Chapter 6193 Driven to Exhaustion The battle was starting to reach its climax. Both sides suffered greater and greater losses as they fought for dominance over a star system located in the vulnerable 1st defensive band. Every human fighting in this strategic location knew that they would likely never be able to get away alive, let alone see another tomorrow. Yet the volunteer linefighters all did their duty without giving in to panic or despair. They signed up for this mission. They fought not for themselves, but for the future of their next of kin and as well as red humanity as a whole. This sense of duty and sacrifice fortified their spirits and allowed them to face certain death with a brave face! "Hahaha! Five elite phasefighters already fell at my hand! I'm rich! My sons will definitely be able to squeeze into the Red Association after this! Help me kill more of them so that I can get my cousins in as well!" "My flight system is toast. Leave me behind. I can't move, but I can still serve as a distraction. I'll even eject my cockpit so that the aliens have two targets to fight against!" "For humanity! Death to the aliens!" The greater the threat of death, the more fearless the mech pilots became! As for the elite orven fighter pilots, they had all grown furious at their inability to keep the first-class multipurpose mechs contained. If not for the human reinforcements running interference, the aliens would have been able to hold back or even destroy the powerful RA mechs! It was for this reason that the elite phasefighters no longer became distracted by other priorities and focused their full efforts on annihilating the elite mech units! Transphasic missiles exploded against mechs, causing the latter to either get crippled or blown apart without any other exception. Multiple phasefighters formed into a wing and kept strafing multiple mechs at once. The firepower of their transphasic energy cannons was too strong for their targets to resist. Many alien fighter craft endured a lot of attacks, especially from the ranged mechs that were able to strike at any distance in this open environment. However, their powerful transphasic energy shields easily withstood a lot of blows, thereby making it so that very few phasefighters succumbed from ranged attacks. The only effective way for the second-class mechs to take down the phasefighters was for multiple melee mechs to get close to them. The Red Two heralded space suppressors as game changers, and they proved their value many times over in this battle as well as many others. Not only were the melee mechs able to shatter the transphasic energy shields multiple times easier, their intervention also increased the effectiveness of ranged mechs targeting the same enemies. Although the original squad assignments had already turned useless due to all of the deaths, the veteran mech pilot did not require any formal assignments in order to work with each other. Informal teams formed and broke apart with every passing minute. The mech pilots utilized their own judgment to decide whether to group up with other machines or go their separate ways. As the amount of second-class mechs and elite phasefighters began to drop at a rapid rate, it became clear that the latter steadily gained more ground. It couldn't be helped! The elite phasefighters may have suffered heavy losses after tangling with the first-class multipurpose mechs they were supposed to stall, but their remaining numbers was still more than enough to grind down the much weaker second-class mechs! This confrontation was turning into a grave for an increasing number of mech pilots. Their courage and optimism were admirable, but high morale alone could not save them from near-certain death! The only way for these imperiled and dying mech pilots to reach the light at the end of a very dark tunnel was to break through. Under the insane pressure exerted by the powerful fighter craft that they had been struggling against, more and more mech pilots managed to exceed their limits and break through! "I WILL NOT ALLOW MYSELF TO BE DEFEATED BY THESE PATHETIC FIGHTERS!" "MY STORY DOES NOT END TODAY!" "I AM THE SAVIOR OF RED HUMANITY!" Their strong emotions propelled their willpower to unprecedented heights! Not only did they gain strong convictions, but their forced resonance directly amplified the combat power of their machines by around an order of magnitude, enabling them to kill elite phasefighters with greater ease! If these brand-new expert candidates all committed to the fight and directed their temporary boost in power to eliminating the elite phasefighters, then the second-class mechs might have a chance of winning this confrontation. However, this did not make sense from a strategic perspective! The higher ups valued the lives of all of the newly ascended expert candidates far greater than the 'ordinary' mechs and mech pilots that had yet to display any extraordinary strength. The only known evacuation ship could accommodate a large number of passengers on an emergency basis, but it could not accept any people that held no greater value. Only the expert candidates were entitled to receive a ticket on this ride! As soon as they broke through, the expert candidates only fought for a short amount of time before they resolutely retreated from the front. The elite phasefighters didn't want to let them go. It became clear that the orvens all received orders to shoot down as many mechs piloted by expert candidates as possible, so a frenzy occurred after every breakthrough! The few RA mechs assigned to escort these expert candidates back to the rear provided a lot of cover to guarantee the survival of these future human heroes, but it was not enough! The other second-class mechs had to come to the aid of their luckier comrades and do their part to reduce the pressure. All of the hectic struggles caused people's emotions to surge even higher, thereby triggering further breakthroughs! 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝕨𝕖𝗯𝚗𝚘𝕧𝕖𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝕞 These were remarkable phenomena as many of the pilots here were older veterans who had previously given up any hope of treading onto the path of godhood. It was only now that they were literally in the fight of their lives that these old dogs seemed to experience a renaissance. All of their training, experience and skill seemed to come together and sublimate into willpower that became strong enough to impose their ideas on reality, if only momentarily! Josh Ketter became incredibly inspired by all of these breakthroughs. He had interacted with a few of them in the past few months. They were similar to him in terms of age, growth trajectory and more. To see these brave men and women defeat the odds as well as their own estimations gave everyone else hope that they may be able to replicate this feat! "Press the advantage! The elite phasefighters are already beginning to flag. Those orven fighter pilots are too inexperienced!" The tech utilized by the orvens may be a lot more superior than the tech utilized by the second-class mechs, but the individuals controlling them also mattered! Compared to the veteran mech pilots, their much younger and less trained orven counterparts began to show their faults. Even if the alien fighter pilots did not have to control as many variables, their hasty training and their lack of tempering obviously left their mentalities rather weak. Their ferocity could not match that of their human foes. Their motivations were also fairly weaker as they were mainly fighting on behalf of their 'gods' and their higher caste superiors. This caused the alien phasefighters to fight less fluidly than before. As the orvens became susceptible to fear and doubt, they began to forget parts of their training. This made the fight a bit more bearable for mech pilots such as Josh Ketter, but only to a modest extent. The huge gap in tech level was still too difficult to overcome! "Die!" A battered and partially crippled Fey Fianna utilized its only intact arm to stab its spear against an elite phasefighter. The enemy craft had clearly lost its transphasic energy shield at least once before. Its fuselage exhibited clear signs of damage and burn marks caused by laser beams. However, the craft somehow managed to pull back and rest long enough for its transphasic energy shield generator to restore its function. It was difficult for the Fey Fianna to inflict effective damage to the craft at its current state. The loss of an arm due to getting shredded by enemy fire had made it a lot more difficult for the machine to wield its spear. What made the Fey Fianna's situation even worse was that it had almost run out of modular armor plating. The machine had stripped every piece of plating from the head, the limbs, the space suppressor fey in order to protect its most essential internal components against damage. The Fey Fianna would have definitely fallen if not for the ability to rearrange its armor plating! Even so, Josh Ketter knew that he had exhausted his allowance. He fought with the constant fear that his mech would get torn to pieces as long as it attracted the attention of a determined enemy fighter pilot. In order to reduce the chance that his mech would get singled out, Josh purposefully fought alongside other melee mechs in order to give the orvens other targets to focus their fire. It worked so far. The swordsman mechs and other melee mechs all looked deadlier and more threatening than Josh's beat up Fey Fianna. Even as the axeman mech that Josh had been fighting alongside began to shut down as another enemy craft blew a hole through the cockpit, his Fey Fianna along with other supporting mechs finally breached the defenses of their target and made short work of the damaged fighter craft! "Another one down." Less than 200 elite phasefighters were left at this time, but these craft were predominantly piloted by the most skilled and resilient alien fighter pilots. The cowards who had begun to flag as the fighting dragged on had already been eliminated for the most part. The ones that remained were undoubtedly the more promising fighter pilots that had become baptized and tempered in battle! As the weary and increasingly faltering second-class mechs tried to finish off the remaining elite phasefighters, Josh suddenly felt threatened as an elite phasefighter finally targeted his partially crippled mech out of all of the other nearby mechs. "JOSH!" Franklin roared even as his hot energy rifle spat out hyper positron beams at the strafing phasefighter. "GET OUT OF THERE!" As the jaws of death began to descend upon him, Josh became more and more focused. His Fey Fianna abused its strained flight system past its limits and forcibly juked around in space, thereby managing to evade the majority of incoming shots fired by the enemy craft. The inexperienced orven pilot became frustrated by the continuous evasions and tried to compensate for his aim as best as possible. However, the alien's frustrations only caused his aim to worsen, thereby allowing the Fey Fianna to get away with only minor damage! Much of the shots that would have otherwise struck the torso of the machine had been resisted or softened up by the space suppressor fey. Both modules that had served the Fey Fianna extremely well during the previous fighting finally reached the end of their journeys. Their fall was swift as the Fey Fianna had already cannibalized all of their modular armor plating! Though the mech no longer possessed any obstacles that could shield its internals from damage, the alien phasefighter had already come too close to launch any further attacks! Unlike mechs, fighter craft were not meant to remain stationary in combat. The enemy phasefighter had little choice but to swoop past the Fey Fianna without gaining the satisfaction of downing another human mech. The orven mech pilot focused the formidable firepower of his fighter onto another mech. Josh briefly relaxed now that he confirmed that he had managed to prolong his life a little more, but he soon began to panic when he noticed that the enemy craft was firing its energy cannons at the supporting ranged mechs! "Franklin! Disengage right now!" 'I can't, Josh! The enemy fighter has it out for me! I can't shake its fire!" "Then eject!" "It's pointless. My time is up. I will leave the rest to you, Josh. For a human galaxy!" The elite phasefighter managed to land enough shots on the evading ranged mech to destroy the latter's flight system. Once Franklin's rifleman mech lost its ability to move, it became an easy target. The orven phasefighter took advantage of this condition and easily demolished the mech's exposed torso! Seeing his war buddy and genuine friend of the past few months die without being able to to do anything to avert this outcome finally caused Josh to go over the edge! Red filled his vision as his helplessness and repressed fury boiled over! He broke through! "YOU FILTHY ALIENS!" The Fey Fianna exploded with energies as forced resonance spontaneously repaired and fortified a lot of parts! The mech had gone from a near wreck into a formidable threat! Even as Josh became an expert candidate and earned a ticket from this battlefield, he refused to obey the orders to retreat and ready himself for evacuation. All thoughts about returning to his daughter disappeared from his mind as only vengeance dominated his irrational mind!