Chapter 3154: Different Mech Pilot (1/2)

The Dark Zephyr raced across a large volume of empty space and showcased the full speed and agility of the mech. It danced back and forth as it tried its best to evade hundreds of invisible energy beams.

At this stage, the Larkinson Army and more specifically the Hall of Heroes had refined Venerable Tusa's training regime.

The power of an expert mech was so great that the normal intensity of routine practice was completely inadequate.

Over multiple months, the live training sessions became increasingly more intense, systematic and professional.

For example, in order to conveniently provide a huge practice space where the Dark Zephyr could show its paces without exposing anything, the Black Cats specially procured and modified interference bots in huge batches. Thousands of tens of thousands of them could jam and mess up most forms of detection in a volume that stretched out for plenty of kilometers!

If Venerable Tusa wanted to test the limits of his expert mech's speed, then the bots could be deployed in a long rectangular track so that the expert pilot would be able to gain precious experience in handling situations while accelerating forward.

In order to provide challenging exercises to Tusa without burdening the Larkinson Army too much, the Hall of Heroes also procured small and compact bots that were capable of firing weak, invisible beams that hardly did any damage but could be fired at an incredible frequency without worrying about inflicting any damage to anything. No matter if it hit a starship, a mech, a shuttle or even a human wearing a vacsuit, no one would come to any harm!

This enabled the practice scenarios to be omnidirectional, which meant that Tusa had to worry about dodging attacks from every angle.

The ranged bots came with a variety of targeting modes. They could rely on their awful inbuilt targeting systems. They could connect to a central automated targeting system aboard combat carriers and combat-oriented capital ships for much better results. Mech pilots and other people could even connect to them remotely in order to put their skills to the test against the most challenging foe they faced!

Through these tools and more, Venerable Tusa gained plenty of stimulation from having to dodge these attacks, especially when he did not rely on his mech's characteristic Perception Distortion ability.

At first, his performance wasn't exactly stellar. His ability to anticipate attacks started off rather poor when the ranged bots first came into service. The bots were small and numerous, so it was hard to keep track of their movements. What was worse was that it was hard for the Dark Zephyr to track the activity of their ultraweak energy projectors.

Without the capacity to reliably detect energy and heat buildup just before a weapon released a shot, Venerable Tusa had to rely on other measures in order to avoid getting hit!

He relied heavily on his instincts, intuition, experience and other intangible sources to judge where he should move in order to avoid an attack that he had no objective way of perceiving.

It was outright magical how the Dark Zephyr was able to glide away from a danger zone moments before an energy beam punched through the area!

Venerable Tusa was not only able to do this once, but hundreds of times before he finally slipped up and allowed his expert mech to get grazed.

His performance was drawing a lot of admiration from the other Larkinson mech pilots. Both old and new clansmen were continually amazed at all of the incredible maneuvers that Tusa was able to pull off. The parameters of his expert mech's excellent agility, responsiveness and thrust-to-mass ratio were so high that it was as if they were looking at the shadow of a first-class mech!

Currently, the practice session had become a little more interesting than other times due to the participation of other mechs.

Just over a dozen Ferocious Piranhas tried their best to chase after the Dark Zephyr while being subjected to the harmless beams of dozens of ranged bots.

Unfortunately, compared to the graceful and seemingly prescient Dark Zephyr, the ordinary second-class light skirmishers were doing a pretty bad job at evading the invisible beams!

It was not because the attacks weren't visible. The sophisticated sensor systems of second-class mechs were easily able to detect the weak energy beams, but by the time the systems passed their observations on to the mech pilot, the lightspeed attacks had already struck their targets!

Obviously, ordinary mech pilots did not possess the superhuman intuition and judgement of an expert pilot. This caused the mech pilots that Venerable Tusa took under his wing to struggle considerably.

”Alright, stop!” Tusa commanded.

The bots immediately ceased fire while the mechs turned around and accelerated in the other direction in order to stop going forward and shooting past the interference envelope.

As Venerable Tusa brought his expert mech in front of the Ferocious Piranhas, their respective glows and other influences mingled together. The glows of the Ferocious Piranhas were harmless towards friendlies, fortunately, but their presence still charged the surrounding space with an indefinable energy.

The combined pressure exuded by the Dark Zephyr was not as easy to endure to other people. The combination of an expert mech and prime mech produced a slightly more empowered aura that made the Speed Demons a little more light-headed.

It was fortunate that Tusa's force of will was actually the gentlest and least oppressive out of the Larkinson mech pilots. It was disturbingly easy to overlook Tusa and his expert mech when they wanted to attract as little attention as possible.

”I'm glad to see that you're making progress.” He transmitted to the Larkinsons who received the privilege of receiving direct instruction from an expert pilot. ”To become a true Speed Demon, it is not enough to maximize the thrust power of your flight systems and waste a lot of power in vain. What truly matters is to anticipate attacks, move away from them before they even appear and to keep your mech alive. Excellent training can only take you so far. Just look at the performance of our latest addition. As much as I applaud his trained judgement and his technical piloting skills, he is not the best performer among your group.”

The mech pilots all directed their sensors towards the Ferocious Piranha floating to their right.

This mech was different from the rest because it wasn't piloted by a Larkinson. Instead, its cockpit was occupied by Jessica Quentin, one of the twenty MTA mech pilots assigned to train with the Larkinson Clan.