The Mech Touch (Web Novel)

The collision of mechs in the center of the battlefield was slower but much more impactful!

Sturdy mechs collided against each other with their shields up front! Other melee mechs either swooped past each other while trying to rake their opponents or stopped in the middle in order to start killing as many mechs as possible.

After a long time of waiting and advancing, the mainstay mechs of the two forces had finally clashed!

The Molten Hammers were especially eager. The oldest and most storied mech division in the Ferril punitive fleet had waited for a long time in order to show their prowess once again. Now that they were allowed to fight against human mechs for the first time in decades, the mech pilots did not want to shame their predecessors who managed to defeat the previous rulers of this star sector!

"Slaughter the tall folk!"

"Our hammers will smash them to pieces!"

"My shield shall never break!"

The first units to oppose the Molten Hammers were the Avatars of Myth and the Cross Clan!

The latter tended to field sturdier and more solid mechs than the Glory Seekers. The Crossers also favored mechs with more resilience, endurance and staying power, which made them suitable to fight in standing battles.

Ves had already caught plenty of glimpses of the mechs fielded by the Cross Clan. Many of them were designed by Professor Benedict though the majority were still rather generic.

There was nothing wrong with their performance, though. They were solid and performed well in all of the basic parameters that mattered.

As for the Avatars of Myth, many of their mechs consisted of Bright Warriors.

The rifleman mech configurations were still further in the back and were already locked in an exchange of fire with the Slug Rangers.

The lancer mech configurations had not yet built up a charge. It was too risky for them to dive into the formidable dwarven mech formations.

The swordsman mech configurations were already hard at work trying to deal damage without exposing themselves too much to the deadly dwarven mechs.

The space knight configurations were the main focal point at the moment. They were the only mechs of the Larkinson Clan that could stand up to the heavy assault that the Molten Hammers excelled at! The pressure they had to endure was incredible and it only grew worse as the unique mech models fielded by the dwarves began to show their worth.

The most iconic dwarven mech model was the space knights fielded by its elite mech regiment. The overstrength Vulcan's Chosen fielded 3000 Molten Furies, which was the signature shield-bearing mechs of the Molten Hammers!

The low stature of the Molten Furies quickly gave the Avatars of Myth and the Cross Clan a lot of headaches. None of them had much experience with fighting mechs that were so short but so resilient at the same time.

The Vulcanite mech pilots were well aware of the pros and cons of piloting dwarven mechs. They made good use of their lack of height to make it more difficult to land effective attacks on them. At the same time, they also concentrated their attacks on the mid-sections of their opponents. This often resulted in awkward exchanges where the taller humanoid mechs had to employ neglected moves in order to defend against such low blows.

Of course, the Avatar and Crosser mechs tried to lower themselves in order to fight against the dwarven mechs on an equal basis, but this only prompted the Molten Hammer mechs to do the same.

The clash in the center was by no means a static crush between two massive forces. The huge distances in space along with a need to maintain distance from too many mechs lest they collide against each other meant that the actual battle line stretched out across many kilometers.

Mechs were quite big, after all! With the high degree of effectiveness of ranged mechs in space warfare, melee mechs tended to avoid clumping up too much in order to prevent themselves from becoming easy targets.

"Stand your ground! Our clan is depending on us. Do not let a single dwarven mech pass!" Commander Melkor exhorted his men as his mech constantly fired positron beams at suitable targets.

In front of him, the melee mechs of his Avatars were struggling to contain the dwarven mechs.

The Bright Warriors they piloted all exuded identical glows that provided the Avatar mech pilots with both comfort and strength. Yet that was not enough to resist the pushing power of the Molten Hammers.

Commander Melkor quickly grew grave as he witnessed the performance of the signature mechs of their opposition.

The Molten Furies that were the main dwarven mechs responsible for absorbing the blows of their opposition were hardy and difficult to deal with. In a one-on-one fight, it took too much effort for an offensive melee mech to break through their defenses.

So far, the only way the Avatars managed to overpower these hardy machines was to gang up on them and attack them from multiple angles. The Molten Furies and their thick shields were too difficult to overcome from the front!

"Argghh!"

"Careful!"

"Don't stay too close!"

As the Avatars and Crossers began to destroy the Molten Furies, they suddenly learned why they were called this way. Anytime a Molten Fury got wrecked or ejected its cockpit, the machine in question blew up with so much force that any mechs in front of it got blasted with such violence that they inevitably incurred damage.

This presented a major problem to the mechs up front. Aside from the space knights who were still able to bear the explosions, every other melee mech had to make way and make sure they did not face any of the Molten Furies head-on. This constrained their choices and quickly caused their performance to drop.

"Hah! They're too afraid of our molten surprise!"

""Push them back, laddies!"

Commander Melkor darkened. Despite the stable performance of the Avatars of Myth, these final surprises severely caused his mech pilots to become unbalanced.

"It's just like fighting against the Holvein Grenadiers during the Battle of Reckoning." He muttered.

Fortunately, their prior experience in fighting against explosives allowed the Avatar officers to form a suitable response. The space knights largely tried to keep the Molten Furies in place while the other melee mechs sought to harass or destroy the dwarven mechs from above and below.

"The Molten Furies can't shield as well from multiple angles at a time!" Gloriana concluded after she analyzed their design. "Don't attack their sides. They can easily pivot their shields to deflect attacks from their left or right. You need to attack them from a vertical angle. Attacking from below will definitely make them flustered!"

After just a few rounds of fighting, the Larkinsons confirmed Gloriana's analysis. It appeared that typical dwarven mechs were much less capable of defending themselves against attacks from the top or bottom of orientations.

Their shields were thick and they were able to defend well in horizontal directions. However, if an attack came from above, they had to angle their shields to cover their exposed top profile, which inevitably made it easier for enemy mechs to bypass the dwarven mech's defenses.

The Molten Furies were especially bad at defending against attacks from below. Their arms were short, so the only way to deal with this situation was to rotate their frames so they faced downwards.

Of course, the problem with that was that they exposed their upper sections to the enemy mechs that were previously to the front.

Humanoid mechs had difficulties defending from below as well, so this was not a unique weakness to dwarven-shaped machines. It was just that the Molten Furies were so sturdy that the expeditionary forces were desperate to grasp any possible advantage.

Since attacking their rears was too difficult in this large-scale engagement, then attacking from below was a good alternative!

Due to this, the battle became increasingly more three-dimensional as the mechs moved along the z-axis. The mechs were drifting further apart but not so much that they exposed too many loopholes to their opponents.

Commander Melkor tried his best to maintain situational awareness. He was constantly trying to keep his units together and occasionally issued orders to direct more mechs in areas where the dwarven mechs slowly gained an advantage.

Despite the various responses made by the expeditionary forces, the Molten Hammers were steadily pushing forward. Not only was it difficult to damage the dwarven mechs in set battles, the dwarven mech division also outnumbered its foes!

With several thousands more mechs than the Larkinson Clan and the Cross Clan could muster at the center, it became too difficult to rely on positioning and tactics to hold the line.

The defense effort was faltering!

This wasn't entirely the fault of the Molten Furies. These dwarven space knights were good at withstanding attacks but weren't nearly as good as dishing them out. They were all armed with one-handed axes that did not possess a lot of reach.

They had one advantage, though.

Axes were great at damaging shields!

The Molten Furies did not even bother to bypass the shields of the defensive Bright Warriors and other space knights. They just hacked at the shields right in front of them with such enthusiasm that their victims were definitely feeling a lot of pressure!

"Damnit, we can't hold!"

"Our swords can't overcome their defenses fast enough!"

"We need help or else we can't hold the line!"

Though the offensive mechs of the Larkinsons and Crossers tried their best to work around the strengths of the tricky dwarven space knights, the Molten Furies responded by tightening their formation so that they formed overlapping shield walls that looked like giant half spheres!

No matter whether the Larkinson or Crosser mechs tried to attack from the front, left, right, above or below, there were always thick and sturdy in their way. The amount of attacks that were actually able to land on the frames of the Molten Furies were distressingly few, and even if an attack went through the thick base armor of the dwarven space knights always limited the damage to just shallow marks.

"This is a real defensive mech regiment!" Commander Melkor gasped.

The Molten Furies belonged to the Vulcan's Chosen, which was the premier mech regiment of the 7th Mech Division of the Ferril Provincial Army. They were all extremely well trained and proud of their heritage and illustrious record.

Venerable Orthox De Massie, the expert pilot of the infamous Gatecrasher, had risen up from the Vulcan's Chosen!

"Hold fast, Avatars! No defense is impregnable! Help is on the way!"

Although the dwarven formation left an obvious weak point at the rear, none of his Avatar mechs took advantage of this opening.

This was because they had to fight through the offensive mechs of the Molten Hammers first!

Though the offensive melee mechs of the Molten Hammers didn't seem to be in a hurry to go on the attack, a number of them had already collided with the human mechs and showed off a frightening degree of threat despite their shorter stature.

None of the dwarven mechs were easy to deal with! The Molten Hammers were so good at frontal warfare that fighting a battle on their terms was no less than suicide!

"We need a way to break their cohesion." Commander Melkor concluded.

His heart ached whenever he saw another Avatar mech going down after getting overwhelmed by axes and other heavy weapons. The Molten Hammers were not only fighting in their element, but also had the advantage of numbers at their side!

Though the latter wasn't so obvious at the moment, when Melkor looked at the deep ranks of dwarven mechs just waiting to have their turn at hacking the human mechs, he couldn't help but feel that his Avatars were inadequate.

They performed well against smaller and less disciplined units, but now that they were fighting against a real heavy assault mech regiments, the difference between a private mech legion and a professional military mech division had become very obvious!