Chapter 3750: Unorthodox Attack Method

The t.i.tan-3 Project was unkillable under the right circ.u.mstances.

Derived from the matter harvested from the t.i.tania's carca.s.s, the meat suit was unexpectedly compatible with Venerable Joshua.

Ves believed this was not only related to his life domain, but also his pa.s.sing familiarity with t.i.tania the design spirit.

Although Ves had only tied the t.i.tania to the Minerva, an expert mech that was exclusive to Commander Casella, that did not mean that Joshua had no ways of contacting the new design spirit.

Joshua only needed to approach the Minerva and experience its glow to come into contact with the t.i.tania.

As long as Joshua managed to develop a friends.h.i.+p with the remnant consciousness of the ancient astral beast, he could definitely increase his affinity with her former fles.h.!.+

This was why Ves had high hopes for the amazing resilience of the meat suit. Only a mech pilot like Joshua could draw out its full potential!

The hope was that the meat suit would therefore turn the Everchanger into a miniature juggernaut! Even if its size did not even come close to matching the enormous dimensions of the Ura.n.u.s, the meat suit was still large and tough enough to withstand a lot of punishment!

"The t.i.tan-3 Project is quite powerful, but its properties allow it to excel in battles of attrition." Dr. Perris explained. "Since that is the case, we decided to add additional energy cells and biological power reactors to enhance the meat suit's staying power. As long as the meat suit does not incur critical damage to its biosystems, it will always be able to keep fighting."

Ves liked this aspect. "That's good. The Everchanger is not a mech that scores high on endurance. If it can drastically increase the time it can remain active on the battlefield by donning this meat suit, then that is worthwhile enough to invest in its development."

This turned the meat suit into a combat engine that just kept fighting under difficult circ.u.mstances!

As long as the enemy could not overcome the meat suit's defenses straight away, it was impossible to take it down as it continued to regenerate its damage while relying on its vast power reserves to keep on fighting!

After Ves studied the numbers and verified that the meat suit should theoretically be able to stay in a fight for several hours as long as Venerable Joshua wasn't pus.h.i.+ng it too hard, he moved on to its offensive capabilities.

"I see that you have failed to integrate any ranged weapons in the meat suit. In fact, you also removed the spear that was present in the earlier iterations of its design."

Dr. Perris looked apologetic. "From the moment we chose to make the meat suit out of the t.i.tania's biomatter, we were bound by its constraints. Given that the t.i.tania was originally a ma.s.sive but highly inflexible astral beast, the harvested tissue also possesses these traits. In order for the flesh to remain so dense, strong and resilient, we cannot treat it too much in order to make it more flexible or adaptable. Any changes we have made to the tissue has drastically weakened its structure, thereby turning them into weak points that can easily be exploited by our enemies. Without understanding the t.i.tania's biomatter on a deeper level, we can only work with what we have."

The consequence was that the t.i.tania's flesh could not be repurposed into sophisticated bioweapons such as organic laser cannons and so on. The dense flesh was also lacking in flexibility and fine-grained movements, so the meat suit would not be able to wield any melee weapons with adequate proficiency.

"The flesh we are employing are akin to alloy bricks that cannot easily be bent or shaped." Perris stated. "Since that is the case, we have eschewed sophisticated weaponry and resorted to embedding the arms of the mechs with sharp and thick claws."

The reinforced claws were large, thick and made of strong alloy.

Their purpose was fairly clear at first glance. They were meant to tear through the thick hull plating that protected s.h.i.+ps from outside factors!

Even if the claws became chipped or damaged during a battle, it was no big deal to replace them after a battle had ended. There was even hope that Venerable Joshua would be able to regenerate easily enough since they were made out of biometals!

"These claws can be retracted, right?" Ves asked.

Dr. Perris nodded. "Correct. If the claws are not suitable and if applying blunt force trauma is more preferable, then the meat suit can retract its claws and fight with its fists. With the help of Tifi Coslone, we have designed the arms to be able to deliver a huge amount of physical force. This is also what the t.i.tania's flesh excels at. The meat suit fights like a heavyweight brawler that relies on simple, winding attacks that can crush mechs with a single strike or punch holes through multiple layers of hull plating. There is no mech in the Larkinson Clan that can come close to dealing so much physical damage!"

It was tough for Ves to determine the best trait of the meat suit. Its high resilience and fast regeneration made it into an unkillable zombie machine. Its large size combined with its enormous physical might turned it into a close-ranged brawler that could tear entire s.h.i.+ps apart if unopposed!

As Ves imagined the meat suit's performance in close-ranged combat, he did not think that few melee mechs would even dare to confront the machine directly.

Every other mech would just get crushed by the meat suit's vastly superior physical strength!

Not all was well, though.

As Ves continued to learn about the meat suit's exact specifications, he identified a number of shortcomings and vulnerabilities that could potentially hamper its effectiveness.

Ves put down the organic mech figurine. "I am impressed by what you and your team have accomplished, especially with minimal output from myself, but I still have a couple of concerns. I won't mention anything about the meat suit's obvious lack of ranged weapons. It is not a big deal if it cannot retaliate against ranged opponents as there will be other friendly mechs that can provide covering fire. What I need is a mech that can employ brute force to rip apart enemy forces that are not set up to defend against such a direct approach."

"About that, sir"

"What is it, Perris?"

The biomech designer had presented her case with pride and confidence so far. It was odd for her to show so much hesitation all of a sudden.

"When we researched potential ways to integrate ranged weapon systems in the meat suit, we have found that all of the conventional options are not viable due to their inherent incompatibility with the t.i.tania's flesh. However, one of the researchers a.s.signed to the Scarlet Garden has come up with a rather novel idea."

"And what is that?"

"Before I say anything further, do you recall how the t.i.tania originally fought against our fleet when we encountered the astral beast in s.p.a.ce?"

Ves frowned and revisited his memories of the short battle. The t.i.tania, despite being an ancient astral beast that was the size of a medium-sized battles.h.i.+p, was remarkably lacking in firepower.

Part of that was because the Larkinson fleet engaged the creature at longer ranges most of the time.

The t.i.tania would have been able to bite and crush the expeditionary fleet's stars.h.i.+ps if it ever got close, but the Golden Skull Alliance wasn't stupid enough to let that happen!

Another part why the t.i.tania's offense was so lackl.u.s.ter was that it had barely survived a fight against a mysterious phase whale. With so many scars and missing tissue, the creature was not able to put up a good enough fight against the Golden Skull Alliance.

However, Ves would be lying if he claimed the t.i.tania easily succ.u.mbed. Even in a heavily-damaged state, she was still able to pose a lot of threat to the expeditionary fleet by employing a strange means of attack.

The t.i.tania literally launched her own offspring towards her enemies!

Due to her immense size and bioma.s.s, she could comfortably launch meat torpedoes that were the size of mechs or larger at an enemy fleet!

Even though the tough missiles could eventually be intercepted as long as they received enough attacks, the expeditionary fleet still fell into a precarious situation if it wasn't able to defeat the t.i.tania quickly.

Ves still had a decent impression of this unorthodox attack method. There had to be a reason why Dr. Perris brought it up in a discussion about the meat suit.

His eyes widened.

"Wait a minute are you saying the meat suit can attack at range by giving birth to children?"

The female biomech designer awkwardly coughed. "I wouldn't put it in those terms, sir. The meat suit is not the t.i.tania and it doesn't have the reserves of bioma.s.s to launch those large flesh torpedoes. What we have managed to do is reverse engineer some of the mechanics behind the t.i.tania's attack method and bioprogram a small-scale biological attack method that is derived from this research."

In order to ill.u.s.trate her point, Dr. Perris projected the footage of another simulated battle.

This time, it showed the meat suit confronting an enemy fleet. While the target vessels did not possess enough defenses to repel the Everchanger when it was equipped with its organic wargear, the problem was that there were hundreds of vessels!

Even if the enemy s.h.i.+ps weren't particularly large or important, the meat suit did not possess the ability to inflict ma.s.s destruction at a scale that could effectively destroy the entire fleet in a timely manner.

This was where its alternate attack method came into play.

The meat suit did not approach any of the enemy vessels but instead flew through their formation.

During this flight, the surface of the meat suit bubbled before they spat out small b.a.l.l.s of flesh that launched towards the surrounding s.h.i.+ps.

The clip then centered around one of the b.a.l.l.s that impacted against the surface of an enemy s.h.i.+p shortly afterwards.

Once the flesh ball made contact, it began to search for weak points before trying to drill through the hull of the vessel.

If the autonomous flesh ball succeeded in entering the enemy vessel, it could subsequently absorb a lot of suitable matter so that it could rapidly expand in size and power!

What happened next was difficult to watch for Ves. The tiny flesh ball grew into a creature that was akin to a tiny astral beast. It began to wreak havoc inside the flesh and the crew were simply incapable of defending against a powerful enemy that had moved past all of the s.h.i.+p's exterior defenses!

If multiple flesh b.a.l.l.s happened to land on the same s.h.i.+p, then the quant.i.ty of rapidly-growing offspring could easily destroy an entire stars.h.i.+p from the inside!

Even though the simulated scenario was not entirely realistic, it still showcased the huge amount of destructive potential the meat suit possessed if it employed this unorthodox attack method!

What Ves managed to observe was hardly different from purposefully infecting enemy vessels with voribugs!

The difference between the astral beast offspring' and the voribugs was that the latter were better at this job.

Even so, this was a horrifying attack method that was sure to disgust a lot of people if exposed!

Ves frowned at Perris. "I cannot deny the impressive combat effectiveness of this organic attack method. I would be highly impressed if you can add this feature to the actual meat seat. There's a big issue that prevents me from approving it. I am pretty sure that this organic weapon system is illegal. It is a self-replicating bioweapon that can not only depolate entire s.h.i.+ps, but also planets if it runs out of control."

There was a very big taboo against employing biological monstrosities that could easily s...o...b..ll to the point where they consumed everything alive on a planet!

Despite the admonishment, Dr. Perris did not look defeated.

"It doesn't have to be a self-replicating bioweapon, sir. As long as we program the offspring' so that they cannot reproduce any further, they can be contained. Their effectiveness against s.h.i.+ps will drop if this is the case, but this is not a fatal setback. This is not an unheard-of attack method back in the Life Research a.s.sociation. It is hardly different from using mechanical bots to sabotage enemy s.h.i.+ps from within. They are just organic in this instance."

In other words, it might technically be legal for the meat suit to make use of this insidious attack method!