The Mech Touch (Web Novel)

5865 Tricky Lightning Beasts

War had come to the Dominion of Man.

The dreadnought's hull was so immense that her entire surface could function as a battlefield unto itself.

At this moment, only a relatively small portion of the surface had come under siege.

Compared to the first wave of enemies, the second wave was a lot trickier.

Twice as many lightning soldiers appeared this time, though it was doubtful that they were actually sapient and civilized.

There was nothing about the large worms and the flying beetles that suggested that they were intelligent beings.

The bloodlust and single-minded determination radiating from the enemies suggested that they were bioengineered beasts that were purely bred for war.

Intelligent or not, Ves did not think that the lightning beasts were any weaker than the army of bipeds that fought before!

The worms demonstrated absurd regeneration capabilities. Even when they got hit by five explosive shells at once, as long as more than a third of their bodies remained intact, they recovered in full in just half a minute!

The flying insects did not exhibit nearly as much regeneration ability, but they were fast, especially when they flapped their wings.

Though the horned insects did not dare to fly too high for fear of exposing themselves to an excessive amount of point defense turrets, they were still able to accelerate their flight while remaining low to the hull surface.

The insects closed in on the Dread Marines a lot faster as a result. The giant creatures seemed to possess greater mass than a Medium Dread Marine, so they built up plenty of momentum behind their charges.

"Brace yourselves!"

"Front row, activate your azure energy shields!"

The Dread Marines at the front had strengthened their defenses in anticipation of meeting the incoming charge. Not only had they installed additional physical barriers, but they also activated their azure energy shields just to absorb the initial impact.

Just as the insects drove their horns into the targets directly in front of their path, they suddenly began to engage in a complicated envelopment maneuver!

The insects demonstrated greater mobility than expected as they redirected their momentum with great effort.

Many of the giant horned beetles split off into pincers that attempted to flank the Dread Marines.

Other lightning insects momentarily flew upwards before diving at the rear lines of Dread marines in short but devastating charges!

"All units, activate azure energy shields!"

Many elements of the 34th and 88th regiments lost their azure energy shields as one or multiple horned beetles attempted to impale their Dread Armors!

If not for the fact that the Dread Armors were intelligent enough to automatically switch on the azure energy shields back in a hurry, the Dread Marines would have suffered greater casualties at this time!

Most of the Medium Dread Marines and all of the Heavy Dread Marines managed to fend off this charge attack without suffering significant material damage.

However, the Light Dread Marines that hadn't been able to evade the charge attacks suffered considerably greater harm!

Horns made out of condensed lightning broke apart the relatively weak azure energy shields and thrust right through the layers of transphasic hyper armor plating.

Refined by fire energy or not, the Light Dread Armor ultimately proved to be inadequate to block the charge attacks entirely.

Some of the humans wearing these relatively thin armors had died outright. Some perished straight away because their heads got crushed. Others expired because their bodies couldn't handle the discharge of destruction energy.

Fortunately, many others were able to survive even when they had been severely injured.

"Engage the emergency evacuation protocol!"

Before the insects could follow up on their charge attacks by finishing off the injured and vulnerable soldiers, the Rubicon Spatial Transfer System teleported the latter away without warning.

"Crush the lightning insects!"

Even though the Dread Marines did not expect the horned beetles to bypass their frontline in such an intelligent and coordinated fashion, they still adapted quickly to the changing situation.

Many Dread Marines aimed their weapon modules at the closests targets and opened fire so long as they were not at risk of striking their fellow comrades.

The horned beetles were not too resilient, and they were trivially easy to strike at this time. The only reason why the lightning beasts did not get wiped out a lot faster was due to the fear of committing friendly fire.

"For the Dominion of Man!"

The Dread Marines resorted to their melee armament to finish off the beetles while they remained fairly close.

Many Dread Marines pulled out swords or projected plasma blades from their thick wrists.

Other Dread Marines who wielded enormous rifles activated plasma bayonets that could cut through the lightning insects just as well.

Excellent technique combined with powerful armaments ensured that the Dread Marines quickly defeated a lot of enemy beasts.

Explosions of tribulation energy occurred in rapid succession, causing all of the Dread Marines to receive varying degrees of lightning baptism.

Though the effect of a single kill was not much, when thousands of insects died in a relatively concentrated section of the hull, the lightning baptism received by all of the Dread Marines had reached a considerable scale!

Hundreds of Dread Armors that absorbed a lot more destruction and creation energy than others even began to glow for no apparent reason!

While the beetles were taken care of, the worms had managed to advance just enough to attack the first Dread Marines in the way.

The lightning worms did not have an easy time. Many of them became impeded by the bombardment unleashed by the 88th Regiment. Twenty percent of the worms even got blasted outright, though most of their destruction and creation energy only ended up strengthening the closest hull sections.

In order to benefit the Dread Marines the most, the 88th Bombardment Regiment refrained from concentrating their fire too much. So long as many of the worms slowed down, they should have become more manageable.

It was not until the worms went on the attack that taught the Dread Marines that it might not be the best idea to leave so many of them alive!

The organic damage sponges continued to suffer huge amounts of damage that broke apart their bodies, but still they advanced until they widened their eerie mouths and dove in to swallow the Dread Marines whole!

"Energy shields!"

"It's not working!"

Surprisingly enough, the worms were able to stretch their mouths so wide that they were able to swallow up the Medium Dread Marines whole!

Hundreds of troopers ended up in the 'stomachs' of the worms within the blink of an eye regardless of whether they kept their azure energy shields active!

Once they got swallowed, they seemed to enter into an entirely different environment where their energy shields wore down quickly and many of their attacks got absorbed by unusually resilient internal walls!

"The Rubicon has lost its lock on the swallowed Dread Marines. It can't teleport them out! We need to break apart the worms before they digest their prey!"

The worms were making this difficult by retreating right away despite their significantly impaired mobility!

Other worms advanced and utilized their bodies as organic shields to prevent the other Dread Marines from coming to the rescue.

Dread Marines already started to perish when the worms wore down their azure energy shields and dissolved their formidable Dread Armors from all sides!

Once the armors got breached, it usually did not take long for the digestive fluids to melt through the inner suits and turn the flesh and bones of the soldiers into goop!

The Dominion of Man did not allow the worms to have their way.

Tertiary gun batteries shredded the worms from multiple directions.

Missiles launched by more distant launchers blew apart multiple worms at a time, freeing the captives while also inflicting further damage to the half-digested Dread Armors.

Fortunately, removing the debilitated Dread Marines from the stomachs of the lightning worms proved to be enough for the Rubicon to do its job and teleport the damaged units away.

The gigantic alien face looking down at the 'battlefield' from above continued to observe the Dread Marines fending off the lightning beasts while exhibiting more and more signs of disapproval.

Ves had no time to pay attention to the mood swings of the Subjugation King. He had already begun to play a monotonous melody that could somehow be heard by the Dread Marines despite the fact that sound did not transmit across the vacuum of space.

It took a while, but once the invisible currents grew strong enough, water spontaneously began to emerge and push against the advancing lightning worms!

The tribulation manifestations crackled a bit, but still maintained cohesion as if they were actual physical organisms.

The small flood conjured by Ves was not as simple as it looked. His Oceancaller drew from all of the compatible E energy in the vicinity and transformed it all into an empowered tide of water that constantly slowed down the advance of the worms.

Normally, the worms should have been strong and implacable enough to move against most water currents without getting impeded too much, but the power channeled by the Oceancaller empowered the body of water to an unnatural degree.

Thousands of worms slowed down even further. They fought to push forward, only to find their progress slowed down even further.

Ves was happy with his initial contribution in battle. It was not the sort of flashy solo action that would bring him personal glory, but he could clearly observe that the Dread Marines were taking advantage of the situation to reorganize their lines and eliminate the nearby worms that did not get pushed by his water currents.

Through certain rules that Ves was not quite familiar with, he began to receive small infusions of destruction and creation energy.

He figured out that much of his rewards became discounted due to distance and limited individual contribution.

However, because he was debilitating so many of the worms, the total quantity of tribulation energies actually became quite considerable!

He was not the only one that experienced this effect. Colonel Desiree Franklin and other officers experienced similar boosts despite not personally firing any weapons at the lightning beasts.

It was an interesting mechanic. It beat getting directly struck by lightning bolts as far as Ves was concerned.

The fact that such mechanics existed in the first place showed that the heavenly authorities of Messier 87 and other galaxies had been refining them for a huge amount of time.

Eventually, all of the lightning worms and lightning beetles got crushed. As the two regiments reaped most of the rewards for eliminating them, another wave of pride and jubilation erupted from the entire crew of the Dominion of Man.

"This is goodbye, professor."

"Huh?"

"The 34th and 88th are no longer in optimal fighting condition." Colonel Franklin stated. "We will soon be swapped out by fresh regiments so that we can repair and resupply. We need to give as many of our Dread Marines an opportunity to feed off their kills."

"I see."

The swap happened in an instant. The Rubicon was so powerful that it could instantly switch an outgoing troop with an incoming troop.

Only two fresh Dread Marine Regiments appeared at this time, but the Rubicon was ready to teleport additional troops depending on the enemy troop composition of the third wave.

This time, a single larger and stronger lightning bolt threaded through the gap in azure energy shield coverage and struck a section of the hull that was hundreds of meters away!

Ves and many of the Dread Marines already expected to face more formidable opposition, but they became a lot more concerned when mech-sized lightning soldiers emerged around the impact site!

The biped aliens easily towered over Heavy Dread Marines and were equipped with armor that wrapped around their slightly inhuman forms. Their tails ended in spiked balls that looked like they could inflict a lot of trauma if they struck anything.

"We are going to need a lot more Dread Marines this time."