The Mech Touch novel Chapter 3878

Chapter 3878 Existential Threat

"Sir, we can't keep provoking more Swarmers! Our maneuvering space keeps getting smaller. The enemy fish-whales aren't blindly chasing after the Everchanger anymore. They have begun to employ more sophisticated tactics such as trying to encircle us. The longer we stay here, the greater the chance we'll get surrounded!"

It did not take as long as Ves thought to rile up the Swarmers milling about on the Spiral Continent.

Large amounts of white fish-whales interspersed with the occasional elite fish-whales had entered into a rabid frenzy as soon as they discovered the presence of a foreign element that was definitely not on their side.

It was as if the Everchanger had killed their mother and taunted them by dangling her corpse in front of their eyes!

When Ves gazed at the projected map, he spotted so many red dots pressed together that they looked like a tide of red!

He grimaced a bit when he saw that they were still short of their target of attracting 500,000 Swarmer fish-whales. If they didn't lure enough cannon fodder to the Phase Kingdom, then the humans and the Evolver fish-whales would have to make up for the shortfall with their lives!

"Arlight, you can pull away from the Spiral Continent, but before you leave, expand the Everchanger's glow to the maximum possible range you can reach."

"What?! Didn't you theorize that this will attract the attention of the Hive King?!"

"Look at the increasing degree of coordination displayed by all of these Swarmers. I think it is safe to say that we have already attracted this powerful mastermind's attention!"

The original plan called for trying to provoke the Swarmers into chasing the Everchanger without alarming the Hive King, but Ves had already taken into account that they would fail in the latter goal.

The Swarm Kingdom may be big, but it was difficult to hide a disturbance affecting hundreds of thousands of fish-whales from a central leader.

The shift from instinctive reactions to purposeful maneuvers was not obvious at first, but when the fish-whales started to circle around instead of trying to chase after the Everchanger, even a fool could see that the Swarmers were being directed by an overarching leader!

A gigantic tide of fish-whales didn't necessarily pose a threat to Ves. No matter how numerous they became, as long as they only behaved instinctually, then how could they possibly stop any mech from coming and going?

It was unfortunate that the threat level of the Swarmers had reached an entirely new level now that the Hive King or another powerful Swarmer commander had taken charge of all of the riled-up troops.

Ves could even see that groups of fish-whales that the Everchanger had yet to provoke begin to stir as well. They moved up and spread themselves out in order to cast an increasingly wider net for the mech.

There was no way for the Everchanger to escape if the net closed. He knew his own work well. The expert hero mech he designed was a versatile machine but it did not excel in blockade running.

Sure, it was possible for the Everchanger to force its way through a dozen or so grunt fishes if Venerable Joshua tried his best, but there were way more Swarmers in the way than that! No matter what, even an expert mech could get trapped and exhausted to death if it ended up in the middle of a ball of thousands of rabid fish-whales!

"Pulling out now, sir!"

Venerable Joshua concentrated hard as the Everchanger squeezed more speed and acceleration out of its flight system in an attempt to escape the noose.

At the same time, the expert mech abruptly expanded its glow, causing it to rile up many more fish-whales in the surrounding environment.

The angry fish-whales didn't like this at all. Their fury became more intense as they tried to close in on the annoying mech that had trespassed on their territory!

"Haha, we're out!"

Fortunately, the Everchanger made its way out of the Spiral Continent well before the fish-whales could complete their envelopment. The grunt fishes and the elite fishes had no choice but to chase after the expert mech's wake in order to kill the enemy that dared to disturb them and provoke them into action.

When Venerable Joshua noticed that the tide of Swarmers were beginning to fall behind, he slowed down the Everchanger's advance in a gradual and controlled fashion. This made it seem as if it was getting tired and that it had lost a bit of steam.

The distance between the expert mech and the hundreds of thousands of angry fish-whales no longer widened.

As Ves kept studying the expressions of the fish-whales in order to see if he could gather more clues, he noticed that they were already beginning to calm down.

Most fish-whale varieties didn't excel at speed. The Swarmers did not even possess a single variant that was able to fly faster than the sergeant fish-whales, and that was mostly because the blue fishes needed to build up a large amount of momentum in order to deal a lot of damage when their skulls collided against their targets.

"Slow down a bit more, Joshua. Give the Swarmers the illusion that they can catch up to you if they chase long enough. Try and wobble your flight path a bit and make the Everchanger look less pristine in its performance. They can't give up this soon!"

"I will try, sir!"

The Everchanger soon made the adjustments. Venerable Joshua was skillfully pulled off the subterfuge and truly made the expert mech seem as if it had overloaded itself and was starting to reach the limits of its stamina.

If the Hive King and the Swarmer fish-whales were unfamiliar with the properties of mechanical constructs, then they should assume that the Everchanger behaved like an organic creature that could grow tired over time.

"Let's hope the Hive King isn't too smart or knowledgeable about mechs."

The chase continued for a couple of minutes. Over 400,000 fish-whales had joined the chase. Each of them crowded each other so much that Ves pretty much only saw white if he looked at the rear view!

Joshua also put up a better act of pretending that the Everchanger was on its last legs. The expert mech's surface fizzled as its thrust power dropped by more than 50 percent all of a sudden.

This stimulated the humongous amount of grunt fishes, causing them to see red and squeeze more speed out of their bodies!

When the distance between the Everchanger and the chasers kept shrinking, the yellow fish-whales took action.

Hundreds of spitter fish-whales launched globs of corrosive projectiles.

Although the Everchanger could have easily dodged or evaded the spit, Venerable Joshua deliberately downplayed the maneuverability and responsiveness of his machine and only made a lackluster attempt at evading the incoming projectiles.

While most of the spit projectiles missed anyway, half-a-dozen of them still managed to splatter onto the resonance shield of the expert mech.

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