Venerable Irene Mox gently raised her body into the air and smoothly entered the cockpit of the Iron Hedgehog. As a fairly young but talented expert pilot who distinguished herself in many past engagements, the Quillim Mech Army recently replaced her old low-tier expert mech for a mid-tier expert mech. That machine was the Iron Hedgehog, an expert heavy artillery mech that had been designed with her proclivities in mind. To Ves, it was a well-designed expert mech that was a product of its time. "The current date is 197 AOM." Ves reminded himself. He learned the exact date during the mission briefing earlier. "At this stage, the Age of Mechs has entered full-swing. All of the messy stuff that mech designers invented in the first century has long been settled by the MTA. Mech archetypes are well-defined and a lot of expert pilots have already emerged." Ace pilots were much rarer and god pilots were so few that they were revered to an even greater extent because of their scarcity! As Ves examined the Iron Hedgehog through Venerable Irene Mox's senses as well as her strong and bountiful mental activity, he quickly developed a basic understanding of its design and configuration. The Iron Hedgehog was designed as a pure landbound mech. Although it could technically perform the role of a bunker mech, it was clearly not optimized for this role. Irene's expert mech was much more suited when deployed on land. Ves had learned from Master Decimus Horst that if he wanted to figure out any heavy artillery mech, he first had to study its armament. The quantity of weapons as well as their properties immediately told Ves what they were all about. The Iron Hedgehog's weapons were split into two different categories. The armaments placed on the outside edge of its oval top consisted of 8 heavy gauss cannons. Their calibers were not considerably large, but perhaps they did not need to be. Ves could tell that the gauss cannons were designed to maximize their muzzle velocity and precision. What Ves found interesting about the placement of gauss cannons was that they could cover any angle when aiming straight ahead. However, this was only meant for emergencies. The Iron Hedgehog did not have any other way to repel enemies that managed to get past friendly guardians and come close enough to threaten it at close range. Normally, the 8 gauss cannons should be pointed at an angle. This allowed for Iron Hedgehog to fire solid rounds that followed a parabolic trajectory and land on distant targets with good speed and precision. They were not the main sources of damage, though. The 8 howitzers that were clustered at the center portion of the Iron Hedgehog's top were remarkably simple in nature! They were ballistic cannons that were designed to propel high-explosive shells at high angles. What mattered the most for these howitzers was their ability to inflict lots of damage onto distant locations surrounded by complex terrain. Many times, resilient structures and thick mountains blocked the firing angles of ranged mechs. By employing howitzers whose rounds could be fired with steep angles of descent, a heavy artillery mech could provide valuable support from the rear whereas a typical rifleman mech remained helpless! While there were missiles that could circumvent all kinds of obstacles before they struck their targets, it was possible to blind their sensors, interfere with their guidance or simply shoot them down before they reached their targets. Simple but solid explosive shells were cheaper, faster, less prone to faults and could easily be replenished. These were vitally important traits for a heavy artillery mech that was expected to launch hundreds if not thousands of explosive shells over the course of a long day! From what Ves could surmise of the Iron Hedgehog's design, its ammunition capacity was remarkably disappointing. "Why does it have so many guns, yet so little space for rounds and shells?" The answer eventually became clear once Venerable Irene Mox interfaced with her expert mech and directed it to exit the underground hangar bay. The Iron Hedgehog slowly utilized its four thick legs to step into a ruined city. It was clear that the Bontues and the Quillims had fought hard over this city. Heavy shelling and collateral damage made it so that there were vastly more damaged structures than untouched ones in this urban environment! More and more mechs bearing the emblem of the Quillim Mech Army strode out of the tunnel exits. Ves had the illusion that he was watching a period drama due to all of the outdated tech on display. The Treading Drum Star Sector was located close to the galactic center where all of the best tech emerged first. The mechs that showed up were all fairly advanced during this time period. It was a pity that to a modern mech designer like Ves, the mechs in view were awfully primitive in many aspects! "It's 200 years, after all. The overall mech paradigms may have been set, but the tech that empowers these machines is constantly progressing. If I remember my history correctly, the current mech generation introduced a lot of mobility-oriented advancements that have made many mechs faster than before." In the year 185 AOM, the Mech Trade Association announced the commencement of the Speed Generation. Landbound mechs primarily benefited from the introduction of many innovations, but aerial and spaceborn mechs also received sufficient attention. Before this mech generation, a lot of mechs moved rather ponderously on the battlefield. There were still plenty of ways to increase their traversal speeds, but that came with heavy tradeoffs such as massively restricting their runtime and forcing them to burn through an excessive amount of fuel or energy. The Speed Generation solved many of those problems and made it much easier for mech designs to hit more favorable sweet spots. This period of time also happened to be the point in mech history where light mechs truly became unleashed! It had been more than a decade after the introduction of this mech generation at the current time. The average speed of mechs had already been elevated and light mechs had become a terrible scourge that needed to be guarded against. The mech unit that Venerable Irene Mox was attached to clearly took a lot of precautions. Early striker mechs guarded the periphery while a number of melee mechs stuck close to important ranged mechs such as the Iron Hedgehog. Not a lot of aerial mechs lifted off from the ground. It was dangerous to put them into exposed positions under the current conditions. The only ones that launched at this time were dedicated scouting models that could evade many attacks. The slow but steady march proceeded for an hour or so. Nothing much happened as the Quillim mechs had yet to make contact with Bontue mechs. Though Ves was disappointed that he wouldn't be able to see the Iron Hedgehog in action right away, he bided his time while he slowly and cautiously explored the mind of Venerable Irene Mox. Whenever she thought of the Bontues, both anger and pain surged in her mind. Irene hated the enemy! This hatred went beyond the general anger that any Quillim soldier held towards the Bontues. Her animosity was clearly personal. "Her cousin got killed during this war." She grew up with her cousin. They were close friends and even attended the same mech academies. Unfortunately, her cousin chose to specialize in piloting light mechs that had just come into vogue. This exposed her relative to a lot more danger during the Terrace War. Once Irene Mox received the awful news, she not only developed a personal hatred against the Bontue Republic, but also became a lot more driven to kill the enemy! As the large group of mechs reached the periphery of the ruined city, the Quillim mechs began to split up into smaller units. Individual mech companies started to move at their own paces. Light mechs zipped forward and raced across the open terrain that was covered with grass and cultivated fields. Medium mechs advanced at a slower pace as they methodically headed towards a specific destination. The few heavy mechs such as the Iron Hedgehog dug into their current positions and waited for the situation to develop. Ves didn't realize clearly until now how much heavy artillery mechs had to wait around. They weren't suitable for moving around a lot, and their impressive range gave them the luxury to stay in place. He hadn't been paying too much attention to the previous briefing, but he quickly knew what was happening after skimming Venerable Irene Mox's thoughts. Her current unit was assigned to attack a neighboring city that was held by the Bontue defenders. Since this planet originally belonged to the Bontue Republic, it was clear that its troops held a substantial defensive advantage! Multiple Quillim units had therefore been assigned to attack the neighboring city from several directions. The attacking troops outnumbered the defending ones, but that still made it difficult to dislodge the latter! More time passed by as the vanguard took its time to cross the distance between cities. It was only after the landbound light mechs as well as the aerial mechs reached the periphery of the target city that Venerable Irene Mox could finally make herself useful! "Venerable Mox, please pay attention to the priority targets that we have lit up on the command net. We need your gauss cannons and howitzers to open the way." Irene finally began to break her stoic demeanor and radiated actual excitement at this time. "With pleasure." Despite the vast distance between the cities, the mechs in the vanguard maintained solid communications with the mechs in the rearguard. Multiple different scout mechs fed a lot of valuable observation data to numerous different command mechs and command vehicles. Each of these vehicles processed the incoming data before they updated the command net with relevant information to each and every individual mech. Venerable Irene Mox quickly processed the available data on her priority targets with incredible ease and already determined what she needed to do in the next minutes. "Iron Hedgehog, opening fire!" The surroundings boomed as the 16 cannons all opened fire in quick succession! The four solid legs of the heavy artillery mech had already been braced on the ground to ensure that the powerful machine swayed as little as possible. Ves watched with amazement as sixteen resonance-empowered rounds and shells followed slightly different trajectories in the air. Seconds later, the fast-moving gauss rounds struck their targets first! Numerous highly reinforced bunkers, walls, turrets and other city defenses that were rated to withstand a considerable amount of bombardment were instantly breached! Only 5 targets had been struck in the first salvo as the tougher ones demanded multiple attacks in order to breach their defenses. Just after the defenders were reeling from this opening blow, the howitzer shells were arcing down from above at this time! A lot of rapid-fire cannons had begun to open fire at the incoming shells in a desperate attempt to detonate their warheads in advance, but this did not work as the Iron Hedgehog's howitzer shells were faster and more resistant towards damage! BOOOM! BOOOM! BOOOM! A mass of impressive explosions engulfed entire streets as they unleashed their resonance-empowered fury on a destructive scale! What impressed Ves a lot were the shells that happened to strike the larger structures that the Iron Hedgehog had previously breached. 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝙚𝔀𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝒐𝒎 Somehow, Venerable Irene Mox was able to aim her howitzer cannons in such a fashion that their shells accurately flew through the newly made holes before blowing up the interior of these damaged fortifications! This was just the start. Ves watched on with amazement as an entire exterior defensive line began to suffer utter ruination as the astounding firepower of a single expert heavy artillery mech methodically lay waste to all of the fixed structures! Although the Iron Hedgehog rapidly depleted its ammunition due to the high frequency of attacks, Ves saw that this was not that big of a deal. Two different supply mechs approached from the rear. Each of them held several containers filled with additional ammunition that were just waiting to be loaded into the Iron Hedgehog!