Chapter 5867 So Much Cheating The way the Dread Marines fought against the so-called Fallen Heralds of Akshi was glorious. The elite and well-trained infantry did not hesitate to employ aggressive fighting tactics to wear down their targets while dancing at the edge of death. The sight was so impressive that Ves remained rooted on the spot for a time. His analytical mind could not help but dissect the combat doctrine and strategy employed by the 6th Giant Trapper Division. The first point that stood out to Ves was that the Dread Marines tried their utmost not to remain still. They flew through space and maneuvered in unpredictable patterns to the best of their abilities. Their lives depended on it! No matter whether it was the Light, Medium or Heavy Dread Armors, none of their defenses could ever compare against a well-designed mech. Most weapons employed by first-class mechs were readily capable of overpowering the defenses of Dread Marines, especially if multiple of them focused on single targets. This firepower disparity had many implications. Unless there were powerful fortifications on hand, it made no sense for Dread Marines to remain immobile and on the defensive. This was why the Dread Marines relied on superior maneuverability to keep them alive. Due to their smaller sizes, it was a lot easier for them to move at respectable speeds. Combined with their much smaller sizes, the Dread Marines turned into wasps that could sting a lot harder than most people expected. At first, the Giant Trappers made impressive progress. Dozens of Fallen Heralds succumbed to all of the firepower in quick succession as the Dread Marines intelligently distributed their attacks to specific targets to attain maximum short-term results. The most effective weapons employed in this fight were the high-yield missiles launched by many Heavy Dread Marines. The guided missiles followed precise yet also unpredictable trajectories before converging on specific targets at the final second. This not only made it difficult for the Fallen Heralds to determine which of them were targeted, but also increased the difficulty of intercepting the incoming ordnance. As clusters of missiles struck the corrupted flame barriers of their targets at the same time, their high-yield warheads laced with expensive hypers and exotics exploded with great fury! Not that it was easy to do so. Each transphasic hyper missile contained cutting-edge technology that made them faster and more difficult to perceive. As clusters of missiles struck the corrupted flame barriers of their targets at the same time, their high-yield warheads laced with expensive hypers and exotics exploded with great fury! Ves winced when he saw so many expensive missiles getting expended on the tribulation manifestations. They were relatively small, yet still managed to pack a large punch. He estimated that each and every high-yield missile was packed with so much precious materials that they had to cost at least 10 million MTA credits, and that was excluding the phasewater that made them a lot more potent! It was clearly worth the cost, though. Out of all of the armaments utilized by the Giant Trappers, it was the high-yield missiles and to a lesser extent their explosive shells that wore down the defenses of their adversaries the fastest. The Medium Dread Marines inflicted much less damage in comparison, but they served their own purpose in this lineup. They were more targeted in their attacks. Once the flame barriers went down, the Medium Dread Marines were able to drive their plasma lances at any exposed weak point with their quick and nimble charge attacks. Their numbers along with their annoying tendency to circle around their prey debilitated the Fallen Heralds so much that it became increasingly unrealistic for the lighting soldiers to catch up to the Heavy Dread Marines! Of course, that caused the Medium Dread Marines to attract the ire of all of these powerful foes. Once the Fallen Heralds started to fight against their closest enemies in earnest, the battle became a lot more intense! The Fallen Heralds did not fight like simple axemen. They fought like qi warriors who happened to be wielding axes. Spikes of power erupted from the giant lightning warriors an instant before they swung their axes in unison! "Be careful!" The axe swings propagated large waves of darkened flames that weakened incoming attacks, drained the defenses of any nearby targets and caused the exposed Dread Armors to catch fire! "These fires are draining the phasewater and hyper materials of our Dread Armors!" "Our extinguishing methods are not working!" "We require emergency evacuation!" "We cannot risk the danger of teleporting your burning Dread Armors into our ship. We will have to evacuate you without your suits." "DO IT BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE!" Though the fleeters had come to a silent agreement with the tribulation storm to resist the attackers of the 5th round by relying on their Dread Marine Corps, that did not mean that their troopers had to fend for themselves. The Rubicon Spatial Transfer System was a core part of their combat doctrine. It was arguably the most powerful and precise teleportation system in the Red Ocean, so it would be a crime to utilize it sparingly. Other than the greater beyonder gate, the technologies put into the Rubicon Spatial Transfer System was so far ahead in terms of cost and technological sophistication that it was ahead of its time. Though the corrupting flames generated a lot of interference that made it harder for the Rubicon to lock onto the humans wrapped inside the Dread Armors, it was not strong enough to block teleportation entirely. The soldiers under imminent threat still managed to escape in an instant! There were only a few cases where the loss of Dread Armors also became accompanied by loss of life. These instances mostly happened when one or more Fallen Heralds managed to boost forward with abrupt speed and slam their burning axes into their targets! The force behind these attacks were unnaturally strong as each impact produced strong explosions that tore apart the defenses of the Medium Dread Marines! Many of them had opted to switch their azure energy shields off in order to absorb as much tribulation energies as possible. While the Dread Armors were intelligent enough to activate their azure energy shields during emergencies, it took time for the energy barriers to get up to strength. The hasty measures were not enough to block the power of the explosive axe strikes! It was not just the corrupting flames that inflicted a lot of damage. Tribulation lightning augmented every strike, enabling the Fallen Heralds to inflict considerably greater damage than when they used to be alive! "Do not let your Dread Armor get hit! These dark flames will stick to any metal and continue to burn everything down!" The giant lightning soldiers began to gain the upper hand. The explosive strikes were already bad enough, but even their glancing blows had the potential to take Dread Marines out of the fight. The Medium Dread Marines fought valiantly as they continued to entangle the Fallen Heralds, but their numbers were dwindling at an unsustainable rate. Large quantities of high-yield missiles circled around and took out lightning soldier after lightning soldier. Ves already noticed that the Heavy Dread Marines launched far more missiles than they could reasonably carry. There were only two possible explanations why they could launch more missiles than could possibly fit in their ammunition containers. The first possibility was that they were all equipped with dimensional pockets that were filled with lots of spare missiles. The second possibility was that the Rubicon Spatial Transfer System teleported fresh missiles directly into the launchers of the Heavy Dread Marines after they expended their previous payloads! When Ves concentrated on the Heavy Dread Marines, he quickly figured out that the Rubicon was doing all of the work. "That's cheating!" Ves had never heard of anything as absurd as directly reloading armaments through teleportation! It was such a dangerous and wasteful tactic that an accident or ten should have occurred by now! All of those Heavy Dread Marines were constantly moving around to the best of their abilities, making it even more difficult to precisely teleport the missiles exactly inside the tubes of the missile launchers with no mistakes! Ves developed a strong desire towards the Rubicon. He wanted to obtain a souped-up teleportation system for himself. The one utilized by the Dominion of Man was so good that it could do practically anything! "Professor Larkinson!" "Ah, yes, General Capalli?" "Our Dread Marines are experiencing difficulties with neutralizing the dark flames spread by these lightning soldiers. Since you are capable of summoning water with special properties, please use that strange flute of yours to see whether you can douse the flames." "I will do my best." "Good. I will dispatch additional defensive units to keep you safe while you work." A bunch of Medium and Heavy Dread Marines already arrived at his position before deploying various defenses, though they conspicuously left out their azure energy shields. Ves brought his Oceancaller back to his lips and began to play a slightly uplifting tune. There was no need to attack or inhibit the movements of his latest adversaries. He doubted that his relatively weak strength and shallow understanding of qi cultivation would allow him to inflict serious damage against these mech-sized tribulation manifestations. What he could attempt was trying to douse a few flames with special properties. He concentrated hard on cleansing corruption, putting down fires and cooling down burnt armor plating. Soon enough, modest waves of water formed in the distance and quickly began to engulf the nearest Dread Armors that had caught fire. Part of the water instantly evaporated as the heat and power emanating from the corrupting flames turned out to be fairly strong! However, the corrupting flames also began to disappear, leaving the Dread Armor partially melted but still capable of putting up a decent fight! The Medium Dread Marine took the time to raise a thick thumbs up before he went back into the fray. Even though he had been offered the chance to teleport back inside the ship so that the technicians could carefully preserve and repair his tribulation-blessed Dread Armor, the soldier refused to back down when he could still contribute to the fight! "Can you do that again, professor?" Ves frowned as his previous exertion hadn't been light. "I can, but my efficiency is not very good. I can only help out one Dread Marine at a time, general." "...Do what you can." The fight continued. Over a thousand Dread Marines had already been taken out of the fight, and hundreds more were in the process of getting burned or shattered. The Fallen Heralds of Akshi were not as numerous, but still had enough to last quite a while. Their powerful axes and the protection of their corrupted flame barriers made it a lot harder to produce lasting results. This was especially when the giant lightning soldiers started to unveil more and more tricks! Each time they swung their axes, they produced corrupting flames that turned into piercing arrows, burning nets, fiery snakes and other unusual forms. It was difficult to predict the effect of these empowered axe swings in advance. There were so many possibilities that even the Brain Trust struggled to infer the results before they happened! Ves clearly knew that the water summoned with the help of his Oceancaller was able to pitch in, but his technique was too poor and his Spirituality was too low for this kind of fight. "I need to strengthen my efforts? There has to be a trick." He did not know cultivators well enough to know how they were able to leverage their power to a greater degree. He furrowed his brows as he quickly sifted through his memories in order to learn from good examples. After a bit of searching, he suddenly came across the Destroyer of Worlds. As the only god pilot with a companion spirit, she had actively developed a lot of powerful methods where she could combine her willpower with Emma in order to produce greater synergies. Though Ves was not a high-ranking mech pilot, he could still take a page out of Irene's book and take advantage of his companion spirit! "It's showtime, Blinky!" "Mrow!"