CHAPTER EIGHT

As he continued his silent approach burrowing inside the floating stone, Jason carefully kept the Red Minerva's tail as still as possible, balancing the heavy appendage with countless minute adjustments.

Despite his experience with his Mech, Jason had never quite managed to adjust to the Red Minerva's tail - it just felt like he was never using it properly.

The clubbed tail was hefty and cumbersome.

A successful blow would inflict serious damage, but it was just too slow to consistently hit opponents. In addition, the tail was normally meant to drag across the ground, but the noise often exposed Jason's secret approaches.

The club simply wasn't a very good fit for the Red Minerva, which was a raider type built for speed and rapid blows.

Giving a cave dragon a tail like an ankylosaurus was a good lore decision, but it didn't synergize with the machine's innate playstyle.

Such clashes between aesthetics and combat ability were actually rather common among Overdrive's NPC boss machines.

At the end of the day, Overdrive needed to both create a compelling story and present a challenge for players.

Sometimes, one of the two factors fell by the wayside.

If Jason had been allowed to make such a drastic modification to his Mech, he would have done it in a heartbeat.

Hemoborn could undergo both genetic level modifications - splicing on genes, and therefore attributes, of other animals - or technological changes, such as replacing the tail with a mechanical graft.

However, all such changes were locked by Jason's role as a contractually obligated One Star Boss.

For now, he was only allowed to use the base Red Minerva unit with no deep customizations.

Jason finally burrowed past the first island, emerging on the burning forest on the other side.

Jason immediately aimed for the next island above him, leaping and then activating his beam blades to quietly catch himself on the next island.

The Smoulderhulk was still high above him, but the AngryBoardMember had no idea what was coming.

Cookie-cutter whales almost never had the game knowledge required to anticipate strange and unexpected situations.

Almost nobody would expect the Red Minerva to burrow its way past the seemingly impregnable islands. After all, the magically reinforced stones had tanked the Smoulderhulk's powerful missiles without any issues.

It was only the unique intersection of the Red Minerva's special abilities that had allowed Jason to find this particular loophole.

More likely than not, the AngryBoardMember thought that the end-of-game health timer procedure had already secured his victory.

As much as he wanted to destroy Jason in a fiery explosion, it seemed like simply showing his son that the dragon was a coward was enough.

Thus far, the man was content to just wait.

He spammed missiles, but he made no risky moves to suddenly bring out his enormous cannon.

But after fifteen minutes of slow and steady climbing, Jason emerged on the island directly beneath the Smoulderhulk.

Unlike before, he did not borrow through the ground.

Digging through the island the Smoulderhulk occupied posed a significant risk. The tremors would immediately tip off the AngryBoardMember. The board member might be inexperienced, but he likely still had common sense.

As much as Jason wanted to, he couldn't simply slip past and secure his victory.

The thought of winning the battle in a manner his opponent simply couldn't perceive deeply appealed to Jason's pride in his game knowledge.

But as satisfying as such a win would have been, he had to use a much more dramatic tactic.

Even though Jason had a lot of pride in his piloting skills, he was very careful to keep that pride from getting in the way of winning the match.

Victory was its own reward - any move that brought Jason closer to winning fit his self-image as a pilot.

Instead of digging underground, Jason quietly leapt towards the far side of the Smoulderhulk's island, climbing up from behind the massive treaded Mech.

The massive machine's draconic head - which contained both the thrumming fully-charged Devastator Cannon and the Smoulderhulk's eye cameras - was facing the wrong direction.

The enormous Mech lacked the backup cameras to see an approach from behind. Like most Mechs from its time period, it relied entirely on its forward-facing eye cameras.

It was another example of how the Smoulderhulk wasn't a perfect fit for the modern-day meta.

On the surface, using a banned Mech from a past Overdrive metagame seemed like it had no drawbacks at all. After all, if a strategy was banned, that meant that it had to be overwhelmingly powerful.

It was definitely true that a modified Smoulderhulk would still dominate competitive play.

However, the AngryBoardMember had failed to consider a very important factor - the Smoulderhulk was a machine designed to face other Giga Mechs.

When facing enormous Giga Mechs, there was no need to watch out for sneak attacks. If one of those gigantic machines snuck up on you, you were a complete moron, plain and simple.

The slender Red Minerva was a very different story.

Jason had easily entered his opponent's blind spot.

On top of that, the powerful energy field created by the Overdrive Lockers nullified sensory abilities such as radar.

He was totally imperceptible.

Jason climbed up to the very edge of the peak, just beneath the edge of the Smoulderhulk's right tank tread.

This was the riskiest move of the entire match.

There was no room for error.

Jason briefly took his left hand off of his control board.

He nodded with satisfaction to see that his fingers were completely still. He felt not a single hint of fear and nervousness.

His entire body was suffused with emotionless precision.

It was time to strike.

The wind whooshed as a thickly reinforced rope emerged from the Red Minerva's left wrist.

The rope was another one of the Red Minerva's standard items.

The basic item consisted of over a dozen fine steel strands woven tightly together.

The component parts were extremely cheap - only 1,000 Credits total - but now that they were all reinforcing each other, the strength was far greater than that of each individual strand.

Like the dragon's tail, the rope was actually meant as more of a lore-focused item than a perfect fit for the machine's capabilities. It was only natural for a climber to carry ropes.

Unlike the tail, however, these ropes were a perfect fit for how Jason liked to fight.

Jason's skilled fingers finely manipulated the control board as he flung the rope forwards just like a lasso. The large circle he'd tied at the end successfully wrapped around the tread.

Jason let out a brief sigh of relief.

He'd spent countless hours using the steel rope, but there was no one-size-fits-all situation.

Every Mech was unique and one of a kind.

Jason had never battled a machine like the Smoulderhulk before. His past experiences were only a very loose guide. When throwing the ropes, he hadn't been completely certain that he could ensnare his foe.

Jason waited for half a beat before proceeding, but AngryBoardMember didn't even notice the rope.

It was too light to inflict any damage to his heavily Mech, and Jason's tactic came totally out of left field.

Using a rope to trip and bring down a larger object wasn't particularly creative in the grand scheme of things - it was a common trope dating back to pre-historic times.

However, it was something that simply wasn't done in Overdrive.

In a world filled with awe-inspiring weapons and heavily-armored titans, something as basic as a rope had completely fallen by the wayside.

It was only Jason's countless games with the Red Minerva that'd allowed him to discover this powerful but underrated strategy.

With the rope tight and secure on his opponent's flank, Jason kicked off against the stone. The Red Minerva's steel-reinforced muscles freely launched the draconic Mech off of the rocky alcove. The clear sky flashed before Jason's eyes as his partner tumbled through the air.

The steel-reinforced rope screamed as it pulled the enormous machine.

At first, it seemed like the rope would snap.

But then, little by little, the Smoulderhulk's iron tread gradually began falling off the island.

Before long, gravity did its work and Jason's job became dramatically easier.

The Smoulderhulk lost balance and fell.

A brief smile flickered across Jason's face.

He loved defeating his opponents with unexpected strategies.

He was almost like a cartoon character shouting "TIMBER!" before upending a much larger foe.

But to his credit, the AngryBoardMember didn't panic.

He was much better than Jason expected.

Despite Jason's cheesy and unexpected strategy, he reacted almost immediately.

Instead of allowing his machine to tumble off the island, he activated the massive UFO-like propulsion devices beneath the Mech. The machine steadily turned around, aiming to bring its deadly Devastator Cannon to face Jason.

Unlike conventional thrusters, the propulsion devices exchanged speed for reliability. The gravity repulsion devices pushed the massive Mech into the air without any hint of flames or even fuel.

The set of sixteen massive disks was arranged neatly underneath the Smoulderhulk's base, fitting in smoothly between the two tanklike treads.

Spike's logic in adding the repulsers to his machine was rather obvious. The Smoulderhulk was already extremely slow due to its countless layers of armor. The added advantage of high-powered thrusters was marginal.

However, the added safety provided significant protection against saboteurs.

The slow but reliable weapons made things even more difficult for Jason.

Thruster systems - especially ones large enough to propel this gigantic Mech - would have been easy to damage with the Red Minerva's flame breath.

Repulser systems had to be more directly sabotaged.

Jason inputted a set of swift commands, and a set of Busted Grenades emerged from his wrist.

The low level items were the Red Minerva's only true ranged option, and they were extremely unreliable.

Because of the strict balancing system forced on One Star Bosses, early-stage Mechs could only specialize in a single area.

The Red Minerva already had speed.

As a result, she couldn't use too many high-quality offensive items.

The Busted Grenades were a highly unreliable item that Jason usually preferred to avoid at all costs.

In terms of sheer potential, the Busted Grenades had a fairly high ceiling.

Most players would easily rate the weapon's offensive capabilities in the high A-tier.

In comparison, the Red Minerva's flame breath and beam blades could only inflict about a C-tier level of damage, which was only enough to land a glancing blow on the heavily armored Smoulderhulk.

However, the Busted Grenades also had a very painful downside.

Oftentimes, it took up to ten seconds before exploding, granting a foe plenty of time to flee.

Jason had once heard an Overdrive streamer joke that items like Busted Grenades basically functioned like IQ tests. Only someone completely lacking in common sense would stick around after their opponent tossed a brightly glowing bomb at them.

Fortunately, the Smoulderhulk's speed removed the weapon's usually dramatic downside.

It was impossible for the massive Mech to escape the powerful weapon's blast radius.

Jason pulled the chains on all the grenades at once.

His skilled fingers danced across the keyboard, and the Red Minerva's steel nails responded just as quickly.

Next, Jason threw, aiming not for his opponent but for the island directly beneath the Smoulderhulk.

At the last second, Jason breathed his acidic flames yet again, dissolving the island's outer layer of magical protection right before his grenades landed.

The island exploded to pieces.

Flames seared across the battlefield as Jason used his ropes and palm-generated beam blades to catch himself on an island far away from the explosion.

The Smoulderhulk wasn't so lucky.

Massive pieces of stone shrapnel stabbed into the massive Mech's vulnerable undercarriage. The bright-lit gravity repulsor system beneath the machine flickered and then dimmed as the enormous machine plummeted through the skies.

The heavy machine crashed straight through the already-damaged island, landing awkwardly on the island directly beneath it.

The island - already weakened by Jason's burrowing - shook beneath the enormous machine's weight.

The burning Mech immediately ignited the forest around it.

Smoke and flame billowed through the air.

Even better, the random collisions as it crashed straight through the destroyed island had knocked the enormous machine off balance, forcing it to land on its side. The tank treads on the left side were buried deep into the earth. The Mech jerked back and forth as it tried to rise back into the air.

Because it'd initially been designed for head-on shooting duels, the heavy machine lacked the ability to easily return to a straightforward position.

It was like an insect struggling to right itself.

Fortunately for Jason, the awkward angle severely limited its strongest weapon.

At the moment, the Devastator Cannon was pointed straight at the ground. Firing would cause the powerful attack to rebound right at the Smoulderhulk.

It was a severe stroke of luck, but Jason knew he couldn't celebrate for too long.

Jason climbed past the edge of the island, reaching its surface.

If he wasted time, his opponent would eventually get back to its feet.

With one last glance at his fallen foe, Jason activated his partner's beam swords, and she leapt into her beloved earth in an elegant swan dive.