Battle Mastery: Winning conditions met within 3 turns (all enemies destroyed, all friendly units survive)
That strange space with crystals is back. The big mysterious guy from earlier is saying the time is near for a new creation and a vessel is need to open the door. A girl with blue hair is sent to “Sever the roots... Sow... the new seed.”
Meanwhile, Lamia tries to search the Hagane computers for Helios, but comes up empty-handed. Eita finds her and she passes it off as general research. Also, Lamia cannot laugh properly, though the last one she tries is kinda cute on her.
An EFA base has come under attack by unknown enemies. No black critters with corrosive blood here, just the creepy skeletons and tentacle things. The Hagane is the closest ship and the captain suspects it's the same Unknowns they saw in China.
This BM is pretty easy to acquire, though the victory conditions are annoying. Nothing good ever comes of having to keep “friendly units” alive when they're made of tissue paper piloted by blind idiots. In this case, there are three F-32 Schwerts jets that were obsolete in the last war and three Lion Fs.
I start by charging Kyosuke and Lamia ahead to distract the Einst from the base's units, while everyone else piles in behind them. After two turns, the Einst are all gone and Bullet took a hit for being stupid.
Once the initial batch are gone, a few skeletons warp in with a new Mech piloted by the blue-haired girl we saw earlier. This time, Kyosuke isn't the only one to hear her voice. Einst Alfimi seems to have some sort of connexion to him and Excellen. Her mech, the Lichkeit, has over 100K HP. Obviously, you're not supposed to take it down at this point.
The reinforcements start off to the south east, across some water. I pull everyone back since most of my weapons suffer penalties against underwater enemies. One Einst Knochen will drop an Energy Drain, which was very useful in the last game, but a bit less so here when a lot of late-game bosses block status effects. Alfimi will warp out after taking 15-20K damage and Kyosuke says she reminds him of Excellen.
The Hagane gets some stuff from the base after the battle: a Dustproof module that improves performance on the ground, consumables, an M95 machine gun, and more status effect weapons. The only post-battle conversation worth repeating is a report that the forces assembled for Operation Mole Hunt are under attack by DC remnants.
Lami kill count: 36
Kai kill count: 22; level 14
