In the heart of the front lines, the knight Lanis Ailan battled fiercely within his knight machine, oblivious to the impending collapse of his side's defenses. The Avenger Gatling guns mounted on his arms unleashed a torrent of shells upon the distant defensive structures, demolishing one building within a mere three seconds and entombing the foes within its rubble.
Ailan relished the thrill of this firepower, a sentiment echoed by the machine spirit of his knight, the Roaring Rain. In his family, Ailan and his knight were anomalies; typical knight machine spirits preferred to charge forward, decimating foes with chainsaws, requiring their pilots to learn restraint against the machine's instincts. The Roaring Rain, however, was different.
"Die! All of you, perish!" Ailan commanded as he directed the Gatling guns toward a cluster of enemies who had just surged forth from the wreckage of a collapsed building. Most projectiles exploded around the enemies, shrapnel flying, but regardless of direct hits or ricochet, all were deflected by an unseen shield surrounding a drone.
"Damn it!" Ailan bellowed, anger surging within him. He loathed encountering shielded enemies and vowed to show these unwilling foes the consequences of their reluctance to embrace their demise.
Suddenly, the deafening roar of the Roaring Rain resonated across the battlefield. The knight halted its assault, compressing its body as the missile bay atop it elevated towards the sky. A missile launched from the bay, followed by another, then a third, each launch causing the knight's body to shudder until all missiles had been exhausted.
Soaring skyward, the missiles cascaded down upon their targets, erupting and sending debris—human and mechanical—spilling outward. Witnessing the demise of his hated enemies, Ailan erupted into a maniacal laughter, the machine spirit of his knight sharing in the exhilaration.
The rapid-fire of the Avenger Gatling gun intensified, wreaking further havoc on the structures ahead. As he gazed at the flames spewing from the gun's muzzle and listened to the Roaring Rain's resonant growl, Ailan found himself transported back to his childhood.
In the residential quarters of Tyrone II, children played a game of knights, wielding sticks as makeshift melee weapons and engaging in slow, theatrical battles. Ailan had always found this manner of play tiresome; he preferred unleashing firepower upon his enemies, a sentiment his friends and even the elders of his family rejected. He vividly remembered once asking an elder why knights couldn't wield dual Gatling guns, only to be met with disdain and lectures about family tradition.
He had thought he would never have the chance to fight for his family's honor until the day he stood before the Roaring Rain and connected with its infamous machine spirit, notorious for killing its pilots. In that moment, he felt reborn.
"Your family is merely a clan of cowards who fled the power struggles of their home world. What do they know of honor?" Ailan shouted in fury. The enemies before him transformed in his eyes into members of his own family, their crumbled buildings symbolizing the family tradition of close combat.
At that moment, Ailan was a knight equipped with twin Avenger Gatling guns, free to slaughter and directly challenge the family's melee combat traditions. "I am the Blade of Fear! For the Master of Wisdom!" he declared, accelerating forward. The Roaring Rain's legs trampled over the heads of infantry before crushing a tank beneath its weight.
As the infantry in front of the tank heard the rumble of explosions and prepared to cry out a warning, the knight's other leg crushed their heads, the knight continuing its advance. Explosions erupted at Ailan's feet or struck his body directly, yet neither he nor the spirit linked to him showed any sign of fear.
Unaware that soldiers scurried among the ruins, preparing to confront the knight, Ailan pressed onward, oblivious to the fact that these soldiers were not the final line of defense. As the energy fissure in front of the defensive zone opened, the figure of Qin Mo began to materialize.
Observing the knight unleashing a relentless barrage, Qin Mo realized his oversight; he hadn't anticipated that a remote place like Tyrone would have a knight, thus he had failed to design weapons specifically tailored to counter knights. "Our forces have thoroughly disrupted the enemy's lines," Grey's voice crackled through the communicator.
"Excellent," Qin Mo replied with satisfaction. "Now, let's deal with this knight."
Responding to the command, Grey, Anrida, and Yaon, who had been fighting alongside other allies, redirected their course directly toward Ailan's position.
At this moment, Ailan became aware of the individual obstructing his path. He regarded this person with utmost respect, unleashing a concentrated barrage from his Gatling guns. Qin Mo stood resolutely, contemplating how to address the knight when his gravity shield was suddenly assaulted. Countless shells were repelled, but the smoke obscured his vision, only clearing when the helmet's thermal imaging activated, revealing the battlefield once more.
Ailan advanced, firing his weapons. As he moved to stride forward again, the ground beneath him buckled, the leg of the knight sinking as if into a quagmire. The knight's substantial forward momentum prevented Ailan from adjusting in time, causing the entire machine to crash down, its head turning slowly to assess how it had become ensnared.
To his astonishment, Ailan saw his leg completely submerged in the metallic ground, exclaiming, "This is impossible!" The scene before him was utterly bizarre. The metal surface had not collapsed; it remained intact, yet it failed to support the weight of the knight's leg, as if it were... liquid.
Ailan could scarcely believe his eyes. Though he had witnessed many strange phenomena on Tyrone II, he had never encountered anything like this. In his panic, he turned to aim his arm at the person before him and resumed firing.
As before, his bullets were entirely shielded by the gravity barrier. Qin Mo began to manipulate the physical laws governing the area occupied by the knight. Previously, he had only been able to control the physics within a few hundred meters, but while he couldn't directly manipulate the laws of an entire planet, he found it quite manageable to influence the knight and its immediate surroundings.
As he exerted his control, the trajectory of the ammunition transformed from a straight line into an arc. Having successfully warped the physical laws, the Gatling shells all veered off course, crashing into the knight's head. The anguished screech of metal echoed as the Gatling-arm fell with a thunderous crash.
"You really did walk into my line of fire," Qin Mo remarked.
Specialization is key; just as a hellfire gun proves superior against an overwhelming horde of infantry, it pales in comparison to a lumberjack gun against armored foes. When confronting a knight crafted from metal or a similar war machine, it was precisely one of Qin Mo's many strengths.