Chapter 7313: The Battle of Philaster Crestia

The decisive battle had begun.

After several hours of waiting, the Voribug Organic Battle Moon had stopped a short distance away from Philaster Crestia III.

Though the moon did not advance into weapons range, just the fact that it was orbiting relatively close by already exerted a lot of pressure towards the defenders.

The Rubarthan soldiers gritted their teeth and tried their best to focus on their immediate responsibilities.

The Goliath Hive did not deploy its Goliaths right away.

Instead, tens of millions if not hundreds of millions of cannon fodder bugs began to flood the orbital defense network.

A huge number of guns opened fire onto the seemingly unending swarms. Even though the soldiers all knew that the Goliath Hive actually fielded the least amount of cannon fodder out of the 6 hives, it certainly did not feel that way given that there were bugs in every direction!

The mech pilots, spacers and orbital techs all felt pressured as they tried their best to repel the onslaught of mutated voribugs. From their perspective, there was no such thing as too few voribugs.

They were already straining to hold back the tide, and this was when they were still in the early phase of the battle!

Many of them endured so much strain that they began to call for reinforcements to relieve their beleaguered positions.

Unfortunately, there was not enough backup to go around. The Goliath Hive did not attack the planet from every angle, but its forces had spread out just enough to lock down many defending units in place.

Although it sounded counterproductive for the mutated voribugs to spread themselves out and attack the planet from multiple angles, conquering a planet was not easy.

The enemy needed to thoroughly dismantle at least half of the orbital defense works in order to secure one side of it from bombardment.

Attacking from multiple angles also had a very negative effect on morale.

All of the soldiers knew that if the enemy bugs maintained their blockade, it would become increasingly harder to feed the locals.

Whether out of a sense of duty or self-preservation, the soldiers assigned to the areas under siege all experienced complex but ultimately firm emotions.

“Shoot! Shoot! Shoot!”

“Don’t hold down the trigger. Conserve your ammunition. Our resupply schedule can’t keep up with your ammo consumption!”

“Requesting backup! My orbital platform is about to get overrun!”

Even though it was just the prelude to the most intense phase of the battle, soldiers already began to suffer and die.

The voribugs attacked with such ferocity that hardly any human could take a break.

Out of all of the assets that came under siege, the orbital platforms suffered the brunt of the damage.

All of the mechs and warships in the field were mobile enough to evade the initial enemy attack waves.

The much larger and more formidable orbital defense fortresses could withstand much more damage with the help of their titan shields.

The smaller orbital defense platforms lacked such defenses. They were built with a certain degree of economy in mind. Once their azure energy shields shattered apart, they could only rely on their relatively thick layers of medium-grade armor plating to withstand the attacks of the voribug swarms.

The crews of the orbital platforms never survived once the voribugs ate their way through all of that armor.

Yet the remaining ones still fought as if their lives were on the line. They all understood the stakes. They could not afford to retreat prematurely, but neither could they stand their ground and endure wave after wave of cannon fodder bugs.

The psychological impact of fighting against these swarms was very bad.

The Goliath Hive clearly bred these cannon fodder bugs with the cheapest of materials in the Philaster Crestia System. The voribugs simply converted worthless asteroids and mundane materials into the weakest and most common of subspecies.

The value of a single bug was far too low, yet because they were so numerous, the defenders had no choice but to expend valuable energy and ammunition just to mow them all down.

“These bugs never end…”

“Is the Pact doomed from the start?”

“I won’t… die to these worthless bugs…”

At least the native aliens possessed a semblance of honor and dignity. As murderous as they may be, they were still opponents that humans could understand. Dying to an honorable alien soldier was preferable to getting devoured by a multitude of weak and pitiful voribugs!

Several hours passed by as the defenses continued to endure attacks.

Since the Goliath Hive was not in a hurry to bring out the big guns, the defenders tried their best to conserve their resources.

Everyone knew that fighting against the mutated voribugs always ended up in a battle of attrition.

Even in a battle against the Goliath Hive, any force that failed to last against the swarms had no capital to win.

The enemy willingly squandered the lives of all of the cannon fodder bugs in order to gain an advantage in the subsequent rounds.

By the time the megavoribugs made their advance, the depleted defenders might not be able to endure for long!

This was why it became crucial for the champions and elite units to hold back and conserve their resources as much as possible.

While there were expert mechs roaming about in order to plug any gaps that had emerged across the orbital defense network, the ace mechs and other powerful assets conspicuously remained absent on the battlefield.

Deploying them early meant that they would not be able to fight against the Goliath and the Incubator with their full strength. They could afford to lose this confrontation, so as much as these heroes wanted to tear into the voribugs, they did their best to restrain their restless hearts.

This naturally included the 28 Ascended Giants. They found it more difficult than the other soldiers to remain inside the Armitage.

Each of them had already donned their raiments, yet none of them received permission to sortie and display their heroic demeanor in front of the Rubarthans.

“Sir, when will we be allowed to fight?”

“When the enemy sends out its Goliaths and battle moon.” The Divine Harpoon calmly answered for the umpteenth time. “Only several hours have passed so far. The Goliath Hive is not done with exhausting the defenses of the nearby planet. This assault is unlike any other. The voribugs no longer have a need to test their Goliaths against us, so they are doing their best to get our more valuable units to exhaust their resources against their least valuable ones. If you have any functional brain in your giant skull, you would know this already.”

Each Ascended Giant used to be an elite soldier or combat back when they lived mortal human lives. None of them should have asked this kind of question.

“Where is our polemarchos? He should be leading us in our time of glory.”

“The Dark Apostle is handling other matters at the moment. He will arrive before us when the time has come and not before.”

The leader of the Ascended Giants was not with them at the moment.

As a mech designer as well as a human phase lord, Ves saw no point in fulfilling the role of the latter at this phase of the battle.

Instead, he remained in his workshop and kept tinkering with his raiment and his weapon systems.

After fabricating a handful of exploding spears for the Riot Mark III, Ves no longer spent his time on making additional ones.

While they would definitely be able to make a regular Goliath hurt, the more powerful ones were not that easy to eradicate.

Their greater size and rapid regeneration capabilities made it impossible to eliminate them in one fell swoop.

As long as that was the case, the Level 7 Goliaths would easily be able to restore their bodies by absorbing large amounts of cannon fodder bugs.

This was by far their most annoying trait. Burning their flesh with plasma weapons helped to inhibit their regeneration, but the efficiency was too low.

Regardless, the Rubarthans had supplied scaled up plasma weapons to every Ascended Giant attached to the Bluejay Fleet because they had nothing better on hand.

Ves received a weapon from them as well.

The hyper plasma halberd featured plenty of reach and could project a fairly long plasma blade.

Since the Rubarthans specifically designed it for Ves, they went out of their way to improve its materials and craftsmanship.

Although it was not a masterwork weapon, any Ascended Giant would be happy to wield this powerful plasma halberd.

Not Ves.

When Gloriana visited his workshop, she conspicuously noticed that the gifted Rubarthan weapon still rested inside its container.

It turned out that Ves hadn’t even bothered to open the massive ‘gift box’.

“What are you doing, Ves?”

“I am figuring out how to upgrade my superdimensional spear?”

“The Sting, right? Why are you so invested in this last-minute endeavor? Is it not enough for you to make use of the Rubarthan gift? Aside from its energy consumption, it is truly a powerful weapon.” Gloriana remarked.

“Plasma weapons are bandaids. You know that as well as I do.” Ves argued back as he continued to tweak his design for his upgraded weapon. “Fighting against the Goliath Hive does indeed require strength, but it also demands a counter against the attrition warfare doctrine that the mutated voribugs so love to employ. We need to expend the least amount of resources to inflict the maximum amount of destruction. We can’t do that by using plasma weapons willy nilly.”

His wife frowned but did not argue back. She knew his points were valid. If there was a possibility to develop a better weapon, then it was worthwhile to explore this possibility.

“What do you have in mind?” She asked.

Ves pointed at the container set on a nearby table. “Do you remember the Corrupting Orb that I managed to obtain in the past?”

“I do. You used it during the leadership challenge. Wait, are you thinking of using it to corrupt the flesh of the voribugs?”

Ves grinned. “Something like that. Recently, I built a high-grade dimensional spear mixed with TE wood for myself. Back when I designed it, I already had this possibility in mind. I want to combine as much of my knowledge related to hyper technology, E-technology and qi cultivation into the creation of a spear that can not only pierce through anything, but also wither the bodies of my enemies. To put it differently, I am basically trying to convert my knowledge on how to load the withering curse into my weapon artifact.”

That caused Gloriana to raise her eyebrows!

“That sounds difficult. You are treading new ground with this. At the very least, you will have to employ runes in order to program the weapon.”

“I know. Runes are not as mysterious as before, Gloriana. The Ascension Runes that third-order living mechs are able to accumulate over time. The Red Collective has also built up a respectable database of runes. The true challenge lies in combining them and applying them to an artifact. I may have the Oceancaller as a reference, but the traditional craftsmanship put into this work is so deep that I can’t replicate the production methods. I still have to figure out a lot of stuff on my own.”

“That does not sound as if you can meet your goal within a short amount of time.” His wife responded with a frown.

“Hehe, normally you’d be right, but who do you think I am? Creating living objects is my expertise. I have always bypassed the stringent requirements of traditional craftsmanship by making my stuff alive. The conversion from a dead object into a living entity often creates new possibilities. I have often used this to fill up the gaps of an incomplete design. Right now, I am gambling on whether the incomplete framework of a withering spear can be completed by turning it into a basic high-level artifact.”

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