Chapter 886. Extravagant Mech (1/2)
Ves still remembered the Glowing Planet campaign. A single rogue planet that likely emerged from the galactic heartland or galactic center randomly streaked through the galaxy like it was on a pleasure cruise.
For countless years, no one ever discovered the Glowing Planet coursing through interstellar space. It was actually quite hard to detect planets traveling through the void as they hardly ever leaked any signals.
The Glowing Planet's discovery within the borders of the Bright Republic was a complete coincidence, but the unimaginable amount of wealth contained sent the entire Komodo Star Sector into a frenzy.
The Bright Republic and the Vesia Kingdom, the two nearest states, only scratched the surface of the unimaginable wealth contained on the planet. Once the Hexadric Hegemony and the Friday Coalition barged in, they claimed over ninety-five percent of all the wealth locked inside the planet.
As of now, all that remained of the Glowing Planet only consisted of loose rubble floating through interstellar space.
Even if the two dominant second-rate states obtained the lion's share of the Glowing Planet's unimaginably valuable minerals and exotics, the Brighters and Vesians at least recovered some scraps.
Rorach's Bone was a genuine high-value exotic material with the consistency of bone. Its regeneration properties made them essential materials in any high-value mech. Even though it cost a lot of energy for them to regenerate battle damage, they naturally drew ambient energy from the air, allowing them to repair delicate components laced with Rorach's Bone as long as some time had passed.
This made them the ideal exotic to use in mechs intended for long deployments in difficult terrain.
However, it would be an enormous waste to employ them in guerilla mechs or the like. Their high value and exceedingly wondrous properties made them far more suitable to be incorporated in expert mechs. Let alone expert mechs, even ace mechs didn't shy away from taking advantage of this great material!
This was because not only would Rorach's Bone be able to grant a mech regenerative properties, it also enormously enhanced its resonant abilities. When alloyed with non-resonant materials and exotics, a small addition of Rorach's Bone allowed them to undergo a huge transformation, granting them resonant properties!
For an expert mech, the higher the proportion of resonating materials, the easier it was for the expert pilot to exhibit stronger resonating abilities.
However, any expert mech would have already gained a decent boost if only 0.1 percent of its material composition consisted of Rorach's Bone. To use up one or two percent would be a generous gift, but elevating the use of Rorach's Bone as the main material for the armor plating, internal frame and all of its core components was extravagant to the extreme!
Ves wanted to puke out blood at the sight of this expert mech from the Hostland Warriors. He didn't believe a single battle mech regiment could afford the consumption of practically half the Rorach's Bone available to an entire duchy. With the same amount of Rorach's Bone, the Hafner Duchy could have outfitted two or three companies of extremely resilient elite mechs.
Such a great number of elite mechs designed for frontline combat would have been a much more versatile use of Rorach's Bone.
That was because if the extravagant expert mech ever got defeated, the Hafner Duchy would suffer an unimaginable amount of losses! Such a devastating injury might even force the current Duke of Hafner to step down!
Yet Lady Amalia somehow managed to convince the Hostland Warriors to bring this extremely expensive mech in her extremely risky jaunt into the deep frontier!
The amount of political capital the lady or her backer expended must have been extremely considerable.
Yet Ves had no doubt that the Vesians considered the price to be worth it, because this expert mech was nearly undefeatable against mundane mechs. Even many expert mechs wouldn't be able to leave a scratch on this mech, including Venerable Xie.
Without sufficient penetration power that could take out the cockpit in a single hit, anyone could forget about defeating this mech! The only other strategy one might be able to deploy was to exhaust its energy cells, but would this expert mech be kind to let its energy reserves be drained?
The more the Vandals heard what Ves had to say about this ridiculously expensive mech, the more they despaired.
”Even if we were still able to field the Pale Dancer, it can't do anything against this mech.” Ves decisively declared. ”There's no way its upgraded laser rifle can penetrate its self-regenerating armor plating. While Rorach's Bone isn't the toughest material, a laser rifle excels at pouring out a steady amount of damage over time. That's exactly what Rorach's Bone is meant to counter. If we had someone like Venerable O'Callahan piloting a landbound lancer mech, the story would be entirely different.”
This also signified that the expert mech that showed wasn't undefeatable despite its profligate use of exotics. Some mech archetypes naturally constrained other types. An expert mech based on Rorach's Bone may seem extremely resilient, but as long as a lancer mech or something charged straight at it with incredible force, it wasn't out of the question for an empowered lance to pierce through all of the Rorach Bone-empowered armor plating and demolish a core component.
Ves looked at some of the sensor readouts and saw that the expert mech openly broadcasted its transponder without any encryption.
The name of the expert mech sounded deceptively simple.
Belisarius.
Such an act practically dared the Vandals to bombard it with laser beams. Yet no one moved at this time. Even the mechs fighting in the flanks separated from each other. Every mech pilot worshipped expert pilots, and the entry of one of their kind compelled everyone to halt.
Not even the Flagrant Swordmaidens dared to disrespect an expert pilot. This was a common fault of all mech pilots and one that extraordinarily frustrated Ves right now.
A mere announcement from the expert mech halted all the momentum the Vandal and Swordmaiden mechs accumulated through blood and sacrifice!
After a long pause, allowing the Vandals and Swordmaidens to drink in the Belisarius, the expert pilot spoke once again. Her voice thundered through the battlefield.