After half an hour of unceasingly killing bugs of many different shapes and sizes, the skirmish finally came to an end. The Goliath Hive only sent out a finite amount of cannon fodder at the defensive lines. It was still so much from what Ves could observe. If this battle amounted to a mere skirmish, he feared how much worse it would be when the mutated voribugs Finally got serious. At that point, the defenders would no longer have the luxury of maintaining reserves. All of their assets had to contribute right from the start in order to prevent the overwhelming number of bugs from overrunning any of the critical defensive nodes. “It is only when you witness a massed voribug attack in person that you truly begin to appreciate the threat posed by so numerous weak bugs." All of the Goliaths got defeated, though not without a struggle. The Ekstrom Goliath lasted the longest and put up the biggest Fight. The Divine Arsonist needed a lot of time to tear apart the flesh of his enemy with his hands. His combat performance was incredibly disappointing, to say the least. The Ascended Giants were supposed to be good against other champions, but to see one struggle against a voribug equivalent was discouraging. The Phase Lord Department did not make a good first impression on the battlefield. The Divine Arsonist presented himself before his superior with a lowered head and a difficult expression. His raiment and gear looked a lot worse than before. The mutated voribugs had been able to gnaw on him long enough for holes to form. Even his flesh got eaten, though the voribugs were SO weak that they were unable to handle more than a single shallow bite of transphasic flesh. “I'am sorry, sir. I failed to defeat the Goliath as cleanly as I promised. I shamed the new polemarchos and the rest of the Ascended Giants. I... am prepared to accept any punishment." The Divine Harpoon placed his large hand on the giant trooper's injured shoulder. "None of us are blaming you. Our gear and tactics prepared us to fight against high- ranidng mechs and alien phase lords as a team. Fighting alone against a Goliath assisted by millions of voribugs is as far as you can go from that. We expected you to stumble, though not to this extent. What is important is that you ultimately won the duel without requiring any external assistance." "You are not... upset?" "You have proven that a single Faceless Giant is strong enough to contend against a single Level 7 Goliath. Why would I not be pleased? The fact that you had to struggle so much to secure your win is a consequence of our lack of preparation, and no one is to blame for that. What is important is to learn from your fight and do better next time. Go back and get yourself checked out. After that, write a report so that we can discuss how to defeat the enemy Goliaths faster.” "Yes, sir"! Many people observed the initial performance of the Divine Arsonist and came away disappointed. Not all of them realized that he was one of the weakest Ascended Giants that the Bluejay Fleet could dispatch. While the Ascended Giants were eager to prove they were a lot stronger than many observers thought, Ves was not in a hurry to put them back into the field. He at least wanted to wait until the Aseelided Giants received better gear. Outfitting 30 Ascended Giants with brand-new superdimensional gear was a big operation. Ves was willing to do a custom job for his own needs, but it would be too much for him to build all of the parts for his men. In order to fulfill their needs in a hurry, lie approached the Rubarthans to take care of their needs. Lord Richard Brownstone looked shocked when Ves voiced his request. "Are you sure you wish to entrust us with the responsibility of accepting your shipments of hull-grade superdimensional matter and outfit your Ascended Giants with superdimensional raiments?" Ves nodded. "So long as it conforms to the designs that I have sent you. The raiments must be made with the tech and standards of the Phase Lord Department. You can make small modifications if there are any supply problems, but please inform me of the changes beforehand. Generally speaking, speed is of the essence. The sooner my big boys are equipped with serviceable protection, the more they can defend this star system. You would be helping yourselves as well as my department.” The Rubarthan Senior Mech Designer looked flattered. "We are honored to receive your trust. Our production facilities in our star system are not the best. We certainly do not possess the high-tech machines needed to work with superdimensional matter. If you can predict your shipment to one of our major industrial planets, the Brownstone Principality C311 complete this order in a week with the help of newly developed hardware. It will take a few more days to ship the completed products to this star system, but this is our limit." Ves smiled. "That sounds Fine. I am not expecting any miracles here. The quality of the raiments does not need to be perfect either. As far as I am concerned, they are merely stopgap products. Aside from that, I have another request. I would like you to produce a batch of 15 plasma weapons at 1.5x scale for the Faceless Giants. I also need another batch of plasma weapons at 2.5x scale for the Ur-Titans. From what I have witnessed so far, superdimensional weapons are not that useful if they cannot secure a Kill fast enough. The plasma swords utilized by your high-end mechs are much more effective at killing megavoribugs as they inhibit their rapid regeneration. In the absence of a better solution, I can only think about placing this order." The request was expensive and troublesome. Plasma swords rated for high-level combat cost a fortune due to the need to make them tough enough. The cost would rise even further due to the need to scale them up and ensure they still worked properly. However, the cost was not that big of a deal for a major player like the Brownstone Principality. "Done." Lord Richard Brownstone said. "Please send us a list of melee weapon preferences. We can fabricate the right amount of plasma swords, plasma axes, plasma halberds and more based on what your Ascended Giants prefer to wield. Given that you are here to help the Rubarthan Paet, we will bear the cost of producing the enlarged weapons." “Is that appropriate?" "I suppose we can send the bill to the Phase Lord Department, but we shall not. As long as your Ascended Giants are ready to intervene when necessary, that is enough of a repayment in our opinion. The Philaster Crestia System is not the most important defensive node in this zone, but its fall will result in greater pressure elsewhere. We are eager to arm your Ascended Giants with plasma weapons for that reason. We need to be ready once the enemy dispatches all of the Goliaths that it can muster against our defenses.” The big offense was coming. They could all feel it. The Goliath Hive was not going to waste its time on testing its Goliath strains forever. "I really hope the Goliath Hive won't decide to launch a full attack before we can properly outfit all of my Aseended Giants." Ves sighed. The Voribug War was still in its early days. The Devourer Queen was still setting up a lot of stuff even as this unfathomable existence conquered a lot of poorly defended planets. So far, the Rubarthans were doing a decent job of blocking the alien insects, but that was not enough to achieve victory. So long as the mutated voribugs kept rainpaging across alien space, they could snowball their numbers and throw an astronomical amount of cannon fodder at their enemies’ Just thinking about it was enough to induce despair! "We believe the Goliath Hive is not ready to launch a full invasion in at least a couple of weeks." Richard said. "This should give us enough time to properly outfit your Ascended Giants with better gear and strengthen our defenses in this star system. Multiple groups are working to implement different measures to defend our territory or inflict a massive amount of casualties before we are forced to retreat. What is more important is to devise a means to effectively fight against the numbers game of the enemy." He was right. The mutated voribugs had become an incredibly implacable foe not because of their ability to field Goliaths, but because they were able to throw a huge number of cannon fodder at their enemies’ Many people had begun to figure out how to solve this fundamental problem. Just as how overcoming transphasic energy shields was the secret to defeating the native aliens, figuring out an effective way to defeat entire swarms of ordnance fodder was the key to defeating the mutated voribugs’ Unfortunately, Ves had just arrived and failed to make much progress so far. “I do not have any good ideas at the moment. I am sorry, Richard. I hoped to be able to make an immediate difference, but I still need to conduct Inoue research. Without inspiration, I am not able to come up with any revolutionary ideas." Lord Richard looked disappointed for a moment. "We are only asking you to do your best. If nothing else, the Ascended Giants that you have brought with you are already raking a difference. Just knowing that we have such powerful backup available can do wonders in raising morale." The two mech designers talked shop with each other for the next few minutes. They swapped a few mech design-related ideas that might lead to more effective bug- clearing solutions. "Standard Inechs are not an effective solution against the mutated voribugs." Ves analyzed. "Their limited scale and limited reserves lowers their killing efficiency. Warships are more effective due to their far greater damage output, but only if they can keep the voribugs at a distance. Orbital platforms are also fairly effective due to their simplicity and respectable damage output.” "What are you trying to say, Ves?" “If we continue to rely Oll boring mess and plain technology, we will never be able to gain an advantage over the mutated voribugs. We need to think outside the box and Figure out a way to make mechs useful in this context." "Do you have an idea?" "A handful. I think that combining mess with the power of qi formations may be the solution we seek. Our clan has extensive experience with employing battle formations long before the start of the Age of Dawn. I think... I may have to dust off my old research on this and Figure out a way to make them more accessible and less consuming. Battle formations have great promise as we can now leverage the power of E energy radiation, which is essentially a free energy source." The Rubarthan liaison looked reluctant. "I have seen the footage of your battle formations. Their power is impressive, but executing them is another story. We are not quite confident enough to decide whether to address the problem of E energy radiation. Battle formations manipulate E energy through the minds of dozens if not hundreds of people, so if any of them possess distorted thinking, a bad apple can easily spoil the entire party." Red humanity still did not possess a full understanding of E energy. It was capable of producing weird effects. E energy did not entirely behave according to logic. It could even be dangerous enough to corrupt others arid turn them into thralls. "Battle formations may help, but I feel that they are not enough.” Ves said. "We need to Figure out a more sustainable solution, one that can kill more voribugs at once, or one that can make our mechs last longer. The solution needs to be affordable as well, or else there is no point in developing it further." "Well, good luck with that, because you will need it, Ves."