The Demons weren't going to let Max take advantage of his good luck. Before the massive hulk of the last demon was even evaporated, two more giant Red Demons, each as tall as a Heavy Mecha, standing nearly fifteen metres tall, were working together to overwhelm him.
Max slid right and swung hard at one Demon's side, forcing it towards its partner and allowing him to get them both in front of him for a moment. Then the Light Mass Drivers went to work, raining hypersonic rounds down on them.
But the Demons were wise to the trick, and as fast as Max could adjust, they were twirling away from his targeted trajectory. They had to be using some trick. With his System Function, he didn't even have to think about the targeting. It was already on his screen, along with a predicted movement pattern that was very rarely wrong.
Only this time, the Mass Driver rounds were exploding all around them, decimating the smaller demons but either missing his large opponents or tearing through the thin membrane of their wings and doing negligible damage.
A change of tactic was in order, so Max forgot about targeting them with the guns and turned both the Light Mass Drivers and the Thunder Guns on the Demons in the ranks behind them while he held the champions at bay with his sword and shield.
They were good, but they didn't realize that he was no longer shooting at them but past them, and they continued to dodge his shots, keeping them too busy to coordinate an attempt to get through his defences.
When the two finally realized what he was doing, the roars of rage echoed through the battlefield, and the Demons around him instinctively bowed down in submission.
[Cuirfidh mé deireadh leat damnable daonna] The demon shouted, then stepped back to avoid having Max's sword shoved through its throat.
"So you do speak a language I can translate. You will end this damnable human, will you? I don't think so." Max laughed, then unleashed his forearm-mounted Ion Cannon on the Demon, crippling one leg and leaving him unable to parry the next strike.
His partner lept forward, intending to save the downed Demon until it could heal, but Max met its charge with his shield, and the two giants crashed to a standstill while the jagged blade in Max's right hand came down on the back of the crippled Demon's neck.
One-on-one, the Demon was no match for the Titan Class Mecha, and in three swift strikes, Max knocked the demon's blade aside and took its head from its body.
The battle around their deployment zone was beginning to come under control as the might of the Android Army tore through the Demons and their allies. The mortal forces were in full retreat already, leaving only the Demons, who were mostly only armed with close combat weapons or ranged weapons that they had scavenged from the dead.
There were precious few of those still in workable condition, given the propensity of the Mecha to use explosive shells, and it was clear that they wouldn't be able to force the attack much longer.
The artillery from the human force continued to rain down on the Demons as they turned away from the battle, thoroughly routed and bellowing in rage.
[Good work today, everyone. Don't forget to share and update your combat data, and get the destroyed units back into the ships for refurbishment.] Max ordered.
They had lost about one in twenty Mecha during the battle, a much better outcome than he had expected, though the level of damage to the others was substantial, and even the built-in replicators would take a while to rebuild the damaged sections.
Max sensed Nico's amusement at the fact that he addressed the Androids as if they were human troops that needed a morale boost, but it was too strong of a habit for him just to stop doing it now.
"Let's head back behind the line and get started on a plan to deal with the larger battlefield.
The Drones are mostly back in the area now and keeping the enemy pinned down wherever they can find them. They've taken heavy casualties, and we're down to under thirty percent combat capability for our airborne forces." Nico informed him.
Two-thirds of the drones down was brutal. Max moved back to their Cutter as he checked the damage reports, giving himself a small buffer of safety if they were attacked again.
It looked like the Drones took every engagement personally, and nobody had set parameters not to use nukes in the atmosphere, so they had unleashed nearly a hundred thousand small fusion explosions all over the planet.
"I somehow suspect that if we told the locals we were on their side, they would not believe us at this point." Max sighed as he saw the footage from the Drones replayed in his mind, courtesy of his borrowed copy of Nico's skill.
Nico giggled. "Fear not, brave civilians. We are from the Government, and we are here to help."
Max facepalmed at the cliche reference, but it really was the case today. They had probably done more damage to the planet than the Demons had, even though they had eliminated over half of the invading force in the last few hours.
Particularly egregious was the Destroyer that had been taken out by the Drones and crashed into a metropolitan area. The ship was over a kilometre long, and the casualties in a hive city would be in the millions just from that crash alone.
"I vote that we don't tell them our names before we leave," Nico added helpfully.
"I second that. But now we need a weapon for the next round of drones that isn't a nuclear weapon used in close proximity to civilians." Max sighed.
"You know, I have an idea. A really good idea. I've been analyzing the energy signature of the Demons when they are destroyed, and I think that I can replicate it and throw them back out of reality to another layer of space.
It's not exactly killing them, but they aren't really dying anyhow. With that in mind, making them someone else's problem is just as good, right?" Nico offered.
