For the first time since the outbreak of the Sand War, hope began to spread.

It originated from a surprising source.

Across numerous battlefields in the Protectorate, the Kronon defense fleets deployed as usual.

The sandman race continued its mindless assaults on human territories long after the sandman emperor perished.

They showed no signs of stopping! Many analysts already became resigned to the fact that the sandmen would continue to engage in their suicidal attacks until not a single living grain of sand was left!

The only variable was how many humans they killed while their race collided against the might of human civilization!

Without the assistance of the Big Two or the two dominant second-rate states, the Ylvainans, Brighters, Vesians, Reinaldans and many other people had to depend on themselves to save their lives!

After many months of fighting and countless human deaths, salvation finally graced the fatigued combatants.

It came in the form that no one expected, even the Ylvainans themselves!

In one major star system, several mech regiments resisted a large sandman fleet that consisted of up to twenty sandman admirals!

Millions of drones buzzed around three humongous monoliths.

The monoliths each fired heavy laser beams at distant starships, pressuring the Ylvainans into concluding the battle quickly.

Without their motherships, the mechs had nowhere else to go! The Ylvainans couldn't afford to lose their ships, especially when the losses far outpaced their replenishment rate!

However, the starfighter screen that protected the vital Holy Soldiers and other vulnerable mechs were dropping like flies!

Just like the Brighters, the Ylvainans introduced a second generation of starfighter models that featured much more substantial armor.

Yet against the collective might of more than a million drones, these starfighters became flooded with light lasers!

The Eye of Ylvaine did not sit still for long. Three of the Deliverer mechs deployed right at once. They split up in order to encompass three sections of the approaching sandman fleet, determined to strip it down as fast as possible!

"The Hunters of Ylvaine are here!"

"Keep fighting! Don't let the sandmen threaten the Deliverer mechs!"

As soon as the Deliverer mechs arrived in position, they prepared their gauss rifles but held their fire.

The Hunters of Ylvaine had to bide their time.

No matter how many starfighters fell, no matter how desperately their pilots screamed for help, the Hunters of Ylvaine needed to commune with the Great Prophet in order to receive his blessing.

All three Hunters of Ylvaine closed their eyes and immersed themselves in their mechs.

Through trial and error, the Hunters of Ylvaine formed a ritual of some sorts that hastened the onset of the blessing.

The more they immersed in the mech, the greater the blessing!

The more they prayed to Prophet Ylvaine, the faster he responded their earnest pleas!

"Oh prophet, please bless us with your sight and save the lives of your devoted followers!"

"I pledge my life to you! I beg you, expose the wicked sandman admirals and help us exact judgement for their crimes!"

Whenever they arrived on the battlefield, each Hunter of Ylvaine prayed in their mechs as if they were kneeling before an altar.

Though this exposed the mechs to enemy fire, their distance from the sandman fleet made it extremely unlikely that they would get fired upon.

Even if the sandman did attempt to destroy the distant targets, the attending mechs would never allow the Deliverers to be profaned!

A squad of space knights escorted each Deliverer and surrounded it from each cardinal direction.

No enemy was allowed to interrupt this sacred ritual!

With the cover of these valiant space knights, the third eyes of all three Deliverer mechs shone brighter and brighter!

Though they had already shone as soon as they came online, the moment the Hunters of Ylvaine finished their prayers, the glows of their Deliverers connected to their minds at a degree that could scarcely be measured!

In fact, many mech designers tried to figure out which variable caused the third eyes increased or decreased their luminosity.

No one managed to find an answer as of yet! The input that controlled the intensity of their shining crystal orbs seemed to be connected to nothing!

This application went beyond established science. Only a deep understanding of Ves Larkinson's design philosophy would allow other mech designers to replicate this mysterious feat.

Many have tried, but none have succeeded!

The copycats who faked the shining third eyes were easily exposed as counterfeits!

This was because these mechs were devoid of glows or only contained traces of one. The third eyes glowed according to concrete input such as pilot immersion or the quality of the man-machine connection, which was not exactly what an authentic Deliverer conveyed!

What the brightness of the third eyes actually represented was the alignment between the mech pilot and the mech!

Only by resonating with the design spirit of the Deliverer would the mech pilot be able to make the third eye shine a light in the dark!

Right now, the three Deliverer mechs shone like torches in the night, repelling the darkness that threatened to engulf the vulnerable Ylvainans!

"DEATH!"

All three Deliverer mechs fired in unison in very specific directions. Each Hunter of Ylvaine observed the outcome of their shots with unnatural intensity!

As soon as the hyperaccelerated projectiles slammed against three random sandman drones, every mech pilot and starfighter pilot briefly paused.

Just seconds later, a third of the humongous sandman swarm suddenly lost coordination!

Hundreds of thousands of deadly sandman drones seemed to lost their signals and began to drift apart, having received no instructions to turn around and keep up with the swarm!

A collective roar erupted from the throats of the rapturous Kronon mech pilots and Ylvainan starfighter pilots!

"YLVAINE IS WITH US!"

The miracle wasn't over yet! Shortly after their gauss rifles chambered another round, they barked out yet again!

Three more random sandman drones shattered apart after suffering devastating kinetic impacts!

Hundreds of thousands of surrounding sandman drones all lost cohesion! They no longer fired their lasers and simply drifted off as if their souls had left their bodies!

"YLVAINE! YLVAINE! YLVAINE!"

The Deliverers unleashed a couple more volleys, hitting a sandman admiral almost every time!

Though one of the Deliverers happened to miss his target due to extreme distance, the Hunter of Ylvaine quickly made up for it by succeeding upon his second try!

The swarm had ceased to become a threat!

By slaying less than a dozen specific sandman drones, the three Deliverers achieved a result that required at least several mech regiments to succeed!

Just three long-ranged mechs managed to defeat a sandman swarm encompassing millions of drones, each of which were capable of outputting lasers that could overwhelm an entire defensive fleet and scour entire planets of life!

If that wasn't a miracle, then what even qualified as a miracle?!

The foreign observers monitoring this miraculously lopsided result all witnessed this miracle in the flesh.

They had turned numb at seeing miracle after miracle taking place before their eyes.

Most of the foreign observers were secularists who came from supposedly enlightened states.

To see the ignorant and superstitious Ylvainans succeed where everyone else had failed put a very sour taste in their mouths.

Had human science failed them?! Why couldn't the Brighters and Vesians, both of which experienced numerous wars, develop a solution as effective as the Deliverers?

Why had Ves Larkinson, a Brighter and a member of a prominent military family, developed the Deliverers for the Ylvainans instead of his own people?

Too many inexplicable questions surrounded the Deliverers. Many foreigners desperately wanted to unlock the secrets of their design, but none managed to make any breakthroughs!

The only person who could offer a satisfactory explanation happened to be the victim of a strange conspiracy!

A lot of criticism had been directed at the Bright Republic, the Cavendish Family, the Ramza Family and even the Friday Coalition! If not for this extremely ill-timed plot, the other states might have been able to persuade the Bright Martyr in sharing some of his secrets!

Even if Ves Larkinson stayed mum, then at least they could have persuaded him to design their own variants of the Deliverer!

As it was, the Ylvaine Protectorate's willingness to lend the Eye of Ylvaine to the other states offered them an alternate solution!

With such powerful mechs defending their vulnerable star systems, the foreign states would certainly be able to lessen the pressure!

Without the swarms, the mechs and starfighters perished much less quickly!

This was because the monoliths that remained behind were more suited to attack larger targets than small craft!

Without the protection of the swarm, these monoliths inevitably turned into punching bags destined to die by a thousand cuts!

Negotiations, which initially proceeded slowly, gained rapid momentum as the demand for the Hunters of Ylvaine increased!

The Ylvaine Protectorate made a large number of deals with foreign states. Alongside alliances, trade deals, generous payments and the right to proselytize their faith in the foreign states, the Ylvainans rapidly gained influence in the local region!

As long as the Protectorate lived up to its end of the deal, its post-war circumstances would definitely herald a golden age for the Ylvainan people!

As the Ylvaine Protectorate finally signed an agreement with the Bright Republic, the first Deliverers soon arrived at Bentheim.

Hard-pressed by the sandmen, the port system became a graveyard of many starfighter pilots and mech pilots!

The great industrial machine of Bentheim could no longer keep up with the attrition suffered by the Mech Corps and Starfighter Corps!

Even the irregular forces started to bleed valuable mechs and mech pilots! Outfits such as Ricklin's Rollers and the Blood Claws became less and less hopeful about their ability to defend Bentheim.

Only a rare number of notable Brighters lifted up the flag.

"Don't give up!" Vincent Ricklin shouted as his scorched and worn-out Adonis Colossus withstood numerous laser attacks as his mech boldly flew to the front. "Bentheim must never fall! Our brothers and sisters are counting on us! For Bentheim!"

"For Bentheim!"

After living through scores of battles, Vincent Ricklin was no longer the bumbling fool of before.

While his earlier performances were more comedic than heroic, the sheer defensive prowess of his Adonis Colossus always made sure he lived to fight another day!

Though his Sandbreaker rifle often missed and his missile salvos never achieved any critical results, his familiar presence always dispelled some of the darkness threatening to collapse everyone's morale!

Yet sheer charisma alone was not enough to reserve the losses suffered by the defenders of Bentheim!

Under these circumstances, three Kronon mech pilots and their Deliverers finally transferred from Cloudy Curtain to Bentheim.

 

"Boss, something has happened!"

"It's the sandmen! They've withdrawn!"

"What?!"

This was completely out of his expectation! Why would the sandman suddenly halt their relentless assault on human space? A sudden withdrawal would not only give the beleaguered states a valuable reprieve, but also negate many of the gains they have made.

What had changed? Why were the sandmen breaking their pattern?

"It's true! It's all over the galactic net! The entire third line of defense reports that the sandmen have stopped throwing their fleets at human-occupied star systems! Not a single sandman has launched an attack in the last eight hours! The scouts that are tracking the movements of the enemy have all observed the sandman fleets aborting their forward approach!"

"Where are they going?! Are they retreating back to the frontier?!"

"That's the peculiar part about the changes in movement. The sandmen aren't fleeing like scattered sand. Instead, all of their fleets have altered their routes so that they are all converging on a single star system!"

This was shocking news! There was definitely an intelligence behind this change! Whether it was Sigrund or some high-caste sandman leader, it was clear that the aliens were not content to perpetuate their losing trend!

"Where?"

"We're not quite sure yet. More observation is needed to pin down the precise location. What we're certain of is that the convergence site is located somewhere in the territory of the former Coman Federation."

"That means that practically every surviving sandman fleet will converge in a state that is situated straight in front of the Bright Republic!"

This was a massive threat to the state, if tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of sandman fleets all gathered in front of the Bright Republic's doorstep, what would happen once this convergence finished?

Would all of these sandmen form another artificial sand planet like the one that ambushed the CFA warfleet?

Unless the Big Two came to the rescue yet again, this death ball might be powerful enough to smash through the entire Mech Corps!

The Bright Republic was prohibited from developing and fielding weapons capable of destroying planets. While this rule was meant to limit the damage in human conflicts, it also crippled the state's attempt to fight against aliens who were unbound by the rules imposed by the Big Two!

The most important question now was whether the MTA or the CFA would move into action.

 

he sandmen altered their pattern yet again.

The aliens were slow to change their approach, but once they did, it always resulted in significant changes!

After getting beat up by Deliverers over and over again, the sandmen reacted outside of expectation.

Most analysts predicted that the sandmen would have abandoned the swarm configuration that made their sandman admirals so vulnerable against sniping.

Yet it seemed the sandman leaders still in charge had opted to skip a couple of steps and went straight for the final resort!

It was difficult to estimate how many sandman fleets were left. The sandmen drew out nearly their entire population from their territories in the deep frontier and committed them to the invasion.

Even though the human states managed to defeat an incredible amount of fleets, more were still intact and on their way to invade human space!

If the sandmen kept flinging their fleets at human space without strategy, then the states possessed ample confidence in repelling the onslaught.

It was a different story if they smarted up. By taking advantage of their numerical advantage by gathering them up to form a single massive force, almost no state could withstand their might!

A sense of helplessness spread throughout the troubled states. The might of a sandman planet like the one that struck a blow against the CFA warfleet was irresistible by any third-rate state involved in the Sand War!

Perhaps they might stand a chance if they all joined forces and pooled their military strength into a unified mech army, but what were the chances of that happening?

More information quickly poured in from scouts and observers. They managed to infer the star system chosen as the convergence point, and it was right in the heart of the former Coman Federation!

This was bad news for the Bright Republic!

The state just happened to stand in their way if the sandmen kept heading towards the core worlds!

Though it was not out of the question for the sandman planet or armada to alter their course and steer around the Bright Republic, the odds of that was not very high.

The sandmen weren't known for employing tricks. Their leaders set a simple directive, and the lower-caste sandmen obeyed those orders in the most direct fashion possible!

Therefore, if the sandmen were still trying to invade human space, they would certainly take the path of least resistance, which meant they would be proceeding straight ahead!

The mood in the Ylvaine Protectorate grew tense and uncertain. It only took a slight change in direction for the suspected sandman planet to steer the sandman planet towards the Protectorate.

Not even the recent announcement from the MTA allayed everyone's worries.

In the face of such a clear and present threat, the Mech Trade Association could no longer remain impassive. Failing to act against such an overpowering alien threat would certainly impact their reputation to an extent!

Perhaps they were too lazy to deploy their forces throughout the entire front in the earlier stages of the Sand War.

Now that the sandmen were eagerly converging their forces in a single location, the MTA only had to dispatch a single powerful strike force to put an end to their invasion!

The only question was how long it would take for the MTA's Compliance Department to muster up their troops and intercept the sandman planet.

No one knew what the future held. While many people believed that their state would no longer be subject to the ravages of the sandmen, other people suspected that their enemy wasn't so simple!

Time and time again, the sandmen slaughtered so many citizens with the MTA standing by as if the culling was a natural cycle of nature.

Public confidence and trust in the MTA had fallen into a pit! Combined with their obvious preoccupation with the Red Ocean, many humans affected by the Sand War no longer looked up the MTA to save their lives!

The changes affected the Bright Republic the worst. Even though the relentless assault against the Bentheim System had finally ceased, hardly any Brighter celebrated the reprieve.

The Mech Corps and Starfighter Corps rapidly began to reorganize their regiments in preparation for a large-scale action. Whether it was to resume their prior defensive actions or to concentrate their forces to repel a planet-sized sandman behemoth, the Bright Republic needed to make the most out of the temporary lull in battle.

The conditions were slightly better in the other states. The Ylvaine Protectorate and Vesia Kingdom which bordered the Bright Republic were both adopting similar postures.

As for the states situated further away, the mood grew cautiously optimistic. Some even believed that the sandmen would no longer bother them! As far as they were concerned, the sandman invasion wasn't their problem anymore! Let the Brighters and the MTA take care of the sandmen's final gambit. There was no need to intervene any further!

With several distant states declared an end to the fighting and the start of reconstruction, it became clear to the Bright Republic that few states were willing to reinforce its precarious defense lines.

The selfishness of state governments became fully evident when the Bright Republic's pleas were help fell onto deaf ears.

Not even the Ylvaine Protectorate issued a commitment, The Ylvainans don't owe the Brighters anything. In fact, the opposite is true. The ties between the Protectorate and the Republic are too shallow to foster a mutual defense pact. There are too many differences between the two states, and the Ylvainans don't believe the sandmen will change course and attack the Protectorate after they smashed the Republic.

This also means that the Bright Republic won't come to the Ylvaine Protectorate's aid if it turns out the sandman planet attacks the latter instead.

Everyone is gambling like they are taking turns to ride a starship with a malfunctioning FTL drive. Each passenger hopes that disaster will pass them by and that the FTL drive will still hold up.

Considering that the Bright Republic bore the most risk, no amount of diplomatic entreaties could convince the other states to send aid!

Some people even wrote the entire state off! There was no way the Republic would be able to survive if the sandman planet invaded the Bentheim System, which many analysts predicted due to its attraction as a port system!

Still, the likelihood that the Bentheim System will be attacked is quite big. Once Bentheim falls to the sandmen, our home still will lose its economic heart. It will be difficult for the Bright Republic to remain strong. Even if the state manages to recapture the Bentheim System, it has lost centuries of investment and accumulation. It's too expensive to rebuild the local economy, especially since the government is certainly drowning in debt!

The geopolitical implications were considerable. Unless the MTA stopped the sandman planet in time, it was likely that the Bright Republic would suffer an unprecedented period of weakness, What might happen afterwards was bad news for the Republic.

The sandmen fleets that halted their mindless charge into human-occupied planets still converged to a location within the territory of the former Coman Federation. It was difficult for the Bright Republic and other forces to know for sure because the density of sandmen constantly increased the closer they tried to sneak their scout ships into this exceedingly perilous space!

Due to the extensive amount of time needed for the sandmen to complete their mass convergence, the MTA had plenty of time to form a response.

The MTA's Compliance Department finally dispatched a small warfleet to Bentheim. There, the fleet would either wait for the sandman planet to arrive at the port system, or move out to intercept the cataclysmically powerful sandman amalgamation before it came any close to crowded population centers!

The arrival of the warfleet finally pressed down much of the panic that had formed in the Bright Republic in recent weeks. If not for their presence, Bentheim would have probably been engulfed by chaos and rioting!

The only issue of concern was that the Compliance Department dispatched less assets than everyone thought.

Unlike the CFA's formidable Archangel Battle Group, the small fleet anchored in the Bentheim System mostly consisted of a couple of warships and carriers.

In the space warfare doctrine adopted by the Compliance Department, mechs played a much greater role. Even though deploying spaceborn mechs in a battle between warships was like taking a knife to a gunfight, the MTA never gave up the practice. Its mech designers worked hard to turn mechs into a serious contender against warships!

In any case, the mechs fielded by the MTA were a far cry from the Desolate Soldiers and Dawnbreakers that flooded the Bentheim System. The MTA utilized the same kind of first-class multipurpose mechs adopted by the first-rate states!

Naturally, their mechs were even better! Designed to pose a serious threat to warships and the worst weapons employed by the most advanced alien empires known to humanity, the mechs of the MTA were true engines of destruction!

Many of them were able to output so much damage that they could devastate several major cities on Bentheim! Some could even unleash ordnance that could wipe out a small continent!

With so many powerful mechs brought by the Compliance Department, many optimism began to believe the Sand War was as good as over! As long as the sandmen bumped into the impressive mechs of the MTA, even an entire planet couldn't stand a chance!

The movements of the MTA also provided some reassurance to the the Bright Republic.

 

 

Inside a highly-congested space station in the Bentheim System, a lot of spacers and mech pilots were idling and relaxing at its many bars and other establishments of varying repute.

Ever since the sandmen stopped throwing their fleets against human territories like a flood, the defenders of the star systems that had been pushed to the brink all sighed in relief.

When the latest developments became known, the Bright Republic quickly grew alarmed while the other states thanked their lucky stars that they weren't in the way of the final sandman offensive!

Several months had gone by since the Sand War entered into an entirely different phase. As far as the more far-flung states like the Reinald Republic was concerned, the Sand War was pretty much over!

Only the states in the vicinity of the former Coman Federation still sweated like buckets. The Bright Republic may have been the obvious target, but the Vesia Kingdom, Ylvaine Protectorate, Independent State of Pillis and various other states might very well be next!

For this reason, the diplomats from the Bright Republic worked overtime in trying to solicit help from the surrounding states and beyond.

In the meantime, the Mech Corps and the Starfighter Corps eagerly took advantage of the months-long lull in battle to reorganize their deployments and prepare for the clash that everyone saw coming.

Though a lot of Brighters wanted to mourn and take stock of the immense amount of death and loss they suffered, the government didn't allow its population to let down its guard!

A large amount of Peaceful Soldiers regularly patrolled the streets of the major cities. They not only helped with enforcing martial law, but also instilled the correct moods among the citizens who simply wanted to forget about the sandmen!

The Sand War isn't over."

This phrase was repeated over and over across all manner of official communication. The Brighters had to avoid falling asleep just when the sandmen were about to come back to strike one, last blow against the state that had stopped them in their tracks!

Since the Bentheim System was the likely target of the rumored sandman planet, the Mech Corps and Starfighter Corps reassigned a large amount of regiments and divisions to this star system!

Despite the congestion, despite the logistical challenges, Bentheim grew more and more formidable as soldiers and defenders from all over the state converged on the port system!

This naturally led to a lot of congestion, especially at sites where all of them liked to spend their time while on leave.

At a particularly dingy drinking establishment that had clearly seen better days, rhythmic music blasted softly from the ceiling. A low light left much of the interior in shadow, with only a scarlet-purple glow providing enough light for the patrons to pick up their glasses of beer or banter with the right comrades!

At a cramped booth located in the corner of the top floor of the bar, two young women were waiting for their third companion to return with their orders.

Ordinarily, a serving bot should have brought their drinks to their table, but all of the bots long gone out of order.

"Really now." Ketis scowled. "Of all the places we could have chosen, why did he settle for this drinking hole? The ventilation system is on its last legs! The floor is sticky with spilled liquids! The walls and ceiling are already starting to corrode!"

Through the laughter and banter of the other patrons, the noise also started to grate on her ears. While the former pirate was not unaccustomed to rougher crowds, she could always count on her fellow Swordsmaidens to back her up if someone looked at her wrong.

Now, plenty of the men sitting in the nearby chairs, booths and barstools were openly leering at the two women!

Though everyone here had the good sense to avoid going any further, the uncouth stares still bothered Ketis to no end!

If not for the very tight security systems keeping the space station in order, she would have felt tempted to march towards her 'admirers' to poke their eyes!

"Those mercenaries and gangers are not worth your time." Raella spoke from the other side of the booth. "Don't forget why we are here. Soon enough, we might have to depend on them as comrades in arms."

A solemn silence passed between the two women.

"Heya, babes! Why the glum faces?!" A loud and very male voice interrupted their musing.

Three large mugs of beer slammed against the tabletop. The newcomer soon sat down next to Raella and placed her hand on the curve of her bottom.

Raella swatted his arm with a slap. "Not here! Keep your hands to yourself!"

"I wasn't doing anything, babe!" Vincent Ricklin retorted with mock innocence. "I was just appreciating your Larkinson charm. Have I told you that you're gorgeous?"

"Hey, I was just talking, babe! I love my Adonis Colossus! It's the best mech that I could ever pilot! It has brought me so much fame and success! I'd be a fool to give it away!"

The only mech designer at the booth nodded with satisfaction. "At least you know your priorities."

"I feel kind of jealous, actually." Realla sighed. "The Prideful Soldiers and other mechs I've piloted recently are not as good as yours. I really wished I pressed my relation with Ves a bit harder. Maybe that masterwork mech of his could have been mine!"

"Hey. The light skirmisher that I'm designing for you won't disappoint you, Raella. I'm already planning to show it to Ves so that he can make a pass on my design and instill it with one of his glows."

"Is that even possible?" Vincent scratched his head.

"I'm not sure, but I've tried my best to adhere to his guidelines, so I think it will work."

"It won't be entirely your design anymore, though."

"You'll get to pilot a better mech."

"Ah, that's right."

Despite the ongoing Sand War, everyone was already starting to think ahead. What would they do after human space was no longer being threatened by the sandmen? With so many devastated states and star systems, a huge wave of reclamation and reconstruction would soon take place.

Just like the invasion of the Red Ocean, there was plenty of treasure to find among the wreckage of the former border states!

Where there was treasure, there would doubtlessly be a lot of rivals looking to harvest most of the gains.

Vincent Ricklin saw a great opportunity here!

As long as he and his Ricklin's Rollers picked up a lot of valuable salvage, he could grow his mercenary corps further.

Perhaps he might even be able to claim his own planet!

As Vincent grinned and laughed at the prospect of ruling his own planet, both women shared a peculiar look.

"Really, Raella. Why date this dolt?"

"He's fun and he's great in bed! What's not to like?"

"You're not growing any younger. You should start looking for something more permanent than a casual fling."

"Hey, babe, don't call me a casual fling!" Vincent pulled himself out of his latest daydream. He squeezed Raella's shoulder. "I'm really serious about my girl here! Raella is much more than the girls I've been seeing in the past. She can be quite the tigress on and off the battlefield, if you know what I mean."

Ketis did not look amused at Vincent's obvious wink. "Ugh. I don't even know why I bother."

"Hey now, Ketis." Raella began to look concerned. "Having someone by your side who you can click with is a great way to spend your time. I would have gone stir-crazy from all the drilling sessions if not for Vincent here. Maybe you should take a page from our book and start dating yourself."

"I feel like a Hexer. None of the boys here are great. They don't understand me. Not like him..."

"Female Hexers who are disgusted with boys like to hook up with their own kind, right?"

Ketis offered them a grim smile. "The women here are not much better. It's.. not what I want. Back in my old outfit, I always considered my fellow Swordsmaidens to be sisters. I don't want to distort that impression by looking at them in a different way."

"Do you have the hots for Ves?"

Raella immediately slapped her man on the cheek! "Vincent! Don't be rude! We talked about this! This is a sore point for Ketis! Oh, you poor girl!"

"I'm not as fragile as you think I am." The young mech designer sighed and shook her head. "Ves has Gloriana now. They look happy with each other and I'm happy for them. I.. I always felt that Ves was too good for me. It's best that things turned out this way."

"Oh, Ketis.." The exiled Larkinson stretched out her arm in order to hold Ketis' hand. "If I was still with Ves, I would have smacked some sense in him. If I knew he had a fetish for Hexers like Gloriana, I would have smacked his face until he turned back to normal! He really missed out on a sweet girl like you who looked up to him all the time!"

"That part of my life is over. Just let it be. I have already started to look ahead."

"Do you need me to introduce you to some buddies of mine?" Vincent offered. "I know all kinds of fellows who would love to—"

"—I'm fine, Vincent. I can manage on my own."

"Your buddies are all thugs and lowlives." Raella complained. "I know they have been covering your back during your rebel days, but you should really professionalize your outfit. At its current state, it's far from my Blood Claws and barely better than Dietrich's pathetic Whalers!"

"Didn't that loser get kicked out from his own gang?"

"That's not the point. I'm telling you, Vincent. There's no future for you if you continue to run Ricklin's Rollers like a terrorist cell."

"I'm working on it! This isn't something I can change in a day."

He said this the last time, and the time before that. Nothing seemed to have changed. To Raella, Ricklin's Rollers acted more like a bunch of bros with mechs rather than a reliable fighting force.

"I heard Ves and his followers are about to return to the Bright Republic, if only briefly." Raella changed the topic. "My family is quite abuzz about this. What have you heard, Ketis? Are you looking forward to returning to his side? You've already spent quite a lot of time with me. While I'm glad to keep you company, I feel like you are missing out on opportunities."

Ketis frowned. She wasn't quite sure how to answer this question.

Would it be better for her to return to Ves, or try to find her own way to success?

 

meanwhile, an enormous number of ships and mechs had gathered at the Bentheim System.

With the sudden withdrawal of the sandman fleets from occupied human space, many people believed the war had ended.

They came up with several reasons why the Sand War took such a sudden turn when states like the Bright Republic had been pushed to the brink.

The sandmen race returned to sanity.

Killing the sandman emperor caused the aliens to lose confidence.

The invasion achieved its purpose.

Whatever the case, many of the states involved in the Sand War hoped that the ordeal was over.

Sadly, the sandmen weren't done yet. With their original territories ravaged by the CFA, the invasion forces were the only sandmen left in the galaxy!

Instead of running back into the deep frontier with their tails tucked between their legs, the sandman initiated one more suicidal attack.

They concentrated all of their sandman fleets and merged them into one, humongous sand planet.

The size of this planet reached an immense proportion. Not only that, but the scout ships also discovered that the sandman forces brought a lot of valuable exotics and materials harvested from their conquests!

With the reinforcement of a considerable amount of material wealth from thousands of planets, no one had a good idea of what the sandman planet could do! Was it stronger than the capital planet of the sandman empire? Was this the final attack run of the sandman race?

Whatever the case, the entire Bright Republic readied for the final confrontation.

An enormous amount of mech regiments and mech divisions gathered at Bentheim. A lot of star systems along the suspected route of the sandman planet had been evacuated.

Various scout ships had been posted in every single star system in the vicinity of the route. If the planet ever veered away from Bentheim, the defenders would know as soon as possible!

When the sandman planet finally finished its accumulation and set off in the direction of the center of the galaxy, every Brighter held their breaths.

The Mech Corps and the Starfighter Corps in the Bentheim System both increased their readiness and prepared to fight what might arguably be the most important battle in the history of the Bright Republic!

Due to the enormous scope and the historical significance of impending battle, a lot of foreign glory hounds had gathered in the Bentheim System as well!

Vesians, Reinaldans, Fridaymen and many other foreign outfits sought to land at least one blow on the planet-sized alien threat!

Even if their contribution in the battle was negligible, they would still be able to brag about participating in this epic battle!

While the foreigners looked forward to the upcoming clash between the sandman planet and the MTA warfleet, the Brighters were less than enthused.

The foreigners didn't have a stake in the battle. Whether Bentheim got wrecked by the sandman was none of their business!

In contrast, the Brighters all knew that the Bright Republic would only become a shadow of its former self if it lost its economic heart. The sheer amount of commerce, industry and R&D that took place on the main planet was immense!

For many centuries, the Bright Republic benefited enormously from this concentration. It had become one of the main trade destinations in this region of space. While the star system was often crowded with traffic, the vast amount of goods flowing in and out provided lots of opportunities for businessmen across the star sector!

Yet now, the state finally paid the price for putting most of its eggs in a single basket. Against a foe that was so overwhelming that dozens of border states succumbed to their might, the sandmen had proven to be too powerful to resist by third-rate states!

While the soldiers of the Bright Republic prepared for battle, their morale had fallen into a ditch.

It couldn't be helped. In a time where the citizens and servants of the Bright Republic had to lean together to resist the alien onslaught, their own higher-ups suddenly decided to stab one of the most stories military families in the back!

Almost every Brighter disapproved of this decision. Considering the Larkinson Family's considerable prestige and honor, they deserved better!

The Brighters weren't shy in expressing what they thought.

"Why are we letting the Fridaymen run our state?! Do our voices even matter?"

"The bright president has turned into a puppet! What has the Friday Coalition ever done for us? We're already being treated like pawns!"

"If our own government is shameless enough to betray the Larkinson Family, none of us are safe! Mark my words, soon it will be our turn!"

The disappearance of so many Larkinsons across the ranks of the Mech Corps hit the soldiers particularly hard. The reputation of the Bright Republic tanked, and with it the Mech Corps for acquiescing to their tyrannical decisions!

How could the Mech Corps retain any honor when it repaid its heroes with a stab in the back?

Colonel Ark Larkinson didn't deserve to be chased away from his own comrades.

Benjamin Larkinson made too many contributions in the previous war to be dragged away from Rittersberg in chains.

Melinda Larkinson defended Bentheim for months, yet her own surface took her into custody!

All of these Larkinsons and more set an example to the Brighters. A lot of average citizens aspired to become like them. For their heroes to be torn down like this was an immense blow to everyone's impression of their own government!

This led to a slight depression and sense of cynicism among the mech pilots and starfighter pilots, which was very dangerous when the survival of the Bright Republic was at stake!

As the sandmen planet was scheduled to arrive in the Bentheim in the next couple of weeks, almost every Brighter in the Bentheim System prepared for the inevitable clash in their own way.

 

The Bentheim System. Usually bustling with trade ships and passenger ships of all shapes and sizes, in recent days civilian traffic practically dropped to nil.

No more resources were being supplied to the factories on the ground.

No tourists came to experience the hustle and bustle of the Bright Republic's liveliest planet.

No mechs and other manufactured goods were being shipped to other locations.

The star system turned into the opposite of what a prosperous port system should look like.

Part of the decrease in traffic was due to the destruction of a lot of border states.

Without a lot of secure and established trade routes, how could the bounty of the frontier and the border states be shipped towards the center of the star sector?

The loss of so many trading partners already hurt Bentheim and the Bright Republic considerably.

Yet the more important reason why commercial ships avoided Bentheim like the plague was the imminent arrival of the greatest threat the Bright Republic had ever faced!

Captain Rosa Orfan of the Flagrant Vandals sat in a waiting room next to the mech hangar of the Wolf Mother.

The huge and expanded factory ship groaned frequently even in rest. Due to the nature of her numerous additions, the ship never flew as smoothly as ships that were built to this scale from the start.

The Flagrant Vandals were still scraping by after the last Bright-Vesia War. Though the Vandals managed to build up a reputation due to their exploits in the conflict against the Vesians, the sandman invasion quickly sucked up all of the attention.

Funding started to decrease as the Bright Republic became increasingly more preoccupied with pumping as many starfighters as possible.

Due to the great losses the Vandals suffered, the mech regiment never managed to replenish its ranks to its old levels. Other mech regiments needed to replenish their ranks as well, and the higher ups began to disregard the Flagrant Vandals yet again.

Captain Orfan wasn't happy. She had already grown a little bit disillusioned with the leadership of her state, and recent events just soured her feelings even further.

"Why am I even here?" She sighed.

She looked at the empty bottle in her hand and threw it over her shoulder. It clattered against the deck of the waiting room before rolling against the bulkhead.

A cleaning bot soon arrived to take the bottle away and bring it to recycling.

"I know. The Republic I knew is gone."

She activated her comm and checked the overall state of her customized Novabreaker.

As a melee mech specialist, and a landbound one at that, she was not very pleased with her currently-assigned mech.

It was too bad that her opponent consisted of an alien race which possessed absolute superiority up close.

"I'd rather fight the Fridaymen rather than the sandmen! At least you managed to tear down some of their expensive mechs! What I wouldn't give to be a part of that fight!"

The only melee mechs allowed to fight the sandmen were expert mechs. Many expert pilots such as Ark Larkinson already proved that they could keep themselves safe while simultaneously dealing serious against their monoliths!

Captain Orfan wasn't an expert pilot, though. She was just an expert candidate, and the exact circumstances of her advancement were highly unusual.

Expert candidates hardly possessed the extraordinary might of fully-fledged expert pilots.

The only advantage that Captain Orfan truly possessed was that she broke through her human limits. This enabled her to improve at a rapid rate and learn how to pilot spaceborn mechs and ranged mechs remarkably easily.

During the height of the Sand War, Captain Orfan enjoyed so much target practice that she had become quite a decent shot these days!

"It's not the same. Ranged mechs are so cowardly. I can easily crush a dozen mechs by the time my pitiful ranged mech with its pitiful peashooter can barely defeat a single machine!"

The Sand War and the Komodo War both weighed on her shoulders despite her desire to have nothing to do with them. She was tired. She had gone through a traumatic mission in the frontier and still hadn't recovered from all of the friends and comrades she lost.

Fighting the sandmen might have been cathartic to a point, but the stupid sand-like aliens were no better than punching bags. There wasn't any fun or satisfaction in beating them up, especially when another sandman fleet arrived the next day.

As Captain Orfan continued to talk to the air, an alarm finally sounded in the waiting room.

[RED ALERT! OUR SENSOR NETWORK HAS JUST DETECTED A HUGE WAVE OF GRAVITIC DISTURBANCE!]

"The sandman planet!" Captain Orfan gasped.

It was finally time for her to move into action.

While it would probably take hours before Orfan gained a chance to test her mettle against aliens, she still stood up and exited the waiting room.

After she entered the large and cavernous mech hangar, she passed by lots of mech technicians as they ran around to ready the mechs for their impending deployments.

"Orfan."

"Captain!"

"Carry on, techs. We're depending on you all! I don't want a single mech of ours to malfunction today!"

"Don't worry, captain. We've been tuning these mechs for weeks. They're running as smooth as silk!"

The woman eventually reached the site where her Novabreaker stood ready for activation. The mech technicians had already finished prepping it for battle.

"Chief Carmon." Orphan gruffly greeted the chief technician. "How's my mech?"

The middle-aged woman in overalls nodded towards the expert candidate while chewing a stimulant.

"We couldn't implement all of your requests. There's only so much we can do to enhance the firepower of the Sandbreaker rifle. It's a weapon designed for the mass market. There is hardly any room for performance enhancements. The best we could do was to tweak its ammunition and reinforce a couple of portions of the rifle."

The chief technician also implemented some other tweaks. The Novabreaker was an excellent design. Five Ansel Seniors pooled their strengths tot design the award-winning Dawnbreaker mech that had become the preferred model in the Sand War.

Though the Desolate Soldier designed by Ves had an even greater effect on the war, its inherent fragility meant that the casualty rate of its mech pilots was several times greater than the mech pilots of the Dawnbreaker!

The Novabreaker was the militarized variant of the Dawnbreaker. Its performance in almost every aspect surpassed the base model. Though the costs had risen as well, the excellent protection it offered to its mech pilots was incredibly valuable!

After the techs completed their final checks, Captain Orfan entered the cockpit and waited in the darkness.

Nothing except a large projection of a map of the star system lit up the interior.

Right now, a lot of dots of light were interspersed through the Bentheim System.

Most of them represented the mechs and ships of the various mech regiments of the Mech Corps. The bulk of them oriented themselves towards the direction of the former Coman Federation.

Everyone anticipated the sandman behemoth to enter the star system from this direction.

Of course, just to cover their bases, the Mech Corps also stationed plenty of elements in other directions. Even if it was just a low-probability event, the military couldn't afford to get caught with its pants down!

Captain Orfan noted keenly that the Flagrant Vandals were stationed at one of these flanking positions.

Unlike the premier mech regiments, the Vandals didn't have the honor of meeting the foe at the start where all of the recorders would catch them at a good angle.

However, Orphan didn't think the premier mech regiments would have a chance to fire their weapons at all. To many Brighters, the biggest threat in the star system wasn't the sandmen.

It was the MTA.

Though not as formidable as the CFA warfleet that ravaged the sandman empire, the MTA task force with its highly-advanced fleet carriers, formidable-looking cruisers and destroyers and exceptionally nimble combat carriers made for a very impressive sight.

The MTA task force already demonstrated its prowess several times when it deployed its famed first-class multipurpose mechs in leisurely practice runs.

Situated very close to the estimated emergence point of the sandman planet, the MTA carriers were already starting to deploy its mechs.

Captain Orfan patched into a feed transmitted by a nearby scout ship in order to observe the mechs that launched from the carriers.

The multipurpose mechs were bigger and tougher than any of the mechs she was used to dealing with. Many of them were laden with weapons and modules, only a fraction of which were visible from the naked eye.

As a mech pilot who had entered a derelict CFA battleship and looted it of some of its valuables, Orphan didn't regard the mechs with the same degree of envy as her fellow comrades.

Though the CFA and MTA often acted as if they were invincible, Captain Orfan knew very well that they just happened to be the biggest bullies in the galaxy.

She even suspected that the main reason the MTA dispatched its task force to Bentheim was to make a show of force!

The gravitic disturbance grew even greater. Though her Novabreakers didn't possess the sensors to detect more than a fraction of the fluctuations, the ships of the Flagrant Vandals and the network of listening posts and other assets strewn throughout the star system all transmitted very worrying telemetry.

The fluctuations were so large that they covered the entire star system! They reached such strong levels that no one wasn't sure anymore where the sandman planet would emerge!

The Mech Corps waited with bated breath. The mercenary mech pilots who had come to take part in a historic battle also froze. The sensor readings had already exceeded anything they witnessed in their lives!

"They're coming! Wait! They haven't arrived at the front! They're knocking on our rear door!"

A surprisingly small sandman amalgamation emerged at the opposite side of the star system!

Everyone was stunned!

"This is impossible! FTL isn't supposed to work that way! All of the scout ships were sure the sandman planet traveled straight to Bentheim from Sydney Superior!"

"Wait! That's not a sandman planet! It's mass and volume are way too small! It's.. it's just a monolith!"

The fluctuations hadn't ended though. A few seconds later, a dozen different signals spiked from various edges of the star system.

More sandman monoliths emerged in a direction away from where everyone expected the sandman planet to arrive!

"There's more!"

Hundreds of signals spikes. Thousands of signals spiked. Tens of thousands of signals spiked!

Sandman monolith after sandman monolith kept entering the edge of the Bentheim System from every angle! In a matter of minutes, a huge and dispersed ring of sandman monoliths finished their transition back to reality!

A sense of horror dawn on everyone's mind.

"The sandmen fooled us! They never intended to attack the Bentheim System as a single, massive planet! They split up their planet at the final leg of the journey and dispersed back into countless smaller units!"

Even Captain Orfan lost her confidence. Before the sandman race halted its invasion, it had been doing an excellent job pressuring thousands of star systems at a time.

All of those sandmen fleets had overrun dozens of border states and put another dozen states under an incredible amount of pressure!

Now, the sandmen seemed to have eschewed its strategy of dispersing its strength. Instead, it pooled its sandman fleets together to attack a single star system, but not in the method every human anticipated!

Even the MTA appeared stumped at this new development. Even though its powerful task force was capable of deploying hundreds or thousands of first-class mechs, it was impossible for this force to cover each and every direction!

"Looks like this won't be a walk in the park after all!" Captain Orfan concluded.

As soon as the sandman monoliths returned to realspace, they all accelerated forward as an indomitable swarm!

Battle ensued quickly. The Mech Corps stationed a lot of mech regiments at the flanks. The generals did so not just to cover every direction, but also keep the forces in reserve.

Now, the Flagrant Vandals and the other mech regiments stationed in flanks were suddenly forced to sortie sooner than anticipated because the sandmen defied their expectations yet again!

"Where is their sandman planet? Why have they broken themselves up again?!"

"Shut up! Just shoot them! This monolith isn't going down as easily as before!"

"What the hell?! Is that an energy shield?! Since when were the sandmen capable of projecting shields!?"

"Where do they get all of the technology from? Did they engulf an MTA mech or CFA warship?"

"Ahh! That's not a laser beam! That's a positron beam!"

The opening stages of the Battle for Bentheim started off explosively as the dispersed elements of the Mech Corps started to clash against the nearest sandman monoliths!

Soon, they discovered that their enemies weren't as exploitable as before. Somehow, their opponents had level up! Each and every monolith began to exhibit a lot of tricks the defenders had never encountered before!

In many cases, these surprises proved fatal as the upgraded sandman monoliths exterminated the mechs dispatched to halt their advance!

"Where are the starfighters?! We need their help! The monoliths are firing too many energy beams!"

"They're on their way! Hold on!"

"What?! You're only sending a single starfighter regiment? That's not enough? We've already lost a quarter of our mechs to take down a single monolith, and there's another one following right behind!"

The might and numbers that allowed the sandmen to pressure a huge amount of star systems at the same time finally converged on a single star system!

Not only that, but their upgraded monoliths immediately resulted in thousands of casualties in the opening minute as the defending mechs and starfighters were completely caught off guard!

Their enemy had evolved, but the human forces hardly changed!

The worst part about it was that both the Mech Corps and the Starfighter Corps spread out their regiments at the flanks. They still devoted over half of their best units at the suspected front in anticipating the arrival of a sandman planet that would come!

"Fall back! Don't fight the monoliths head-on! They're too deadly and accurate at closer ranges!"

"Damnit! What is the MTA doing?! We need the help of their multipurpose mechs right away!"

The MTA attempted to disperse some of its ships and mechs. A handful of destroyers started generating portals that led to different parts of the Bentheim System in order to rapidly relocate squads of multipurpose mechs in order to ease the pressure on the beleaguered flanks!

The arrival of the first-class mechs instantly turned the tide of the battle! Many of the mechs brought their energy weapons to bear. As soon as they aimed their weapons at a sandman monolith, the muzzles spat out bright blue bolts that instantly penetrated the energy shields carved off huge chunks of sand from the monoliths!

As powerful as the sandman monoliths appeared, they still weren't a match against even a single multipurpose mech!

Unlike the Mech Corps and the Starfighter Corps, the first-class mechs eschewed physical damage weapons in favor of energy weapons with a peculiar disruptive effect.

Each time their crackling blue energy bolts impacted the surface of a monolith, they discharged a lot of energy, some of which were completely unfamiliar to the Mech Corps!

Regardless how it worked, the disruption caused by these impacts immediately disturbed the bonds that held the individual sandman particles together!

As much as the MTA reinforcements provided some much-needed relief, they couldn't be everywhere! While monolith after monolith succumbed to the superior mechs of the MTA, more sandman monoliths pushed through the initial opposition without breaking their energy shields!

On the surface of Bentheim, billions of locals watched the footage with an increasing amount of dread.

Panic had already sparked as the citizens saw that the Mech Corps, Starfighter Corps and even the MTA failed to stem the tide!

"There are too many sandmen!"

"We're all doomed!"

"Why couldn't I get passage off an evacuation ship?!"

In the last couple of months, the Bright Republic attempted to evacuate many citizens from Bentheim. However, Bentheim was the most populous planet in the Republic.

Even with so much time, over a half of the population was still stuck on the surface!

In truth, the government could have evacuated more people. However, it was difficult to divert additional ships to address this need.

In addition, a large majority of Brighters expected the MTA to wipe out the sandmen with each, thereby making an evacuation moot!

This misplaced confidence in the MTA along with the fear that Bentheim's powerful economic engine would shut down forever caused many leaders to put the brakes on the evacuation effort!

Now, billions of Brighters started to lose their confidence as they saw mechs and starfighters dropping like flies in front of the relentless barrage of positron beams punching straight through their flimsy, low-quality armor!

Seeing as the broadcasts were doing more harm than good, the Mech Corps immediately deactivated its feeds. The local government also shut down all of the local communication networks in order to prevent any chances of the locals to patch into another channel that displayed the massacre up close!

Far from stemming panic, the communications blackout instead fanned the flames! The doom and gloom continued to fester without limit as the Brighters let their imaginations run wild!

Unlike before, no more Peaceful Soldiers patrolled the streets. No more Prideful Soldiers kept the rabble rousers in line. No more Desolate Soldiers were in place to instill duty in the minds of the frail!

Ever since Ves turned into an enemy of the state, the Bright Republic forcibly confiscated every LMC mech.

Now, this decision bit them back in the worst possible way!

Panic and mass hysteria soon erupted in Dorum, Haston, Ansel and other densely-populated cities! Due to all of the preparations for the current battle, the local Planetary Guard forces were woefully insufficient to suppress the panic!

Though the existing order on the planet quickly started to break down, none of the senior leaders were paying attention to the events on the ground.

The critical issue remained defeating the sandmen before they reached the planet! Right now, they were doing an excellent job at it as their upgraded monoliths steamrolled through various mech regiments and starfighter regiments alike!

"This shield just doesn't go down! How many times do I have to fire my rifle before I can breach this shield?!"

"AAAHHH! We just sacrificed two mech companies to take down this shield. How come the monolith restored its shield so quickly?!"

"Die sandmen, die!"

Tons of sand and broken wrecks floated throughout space as the scale of the fighting had reached an unimaginable level!

Captain Rosa Orfan was in the thick of one of those battles. She weaved her Novabreaker in various directions in order to remain mobile.

The Mech Corps and the Starfighter Corps learned early on that no amount of armor their assets possessed were strong enough to withstand more than a couple of positron beams! Many of them even succumbed after suffering just a glancing hit!

The sandman monoliths discharged so much energy at a time. It was as if the sandmen emptied out all of its energy savings in order to spread as much pain as possible as sandman race made its existence felt for the final time!

Her Novabreaker whizzed to the left just as a small but deceptively powerful beam missed the mech by a couple of meters!

The Sandbreaker rifle wielded by her mech kept pumping round after round against the monolith. However, despite her skill as an expert candidate, her contribution was no better than that of the starfighter pilots as their basic machines packed just as much punch against a large and relative massive target!

"These sandmen went all in on monoliths!" She gritted her teeth. "It's as if they knew we didn't have the firepower to grind them down!"

Their only hope lay in the first-class multipurpose mechs deployed by the MTA.

Yet as powerful as they performed, the sandmen weren't allowing their monoliths to get beat up for free!

As soon as a multipurpose mech flew in range, the monoliths immediately ignored the pesky starfighters and the mechs of the Mech Corps in favor of unleashing all of their might against the Mech Corps!

Instead of firing hundreds of dispersed positron beams, the monoliths instead concentrated their power and unleashed a single, devastating beam that blasted an entire zone around the multipurpose mech!

No matter how fast the MTA mechs attempted to dodge, they were all struck with remarkably few exceptions!

The monoliths unleashed enough power to blast apart numerous asteroids and more!

Soon after they discharged their entire power reserve, the hot monoliths silently broke apart as the sandmen that consisted of the amalgamation had sacrificed everything to launch this sacrificial attack!

It wasn't enough. Humanity's most powerful mechs were tougher than that! The megabeams not only left a single scratch on the MTA mechs, but also failed to breach their energy shields!

"Watch out! More of them are launching their attacks!

The first monolith only bought time for several more monoliths to get into range! Three of them charged their positron beams at the same time.

Perhaps smelling trouble, the multipurpose mech assigned to guard this zone immediately started to engage its powerful flight systems to rapidly build up a lot of distance!

Boosters and certain warping technology came online to accelerate its sunlight flight to ridiculous speeds!

Yet as much as the multipurpose mech attempted to gain some distance, the monoliths finished charging up their attacks too quickly!

Three bright-blue megabeams of charged particles slammed into the fleeing multipurpose mech with unerring accuracy! No matter how sophisticated their ECM systems threw off targeting systems, the sandmen appeared strangely immune to the interference.

It was as if the sandmen had transitioned from a third-class space pest into a first-class menace!

Though the three monoliths shattered and broke apart after expending their power, they managed to do their jobs.

They successfully felled the multipurpose mech!

As soon as the first MTA mech succumbed against the sandmen, the hearts of every mech pilot stilled.

Though there were many instances where the multipurpose mechs managed to destroy the monoliths, the problem was that there were way too many sandman monoliths!

The MTA task force quickly began to feel the strain as their individual mechs had to contend against half-a-dozen sandman monoliths at a time!

In order to prevent its precious mechs from getting mobbed, the MTA ordered the mechs to team up and cover each other's backs.

As the MTA mechs consolidated together, they no longer succumbed to the sandman monoliths.

However, concentrating these powerful mechs also caused a lot of sandman monoliths to slip through the gaps!

"The MTA is getting overwhelmed! Not even its warships are able to hold back the onslaught!"

Even though the sandmen dispersed their fleets in every direction, most of their elements still arrived at the front.

Though the premier mech regiments of the Mech Corps put up a good resistance, the sandmen didn't pay much attention to them. Instead, they poured their full firepower against the mechs and warships of the MTA!

Their large cruisers and formidable destroyers attracted most of their attention. The awesome firepower of their large caliber weapons broke through the shields of the sandman monoliths far too easily to be left alone!

Though sandman monoliths initially started falling in droves, they soon presented their answer to the might of the MTA warships.

They merged together!

The sandman monoliths organically melted into each other, forming larger and larger amalgamations.

Though that made them bigger targets, the shields they were able to project became increasingly more capable of withstanding the bombardment of positron beams, plasma bolts, fusion rounds and even more exotic attacks such as localized singularities and nanite storms!