Chapter 13

The second barrage was targeting the frontline cluster that was heading in my direction. They were marching in formations, with their mushroom shields like a roman testudo with their shroom shields at the front, and their shroom hats guarding their top. And so likely enough my second barrage did barely any significant damage to them. The first strike was a surprise, the second and third barrage barely did any damage at all, with the shrapnel bouncing off their shields and explosions softening the soil beneath them.

“They aren’t going down,” Oona said, a slight tinge of fear in her tone.

I gritted my teeth, thinking about what I could do? Like all battles, No battle plan ever survives first contact with the enemy. Hypothesis and Tactics is one thing, reality another, and no one could be truly sure what the outcome will be until it was done.

With that mindset in my mind, I held on my joystick and activated my walking script. The obvious tactic is the plain one. Stomping on these knob heads. I moved Amelia forward to trample on the mushroom men’s formations.

When I completed a stomp with my right foot, I got a few system messages of damaging the fungi folk. But it wasn’t as much as I had expected. Then the knight mecha tilted back a bit, after stepping. The mushrooms who were under the metal sols of the mecha’s boot were pushing upwards. I was shocked at first, reacting quickly I continued stepping through the cluster of small folks.

How was that possible? Were those mushroom soldiers considerably endowed with strength or was Amelia not...

Suddenly, mushroom soldiers began to jump and step upon each other's shroom heads as platforms to then jump onto the plate and chainmail of my Mecha’s legs. The Knight Mecha’s leg movements were staggered by the added weight the mushroom soldiers added upon her, encumbering her more.

Then the realization struck me. I made two fatal mistakes today, well on this battlefield. I did not pull the helm’s visor down to my consternation, and I did not add a solid enough amount of weight to the Knight Mecha’s frame. Yes, If I account for the altered grass and branches into the weight of the plate armor and chainmail, it’d be around 30 kilograms. But that’s below the minimum for a 6 foot Knight frame. If enough mushroom men climb atop Amelia, she will likely trip and fall immobile onto the soil.

My foundations were sound, my concept was genius, but I didn’t really think things through in the end. This was the chink in my armor and my design. It was the nagging feeling that was there but I was too eager to get the wheels rolling. Castigating myself as a fool, I scrunch my shoulders and continue my haphazard stirring into the crowd of Mushroom soldiers, quickly trampling them and moving on so that the Mushroom men don’t have the chance to latch on. But, the further I moved on, more were latching on, gripping their fungi fingers into the chainmail and the edge of the plates. It was to the point that Amelia was slowing down on her stomping.

I then spotted a huge cluster of Mushroom soldiers pushing through the nearest chokepoint near me. They were overwhelmed by the 50 defenders who doggedly defended their spot of land. Teka was at the front, eager to show his martial prowess, like a spear dancer in a melee against shields, he spun for all he was worth.

Imagining the inevitable torrent of mushroom soldiers if that chokepoint broke; I used my second last barrage to target the cluster of Mushroom soldiers that were crowding the gap. Launching the rockets, they haphazardly directed themselves with their spontaneous combusting stones into the fray, exploding on impact.

I had relieved the grass soldiers on the chokepoint from being swamped, but I only had one barrage left. I had to do something else, something that would change the course of this battle. These stubborn knobs just won’t back down.

I tried to stir the analog joysticks to stomp through the mushroom soldiers again, but the actions weren’t being performed. It’s as if there were something blocking the Knight’s mecha’s motion and joints.

“I think we have a mushroom problem.” Wink nervously shouted from below. He was looking down through one of the small slits around the chest compartment that would garner sunlight from the sky to support the small ecosystem inside.

“Oona? Can you look down and tell what's happening?”

I didn’t have to ask, because Oona was already on her way at the front to poke her head out to peer down at the Knight Mecha’s thighs and legs. Her face said it all.

“How many are they?”

“A lot...” She muttered.

Hundreds of mushroom soldiers had latched onto the chainmail and the plating of the knight mecha’s legs, encumbering it down from movement. I had one more barrage left, and I don’t think it will do it. Of course it will disrupt them from climbing, making them fall into the soil, maybe killing a few, but they will continue on until Amelia’s downfall.

It was a battle of attrition and I have only one barrage left. I had to think of another way to change the course of this battle. But what?

“Think! Think!” What can I do? We still have some elemental stones from the Pelvis compartment, but none of them are combusting stones. We probably used all of them. So I can’t use them as makeshift grenades to bombard the shrooms climbing onto the mecha. All I had was water stones, air stones, and fire stones...

I can wrap air stones in brittle grass and throw them down as shrapnel grenades...

No, the force on those air stones isn’t considerable compared to a combusting stone.

I can use the water stones to make it slippery for them to climb atop the mecha, but I’d still have to consider the chainmail holes, those knobs had gotten their hands between. They were good climbing platforms to climb upon. Making them slippery would not really affect the climb as much.

I had to consider a plan quickly before Amelia gets too over-encumbered and trips onto the soil. Then I had my eureka moment. I slapped my palms at the idea, then shouted down below.

“Wink, Peb, get all the water stones, air stones, and fire stones into all the gauntlet sockets.”

Peb replied back at the right shoulder compartment. “We still have one barrage left!”

Oh right. “Thanks for the reminder Peb!” I grinned at this point, my plan was not great, maybe a complex, but it was something that I had done before, but less of the pressure. I directed the right gauntlet fist down at the bottom half of the Mecha, aiming at the plated legs.

“Prepare for impact,” I shouted down below. Wink and Peb clutched onto something. I then pulled the trigger, launching the last combusting shrapnel barrage down onto Amelia’s bottom half. Four identical explosions ensued with the ongoing shrapnel clinging onto plate mail and chain, ringing throughout the interior of the mecha.

A deluge of mushroom soldiers in the premise of the four explosions had lost their grips of the mecha and fell down into the soil alongside their peers. I had killed a few of them but maimed plenty. It was an extravagant amount of burst to do a simple task of getting these knob heads into the ground.

With my teeth clamped tight, I told the party below to prepare the elemental stones.

“Water stones first.”

“Ready!” Both Wink and Peb said in both shoulder compartments of the Knight Mecha. Pressing a second button on the left controller table, I used the left gear stick as the controls for the left gauntlet. I then aim both fists onto the ground, a meter away from me. I then pulled the trigger, but this time I did not set barrage mode on the gauntlets, instead, I set them into pistol mode.

I shot the first few water stones into the ground, at the impact they broked, spilling their contents of water stored inside of them to spill into the soil. I then spun my mecha around to shoot everything around me, specifically aiming at the patches of dirt that had not been soiled yet. I did not know how many I fired, but it was twice as much as the combusting stones that were recently used.

“Water is done!” Peb and Wink both shouted.

“Fire!” I screamed out with glee.

I then sprayed the ground with fire stones, hitting the now wet soil beneath the mushroom men's sols into steam. The fire stones as they are named, do not burst into fire, but instead warms up when they are activated. So when mixing the firestones with the puddles of water on the surface of the soil, a small amount of steam and mist began to propagate beneath the Mushroom folk.

“Wind!” After all the fire stones were expended, Peb and Wink both slid down an arsenal of wind stones into the gauntlet sockets. I then shot the wind stones into the steam-filled ground which then increased the amount of air into the mix, making the steam that had fog the area around the Knight Mecha; thicker, in a much quicker timeframe.

Mushroom soldiers started to get stuck into the soil which was now mud that had been muddied by my actions. The newfound mist hid this from the other mushroom soldiers who were heading towards the fog, into the swamp I had made just for them.

Oona looked down bewildered at my action. “You got them stuck?” She said, marveled. Then she continued, “What if they get out?”

I grinned at the back of her. “That's why I need you.”

She swirled her head to face me. “Me?!”

I nodded with a gleeful glimmer.

“What do you need me for?”

“Oh, it’s just a simple thing.”

“What?”

“I want you to pick me up.”

She looked at me agape and slightly abashed. “Excuse me?”

“Just fly me around, and you’ll see.”

She looked at me, flabbergasted, then shrugged. “What the heck.” She muttered in consent.

I leaped off my stool and headed to the opened face of the helm. Oona went behind me to latch her arms around my chest. It looked like she was hugging me behind, noticing this, I remarked “You’re so aggressive," In a sultry tone.

Her face went rigid, then she kneed me in my butt.

“Ow, ow, my bad.”

“Are you ready?”

“I’m always ready.” I grinned, the second part of my plan ready to be executed.

She then lifted me up with her wings out from the helm and into the breeze. It was uncomfortable at first, but then I got used to her chest touching my shoulder blades.

“Hover down a bit more.” I directed her. She grunted as her reply.

When I was waist high from my mecha, I activated my Active Skill, Invoke Song.

“Every night in my dreams

I see you, I feel you

That is how I know you go on”

Oona cursed, as I continued my shrieking rendition of ‘My Heart Will Go On,’ by Celine Dion.

“Near, far, wherever you are

I believe that the heart does go on

Once more you open the door

And you're here in my heart

And my heart will go on and on”

As I continued on singing with my intentions clear to the grassroots network below the soil, beginning to shift to the song. The shifting muddied soil began to sink the Mushroom soldiers into the ground like quicksand. In a relatively quick amount of time, the Mushroom men’s struggles began chaotic, as they sank further into the earth.

Oona flew me around as I sang or more like shrieked my song to my trapped audience. Their struggles were for naught, for the more they struggled the quickly they sank in. So just like my pod name suggests, oddly fitting for this moment in time, the Mushroom soldiers began to sink into the soil of the grove.