Solo vs Troll (6)
Beep-beep-beep! Beep-beep-beep!
"Commander, a destroyer is moving ahead of us."
"Ugh… just one?"
"Yes, sir. Another transport type, but—wait a moment. This one's fully loaded with resources!"
"Oh."
Coincidence or not, near the very spot where Melon had lost his previous quarry, a transport destroyer packed to the gills with resources was puttering about on its own.
Naturally, Melon felt not the slightest fear of a basic destroyer with no escorts in sight and nothing more than three lasers for armament. He immediately mobilized his fleet and charged in, intent on mindlessly attacking and looting the vessel.
"Enemy destroyer is reversing course and fleeing!"
"Chase it! This time we're catching it for sure!"
The moment the destroyer confirmed Melon's fleet had appeared, it spun its bow around and ran for its life, engines screaming at full burn. Unfortunately, the massive load of minerals in its cargo holds made the hull more than twice as heavy as usual. Its movements were sluggish, its speed glacial.
Before long, railgun rounds from the main battery of Melon's pride and joy—the Overseer—slammed into the destroyer.
KRA-KOOOM!!!
True to its reputation for firepower rivaling a battleship's, the Overseer's main gun shattered the destroyer's propulsion systems and keel in a single shot.
In his determination not to let this one escape no matter what, Melon had pushed the Overseer ahead alone for a rapid approach—ignoring Maya's attempts to stop him. As a result, the Overseer had pulled well clear of its escort fleet. From Melon's perspective, though, the escorts were only two or three minutes behind at most. All he had to do was quickly salvage the destroyer's resources while waiting for them to catch up.
But that exact moment was what Icarus had been waiting for—the destroyer and the mineral cargo inside it serving as his second bait.
The instant Melon's flagship, the Overseer, stood isolated from its escorts—
WHOOOOSH!!!
"Wha—?!"
Twenty patrol ships under Belial and Ignis charged the lone Overseer in a single, crushing rush.
"Commander! The Overseer is in danger!"
"Shit—fire! Blast every last one of them!"
Watching from his command post, Melon reacted with pure panic and tried to counter the ambush with the Overseer's formidable main battery. But for all its raw power, that gun was ultimately a single-target weapon. By the time the assault force closed the distance, the Overseer's counterfire had managed to sink only two patrol ships.
And for a cruiser to wield battleship-grade firepower, something had to be sacrificed. Rate of fire was one of those sacrifices—and so was hull defense. Which meant, in practical terms, that a direct breakthrough assault via boarding pods was entirely viable against a cruiser.
The moment they closed with the Overseer, Belial and Ignis each boarded a separate assault pod. Launched like shells, they punched into the Overseer's interior and began their boarding operation.
The boarding alarm, of course, reached Melon's command post immediately.
"Nooo, not my Overseer!"
Desperate, Melon ordered his fleet—now barely a minute away—to engage their boosters and close the remaining distance. But the moment Belial and Ignis finished their job of putting superhumans aboard the Overseer, Icarus's patrol fleet dove straight into Melon's escorts.
"Aaaargh!!! Get lost! Get the hell out of my way!"
"Commander, please calm down—we have to eliminate that fleet first somehow!"
"Aaaagh!"
The boosters he'd just burned became completely useless. Worse, using them slapped Melon's entire fleet with a -50% mobility debuff the instant combat began. It was, by any measure Melon could imagine, the absolute worst possible outcome.
Solo vs Troll (6)
While Icarus's remaining patrol ships bought time with extreme deep-dives, Ignis and Belial—having infiltrated for a shipboard melee that, game or not, still very much existed even in the sci-fi age—were tearing through the Overseer's interior with everything they had.
"Hah!"
Slash! Thud!
The assault pods raining down from the patrol ships had also deployed Terminator-esque androids as support units. But there was only so much you could ferry in roughly ten pods.
Thud-thud-thud-thud-thud!
VRRRRRRRRRR!
Against the defensive drones and turrets stationed throughout a cruiser over a kilometer long, the androids were swept aside with pathetic ease. One assault pod even managed the spectacular blunder of smashing only the cruiser's antenna array before sailing off into the distant void of space.
Even so, there was a reason they'd been deployed at all.
"Foothold!"
The androids Icarus had sent in served as stepping stones for Ignis's fluid three-dimensional combat—or as pieces for Belial to claim.
"Better if I control them myself."
Using her signature ability—Puppet Manipulation—Belial folded the androids into her own forces and began seizing sectors of the cruiser's interior one after another.
One way or another, their presence was an enormous help to the two women who'd boarded. Which, put differently, meant they were applying crushing pressure on the S-grade character Melon had left behind to protect the cruiser's control systems: Barbatos, Melon's only close-combat superhuman, who'd never gotten a proper chance to level and was stuck at a mere level 12.
Melon may have been an aggro-magnet who charged in mindlessly, but he wasn't completely brainless. To compensate for Barbatos's low level, he'd piled on every piece of gear he could and layered in support from the defense systems—preparing as thoroughly as he knew how.
Unfortunately…
"Surrender, Barbatos!"
"The cruiser's defensive forces you were counting on are already annihilated. Give up quietly and hand over control."
"…So it comes to this after all."
The defenses Melon had prepared could, at best, have held against a character only somewhat stronger than Barbatos. The two women standing before him now—Ignis, who was called near-SSS-grade, and Belial, a clear-cut SSS-grade—were far beyond that.
Barbatos let out a long sigh, lamenting the dull-wittedness of his lord and commander, Melon. But the lament lasted only a moment.
Thud!
"I, Barbatos, under the command of my lord Melon, will protect this cruiser's control systems to the very end!"
"…Of course it would go this way."
"No choice, then. We're short on time—finish this as fast as possible."
Driven by his resolve to defend the cruiser his lord had entrusted to him, Barbatos drove the butt of his giant warhammer into the deck, flooded his powered armor with every amp of juice it had, and charged Ignis and Belial.
Despite the considerable stat gap from his lower level and grade, the extra equipment Melon had given him—combined with the defense turrets and reinforcement drones installed in the control room—let Barbatos put on a remarkable display. A mere S-grade, holding his own against two SSS-grades, buying every second he could with his life on the line.
But no amount of gear could change the fact that he was only mid-tier even among S-grades. He hit his limit fast. The powered armor compensating for his lacking stats was smashed apart under Ignis's relentless flurry of blows.
Seizing that opening, Belial swept in low and fluid, her strike catching him under the jaw and lifting his body clean off the ground.
"This ends now!"
Ignis's full-power Hectopascal Kick—boasting SS+ attack power—drove straight into Barbatos's gut. He never even got the chance to choose defiance through sheer will. Barbatos's bitter life came to an end, and he set off once more on the long journey back to the distant world of the gacha.
Having buried Barbatos, the two women looked at the cruiser's control systems—now stripped of turrets, drones, and even its last superhuman, left with nothing but a flimsy firewall—and quietly licked their lips.
At that same moment, Commander Melon was…
"Damn it, wasting time on a bunch of patrol ships!"
"All ships, full speed ahead! Prepare for shipboard melee inside the Overseer!"
Icarus's patrol fleet, diving in without regard for their own losses, had cost him a precious five minutes. His already shattered mental state was fraying further, nerves stretched so thin that a full-blown breakdown felt imminent. Even so, Melon's berating of his subordinates had reached a level far beyond his usual abuse.
Of course, from Commander Melon's own perspective, he had perfectly valid reasons for it.