Chapter 163: “What on earth is that?!”

“Ergh…” The mech pilot groaned after his body had been sent flying; well, more accurately, the mech he was in was sent flying. Getting blasted sent him miles away, and bits of metal had been peeled off his mech’s armour. It was still in working condition, but the damage would affect his combat capability.

“What a mission…” He sighed, but this was what he signed up for. Going into the mission, everyone was briefed that this was going to be extremely dangerous. Shown examples of Dominous Hood's past attacks, they would tell the minimum amount of resistance to be expected. Of course, different groups ran different simulations with greatly varying results. He even had a laugh with some people when they came together for group bonding about it.

Still, despite the differences and even if the simulations said their defences were going to be crap–whoever ran those runs needed to be fired–they collectively knew it was a hard one. There was a feeling in the air that this very much could be their last mission.

Mech pilots tended to be more in line with standard military personnel than normal hunters and mercenaries. They drove mechs, and they tended to be more expensive, so a certain amount of discipline was usually expected.

[“Keoa, are you okay?”] Keoa heard a voice through his radio, and he sighed before answering.

“Hey, Roger, yeah, I’m fine for the moment.” His large mech stood up as he looked back over to the battlefield.

The distance he was sent flying was ridiculous.

I’m going to kill someone if I survive this. Feelings were complicated; this was way tougher than anything they anticipated, but he was still glad he was here fighting. His heart knew this was the right thing despite his body's great disagreement.

Keoa gave a quick glance at his mech’s stability, armour, and power. The mech was how he fought; sure, he had a rifle, armour, and a mage class, all of which he knew how to use, but he was specialised for this; using anything else was suicidal at this point.

The mana engines pumped with energy, he flew back into combat.

Power was charging in his large rifle, and his external shields were regenerated.

“...What is that?” Keoa had to double-check her long-range sensors and was noticing something moving fast and dealing with multiple enemy mechs.

Once he got closer, the visual scanners gave him the situation.

He saw what appeared to be… a spiky human. They were covered in a red glowing shell of light around their armour with two purple horns sticking out of their head.

“What on earth is that…” But he wasn’t on Earth anymore.

Humans fighting mechs wasn't an unusual thing; plenty of people had skills that were suited for bigger targets, and there were mages with mana and skill that could create literal elemental storms that could tear apart anything in sight. However, a person running around like a boulder smashing through expensive, tough, heavy machinery with what appeared to be just their wasn’t something he had ever seen or expected.

They were genuinely like a human missile jumping off the ground with immense force that caused it to crack and break through the metal body of the enemy mech.

He watched on in their near awe as the person crashed onto a mech and tore the metal sheets of the mech they landed on and destroyed the insides. With that pilot dead, they jumped towards another mech and continued their brutal assault on all machine life in their sights.

“Roger… What am I seeing?”

[“I am unsure.”]

The area they were currently fighting was defending the second access point into Dominous Hood’s underground Asta base. All the turrets and other defences had been destroyed, so the worry that they were going to be shot in the back was less, but still quite a worry since the swarm of large and small bots was coming from all directions. Keoa had been one of the few who had broken formation to strike for other angles, as the bots had clearly been prioritising reclaiming the entranceway, which made it a bit easier to shoot them specifically from behind. However, his action eventually led to his mech's earlier unwanted flight attempt.

Roger hadn’t broken formation and was holding the line along with the twenty other mechs and a number of other soldiers, so he had a better angle of the carnage that was unfolding.

[“They showed up and started supporting our defence effort. No communication has happened, so perhaps theirs has been destroyed.”]

“How much mana must be going through that suit to create that level of physical strength?”

[“Perhaps it is the rare purely physical fighter?”]

“No one is that physically strong.”

[“Have you seen a high-level non-mage physical brawler?”]

“No, because they don’t exist, and they are also clearly using magic.”

[“Just trying to make the point that perhaps a physical fighter is stronger than we thought.”] The most update n0vels are published on ⓝovelFire.net

“Yeah, sure.” Keoa was close enough and began shooting, prioritising the mechs that were likely piloted by humans.

Boom!

Crash!

The person who, at this point, they were assuming might just be a runaway monster was tearing through mechs like butter. Honestly, doing a better job than either of them had been.

“Let’s just provide support and continue what we were doing…”

[I never stopped.]

Their personal conversation was heard across the open comms, which made a lot more people just more confused.

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Hehe, this is kind of fun. My physical strength was truly absurd; it was the one aspect I hadn’t really focused much on since, well, compared to everything else, it was just physical strength. Now I did enjoy my time with Espr’s power that granted me a powerful body, but when I could create my very own stars, the favourite was clear.

But at this point, when I was trying to reload my energy reservoirs, my physical strength was the perfect thing to rely heavily on. Now I wasn’t exactly sure why I was strong. That might be a little weird-sounding, but Espr didn’t give me an explanation for it. I know some of my abilities are an extreme amplification of what I already possessed; others were base abilities of Spiritual Beings; and there were a few that were based on what I consumed for my evolution–a part of Espr’s power and the Nelatta world.

The strength could easily be because of the natural ability of a Spiritual Being, well, a non-dungeon planet Spiritual Being or an effect of consuming Espr’s power.

(“ Your big climactic revenge, and you are running around like a child on the playground ”)

I am allowed to have fun. And. Do not jinx things. I laughed, then warned. I may be fine, but that doesn’t mean everyone else will be.

I didn’t want Lila to die, nor did I want Nina to lose anyone who worked for her. I knew she cared for them, and she had done a lot for my family.

I had gone ahead with my plan on supporting the ground forces by taking a more hands-on approach.

Come, you stupid bot!

My hand melted through the bot's heavy armour; the mana shield simply shattered with force as I ripped and tore my way through the large machines. I did have a Starlight shell around my body, but that was more for keeping my armour safe from damage, along with some claws that made actually digging into and pulling the metal scraps apart easier.

Overall, I was barely using my energy as I slowly recovered my supply. I had thought about keeping my horns away as well; there was a massive sign of where and who I was on the battlefield. When they were out, I learned from Mella that she could be a slight disturbance when they were active. She couldn’t clarify what she meant by that feeling, but simply that something was strange, and to be fair, I was pulling energy from another dimension, which was very strange, and so overall a reasonable answer on her part.

Landing on the ground, I grabbed the leg of the robot whose internal controls I had moments ago wrecked and threw it like a bowling ball. I jumped after it had the automatic response of the bots to dodge and crashed into one of them like a missile. Then, once again, I jumped to my next target. My goal was to destroy as many of these mechs as possible, and once that was done… I was thinking of going underground to support the assault efforts. I was still a little unsure about that since I didn’t like fighting underground, and I had a feeling people would eventually be coming back up, but they realistically could use support; everyone could, and I was likely the strongest fighter here.

As I spent the next few tens of minutes fighting mechs and smaller robots, running between different combat zones when I felt the remaining forces could handle the rest. One of the areas where mechs were coming up from opened up as a new wave was coming to reinforce.

Hmmm… Maybe I could go down there instead…