Chapter 3485: Strategic Shift Although the support of the audience did not directly affect the battle strength of the combatants in any way, it still had a substantial influence on morale. The Larkinson mech pilots became a lot more buoyed when they saw how extensively the fans and viewers around them rooted for their victory. Even if many of the Larkinson mech pilots didn't fight for glory, right now they couldn't help but become caught up in the competitive fever! As long as they won the next match, they would become famed and celebrated warriors in the Red Ocean! If nothing else, they could brag about reaching the finals of a big and important tournament whenever they entered a bar! Of course, they still needed to win. All of their dreams and hopes would become dashed if they weren't able to beat the Urthinans. As the countdown started, the mech pilots of both sides tuned out the massive live audience and only focused on what was important. The arena battlefield turned into a highly unusual environment this time. The surface of the arena turned into a flat, arid terrain that offered no cover or obstacles of any kind. A battlefield like this would have been completely boring if not for one complication. A light sandstorm swept throughout the entire battlefield. The sand particles that were largely blowing in a uniform direction were mixed with a light proportion of metal and exotic materials. This caused the sandstorm to generate a moderate amount of interference. Although the sensor and communication systems of most mechs still remained effective in a range of a couple of kilometers around them, it was quite troublesome to reach any further without the use of mechs acting as relays. Still, this was not that big of a deal. Neither the Larkinsons nor the Urthinans enjoyed a significant advantage this time. At most, they needed to roam around a bit more in order to locate each other's mechs. What did bother them was the fact that the sand could sneak into all kinds of holes and crevices. While the blowing sand wasn't powerful enough to grind down solid mechs in a short amount of time, they could easily aggravate the injuries of any mechs! As long as a mech suffered an armor breach and exposed its internals to the environment, all of that sand blowing into the interior compartments could easily interfere or wreak havoc on the functioning of the mechs! The implications were clear to the Larkinsons. "Avoid getting hit." Commander Casella instructed her men. "If you get struck by a lance, it likely won't matter as much, but if the enemy ranged mechs manage to breach your armor, try to orient your mechs so that the hole doesn't face the wind." This would only slow down the deterioration process. The measures the mechs had to take to stall their end also impose considerable limits on their subsequent actions. However, Commander Casella could work with this. In her judgement, the current battle environment provided a slight advantage to the Larkinson Battalion. Whereas the Urthinan lancer mechs needed to pull off a successful charge in order to breach the armor of their targets, most of the Larkinson mechs didn't have to go through so much trouble! Casella took one more look at her entire battalion. The mech roster for this battle was a significant departure from what the Larkinson Battalion had fielded before. This time, the Larkinsons did not bring any Transcendent Punishers. The Eye of Ylvaine wasn't happy with this strategic decision, but the Larkinson Battalion simply couldn't afford to bring so many burdens to the battlefield this time. The Transcendent Punishers worked best against opponents that were slow and could not overwhelm the Larkinson lines. The aggressive, charge-oriented mech doctrine of the Glory of Urthina Battalion happened to be one of their worst nightmares! No matter whether the Larkinsons brought 20, 50 or even 100 Transcendent Punishers, each of them would get demolished in the first five minutes when a torrent of lancer mechs swept across their positions! Lancer mechs just loved to skewer their lances through big, fat immobile targets like heavy artillery mechs! It was largely self-defeating to bring a large amount of knight mechs to protect the heavy artillery mechs. The enemy lancer mechs would just wipe out the knight mechs first before moving on to demolish the heavy artillery mechs shortly afterwards! This was also the reason why the Larkinsons did not bring any Eternal Redemptions this time. While Penitent Sister cannoneer mechs were more maneuverable than the Transcendent Punishers, they were still sitting ducks against their current opponents! The Larkinsons made a bold but risky change in strategy for this match. Instead of fielding a rounded and balanced assault force, the Larkinson Battalion instead switched out all of their melee mechs and slower mechs! The Bright Warriors in knight mech configuration and swordsman mech configuration were entirely absent this time. The Valkyrie Redeemers were still allowed to remain, but their numbers had been reduced from 120 mechs to 80 mechs. The remaining 420 mechs of the Larkinson Battalion consisted entirely of Bright Warriors in rifleman mech configuration! Many of the mech pilots who fought in the previous matches had been replaced by other mech pilots who specialized in ranged combat. The clan still had plenty of mech pilots that were readily available to participate in this competition. The extreme shift in force composition meant that the Larkinson Battalion could no longer use the same fighting formulas as before. The Larkinsons needed to employ a radically different approach in order to win with so many mobile ranged mechs! While the Valkyrie Redeemers could fight both at range and up close, they clearly weren't equipped to collide directly against the assault forces of the Glory of Urthina Battalion. For now, their melee capabilities weren't important. Commander Casella had strictly instructed the Penitent Sisters to maintain their distance for the time being. "Before we can go on attack, we need to blunt the enemy's assault." She reminded everybody. "Stick to the plan and force the Urthinan lancer mechs to waste their time chasing after our mechs." As the Larkinson mechs all soared into the air and built up speed, the first Urthinan offensive mechs had already begun to appear from the sandstorm. These mechs quickly relayed the news to the other Urthinan mechs. More and more powerful enemy lancer mechs, offensive knight mechs and light skirmishers emerged from the raging sands. "Slay the infidels!" "Run them down!" "Glory to Urthina!" Just like they did in the previous matches, the Urthinan assault force did not bother to deliberate its choices. They immediately committed to a full attack, trusting that their strength was more than enough to sweep their opposition! Their religious fervor and devotion to the goddess Urthina caused all of their mech pilots to become extremely focused on reaching their opponents before crushing them with pure momentum! Yet as the Urthinan melee mechs surged forward, their mech pilots found to their dismay that the unbelievers didn't group up in a single, large formation. Instead, the Larking ranged mechs all split up into different mech companies that all flew in directions! The grand charge of the Urthinans soon yielded no result. No Larkinson mech was stupid enough to stay in the path of the advancing lancer mechs. While the previous lineup of the Larkinson Battalion wouldn't have been able to move aside so easily, the current makeup was different! With no slowpokes to slow the Larkinsons down, the Bright Warriors piloted by the Avatars and the Valkyrie Redeemers piloted by the Penitent Sisters easily managed to dance around the main enemy formations before firing their potent luminar crystal rifles at the exposed enemy machines. Hundreds of energy beams concentrated on a dozen targets. The warnet automatically coordinated the actions of the different Larkinson mechs so that groups of them always concentrated their firepower on specific targets. The Urthinan lancer mechs possessed quite a lot of armor. They not only relied upon it for protection, but also needed the mass to better build up their momentum. Now, all of that armor was quickly being dismantled after the unlucky targets got hit by forty different energy beams at once! "Ahhh!" "My mech is going down!" "I have shamed Urthina!" Most of the energy beams accurately hit their target. Much of it had to do with the relative inflexibility of the enemy lancer mechs, but the Avatar mech pilots had all invoked the Golden Cat at this time. By borrowing the superior marksmanship skills of superior mech pilots such as Commander Casella Ingvar, every mech pilot controlling a Bright Warrior in rifleman mech configuration had begun to echo her level of skill! In addition, a strange connection formed between Casella and the Avatars while the latter borrowed from her skill. She felt a little bit more connected to her current subordinates. Although this did not lead to anything drastic, she faintly felt that her battle awareness had extended even further. Her eyes narrowed at the distant lancer mechs. "You might fight in the name of the goddess Urthina, but we have the Golden Cat on our side!" The luminar crystal rifle was one of the strong points of the Larkinson Clan. This exclusive tech granted the average Bright Warrior mech model a considerably more powerful offensive punch! Although one of these rifles already posed a threat against the enemy Urthinan mechs, a mech company's worth of them could easily tear apart any mech even if half of the energy beams missed! One of the more interesting tactical decisions the Larkinson had made was to employ multiple luminar crystal attack phases at the same time. The slicer beams fired by some of the Bright Warrior mechs possessed high penetration power and easily drilled tiny openings through the frontal armor of lancer mechs. The kinetic beams fired by a number of other mechs forcefully expanded these cracks and made the weak points larger. The barrage of positron beams that were fired at the same time could not only soften up the armor even further, but could easily burn through the openings and inflict a huge amount of damage to the internals. When these different energy beams were employed in isolation, then their effect wouldn't be as good. However, the Larkinsons had learned long ago that using multiple types of energy beams at once produced a wonderful synergy effect that allowed them to breach through enemy armor considerably faster than usual! While it was difficult to realize this advantage on a smaller scale, the current battle was just big enough for the hundreds of Larkinson ranged mechs to take advantage of this potent synergy effect! The Glory of Urthina Battalion weren't happy with seeing their prided lancer mechs getting downed one by one, though. Their commanding officer soon formed the correct response. "Split up and chase after the enemy mech companies! They can't evade all of our charges as long as we pincer their formations!" The Urthinan melee mechs split up into companies as well, but they did not chase after all of the Larkinson mech companies. Instead, 2 Urthinan mech companies both split up and chose to approach a single Larkinson mech company from two different directions. While this left a large amount of Larkinson mechs unattended, it was fine as long as their targets were taken out quickly. All that mattered was that the Urthinans had to reduce the number of opponents quickly in order to reduce all of the attacks whittling down their melee mechs. Yet even as the Urthinans executed their pincer strategy, the Larkinsons quickly enacted their own response to this change. "Split up into fireteams spread out!" The targeted Larkinson mech company did not dare to confront the two charging Urthinan mech companies head-on. Instead, it dispersed into smaller groups of 5 mechs that each moved away from each other at a rapid pace! The Urthinan pincer attack was rendered ineffective now that their original target had faded away like a dispersing bee swarm. Meanwhile, those split-up Larkinson elements continued to fire their luminar crystal rifles at the stymied Urthinan mechs! It was as if the Larkinsons were taunting at the inability of the Urthinan lancer mechs to skewer an opposing mech! Yet even as the Larkinson mechs continued to dance around the Urthinan melee mechs, a flood of shrapnel overwhelmed a couple of Larkinson fireteams! The Urthan ranged support had finally taken their place at the center of the battlefield and begun to support their beleaguered comrades!