Chapter Twenty-One: Mecha

Li Daoran sat dejectedly in the landing pod, bracing himself to stand firm. When one's abilities fall short, one must accept it; there was nothing he could do about the mockery. Revenge for a gentleman could wait ten years—Cold Wind, a million little tadpoles, he took note of them all.

Staring at the mech selection page before him, he hesitated. Points weren’t meant to be spent like this; if he chose another and lost again, it would no longer align with the plan Chen Ming had laid out. So he logged out and registered a new account, one that could only access the game Mecha Battle Storm, without permission to enter the intranet.

He entered the game, naming himself "Weakest Newcomer in History," and successfully logged in. This time, the interface was different: instead of choosing a mech, he was automatically assigned a Level 1 heavy firepower mech, the Brave Type II.

The tutorial began. The Brave’s controls were simple: forward, backward, turning with a joystick and four keys, while the four mounted joint firepower systems were encrypted and controlled by ten keys in various combinations, supplemented by intelligent voice control. The operation was straightforward and foolproof, much like ordinary mech games on Azure Blue Star.

Just a joystick and fourteen keys were enough to operate it, but only two of sixteen screens were lit, giving terrible visibility. The handling felt poor, always lagging, as if there was a delay between command and mech response. Control was limited, movement slow, only a portion of the main body could be manipulated, micro-adjustments were impossible—on the battlefield, it was little more than a solo-controlled tank.

He was then introduced to other types of Level 1 mechs, which never strayed from the traditional constraints of tanks, planes, and the like.

Next came the second-generation mechs. Compared to the first generation, they were improved in some areas, but their greatest innovation was the addition of an energy shield. Due to the prevalence of energy blocks, weapons in Daoran’s world mostly relied on energy beams, and the energy shield could counter such attacks. Its emergence marked a major technological breakthrough.

Third-generation mechs underwent significant changes, favoring animal forms—gorillas, leopards, beast-like shapes dominated. The transmission system saw a huge leap, greatly enhancing controllability, though long-range weapons became scarcer. As a result, third-generation mechs served as transitional models and were quite rare.

Fourth-generation mechs approached the humanoid robots of Li Daoran’s imagination: humanoid shapes, no lag, no joystick, but a drastic increase in operating difficulty. More than forty keys coordinated control, and six screens covered nearly the entire 360-degree view. Operation was extremely challenging—just lifting the left leg to take a step required six keys pressed in a specific order.

The fifth generation abandoned the humanoid approach, growing stranger in style and more specialized. There were heavy firepower models resembling fortresses, light leopard-shaped jungle scouts, desert reaper treaded mechs, and others, each dedicated to a specific role.

Sixth-generation mechs benefitted from major breakthroughs in power systems, dramatically improving all parameters over the fifth.

Seventh-generation mechs achieved far greater energy efficiency; the maximum output power of energy blocks made great strides, and heavy firepower models gained an even greater share.

With the newest eighth-generation mechs, energy shield technology was revolutionized—it could now auto-recover. In group battles, mutual coverage allowed them to withstand energy weapons and break frontlines. The emphasis shifted to agility, evading gunfire, cross-covering to breach lines, and winning through close combat. The requirements for mech pilots rose sharply: for example, the classic Jumper light mech had 328 keys. Its full energy shield could block five shots from same-spec energy cannons, and in ten seconds, could recover from thirty percent to ninety percent safety. In the hands of top pilots, it was almost invincible in small-scale skirmishes.

With so many keys, to operate an eighth-generation mech smoothly, a minimum of thirty actions per second was required—that is, pressing at least thirty keys in a specific sequence every second to qualify as a pilot. The 328 keys represented 328 sensors, allowing manipulation delicate enough to pick up a person from the ground without harm, or powerful enough to cleave several fifth-generation mechs in half with one blow.

This was the pinnacle of Daoran’s world: eighth-generation mechs. No country had developed a ninth yet. The only publicly announced custom-made "eight-and-a-half" generation mech belonged to Li Qing, the God of War from the Grand Summer Nation, ranked first among mech pilots.

Li Daoran staggered out of the landing pod, clutching the wall and retching. The prolonged visual confusion in the pod, coupled with the lengthy tutorial and attempts at controlling the mechs, left him feeling that mech pilots were superhuman. Each model had different controls—some had legs, some treads, various weapon systems, with unique procedures and key setups for every mech.

Especially with the reminder: true mech pilots configured their own key settings. Only by understanding every sensor of a particular model in detail and abandoning intelligent assistance for pure manual control could one be considered a real pilot.

The intelligent system not only introduced delay, but in many situations, special maneuvers were required, and its error-correction could hinder quick responses. More importantly, a pilot’s manual speed outpaced the AI. When those using intelligent assistance faced pure manual operators, the latter would typically defeat them in three moves. True pilots, therefore, operated entirely by hand, eschewing smart systems.

In Mecha Battle Storm, controls were much simpler. The eighth-generation Jumper mech had only 160 keys, the difficulty for other mechs was also greatly reduced—they were all pared-down versions with many weapon systems removed, and the challenge was more than halved compared to the intranet.

Even so, Li Daoran tried each control method, reviewing all procedures, which took nearly ten hours.

After retching for a while, he steadied himself against the wall and stepped outside, but after a few paces, his vision blurred, and finally everything went dark—he collapsed.

Not long after Li Daoran fainted, Liu Meng approached, her high heels clicking with every step, and the towering, burly Bear Mountain followed closely behind.

“Perhaps I’ve placed too muc