Chapter 23: The First ‘Stop’ In Mech
Translator: Noodletown Translations Editor: Noodletown Translations
“Mu Fan, Mu Fan, are you there?” Chubby Harry decided to ignore the two idiots in this level-1 room full of weirdos, and he called out to Mu Fan through the team voice communication channel.
“I’m here!” Mu Fan said inside his cockpit, but his voice wasn’t heard in the team voice communication channel as he didn’t know how to send voice messages.
“Mu Fan, where are you? Mu Fan?” Chubby Harry asked a few more times, and nobody answered him.
“Stop yelling and go to point B.” Those two unique players shouted again.
Chubby Harry had already blocked these two in the voice communication channel. He took a glance at the map, and as a responsible Silver 1-star pro player, his strategic approach was to choose point B.
There was no time for Harry to find Mu Fan now, or else the opponents would find him first and slaughter him before he got to Mu Fan.
With a birds-eye view looking down at this seemingly random rocky area, point A was located at the eight o’clock direction while point B was at the four o’clock. Mu Fan was at the innermost part of the six o’clock direction.
The map was fairly small. Since it was a first-generation mech battle room where every player’s mech had low mobility, the face-offs in a relatively smaller space would be more fascinating.
The map was simulating an ongoing battle at the edge of a city, and Chubby Harry was controlling his first-generation Re:Striker around. The Striker was a reality mode mech that could be purchased with star coins, and ‘Re:’ before its name represented the 5% increase to its mobility and defence.
[First-generation Re: Striker
Reality Mode Mech. This first generation mech was created by humans for land usage on rough terrain before going above the atmosphere. It is a military mech, and the control cabin located in the chest has been expanded. It is protected with high durability alloy plating. The design highlights include evenly distributed weight, mobility, and defence. The weapons loaded on board are the standard first generation military weapons. Such mechs are still active on some UGF planets due to its structural durability, and they are used by militias.
Height: 5.14m
Weight: 8.15t
Class: Military-use first-generation mech
Maximum Speed: 55km/h
Weapons: Two-shot 128mm howitzer; 60mm Gatling gun, high durability dagger, and military-use alloy machete.
Engine: First-generation nuclear energy reactor
Accessory Equipment: Emergency energy reactor, first generation engine overloader (10% fluctuation)
F- in long-range combat, F+ in Re:defence, E in Re:close-range combat, F in mobility.
Chubby Harry had purchased almost all the star mechs from the first to the sixth generation and revised and modified every single one of them into a ‘Re:’ model. This was preparation! This was money! This was professionalism!
This was Young Master Harry of the Fuwen Corporation from Planet Loga!
Chubby Harry was piloting his Re:Striker as he leaped from a shipwreck to a huge rock. And then with a smooth transition, he landed onto the ground on all fours without moving.
Yes, he laid flat onto the ground and shouted in the voice communication channel, “Enemies discovered at point B!!! They launched an attack! Suppress enemy fire at point A!”
Then, Chubby Harry saw from the map that the two teammates in point A charged out.
He murmured to himself, “One, two, three, four; that should be about it.”
Then, he unmuted himself toward those two unique players in the voice communication channel.
The receiver in his cockpit captured the sounds of crossfire about three kilometers away, and the voice communication channel sounded more like a mess with aggressive cursing. Chubby Harry’s mech laid flat on the ground. With the uneven landscape and chipped boulders, he could only imagine what the crossfire looked like from the sounds he was hearing.
‘Maikang Star Bomber King’ of the green team was eliminated.
‘Mathiled’ of the red team was eliminated.
“That Lemon Balloon, I will kill you.” The two mechs believed Harry and charged out after his call. But in reality, that green dot which represented Chubby Harry on the map didn’t move at all after he made the leap.
The two mechs happened to run into the enemy mechs that were hiding in the area. After one mech was destroyed in the crossfire, the other one was half-dead as he hid behind the rocks. Damn it! We got tricked by that guy at point B.
“You trash!” The teammate who died first couldn’t speak in the voice communication channel anymore, so this was coming from the teammate who got half destroyed and had already exposed his location. Therefore, it was only a matter of a few minutes before he would be killed by the enemies, so he was swearing non-stop in the team voice communication channel.
And what was Chubby Harry doing right now?
“I told you not to insult me.” He grinned as he listened to his teammate swear and turned on dial 4 and 6, initiating the scanning radar. Target detected!
Harry’s Re: Striker jumped up from the ground as he overloaded his engine by 10% and accelerated in an instant. He dashed forward and jumped onto a huge rock that laid low. Don’t mess with Chubby Harry since his ability in scheming was two stars higher than his overall rank.
Two enemy mechs, one yellow and one black, appeared on his light display screen as they were trying to secretly approach point A.
Chubby Harry leaned against a tall rock and pulled out his two-shot howitzer from his back.
[Systematic enemy-searching radar calibrating, locked on!]
“Oh no!” Ear-piercing sirens burst in the two mechs, notifying them that they have been locked on by a weapon and must take cover quickly.
However, it was too late for these newbies in this level-1 rooms to react, and the first-generation mechs were unable to move faster than one could move their arms.
Bam! Bam! The first shot ripped open the yellow mech’s back armor, causing it to explode and leaving behind only white smoke in the air. The second shot pierced through the back armor of this mech, sending it flying several meters away from where it was.
[‘Corey Salik’ of the red team is eliminated; Killing Blow medal awarded to ‘Lemon Balloon.’]
“Damn it.” The half-dead teammate and the enemy piloting the black mech swore at the same time.
Dodge! Chubby Harry knew that it wasn’t the time to show-off. His mech rolled down the broken rocks in a funny way like a ball.
“You bunch of losers!” Chubby Harry’s voice sounded in the cockpit, and he was using the all-chat channel this time
Both his teammates and the enemies shouted at the same time as they could hear the hidden message in his words.
Chubby Harry was still not used to operating this first generation mech as there was a lot of delay in reaction time. Although Harry had installed a hand-gesture syncing device in the cockpit and upgraded its all manual operation to semi-intelligent operation, that was the most revisions that he could do. Otherwise, it would be considered cheating.
“Oh no, the enemy is going to sneak-attack.” Two red dots suddenly appeared on the map and went around Chubby Harry, killing two of his teammates who were about one kilometer away before he could react.
“Fire support! Fire support! Bomb this location, coordinates 33, 47. Hurry!” The team voice communication channel sounded like a mess, and the cheerfulness that came from the kill that Chubby Harry got was long gone.
“Where’s that Lemon Balloon? Get over here! We’re dying!”
Chubby Harry’s brows pinched tightly together as he wondered, Why is it so hard to win? Why do I always get a bunch of idiot teammates?
Suddenly, someone shouted in the team voice communication channel, “Wtf is this sh*t? A specimen from the museum? How come something like this is in our team! Can this thing even fight? System, if you’re f*cking with us, just tell us.”
The Model EH01 which stood still in the far distance… looked like it had starved to death without a piece of clothing, and all that was left was a white shining skeleton standing in an upright position.
One of the teammates controlling a wolfwalker, a beast-form mech, had dodged the enemy firepower and retreated to the six o’clock position where he saw Mu Fan’s mech standing there.
“System identification, generation-zero mech, Model EH01, a human-form general purpose heavy mech,” this player shared the information that he got from the System with everyone in the team channel.
Everyone felt like a cold wind blew inside everyone’s cockpit. This seems like an antique that only exists in the textbooks. Isn’t the first-generation the lowest-leveled mech on the PO Battle Network? What is going on with this generation-zero mech?
“…”
Everybody fell silent for three seconds.
“Hey man, can you tell me where this mech came from?”
No one answered.
“Hey, don’t play dead! At least move and attack if you’re not going to speak up.”
The huge white metal skeleton stood there still like a master.
Meanwhile, Chubby Harry felt speechless when he saw the ID ‘Lord Egg’ appear on the skeleton’s head.
Harry couldn’t see what it was like inside the cockpit, but Mu Fan was clueless as he stared at all the keys in front of him. He could hear everyone’s voice in his cockpit, and he wanted to explain but felt helpless as he didn’t even know which key to press to connect to the voice communication channel.
Today’s so embarrassing. Am I going to stand here all the way through and wait for my first mech battle to be over…
Through the display screen, Mu Fan could see the beast-form mech explode after being attacked by the two enemy mechs.
Then, the two yellowish-brown mechs walked out from behind and approached Mu Fan with hesitation as if they were stunned by this strange and bizarre mech.