The Mech Touch

As Venerable Dise, the First Sword and Qilanxo hammered out a new form of cooperation in a desperate attempt to withstand the Shockshell's furious attacks, Venerable Rebecca grew more annoyed at her opponent's refusal to submit to the storm.

A powerful soldier of her caliber should have been able to overwhelm an ordinary mid-tier expert mech controlled by a relatively inexperienced expert pilot a long time ago.

"These Larkinson mechs are too abnormal." Venerable Rebecca cursed.

This was not a secret to the Fridaymen. It was well-known that the Larkinson Clan treated its mechs differently than other organizations. The combination of a highly innovative mech designer and lots of funding produced mechs that were extremely perverted in different ways.

A typical offensive machine that was mostly designed to attack would have never been able to hold out this long against the Shockshell's thunderous attacks!

Venerable Rebecca did not hold back in the slightest when she fully activated the transphasic functions of the Shockshell's weapons.

Though the drain on her willpower became a lot greater than before, it was worth the expenditure as long as she could quickly take down one of the Larkinson Clan's trump cards.

The problem was that she wasn't able to gain the payoff that she wanted!

The shock hammer constantly pounded towards the First Sword, only for the enemy's greatsword to intercept the hammer.

Powerful arcs of electricity constantly bombarded the expert swordsman mech and its weapon, only for them to endure the damage without any significant consequences.

The most confounding part about the First Sword's increasingly more effective defensive measures was that its aura had changed.

A familiar giant lizard had descended onto the expert mech, infusing it with greater defensive strength that proved to be remarkably effective at blunting the more extraordinary properties of the incoming attacks.

"What is this beast!?" Venerable Rebecca questioned as the expert swordsman mech no longer felt so simple to her senses.

Previously, the First Sword came across as a sharp blade that could cut through anything.

Now, that image had weakened in order to make room for a giant and surprisingly resilient alien lizard!

As Venerable Rebecca strengthened her efforts to engulf the First Sword in her storm, she found that it was a lot harder to shock and paralyze this giant lizard with her willpower!

This was because she was no longer able to suppress Venerable Dise's willpower directly!

One of the main reasons why Ves had always been reluctant to replace the Unending alloy integrated in his first batch of expert mechs was because it was a spiritually-reactive material.

Ves, who had always believed in the strength of intangible phenomena, took advantage of this property to turn mechs such as the First Sword into a prime mech.

Though this aspect no longer attracted as much attention anymore since every expert mech had access to true resonance, that did not mean that prime resonance was weak!

In fact, certain expert pilots such as Venerable Joshua had shown that combining prime resonance with true resonance often resulted in dramatically more powerful effects!

Right now, the First Sword showed off the potential of prime resonance in combination with an expert mech, forming a brand-new defensive barrier that was primarily based on Qilanxo's domain rather than that of Venerable Dise!

This was made possible by the hundreds of Ves worth of spiritual energy that Qilanxo had infused into the First Sword.

In normal times, this amount of spiritual energy was already enough to make it difficult for ordinary people to remain close to the First Sword at ordinary times.

It wasn't until the living mech had grown up to a sufficient extent that it was able to reduce the external pressure of its heavy glow.

Though the First Sword didn't carry as much spiritual energy derived from a design spirit as many of the other prime mechs in the Larkinson Clan, it was still enough for Venerable Dise to amplify with the help of true resonance!

As gauss rounds, electrical bolts, positron beams, shock hammer strikes and electrified kicks continually pummeled the First Sword under its current state, none of the attacks made as much progress as before!

The only attacks that had a chance of dealing at least some internal damage were those launched by the Shockshell's transphasic weapons, and even then they failed to achieve as much effect as before.

Part of it was because Qilanxo used to be able to manipulate the fabric of space in her centuries of lifetime on a savage planet.

Her subsequent death and ascension only strengthened her application of her spatial abilities even further.

This meant that Qilanxo just happened to possess the right spiritual attribute to effectively restrain and neutralize against the transphasic properties of the incoming attacks!

Not only that, but the previous disparity in mental strength no longer applied.

Instead of pressing her willpower upon a weaker and less developed expert pilot, Rebecca instead found herself hitting a wall as she tried and failed to shake the powerful mentality of a former sacred god that had once reigned as the queen of a pantheon in a primitive society.

The difference in strength, mental resilience and other mental properties were too great.

For once, Venerable Rebecca was no longer able to take advantage of her age and development time as Qilanxo had lived almost five times longer than the enemy expert pilot!

One of the consequences to all of this was that the powerful new transphasic tech at her disposal no longer made a difference in her fight against the First Sword.

"What are you made of?! Why do you Larkinsons design such weird mechs? There shouldn't be any phasewater in your mech!"

The powerful high-tier expert pilot did not believe that the First Sword could last forever against the storm.

Even if the Shockshell's formidable arsenal was no longer able to bypass the defenses of the First Sword, then it would just keep attacking and attacking until the strange spatial barrier finally ran out of energy!

"I don't believe your new defenses will be able to last much longer!"

This was unfortunately true. Qilanxo was a spiritual life form that ultimately existed in another realm. It took considerable strain on the part of Venerable Dise and the First Sword to channel just a portion of the big lizard's might from afar.

"Orfan!" Dise shouted. "Hurry up and relieve me! I don't have any other measures left!"

The Riot at this time had just recovered from getting bounced away yet again.

Even though the expert spearman mech had yet to crack the means to defeat the infamous Repulsion Wave, Venerable Orfan had at least managed to drain Venerable Rebecca's willpower quite a bit by forcing the Shockshell to perform its costly move over and over.

However, Venerable Rebecca still had plenty of energy left to push away the Riot at least a dozen more times.

It was not as if Venerable Orfan had tried to figure out another way to overcome the Repulsion Wave, but the problem was that she hadn't figured out an effective solution!

She had tried envisioning herself and her expert mech as a giant spear that could pierce through her opponent's repulsion wave.

She had tried to imagine the Riot as a large and dense planet that could break through any obstacle by relying on brute force.

She had even attempted to hypnotize herself into thinking that her Riot was an invisible and incorporeal ghost in a particularly stupid attempt to make the Repulsion Wave bypass her expert mech as if it didn't exist.

Suffice to say, the Riot still got pushed away without any other effect!

"I'm not good at this." Venerable Orfan complained. "The difference in power is too great!"

She experienced the same problem as her good friend Dise. When it came to willpower and resonance manipulation, neither of them could overpower the strong will of an ace pilot candidate!

It wasn't until she noticed what Venerable Dise was doing to better defend against the Shockshell's onslaught that Venerable Orfan became inspired.

As someone who was more used to cooperating with Qilanxo, she had already tried to rely on the design spirit's strength to overcome the Repulsion Wave, but not to this extent.

"Qilanxo! If you still have something to spare for me, help me break through this annoying Repulsion Wave!"

The Riot did not blindly charge forward at this time. Instead, Venerable Orfan made her expert mech turn around and circle around in a wide loop.

The expert spearman mech was building up momentum!

Due to the upgraded flight system of the Riot, it did not take too long for the expert spearman mech to build up a respectable amount of speed.

Once Venerable Orfan thought that her Riot gained enough speed relative to the Shockshell, she turned her expert mech around and charged straight towards her target with much greater momentum than before!

If that was the extent of her new plan, then the Shellshock merely had to invest a lot more energy to launch a Repulsion Wave that was strong enough to blunt the Riot's powerful charge.

It was only when the Riot came close that it began to acquire additional qualities.

The phantom of a giant lizard briefly hovered behind the Riot yet again as Venerable Orfan tried her best to bring down the savage side of Qilanxo!

The corona around the Riot surged. The expert mech no longer came across as a spearman mech to the surrounding people.

Instead, a lot of mech pilots had the illusion that the Riot had willingly morphed into a giant reptilian monster, one that was hellbent on crashing into the Shellshock!

"Go away!"

Venerable Rebecca definitely sensed a greater threat from the Riot. As the Shellshock channeled a bit of extra true resonance into its concussion shield, it released a more powerful Repulsion Wave than before!

This time, the Repulsion Wave failed to push away the Riot!

The powerful willpower of a high-tier expert pilot proved once again that it was unable to match the strength of a centuries-old design spirit.

Qilanxo seemed to roar with great anger as the design spirit felt affronted by the enemy's naked challenge!

Just as the Shellshock wasn't able to overcome the First Sword's Qilanxo-blessed defenses, the Repulsion Wave was unable to achieve the desired effect against the Riot because it had been blessed by the giant lizard as well!

Without the amplification provided by Venerable Rebecca's condensed force of will, the Repulsion Wave was not that powerful anymore.

The wave passed over the Riot's exterior like it was a simple breeze.

Venerable Orfan became ecstatic when she saw that her Riot continued to get closer to her target!

"Hah! Not so tough now, are you? Taste my spear!"

Though Venerable Rebecca did not expect the Riot to break past the strengthened Repulsion Wave this time, she reacted quickly and turned her Shellshock around.

A violent explosion erupted from the collision between the two expert mechs!

The Riot's spear had driven into the Shellshock's concussion shield, causing both expert mechs to unleash multiple different energies!

By the time the Riot had ended its charge, the Shellshock's resonance shield had weakened by a substantial margin!

"You're mine now!" Venerable Orfan grinned with renewed enthusiasm.

Her Riot stuck to the expert hybrid mech without giving the enemy machine any reprieve!

This forced the Shellshock to abandon its assault against the weakened First Sword in order to defend against the new threat.

With the blessing of Qilanxo, Venerable Orfan no longer experienced any sort of suppression from Venerable Rebecca's electrical storm!

It was as if a hurricane had downgraded to a mild wind all of a sudden.

In fact, the presence of two separate expert mechs that both channeled Qilanxo's presence at once had caused the surrounding space to become affected by the design spirit's domain.

It was no longer Venerable Rebecca that reigned over this portion of space. Qilanxo had forcefully taken over her territory!