Chapter 6203 The Poor Saint

Chapter 6203 The Poor Saint

All seemed lost as death and destruction unfolded before the eyes of the defenders.

When the Red Tide Offensive swept across the border regions like an unstoppable force, a lot of defenders struggled to keep their head above water.

The most intense and destructive battles took place in the upper zones. Though relatively small, the upper zones served as critical territories to red humanity as these regions happened to be abundant in phasewater or other rare exotics.

The Red Two and the first-rate colonial superstates often stationed large quantities of their own standing forces at these strategically important locations.

The middle zones were much larger and more expansive. They formed the backbone of human-occupied space as far as people were concerned.

Although many of the mechs stationed in the middle zones could not compete against first-class multipurpose mechs, they were much cheaper and easier to mass produce in vast quantities!

Second-class mechs hit the sweet spot between affordability and combat power. They were the most suitable choice to defend large swathes of territories of moderate value and importance.

Pilots of this class might not enjoy the best training and augmentations, but they arguably possessed the greatest control over their own futures. If they were afraid of hardship, they could attend a more relaxed mech academy and graduate to become a second echelon combatant.

Those that aspired for greatness could work a lot harder to attend the most prestigious second-class mech academies and apply for frontline combat duties once they started their careers.

Success cases such as the famous Destroyer of Worlds proved that there was a pathway for second-raters to ultimately ascend to the rank of god pilot!

If the probabilities were extremely slim, the existence of a tiny opening was enough to motivate countless second-class mech pilots!

In comparison to the glamorous upper zones and the respectable middle zones, many people never paid any attention to the lower zones.

The word 'lower' already possessed negative connotations. Attaching it to a zone instantly caused the entire region to degrade in the eyes of many first-raters and second-raters.

It was as if every lower zone was not only devoid of valuable resources that could enable red humanity to compete against the powerful native aliens, but also possessed a degenerate atmosphere that could corrupt any superior being that traveled in the wrong direction.

Unlike second-raters who had a chance of getting promoted into first-raters, third-raters possessed virtually no chance of reaching the top of human society.

They not only needed to perform above and beyond their distressing lack of quality augmentations to become a second-rater, but had to work even harder to earn the recognition of first-raters!

This was practically not doable in any person's lifetime.

The only example that people could point to in recent times was the famous Devil Tongue, but most third-raters had come to despise him and reject his credentials as a third-rater.

"Professor Larkinson? Isn't he the mech designer who claimed to start off as a humble citizen of the Bright Republic, only to neglect to share that his mother was a centuries-old monster who wielded power like a god back in her heyday? This guy is anything but a grassroots success story! The only reason why he got to live in the Terran Alliance is because he is pampered by his mother. He was a fallen first-rater who only recently managed to return to where he belonged."

The gulf between first-raters and third-raters was immense. This was reflected in many ways.

The lower zones occupied the largest amount of space, but received the lowest investments.

This was because most of the star systems in the lower zones lacked value to the powerful and prosperous groups.

It only made economic sense for third-raters to occupy and develop the terribly poor star systems of the lower zones. n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

Third-raters were numerous but cheap. They spread across the lower zones like cockroaches claiming the dark and unpleasant regions of space.

The space peasants attracted so much contempt from everyone that even the aliens looked down on them! They too discovered how the colonists of the lower zones were laughably weak!

This worked well for the third-raters, strangely enough. The major alien races looked down on the lower zones so much that none of them found it worthwhile to dispatch their own fleets to these filthy regions.

Then, the newcomer finally appeared.

When the distortion produced by warp travel and other sources of interference cleared up, both sides were taken aback by what they detected.

"That is not a ship."

"It's a mech, no a second-class mech."

"I recognize this machine! That... that is the famous Robin Hood!"

"You mean the ace mech of the Pauper?!"

The Robin Hood possessed an iconic appearance that made the machine look cheaper and shabbier compared to the most impressive first-class ace mechs utilized by peak ace pilots.

It even looked a bit underwhelming compared to many second-class ace mechs!

Nonetheless, the sight of this single machine inspired a lot of hope among the soldiers. Those who knew the reputation of this famously eccentric ace pilot even started to look forward to what was about to happen next!

"SOLDIERS OF THIS LOWER ZONE. REJOICE, FOR I SHALL INFUSE YOU WITH STRENGTH THAT CAN HELP YOU WIN!"

All of a sudden, every mech on the battlefield experienced a transformation unlike anything their pilots had ever witnessed.

A grand but intimately friendly power took hold of their machines, and seemed to amplify their performance to such an insane degree that not a single pilot possessed any comprehension of how much had changed!

When the mechs began to fight under the effect of the Robin Hood's insane command field, their pilots and the people stationed in the rear all dropped their jaws as they witnessed the updated performance of the boosted machines.

The attacks of the third-class mechs ripped through the transphasic energy shields as well as the frames of the enemy phasefighters as if they were as permeable as air!

Many more mechs opened fire with their rifles and found that they were able to core every phasefighter that they previously struggled to damage.

"This... this is exhilarating!"

"Hahaha! It's not so nice to be on the receiving end of overpowered attacks now, you alien bastards!"

The melee mech pilots became even more excited as they experienced their own improvements first-hand. Their mechs flew many times faster, so much so that if not for the assistance provided by the mysterious command field, the pilots would have gotten overwhelmed by the excessive speeds they reached!

When the melee mechs easily caught up to the phasefighters that usually flew fast enough to outspeed any third-class mech, the sword and spear strikes easily shattered the transphasic energy shields and tore through the fuselages with just as much ease!

"The performance of my mech has almost reached the standards of a first-class mech! This is insane! My machine should have fallen apart long before it is able to perform at such an extreme level!"

"Who cares? Enjoy it while you can!"

It was not just the enemy phasefighters that became as vulnerable as piglets in front of the empowered mechs.

The much larger and more threatening alien warships also faltered under the attacks of thousands of vengeful third-class mechs!

The pilots all took advantage of the incredible power boost provided by the Robin Hood and eagerly took revenge against the alien species that thought they could treat the defenders as practice dummies!

In the meantime, the Robin Hood did nothing more. It had symbolically fired its energy crossbow at the thrusters of the alien flagship, thereby preventing the vessel from slipping away, but other than that, the second-class ace mech appeared content to let the mechs under its influence do all of the work!

Saint Robert Richardson smirked as he sat inside the cockpit of his ace mech. The peak ace pilot knew that many of his peers looked down on him for taking pity on the third-raters, but he felt differently.

The third-raters were worth saving. Their limited wealth and means could not spoil the strengths of their hearts! They only needed an opportunity to prove they were better than the snooty first-raters that looked down on everyone else from their ivory towers!