CHAPTER SEVEN

Jason stared up at the island with his eyes narrowed.

His heart had started pounding in his chest as soon as he heard the telltale ding of a fully charged Devastation Cannon, but there was no need to panic.

This situation was dangerous, but it was nowhere near as bad as it seemed. In fact, Jason was arguably at sort of an advantage compared to when he'd started the battle.

As frightening as the Devastation Cannon was, the deadly weapon was not the end-all-be-all of this match - finding the hidden treasure was.

Despite his prodigious piloting skills, Jason seriously doubted he could take on a fully-charged Devastation Cannon. The blast was just too wide and too fast.

However, this was not a fight - it was a mission to steal the hidden item.

At the end of the day, what Jason cared the most about was winning.

He had a lot of pride in the combat skills he'd built up as a One Star Boss.

In fact, he now resignedly viewed the role as the ultimate form of training weights.

All the restrictions put onto him by the Overdrive Corporation had forced him to dramatically increase his skills. Because wins were so incredibly hard to come by, this was a form of training even professional players lacked.

Switching to this new sort of heist mission should have been rather difficult for Jason. However, he was an Overdrive player first and foremost, and that meant respecting the base rules that had been established by the server.

As a player, he needed to adjust his playstyle to fit with what the game server had given him.

Jason's first priority was getting directly beneath his opponent.

The Devastator Cannon was built directly into the tanky Smoulderhulk's draconic head, which was attached to the main body on a flexible mechanical neck.

The neck could crank around to adjust the Devastator Cannon's firing angle, but there was a fundamental limit to the machine's flexibility. The lower Jason got, the worse his opponent's firing angle became. The neck couldn't reach all the way down.

It was impossible for the Smoulderhulk to fire down in a straight line. The Mech's unwieldy body blocked the path of the cannon.

In response to Jason's sharp downward drop, the Smoulderhulk simply continued using its missiles.

Despite his earlier failure to hit Jason, the AngryBoardMember clearly did not want to risk moving his oversized machine. Although the missiles had failed to find their target, using them didn't cost the Smoulderhulk anything but ammunition.

Spamming them was ultimately a very safe strategy.

The missiles continued their relentless pursuit, swerving endlessly as they pursued the descending cave dragon. The AngryBoard Member continued diligently spamming the reliable weapon.

Fortunately, heat seeking missiles had a clear cut weakness.

They were distracted by other heat sources like flames.

As the missiles continued missing Jason, they had gradually set all the nearby forests on fire. The same flames that'd eventually revealed the hidden treasure chest were now protecting Jason from the deadly projectiles.

Before long, the missiles could no longer adequately track the Red Minerva.

But despite the cover, Jason hastily scrabbled away from the burning forests, feigning panic as he continued his determined downward path.

Like all cookie-cutter whales, the AngryBoardMember was probably very comfortable with his own machine's traits, but he didn't know about the Red Minerva's strengths.

As a true biological dragon, the Red Minerva was immune to flames.

That immunity would be critical when it came to securing the objective before his opponent. Even if the Smoulderhulk was currently focused on destroying the Red Minerva, the great mechanical beast would undoubtedly make a move for the hidden item.

Jason didn't want to key his opponent into that unique interaction, so he left as soon as the forests burned.

The triangular islands were reinforced with Spell Titan magic. The earth could not be easily destroyed. However, the same could not be said for the forests. The flames burned brighter and brighter as the missiles obliterated trees and ignited shrubbery.

Before long, plenty of the islands had become barren wastelands.

BWANG!

BWANG!

With his missiles foiled, Spike turned to the Smoulderhulk's tractor beams. The weapons were yet another one of Spike's signature items.

Jason hastily evacuated the target area, but the unfortunate trees around him had no chance to flee. The ground hissed as a pair of gleaming golden beams slammed into the earth.

There was a horrible shrieking noise as the trees were completely torn asunder. The roots were completely wrenched from the earth. The trees streaked back towards the Smoulderhulk and before wailing as a pair of enormous attached buzzsaws tore them completely apart.

Unfortunately for the AngryBoardMember, the Smoulderhulk's tractor beams were a good example of the Mech's dated build philosophy.

The slow but reliable beams excelled at dealing with other Giga Mechs, which couldn't get out of range in time. Back in the old days, stationary Giga Mechs had used tractor beams to remove their opponent's weapons and armor. The attached buzzsaws would then destroy the removed parts, preventing the other machine from re-attaching them.

Spike's use of the tractor beams had established him as a top tier pro and a respected innovator.

However, the weapons were actually nearly useless against nimble opponents like the Red Minerva.

They essentially doubled down on the Devastator Cannon's weakness. There was no use for such incredibly slow weapons when battling a swift glass cannon foe like Jason's Red Minerva.

Freed of both the tractor beams and the Spitfire Missiles, Jason just continued sprinting away.

As the islands continued burning, Jason's movements grew faster and faster.

The Red Minerva's terrain affinity continued gradually increasing, and Jason's partner grew stronger and stronger.

The Hemoborn's built-in elemental bonuses and affinities were the Mech class's most unique strengths.

While it was possible to create purely robotic machines dedicated for sea or sky combat, the Overdrive game system only gave these special environmental stat bonuses to partly biological machines. The environmental buffs were a special benefit gained in exchange for the innate risk of using fragile biological parts.

For example, an octopus Hemoborn would usually move faster than a Kingbreaker specialized for underwater operations, so long as both Mechs had similar parts quality.

Environmental buffs were particularly helpful for lightweight Mechs like Jason's Red Minerva. Normally, Hemoborn pilots used extremely bulky machines because tankiness synergized well with their special Overdrive bonus, which greatly increased their regeneration.

A mountainous area on fire was the perfect situation for the Red Minerva. The transformed stage applied both of Jason's bonuses at once.

His speed grew greater and greater.

Before long, the veteran pilot soon found himself hiding on an island seven hundred feet beneath the Smoulderhulk's.

The monstrous Mech's massive mechanical head and the edges of its dangling tank treads cast a gigantic shadow across all the islands that floated beneath it.

At the moment, the two machines were engaged in a stalemate - neither of them could easily attack the other.

However, there was a reason why such bulky and immobile machines had once completely dominated the metagame. Competitive Overdrive matches used health as a tie-breaker - if a fight lasted for longer than an hour, the Mech with more hit points would win the match.

Because the Smoulderhulk was so massive, it would win the tie-breaker almost by default.

The situation forced Jason into getting a move on.

Back when Vile was a new pilot, she'd carefully studied the Overdrive rulebook to find areas to exploit. Her initial Giga mech was an enormous cyborg whale known as the Moby Dick. Vile's imitations - Spike Saunders included - had abused the exact same tie-breaker mechanic to countless tournament wins.

AngryBoardMember had clearly studied Spike's games.

The Overdrive executive didn't panic just because Jason had hidden underneath him.

He knew it was okay to stall for the timer. The undercarriage of these massive machines was their greatest weakness - the enormous battery of thrusters required to move such a gigantic Mech was a critical weak point, and veteran Giga Mech pilots knew to keep it hidden.

It was better to stay in place and stall than to get reckless pursuing an unlikely win.

However, Spike's strategy had been developed before the creation of alternative game modes.

Now that Jason was directly beneath his opponent, he was completely out of sight of his opponent's eye cameras.

Jason raised his head to the island directly above him.

The Red Minerva's mighty leg muscles, further bolstered by its cybernetic enhancements, flexed as Jason prepared to leap.

The Red Minerva lunged…

And fell just short.

Although Jason knew that in real life, he was sitting inside his virtual reality pod, his stomach still lurched as his screen displayed the open sky beneath him. Unfortunately, there was just no way to avoid the visceral response.

Despite Jason's practice, his body still instinctively injected adrenaline through his body.

But even though Jason couldn't control his physical response, he could still control his emotions. He ignored his primal fear of heights, instantly clicking the two buttons at the top of the control board's thrusters.

Crrsshhhh...

Crrsshhhh...

A pair of yellow beam blades emerged from the Red Minerva's palm, shearing effortlessly into the stone with only the faintest of whispers. The swords forcibly embedded themselves into the mountain, anchoring his machine in place. The red dragon's muscular arm flexed as the machine's arms slowly pulled itself upward.

The Red Minerva excelled at both climbing and burrowing.

The beam blades weren't just used for conventional combat. In certain situations, they also served as emergency anchors. In conjunction with the Red Minerva's wrist-mounted ropes, the Hemoborn could scale any mountain.

The Red Minerva's climbing abilities were extremely underrated by the Overdrive community.

Most players only fought the Starter Dragons once, during their first few missions through Overdrive. The One Star Bosses were soon eclipsed by other, flashier machines.

On top of that, most cookie-cutter whales just bought the best Mechs available.

They didn't have time for random obscure machines like the Red Minerva.

Jason was confident that his opponent didn't know what the Red Minerva could do.

He was so confident that he felt like it was worth betting the match on this result. When considering all the variables, this was the absolute best path remaining for him.

Per Jason's estimates, this sneaky path gave him a better than 70% chance of winning.

He reached for a button at the top of his control board, pressing it and then holding it down.

The Red Minerva's mouth opened, revealing a gaping maw complete with a set of steel-reinforced teeth. Hemoborn pilots controlled their Mechs via a special cockpit that had replaced the cyborg beast's brain. Jason was able to control biological weapons like his partner's flame breath just as easily as he controlled its installed beam blades.

A thin but powerful jet of flame emerged with a silent hiss, and the stone steadily melted. The Red Minerva's flames had both heating and acidic properties, allowing it to dissolve stone. The magically reinforced material was able to resist the Smoulderhulk's gunfire, but the combination of fire and poison allowed the Red Minerva to evade the Spell Titan's protective wards.

Slowly and steadily, Jason buried his way up the base of the mountain.

The cave dragon rapidly climbed upward, carving a path with its palm-embedded beam blades with motions that vaguely resembled a swimmer using breaststroke. The Red Minerva's keen eyes easily cut through the darkness, illuminating the path before her.

It was time to do what a cave dragon did best - climb.