Chapter 66: Chapter 63: Aerial Hysteria

The two participants stood away from each other at either end of the playing field, which was five hundred meters apart. Far enough for most rifles to lose their effectiveness and for Trissa to avoid.

She might not be able to avoid energy beams, but they too had limited effective range. Luckily for her, the opponent seemed to have been designing to take down another heavy knight, hence the heavy reliance on kinetic rounds rather than energy beams.

As the announcer explained the format, the arena started to shift into pillars and hills, with individual hexagonal tiles being elevated or depressed to simulate a random terrain. The colours of the tiles and pillars alternate, a kaleidoscope of colours.

The terrain changed every duel, so the viewers were continuously on their toes as to who will win!

The field was symmetrical, with a hill in the middle that marked the midway point from end to end. The rest of the field were dotted with pillars of random height that could act as covers or vantage points, similar to a forest of sorts.

With Trissa’s aerial exosuit, the higher the pillars, the better! She quickly glanced around the map, playing out various combat scenarios in her head.

She didn’t even bother listening to the announcement of the opponent, the timer starting to count down from 10 seconds.

The crowd was not hyped for the match at all, the odds heavily in favor of the heavy defensive knight exosuit.

How was a light aerial raider going to crack open his defenses? The machine gun that the knight was holding could annihilate any opponent coming in from the skies, where one stray bullet could knock out Trissa in no time.

No loud cheers were heard when the timer finally hit zero, with Trissa running forward, while the knight tried to find an area where aerial attacks could be spotted from a distance – the hill.

His movement was much slower than Trissa’s due to his weight, allowing Trissa to reach the middle of the playing field first first.

Many of the viewers felt zero tension from the fight, and began to complain about the matchup.

“How is that light exosuit even going to do anything? Once she hits the air, the machine gun would shred her!”

“She might control the hill for now, but she has to take the position of attacker in this scenario if she wants to win. The knight can easily stall and stay put where he is.”

The knight didn’t attempt to fight for the hill. Knowing that he would be unable to get that position any longer, he situated himself in a forest of pillars that laid at the foot of the hill, setting up defensive barriers around him to serve as mounting points for his heavy machine gun.

His sensors still couldn’t lock on to Trissa through the pillars and the hill, as she was hiding right below the top, using her own sensors to peek beyond the top of the hill, not willing to expose herself.

[It seems that our only aerial combatant is in a pickle! If she takes to the skies she’ll be exposed through scans and gunned down in less than three seconds before she reaches her optimal range of 50 meters!]

[How is she going to overcome this hurdle? The arena will keep shrinking and the defensive knight will be more than happy to play in a smaller stage!]

The threat of the mounted machine gun was too great for Trissa. The crowd booed as it seemed that the battle had entered a stalemate. There was no reason for the defensive knight to push up aggressively, and if she pushed aggressively, she would suffer too.

There was no cover on the downward slope of the hill, which would make her an easy target. It would take five seconds to cover that distance, during which she could easily fall prey to the hail of bullets.

Finally, some movement was seen from Trissa. She gathered up four of her smoke bombs that were intended for electronic warfare and prepared them for detonation, laying them on the ground in a shaped manner just behind the tip of the hill. Keeping two more smoke bombs on her exosuit, she then overclocked her thrusters preparing for lift-off.

A small minority in the crowd of viewers groaned, seeing the participant they betted on throw her life away.

[What is she thinking? Participant Trissa might just be throwing the fight here! Will she show us something unique yet again from Zone 17? Or will she falter here and now!]

Just before she activated her main thruster on her back, the smoke bombs all exploded outwards, with the gas rushing towards her, filled with metal particulates that was intended to disrupt electronic sensors.

Her helmet and exosuit sealed the air in, not allowing any of the particles in, while the thrusters were all already pre-firing, which didn’t get affected by the gas. In fact, the additional force helped to push Trissa upwards faster.

The smoke cloud expanded up to 30 meters high in a directional column, obscuring the knight’s vision and Trissa as the smoke rushed around her. Already the metal particulates were beginning to coat or scratch the surface of her exosuit.

The knight tried to use his sensors to spot Trissa’s body through the smoke, but both his visual and automatic targeting system were blocked by the particulate cloud. The limited budget had force the knight to not have infrared detection, limiting his view.

Before the knight could try to aim his gun and fire randomly into the smoke column, a few nail rounds came out of the smoke from above.

The knight was forced to take cover behind his tower shield, as the nails fired from Trissa’s nail gun could easily penetrate some of the weaker parts like his joints or his helmet easily especially with the help of gravity accelerating it even more.

This allowed Trissa to continue dashing upwards, pushing her thrusters to the maximum as she hit a height of 100 meters. At this point, she was clearly in the open, and the knight had a clear shot at her in the open sky past the smoke column.

But instead of using her smoke bombs immediately, she instead flew right over the knight before throwing one bomb directly down, triggering in mid-air to form a cover of sorts.

The knight’s mounted machine gun couldn’t aim up right above him without removing it from the defense barrier, so he detached it and aimed it straight up, using his own arm which held a tower shield as the mounting point.

He knelt on the ground, using his shoulder to bear the weight of the gun and held down the trigger. The machine gun roared into life, spraying bullets into the air.

He sustained the recoil of the shots while scores of bullet casings clattered on the ground around him. His sensors were blocked by the smoke grenade, but he was sure that one of his bullets would hit her.

Instead, the next scene shocked him, as a portable defense barrier fell out of the smoke cloud directly at him.

The defense barrier was riddled with dents from the impact of bullets as it fell straight like a rock, it’s trajectory aiming straight at him, about to crush him in a few seconds.

The knight immediately abandoned his current kneeling position and tried to move out of the way, but Trissa appeared from behind the defense barrier. She kicked and separated from it at the same time the knight moved, before diving towards him.

Her thrusters pushed to the brink as she accelerated to the ground.

A short spear was held in front of her as she collided with him, deflecting as it barely penetrated his thick defensive plates of the tower shield. However it wasn’t aimed at him but his machine gun.

The spear was stuck in the machine gun, disabling it, while the knight tried to regain his balance from the strong knock, stumbling backwards and almost toppling over from the sheer force.

Trissa would’ve been sent flying backwards from the inequality of masses if it wasn’t for her thrusters continuously firing, allowing her to stick close to the knight even as he stumbled backwards away from her.

Trissa continued to thrust forward while the knight stabilized, landing on the ground extremely close to the knight, being right in front of him.

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Before the knight could use his tower shield to knock her away or swap to his backup weapon, Trissa took out a thermal knife in one hand and a smoke bomb in another, weaving and sliding under the flailing arms of the slow knight to try and slash his joints.

The knife landed a solid hit on the back of his right knee, which caused him to drop on that knee as the knife cleanly sliced through the hydraulic system.

The viewers who betted on the Five Families College watched as the knight lost the range advantage and the battle slowly. Trissa continuously dashed around, slashing at weak joints with her thermal knife and dodging the weakening and slow attempts of the knight who tried to defend himself with his arms.

However, this scenario only lasted a few seconds before Trissa was forced back by the sudden appearance of a flamethrower from the knight. The flames immediately engulfed Trissa’s exosuit, burning off the metal particulates gathered on the surface of her exosuit.

She quickly thrusted backwards and rolled on the ground in rapid fashion, putting on the flames on her exosuit and avoiding the spluttering flames that gushed out towards her.

Trissa was forced to drop her thermal knife and smoke bomb on the ground before recovering her posture and nimbly leaping away out of range.

It was the backup weapon installed into the suit to repel close quarter fighters, and it was mounted inside of his right-arm’s armour plate. The knight had already removed the plate covering it, enabling more air-flow to cool down the inner mechanisms.

Spraying a circle around him, the knight finally managed to recover an area of deterrence. However, one of his legs was already slightly disabled, making it hard for him to run and hence fixing him in place.

The downside of a heavy exosuit is that it couldn’t be lifted by a human in the event of such a malfunction or damage. The knight struggled to move his leg, but he could not even make it budge a little.

Trissa had a sinister grin, which was safely hidden behind her reflective black helmet. Thankfully, the audience only saw a dancing reflection of the ring of fire around the defensive knight.

The knight knelt on the ground behind a tower shield while continuously having its right arm at the ready to fend off Trissa. Having given up on moving his right leg, he had to hold his ground.

He was now counting on the stage becoming smaller so he could melt her in close quarters. The tables have turned, where Trissa didn’t want to be anywhere near the defensive knight unless she wanted to get melted. The rear flaps on Trissa’s exosuit expanded to cool her exosuit down as much as possible.

Trissa safely danced around the ring deftly, using her submachine gun to chip away at the knight, who easily shrugged off the damage, the dents barely registering on his exosuit’s defensive plates and tower shield.

He might have weak points, but his armour was definitely not one of them! Even the nail gun wasn’t enough to immediately penetrate the defensive plates of the tower shield, whereas the knight could easily wait out the confrontation.

“Soon she’s going to run out of ammo, and she’ll have to fight me in close quarters!” Another stalemate had been reached in the battle.

Trissa’s eyes continuously darted towards the smoke bomb that she previously ‘dropped’ on the ground, her posture and firing position planned to get the knight to position right on top of it.

However, no one else could see it and certainly not the knight who was doing his best to keep up with the circling of Trissa, swiveling around with his tower shield to try and block most of the shots.

[What an amazing show of skill from participant Trissa! Despite the overwhelming disadvantage, she has managed to flip the tables onto the defensive knight from the start, but now we’ve reach another stalemate! How is the ring of fire and his tower shield going to be defeated by her?]

A continuous back-and-forth occurred, with Trissa continuously testing the waters while the defensive knight waited out the shrinking of the arena borders.

He kept his flamethrower at the ready, using his tower shield held by his left hand to sustain the incessant stream of bullets and nails coming from her. As the ‘dance’ continued, he finally shifted his position slightly, finally stepping right over the smoke bomb that Trissa had ‘dropped’ before.

Suddenly Trissa made a wild movement, dashing straight towards the ring of fire instead of circling.

[My god, what is she doing!?]

The knight grinned in his heavy exosuit as he happily welcomed her into his burning salvo of liquid flames. “Come on!”

What he didn’t see due to the bright afterglow of the flames from his flamethrower was that Trissa was feinting, already having backed off after the very first instant of dashing, fooling him!

His visual range was blocked by his own flames, which also disrupted any form of tracking system that his exosuit was using. Even if he had infrared, the flamethrower would have blocked his sensors completely.

Before he could turn off his flamethrower however, the ‘dropped’ smoke bomb filled with metal particulates exploded under his feet, resulting in a large ‘boom’ that resounded through the entire arena, the shockwave rippling through the crowd.

Trissa had dropped it when she was forced away by the flamethrower in the first place along with her first knife. The combination of the hot flames and the metal particles created a chain of ignition that resulted in a metal dust explosion.

The crowd roared as they watched one of the largest explosions in this competition so far bloom into copious amounts of smoke and ash in the arena. The viewers were now fully invested into the match!

Trissa finally had her shot at finishing him. She knew that the explosion might destroy the surface plates and his flamethrower, but a heavy defensive knight never went down that easily. She immediately took two thermal knifes and dashed into the cloud of smoke that was blooming outwards, hunting him.

The viewers all tried to get a better view within the cloud but had no money to buy access to any of the infrared drones or radar drones that could see it. In fact, the smoke bomb was so good that many of the premium viewing capsules couldn’t penetrate that far into the smoke either.

[This seems to be the end for the defensive knight! That metal dust explosion should have weakened him tremendously and Trissa most likely has it in the bag!] The announcer prepared a celebratory video of Trissa to show off for the end of the duel, while the examination council started to arrange for her next duel.

However, what came out wasn’t a victorious Trissa, but an injured one instead.

She was thrown flying out of the cloud, with multiple other components and plates all bursting out of the smoke back into the open. As the smoke finally cleared enough for the viewers to see, the large outline of the heavy exosuit was nowhere to be seen.

Instead, a new exosuit that was barebones and had zero defensive plates was rushing towards Trissa, holding a simple short sword and a small pistol. The defensive knight had purged all his plates and components, making the frame the most minimal exosuit that would support him.

Even his redundant battery packs were dropped off, and his helmet was removed to reveal a exposed slightly-burnt face full of fury. The metal particles had entered the seams of the heavy exosuit and scalded him at several locations when it was ignited by the flames.

Lucky for him, he chose an exosuit that had an emergency armour purge system to allow the user to escape with their lives, but he instead turned it into a rapid ground chase going after Trissa.

Despite the turn of events, while Trissa was surprised, she was still unbothered, taking to the skies to have aerial superiority. How was the knight in a barebones exosuit with no thrusters able to compete with her?

However, she couldn’t move as fast as before as her exosuit also previously suffered severe damage from the armour purge effect. The reason why she was thrown out of the smoke cloud was because she was hit face-first by the exploding tower shield.

The duel became a running gunfight, with the knight trying his best to snipe Trissa out of the skies with his small pistol, while Trissa had to manage her exosuit failing systems that were jeopardized by the impact.

The fight had been going on for so long, yet Trissa had been operating at the peak of her NEIR level for the entire duration. Finally reaching her NEIR limits, she gave up on flying and dove straight to the ground with a knife in either hand.

The ranged duel was about to end in a melee fashion!