CH 41: Bigger doesn't mean better (Patreon)

The surroundings were moving around his vision even as he kept accelerating, Noah did not know when but the number of Mecha had steadily been increasing from one to three, and soon, he realized that his margin of escape was steadily shrinking.

Noah’s eyes moved, analyzing, deciphering and his mind churned even as he ran, seemingly paying no heed to where he was going.

But Noah knew. He was not headless, much less lost. He knew where he was going and he knew what he wanted to find.

—Southwest, I finally found a response.

The light in Noah’s eyes changed to a beautiful golden light as he immediately changed direction. The sudden stop and change in motion was so high and powerful that his bones seemed to rattle, pain shot through his mind like a lightning bolt but Noah did not flinch.

An explosion echoed as he finally gave the last juice to up his speed, moving so fast that even his perception was barely keeping up. This was a marvel for him but he could not even admire his speed as his ears caught the sounds of something charging.

—Shield?

No need.

***

Number 15, one of the mecha pilots, who was previously nothing more than a foot soldier was aligning his shoot toward the target.

He did not understand why the boss was being so hesitant about this one. After all, they were nineteen and he was alone. Had they attacked him, the man would already be done and dead since long ago.

[#15 What are you doing!?]

[Don’t mind me, I am just taking things in my hands.]

The damn target was moving so fast that it was hard to calibrate his attack with the canon. Even more so since the forest was obstructing them too much.

He was tired of chasing some midget when they could simply off him easily. More than anything, the reason why he was being impatient was pretty simple. He was greedy. He was wondering…Would the one to kill the target get a special reward?

This was very important. Since most of them did not even have Dark Matter, they couldn't bring the prowess of a mecha to its maximum capacity. They neither had the training nor the power to do so.

But no one would be happy to stay where they were. He was a pirate and of course, his greed was there for all to see. He was not happy with simply getting some shitty pill that would give him some mediocre boost.

Stop moving bitch! Just one second. Only one second.

For the first time in his life, the pirate was praying to the gods even though he knew that ‘gods’ were nothing but powerful existences. It was just a reflex, nothing more. But for the first time once again — It seemed like the gods listened to him.

From his monitor, he could see that the one they were chasing suddenly slowed down while bringing up his two hands and followed with two strange-looking tentacle threads that shot forward at high speed and caught one of the branches high up, before propelling forward.

This resulted in the target jumping high in the sky.

This was impressive. Truly impressive. But at the same time, “Fucking dumbshit!” This left him completely unable to

#15 laughed out loud and not caring as to why the man who had been running around all this time did such a stupid move, he simply cared about the fact that he had a full view of his target and said the target could not flee.

“Die!”

Immediately pushing the button once the target was confirmed, he sent the rocket missile.

His face was filled with glee, his eyes gleaming with joy, his mouth open as his brain already conjured all the pictures of his success and the death of the target. Not even an eventual punishment by Omid scared him.

But what followed was something he simply could not understand.

[Warning! Projectile incoming]

[Tentative to deploy the shield]

[Tentative failed. Energy insufficient]

“Wha—”

One moment he was laughing, the next moment, he screamed as red alarms and warnings sounded one after another.

Everything happened in less than a fraction of a second. For many, this was an eternity, for others, this was an instant. But as always, on a battlefield, this was the difference between life and death.

Boom~!

The cockpit of the mecha vanished in an explosion of fire and smoke and the last things all the other pilots heard were the desperate cries of #15.

They were able to watch the replay of this scene and even then, it still did not make sense to them in the slightest.

The very moment #15 sent the missile, the target had been high in the air and nothing but an open target managed to react by bringing the same tentacle he used earlier, wrapping it around the missile and then, moving it like a pendulum by using the inertia, he made a complete 360 circles in the air before immediately sending back the missile to the one who sent it.

“What the fuck?”

One of the pirates trembled as he watched this. This made absolutely no sense. While it was true that the missiles they were using were inertia types, they were all moving at a speed close to ten times that of sounds.

How in the hell did this mean even manage to realize such a feat with such a meager amount of Dark Matter?

[He is moving!]

The pilots all reacted, noticing that the target immediately changed his direction once again and this time was rushing toward them.

[#10: Blow him up! Blow him up! Argh!]

[#10! Answer!]

They kept calling but all they received was a static sound, bringing chills to their spins. A few who were able to see what was happening were once again astonished as this time the target used himself as a missile and reached the place where the cockpit was installed head first.

Since they were unable to activate the special shield, this place was extremely vulnerable, and clearly, the man had caught on to this fact. But the way he headbutted the metal-reinforced exterior of the Mecha without a care for his own life seemed like something only someone crazy would do.

[#10: Help! He is breaking through! He is fucking eating the armor of my mecha! What the Fuck!?]

#10 couldn't retaliate without risking blowing himself up. Clearly, in terms of craziness, he was far from what their enemies could do.

[#15: What do we do?]

[#12: Do we help?]

A few messages like this came but #1, one of the few who had managed to survive the first trial despite being a pilot knew that this would be foolish.

[#1: You know the drill]

[#10: Guys…You wouldn’t…]

[#1: Use small rounds, we don’t want a repeat of what happened.]

Sadly for him, #1 did not let fear and surprise cloud his judgment again this time, and following his order, all of those who had managed to come closer pointed the end of their rifles to the target.

More than eight mechas this time all fired instantly at the same time, the roar of the rifles filled the air as a rain of bullets was sent with no care about the survival of the one who was once their companion.

All for the goal of destroying the threat.

Metal clashed with metals and it only took a few seconds for the cries and curses of #10 to completely vanish as well as the signal of his mecha.

[#7: Is it done this time?]

They stopped firing and looked with worry at what was now nothing but a husk of a Mecha.

[#5: What are you smoking? I don’t think even the boss could survive such attacks if he was outside of his Mecha.]

[#11: Of course, I am pretty sure that —]

[#1: Spread out immediately!]

The warning of #1 came too late and all they could was once again watch as one of their own was put down.

This time it was even easier as a 5 meters long spear split apart the smoke coming from the Mecha of #10 and flew at a speed five times that of sound before piercing the exact place where the head #11 was, piercing the frame-like it was made out of paper before piercing the head of the pilot, instantly killing him.

#1 could not understand.

They had been in control of the situation for so long but only one mistake was all that was necessary for everything to spiral out of control.

In a few seconds, less than a minute, three pilots were down and it was done with such ease that it seemed like a joke.

#1’s hands were trembling.

His eyes were shaking.

Looking at the fire in the distance and the small shadow slowly walking out of the debris, limping and wounded, he did not think that this was somehow a chance.

All he could think was that the one they were fighting could not be normal. This was not something that should be possible.

It had taken him longer than Omid but now. He understood why this was a one vs many scenario.

In this place, they were not predators.

They were the prey.

(AN 1: For this fight, I had to rewatch a few episodes of Attack on Titan to get a feel of a small fighting giant. This was the closest thing I could find since Primordial Titans are Basically Mecha made out of flesh. Did my best, hope you liked the fight.)

(AN: When I was writing about Noah catching and sending back missiles, I stopped to wonder if this was actually possible or if this was just too cartoonish. So I did what all people do nowadays. I went to Google and I understood that technically, it’s possible. Basically, there are different types of missiles, and while some missiles and rockets have proximity fuzes which means they would blow up as soon as they got close to you before you could even catch them. Some others have base-detonating fuzes that function based on inertia when the munition comes to a sudden stop.)