Chapter 4864 Low Margins The Sensia continually slashed its knives against the modular shields of the Double Up from the front. Although the strikes dealt little damage, the light skirmisher designed by Team Larkinson could swing its knives at a frighteningly high pace, enabling Lizzie Cado to employ her knife fighting skills without too many hindrances! The Furia burned the Double Up's exposed rear armor by firing its wrist-mounted flamethrower at full blast. The concentration of damage was low, and none of the metal that came in contact with the flames melted in an instant. However, the transfer of thermal energy was so great that all of the modular armor situated in the rear of the Double Up's frame began to glow as they continually absorbed more and more heat! Already, the modular armor plates that bore the brunt of flames had already begun to droop and deform. At a certain point, these plates abruptly seemed to lose all life in them and began to fall onto the ground as the Double Up could no longer command them as before. It turned out that the excessive exposure to overwhelming heat had shorted out the circuitry and electrical systems that held them aloft! This normally wouldn't happen to the modular armor systems of properly designed mechs, but the lack of time put into the design along with the use of cheap, low-quality materials caused the components of the armor system to become far more vulnerable to these kinds of attacks than normal! What happened to the Double Up was one of the reasons why modular armor systems had not broken through the mainstream. It was fine to use it as a supplement to a regularly constructed mech like how the Battle Skirt System augmented the defensive properties of the Maiden of Adversity model, but to use it as the main source of defense for a knight mech was a risky choice! However, the Double Up was not a regular knight mech. The pilot of the mech knew he was in trouble. The light skirmisher and the hybrid mech were wailing on the Double Up from both sides. Meanwhile, the Triple Spray continued to linger outside of the smoke cloud, its sensor and communication systems unable to penetrate the interference produced by all of the particles in the air. The only way for the Triple Up to relieve the Double Up and make contact with it was by going inside. It would be a mistake for the light harasser mech to do so because it would only allow itself to get caught by the Sensia at close range! Since the Triple Up could not come to the Double Up, the Double Up just had to get out of this smoke cloud and link up with its partner mech again! The Double Up did not have many options at its disposal. The Sensia at the front and the Furia at the rear tacitly worked together to pin the beleaguered knight mech in place. If the Double Up made any careless movements, it would inadvertently expose its sensitive weak point at its front, thereby allowing either of the Twin Souls to attack its most vulnerable area and knock it out at an instant. There was only one option left for the Double Up. "Purge armor!" Inside the middle of the smoke cloud, the strained and modular armor plating that covered up the entire frame of the knight mech no longer tried to hold itself together anymore. Instead, the modular armor plating all separated from each other while exploding outwards! Though the force of all of those purged modular armor plates did not properly constitute as projectiles, they completely caught the Sensia and the Furia off-guard! The latter did not endure that much disruption as the Furia maintained a healthy distance from the knight mech. The Sensia on the other hand became bombarded by lots of little armor plates at close range. As it was a light mech to begin with, getting hit by a lot of small metal projectiles was like getting blasted by a weak shotgun at point blank range! While the Sensia wasn't fragile to the point where it could withstand this rain of metal plates, Lizzie Cado had been forced to command her light skirmisher to back off and cross its arms across its chest in order to protect its critical weak point. This was exactly what the pilot of the stripped knight mech wanted to accomplish! After purging its entire external layer, a much lighter and skinnier melee mech remained underneath. It held one straight shortsword that had previously been buried along the length of its arm and held a small physical shield made of what little modular armor plating that hadn't been flung away like the rest. The smaller and nimbler knight mech successfully managed to slip away and run outside of the radius of the smoke cloud! "So this is why Beatrice Hendrix called her work the Double Up." Ves sounded impressed as he along with everyone else watched the knight mech reach its second stage. The arena had special optical tech that allowed observers to look through the obscuring smoke cloud and accurately witness what was happening underneath. Otherwise, any battles involving smoke would turn into an unwatchable mess! Ves closely studied the design of the mech underneath the mech. Despite having lost almost all of its modular armor plating through a sudden purge command, what was left did not look like an easy machine to take down. The second stage form of the Double Up initially looked like a light skirmisher that tried really hard to pretend as if it was a knight mech but failed. However, Ves and many other mech designers began to look impressed as this was not exactly the case! This was not a mere 'cute' version of a knight mech. The current form of the Double Up was definitely a light mech, but it no longer fit into any neat categories. It possessed greater speed and agility than before but it could not catch up to the likes of the Sensia and the Triple Spray. Its frame was actually a little thicker and more resilient than average light mechs, but it did not strictly reach the standard of a defensive mech anymore. It possessed a small-sized shield made out of modular armor plating that came with a bit of flexibility, but it could not resist nearly as many blows as a genuine defensive shield. Nobody could figure out the right word to categorize this mech. "Is it a light knight mech?" "Maybe we should call it a swashbuckler mech." "Its a general melee mech." "I bet it has not even reached its final form!" Whatever it was called, the Double Up did not take much time to demonstrate that it could still put up a mean fight even if it had shed much of its protection. The Twin Souls had moved out of the smoke cloud and taken stock of their adversaries. The first clash between the two sides came out in favor of Team Larkinson, but its advantage was not as overwhelming as it looked. The Triple Spray had not yet been hit and only depleted a portion of its energy and ammunition reserves. The Double Up may have lost a considerable proportion of its previous combat power, but its downsized form was still in good condition as its modular armor plating had absorbed the vast majority of the attacks that landed on its frame. The Sensia did not look as fine as before. When it had turned around to attack the Double Up, it had exposed its rear to the Triple Spray. All of the bullets that struck the rear of the light skirmisher had dented or cracked a lot of the thin and fragile armor that protected its internals. While the Sensia had been able to shake off the attacks of the Triple Spray fairly quickly, its rear armor could no longer endure any further attacks! The Furia had been spared of any damage so far. Its defenses were in the best condition out of the four mechs in the arena. Its ammunition reserves had dropped by over half. All of the shotgun shells took up a lot of capacity. The hybrid mech couldn't carry too much of them so it was a grave concern that it could only fire its shotgun a bunch more times before it ran dry. The shoulder-mounted missile launchers had served their purpose after firing their only payloads. Bobby Orwell had already activated the purge command that caused them to detach from the Furia and reduce its encumbrance. The wrist-mounted flamethrowers also had a low capacity to begin with. After firing them at the rear of the Double Up at its maximum possible rate, its propellant reserves had dwindled down to less than 20 percent. 𝘧𝑟𝑒𝑒𝘸𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝓁.𝘤𝘰𝓂 This was still enough to pose a threat against lightly armored mechs, but there was no doubt that the Double Up and the Triple Spray would be wary against this threatening weapon system. The only weapons on the Furia that could still keep firing were its integrated luminar crystal guns. Their low power and high efficiency made it so that they did not burden the hybrid mech too much. After both sides regrouped and took stock of each other, they began the fight anew! All four mechs moved around in order to evade any incoming attacks and make it harder for their opponents to strike their crucial weak points. The Sensia circled around and attempted to approach the down-sized Double Up, making sure to never expose its weakened and damaged rear towards the Triple Up which was not as easy as it sounded. The reason why Lizzie Cado opted to target the Double Up was because it wasn't fast enough to outrun a light skirmisher! Seeing that a confrontation could not be avoided, the Double Up gave up its attempt to close in on the Furia and instead started to clash against the Sensia! Just like before, the Sensia struck the Double Up with a flurry of light unending knife attacks. Slash after slash struck the modular buckler that the stripped mech utilized as its most solid remaining defensive tool. The Double Up did not allow the Sensia to wail at it without any consequence! The knight mech thrust its own shortsword forward and forced the light skirmisher to back off in order to prevent it from getting impaled. The light skirmisher merely circled around a bit and forced the Double Up to utilize its buckler to defend against the attacks. Throughout all of this time, Lizzie Cado made sure that her Sensia always put the Double Up in the way of the Triple Spray's rifle! It dodn't matter too much because the Triple Spray had its own fair share of problems! In order to prevent the Triple Spray from ganging up on the Sensia, the Furia attacked the light harasser mech with numerous attacks! Shotgun pellets struck a portion of the Triple Spray's side armor, causing its arm as well as numerous thin armor plating to suffer small but concerning puncture damage! Thin but bright laser beams continually pelted the Triple Spray's frame. The light harasser mech's evasive maneuvers had caused a portion of these attacks to miss, but enough of them struck the Triple Spray to inflict serious damage to whatever armor plating it managed to strike! The only consolation for Team Hendrix was that the laser beam attacks weren't accurate and precise enough to land on the same portions of armor. The spread damage caused by the laser beams weren't immediately concerning as they had yet to make any substantial breaches. The Triple Spray did not avoid the confrontation and continually fired its triple-barreled rifle at the Furia's frame! The latter's frontal armor began to endure a substantial amount of pressure. The bullets might not be able to punch through its armor plating quickly enough, but its integrated weapons began to suffer a lot of little blows that they weren't meant to withstand! Boom! Another spray of shotgun pellets struck the left half of the Triple Spray, causing its rifle and its armor to incur even further damage.