Chapter 6671 Setting a Trap Given the circumstances of the upcoming confrontation, Melkor decided to lay an ambush. After all, why try to set up a spell array in the middle of a battle while phasefighters were shooting the mechs that carried the crucial formation anchors? The chance that something would go wrong was too great! One of the first lessons that a formation master needed to learn was that when one wanted to employ a spell array proactively against an enemy, it was best to employ them as traps. By setting a trap in advance, the formation master would be able to take the time to calculate the right placements without any urgent time pressure. Another factor that played in his favor was that the absence of fighting meant that the chosen battlefield remained relatively static. If energies started to spew in every direction while asteroids were blowing up, Melkor may be forced to redo his calculations as his previous ones were no longer accurate anymore. While Melkor learned that more advanced formation masters would be able to compensate for these changes on the fly, right now he was still just an auxiliary qi cultivator. His prior practice up until now only made him a little smarter and allowed him to multitask better. These improvements were far from enough for him to perform dynamic calculations in the middle of a battle! "I have just sent out the coordinates along with instructions on where you need to place the formation anchors. Do your best to get close to them as possible and place the objects as precisely as you can relative to my mech's position. Do you understand?" "What if there is an asteroid in the way?" "There won't be. If you look at the locations corresponding to the coordinates, the anchors should be buried just below the surface of different asteroids. Make sure to cover up the digging as best as possible. It is unlikely that the alien craft will be able to detect anything unusual when our mechs will attract all of their attention, but let's not make this easy for our enemies." The mechs carrying the formation anchors proceeded to split up so that they could bury the metal pillars into each of the designated asteroids. Melkor had selected them carefully according to the calculations performed with the help of his mech's formidable processors. Normally, it was beyond his ability to plant formation anchors in a three-dimensional space that was filled with asteroids. Melkor had to make use of the enhanced eyesight of his companion spirit Jonas to scout for asteroids that possessed the right traits to hold a formation anchor and subsequently narrow down the coordinates by performing follow-up calculations. "This is quite convenient." A suitable companion spirit could easily lower the difficulty of becoming a formation master! While Melkor's decision to specialize in deploying and controlling spell arrays meant that he now became a supportive qi cultivator twice over, he did not regret his decisions. Support mech pilots were able to do just fine while they did everything they could to boost other mechs. They performed a noble function that was just as honorable as fighting more directly. Time passed by as his subordinates obediently planted the formation anchors at the designated coordinates. While it may seem as if these pillars that were predominantly made out of hyper materials could be knocked out of position at the slightest disturbance to the asteroid they were hiding on, Melkor was not too worried. Most spell arrays were able to tolerate minor deviations. The efficacy of the resulting qi formation might drop, but it shouldn't disappear so easily. As long as Melkor activated the spell array before the ensuing battle could mess up the environment further, everything should be okay as the empowered qi formation should automatically lock itself into place. It would become far more difficult to mess up the spell array once it came into power, especially from attacks from the inside! Melkor's only concern now was that it was theoretically possible to break apart any spell array by relying on brute force. Excessively powerful attacks could break any barrier. If Melkor could increase the flow of E-energy into an active spell array, it could withstand more attacks before reaching its breaking point, but he currently did not have many ways to make that happen. This made him feel concerned about whether the ritual may fail because the enemy phasefighters were strong enough to break the effect by force. If the enemy craft consisted entirely of cannon fodder small craft, then the chance that this would happen was small, but not zero. Transphasic weapons hit harder and inflicted more effective damage than - det ---1----------- The puelmer phasefighters were worse. Many of them mounted additional high-tech weapons that enabled them to inflict massive damage to their targets. If the strike craft also happened to mount missiles with fairly potent payloads, then the spell array might shatter in an instant! "Change of plans." He decided. "Sir?" "The capacity of my new trap isn't high," Melkor determined. "We shouldn't entrap too many mechs, or else they will try to blast out of the border and succeed this time. Let's do this. Let us wait until half of the expected enemies will enter the qi formation before I activate it. The remaining mech units should focus on eliminating the enemy phasefighters that are trapped outside of the spell array." "That.... is a big change of plans, sir. We can alter the assignments quickly, but many of us will still get caught off-guard." "This measure is too important for us. This ritual has to succeed. Dividing the enemy so that they are cut off from each other is a good way to sow more division and create coordination problems. That should hopefully distract them enough for them to avoid doing the obvious." Melkor along with a few mech officers began to formulate a revised plan for the upcoming battle. He actually liked his new plan better. It became a little more complicated, but it was also better proofed against unexpected or undesired outcomes. "Oh, I also shouldn't forget about swapping my fey" Doing this was fairly easy as there were numerous other Fey Fiannas among the gathering of Larkinson mechs. He soon contacted the mech pilots of two other quasi-first-class Fey Fiannas and called them over. "I need to exchange my offensive fey with your azure energy shield feys." Melkor said. "If you do not urgently need the additional defenses and could use the extra firepower, you can have my luminous fire fey and infinite coil fey. They are both transphasic, so they pack a mean punch." "Sure" "I can adapt." Melkor had grown more proficient in piloting a drone mech while at the same time controlling a multitude of fey at the same time. He spent the last months participating in battles where he could deploy 6 fey at a time, which was more than the starting point for the living mech. It was not until very recently that he was able to expand his living fey entourage to 8 fey at a time! This was a pretty major boost in power and flexibility. A typical fey was considerably larger and more powerful than most spurs attached to the back of the mech. It was thanks to the help of the Commanding Controller Auxiliary Qi Cultivation Method that he quickly became a qualified drone mech pilot. Much of the gains he made with this auxiliary qu cultivation method would get subsumed by a more superior qi cultivation method as long as there was enough overlap. As time passed by, the scouts of the Flagrant Vandals successfully encountered and had begun to lure them over to their chosen ambush site. The Flagrant Vandals tried not to make it too obvious. While the native aliens had neglected the importance of scouting ahead for their main forces, Melkor did not want to underestimate his opponents too much. If one of the puelmer phasefighters possessed an extremely powerful high-tech scanning system, then they could probably detect a large amount of mechs hiding behind asteroids. If these mechs wanted to do a better job of hiding themselves, their pilots could shut down their power reactors and let the machines cool to nearly the same temperature as the space rocks. Melkor had declined to do so. He did not mind it if the aliens detected his mechs in advance. It would make this even better as the native aliens were obviously tasked with clearing the asteroid belt of human enemies. "They are about to arrive!" The waiting mechs began to heat up a bit more in anticipation of moving into action. The Fey Fianna piloted by Melkor meanwhile began to deploy all 8 azure energy shield fey around the mech frame. The legion commander would leave the responsibility of attacking the enemy to other mechs. He needed to focus all of his concentration on conducting the initiation ritual while simultaneously controlling the spell array. The Flagrant Vandal mechs soon flew into sight. The light mechs nimbly weaved around the asteroids while presenting themselves as enticing targets to the vanguard of the main enemy force. As dozens more phasefighters came close, hundreds of mechs started to emerge from behind their asteroids! The melee mechs began to charge forward in order to intercept the leading The ranged mechs began to attack the alien craft while using the asteroids as cover whenever possible. Energy beams, gauss rounds and missiles began to fill the kill box as the light phasefighters desperately tried to use their superior mobility to evade the attacks! Many of them suffered hits onto their azure energy shields. The defenses held up only for a moment before they began to collapse in quick succession. The volume of fire proved too much for the phasefighters to evade or withstand all of orce of enemy the hits! Even as 16 or so phasefighters fell from the initial barrage, the main phasefighters had finally arrived to reinforce their heavily bruised vanguard! The fighting rapidly grew more and more intense. The native aliens did not seem to pay too much attention to whether they were being lured to an ambush. Multiple phasefighters had tried to disengage from the thick of the fighting and began to scout the periphery in order to detect any nasty surprises. Whatever scanning methods these craft used, they apparently did not detect anything suspicious about the buried formation anchors! Since the Larkinson mech force truly did not install any bombs or other suspicious devices into the surrounding asteroids, the alien fighter pilots became more certain the enemy did not prepare anything special. The mixed native alien force began to commit harder to the fight. They flew forward to strafe the human mechs and fired their missiles whenever they saw an opportunity to inflict serious damage to their targets. Melkor smirked at the sight. Despite the losses that had begun to occur, the native aliens did not notice that their phasefighters were gradually getting pulled within the range of his soon-to-be-activated spell array. He had a feeling that his plan was slowly coming together. The only concern was that the puelmer elite phasefighters had yet to commit to the fight themselves. They maintained their distance from the main fight and stayed in reserve for the time being as their alien fighter pilots ruthlessly analyzed the unfolding battle. Melkor felt uncomfortable about them, especially now that he was approaching a critical moment. "Swordmaidens, go send a unit of Storm Swords and Stormblade Samurais to circle around and engage the elite puelmer phasefighters in battle. We need to know what they are capable of and how well they can fight. Vandals, send out your light mechs to "Roger." "Acknowledged." Dozens of mechs that had yet to go deep began to disengage from the main fight and flew their way past other phasefighters in order to confront the most powerful enemies on the battlefield! The puclmers definitely noticed that their craft were being targeted. Now that the humans had sought to challenge their tech, they no longer remained passive and began to unveil their technological gifts! Right before their eyes, seven of the enemy phasefighters suddenly flew into each other and linked up, causing them to form a combination 'gunship' that was much larger than a typical phasefighter! A large muzzle extended from the center and suddenly began to generate a relatively massive energy signature! "Careful! Evade!" The charging Swordmaiden mechs hastily aborted their attack run and began to split away from each other, but it was too late! A massive transphasic positron beam erupted from the muzzle of the combination craft and whipped it from left to right, causing a large handful of mechs to sustain heavy damage or outright get cut in two pieces! Even the defenses of quasi-first-class mechs failed to withstand the might of this energy discharge!