Reborn as a Mechanist with a God-Tier System-Chapter 316: Escalation [1]

"I see..."

Colonel Alphonse’s sky blue eyes gleamed with rising battle intent.

Despite his decades of experience as a D Rank Ascended, he was yet to be sent to the territories of the North where the Synth Order ruled. What this meant was that this was his first time fighting against a D Rank Mechanist.

He had fought countless times against other D Rank NetRunners, Cyber Gladiators, Gene Augurs, and even a few times against D Rank Quantum Shapers, but he was yet to fight against a D Rank Mechanist.

For the first time in his life, he experienced the layered and controlled battle style of a D Rank Mechanist.

From the very beginning, Leon seemed to have predicted every single action that he was going to take. And from the beginning, despite being the one to go on the offensive, he realized that Leon had the full initiative throughout and was leading him by the nose.

He was just reacting passively since.

’What a seamless battle tactic’. He thought with a grin.

Predicting your opponent’s moves was one thing, but being able to act and react perfectly in the heat of battle to counter your opponent’s moves in line with your predictions to neutralize your opponent was genius.

’What a terrifying opponent’. For the first time, Colonel Alphonse truly acknowledged his opponent.

’What else did I expect from him?’ he grinned. ’Afterall, this is someone that even master respected’.

He quickly replayed every move that Leon had made so far in his head, analyzing how he seamlessly used his weapons and switched between them.

’He’s versatile,’ he thought. ’Very versatile...’

The moment Leon’s attack connected, he finally realized the meticulous battle plan of the Mechanist.

Not only did Leon’s planning and battle prediction surprise him and catch him off-guard, the nature of his abilities also caught him off-guard. ’It’s almost like we’re natural counters for each other...’

Colonel Alphonse looked up at Leon. "You don’t fight like a newly promoted D Rank Ascended at all".

He grinned. "Well, let’s ramp it up a notch".

His neon green ADE flared.

Neural Projection!

Neural Projection!

Neural Projection!

Neural Projection!

Neural Projection!

Bzzz! Bzzz! Bzzz!

Colonel Alphonse entered his psionic ghost form again but this time, he wasn’t regular about it at all as he became unhinged with his mobility.

He moved like a wizard, constantly jumping from one neural interface to another, forcing the Mechanist to keep on guessing and for the advanced A.I targeting system of his weapons to keep on guessing.

Colonel Alphonse became a blur.

He hopped again and again, ramping his speed up till it reached a level where he began leaving natural mirages in his wake.

To Leon, it seemed like the Colonel was everywhere!

Though the Colonel didn’t attack while moving at these dizzying speeds, Leon lost his advantage of holding all the main cards of the battle and predicting his next moves as the tides of the battle became unpredictable again.

With the Colonel moving at such speed, it was impossible to predict his next move.

And that was when he did it.

Feedback Burst!

Neural Hack!

BZZZZT!

It happened so fast that Leon couldn’t react.

One moment, Colonel Alphonse was moving at a dizzying speed, simply hopping from one neural node to another through the psionic network, a seemingly pointless endeavor till it happened.

In one millisecond, with Feedback Burst, the Colonel assaulted, disrupted and briefly disabled the electronics of both Skirmisher Class Doom Rovers, making them freeze and leaving them vulnerable to cyberattacks.

This left the door wide open for the Colonel’s Neural Hack ability to focus on one of the Skirmisher Class Doom Rovers, concentrating his power to hack the machine instantly!

The moment the Skirmisher was hacked, it made 2 moves instantaneously. 𝓯𝙧𝓮𝓮𝒘𝓮𝙗𝙣𝒐𝒗𝒆𝓵.𝓬𝓸𝒎

It swung its body in an agile and violently sudden maneuver, cutting at the spine of the other Skirmisher Class Doom Rover with one of its vibro-blades.

As for its second vibro-blade, it aimed at the sky and threw it.

BOOM!

The vibro-blade broke the sound barrier and arrived beside Leon in the sky almost instantaneously, forcing his R9 shield to come to life not just around him but also around the uncompromised Skirmisher that was betrayed.

But one major function of the vibro-blades that made them exceedingly lethal was that they used ultrasonic vibrations to increase not just their cutting effect, but their lethality against energy shields.

They were the natural enemy of energy shields

CRKSH!

The first layer of the R9 energy shields shattered immediately.

But instantly, the layered R9 shield underneath sprung to life, taking the spot of the previous one that was just destroyed. This was the only reason why Leon survived the sudden assault.

He had dozens of R9 energy shields stacked on himself.

’Money, money, money...!’

As for the Skirmisher Class Doom Rover, each one only had 3 R9 energy shields stacked inside them and within a second, all 3 shields shattered, then...

CRACK!

The vibro-blade cut through the Skirmisher Class’s spine like a hot knife through butter!

The Skirmisher Class Doom Rover v0.2 collapsed and was destroyed.

As for Leon, despite being protected by the overlapping R9 energy shields, the concussive force of the impact of the compromised Skirmisher’s throw pushed him off-balance, throwing him off the sword drone that he rode.

Despite being off balance, with his invisible C-5 drones, Leon was able to see the compromised Skirmisher Class aim at him again, about to throw its 2nd vibro-blade at him in a devastating attack.

Noting this, without hesitation, Leon thought. ’Activate failsafe!’

Instantly, all electronic components of the compromised Skimisher Class Doom Rover v0.2 shut down!

Having experienced and seen enough of high-ranking NetRunners in Iron Reef back in Year 583 A.G, Leon was wary about their influence on his mechanical soldiers, this was why he created a fallback system for any autonomous construct of his that had direct access to Davis.

Instead of allowing his own constructs and weapons to be stolen by enemies and used against him, he created an analog fallback system with no network access, creating a deliberate "dumb" version of the machines that were immune to the hacking of NetRunners.

The moment Leon dumbed down the Skimisher Class Doom Rover, Colonel Alphonse lost his control over it even as Leon regained control with Command Link Network.

But Colonel Alphonse didn’t stay in one place after hijacking the machine.

With his knowledge of the Mechanist Class based off the archives of the Freegrid Collective, he knew the general abilities of D Rank Mechanists and had a vague idea about what Leon’s next move would be.

This was why just before Leon could activate the fallback system, he hopped into the neural network again.

Neural Projection!

And this time, he hopped directly into the neural node of the sword drone that was rapidly charging towards the falling Leon to catch him.

The sword drone became a shuttle for Alphonse to get access to his target.

And this time, with no solid platform to kick and jump to evade the pursuit of the D Rank NetRunner, Leon was exposed as Colonel Alphonse finally entered his optimum attack range, then his ADE let loose.

Data Lash!

Mind Distortion!

Psionic Assault!