4878 Free-For-All
When the free-for-all began, the mechs of Team Larkinson and Team Clive tacitly ignored each other.
This was not to say they had become friends all of a sudden. The overarching reason why the Twin Souls and the mechs designed by the Clives chose to combine forces was because there was a greater threat in the arena!
[The mechs are off to an explosive start!]
[Uh-oh. It appears that Team Reemus is in danger. This free-for-all has immediately turned into a 4-on-2 fight from the moment the match commenced. If this tentative cooperation holds, then the mechs designed by Mr. Eric Reemus and Mr. Yzard Holliston will be the first ones to get knocked out of the competition!]
[I can't blame the colluding teams. The S1 that belongs to Team Reemus is too powerful for its own good. It is an artillery beast mech that possesses far too many guns and too little protection. It is the most high-priority target that needs to be eliminated with haste in order to limit the mass destruction it can inflict onto other mechs.]
The logic of targeting the S1 was clear. Team Larkinson and Team Clive did not gang up on Team Reemus because the latter consisted of a pair of foreign mech designers who had no existing ties to Davute.
Their identities played no role as the actual people piloting the competition mechs were all Davutan soldiers to begin with. These pilots were all professional enough to leave irrelevant matters aside and focus solely on representing the interests of the mech designers who entrusted their works to them. It would damage the credibility of the Davute University of Technology and the colonial federation as a whole if the insiders deliberately targeted the outsiders.
In fact, the people involved in the Twin Weapons Tournament did not particularly mind if a group of foreign tourists ended up winning the championship. Real mech designers only discriminated by ability, not their origins or other circumstances.
Right now, the S1 was in a lot of trouble!
At first, the ranged mechs of the opposing teams opened fire at the large and slow-moving target.
The Furia unleashed a salvo of laser beams and shotgun slugs at the S1 as it zigzagged its way forward. The Sensia had already run ahead in order to circle around the S1 and approach it from another angle.
The Daugen on the other hand opened fire with its powerful integrated gauss rifle. Each shot unleashed by this powerful weapon pierced through the thick armor that protected the S1's structure with relative ease!
The constant attacks immediately debilitated the S1 and prevented it from firing back as effectively as before!
[Oh, look at the S1! It is not going to allow itself to get beaten without a cost. It has turned all of its guns towards the mechs of Team Clive and has begun to pound the combination between the Daugen and the Reedan.]
[The S1 has no other choice. It can attempt to target the Furia and the Sensia designed by Team Larkinson, but the two machines are relatively fast and agile. It will take too much time for the S1's output to eliminate the hybrid mech and light skirmisher. On the other hand, the Daugen and the Reedan are highly immobile once they have combined forces. There is nothing an artillery mech loves to attack more than a large and relatively slow-moving target.]
Jocasta Clive and Romulus Clive had chosen to base the strategy of their mechs on defense and firepower instead of mobility. This had worked out well for them in the previous rounds, but a mech like the S1 directly countered their approach!
As such, the mech designers who wanted to knock out the S1 most of all was Team Clive!
There was no way the combination between a knight mech and a marksman mech could withstand the bombardment for long!
While the assault on the S1 continued, everyone seemed to have forgotten about the T1.
The light tiger mech that possessed deadly plasma claws completely gave up any attempt to protect its fellow beast mech and ran all the way to the corner of the arena!
It looked as if the little kitty had become scared of all of the explosions and loud noises and wanted to run as far away as possible!
If it weren't for the fact that the energy shields that contained the fight within the arena were too strong, the T1 probably would have scratched its claws against the barrier in order to create even more distance between itself and the main fight!
Of course, its pathetic move was not as cowardly as it seemed. The more discerning people among the crowd guessed that Team Reemus might still have a chance of winning the tournament.
Even if the S1 got knocked out early, so long as Team Larkinson and Team Clive turned their weapons against each other, the T1 still had a chance of having the last laugh!
There was no way that the mech pilots of Team Larkinson and Team Clive were ignorant of this possibility. How could they fight against each other when they constantly had to watch their backs against the surprise offenses of the T1?
This was why the Sensia stayed away from the S1 and instead pursued the T1 for the time being. The light skirmisher did not show any fear towards the light tiger mech. The former chased the latter around the entire periphery of the arena field!
Meanwhile, the fight against the S1 turned a little weird after a few dozen or so seconds had passed.
The marksman mech mounted on the back of the knight mech steadily dismantled the S1 from a comfortable distance. Each attack launched by its gauss rifle knocked out a weapon system, a leg or other important internals.
At the same time, the S1 displayed a remarkable degree of redundancy and resilience. Even if it wasn't able to resist the penetrating kinetic rounds as effectively as it wished, its constant kinetic bombardment exacted a huge toll on the Reedan's defenses!
The physical shield that the Reedan relied upon to block the majority of incoming damage was looking increasingly more cracked, broken and deformed.
Even if a single attack from the S1 was not that strong, the sheer volume of fire quickly pressured the Reedan to the point where it would be forced to throw away the remnants of its physical shield in less than a minute!
Even the Daugen couldn't fully escape all of the damage despite the fact that it was hiding most of its silhouette behind the Reedan. A few lucky hits had almost managed to strike its extremely important gauss rifle.
Nothing could afford to happen to this weapon! It was pretty much the only reliable means for Team Clive to defeat its opponents and win the finals!
As the S1 and the Daugen-Reedan combination continued to destroy each other in a destructive firefight, the Furia gradually slowed down its attacks until it had silenced its weapons entirely!
Bobby Orwell recognized that it may be better to let the mechs from the two sides dismantle each other.
The S1 already looked in bad shape due to its inability to properly resist or evade the incoming attacks. Its downfall was already set in stone.
In contrast, the Daugen and the Reedan would still be difficult to deal with because the ranged mech was just too deadly against other mechs!
The Furia therefore diverted from its original trajectory and conscientiously moved away while continuing to perform evasive maneuvers.
[Oh! What is this? The Furia has decided to allow Team Clive to finish off the S1 alone!]
[Why should Team Larkinson do Team Clive a favor? The Furia's ammunition and energy reserves are limited. It is better off saving its firepower for later. So long as the Daugen and the Reedan remain easy targets, the S1 will not turn its guns against the Sensia and the Furia.]
When Ves threw a glance towards the mech designers of Team Clive, he could see that Jocasta Clive had become a lot more upset!
The Larkinson mechs had left the Clive mechs to fend for themselves!
If it wasn't for the fact that the identities of Jocasta and Romulus Clive were a bit troublesome, Ves would have burst out in laughter by this time!
"Well, that's what you will get for going for a free-for-all." He smugly said.
Even though the Daugen and the Reedan were left to fend for themselves, they still possessed the upper hand in this ruinous firefight.
The Reedan lost its physical shield a while ago and had to rely on its armor alone to resist further attacks.
Fortunately, the defensive mech's construction was impressively solid. Romulus Clive was an accomplished defensive specialist who was roughly on par with Sara Voiken.
With the cover of the Reedan, the Daugen had managed to knock out another kinetic cannon, which meant that the S1 only had two more intact weapons left to pound its targets!
Just as the Daugen-Reedan combination was about to neutralize the S1 one way or another, its mech pilots received a sudden alert!
[What?! The Sensia has stopped fighting against the T1. The two light mechs have circled towards the rear of the Daugen-Reedan before they have subsequently changed their course to the combination mech!]
[Team Clive is in trouble now! It appears that Team Larkinson has entered into a different tacit cooperation with Team Reemus!]
[How devious! Who could have seen this development coming?!]
The Daugen and the Reedan had been designed to fight against two opposing mechs at most.
They had never been designed to fend off three mechs at once, especially when they were approaching from different directions!
The combination mech was not completely helpless, though. The Daugen was able to pull out an additional submachine gun and use it to spray the approaching light mechs with a torrent of rounds.
The Reedan also tried to turn around in order to use its sword to fend off at least one of the light mechs.
However, the Sensia and the T1 seemingly turned into bosom buddies overnight and cleverly approached the combination mech with a pincer movement before pouncing at the same time!
The Sensia angled itself away from the Reedan's sword and mercilessly utilized its twin daggers to strike anything sensitive within its attack range.
The T1 meanwhile activated its incredibly draining plasma claws without hesitation and almost managed to eliminate the Daugen with a single searing strike!
It only took four more plasma claw attacks for the T1 to destroy the Daugen's crucial gauss rifle and take down the ranged mech entirely!
The Reedan meanwhile succumbed from a combination of the S1's lessened artillery salvos and the Sensia's flanking attacks.
[Team Clive… is out! The Daugen and the Reedan are the first two mechs in the arena to lose their combat effectiveness. The final rank of this team is third place!]
Just when everyone thought that Team Reemus would get knocked out of place first, it turned out that Team Clive got eliminated first! This was an absolutely shocking turn of events, especially since it happened to the mech designers of the Clive Consortium of all people!
[The final remaining teams in contention have already begun their final confrontation! With no more distractions left in the field, the mechs built by Team Larkinson and Team Reemus have immediately ceased any tacit cooperation that existed between them. Only one side can remain standing!]
This was not an even confrontation. The T1 only incurred light damage so far after getting hit by the Daugen's submachine gun, but the S1 was in terrible shape!
When the Furia approached the S1 from the rear, the latter was only down to two intact kinetic cannons, both of which were oriented in the wrong direction!
The Larkinson hybrid mech only needed less than thirty seconds to finish off the defanged heavy artillery spider mech.
Team Reemus was down to a single mech! The T1 needed to put up a heroic performance if it wanted to defeat the Sensia and the Furia!
