The Mech Touch

Once Ves thoroughly demonstrated the Doom Guard's glow and expounded on its main uses, he ceded the stage to Gloriana.

She smiled as she stepped to the center. "Hello, everyone. I am Gloriana Wodin and I am proud to present the specifications of our new Doom Guard design!"

A projection depicting a simplified schematic of the Doom Guard came into view. Gloriana soon proceeded to highlight and boast about the various performance parameters of specific components.

Though she did her best to make her speech understandable to laymen, her narration failed to attract as much interest from the crowd as before.

This was fine. A product reveal wasn't a theater show. Entertainment wasn't the objective. The overriding goal of this day was to generate as much demand for the Doom Guard as possible.

The main reason why Ves resorted to so much drama was because he needed to introduce the glow of his new design in a memorable way.

Simply providing a description of its effects was not even close as effective as making his audience experience its bone-freezing terror in person!

Mech buyers weren't as impulsive as regular consumers. Though he hadn't revealed the price of the Doom Guard, it was bound to cost a fortune to many people!

Getting someone to cough up so much money for a mech was far from easy. Though there were plenty of people who bought mechs impulsively, most potential buyers tended to be more critical and discerning!

This was because the choice of mechs literally affected the lives of those who depended upon them! Adding a good mech to the roster would increase an outfit's chances of completing a mission, while a bad mech could easily cost precious lives!

This was why Ves let Gloriana handle the rest. She was a lot more passionate about the technical design of the mech and eagerly wanted to show off her latest innovations!

Most of the laymen only vaguely followed her explanations or simply tuned her out entirely.

It didn't matter. Gloriana mainly addressed her words to the groups of people who could truly make use of the Doom Guard. Mech buyers, mech commanders, mech procurement offers and more people with the power to purchase the new product keenly paid attention to the detailed strengths of the striker mech design.

Naturally, Gloriana's pleasant voice did not mention any of the less flattering aspect about their design. Its limited capacity, its relatively ordinary strengths, its lackluster mobility and so on never came up once during her entire spiel.

It didn't matter. This was a day of celebration as far as the LMC was concerned.

Despite the generous amount of mech designers seated in the hall, none of them was in the mood to heckle this time.

A greater mech designer loomed over their heads? Who would possibly have the courage to criticize the work of a pair of mech designers that the Master obviously favored?

They would just be making fools of themselves!

Of course, it also helped that the Doom Guard didn't present a threat to their interests.

Striker mechs was one of the less common mech types on the market. The most popular models tended to fall in the budget and midrange market category. The Doom Guard obviously looked a lot more expensive than the norm, so despite its various features, it was simply too expensive to capture the lion's share of the market.

No matter how good a mech performed, price was still a heavy limitation to many wallet-conscious customers!

While there were some mech designers who published a premium spaceborn striker mech design of their own, that was still not a reason to speak out and defend their work.

No matter the special features and properties of their work, how could it equal the fantastic glow that Ves demonstrated earlier?

From an area denial standpoint, the Doom Guard was truly revolutionary in its design! Its glow clearly disregarded the quantity and quality of mechs, and instead tested the resolve of the mech pilots directly!

The demonstration that ensued after Gloriana finished her presentation couldn't make this any clearer.

"Let us proceed with showing our new product in action!"

The walls of Trillion Hall turned transparent. The occupants of the hall suddenly gained the illusion that they were sitting in the middle of space!

The squad of Doom Guards that had stood on the podium had already withdrawn a moment earlier.

Now, they spread their wings and flew into space. The identical Doom Guards formed an echelon formation as they flew out until they stopped at a healthy distance away from the hall.

The transparent walls began to project some feeds that allowed every spectator to observe several magnified feeds of the mechs in question.

In the distance, a huge number of mechs approached. The surprised attendants began to count the number of mechs that approached the Doom Guards.

They soon gave up! There were simply too many mechs for any baseline human to keep track of!

"There are more than a thousand mechs in that massive group! It's as if an entire mech regiment is approaching!" Someone with an ocular implant yelled!

The shock in the crowd grew greater. What kind of demonstration demanded a thousand mechs?

Usually, it was sufficient to utilize half-a-dozen mechs as sparring partners for the new design! There was no practical reason to involve such an immense number of mechs for a simple demonstration!

Ves walked back up to the center of the podium again.

"What you are witnessing are the mechs of numerous famed and reputable outfits. Both mercenary corps and security companies have agreed to take part in this exhibition. Just like the previous challenge, each of them have been informed that they are entitled to a progressively greater bonus should they last long enough!"

The crowd suddenly realized that a good show was about to ensue!

After the attendants personally experienced the terror of the Doom Guard, most of them developed an eager anticipation of inflicting this pain on others!

Noticing this reaction, Ves grinned wider.

Devils weren't feared for their power!

Instead, it was their ability to twist people's hearts that truly made them notorious!

Numerous potential customers had already started to imagine employing the Doom Guards to terrorize their opponents. Nothing made them feel better than to spread the suffering that had thoroughly shamed them earlier!

This was human nature. Ves knew what dwelled inside their hearts, so he prepared something that would allow them to bring it to the surface!

Out in space, almost two-dozen outfits worth of mechs flew to their assigned coordinates. Despite the sheer variety of mech models, it was still possible to distinguish who they belonged to by matching their coating and markings.

The Doom Guards didn't stick together. Instead, they all began to separate and spread out in a long line. They finally stopped after several kilometers of distance stood between each mech!

The reason for that soon became evident. The huge amount of hired mechs began to envelop the individual Doom Guards.

Ten spheres consisting of at least a hundred mechs surrounded a Doom Guard from each direction!

The spheres slowly contracted. The mechs began to crowd a little closer to each other as the ball of mechs shrank in size. They eventually stopped their contraction when it became too dangerous to reduce the distance any further!

The audience patiently waited for something to happen.

Ves spoke up again.

"As I have stated previously, our Doom Guards excel at fending off assaults and denying an entire area. Due to the special properties of the characteristic glows of our mechs, they are effective no matter how many opponents they affect! This means that no matter how outnumbered you are, the Doom Guard is one of the effective equalizers as long as you make good use of its strengths! Behold what you can do as long as the monsters are on your side!"

The third eyes of the Doom Guards flickered back to life. Their crimson glows looked extraordinarily compelling between the gaps of all of the mechs.

As their recently-activated glows ramped up, the spherical formation of mechs already started to exhibited some changes.

Despite the orders the mech pilots received, they couldn't help but feel increasingly more unnerved as they remain in formation!

Those with frailer nerves and weaker hearts soon began to have second thoughts all of a sudden.

Though the Doom Guards they surrounded never lifted their weapons or made any offensive moves, the onset of terror and the threat of death still wormed their way into their minds!

"What is this?"

"Why is this mech so strange?"

None of the mercenaries had been informed about the nature of the mech. They had strictly been instructed to close off all communications, so they shouldn't have witnessed the initial demonstration of the Doom Guard!

Even if they disobeyed orders and sneakily watched a feed of the product reveal, it didn't matter.

The fearsome glow of the Doom Guard worked best against unprepared opponents, but it remained effective regardless if its opponents were aware!

When the glow reached its full strength, the spheres visibly shook!

The weaker mercenaries already started to lose their confidence, while the older and more experienced mech pilots managed to hang on to an extent.

It was too bad that the Doom Guard didn't carry its name for nothing. The sense of doom it heralded was so pernicious and multifaceted that hardly anyone could remain immune for long!

"They're breaking!"

The spheres of mech suddenly lost its aesthetically round shapes as some of the mercenaries couldn't take it any longer! Their courage was too shallow for them to persist! The cowards seemed to have succumbed to their baser instincts and mindlessly commanded their mechs to turn around and fly away as fast as possible!

Impressively, over half of the mercenary mechs exhibited this shameful behavior! No matter how much their bosses shouted at the mech pilots, the irrational fear that tipped them over was not so easy to resist!

It took at least half a minute and a generous distance for these frightened mech pilots to regain their wits.

"That.. that was scary!"

"I can't believe what has happened to me just now!"

"Did someone drug my coffee?!"

The five-hundred or so mechs that remained didn't reform the broken spheres. The majority of the mech pilots were too busy trying to resist the pressure radiating from the Doom Guards!

The tenuous movements of the mechs were in full display to the audience. While it was admirable that this group of mech pilots managed to hang on this far, it was obvious that the mentalities of these mech pilots had obviously dropped!

The capability to induce this state of mind was already valuable in itself! Shaking, hesitant mech pilots were much more easy to break than high-spirited mech pilots!

Soon enough, the remaining mech pilots received orders to close in and reform the spheres. They reluctantly obeyed this order and tried to fly closer.

This was difficult! The mechs hesitantly flew closer to the Doom Guards while doing their best to form more compact spheres.

They failed. The closer they came, the more their mech pilots experienced the glows of the mechs!

It became drastically more difficult for these regular mech pilots to maintain their nerves!

Over two-hundred mechs dropped out.

Just a fifth of the original group of mechs remained! The spheres of mechs that surrounded the Dooom Guard seemed so thin and fragile that it looked as if a single punch could break them into pieces!

Ves waited for the right moment to pass on his next command to the mech pilots of the Doom Guards.

"Show them a taste of hell."

The ten striker mechs simultaneously cocked their massive flamethrowers and began to spew a sea of flames all of a sudden!

The Doom Guards rapidly spun around its axis in order to spew flames in practically every direction!

Though the eruption of omni-directional hellfire looked frightening up close, they didn't traverse very far! The billowing flames only traversed a modest distance of fifty meters before losing momentum.

There was plenty of distance between these flames and the surrounding mechs!

Yet despite the lack of threat, the intimidating sight triggered the build-up of fear that mounted in every mercenary's imagination!

The spheres disintegrated as a considerable number of remaining mechs broke formation!

As the Doom Guards ceased to spew their flames, they suddenly became a lot more visible.

There weren't enough mechs in the way anymore to block the views of the feeds!

Ves wrapped up the demonstration.

"No matter how powerful the mech, the pilot is always the weakest link!"

"No matter how many opponents show up, a single Doom Guard can topple them all!"

"No matter how bad your mech pilots are, a Doom Guard can turn any of them into elites!"

"Order a Doom Guard today to be the first to have a monster at your side!"