Nico and Max both rushed to their Mecha as the Arisen began to pour out of their ships and join the battle. The War Walkers were a familiar sight for Max, and he knew exactly what they were capable of, so there would be no confusion about deployment patterns when they joined them in combat.
The Android Army moved seamlessly to join the War Walker formations, providing a variety to their firepower as the two fleets merged into one force. In return, a wing of ten Command Walkers moved over to join Max and Nico, all armed with twin swords and prepared for close combat.
[Human Commanders. It will take seven minutes until we can close the portal. Until then, the breach needs to be held and the Lesser Energy Beings held at bay.] The Command Walker wing leader informed them.
That was the first time that they had heard a War Walker directly address anyone. Max wasn't even aware that they had the capability until now, but he could see that there was a powerful surge of energy building on the other side of the portal, which he assumed was a mass of Demons.
In the mind of the War Walkers, there were three categories of Energy Beings. Minor, Lesser and Greater. Greater took a whole fleet of ships to destroy, and minor were the ones that you could fight with a Mobile Suit or infantry. That left the Mecha-sized ones as the Lesser Demons.
Or so Max assumed until he actually got to the portal to face them.
The Mecha-sized ones were the least of the Lesser Demons. There were others up to a hundred metres tall, wielding all sorts of brutal weaponry or throwing energy attacks from those flickering crystals at them.
It wasn't just one variety either. It looked like the open portal had attracted all sorts of creatures to the tear in space, and they were determined to get out.
Max could sense that they were trapped in that place, their ancestral home, though they were often found in the secondary layer of space where the battle had raged against the Greater Energy Being.
Nico's excitement reached a frenzy as she realized that the creatures five times their size were also valid opponents, and she began charging her weapons.
Max ran the [Optimize] process on his weapons to get ready for the battle and found that there were significant changes that needed to be made to their current loadout to fight in the strange third layer of space where these beings were emerging.
[Nico, I have finished the analysis. This layer of space is different. Nukes won't work properly here. Switch to Antimatter shells in your Thunder Guns and Light Mass Drivers.] Max instructed her.
Nico didn't hesitate or doubt his orders, and she changed the type of shells an instant before the first ones were fired, going immediately to Warp speed and crashing into the Demons with a spherical black explosion.
Everything seemed to simply go dark where the shells exploded, and then a vacuum formed, sucking in more energy to fill the gap where the Demon used to be.
Max sensed the amusement of the War Walkers and the rage of the Demons as the first barrage of shells hit, and then the less-than-light-speed rounds of the light Mass Drivers began to detonate.
It turned space around the enemy formation into a volatile minefield of unstable black vortexes, which would tear apart the energy beings that got too close while they were sucking in energy to fill the void.
The Demons charged at an astounding pace, closing the distance between them in seconds and preventing the Thunder Guns from using any more Antimatter shells due to the close proximity of the detonations to his own lines.
The Mecha and the War Walkers raised their blades, and the two sides crashed together in eerie silence, with nothing to transfer sound from the battle.
Behind them, the fleet was doing an incredible job of holding the main force at bay, but the ships were able to appear behind the line that Max and Nico had formed with the Arisen, and only the Demons were forced to appear directly here at the portal.
Seven minutes was going to be a long time for them all to hold on.
Max blasted a Demon apart with his Ion Cannon, then thrust his jagged blade through the throat of another, tearing the head from its body with the backstroke. But with every shot and every strike, he was forced to retreat a little more.
The numbers were overwhelming, extending as far as his sensors could reach, an unstoppable tide of Demonic Beings.
If that were to ever reach his home layer of space, there would be no stopping it. They didn't have a tenth of the force that would be needed to deal with that sort of threat spread through multiple Galaxies.
[Dammit, is that what it always looks like here?] Max asked the Arisen, hoping for an answer.
[No, That is what the remnants of a defeated Greater Energy Being look like. When it was destroyed, a portion of its energy returned to its home and split to create these creatures. They are unstable and will dissipate in a few decades or possibly sooner, but today, we must hold them at bay and allow them to be taken by the currents.] The Command Walker's team leader replied.
That massive army would last for decades? But if they were part of the energy being, then that meant they should have the same flaws.
Max [Optimized] his Ion Cannons to destabilize the beings and fired it as a dispersed blast, clearing an area in front of his Mecha.
He sent the data to Nico, who adjusted her weapons with it in an instant and passed the data to the War Walkers.
It wasn't clear if they would be able to use the technology or not, given their different technology and possible status as Energy Beings themselves, but it was worth a shot.
Nothing about their weapons seemed to change, but the War Walkers were already quite effective at destroying the beings to begin with. The additional ability to destabilize a group that got too close gave Max a bit of room to maneuver, and now he was able to help the line hold its position against the tide of Demons.
What he really wanted was to adapt that technology to his sword as well, but the one he was using was based on Demonic technology and wasn't a powered weapon. It was an unfortunate oversight on his part, and Max made a note to give Nico a new idea for their next iteration of Mecha.
Variable pattern energy weapons.
If they could adapt their energy weapons in an instant the way that they could create new Mass Driver Shells on demand, they would be able to reliably handle any enemy that they faced.
With technology like that and all of the new data they had collected from the enemies they were facing here, it might be possible that they would be able to replicate one of the Relic God Mecha that humanity possessed.
Of course, he now knew that those came from the Darklings' distant past, but soon, humans would be able to make their own. Max was certain of it.
