The Mech Touch (Web Novel)

5883 Fire Energy Raiment

A blazing skirmish took place above the surface of the Dominion of Man!

Two glowing shapes circled around each other. They frequently exchanged blows that constantly generated explosions of fire and lightning.

The larger shape that glowed with sickly green lightning constantly sought to damage and tarnish the radiance of the smaller shape surrounded by fiery orange flames.

While the larger monster launched more destructive attacks that often inflicted a lot of collateral damage onto the hull of the Dominion of Man, the slightly smaller monster exerted his power in increasingly more inventive ways!

As the two giant and distinctly inhuman shapes circled around for another clash, the one that was actively being propped up by the Spark Reactor of the Dominion of Man formed another blastlance and drove it into the lightning-empowered enemy.

A powerful explosion of fire energy knocked back the gigantic alien form until the clone of a much more powerful being collided against the side of a ruined gun battery!

Despite the humiliating display, the Subjugation King did not express any hint of displeasure.

In fact, the powerful God King displayed more and more satisfaction as Ves and his partners put up an increasingly better fight!

Given that the clone of the Subjugation King allowed so many incoming attacks to land when he definitely possessed the foresight and strength to block or evade them, there was no way this powerful opponent was fighting at his full strength.

This caused Ves to become increasingly more suspicious at the attitude of the Subjugation King.

It seemed more and more likely that the powerful alien was deliberately modulating his combat strength in order to present a difficult but not insurmountable challenge to Ves.

If that was the Subjugation King's play, then it was obviously working.

Ves and his partners constantly felt the pressure to improve and develop better ways to fight. They had grown so rapidly during this high-stakes fight that it was unbelievable to think that they weren't originally meant to fight!

While the rapid growth should have been a cause for joy, Ves did not entirely treated this as a favorable development.

The fact that the Subjugation King never actually lost the upper hand was proof that he still had enough fighting power to spare.

As both Ves and the clone of the God King fought more intensely against each other, the inevitable outcome was greater collateral damage!

For example, the Subjugation King tore out the gun barrel of a nearby broken turret and utilized it as a club to bash against Ves' true body!

The hardened transphasic hyper alloy struck a hard blow against the fire energy armor plating that Ves and Blinky had shaped over the tall true body.

By now, half of the body was covered with glowing orange armor plating. Blinky worked hard to shape and condense a lot of fire energy into a solid armor raiment that would stay in place and keep up with the movements of the body.

Fire energy was not originally suited for defense, so Blinky had to work extra hard to make it behave according to the design supplied by Ves!

The fact that it worked a lot better than it should was because Ves had donated copious amounts of his own lifeblood to reinforce the temporary armor plating!

Ves had discovered that his blood was not only a source of phasewater, but also possessed a much stronger spiritual component than he expected!

He believed that this was partially due to all of the fire energy coursing in his body. His blood must have assimilated some of it, producing unknown effects that allowed him to manipulate it in increasingly more versatile ways.

Though Ves expected his blood to lose this extraordinary charge as soon as the supply of high-quality fire energy was cut off, he was determined to make the most of this temporary advantage!

Ves did not hesitate to spill liters of his own blood to reinforce his summoned weapons and armor.

His powerful true body was easily able to generate replacement blood, so he was not afraid of dying from blood loss.

The more serious problem of his tactic was that it was not so easy to replace the lost phasewater.

As a result, the longer he fought, the more his phasewater concentration dropped!

Ves endured real pain each time he expended his phasewater-

infused blood, but he saw no other way to empower his fire energy armaments to a level where they could keep up with the clone of the Subjugation King.

The only reason why he wasn't too worried about spilling out so much phasewater was because the regular countershocks spontaneously replenished his depleted reserves.

He was actually maintaining a careful balance. He constantly needed to control his expenditure of phasewater to ensure it did not exceed the phasewater produced by exposure to tribulation energies.

Ves still grew stronger so long as he maintained a positive balance. He just did so at a slower rate than before.

Even so, it still wasn't enough!

The trio might be able to pressure the clone of the Subjugation King, but they weren't able to hinder the powerful alien from damaging the ship!

Many times, the powerful tribulation manifestation somehow found a window of opportunity to launch a casual strike at the increasingly more damaged hull.

So much of the exterior of this side of the dreadnought had been wrecked by previous attacks that the Subjugation King was able to damage or destroy important systems!

"<nullb>#$#&."

"<nullb>YOU MUST DO BETTER IF YOU WISH TO SAVE YOUR PRECIOUS SHIP."

The powerful alien clone allowed the giant transphasic fireblood axe to strike his shoulder and inflict a shallow wound. A powerful jolt of tribulation lighting instantly zapped Ves shortly afterwards.

Though the wound was actually a bit more serious than it looked, the clone of the God King ignored the injury and proceeded to reach out and grabbed Ves' armored form with his limbs.

"<nullb>$&$#%."

"<nullb>YOUR FIGHTING SPIRIT IS BARELY ADEQUATE, BUT YOUR RELIANCE ON BORROWED ENERGY WILL BE YOUR DOOM."

The clone exerted a huge amount of strength as he threw Ves' true body right into a large hole on the hull of the dreadnought!

Ves uttered a soundless cry of pain as his body crashed through a damaged bulkhead and collided against an exposed azure energy shield generator!

The shell and the components of the shield generator instantly crumbled upon impact!

If not for the fact that it had already been depowered, the destroyed generator would have produced a painful explosion!

Ves did not dare to take his time to recover from the impact. The longer he remained buried inside the dreadnought, the greater the chance the Subjugation King would come and resume the fight in a much more sensitive location!

Blinky generated a powerful simulated flight system onto the back of the armor raiment. It quickly generated a lot of thrust power, allowing Ves to propel him back outside the ship!

The clone of the Subjugation King quickly greeted his opponent with a powerful ball of tribulation lightning that he had formed with his limbs.

Yet before the powerful alien could launch this destructive attack, Ves raised his arm and waited for Blinky to generate a simplified version of a transphasic ballistic pistol!

There was no way that Ves could simulate the performance of a luminar crystal weapon or other advanced firearm, but it was no problem for him to generate one of the simplest firearms developed by humanity!

A quick trigger pull caused the pistol to launch a phasewater-

infused bullet that consisted of condensed fire energy.

Although the projectile was not particularly fast compared to a round fired by a gauss weapon, the distance was so short that the empowered bullet struck the lightning ball with hardly any delay.

Naturally, Caramond's borrowed marksmanship skill ensured that the shot struck the intended target even during a high-

speed movement!

When the two concentrated energies came into direct contact with each other, only a single outcome was possible.

The lightning ball and the fire bullet exploded right when it was still in front of the clone of the God King!

The lightning manifestation clearly suffered a considerable amount of damage.

However, much of the tribulation energies contained within that ball had spilled into the environment. Only a fraction of the energies went on to fuel the growth of the trio!

Though Ves already started to come up with ideas on forming a ballistic cannon, he refrained from summoning them as it would continue to diminish the rewards gained from fighting this powerful alien bastard.

The only possible pathway to victory was to get close and continue to shock himself as much as possible!

"Charge forward!"

"<nullb>We need more weapons!"

"I will take care of the design!"

As the destructive clash dragged on, Ves continually tried to design better weapons and equipment for himself.

The fact that he was able to do this in the middle of the battlefield was a testament to his ability to excel in high-

pressure environments!

Even though his Spirituality had endured so much strain that it was moving closer to total exhaustion, Ves forcibly concentrated a part of his mind on familiar design processes.

His efforts slowly bore fruit as his true body gradually seemed to turn more mechanical and multifaceted.

As his strength steadily increased through the constant feedback of tribulation energies, Blinky gradually managed to form a full-body suit of armor that largely resembled the appearance of a mech.

Various weapon modules started to appear onto the armor made out of fire energy.

Ves initially mounted a pair of flamethrowers on his wrists. They were useful at softening up the tribulation manifestation, but lacked the punch to inflict crippling injuries.

He then mounted a pair of missile shoulders that was regularly filled with transphasic unguided rockets. Every salvo struck quite hard, so much so that they often interrupted whatever big move that the clone of the Subjugation King attempted to pull off next.

Ves somehow managed to figure out how to simulate rudimentary energy weapons, though it was better to describe them as concentrated fire energy outlets.

Regardless, Ves copied aspects of the original design of the Mars and implemented a highly adapted version of the ARCEUS System onto his fire energy raiment!

All of these changes enabled Ves to fight increasingly more like a hybrid mech!

In fact, he fought much like Patriarch Reginald Cross, who always liked to launch unrelenting attacks at closer ranges!

The ranged weapons were not meant for Ves to snipe his opponent at a distance. They were made to pressure the clone and ensure that he did not recover any of his injuries.

Ves inflicted the most serious blows with the help of his transphasic melee weapons!

Blastlances were one of his favorite solutions, but he also summoned other weapons ranging from axes, greatswords and even daggers.

Though Ves had absolutely no clue how to proficiently wield these weapons, Caramond had access to a broad swath of skills that he was constantly mastering with every exchange of blows.

The clone of the God King regularly blocked the incoming strikes with the help of blood spikes that extended from his body, but they were anything but perfect.

Caramond always chained his moves so that he eventually managed to sneak an attack past his opponent's guard.

Ves and his partners managed to achieve the greatest success when they managed to unbalance their foe with the help of all of the ranged weapons blasting at the clone.

Once the tribulation manifestation exhibited the slightest of openings, Ves' true body surged forward and relied on momentum to chop down a simulated greatsword!

Though a pair of crossed bone spikes managed to block the heavy attack, the upper half of the enormous blade had turned as if there was a hinge just beforehand!

This unexpectedly caused the greatsword to turn into a weird version of a warpick.

What mattered was that the tip of the blade managed to sink into the shoulder of the clone of the God King just enough to sever the arm!

The separated limb soon exploded, unleashing much more tribulation energies that pushed Ves and his partners back and forcibly fueled their growth by a significant margin!