Chapter 112

Chapter 112

"Alright, we can now see that members of both teams have begun their first encounter!"

"Federation player Janice lured Imperial player Cen Yuehuai into the alley... It was an ambush! Federation's Yaning Kelly suddenly emerged from the collapsed mud wall with a light sword attack — fortunately, Cen Yuehuai's teammate arrived just in time. It's now two against two; how will the battle unfold?"

Soon after the commentary started, many people turned off the background narration.

Well, although the commentator is impartial, articulate, and has a resonant voice, clearly putting his wholehearted enthusiasm into the commentary, and seems experienced... there's still something lacking.

In regular entertainment-based mech combat matches, commentators need to understand the tactical styles and behavioral logic of both sides, possess deep industry knowledge, and even enrich the commentary with team history and members' gossip to prevent it from being dull and uninteresting.

However, besides repeating what's happening on the field, analysis and evaluation are more crucial. Analyzing both teams' tactics, changes in their fighting style, and making predictions about the outcome...

But the two teams in the field come from top military academies of their respective nations. Their personal information is confidential. The commentator doesn't have access to their combat data before the match starts and can't guess the unique moves or usual tactics of either side.

Even if he had all that information — would the commentator dare to share it? Would he dare to boldly predict the development of the match?

Ideally, those with the status and experience to make such evaluations should be higher-ranking officers... but no one is willing to take up the role! Commentating on the match outcome is essentially a recipe for offending someone.

It's tough being a commentator, forced to continue despite the difficulties. Therefore, apart from those who enjoy the spectacle, most experts simply mute the commentator's narration.

Just watch the match.

……

On the field, Cen Yuehuai and Yu Yan watched as Janice and Yaning Kelly headed into the same ruins but split in different directions.

"So, who should we go after first?" Cen Yuehuai asked, "Based on previous intelligence, Yaning Kelly might be the commander, and he seems easier to tackle in terms of personal strength... But this is a five-on-five team match; even without him, the Federation team has others who can take command."

The two exchanged glances, deciding to further probe this 'Janice'.

"Janice moves fast and is a strong shooter," Cen Yuehuai inhaled softly, "Your heavy mech is at a disadvantage against her. Here's the plan: I'll engage directly, and you provide cover."

Yu Yan expressed no objections.

Silver wings unfolded, and the mech darted through the air like a meteor. In a flash, Cen Yuehuai's figure flickered twice, silently moving beside Janice's mech. Her mech's weapon transformed in an instant, the mandarin duck axes beginning to spin like fiery, whirling discs.

Cen Yuehuai stepped forward to intercept Janice, pivoting with an elbow strike, lightning-fast, aiming for her opponent's ribs.

The engine of Janice's mech let out a long hum as she bent her knees in place, coming to an abrupt stop and then sliding back two meters, causing Cen Yuehuai's attack to miss.

In that split second, Cen Yuehuai's eyes widened slightly in amazement: Her opponent's reaction speed was incredibly fast!

Based on her reaction speed and piloting skills alone, Janice had already surpassed the vast majority of military academy students Cen Yuehuai had encountered.

Without pausing, Cen Yuehuai continued her fierce assault, twisting and flipping, her blade sharply slashing towards her opponent's throat.

Janice leaped up, kicking at Cen Yuehuai's elbow.

This was a flaw Cen Yuehuai had deliberately left open! Smiling, she tossed her weapon into the air, which circled like a bird through the forest, aiming for Janice's back.

With a hum, Janice's mech emitted another strange sound, and her figure blurred, leaving only an afterimage. A subtle whoosh of air followed as her mech unexpectedly appeared several meters away!

What was that, some kind of shadow clone?!

Before Cen Yuehuai could react, a beautiful yet dangerous silver crescent suddenly appeared in the air — Janice's swift, descending slash!

Bang!

The silver blade and the heavy sword collided fiercely.

Yu Yan, wielding his heavy sword, barely blocked the penetrating sword light.

Janice deftly retracted her silver blade and then suddenly accelerated towards Yu Yan, her sword light cascading down like a tidal wave.

Yu Yan couldn't react in time!

In that instant, it was as if time itself had frozen; everyone's movements slowed down... The trembling silver light in Cen Yuehuai's eyes became clear, the sharp blade slowly pressing towards Yu Yan's shoulder blade...

Cen Yuehuai felt a nerve in her brain start to pulsate wildly.

On the holographic screen, Cen Yuehuai's mech gripped the ground with both feet, its wings glinting as she propelled forward like a cannonball, shooting between Janice and Yu Yan.

A flash of light!

Cen Yuehuai precisely intercepted Janice's curved blade with her mandarin duck axes. She threw the other one without hesitation, which Janice narrowly dodged. As Cen Yuehuai retracted her axes, she spun and thrust towards her opponent's knee — a fluid movement, easily evaded, but no matter — Yu Yan seized the moment to gather strength for a sweeping blade strike, forcefully knocking the unsteady Janice away.

The strike was a do-or-die effort, leaving a few cracks on Janice's mech's abdomen.

Just as Yu Yan prepared to press the attack, Yaning Kelly and Yan Jingyi suddenly appeared from nowhere.

Yan Jingyi attacked like a tiger, her strikes so powerful that Cen Yuehuai felt as though she was battling a heavy mech. Barely managing to fend off the assault, Cen Yuehuai saw Yan Jingyi crouch and swing her blade. Dodging, Cen Yuehuai noticed Yan Jingyi flip over in place and kick her squarely in the rear.

Cen Yuehuai: "..."

What kind of style is this?! Why are her fighting techniques so messy, like a thug's brawling?

Yet Cen Yuehuai still couldn't beat her.

The moment Yu Yan escaped from beneath Janice's blade, the explosive force in Cen Yuehuai's mind vanished, and she reverted to her usual self. Suddenly overwhelmed by Yan Jingyi's barrage of punches and kicks, she was utterly dominated, unable to turn the tide.

Yu Yan hurried to assist.

Meanwhile, Yaning Kelly took the opportunity to hoist Janice onto his shoulder and flipped atop a ruined building, leaping between windows to escape.

He scaled a crumbling concrete wall, with stones rolling down in his wake, crushed under the foot of another mech.

Yaning instinctively looked up.

Hi~

It was Baisha, waving at Yaning. Her towering and formidable silver mech, with fingers spread in a greeting, seemed oddly endearing.

Yaning chuckled instinctively — but quickly realized he laughed at the wrong moment.

Today, they were enemies.

Baisha lunged with a thrust, which Yaning barely parried. By the second move, burdened with Janice, he was already struggling to hold on.

Just then, the previously motionless Janice on Yaning's shoulder, like a switch had been flipped, suddenly burst into action—

She stepped on Yaning's back and pushed off forcefully, launching herself like an arrow at Baisha, her long blade casting a myriad of elusive afterimages.

Yaning, kicked in the back: "Damn it!"

Baisha raised an eyebrow slightly, spun her rifle, and the meteor-like tip pierced into the vast silver light, forcefully splitting the blade attack in two!

Janice's figure vanished in that instant.

Baisha didn't stop; she swept her rifle like a whirlwind through willows. After vaguely locating Janice's position, she gripped the rifle's handle, thrusting upwards towards the lingering afterimage in the air, flipping in a sweeping motion.

A soft "bang" sounded.

Janice's mech landed, its back thrusters crumbled. Baisha's long spear pinned her to the ground.

Baisha was clearly holding back, handling the situation with ease.

However, to the audience, this scene was subtly terrifying—

No fierce, stormy onslaught, no blood-boiling process. In just a few dozen seconds, she effortlessly subdued her opponent. On a real battlefield, she would have likely taken her opponent's life by now.

Come to think of it.

A real battlefield is full of unpredictability; how could it be like this fight with just a few people exchanging blows? One misstep could mean instant death; Baisha’s style is the norm.

"Your mech is quite interesting," Baisha's gaze fell on Janice's mech. Her tone was curious, but her eyes were so sharp, as if she wanted to dismantle the mech on the spot, "Is that a warp engine? It's my first time seeing such technology on a mech. How do you withstand the distortion forces of space with □□? Or perhaps…"

Janice stiffened.

Her attempt to launch a surprise attack with her engine was halted even before taking off, as Baisha's spear pierced her shoulder, nailing her to the ground.

"I said your mech is interesting, but that doesn't mean I don't understand its structure. So, I won't spare your mech, nor will I hesitate to harm you because of it, understand?"

Baisha's hand lifted, transforming, and then a tool emerged in her palm—a screwdriver.

The onlookers: ????

They belatedly glanced at the Imperial team's information panel:

Baisha Ronin.

Chief Mech Engineer.

Oh, she’s a mech engineer…

Damn, she's actually a mech engineer!

The audience watched in horror as Baisha slowly approached Janice's mech—

The next second, all the holographic screens in the arena suddenly went dark, turning into pure black screens.

It seemed that Baisha dismantling the mech wasn't suitable for all viewers... after all, it involved the Federation's military mech technology...

Several minutes passed before the screens were reactivated.

Baisha stood in place, her hand returned to its normal five-fingered form. On the ground lay a chaotic mess of mosaic-censored mech shell and parts, but nothing else.

Janice was gone. Yaning Kelly was also nowhere to be seen.

Baisha contentedly picked out a few components and stowed them in her storage space.

The Federation audience watched this scene, collectively feeling defeated.

"Can't anyone stop her? Really, can't anyone just stop her for a moment?"

"That's our Federation's mech technology. Just taken away by an Imperial, isn't that a problem?"

"It's because we're being crushed so easily, Baisha Ronin is shopping for free like it’s a supermarket..."

"She's not going to awaken some weird ability and start dismantling other people's mechs, is she?!"

If Baisha could hear this question, she would definitely retort on the spot.

After all, Baisha Ronin has her own pride.

Meanwhile, the camera shifted to another scene.

Ji Ya and Xino were engaged in a two-on-two battle against the Zhou twins.

In a head-on fight, Zhou Ying was no match for the two of them. But his myriad of tricky gadgets often caught them off guard. Plus, Zhou Xiao and Zhou Ying had chosen a complex tube building as their stronghold, popping up now and then. Xino and Ji Ya could only move around, fighting a guerrilla warfare, like playing whack-a-mole.

Xino incredulously remarked, "How did they manage to find such a place? Weren’t all players prohibited from scouting the area beforehand? How are they so familiar with the terrain around here?"

But since the arena was jointly built by the Empire and the Federation, theoretically, the likelihood of leaking the terrain map was low.

"Maybe they just have a good memory," Ji Ya sighed lightly, "A few more rounds, and I should remember it roughly too."

As she spoke, her eyes narrowed, raising her gun and firing several laser shots at a specific location.

A cloud of dust exploded, revealing something moving in the deep shadows.

"I knew they would show up here," Ji Ya said with a smile, "Let's wait a bit longer. The mech engineers are trapped here and can't help the others; they're more anxious than we are."

Then, they received updates from their teammates over the team channel.

Yan Jingyi was still entangled with Cen Yuehuai and Yu Yan, with no winner yet.

Baisha reported, "Yaning and Janice are heading your way."

Ji Ya and Xino exchanged glances, thinking that didn't make sense.

First off, with the princess herself in action, how could those two have escaped unscathed? Secondly, this tube building wasn't exactly a strategic location; coming here meant they'd be stuck and easily targeted by Ji Ya and Xino. There were so many other places in the arena to hide; why choose a spot with no ambush value?

The next second, they saw Yaning carrying a figure hurriedly jumping into the tube building—Ji Ya tried to aim, but the distance was too far, beyond her shooting range. She had to give up, but she could see clearly that Yaning was carrying a person, not a mech.

...What was happening?

"I dismantled Janice's mech," Baisha announced over the channel, "I guess that counts as one elimination."

The rule of the competition was that a player was eliminated only when they completely lost the ability to move.

Such a rule was indeed quite ingenious.

Elite five-on-five mech combat—what's there to combat without a mech?

……

Meanwhile, Yaning, carrying Janice, leaped into the window sill of the abandoned building, continuously sending distress signals over the channel.

Help, help!

Yaning took a sharp turn in the dimly lit corridor and came face to face with Zhou Ying, who was carrying a toolbox.

Zhou Ying had thought Yaning's mech was severely damaged and had calculated this route to wait for him. Seeing almost no major damage to Yaning's mech, he was about to frown when Yaning pulled the unconscious Janice off his shoulder and laid her in front of Zhou Ying.

"Zhou Ying, help me!"

Janice's condition seemed very wrong.

Her silver mechanical pupils were somewhat scattered, blue electronic patterns faintly flickering on her wrists, and her limbs twitching slightly.

"Data... error..."

"Calculating... restarting..."

Zhou Ying's eyes widened, followed by a wave of frustration.

"I'm a mech engineer," Zhou Ying said through gritted teeth, "not a doctor in intelligent mechanics!"

"But mech engineering also involves neuro-mechanics, right? You've told me that," Yaning replied, somewhat helplessly, "We can't just leave her like this."

"Although both are mechanics, they're completely different things—anyway, what happened to her? How did she suddenly become like this?"

They had all witnessed Janice's computing capabilities.

Not long after entering the arena, Janice had completed the terrain scan and data analysis. Where to fight for the greatest advantage, what tactics to use against the enemy – she had calculated all of these, and Zhou Ying and the others had benefited greatly from her insights.

But wasn't Janice's combat ability quite strong? How did she get beaten so badly so quickly?

Zhou Ying: "Was it Baisha who did this?"

Yaning: "Sort of. She was hit twice."

Zhou Ying: "..."

Somewhat speechless, he climbed out of his mech's cockpit, carrying an instrument from inside. He then pulled several wires from his mech and made a quick connection, saying, "Check her for any interfaces."

Yaning, surprised: "She has interfaces on her body?"

"Of course not on a person, but she's half cybernetic," Zhou Ying explained.

Yaning, awkwardly: "Isn’t that inappropriate?"

Zhou Ying glanced up from his equipment, expressionless: "If you don't look for it, should I?"

Yaning: "..."

Zhou Ying paused, then added: "Besides, you don’t have a girlfriend."

Yaning rolled his eyes, took a deep breath, and hopped out of the cockpit. Feeling around Janice's neck, he said, "There's a hard spot here on the back of her neck."

So, it was a subdermal interface.

Zhou Ying carefully used a knife to cut open the pale skin at the back of Janice's neck, revealing a small interface. He detached an adapter from his own mech for the connection, then linked the wires and began checking Janice's internal system database.

After checking for a while, Zhou Ying sneered and glanced at Janice: "Our combat data is all in her system."

Yaning: "Is it from the training we've had these past few days?"

Zhou Ying: "No, the data collection seems to have started even before we met her."

The two fell silent.

If Janice's role was as the team's commander, then having their combat data made sense. But it was still unsettling to be reduced to mere 'data'.

During the repair process, Zhou Ying, visibly agitated, pulled out several strands of his hair, finally identifying a few erroneous points in the vast data.

He checked the timestamps of the error data, then reviewed the situation with Yaning, realizing that Janice must have been fighting Cen Yuehuai and Yu Yan from the Empire at that time.

"Was she so overwhelmed by the Imperials that it caused a malfunction?" Yaning said incredulously.

"Not sure," Zhou Ying shook his head, "But it's clear that the fault wasn't due to physical impact. It's more like she hit a bug..."

Zhou Ying paused, recalling Janice's murmurs of 'calculation error' and 'calculating restart', and patiently continued inspecting.

"...After a long search, I found a possibility," Zhou Ying said, "Janice's system calculates every enemy encountered and builds a database based on their performance. She has her own combat logic, and the database dictates her reactions to opponents. But when an opponent's performance suddenly exceeds the database's expectations, her calculations crash, rendering her combat logic ineffective."

Yaning cautiously asked, "You mean...?"

"Janice's database must be from the recent military exercise on the barren planet," Zhou Ying said coldly, "Either they didn't give it their all that day, or their strength has incredibly increased overnight."

Yaning's mouth twitched.

As Zhou Ying tried to delete the erroneous data, Janice quieted down after all the database was cleared, but she still did not regain consciousness.

"I did my best," Zhou Ying said with a grim expression, "We could just surrender and send Janice for repairs. It's their military technology that failed, not us. Even my uncle can't blame us for this."

"She is, after all, a person," Yaning sighed, "Describing her as a 'military technological product' seems rather harsh, doesn't it?"

Suddenly, Janice's arm trembled violently and she firmly grasped Zhou Ying, who was nearest to her.

Her eyes suddenly brightened, though speaking was still difficult for her.

"Connect me... to your... mech system," Janice's eyes, gleaming silver like ghostly flames, implored, "I'll help you... win..."

As she spoke, a shallow pool of tears gathered in her eyes.

It wasn’t real crying, but rather physiological tear production, a subconscious reaction.

Zhou Ying stared at her expressionlessly and then decisively disconnected her from the mech, kicking the toolbox towards her.

"Awake? If so, fix yourself. If you fix it well, we continue the match. If not..." Zhou Ying suddenly chuckled with a malicious tone, "Then I'll return you to my uncle."

Yaning: "..."

The next second, he actually saw Janice struggling to get up, pressing a button on her wrist with shaking hands, then connecting to the cyber-brain to start repairing data.

This actually works?