Chapter 512. Too Much Success (1/2)
Elsewhere, the Bright Republic and the Vesia Kingdom long threw the fate of the Glowing Planet to the back of their minds. After all, once the two dominant second-rate states of the Komodo Star Sector laid claim to it, they lost rights to contend for ownership of the rogue planet.
The conversation of the day instead revolved around the daring raid of the Flagrant Vandals. This obscure mech regiment under the 3rd Tarry Division never registered in the minds of the Brighters. The Vesians were better acquainted with the Vandals, but often mistook them as wayward mercenaries gone pirate.
Their time of obscurity was a thing of the past. The bombastic events at the Detemen System opened everyone's eyes to what this vagabond-like mech regiment was capable of. The
Vandals sneaked into the core regions of the Kingdom and wreaked havoc at the unsuspecting star system, smashing the garrison fleet in the process! Then they split up. The Vandals under the command of Major Verle overran a moon base, plunged a capital city into chaos, robbed half of its heavy industries of their assets and captured the planetary leader in a spectacular hunt!
Blood boiled in the citizens of the Republic!
”Hahaha! Look at how clueless they are when faced with an invasion! A planet of the republic would never fall into confusion like that when the Vesians intrude upon our star systems!”
”This is the true face of the Kingdom! For all their boasts, they live under a tyranny! How else is the rebellion so strong!”
”Who are the 6th Flagrant Vandals? I've memorized every mech regiment under the 3rd Tarry Division, but I always thought they were understrength!”
”They look like pirates with funding! Did we hire some washed-up frontier scum and organized them into a regiment or something? They're way too good in raiding the entire place!”
”Did they really capture the heir of a count? The Vesians must be going mad right now!”
Each piece of news buoyed up the Republic's flagging spirits. It provided them with a timely victory to stall the decline in confidence over the war.
While the accomplishments at Detemen IV attracted the most attention, the Vandals also inflicted a lot of damage at Detemen II. The resource-processing planet used to watch over a score of solar foundries. They utilized the incredible heat and energies from the binary stars to transform raw ores and metals into processed alloys.
All of them had been wrecked, which set back House Jier enormously. As the Vandals made landfall on the scorching hot planet, Count Reizen proved himself to be the better of Lord Javier in every way by taking personal command over the defense of their valuable renewable exotics mine.
There was little of value to be found on the surface of Detemen II, but the renewable exotics mine stood out as a massive outlier. Sources of endless exotics were rare, as most of them formed in extreme and highly peculiar situations at the center of the galaxy. The galactic rim only uncovered exotics from ancient stellar objects flung from the center to the outer portions of the galaxy many eons ago.
While stars and planets still ejected from the fulcrum of the center of the galaxy on a regular basis, they always got lost in the vastness of the galactic rim.
The renewable exotics mine was a unique byproduct of a set of coincidences in the galactic center. It was very rare, and formed the basis of House Jier's long-term prosperity. Every force aligned to the House pulled back from defending unimportant facilities in order to safeguard the mine.
They failed. Over two days of hard fighting where Colonel Lowenfield ordered the launch of several waves of artificial asteroids, the defenses around the mine finally crumbled in the face of Vandal determination. Count Reizen's custom mech fled through a tunnel in a bedraggled state, leaving the mine exposed to the Vandals.
Nobody knew what happened to it. Some people guessed that the mine hid some sort of natural treasure that was responsible for making the mine renewable. In any case, the mine lost its essential quality, and no longer generated new junk exotics. Once House Jier mined all of the the existing deposits, the mine became exhausted.
These accomplishments fully smacked the face of the Vesians, who had grown arrogant at their continued successes at the frontlines. Their indomitable fleets and mechs slowly pushed forward since the outbreak of the war, but the sudden raid on the Detemen System poured cold water over their shoulders. The shock was too great that some of the Vesians pulled back their aggression. This unintentionally gave the Mech Corps a rare and precious moment of reprieve.
This highlighted the power of the dissemination of information. In an age where every planet was connected to a vast galactic network, every citizen and serviceman became easily swayed by the news, rumors and propaganda circulating in the void.
Joshua finished reading the news bulletins in his comm and felt his blood boil. Right now, he attended a military-funded mech academy that rushed their mech cadets through years of training.
Many promising cadets couldn't handle the pressure. They washed out after a couple of weeks of high-intensity training and got kicked back to their home star systems.
Though Joshua turned out to be of average ability and talent, his willpower and grit impressed the instructors. Through hard work and focused training, he kept up with the grueling pace and accepted every abuse the instructors flung in his way.
He would not be deterred. It was a dream for a native from Cloudy Curtain to attend a mech academies in Bentheim, and he resolved to never squander it. For it is in this ruthless pace of training that Joshua improved the fastest.
”Damnit.” He cursed as he browsed at his rankings in Iron Spirit. ”I'm still too far away from unlocking 5-star mechs.”
Nobody in his class understood his drive. Joshua felt a little ashamed in telling his fellow cadets why he trained so hard. The main reason why his willpower pushed him through was because he wanted to unlock the ability to pilot the LMC's best virtual mechs!
Sadly, it appeared that it would take at least another year for him to improve enough to escape the bottom of the Gold League. Joshua regularly competed against mech pilots at least three years older than him. Only until he could overcome this barrier would he be able to enter the Gold League properly, thereby qualifying him to pilot Iron Spirit's 5-star mechs.
”The Marc Antony Mark II, the Blackbeak, the Crystal Lord… why are you still so far away?”
The latter two products gained an enormous amount of fame in the mech industry. Joshua wasn't too exposed to that, but even he heard plenty of stories about their excellence. Even the hardcore virtual athletes started to take note of the Blackbeak and the Crystal Lord. Out of all of the virtual designs published by Chasing Clouds, it was these two that formed the crown.
While Joshua dreamed of piloting the the LMC's wonder mechs, elsewhere on Bentheim two women met each other at a quiet rooftop cafe. Among the elegant plants and wood-fashioned furniture, the women stared at each other with varying levels of tension.