarm that their shielding systems were slowly being overloaded! With the Glory Battalion pinning the remaining CRC mechs down, it wasn't easy for the Fridaymen to dispatch additional reinforcements to rescue the stricken knight mechs! Though a number of mercenary mechs and CRC mechs moved to reinforce the stricken mechs, the remaining Swordmaiden mechs were well prepared to fend off the sporadic rescue attempts! "Abort our counterattack against the Living Prophet and divert our elite squad to rescue our defensive mechs!" "We can't, sir! The Kronon traitors are overwhelming our elites!" "What?! How?!" "Additional reinforcements have arrived! Three Kronon mech companies stationed throughout Krent have gone AWOL and moved to support the Living Prophet!" "These blasted Ylvainans! Their faith is blinding their good sense!" The Kronon defectors only numbered around fifty mechs at the start, but rapidly grew in numbers as additional Kronon mech pilots arrived to support the Living Prophet! "Our blessings have returned!" "Praise Ylvaine!" "The Living Prophet is our salvation! Only he can return us to the true faith!" The reason why these Kronons decided to defy their superiors and support the defecting side was simple. The LMC mechs in their possession slowly regained their glows when they moved towards the Living Prophet. If they did the opposite, then their glows would definitely disappear again. To the Ylvainans, such an outcome was intolerable! The mech pilots who had become accustomed to the reassuring glows of the Holy Soldiers and Deliverers believed that this was a test from the Great Prophet. The only way to regain the grace of the Great Prophet was to fight by his side even if they made enemies with the rest of their state! "The three leading dynasties have forsaken the prophet! Only the True Ylvaine Dynasty serves the prophet's will!" Though the elite squad of CRC mechs felled plenty of Kronon mechs within the blink of an eye, they couldn't stop the rest from mobbing them from each direction! The fanatical Kronon mech pilots ignored every danger and risk of death in order to madly tear the second-class mechs apart!