No one in the hunting team thought the hunt for Zeigra proceeded well. Over the course of three rounds of battle, their mechs managed to unload a lot of damage onto the Crown Cat.
However, his exotic and mineral-enhanced hide proved to be as tough as the armor plating of a heavy mech! The sheer resilience of the Crown Cat along with his formidable mobility meant that Zeigra absorbed or evaded most attacks directed against him without any apparent results!
Even if the exobiologists and other experts claimed that their efforts succeeded in wearing Zeigra, the mech pilots all suffered from the illusion that they faced Zeigra in his peak condition!
When one side visibly grew weaker while the other side still fought close to peak condition, the latter became increasingly unfathomable!
No amount of analysis and expert opinions could shake the impression that had rooted into the minds of Lady Miralix's closest companions. Her former classmates in the academy finally exhibited the weaknesses resulting from their lack of tempering and experience.
More and more, the mech pilots began to demand an end to the hunt!
Who cared whether they failed? They could always try next time! The price of retreat was no big deal to the mech pilots, but the same didn't apply to their commander.
Lady Miralix urgently wanted to conclude the hunt! The faster she hunted down a Crown Cat, the sooner she received permission to leave Felixia and pursue a career in the wider Sentinel Kingdom!
She was well aware that the late twenties and early thirties proved pivotal to the careers of many mech pilots. This was a time where the most ambitious and successful mech pilots grew the fastest and attracted the attention of a patron who might take a promising mech pilot under their wing!
While there was no harm in wasting a year or two, this was unacceptable to the most ambitious mech pilots! Every year mattered! It would be hard to make up for lost time as Lady Miralix might enter the service of Sentinel's military at the starting line while most of her fellow peers of the same generation had already been promoted to mech lieutenants or mech captains!
Due to these considerations, declaring an end to the hunt while they still possessed a number of functioning mechs was completely unacceptable to Lady Miralix!
\"I would not call one rifleman mech, one knight mech, two spearman mechs, one axeman mech and one tiger mech a qualified hunting force against a Crown Cat.\" One of the mech pilots argued. \"And lest you argue otherwise, all of our mechs barring your own are already falling apart!\"
Due to the enduring complaints, Lady Miralix decided to call every mech pilot to a meeting.
Of course, considering the danger of leaving their hunting team exposed, they attended the meeting via projections. All six mechs that were still fit for battle deployed around the vulnerable legged transports.
Fortunately, Zeigra's preoccupation with demolishing and taking bites out of the mechs in front of his face prevented the cat from going after the vulnerable transports parked in the distance.
However, it was exactly due to Zeigra's focus on their mechs that forced Lady Miralix to confront her mech pilots over their demands to retreat!
\"We can still fight.\" She stated, her face marked by the stress and exhaustion of keeping the hunting team together. \"We entered this hunting zone to slay a Crown Cat, and we will not return without his carcass in our possession!\"
\"Madness!\"
\"Zeigra is too strong!\"
\"We're not good enough!\"
\"Lady Miralix!\" One of the female mech pilots who lost their mechs shouted over the crowd. \"Let's face it, our plan has failed. The battle of attrition that we waged against Zeigra has weakened us more than this darned cat! He's practically immortal! Every time we face him in battle, it's as if all the damage we've dealt to it before has been wasted! According to your own exobiologists, the damn cat has been eating huge chunks of our mechs to restore the integrity of his hide! A drawn-out chase is exactly the wrong approach to take against this monster!\"
The woman's words resonated with the others in the meeting room. The exobiologists carefully studied the data captured by the sensors and found out after the third round that the cat's hide already incorporated a significant amount of exotics and metals it previously ate from their own mechs!
Ves sat in the back of the room and observed the meeting while Lucky yawned and napped on his lap.
If Genevieve was here, Lucky would at least be able to enjoy the company of a fellow cat. Sadly, Lady Miralix declined to bring her pet along the expedition, knowing that she would be forced to remain in the cockpit of her mech for days on end!
As the mech pilots continued to convince Lady Miralix to call for an end to the hunt, Ves began to entertain his own doubts.
He developed his own judgement based on how the first three rounds developed.
Both sides increasingly became more familiar with each other. Just as the Felixia Catstrikers gathered a wealth of data on Zeigra, so did the cat learn how to better defeat the opposing mechs.
In the first round, the Catstrikers lost just a single mech.
In the second round, the hunting team lost two mechs.
In the third round, they lost three mechs!
It didn't take much imagination to suspect that the hunting team might lose all of their remaining mechs!
A key factor that depressed everyone's expectations was the condition of the surviving mechs.
Every mech aside from the Kinslayer lost at least twenty percent of their battle strength! Some mechs fared worse, such as the axeman mech that lost its arm in the first round.
Despite the best efforts of Ves and the mech technicians, they only managed to make rudimentary patchwork repairs on the surviving mechs. No matter how many spare parts they salvaged from the wrecked machines, the lack of time and heavy equipment severely hampered the extent to which they could repair a broken mech.
With so little amenities, Ves already thought it was a miracle to ensure the hunting team could still rely on five functional humanoid mechs.
\"Give it up, please.\" One of the mech pilots begged. \"While we've all managed to eject from our cockpits in time, if we lose all of our mechs, how can we deter Zeigra from finishing us off?\"
A human running on foot could never possibly outrun a vengeful huge cat! The legged transports wouldn't be able to get away either as they were optimized for capacity rather than speed.
Lady Miralix glared at her subordinates. Many of them used to be her buddies at the academy!
\"My answer remains the same. A hunt is always marked by peril. That's what makes them worthwhile. Haven't we all agreed to persevere and put our utmost into succeeding in this hunt? Don't forget how much we'll benefit from having a successful Crown Cat hunt in our records! Our future colleagues will envy us! Promotions will shower down on our heads! Make no mistake. Killing Zeigra and returning in triumph is an opportunity that will only come once!\"
\"Commander, we don't have to hunt him this year! We can try again next time! With all of the things we've learned about Zeigra, we can adjust our mechs and training to counter his strong points while exploiting his weak points! For example, we've learned that a battle of attrition isn't ideal against this cat!\"
\"NO!\" Miralix angrily erupted.\"WE WILL NOT END THIS HUNT AT THIS MOMENT! WE STILL HAVE A CHANCE!\"
Her outburst quieted the meeting room.
The woman took a deep breath. \"If we turn back now, everything we've learned will be moot. Zeigra is a fast-evolving cat and he has already started showing some progress after each and every round. Give him a few months or years, and he'll no longer be the bottom-ranked Crown Cat. Entering in the top ten is not impossible as long as he turns the tables on additional hunting teams!\"
Once a Crown Cat entered the top ten, the Felixia Catstrikers no longer stood any chance of hunting such a formidable creature. Only the top hunting outfits with years of experience and an abundance of skill could challenge these true apex predators!
Some of the mech pilots sent knowing glances at each other. One of them eventually spoke up with a fatalistic tone.
\"We've already sounded each other out in private. I'm sorry, Lady Miralix, but we can't support your ventures any further. There is no shame in conceding defeat against a formidable Crown Cat! In fact, the fact we tussled with the monster and returned with our lives is enough for us to earn a bit of fame!\"
\"That's nothing! That's just a consolation prize that essentially celebrates our failure! I will not have such a stain marring my record!\" The lady shouted.
\"You're being too unreasonable! All of us understood how much you depend on this achievement, but hunting Crown Cats is hard for a very good reason! In your obsession with earning glory and fame, you've lost sight of how most hunts against these top monsters fail!\"
\"We were too overconfident!\" Another mech pilot interjected. \"We're all young and we've never fought a Crown Cat before. Zeigra is completely different from the other cats we've hunted for practice!\"
It became clear to Ves that Lady Miralix's subordinates had already collectively decided to pull back. They merely wanted to get Lady Miralix to concede and give the order to retreat.
However, her obstinance and her strong belief that they still stood a chance against Zeigra threw a wrench into their plans!
The relations between Lady Miralix and her mech pilots continued to sour as they both held their ground.
Lady Miralix wanted to continue to chase after Zeigra!
Her subordinates no longer wanted to do anything with the hunt!
The two held completely opposite opinions. Despite Lady Miralix's high birth, every mech pilot was more than aware that she only wielded a limited amount of power right now.
As an untested mech pilot with a noble pedigree, Lady Miralix couldn't draw on the authority of House Laterna to force anyone on the planet to comply. This hunt was supposed to be a trial that put her leadership and combat capabilities to the test.
Right now, Lady Miralix was badly failing this critical leadership checkpoint.
Ves quietly shook his head at the increasingly acrimonious fight between the two sides. Lady Miralix practically stood alone as her staff and other non-combat personnel started to take the side of the mech pilots.
No one wanted to die in order to satisfy someone else's vanity! The fame and prestige that everyone stood to gain from slaying Zeigra was only attractive if they got to live at the end of the hunt!
As everyone's tempers flared, Lady Miralix increasingly found herself isolated. She found no support among even one of her mech pilots!
Her projection increasingly looked more upset! I was as if she was being driven mad by her own men!
\"I won't repeat myself! The Felixia Catstrikers still have a chance! I will not order a retreat even if we only have one functioning mech left!\"
\"Then you can go hunt Zeigra on your own!\" A mech pilot threw back! \"Our mechs and our legged transports will return to Kemila without you! If you're so eager to charge at Zeigra and throw your life away, then by all means go ahead! Just don't drag us with you in your suicide attempt!\"
The Felixia Catstrikers had enough! After three arduous rounds against Zeigra, they were ready to throw in the towel!
Sitting in the back, Ves quietly snorted.
Lady Miralix opted to form her hunting team entirely around young and inexperienced mech pilots.
Regardless of how well they performed in the mech academies, their resolve was no different from any other rookie mech pilot!