Ves felt the need to shake up the Rubarthan defenders.
The Goliath Hive was too heinous. Not only did it break the fighting spirit of the Rubarthan soldiers, it also turned them into unwilling accomplices to an organic weapon development program!
There was no way anything good would come out of letting the Goliath Hive dictate the rules.
The defenders continually got worn down while the Goliath strains entered into a high-speed iterative development period.
The expert pilots and ace pilots of the Rubarthan Pact earned very little glory by defeating the Goliaths.
This was due to how easy it was for the mutated voribugs to grow another Goliath, especially if they were Level 6 or lower in strength.
Every high-ranking mech pilot possessed a story. Their legend started when they first piloted a mech in a professional capacity and continually became more remarkable as they made more achievements.
Expert pilots, ace pilots and god pilots were the protagonists of the human race during the Age of Mechs.
Even when red humanity transitioned into the Age of Dawn, this reality had not yet changed.
Many people looked up to these honorable and noble heroes.
The rise of a high-ranking mech pilot was a cause for celebration.
The demise of any of them was a tragedy that deserved to be mourned.
A similar dynamic applied to the phase leaders of the native alien races.
Aside from phase whales, every phase lord was an exemplary member of an alien race.
Only the most outstanding, privileged, successful and determined aliens gained the opportunity to transform into a phase lord, and only the strongest among them were able to survive the process.
Each phase whale and phase lord assumed the identity of a god, if only a minor one at the start.
As soon as they transcended their mortality, they had joined the true leadership class of the alien societies of the Red Ocean.
Mortals did not possess the qualification to question their gods.
They were only expected to worship and obey.
As such, the champions of both sides respected and acknowledged each other as honorable and worthy foes.
They had many reasons to hate and despise each other, but they never questioned each other's worth.
They were existences that transcended normality. They were all heroes or gods.
Even as they killed each other, they respected their opponents because they all built up their own unique legacies.
The same could not be said for the Goliaths. They were very clearly mass produced champion units that did not earn their strength, but received their endowments from birth. They did not have to work hard or risk their lives to get ahead. They were incredibly young and did not develop any unique capabilities that they could call their own.
Combined with the fact that all Goliath strains possessed shortcomings that made them weaker than their counterparts, there was no way to earn glory from killing these giant bugs.
The Goliaths may have been gifted with sapience, but their independent thinking only extended as far as utilizing their natural gifts in battle.
They did not possess any names as far red humanity knew and did not possess any personality worth noting. They were giant organic drones who only cared about fulfilling a single purpose.
Given all of these conditions, how could an expert pilot possibly earn a large amount of glory from defeating them? It was difficult to derive any satisfaction from beating a Goliath when a nearly identical superbug showed up the next day.
"The novelty of defeating a Goliath has worn off the first few times." Lord Richard Brownstone explained. "Our expert pilots were initially eager to prove their skills and accrue more experience, but after repeated attacks, they are beginning to despise these challenges. Each victory rings hollow as the Goliath is nothing special. What is worse is that the mutated voribugs are learning from us. The enemy is actively adapting their Goliath strains to make them harder to defeat with known methods. No expert pilot wants to get countered like that. Their willingness to deploy onto the battlefield and meet the challenges has collapsed."
Ves could sense that from the projections of the battlefield. The expert mechs flew at a moderate pace and did not radiate any form of impatience.
The only exception was the sole Ascended Giant that had entered the field. The Faceless Giant had emerged with a loadout that conformed to a modest scale of 1.5x.
This did not sound like much, but a phase lord was still a phase lord.
As Ves analyzed the Faceless Giant's gear, he noted that it was not too exceptional.
The transphasic hyper raiment and spear were all standard issue and were optimized for mass production.
Perhaps the only remarkable aspect about the spear was that the tip was comprised of mid-grade superdimensional alloy.
Now that the Phase Lord Department had fallen into his hands, the Red Collective no longer maintained their blockade on superdimensional matter.
Although the current treatment afforded to the Faceless Giant was minimal, the addition of a small amount of superdimensional alloy resulted in a massive increase in lethality and penetration power!
This was the basic loadout of a combatant of the Faceless Giant Phalanx.
The Ascended Giant in question also chose to add optional modules to his loadout.
For example, he opted to mount large capacity shoulder-mounted missile launchers on his raiment.
These were not the slim missile launchers that possessed very limited capacity and strict payload limits.
The Ascended Giant was larger and could accommodate bigger modules.
Even so, the human phase lord chose to enter the battlefield with a lot of firepower at the beginning.
Curious.
Aside from that, the Ascended Giant that had received the privilege of being the first to fight against a Goliath also carried a large flamethrower in his arms.
The large flamethrower added another major burden to the Faceless Giant as he had to carry a sizable propellant tank mounted on his lower back.
"Who is he, Harpoon?" Ves asked.
"The Divine Arsonist." The strategist of the Faceless Giant Phalanx replied. "Formerly known as Tangshan O’Reilly, he has a penchant for fire and loves to wield a flamethrower with a large propellant tank. I proposed his name when the local commander asked us whether we wanted to test the mettle of one of our Ascended Giants against a Level 7 Goliath. He is not particularly strong or exceptional, but he is particularly suited to fight against the voribugs."
"Why him and not yourself?"
The Divine Harpoon smiled. "I have no desire to earn this glory, as meager as it may be. My harpoons are reserved for more formidable enemies. Besides, I am not as good at clearing swarms as the Divine Arsonist. He at least has a solution against the cannon fodder that surrounds the largest Goliath."