Counterfeit Hero

Chapter 1467: Chapter 9-12: Deathmatch (Part 1)

Ten Judgers, in a skirmish formation, moved through the jungle filled with towering ancient trees, vines, and foliage.

These mechas have black, non-reflective shells. The head design resembles a Spartan warrior’s helmet, with a metal crest on top that looks like a curved axe, extending from the back of the head to the forehead. The cheeks are wrapped in thick metal, and even the bridge of the nose has an arrow-shaped nose guard. Only a Y-shaped gap is left for the eyes and mouth.

This uniquely styled helmet, combined with leaf-shaped shoulder armor, chest armor, and jointed armor for elbows and knees, makes the ten Judgers look like they stepped out of a time rift from the 5th century, lost in the jungle of Leifeng Star in New Era 2064. The fierce, slender bodies contain a leopard-like explosive power with each step.

Leaping over a fallen dead tree, the leading mecha suddenly crouched in the thick fallen leaves, raising its mechanical arm with fingers clenched into a fist.

The team behind swiftly halted. The Judgers, extending to the flanks and rear, each faced their vigilance area, instinctively assuming a defensive posture ready for battle.

The rapidly rotating energy cannon emerging beyond the mecha’s shell, the fast-releasing missile bay rack, and the cold gleaming energy shield and ion light saber at that instant made these mechas look like wolves discovering an enemy intruding into their territory. They bared their sharp fangs in a silent roar, appearing extremely fierce.

Squad Leader Wood lowered his fist, listening carefully to his surroundings.

After confirming no danger nearby, the thirty-five-year-old former Binart Imperial Army Lieutenant Colonel gestured to the team to remain alert. Then, he controlled his mecha to spring forward silently.

The black mecha darted silently between the trees. The movement was so agile and swift. It was as if not a machine made of metal darted through the jungle, but a foraging black panther.

Twenty seconds later, Wood stopped behind a small hill at the jungle’s edge.

Sunlight beamed across the slope, casting the dark primitive forest area in a shallow bright golden glow. The field of view extended beyond a hundred meters. The distant trees, once a blur, revealed their mottled bark and tangled vines under the sunlight. The ground’s yellow leaves laid like a thick carpet stretching into the jungle depths.

The steeply sloping hillside was dotted with dense birch trees. Several large protruding rocks emerged from the slope’s fallen branches and leaves, covered in moist moss. A broken dead branch lay horizontally on the ground next to the rock, its dead, yet unfallen, leaves swaying in the wind. Looking over the broken spider web on the branch, Wood could clearly see a place nearly a kilometer away downslope.

This was a small farm in the Bargosa outskirts of Frenso Town.

A small road from the far mountain foot wound its way here, turning directly east following a small river about four hundred meters away from the slope towards Frenso Town’s central city. A small stone bridge connected the road across the river. Just up the muddy slope to the east of the stone bridge was a small grove, a few residential buildings, and a large farm field.

Currently, the farm was silent. Large tracts of farmland full of craters and overgrown with weeds, dilapidated fences, and half-collapsed warehouses, along with broken, rusted agricultural mechs, all indicated to passersby that the owners had long been driven away by war.

The new owner was a Fei Alliance armored platoon. One platoon was near the slope where Wood was located. Twelve mechas guarded the stone bridge, and there were two squads in an inverse triangle formation with the bridge, stationed at the farmhouse across the river on the right side of the slope with gray-white walls and blue roofs, and on an open area by the irrigation channel in the farmland two hundred meters to the left.

The remaining two platoons of the armored platoon were concentrated near a small grove northeast of the farmhouse, guarding the sides of the road east of the farmhouse leading to the central city of Frenso Town.

Upon seeing the armored platoon, Wood’s pupils involuntarily shrank rapidly.

Green Fatty mechas, a few ugly heavy and medium-sized mechas, mixed with the Jiepeng, Leray, Gazalin, and Desic’s electronic mechas, including the tried and tested models like [Listening], [Element], [Antenna]... Without a doubt, this was the Bandit Army Armored Division, the ultimate target sought by the First Battalion of the Judgers!

How did they appear here, and when did they engage in battle? The forward forces attacking Half Cloud Ridge collapsed so quickly; was it encountering the main force of Fei Alliance, or because of this unit’s appearance... Wood frowned, with numerous questions flooding his mind for a while.

It had been exactly two weeks since he arrived at Leifeng Star with the Binart Imperial Army’s Admiral Rosenberg. During these two weeks, the three hundred Transformed Mecha of the Third Detachment of the Judgers, which Wood belonged to, were holed up in the northern Bridge City, sixteen hundred kilometers west of Phoenix City, never showing face, let alone engaging in combat.

To the officers and soldiers of the Su Jie Alliance, this unit was extremely mysterious. It’s said their secrecy level is 3S, higher than the Night Army. Except for Sobel and the Binart Emperor, even the Crown Prince had no power to mobilize this unit.

Although most people had never even seen this army, their strength, their achievements, their mechas, and everything about them had already become a legend that most inspired the Western Alliance soldiers in this war.

Back on the Evergreen Vine Planet in Catalonia, with only a Judger Mecha Team as a forerunner, the Western Alliance had crushed the Ryan Army, forcing Commander Lunan to abandon all advantages gained since the start of the war and retreat in panic. Now, Sobel actually gave a full detachment nearly a battalion’s worth of force to the Southeast Battle Zone!

Thirty times the strength of the Catalonia campaign’s Judgers. What does this mean?

This unexpected joy made the Su Jie Royal Family ecstatic. The officials who requested aid were already granted promotions and became the most sought-after superstars in both empires while still on the way back.

However, that was only the thinking of the Suss and Jiepeng people.

Wood knew the real purpose of stationing the Third Detachment here was only one thing, and that was to engage with the Bandit Army!

Indeed, it was the bandit army that shattered the legend of the Judgement’s invincibility and zero casualties!

Though reluctant to admit it, every Judger knew of those two defeats. If Anmon, sent to Mars Freeport, was merely an early experimental product, then the two transformed soldiers of the Hanfrey Fleet, beaten by ten bandit army mecha pilots, were masterpieces of fully matured transformation technology, just like Wood.

For the Judger mecha pilots, who had survived the gates of death and gained god-like power, this was absolutely intolerable.

They are the strategic troops of the Binart Empire. Their mecha control can reach the manual control standard of sixty or even seventy movements per second. In this era of war, they are the kings at the pinnacle of the food chain pyramid. When the dignity of the lions is challenged, their only choice is to pounce on the enemy!

The bandit army is the primary sequence enemy of the Judger Corps.

Wood observed quietly. The Frenso Town battle was the first battle that the third brigade of the Judger Corps engaged in after arriving on Leifeng Star. The fifth squadron he belonged to broke through the defenses of the Fei Alliance Armored Division in just a dozen minutes.

And after the breakthrough, the fifth squadron returned back to rest. For Wood and his team, the combat plan of that Suss Marshal Bellif had nothing to do with them. No matter how meticulous this plan was or how great the achievements it could obtain, it was not worth their concern. They were just helping out at the request of the other side.

If it hadn’t been for the sudden collapse of the vanguard forces, the fifth squadron might still be idling in the central city area of Frenso Town right now.

At the request of the Su Jie Alliance Commander, the fifth squadron re-entered the battlefield and was now divided into ten teams.

Five of these teams, led by the squadron leader, moved eastward along the interstate highway, preparing to coordinate with the follow-up troops of the three armored divisions of the Su Jie Alliance to launch a counterattack against the front of the Fei Alliance Army, to halt the advance of their main forces. The other five teams were ordered to penetrate the combat zone, gather intelligence, attack the Fei Alliance forces, and hold designated strategic points.

Wood’s mission was to seize this farm in front of him, guarding the flank for the main force’s counterattack along the central interstate highway, blocking the Fei Alliance forces’ flank maneuver intended to form a pincer attack.

Originally, this was a simple task, but now it seemed not so simple.

If it were a normal regiment of the Fei Alliance armored forces stationed here, Wood would order his deputy commander and eight warriors to charge behind him. But facing a battalion from the bandit army, he needed to consider carefully.

After recording the defensive posture of the bandit army’s armored battalion, Wood, in stealth mode, turned and walked back to where his subordinates were waiting. He already had a complete battle plan in his mind.

He decided to confront the opponents.

As long as, at the start of the battle, he directly charged across the riverbank to attack the bandit army mecha team near the farmhouse, he could gain firsthand data on the bandit army’s combat capabilities. If he could easily defeat the opponent, then he would use the farm, the riverbank, and the stone bridge in this narrow triangular area to give this opponent an unforgettable lesson.

After replaying the entire combat process in his mind as though it were a movie several times, Wood was confident that he had minimized the risks whether in advancing or retreating.

As the mecha ran into the depths of the jungle, the surrounding light dimmed again. The foliage became denser, and the air grew more humid.

Pushing past a colossal tree whose roots twisted and entwined, a tree that required twenty people to encircle, Wood saw the team maintaining vigilance. He stopped, just about to wave to the team members, when suddenly he felt an extreme danger. Almost instinctively, he twisted his body, and the mecha performed a roll, kicking the big tree’s trunk in mid-air, bouncing back in the opposite direction.

With a bang, an Energy Cannon hit the big tree.

The violent explosion blasted a gap in the massive trunk, sending wood chips flying and dirt scattering. The high temperature instantaneously ignited the tree, flames racing up toward the giant umbrella-like canopy.

As Wood rolled to the ground, he saw his team members had collectively sprung into action. At the same time, all around, thirty black mechas they had never seen before charged at them like magic beasts emerging from the abyss.

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.As a ”writer”, I am off to...gather flowers, no, gather inspiration.

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. (To be continued. To know what happens next, please visit www.qidian.com, more Chapters available. Support the author, support legitimate reading!)