Chapter 7327: Sudden Change of Strategy As the Riot Mark III continued to go on rampage to the point of forcing the Goliaths to band together, many people developed a growing interest in the mech and its secrets. The Dark Apostle received multiple inquiries about the ’tech’ used to grant the Riot Mark III access to a new ’energy source’. Even if anyone with decent intelligence and perception could clearly deduce that the ace spearman mech was making use of a power that was not benign in the slightest, that did not reduce people’s cravings for it in the slightest. What did the Rubarthans need the most now that it was beset by the much more troublesome mutated voribugs? Power! At this point, the Rubarthans did not care too much whether it came with any strings attached. So long as the price was not worse than literally getting devoured by an endless tide of alien insects, anything was acceptable! Ves was supposed to accompany the Dark Apostle in battle. He had very little interest in explaining the Riot Mark III to his current hosts. "The design solutions used to make the Riot Mark III so much more powerful are currently exclusive to the Larkinson Clan." He patiently responded to the latest inquiry through Blinky. "No, the Earth Carmine mech design project that we have agreed to collaborate on does not include this particular design application. An adversarial mech is a costly variation of traditional craftsmanship, which cannot be mass produced in the foreseeable future." Lord Richard Brownstone made another request. "I can’t accept commissions where I deliver adversarial mechs for individual mech pilots at this time. My design schedule is already overloaded. Besides, all of this is still highly experimental. A life-changing accident has already occurred. I do not wish the fate of Saint Rosa Orfan to one of your own heroes. If not for the fact that she is part of my clan and that she has accepted all of the risks, I would have been in a lot more trouble for botching this experiment. Yes, you heard that right. What I have made is so new and untested that safety cannot be guaranteed." "Ves." The Dark Apostle said. "Saint Orfan is doing great, but the other fronts are not doing as well. It looks as if the Goliath Hive is about to get serious." That sounded grave. Ves quickly suspended his current discussion with the Brownstone mech designer and cast his gaze across the battlefield. While he was not able to observe much from his current perspective, he also activated a projected map from the Dark Apostle’s raiment that conveyed a lot more data. It turned out that the Goliath Hive had already formed a response. It was not stupid enough to double down on a losing bet. Seeing as the Larkinson ace mech was not only invincible when fighting against a mob of Level 4 to 7 Goliaths, but also kicked their butts despite their desperate teamwork, the mutated voribugs made the most extreme but also correct decision. "The Goliaths at the other quadrants are repositioning!" "What are they doing?" "Wait, they are capturing our expert mechs!" While the Goliaths confronted by the Riot Mark III were having a bad time, the remaining megavoribugs had all shifted their strategy in response. The enemy should be intelligent enough to predict that once Saint Orfan dismantled her current set of opponents, she would move on to another quadrant and do the same thing over again. While her energy consumption was rather high, she should be able to persist long enough to single-handedly defeat a hundred Goliaths. That was more than enough to change the course of the battle in the favor of the defenders. Instead of letting the Riot Mark III defeat all of the Goliaths piecemeal, it was better for the hive to leverage their immediate value more effectively. The solution? Switching from assault to capture! While the Level 4 and 5 Goliaths continued to pressure the frontlines and keep most of the enemy champions occupied, the Level 6 and 7 Goliaths across the remaining quadrants no longer fought to kill. Instead, they ignored their current opponents as best as possible and grouped together before swooping in to capture weaker and more vulnerable expert mechs! Of course, the ace pilots and Ascended Giants that previously fought against these Goliaths grew indignant at the sudden change in strategy. "Get back here!" "Not on my watch!" "I am your opponent!" While the defending champions did their best to block and interfere with whatever the Goliaths attempted to do this time, they were still outnumbered. They could block and eventually defeat Level 7 Goliaths, but all of that took time. During this crucial interval, other high-level Goliaths readily bypassed the occupied ace mechs and Golaiths and warfare and shamelessly swooped down onto the expert mechs that their hive prioritized for whatever reason! The power disparity was too great. So long as the expert pilots had yet reached the higher tiers of their progression, their resistance was not strong enough to prevent the Goliaths from grabbing their machines and taking them away! Even if the expert mechs in question inflicted a large amount of damage to the bodies of their kidnappers, the Goliaths easily resisted the blows or recovered from it afterwards. In order to make sure the Goliaths remained intact long enough for them to complete their mission, much of the remaining swarms of cannon fodder bugs converged upon the high-level Goliaths in order to replenish the latter’s biomass. This luxurious treatment prevented the mutated voribugs from maintaining pressure elsewhere, but by this time, they had largely completed their original missions. The orbital defense network was no longer as pristine and complete as before. Hundreds of orbital platforms had been knocked out or torn apart. Almost a dozen large orbital fortresses had fallen as well. The orbital defenses that remained intact fared little better. Many of them had lost their titan shields and suffered visible surface damage. What was worse was that the mutated voribugs infiltrated their structures. One of their most insidious forms of attack was to simply let their voribugs loose onto a human facility. Just a single bug could devour the surrounding alloys and rapidly reproduce so long as it was not immediately hunted down. The newly born voribug might not be particularly large or powerful, but what was important was that it could replicate the actions of its parent straight away. 2 voribugs turned into 4 voribugs, 4 voribugs turned into 8 voribugs, 8 voribugs turned into 16 voribugs and so on. Given that a single cycle could take place in as little as a couple of minutes, a damaged orbital platform could soon become infested by thousands of metal-eating bugs! During this battle, far more than individual voribugs infested the orbital platforms. As long as the orbital facilities lost their energy shields, it was trivially easy for the voribugs to land on their exterior and begin to worm their way to the interior. If other attackers had managed to breach the surface layers, then that was even better! The voribugs could directly enter the facilities and begin to eat it apart from the inside. This was a lot more effective and also much more troublesome to clear. At least any nearby mechs could come and clear away the voribugs that remained stuck outside. When the bug infection had reached the internal structure of the orbital platforms and fortresses, mechs could no longer play a useful role anymore. Infantry troopers, combat engineers and bots had to take over and manually clear the infected sections. This was a slow and painstaking process. If not for the fact that the Rubarthans had also upgraded the internal defenses of these facilities, the bug infestations would have been a lot harder to control! Even so, the brave soldiers fighting to cull the voribugs gnawing at bulkheads and important components could only suppress their expansion. Keeping the insect numbers down was still doable, but eradicating each and every intruding bug was too much to ask! Unless an ace mech happened to be available to swoop in and make use of its Saint Kingdom to detect and strangle any weak bug that managed to escape persecution, clearing out every bug in the short term was not a realistic demand! As such, even if the orbital facilities still looked intact and functional from the outside, their internal conditions were much worse. For all of their redundancy, the voribugs did not aimlessly devour random metal objects. The Goliath Hive directed each of them to prioritize strong alloys or delicate components. From power transmission systems to the inconspicuous bots that fulfilled many useful functions, the voribugs targeted all of them with suicidal fervor! In short, the orbital defenses could no longer provide as much support on the greater battlefield as before. Combined with the heavy losses suffered by the mechs and the less serious damage suffered by the warships, it remained questionable whether they could withstand another heavy assault. The good news was that the mutated voribugs paid a ruinous price to wear down the defenses to this extent. The swarms of cannon fodder bugs previously seemed endless, but at this time they had almost run out of bodies to throw into the grinder. It was impressive how much the Goliath Hive expended weeks worth of accumulation in a matter of hours. The Rubarthans had been unable to count the exact quantity of voribugs that lost their lives so far, but even the most conservative estimates easily exceeded several hundred million insects! While the amount of bugs that sacrificed their lives was astronomical, they at least managed to make themselves useful in the short time they fought. Even without the assistance of the Goliaths, the small and weak voribug subspecies managed to drive the defenders to the brink. It was therefore peculiar that the enemy did not make the final push that everyone was expecting. The Goliaths were originally supposed to push past all of the resistance and deliver the finishing blows to the damaged and weakened orbital defenses. Their sudden withdrawal gave the orbital defense network a crucial reprieve. Their crews could focus more fully on clearing the bug infestations while constant resupply shipments from the surface replenished the resources of many more combat assets. Exhausted mech units and battered warship squadrons all withdrew from the front in order to take stock of their current conditions and reorganize. While not every voribug had ceased their attacks, their offensive pressure was nowhere near as heavy as before. With only the ranged voribugs maintaining their attacks, the human defenders almost began to take it easy as they no longer had to keep their focus at 100 percent all of the time. However, not many soldiers dared to believe that the Goliath Hive had enough. The kidnapping of expert mechs and expert pilots continued. It was pure bullying for Level 7 Goliaths to ignore the enemy ace mechs and target the low-tier and mid-tier expert mechs instead! For all of their vaunted first-class high technologies, the limited strength of their respective pilots made it difficult if not impossible to resist physical capture! Not even their resonance shields could prevent them from getting captured. They only truly offered protection against direct attacks. The more clever expert pilots attempted to escape capture by ejecting their cockpits at the last moment. Yet that did not avail them much when their vulnerable cockpits got captured by the swarms that attended the Goliaths! Without sufficient protection, it was impossible for the expert pilots as well as expert mechs to escape captivity. The Goliaths did not kidnap the expert mechs without reason. As soon as they latched onto their prey, they flew all the way to the Voribug Organic Battle Moon and plunged directly into its massive fleshy interior! The Incubator devoured both the captured expert mechs as well as their accompanying Goliaths! "Stop them! The Goliaths are feeding the Incubator! Something very dangerous is brewing inside!"