Chapter 7473  Honor Above All

Compared to the other constructs that the arche had made, their blasphemous 'archeshell mech' demonstrated a level of durability that exceeded the limits of conventional transphasic alloys!

Even if archetech ingeniously made machines a lot denser without severely impacting their functionality, there were limits to how much creative engineering could make them tougher.

What soldiers took from this monstrous archetech creation was an alien 'mech' that could compete against the best of standard mechs in terms of damage resistance alone.

However, what mech designers such as Ves and Gloriana took from this unprecedented work was an accidental product that coincidentally combined multiple design solutions that were normally incompatible with each other!

The fact that archetech somehow managed to get along with phase lord body cultivation and not immediately fall apart was a miracle in their eyes!

The research value of this anomalous alien work suddenly shot into the roof!

"Ves!" Gloriana communicated over the command channel. "You should understand how much research value this archeshell mech holds to us. Haven't you always dreamt about transforming your living mechs into phase lords? This may very well be the missing link that can illuminate a path towards your goal! As for myself, the treasures contained within this archeshell amalgamation are countless. As I am concerned, securing it for ourselves is our greatest priority!"

"What do you want, Gloriana?"

"We cannot let anyone else take it away from us!" She hissed. "Let us end this farce. As valiant as the Apocalypse Wardens may be, they are merely infantry. They should be left to deal with enemies of equivalent scale. A mech should only be defeated by another mech. Send in our best. We should order the First Sword Mark III to carve her way straight through the hull of the archecruiser and surgically disable the alien creation. As much as I abhor any notion of damaging its unique structure, I can tolerate the idea of cutting off its limbs before attempting to put it in stasis. We should avoid damaging its torso and archeshell as much as possible!"

"No."

"WHAT DO YOU MEAN, NO?!"

"I meant what I said." Ves responded. "I agree with you that the archeshell mech can potentially deliver a huge amount of novel research data to us. What I do not agree with is to interrupt this fight by bringing in an ace mech. The archecruiser is also precious, and drilling a mech-size tunnel straight into the citadel will inflict a huge amount of damage, much of which we can never recover due to our unfamiliarity with arche naval design."

"WHO CARES ABOUT THE SHIP WHEN THE MECH IS MORE IMPORTANT!"

"I think the Red Fleet will disagree with you." Ves calmly responded. "More importantly, we must respect the will of the warriors. As alien as he may be, the arche captain has disobeyed his orders just so that he can fight one last time at the peak of his entire life. The Apocalypse Wardens accepted his challenge and has yet to call for assistance. This means that they still think that they can complete their objective by relying on their own strength. The least we can do is to honor their bravery."

Gloriana felt perplexed by this response. "Honor their bravery?! THIS IS FOOLISHNESS! We are not talking about child's play here! Securing the archeshell mech must be our highest priority! Who knows what will happen if we let the Apocalypse Wardens damage its structure with their destructive hammers! Preserving the integrity of this construct is a much higher priority than satisfying the egos of upjumped infantry! Soldiers may be responsible for fighting on behalf of our race, but it is intellectuals such as you and I who ensure that red humanity can win this war!"

"ENOUGH." The Saint Commander interrupted the argument between the married couple. "I hold command authority here. I agree with Ves on this matter. As important as the archeshell mech may be, we cannot and should not pin all of our hopes on a single miracle solution. Mech designers such as the two of you may be able to develop the tools that can give us an edge on the battlefield, but it is the grit of our warriors and the will of our people that truly determine the outcome of this war. Honor is not a redundant social construct. It is the pillar that makes countless soldiers sacrifice their lives for the good of our people."

"..."

"My standing orders are to let the Apocalypse Wardens fight until they have won, died or called for backup. Until any of these outcomes happens, all nearby forces are instructed to remain on standby, though ready to intervene quickly if their intervention is necessary."

That settled the matter as far as the Saint Commander was concerned.

Gloriana was not reconciled with this outcome. She privately contacted representatives hailing from the Red Association and the Terran Alliance behind everyone's backs, but she did not expect for their opinions to coincide with that of the Saint Commander!

It appeared that even the mechers and the Terrans agreed with the sentiment that soldiers must be given space to fight an honorable duel!

This truly reinforced the reality that red humanity was run by warriors as opposed to intellectuals!

The female Senior Mech Designer gnashed her teeth.

She could not understand why so many people disregarded the logic of her argument and seemed willing to let a potentially priceless alien research specimen incur irreparable damage!

It was times like these that she wished that the Polymath had successfully taken over red humanity.

Though everyone accused her of being a heartless tyrant, at least no one would fault her for making illogical decisions that harmed their civilization as a whole.

With the Polymath in charge, other leaders would have little choice but to abide by her rules and customs.

A matter such as this should have led to an immediate resolution whereby the archeshell mech got captured as soon as it entered their sights!

Instead of that, red humanity had chosen a different regime, one where fractured organizations and warlords tried to outcompete each other by behaving like primitive barbarians!

Their society had regressed!

As Gloriana despaired over these observations, the Apocalypse Wardens intensified their actions against their sole opponent.

After discovering that their conventional armaments and solutions failed to inflict any observable damage to the archeshell mech, the elite cultivator soldiers quickly changed the configuration of their combat armor.

With a decisive command, the gun barrels, ammunition canisters, energy converters and other assorted components got ejected from their mounts.

Other modules such as expended energy cells and ineffective azure shield generators left the pile as well.

The Apocalypse Wardens had slimmed down their combat armor considerably as a result. The removal of so many redundant modules not only increased their speed and agility, but also committed them to a single means of attack.

Each of them knew without saying it that the only way for them to defeat this alien construct was to bludgeon it with their superdimensional hammers!

After unburdening their superfluous equipment, they instantly changed their approach. Their active battle network continued to keep their thoughts and spirits in sync.

None of them wasted their movements.

None of them hesitated for a second.

None of them had any intention to retreat from this duel.

Despite the enormous disparity in scale, the difference in total mass was not as great as it appeared on the surface.

Superdimensional alloys were much denser in reality than transphasic alloys because the former shunted much more matter into a considerably wider range of dimensions.

This had lots of implications, of which one of them was that a collision between a superdimensional object and a similarly-sized transphasic object often ended up badly for the latter!

Of course, much of this was so new to red humanity that no one could guarantee that the Apocalypse Wardens truly had a chance of subduing the archeshell mech.

The only way to be certain was to put their superdimensional hammers to the test.

This time, the Apocalypse Wardens no longer performed any coordinated combination attacks. Their most iconic move had done nothing but give the archeshell mech a harmless fire bath.

They instead opted to go close. They gripped their formidable superdimensional hammers with two hands and began to close the distance from multiple sides.

The alien leader did not take these human soldiers lightly. He knew that if he hadn't made a desperate attempt to ascend to godhood, he would have suffered heavy damage from that flame hammer!

The fact that his current form could resist the last blow did not inflate his confidence. He chose to take advantage of his larger size and charge straight towards one of the human teams, hoping to crush them to death before the remaining warriors could converge and overwhelm him with the advantage of numbers!

As soon as the archeshell mech dropped on all fours and repeated the same move that successfully claimed a soldier's life, the Apocalypse Wardens did not react as slowly as before.

They had already witnessed this move once, so they were psychologically prepared to encounter it again.

Their combat armor had also become significantly lighter and more agile.

The targeted Wardens already jumped to the side before their formidable opponent arrived. Just as they thought that they would be able to turn this situation around and launch a counterattack, the archeshell mech made another move.

The large construct abruptly pushed with two of its limbs, causing it to roll to the side!

This altered its trajectory and caused it to trundle forward in a diagonal angle!

Not only that, but the warp bubble surrounding the archeshell mech's form briefly spiked in strength, causing it to produce an unexpected boost of speed!

At this time, the sole Apocalypse Warden threatened by this attack hardly had any time to react. He didn't even have enough time to think!

He could only fall back to his training and his instincts. He spared no time and immediately made two moves.

First, he triggered the emergency setting of his boosters, causing them to produce a powerful but damaging impulse that blasted his combat armor in an upwards trajectory.

Second, he swung his heated hammer down in the hopes of inflicting a final blow!

CRACK!

All of this happened so quickly that the optical sensors struggled to register the collision.

When everything became clear, the observers first noticed how the stricken soldier failed to evade the attack.

His suit of combat armor lay crumpled in the distance.

Yet unlike the previous case, the damage to his armor was not fatal. The emergency jump caused a collision between the archeshell mech and the legs, causing the latter to crumple and bend in an unnatural angle.

Aside from getting his legs disabled, the human inside the combat armor only suffered moderate collision damage.

The intact triage systems of his combat armor automatically took control. The leg sections froze up in order to prevent the soldier's injuries from worsening. The arm sections automatically began to drag the unit away with the help of intact boosters.

As for the archeshell mech, he came away with much lighter injuries.

For the first time since the start of this confrontation, the alien construct actually suffered material damage.

The final hammer blow had struck the lip of the giant archeshell, causing a part of the edge to fracture into hundreds of crystalline archemetal fragments.

"We can kill the beast."

It wouldn't be easy, but the remaining Apocalypse Wardens still had hope.

"The archeshell mech is becoming stronger with the passage." Ves warned over the communication channel. "Its energy activity isn't rising, but it is becoming increasingly more organized. The alien captain is unused to his new form, but that is changing as we speak. You need to take him down quickly before he gets too close to reaching his full potential."

"You have five minutes." Saint Commander Casella gave the Apocalypse Wardens a deadline.

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