Ever since the scout mechs brought back footage of one or more large dwarf tribes marching together with the Caged Tongs, the analysts among the Vandals tried to figure out the relation between the two disparate forces. Foreigners from the stars had nothing in common with the nomadic wildling tribes! For what reason would they work together all of a sudden? Most of the Vandals immediately believed the dastardly pirates coerced the helpless, innocent dwarves into fighting on their behalf. A large tribe may be a force to be reckoned with against other native threats, but any half-decent mech force could run rings around them, especially from a distance. It would be too easy for a mech force to subdue a dwarf tribe no matter how many wild gods they bonded with. Even the Flagrant Swordmaidens came up with a couple of contingency plans of this nature if they hadn’t already gained the cooperation of Qilanxo. What puzzled the Vandals the most was that the dwarves and their bonded wild gods all seemed to march into battle with fervor that did not fit with a narrative that revolved around exploitation. "Are those dwarves brainwashed or something? They don’t look like prisoners or slaves! It’s as if they are completely dedicated to the cause!" The best guess the analysts came up with was that the Caged Tongs somehow hoodwinked the dwarf tribes and their bonded wild gods into worshipping them as a greater authority. Everything about the foreigners from the stars impressed the natives, from their powerful metallic mechs to their amazing medical technology that could cure a lot of old ailments. "The natives are like frogs in a well. When someone outside the well drops inside, how can the frogs not worship the outsider as a higher being?" Whatever the case, the frogs no longer ruled the inside of the well but yielded power to the seemingly omnipotent outsiders! While the energy levels of the wild gods as the Akkara mechs kept wearing down their energy fields with accurate laser fire, the exobeasts just didn’t go down fast enough! "Ma’am, the Swordmaidens aren’t responding to our hails. What is your command?" Captain Byrd fell into a difficult dilemma. They drafted the original plan in order to handle the most unstable factor first. Once the wild gods succumbed to massed lasers, the rest of the enemy force fell within their calculations. Yet the Swordmaidens didn’t see it that way. They never backed down against challenges and never showed fear against new and unknown threats! It wasn’t as if they never gave into their fear, but they didn’t see the need in holding back at this time! "Send out our melee mech companies after the charging Swordmaiden mechs." Captain Byrd finally decided. "Let the Swordmaidens absorb the initial brunt of the clash and back them up after they stall. Make sure to keep our own mechs on the second line. Don’t let them get caught up in whatever wide-area powers the wild gods have in store." The Vandal melee mechs moved out rather helplessly as they trailed after the charging Swordmaidens. The battle entered a heated phase as the ranged mechs from both sides scored much more hits as they entered medium range. Vandal and Swordmaiden mechs started suffering serious damage from the laser impacts hitting their frames, but their armor managed to hold out long enough for them to pull back before the damage proved fatal. While Captain Byrd felt confident enough about their chances for victory, she wanted to minimize the damage and lose as few mechs as possible. Every mech that sustained substantial damage or had their armor broken received orders to pull back before they got trashed. In the perspective of the mech technicians, it was much easier to replace a lot of broken armor plating than to repair a single crippled mech with serious internal damage! Of course, if the battle went sideways for some reason, Captain Byrd wouldn’t hesitate to throw the damaged mechs back into battle. The Swordmaiden mech pilots roared as they endured the lasers hitting their mechs and rapidly closed the distance. The diminishing amount of pirate mechs armed with lasers already had their hands full surviving against the coordinated laser volleys of the Flagrant Swordmaidens, so they couldn’t divert much of their firepower against the closing the swordsman mechs. "The mist around the wild gods is dispersing!" The wild gods came back into view. Most of their bodies started to look ugly and scorched as some of the potent damage from the laser beams bled through their energy fields. Their energy reserves already dipped to less than forty percent! However, that was still too much in the eyes of the Vandals. Some of the wild gods started glowing as they channeled their unique abilities against the closing Swordmaiden mechs. "Five wild gods are channeling their powers!" "Divert all of our Akkara mechs on two of them! Prioritize draining their energy reserves! Allocate a ranged mech company to assist their efforts!" The Akkara mechs stopped targeting the wild gods randomly and evenly and instantly brought their cannons to bear upon two of the glowing wild gods at the front. Now that the range shortened considerably, the targeting systems of the Akkara mechs delivered pinpoint accuracy for each hit. Two wild gods each suffered the combined attention of five Akkara mechs each. When the laser beams spread out among their ranks, the wild gods didn’t show any fear. Yet now that the heavy cannoneers started focusing their firepower, the two targeted wild gods abruptly flustered. Shortly after that, over thirty laser rifleman mechs hit the wild gods with a flurry of weak but rapid-fire laser volleys. The might of each individual laser beam fired from the rifles might not be very powerful, but the horrendous volume of repeated laser beams practically blinded the targeted wild gods into a stupor! Their glow diminished as the bewildered wild gods aborted any attempts at offense in order to channel their full power towards bolstering their rapidly diminishing energy fields. However, even as the Vandal ranged mechs managed to stall the devastating attacks of two of the exobeasts, the other three wild gods faced no hindrances at all. After gathering their strength for twenty seconds, they each unleashed the full might of their abilities! "Pull back!" Surprisingly, the Swordmaiden mechs at the very front moved seconds earlier than the Vandal mechs trailing after them from a distance. It was as if the Swordmaiden mech pilots already planned their abrupt reversal beforehand! Each of the three wild gods called down different powers onto the battlefield. One of them summoned a corrosive wind that spread out over hundreds of meters. The strange properties of this acid wind rapidly ate through armor plating of the Swordmaiden mechs that fell into range! Most of them managed to escape the affected area looking like sorry, rusted junkyard machines. A handful suffered worse than others. When their gravitic backpacks or their leg joints failed, the mechs lost all of their mobility. The Swordmaiden mech pilots helplessly ejected their cockpits before the corrosive winds ate through the ejection mechanisms. The heavy gravity did its best to pull down the flying cockpits, but their integrated antigrav modules lasted long enough for them to fly back to the rear. The ejected pirate cockpits on the other hand displayed more mixed results. Half of the time, their antigrav modules failed to fire up, causing the cockpits to slam against the ground after traveling only a couple of hundred meters. Evidently, their mech technicians hadn’t checked the cockpits in a very long time. That said, a significant amount of pirate mech pilots became trapped in their own mechs as their mechs keeled over before they could release their gravitic backpacks and allow their cockpits room to eject. Because the gravitic backpacks shifted the center of gravity of the mechs slightly to the rear, many mechs that stopped functioning had a tendency to fall onto their backs, which was the worst outcome as far as mech pilots and mech designers were concerned! Right after the first wild god summoned a corrosive wind, a second wild god activated his powers in a different area. Tens of Swordmaiden mechs fell into an area that suddenly turned muddy. The soil didn’t grow wet and muddy. Instead, it became as pliable as soft clay, causing most of the mechs in the area to sink down into the ground. This was a fatal trap to mechs, and it had caught over twenty Swordmaiden mechs over a wide area! Even without orders from Captain Byrd, the Akkara mechs abruptly stopped firing their laser cannons at the two stalled wild gods and instead blasted the exobeast responsible for turning the terrain into a soft pit. The blistering lasers immediately halted the wild god’s efforts of attempting to sink the affected mechs into the ground! The soil abruptly hardened, trapping the Swordmaiden mechs and turning them into sitting ducks against errant laser fire from some of the pirate mechs. Most hadn’t sunk deep enough to trap them for long. They forcibly pulled out their legs or hacked the ground with their extremely sharp greatswords until they loosened it up enough to break out. Still, a handful of Swordmaiden mechs sunk deeper than others, to the point where they couldn’t free themselves on their own power. As more and more pirate mechs fired their lasers at the immobile mechs, the Swordmaiden mech pilots decisively bailed out and ejected from their cockpits. "These impatient hags!" "Are their brains filled with muscles or something?" Many Vandals groaned as the Swordmaidens incurred unnecessary losses from these incidents. Why couldn’t they hold themselves back and wait for their ranged mechs to take out these wild gods and their bewildering powers from a distance? "Focus on suppressing the wild gods! Instruct the Akkara mechs to focus their firepower on any wild god that begins to glow!" At this time, the first wave of Swordmaiden mechs finally slammed against the pirate mechs. While many of their mechs suffered setbacks or delays due to the appearance of the corrosive winds and the quicksand pit, their line stretched out over kilometers, allowing most of them to close the distance unscathed. The Swordmaiden mechs instantly tore the mechs of the Caged and the Red Tongs to pieces during the initial clash! The difference in strength was too wide! As a whole, The Devil Razors outmatched the budget and bargain bin mechs of their opposition by a wide margin, both in cost and in maintenance levels. The latter may sound a bit boring but it drastically affected the reaction speed and the amount of damage the enemy mechs could endure before they got wrecked. What really sealed the deal was the disparity in training, discipline and skill! The mech pilots of the Caged fared a lot better than the unruly Red Tongs, who mostly earned their fame from the atrocities they committed instead of displaying valor on the battlefield! The Vandal mechs in the second line faltered in their charge when they saw that the Swordmaidens didn’t need any help at the moment. The vicious Swordmaidens currently fought like wolves among sheep, felling pirate mech after pirate mech with alarming speed! "Those ladies are tearing the pirates apart!" The only meaningful opposition came from the enemy leader mechs. Their pristine states along with their skilled veteran mech pilots propped up the faltering lines of the Caged Tongs. They even fought evenly against their Swordmaiden counterparts! Yet time wasn’t on their side. The Caged Tongs continued to lose more mechs, causing their local numbers advantage to diminish by the second. Already, the Swordmaidens started to gang up on the superior pirate mechs. The cunning Swordmaidens adopted a devious tactic where one Swordmaiden mech occupied the enemy machine in front while two other Swordmaiden mechs targeted its gravitic backpack! A single mech couldn’t cover against three foes at once! Once the Swordmaidens managed to destroy the lightly-armored gravitic backpacks, the elite pirate leaders for all of their battle prowess became imprisoned in their own mechs as they slowed down to a crawl! The Devil Razor or Silver Valencias occupying the mech at the front didn’t need to display any fancy anymore. They simply stabbed their swords straight through the chest plating and through the cockpit of the trapped pirate mechs! 𝐟𝕣𝗲𝕖𝕨𝗲𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝗲𝚕.𝗰𝚘𝐦 While the brawl at the frontlines slanted heavily towards the Swordmaidens, the third wild god that quietly charged up her strength despite the lasers hitting her energy field finally activated her power! She abruptly disappeared from view. "One of the wild gods has disappeared!" "Where has the beast gone?!" An alert suddenly sounded inside the mobile headquarters. "The wild god teleported from her position! She’s right in the middle of our supply train!" Everyone abruptly became alarmed. The heavy transport that served as their mobile headquarters was right in the middle of the supply train as well! The teleporting wild god somehow circumvented hundreds of mechs including the Akkara heavy cannoneers and landed straight in the middle of the most vulnerable area of the Flagrant Swordmaidens!