Chapter 3822: Variant Creatures
Only a handful of blue fish-whales had already managed to breach the defensive line earlier.
Now, seventeen of them had emerged from the portal at once. From the way they spread out and took control over their lesser brothers, it looked like they were preparing to launch the same attack run!
"The blue ones are much stronger than the white ones! We can't let them go through with their charges!"
"What are our ranged mechs doing?! Shoot them down already!"
"We can't! There are too many white bodies in the way!"
Hundreds of ranged mechs were trying to land their attacks on the blue fish-whales, but aside from a few rare exceptions, each of their attacks fell far short!
While the white fish-whales were not that big and tough compared to an actual mech, they were still solid enough to absorb pretty much every ranged attack trying to pass through their bodies.
It took entire volleys to obliterate a white fish-whale, but that didn't help as much when another one immediately occupied the position vacated by its dead brother!
As the blue fish-whales were about to perform their organized charges, General Verle finally allowed the more powerful mech units in reserve to take action!
"The Minerva is moving forward!"
Up until now, Commander Casella Ingvar had done nothing aside from issuing orders and providing an invisible morale boost to the Living Sentinel mech pilots holding the line.
She was proud of her mech legion. She was also pleased that the combination of the Rigid Wall and Rigid Spine mechs held up so well against so much physical pressure.
Though the blue fish-whales had eventually managed to break through the shield wall, she did not blame her pilots for this failure. The more elite enemy units were simply a bit too strong for them to handle with their current means.
"It's time to take action, Minerva." She whispered.
As much as she agreed with General Verle's stance that this was just the start of an extended engagement, she did not feel comfortable with standing aside so that her troops could handle this challenge by themselves.
Part of the reason why mech commanders like her wanted to lead the troops from the front was because of their strong desire and obsession to do everything in their power to protect their comrades and succeed!
The Minerva glowed brighter as its Command Field expanded a bit. Even though Casella did not use it to lend her power to her fellow soldiers as of yet, the Sentinels and other friendly mech pilots gained a bit more confidence after they picked up her influence.
Not only that, but Casella also extended her influence among the hundreds of alien creatures that were madly trying to press forward.
It was easy enough for her to detect the blue fish-whales that were about to perform their formation-breaking charges. They were not only 50 percent bigger than their lesser kin, their bodies also exuded a lot more mass and power!
The threat they posed was much greater!
Aside from gaining greater awareness of where the blue fish-whales were located, Casella also tried to figure out how smart they were. How much autonomy and intelligence did these larger fish-whales possess?
"They're smarter than the white fish-whales, but what cleverness they've gained is entirely dedicated towards aggression and conflict!"
The blue fish-whales were also bred for war! Casella sensed nothing in them that spoke of an ability to think rationally or apply themselves to other pursuits than fighting.
The Minerva brought its custom luminar crystal rifle to bear. The Irvan was a transformable rifle that came with two firing modes.
This time, Casella had left the weapon in its marksman configuration. A long and heavy rifle that vaguely looked similar to the Amaranto's Instrument of Vengeance laid in the expert command mech's arms.
The weapon glowed as Casella and her expert mech generated a fair degree of true resonance.
At the same time, Casella switched the attack phase of her primary weapon to a slicer beam.
"If my attacks can't get around all of the cannon fodder, then let them go through the bodies instead."
When Casella pulled the trigger, the Irvan spat a deceptively thin but concentrated energy beam.
If not for the fact that Casella empowered it with resonance, few people and aliens would have noticed the powerful attack!
The beam instantly propelled forward and sunk through the body of a white fish-whale that was just about to slam its head against the tower shield of a Rigid Wall mech.
Then the beam penetrated through the other side of the injured fish-whale before passing through the body of the next alien victim!
More than a dozen white fish-whales fell victim to this unstoppable attack!
The craziest part of this was that the slicer beam hardly lost power after passing through all of those bodies!
When the thin beam finally struck the blue fish-whale, it accurately penetrated through the middle of the skill and cut through the brain that governed the monster's actions!
The blue creature thrashed and for numerous seconds before falling silent.
Commander Casella didn't pay much attention to the results of her attack. She had already estimated how much penetration power the slicer beam possessed after empowering it with her will.
Although the bodies of the white fish-whales were rather annoying, the power of an expert pilot and an expert mech was not trivial!
The Minerva adjusted its aim and fired a second shot!
An instant later, another blue fish-whale got injured!
This time, the slicer beam failed to hit the brain but cut through the spine of the monster instead. This caused it to lose control over itself. When the blue fish-whale became increasingly more vulnerable, the white fish-whales no longer respected it anymore.
"The white ones are eating any blue ones that show weakness!"
This dynamic provided a lot more convenience to the troubleshooters that were tasked with eliminating the blue fish-whales.
Due to the cannibalistic behavior pattern of the fish-whales, the defenders only needed to draw enough blood for the surrounding fish-whales to finish the job!
This was highly convenient for Casella as she never needed to land another shot to finish off her targets.
As the blue fish-whales began their charge, the Minerva was nowhere done with eliminating all 17 of the high-priority targets!
Expert mech or not, the Minerva could only attack one of them at a time.
Fortunately, there were additional units on the job.
A mech company of Avatar ranged mechs focused their fire in a single direction. Even though there were lots of cannon fodder in the way, the constant attacks forcefully eliminated them one after another.
When a blue fish-whale finally entered the sights of the Avatar mechs, a torrent of kinetic beams slammed against the hardened body and skull of the leader monster!
While the continuous kinetic beams failed to punch through the skull of the blue fish-whale, the attacks were more than enough to stall and mess up its advance despite its tougher exterior!
"Let me help you, Casella." Venerable Joshua said as he covered a different angle with his own Vitalus rifle.
The Everchanger imitated the actions of the Minerva and fired resonance-empowered slicer beams that passed through numerous alien bodies before crippling the blue priority targets.
Although the damage output of the Vitalus was lower, it did not make much of a difference in this situation.
By the time the Larkinson ranged mechs eliminated 13 of the blue fish-whales in quick succession, the remainder had gotten close and threatened to slam through the defensive mechs once again!
"Countercharge the blue fish-whales!"
The shield walls parted a bit in order to allow for the passage of ferocious melee mechs!
In one area, a squad of Valkyrie Redeemer mechs of the Penitent Sisters charged forward and impaled a blue fish-whale in multiple different areas!
Though the resilient creature did not die in an instant, its crippled state had already doomed it in the eyes of its greedy cannibal brothers!
In another area, the Blade Chaser charged forward and stabbed its swords through the body of another blue fish-whale!
The power and maneuverability of the custom mech was excellent despite the ceiling on its performance. As an expert pilot, Venerable Imon was far superior against most opponents, especially the stupid fish-whales that only acted upon their feral instincts.
"I'm not done yet!" He snarled!
The Blade Chaser was surrounded by white fish-whales, but it easily squeezed through the bodies of the monsters whenever possible and cut them down with its twin swords when there was no other choice.
Soon enough, the custom swordsman mech approached another blue fish-whale and intended to skewer it in the same way as before.
However, the target in question was a lot more aware than its deceased colleague. The blue fish-whale actually aborted its charge in order to face the new threat!
After transmitting an invisible command, all of the white fish-whales around it swarmed towards the Blade Chaser as if they wanted to grind the powerful custom mech from all sides!
"You think I'm easy to ambush? Think again!"
The Blade Chaser sliced through the white fish-whales that posed an immediate threat and used the bodies of other creatures as its shield!
In some cases, the fish-whales became so eager to devour their dead or crippled brothers that they no longer paid as much attention to the Blade Chaser anymore!
"These cannibal creatures should have gone extinct a long time ago! Let me help you on your way!"
The Blade Chaser truly showed the potential of its exposive moves as it forcefully fought through numerous white fish-whales and finally sliced its blazing blades through the belly of the fish-like creature!
Just like other creatures, the blue fish-whale did not feel good after getting disemboweled. The white monsters no longer cared about completing their charge against the human mechs and instead fought against each other to devour as much of the blue fish-whale as possible!
Imon briefly became distracted as he wondered whether the cannibals would morph into a blue fish-whale instead.
"It doesn't look like that will happen, thankfully."
Although the white fish-whales that had consumed the flesh of its superior brothers became stronger after they finished their meals, they did not undergo any qualitative evolutions.
In the end, the defenders smacked them down just as easily as they defeated the regular white fish-whales!
The Blade Chaser and the other melee mechs retreated once they finished their jobs. It was quite dangerous to remain outside of the shield wall for an extended amount of time. The tide of white fish-whales never ended!
A subsequent wave of blue fish-whales emerged half a minute later.
There were 23 of them this time, but with the lessons of their earlier success, the defending side managed to take them down with the same tactics as before!
Numerous people began to feel uneasy about this situation, though.
"We'll face an even bigger wave of sergeant fish next time!"
"Our mechs can't take them down from a distance. There are too many soldier fish in the way, and who knows what else will emerge from that portal?"
By now, the soldiers already came up with their own names for the two varieties of fish-whales. The white fish-whale became known as the grunt fish due to its weak and disposable nature.
The blue one became known as the sergeant fish because it always took charge of a limited amount of grunt fish in the immediate vicinity.
As the new names were being put to use, the Minerva, the Everchanger, the Blade Chaser and many other elite mech units did not slack off in eliminating the sergeant fish before they succeeded in breaking through.
As the defenders slowly adjusted to this rhythm, the portal suddenly disorged a new fish-whale variant.
"Watch out! A red fish-whale has emerged!"
This one was much different from the previous two varieties.
First, it was larger than the sergeant fish and could rival the size of a full-sized mech!
Second, its body began to fluctuate as it was about to activate an intrinsic ability.
"TAKE IT DOWN BEFORE IT DOES ANYTHING!"
Casella reacted the quickest as she noticed the red one's arrival the soonest. The Irvan swung in the direction of the new fish-whale, but the creature disappeared before she could pull the trigger.
"Our sensors has registered emissions corresponding to the use of phasewater!"
"Where did the red go?!"
"It's behind us!"
The large and powerful red fish-whale emerged in the middle of an Avatar ranged mech formation!
Shortly after it appeared, it immediately slammed against the thin ranged mechs around it before biting off a third of the mech in front of its maw!
"The red fish-whale can teleport!"