Alexander The Great Mage

I did not hesitate. Not even for a second.

Rona Rhythmos was a Royal Time Dragon! Her powers were beyond the understanding of most mortals.

"ALL UNITS! ATTACK!" I roared. "ALL OUT ATTACK! HEAVY MECHAS, UNLEASH EVERYTHING! COMMANDERS! YOUR STRONGEST MOVES!"

As you have mentioned before, Your Majesty, one of the key aspects of a well-trained army is the ability to instantly respond to a Commander's orders without much fuss.

I am afraid my troops at that point in time were not as well trained as I hoped. Sure, they were all ferocious in battle, especially my Battalion Commanders. But they suffered also from the arrogance of being powerful and wise and experienced.

"WHAT THE F***! You just said strongest barriers! I've already made three barriers!" shouted Little Flame, the cute yet ferocious voice that I mentioned before.

"SHUT YOUR MOUTH!" Yelled Dark Flame. "JUST OBEY, DAMN IT!"

"I need to recharge after casting barrier. I need to maintain power above 90 percent in case of emergencies." Purple Claw said meekly and softly.

"WHAT THE F***! You're the strongest dragon! Why the f*** do you need to maintain 90 percent power?! PLUS This IS the emergency!" Little Flame shouted in anger.

"Di-Didn't you just protest as well?" Purple Claw bit back gently.

"SHUT UP ALL OF YOU!" I roared. "IF YOU DON'T WANT TO SPEND THE NEXT MONTH IN PRISON FOR INSUBORDINATION, YOU BETTER GOD DAMN WELL DO AS I SAY!"

There was silence for a moment. Then.

"I don't know about you guys, like him better when he's angry. It's pretty cool. Hee Hee!" Little Flame giggled uncharacteristically.

"No, I like him better when he's not shouting. He's scary when he's angry!" Purple Claw mumbled loudly.

Thankfully their strongest attacks were already flying by then, or else I might just vomit blood and resign from my post as regimental commander.

As the enemy mechas entered our firing range, all of my troops, including myself, began to glow slightly. At the same time, the enemy seemed to dim slightly.

Rona's spell had finally taken effect.

And what a wonderful spell it was!

The enemy suddenly slowed down drastically as time slowed to a crawl for them. For us, time began to speed up substantially and our movement and attack speeds more than tripled instantly.

With such an imbalanced situation, even the weakest light mecha would be able to inflict a horrendous amount of damage by simply going to melee range and slashing away using their melee weapons!

"Oh my God. This is awesome!" A shocked exclamation sounded from Lumbering Death, the deep masculine voice from before.

"Damn, this is more than awesome!" Little Flame cried out happily. "Let's go and rack up kills and merits!!"

"You have five minutes before my spell wears off. Make good use of it." Rona's exhausted voice rang out in my mind.

"ALRIGHT CHILDREN! WE HAVE FIVE MINUTES!" I roared. "Either we kill them all within that time, or we withdraw at four minutes and thirty seconds! On my signal! GO!!"

We charged towards them and emptied our long range and medium range weapons mags on them as we closed. There was no formation. It was just a reckless charge of ten thousand mechas and ten very bloodthirsty dragons.

Five minutes can be really long or really short, depending on who you ask.

For the AAR, the next five minutes was probably as long as eternity. They had to watch even the weakest mechas out maneuver them and attack them so quickly that their magnificent armor literally melted away under their furious barrage of attacks. For our medium and heavy mechas, it was like they were in a massive target practice.

For us though, the next five minutes passed by extremely quickly.

"This is actually really great." Purple Claw remarked. "I'm actually killing quite a lot of mechas."

"How many have you killed?" Little Flame asked.

"Ummm. Thirty. Thirty one. Thirty two. Thirty… Three." Purple Claw replied.

"WHAT?! DAMN IT! I'M SO SLOW! WHY AM I SO SLOW!" Little Flame shouted.

"You two are so noisy." Lumbering Death grumbled. "Learn from your fellow commanders and keep quiet will you."

"Stop nagging. How many have you killed?"

"Forty two."

"WHAT?! DAMN IT!" Little Flame howled. "Ultimate attack! Mega Fireball Barrage!!"

I sighed. Little Flame was very competitive. Too competitive. She was a lightning fire dragon through and through, and she refused to spend any time mastering other elements other than fire and lightning. Although that gave her incredible firepower, it limited her flexibility in battle.

Lumbering Death, on the other hand, was truly too overpowered. In addition to his impeccable fighting skills, he is a veritable master of ALL the basic elements. His arcane power was hardly the strongest, and he wasn't the largest. But his battle instincts and his speed were absolutely top notch. And his battlefield effectiveness was clearly put on display that day.

Forty two kills in less than three minutes! I barely took down thirty of them.

I am very sure that he would be a Royal Battle Dragon someday. In fact, he might already be one.

Anyway, five minute passed really quickly when you're having fun. I was about to deal a death blow to my fortieth mecha when suddenly, he exploded in a burst of speed and dodged my slash at the last second.

"Holy crap! They're back online!" Little Flame shouted.

I took a few seconds to quickly gauge the situation.

All over the battlefield, the enemy mechas were trying their very best to disengage and retreat.

"PRESS THE ATTACK!" I bellowed.

A thunderous roar rippled out from my men as they redoubled their efforts. Now that the enemy had regained their mobility, killing them became that much harder.

Thankfully we had successfully hammered their willingness to fight into nothing within the past five minutes. After such a brutal hammering, although they still had more than three thousand mechas, they had lost all appetite for battle.

All they wanted was to get the hell out of the accursed battlefield and live to fight another day! Across the entire battlefield, the Haran mechas were in full retreat!

Too bad my men and I were not having any of that. We gave all we had to cut them down as they ran. And to make things worse, one of the reserve regiments had managed to finish their job extremely quickly and were circling around us to hit them from their rear.

Aragosh Dragonos had made his instructions extremely clear.

No survivors.

"TOTAL VICTORY!" Lumbering Death roared out in deep exhilaration as he smashed his lightning infused claw into an enemy mecha and destroyed it completely.

"TOTAL VICTORY!"

"TOTAL VICTORY!"

My men quickly picked up the rallying cry as mecha after mecha fell to our attacks.

It was glorious.

Glorious.

I am sure you understand, Your Majesty.

Putting a hated enemy to rout, and cutting them down one by one as they try to run away from us… AND knowing that our brothers and sisters were already almost in position to hit them from the direction they were running to.

It was an incredible feeling. Total victory was not yet ours, but we could see it so clearly, and we know that we will definitely get it. Each moment that passed which brought us closer to that moment of total victory raised our anticipation higher and higher and higher until we were practically celebrating as we fought and killed the enemy.

Technically, we did not manage to score Total Victory that day. There were too many of them, and too few of us. There were bound to be survivors who managed to somehow escape.

But their numbers were so small and their influence in the seventh solar system were so negligible that the difference was moot. For all practical purposes, that battle was a complete success for us.

We managed to win it, and win it in such a way that the secret of our strength was preserved. We would be able to enter the next battle as a vastly underestimated underdog, and we would still be able to pull the rug from under our enemies.

Total Victory!

*-*-*-*-*-*-*

"From what I see, it feels like mechas are an extremely important unit in battles. It's like Cavalry back on Earth. Why don't the Symphonians use more of it in their Starships? I know that they have mechas, but most of their firepower seemed to be contained in their Starships, motherships, battlecruisers, destroyers and frigates.

Fighters and drones seem to feature more than mechas in Symphonia." Alexander asked.

"The Symphonian Armed Forces is a unique creature, Your Majesty. They have their Star Annihilator Cannons which serve as their primary method of dealing damage and deterrence. Their frigates are also extremely effective because of their combined shields. All in all, the Symphonian Armed Forces is an extremely flexible beast. They have options, and do not need to stake all of their firepower in mechas.. That makes them extremely dangerous."