Chapter 410: Discovery!
Translator: ryuxenji Editor: H2dH2mr
Qiao Ting's heart clenched, and his first reaction was to check on the Lingtian Mecha Clan's numbers. The other side still had 12 people. His brow furrowed as he wondered whether his team members were just unlucky enough to bump into one of the three special-class operators of Lingtian.
Qiao Ting was not particularly frustrated or regretful that one of his members had fallen — on the battlefield, anything could happen; luck was also a major factor. Still, for one of his members to be done in by the opponent in just one minute, Qiao Ting was rather disgruntled. He felt that even if his team member was only an advanced mecha warrior, they should still be able to hold out for at least two to three minutes. Being finished off in less than a minute was like a slap in the face for him.
Right then, Qiao Ting still did not know that his team member had only encountered an advanced mecha warrior of Lingtian's. He had only been defeated so swiftly because he had underestimated his opponent and fallen for the other's trap. On the other hand, it was fortunate that he did not know this, otherwise he would have definitely blown his top.
Qiao Ting knew the importance of morale; he could not allow the morale of Lingtian's battle team to blaze higher from this. Thus, he decided to take action and begin searching for opponents. He wanted to eliminate a few members of Lingtian to push down the other side's numbers and suppress their morale.
However, this map was too vast — Qiao Ting could only choose a random direction and skim across the land rapidly as he used the radar of his ace mecha to scan his surroundings.
The radar on an ace mecha was two ranks higher than that of an advanced mecha's. It could pick up conditions within 5 kilometres. Qiao Ting believed that as soon as they were discovered by his radar, Lingtian's members would never be able to escape his grasp. In terms of speed, advanced mecha were utter trash before ace mecha.
Just as Qiao Ting was conducting his search, the situation shifted drastically. The numbers on both sides began to change constantly — for almost every two or three minutes that passed, Qiao Ting would receive another notification that a Leiting member had been defeated and eliminated from the field. Ten minutes later, Leiting was actually down 5 members, his team's overall member count dropping to 7, almost half of their initial number.
Luckily, Lingtian had also suffered some losses in these ten minutes, losing three of their own. Still, Qiao Ting's mood had already been significantly soured. It was very obvious that in the frontal clashes between the two teams thus far, Leiting was now at a disadvantage.
"Bloody Lingtian." At this point, Qiao Ting could no longer maintain his composure. He could not help but curse.
Right then, a warning rang out from the A.I. of Qiao Ting's mecha. "Beep! Caution, three unidentified flying objects discovered ahead!"
This alert made Qiao Ting's spirits rally. Perhaps because the map was too large, and Qiao Ting's luck also did not seem very good, within these ten minutes, Qiao Ting had not encountered a single Lingtian mecha, nor had he come across any of his teammates. Qiao Ting was rather disappointed by this. Even though he really wanted to hack and slash at the opponent to suppress the other side's morale, he was truly helpless against the empty vastness of this map.
Qiao Ting's first decision was to close the distance between him and the three unidentified objects. Clearly displayed on his mecha's screen, from about 5 kilometres away, three mecha were approaching him in a triangular formation. The three mecha's bodies were exuding the red light marking an enemy faction, and Qiao Ting was extremely familiar with one of the mecha. From its appearance alone, Qiao Ting could tell that it was an old rival of his, that boorish special-class mecha operator Zhao Jun. There were two other advanced mecha behind him; it looked like the three mecha had formed a battle column.
Seeing this, Qiao Ting vaguely understood how his team members had been eliminated within such a short amount of time. They were very likely to have been surrounded and beaten to death by the opponent's greater numbers. Rage surged in Qiao Ting's heart. The mainframe was obviously biased towards the Lingtian Mecha Clan for this scenario to happen. It was likely that some of the Lingtian members may have already been grouped together when they first spawned on the map.
"Hmph, how despicable! Thinking to use this kind of method to prevent me, Qiao Ting, from becoming the king of the military academy? No way!" Rage blazed in Qiao Ting's eyes. He felt that this was an obstacle the academy had intentionally set in his path. He had no idea that the side that had truly been favoured by the mainframe was his Leiting. However, no one could have foreseen that Ling Lan would have the heaven-defying cheating device Little Four, forcibly turning Lingtian's disadvantage into an advantage, causing the scales to tip in favour of Lingtian.
Furious, a trace of coldness emerged in Qiao Ting's eyes. Since everyone was against him, then he would have to pull off an even more impressive performance. He would use true strength to tell everyone that no one would be able to stop him, Qiao Ting, from becoming the king of the military academy.
Qiao Ting's killing intent-filled eyes fell upon that black special-class mecha in the lead on his screen. As long as he eliminated Zhao Jun, the only one in Lingtian capable of withstanding ten to twenty moves under him, this match's final outcome would basically be determined.
Qiao Ting's aberrant control talent had indeed been the main reason he had been able to become the first student of the military academy to advance to ace operator at his age. However, his ability to control his emotions was also a large factor. Regardless of the fury in his heart, after Qiao Ting became determined to eliminate Zhao Jun, his entire being became unbelievably cool and collected. This was a point that Tang Yu greatly admired in Qiao Ting. To develop into a strong person capable of holding one's ground, though talent was extremely important, rationality, mental fortitude, and accurate battle judgment were even more important than raw talent. Without those other qualities, even the most aberrant prodigy would be shot down on the battlefield due to sheer blind recklessness.
Qiao Ting did not choose to rush forwards immediately. Instead, he sneakily closed in on Zhao Jun, carefully maintaining a 4-kilometre distance between them to travel in sync with the other. The search limit of a special-class operator's radar was 4 kilometres — as long as he kept a distance of 4 kilometres between himself and Zhao Jun, the other would never be able to discover him.
Qiao Ting was so careful because he wanted to confirm that there were no other Lingtian members around. Qiao Ting still remembered a case study Instructor Tang Yu had told him once. He did not want to fall into a trap of Lingtian's out of impulsiveness; it had to be said that Qiao Ting was extremely careful.
It turned out that in the history of mecha combat, there had been such an example — an ace mecha of some nation had once encountered a team full of advanced mecha warriors from an enemy nation. Based on common sense, even though the side with the advanced mecha warriors had greater numbers, due to the natural suppression of mecha levels, as long as the ace operator handled things properly, he could definitely break the other side's battle formation apart and obtain victory in the encounter.
However, the outcome was the complete opposite. Perhaps that ace mecha too believed that victory was assured, for he underestimated the battle fervour of these advanced mecha warriors, accidentally falling into the other side's ploy and ending up heavily surrounded. The ace operator thought that even if he could not kill all of the advanced mecha warriors around him, it should still be extremely easy for him to run away in his mecha. But unexpectedly, some of the advanced mecha warriors had chosen a horrific method to prevent his escape — self-destruction!
Yes, those advanced mecha warriors had not cared about their so-called lives, each of them throwing themselves forward one after another. They did not even choose to attack, nor did they dodge — they did not use any beam gun or beam saber, simply using their mecha's two arms to grab hold of the ace mecha desperately. Right after that, they would self-destruct — even if they were hacked to death while holding onto the ace mecha, they would make sure to press their self-destruct button in time. Whether or not it was of any use, they wanted to leave some bit of damage on the opponent.
This was how this group of advanced mecha warriors used the combined power of their self-destructs to exhaust the power of the ace mecha's powerful beam shield. In the end, the final outcome was that the ace mecha was forcibly kept in place by those advanced mecha warriors using that brute self-destruct method. At the end of it all, just like those advanced mecha warriors who had self-exploded, he became a speck of dust in the starry skies.
The example of this fight struck fear into the hearts of all ace operators. Fortunately, not all advanced mecha warriors could view death like coming home, so such an occurrence of trading their own lives for the life of an enemy was not commonplace. Unless death was truly inevitable, only then would most advanced mecha warriors choose to do such a thing. However, also due to this case study, all ace operators became exceedingly cautious. When battling advanced mecha warriors, they would be wary of letting themselves be surrounded, afraid they would also fall victim to that self-destruction method.
Qiao Ting had learned of this case study right after he had advanced to ace operator level. Tang Yu had made him watch the recording of said battle in order to let him understand that, on the battlefield, ace operators were not the only ones who could contend with ace operators.
Only the Huaxia Federation had a recording of that battle, because that group of fearless self-sacrificing advanced mecha warriors was one of the platoons of the Huaxia Federation. Meanwhile, that unfortunate ace operator was from the Caesar Empire. Out of this platoon comprising of 30 advanced mecha, only 7 survived. In order to take down that one ace mecha, the Federation paid the price of the lives of 23 advanced mecha warriors, clinching the victory of that battle. And the recording of the battle was captured back then by these 7 survivors.
This battle was the pride of the Huaxia Federation, but was also the sorrow of the Huaxia Federation. This was because at that time, the Huaxia Federation had considerably fewer ace operators than the Caesar Empire. It couldn't be helped — in order to obtain the final victory, The Huaxia Federation could only resort to this type of methods to plug the gap. However, this also caused the Federation to sacrifice countless advanced mecha warriors. At one point, even the mid-range forces were rather thin, and had required a whole 20 years for the deficit in manpower to be compensated.
This was also why the Federation took it so seriously whenever they discovered any promising sprouts who showed possibility of advancing to ace. After that historic battle, the Federation had no longer wanted to revisit the grief of using numbers to bridge the gap of power ever again.
Qiao Ting was also afraid that Lingtian would choose to use such methods against him. After all, in Mecha World, death was not true death. If the Lingtian battle team really wanted to obtain the final victory in this challenge fight, Qiao Ting believed that this was the only avenue they had.
Thus, although Qiao Ting really wanted to finish off Zhao Jun, he still had to be on guard against the other in case he used such a method against him. If he accidentally fell into the opponent's trap, became surrounded, and was then finished off by the opponent under such despicable methods, he, Qiao Ting, would never be able to live it down.
Qiao Ting followed Zhao Jun's group of three for approximately a minute, and finding no other Lingtian people around, his heart settled. He could basically confirm that the other had set no traps for him now. But just as he was about to make a move, Zhao Jun's group suddenly changed directions. Taking a sharp right angle, they rapidly pulled a distance away from him. Their abrupt actions made Qiao Ting's heart skip a beat — had he been exposed?