"Fucking bastard…just refuses to die…
Beside me, Jiao Ao was swearing under his breath. He was clearly pissed off by my tenacity. Good. The angrier he was, the more prone to making mistakes he would be.
"Hey, why aren't you using a Commander as well?"
"Are you kidding? There's no good Commander for mech."
"Then he'll lose at this rate."
Unlike in tournament places, there were no soundproof booths, so I could hear every single word uttered by the spectators. Unfortunately, I didn't need them to tell me that I was in quite the horrible predicament. Having suffered the full strength of Jiao Ao's Demon Lord, I had seen how terrifying it was.
My ground army wasn't going to be able to withstand another onslaught from Jiao Ao. The amount of my opponent's army that I had destroyed was several times more than the amount of army I had lost, in terms of resources. Mech was a very cost-efficient army. It had to be, because of our turtle strategy and lack of mobility, which meant that we couldn't expand as rapidly and widely as a bio army, or the other races. So we needed to trade blows with the enemy very efficiently, or we would lose. Very badly. Especially in a war of attrition like this one.
Worse, mech units were high-tech and required not just tons of resources but also a long build time. It took almost forever to build up a maxed out mech army. And now I had lost almost all of them. If it weren't for my relatively huge squadron of Broadsword gunships that I had been stockpiling, I would have lost the game there and then.
On the other hand, after the significant amount of damage that Jiao Ao took, he would need a long time for his Demon Lord avatar to regenerate back to full health. At the very least, I had succeeded in buying myself some time.
"What are my other options?"
I glanced through my screen, clicking on tech trees and build options on my Engineers. I knew them by heart, but I thought it best to review them again, in case I missed anything out during the heat of battle. God knows how susceptible I was to stress.
Pushing my glasses up my nose, I considered building my own Commander. Looked like I didn't have a choice – a Commander was just too valuable an asset to not use, especially against an opponent who was also using one. Resigned, I began building my own avatar with the help of my Engineers, while struggling to re build my decimated army. I sent roving bands of Broadswords to patrol my expansions, keeping away harrying hellhounds and aggressive Cerberuses. Fortunately, hellhounds, Cerberuses and Mastodons did not possess any form of anti-air, and they just died to my Broadsword.
For some reason, Jiao Ao didn't care about that, and continued to squander his resources, throwing waves after waves of hellhounds, Cerberuses and Mastodons at me, only for them to die. Then again, he had majority of the map and the resources to spare, but I pushed forward and succeeded in capturing a couple of his other bases, thanks to a concerted push from my ragtag army. My Broadswords forming the tip of a spear, and the few Titans and accompanying Salamanders served as the heavy shaft. Fortunately for me, Salamanders were manufactured very quickly, and they were relatively cheap, so I practically had a whole horde of them swarming the enemy's bases.
The trade-off was that the scout-buggy version was incredibly fragile, possessing low health and low armor. If I transformed them into battle armor, they would become incredibly durable and armored, their health increasing by 50%, but they lost their swift speed and became very immobile. Nonetheless, I wasn't in any rush. I was still in the process of rebuilding my army, so I had my slow but heavily armored Salamander battle armor escort my lumbering Titans.
The presence of Titans was probably why Jiao Ao didn't switch to air and harass me with Gargoyles and Guardians, or Fallen. The Titans would blow them out of the sky with their anti-air missiles. On the other hand, the Titans were countered by cheap, fast-moving units such as hellhounds, which would swarm them and overwhelm the cumbersome giant robots through sheer numbers. That was why I needed the Salamander escort.
Whatever intelligence I could gather by scouting ahead with Salamander buggies – the poor vehicles on a suicidal course, and wrecked immediately after a second or two of infiltrating the enemy's base – indicated that Jiao Ao's Demon Lord avatar was recovering somewhere, trying to get back to full health. There was also a malevolent glow about him, signifying a change in upgrades. Given that he already maxed out, he couldn't possibly enhance or upgrade himself further, but he had the option to switch upgrades. In other words, he would have to first downgrade himself – removing a certain capability or upgrade such as high armor – and then choosing a different upgrade to replace it, such as high speed, or flight.
What upgrades was he getting?
I was tempted to respond by building more Broadsword gunships, but I only added a couple and went full-blown Titan production. The reason was simple. The Commander unit I had chosen to construct was a ground-based mechanical type. A commander piloting a Titan War Armor. I could have gone Tank Commander to buff the damage and attack speed of my Panzer tanks, but since I like robots a lot more, I went for a mecha pilot instead.
That was why I stopped tank production and focused on Salamanders and Titans. My Commander unit could buff both Salamanders and Titans, increasing their durability and firepower. Salamanders in my vicinity would gain personal energy shielding, whereas the defensive properties of my Titans' personal guardian shield generators would triple. The damage of their attacks would also double. While that sounded pretty formidable on paper, the buffs only improved what mech was already good at, but didn't mitigate its one weakness.
Immobility and complete lack of speed.
All the firepower in the world was useless if you couldn't catch up to your enemies. This was why bio armies were a lot more popular than mech. They could employ hit and run tactics, refusing to take a straight-up fight, and abuse their maneuverability to launch surgical strikes that crippled the opponent's infrastructure. Their speed allowed them to strike at gaps in my army's defense, destroying the tanks before they could lumber into position and siege up, and halving the firepower. The same tactic could be employed by the rapid, swarming army of the Demons, and swiftly soaring Psidorks atop flying saucers.
Also, the Demons could afford to lose their maxed out army a couple of times because of how cheap their units were, in comparison. Indeed, Jiao Ao had no qualms throwing away waves after waves of Hellhounds, and abandoning bases just so he could buy enough time for his own Commander.
"Ugh…!"
I heard him seething in the next booth, and the noise of his fingers banging against the keyboard intensified. A horde of Gargoyles swooped down on my dancing Broadswords, only for Javelin missiles to explode amongst them and took them out. Mastodons were brought low by concentrated plasma bombardment from circling Broadswords. Cerberuses and hellhounds were held back by Salamanders, the former blasted apart by Titans' charged particle beams.
For a moment, there was silence. I slaughtered the demonic forces that hurled themselves at me, and then consolidated my position at the newly captured base. Engineers rolled forth to begin erecting defensive lines, turret rings and a headquarters, which I would later upgrade to a fortress. My robots took up position around the base, the pilots taking the opportunity to rest.
The peace did not last long.
Then Jiao Ao finally emerged from his primary base, stalking toward one of the tertiary expansions I had just encroached upon and made my own. With him was a newly spawned army, fresh out of the pools and hellgates. Inhuman shrieks and monstrous roars filled the air as the bestial tide swept toward my newly erected defenses and row of robots.
Moving my mouse, I had my squadron of Broadswords intercept them. Remembering the battle from before, I had them swoop down on Jiao Ao's avatar, leveling their turrets and firing plasma bolts at the Demon Lord.
With a roar, Jiao Ao leaped high into the air, his wings unfurling and spreading widely. The Demon Lord took flight and streaked toward the stunned squadron, his malefic talons lashing out and tearing the hapless gunships apart. They continued to bombard him as best as they could, their deadly firepower taking out a huge chunk of his health, but he effortlessly ripped them apart one by one. Grabbing hold of the wing of one Broadsword, he tore it out and kicked it, sending the poor aircraft down in a doomed spiral. Leaping to the next, his claws cleaved the cockpit from the main body of the gunship, and the pilot's yells were drowned out by an ensuing explosion. His tail lashed out and struck a third Broadsword, causing it to swerve. Before the panicking pilot could regain control, Jiao Ao had spun around and sunk his claws deep into the fuselage, crushing the protesting metal. Plasma bolts continued to pummel him, but he shrugged them off and leaped into another one.
While the carnage in the air continued, the ground below turned into a chaotic melee as the first wave of demons slammed into the lines of Salamanders. Hellhounds were burned into a crisp, their small forms incinerated instantly to ash by the immense firepower of their upgraded flamethrowers, the blue flames washing across the clearing in a raging inferno. The Mastodons were next, but while their immense scythe-claws (or tusks?) could easily cleave the Salamanders in half before, now their claws scrabbled uselessly against the gleaming shields that projected outward from their mechanical bodies. The azure forcefields shimmered from the relentless onslaught, the Cerberuses' claws and the Mastodons' scythes assailing them, but the buffs from my Commander Titan were considerable, and they held strong for a few precious seconds longer than they had any right to.
Then my Titans opened fire.
The Mastodons and Cerberuses that survived the inferno were obliterated instantly, their massive forms torn apart by highly charged ionized beams. They died faster than before, especially since the Titans were doing double the damage that they usually did.
"What the fuck?!"
Soaring high above, because he was still busily ripping my Broadswords apart, Jiao Ao turned his head to look below and saw his army getting slaughtered. Because he was high in the air, he was not able to buff his army, and now they were the ones getting massacred. Clicking his tongue, he dove toward what remained of his forces, trying to rally and buff them simultaneously.
"Switch targets!" I ordered inside my Titan, and the heavily armored bipedal walkers obeyed, the whole column swiveling around to point their charged particle cannons and missile launchers above. The combined volley of blue lightning and Punisher missiles slammed into Jiao Ao and exploded, causing the Demon Lord to crash some distance away from his army, which was being held back by my Salamanders. The smaller battle armor's line was slowly crumbling, their shields giving out and sparking into oblivion as they were overwhelmed by the behemoth-sized demons – especially since their damage and attack speed had just gotten buffed because Jiao Ao had finally gotten within proximity of them, but I left them to continue holding the line for now.
We just need a few more seconds…a few more seconds…!
Bellowing, Jiao Ao staggered to his feet, lashing out with his malefic talons and slashing another Broadsword down from the sky. The Titans continued their barrage, even as the line of Salamanders finally collapsed under the sheer weight of the heavy demons, the Mastodons and Cerberuses stampeding over them. They crashed into the Titans, slashing and biting, but the heavily armored walkers' shields held strong. Azure forcefields gleamed and rippled, absorbing the deadly impacts of the demons' claws and fangs without buckling.
The buffs of my Commander Titan were working, augmenting the defense of their shields and ensuring we could sustain much more punishment than before.
Despite the huge demons getting into melee with us, I continued to direct the bulk of the Titans' firepower at the stumbling Jiao Ao. I didn't care if I lost this game. Even if I was defeated, I wanted to at least take out Jiao Ao's avatar and destroy his Demon Lord…I wanted to slay his Commander unit. That would be a moral victory in itself. Nothing else mattered, even if my army was annihilated and he won the game.
As long as I could destroy that Demon Lord…!
"NOOO!"
Jiao Ao howled when the overwhelming firepower finally blew apart his slowly retreating Demon Lord. As a last-ditch effort, he spun around and took off, spreading his wings and flapping them desperately. However, several Punisher missiles streaked into his fleeing back and detonated, ripping his wings apart. He crashed clumsily onto the ground, only to be caught in a crisscrossing network of charged particle beams that cut him apart. One such beam sliced off his malefic talons and he reeled, clutching at his cauterized stump. Another loped off his legs right above the knees and he toppled over, face slamming into the dirt, writhing around.
"This can't be happening! I flew away! I flew…!"
Then his head was blown apart by a well-aimed charged particle cannon. Coincidence or not, the strike came from my Command Titan, its barrels smoking before I took aim again and sent a pair of searing beams through his ruptured torso.
Jiao Ao was dead.
I watched as the guardian shields flickered off, my Titans' protective screens finally unable to withstand the onslaught of the Mastodons and Cerberuses. There were so few of my Titans left, and the demon swarm was endless. That was fine. They could annihilate us now. I had achieved my objective.
At least that was what I thought, so I was just as surprised as everybody else when I saw the victory message manifest proudly across my screen.