Humanity's Greatest Mecha Warrior System

The look that Nico was giving Max was heart-wrenchingly sweet, pleading for him to go along with what she was about to ask. It was so endearing that even the Huntress knew that something was up before the little cyborg even spoke a word.

"Commander Max, Darling, Best Friend, Battle Brother for life, I don't suppose that you could do me one tiny little favour." She pleaded.

"You want to go out and pick a fight with the nearest camp's champion, don't you?" Max asked, already knowing what she was going to ask.

"I swear, it's just one little fight, and then we can come right back." She pleaded, climbing into his lap to give him the puppy dog eyes.

Huntress Khan burst into laughter at their antics while she waited to see how Max was going to handle his battle-obsessed companion this time.

"Well, there is one camp nearby that might be an option. They have a leader who is nearly twice the size of the others. He's slightly taller than your Mecha, so he should accept the challenge. But we just got back from a battle." Max teased her.

"It will be fast, I promise. We don't even need to fight the whole camp if you don't want to." Nico offered.

The laughing of the Huntress made it impossible to treat this situation seriously, and Max quickly caved.

"Alright. We will have the Mecha stand back, and you can go in front and offer your challenge. I trust that you've already got a proper one programmed into your loudspeaker in their language." Max agreed.

"But of course, I'm always prepared when I have an idea for fun things to do. If that one goes well, then maybe you and Khan can pick a camp and issue some challenges of your own before it gets dark."

[Hunting team, prepare for a mission. Subcommander Nico wishes to challenge a Myceloid Champion to a battle.] Max informed the team that was with them for the last excursion.

The idea was that they would head out as a group, and then the bulk of the force would stand a few hundred metres back while Nico went forward to issue the challenge. Ideally, the enemy leader would accept, and they could have their duel, most likely to the death, and then part ways.

There was no guarantee that it would go that smoothly or that the enemy would take it well when they inevitably lost, but that was why they brought the unit with them.

The perimeter guards were happy to let them out to go on a hunting mission, and everyone was eager to see what would happen now that the Myeloids were acting so much differently than they had before. It was like they suddenly became civilized in an instant after that strange incident, and now they were colonizing the planet.

That was obviously bad news for the Hunters, who had to defend the Anomaly, but if it reduced the intensity of the attacks, it might be a positive in the short term.

There was also some talk of deliberately destabilizing this Anomaly and forcing it to engulf the planet so that they could access it in space like the other one, but all of the Hunters knew that it would have to be done without permission because the other side was on an Alliance planet.

All of their hopes of a normal bodyguard mission had long since been washed away in the black blood of the Myceloids, but there was still some optimism that it might not be a grinding war of attrition right to the end.

Nico led the way to the camp that they had identified with the single largest leader in the area and hoped that the early analysis that size correlated to authority was correct. It would be rather embarrassing if they issued a challenge and the enemy didn't understand what they were doing or why.

Max thought it might be funny if the Myceloids mistook it as a peculiarity of their species and not something that the Hunters had thought about the Myceloids themselves, but that thought was quickly stuffed into the back of his mind as the camp came into sight.

The residents there were building defences in a hurry as they approached, but Max had the Mecha stop a kilometre away, where they would be less threatening to the village while still being in easy weapons range.

Then he stepped forward with Khan, and Nico moved out ahead of them all and stopped three hundred metres from the village's crude spike wall.

[Hey, you slack-jawed, scrawny excuses for a Warrior tribe. I'm looking for a fight. Send out your boss so we can have a go.] She yelled at them in the Myceloid language.

It wasn't exactly eloquent, but their grasp of the language was crude at best. It seemed to work, though, because the biggest one was yelling back at her.

"Who are you calling scrawny, you metal-mouthed grot? Get lost before I send you packing." He called back.

[What then? Are you so scared of a fight? Perhaps that stumpy fellow next to you is a better warrior.] Nico taunted him.

The other Myceloids in the camp were all laughing, and the second largest of them was sneering at the big boss.

"You snooze, you lose." He yelled, then came out running toward Nico.

Max's suspicions were proven correct. The best and largest warrior was the camp leader, and if he won this fight, the second largest would take over the position. But there was an interesting tidbit found in there as well. The largest would actually shrink a bit from turning down the fight, and the second would grow to the leader's previous size when he took over.

The whole species made very little sense to Max, but at least he could categorize how well they fought thanks to the evolutionary trait that granted extra size and muscle mass when they won a fight.

The second largest warrior didn't come out alone. A lot of the villagers came out behind him to watch and formed a semi-circle around the pair, marking half the battlefield.

Max and Khan came forward to mark the back lines on their side, and the Big Boss came out with a clean leather robe on and a large sceptre in his hand.