Humanity's Greatest Mecha Warrior System

Nico stomped her way into battle with the fleeing survivors of the first assault wave.

Literally.

As her Mecha's massive foot dealt a crushing blow to the lesser energy being, she felt a sense of nostalgia that she hadn't had in some time. Perhaps it was time to paint smiley faces on the feet of all her Mecha and bring back the classics.

Her blades swept parallel to the ground, cutting the head off an entire group of warriors, and she joyfully batted them up in the air, with the intention to juggle them for an added bit of showmanship as she took out the ranged targets.

But she had forgotten that these were energy beings, and as they reached the apex of the aerial arc, the heads disintegrated and the energy was pulled into the refiner in her Mecha.

"Bah, that wasn't what I was going for. I need some solid enemies here before I cap out the energy storage tanks again." She muttered to herself as she surveyed the battlefield.

The crab drones were a nightmare for the warriors, low to the ground and fast, with a hard upper shell that resisted most forms of attack even though they didn't have an energy shield. Their spiked legs and crushing claws easily tore apart battle armour, and the drones were programmed to disable if they couldn't kill fast enough to deal with a large group of enemies.

The howling of the wounded was destroying the morale of the regular troops from the Cathedral Ships, and only the blood soaked warriors were still fighting with their usual zeal.

Even the Shin and Valkia balked at the sight before them, disturbed by the carnage that the Mecha team and drones had brought.

Instead of pushing ahead and luring more enemy fighters back to them, as they would usually do, the shin fast attack craft were focused on eliminating the wounded to stop the infernal screaming that had forced them to turn off their audio and lose contact with the outside world.

For the Shin, who were evolved from plants, losing that final connection was incredibly disorienting. They were already in an enclosed box, with no sense of wind, distorted light, no smells, and now no sound. In their minds, this might as well be a dream for all the sense of realism that it had.

But the Valkia were happy to pick up the slack, as they were the ones being the most targeted by the lesser Demons, and those were the targets that Commander Nico wanted the most.

Speaking of the Devil of the Terminus Trading Company, she had new orders.

"Advance troops, there should be a support column nearby. These troopers have hot meals, and I don't see any sign of a camp. That means there is a logistics column and I want it to not exist." She ordered.

"Yes, Commander."

That was the most normal order they could have received, but what they didn't realize was that they were bait. The Archangel Exoskeleton used layers of energy barriers to allow the fast flying Valkia to fight without vehicles, but the nature of the energy barriers meant that the sensitive noses of the enemy could pick them up from kilometres away.

Putting them in combat, where there would be blood and sweat, would only make them smell sweeter to the enemy and draw them from an even longer distance away.

They didn't hesitate to obey her orders, and the scout unit raced forward, searching the satellite feeds for the support column, trying to determine who were combatants and who had their supplies.

Especially the vehicles with the projectiles. The Great Enemy loved projectile weapons, and that required countless munitions resupply runs.

Nico was right, they found the support column only a few kilometres away, hidden under a rocky overhang, out of sight of aerial drones and satellites. The column was a sad-looking lot, wearing tattered rags, but they all had strange symbols carved into themselves, that the team leader recognized as Demon Summoning ritual runes.

The idea was that they would get slaughtered, the runes would be covered in blood, and it would make it easier to open more portals to bring in the energy beings. It was just as insane and insidious as it was brilliant as a strategy.

[Commander, they're marked for a Demon Summoning ritual.] The team leader informed Nico.

[Perfect. Give me fifteen seconds, then begin the culling. I will be there before any of the portals open.]

She needed energy for her research, and every bit that she fed herself from the tank was being sucked up and integrated into the metal of her body the instant that it entered the storage battery she had added to herself for this experiment.

So, as stupid as it might sound, she actually wanted there to be more enemies nearby. Just specific ones though, she didn't care at all about these poorly trained warriors that were being annihilated by the Mecha team as she hunted the last of the stragglers among the lesser Demons.

Her sensors informed her when the energy surged as the support column was destroyed, and she quickly updated the targeting priorities to send the Android Mecha over while the drones dealt with the mundane infantry.

[Commander, incoming drone fighters. Your location is near a priority two bonus point location.] Felicity informed her.

That made things easy. All she had to do was highlight the target, and the gamer corps would take care of supplying her energy for the next few minutes.

[Advance Recon, fall back after marking the target. There are incoming aircraft at your location.] Nico ordered.

They were actually getting better now, and she might have been able to risk the Valkia being in the general vicinity of the battle, but with the level of trust that she had, she wasn't going to risk some idiot forgetting about friendly fire, or getting some strange notion about "Acceptable Losses".

She knew plenty of gamers, and she knew that most of the ones who signed up for this gig were not the most respectable of citizens. It was better not to tempt them.