The Mech Touch

6018 A Revealing Spar

Although Master Benedict Cortez did a good job at explaining the differences between expert mechs and ace mechs, Saint Tusa only truly understood how far his Dark Zephyr was behind when he engaged in his first sparring session against another peer!

In order to avoid overwhelming Saint Tusa right away, his only opponent for the tbeing was Saint Marissa Lewandowski of the Adelaide Mercenary Corps.

As the expeditionary fleet was scheduled to depart soon enough, the two ace pilots only had tfor a short comparison between each other.

Yet that was enough to open the horizons of Saint Tusa along with everyone else that was gleefully observing his 'debut' as an ace pilot!

At first glance, their mechs did not look all that different.

The Dark Zephyr was a black-coated light skirmisher, and so was the Jedda Sandivar. Their sizes and proportions did not differ all that much as they both stuck closely to the template of their mech type.

The designers of both machines had the option of adding other weapon systems to the ace mechs, but neither ace pilots chose to add too much additional bulk to their machines.

Saint Marissa had only opted to add a pair of very compact but potent laser pistols to her ace mech. The two weapons made it a lot more convenient for the Jedda Sandivar to pick off weaker ranged targets without compromising her ace mech's original configuration too much.

Tusa insisted on the removal of the grenade bandolier. He detested his previous reliance on transphasic grenades and did not want to base his combat approach on lobbing lots of powerful explosives at his opponents.

The removal of the grenades fulfilled one of his wishes and returned the Dark Zephyr closer to his original roots.

Of course, the Dark Zephyr gained an arguably even better offensive option in the form of the Dark Wind Module!

Not only was the new Ultimate Module a lot more economical, but its power and utility increased as Saint Tusa grew stronger and increased his comprehension of the shadow element!

In contrast, the Jedda Sandivar had taken a slightly different direction. Its thin, dark frdid not look as if it hid anything as outrageous as an Ultimate Module.

Instead, the ace mech exuded a much greater sense of power and cohesion. It had received many years of willpower baptism, and its design had received many different incremental upgrades, especially in the last two years.

The Adelaide Mercenary Company earned a lot more profit by participating in the expeditionary fleet, and it had spent much of it on accelerating the development of the Jedda Sandivar.

General Herman Foraine knew that the original Third Fleet of the Adelaide Mercenary Company would instantly collapse as soon as Saint Marissa Lewandowski decided to quit and join the Red Association.

In order to prevent this outcfrom happening, he did not hesitate to reinvest a lot of money and materials into improving the Jedda Sandivar at a much faster rate than before.

The ace light skirmisher could not be underestimated for that reason! It was not as weak and limited as before.

Even though it was not an archemech, the Jedda Sandivar's continuous improvements and upgrades gave Tusa the impression that he was facing a very compact but threatening metal demon!

Right now, the Saint Kingdom surrounding the Jedda Sandivar already started to surround it in a slightly hazy white fog.

The fog was not thick enough to conceal the Jedda Sandivar, but it already started to make it a little harder to observe the ace light skirmisher.

There was an obvious discrepancy between the two Saint Kingdoms. The one radiated by the Dark Zephyr was not only a lot smaller, but also gave up ground far too easily.

It was only when the Dark Zephyr's Saint Kingdom had been pushed back to his mech frthat it barely managed to stand its ground.

This indicated that Saint Tusa had very little chance of taking control over the surrounding space. He could only preserve the sanctity of his mech and his own body under the circumstances.

After Tusa thoroughly understood how much worse his Saint Kingdom fared compared to that of Marissa, the two ace pilots decided to move on to the next phase.

"Are you ready?"

Tusa took a deep breath. "Go."

The two ace mechs simultaneously moved into action!

Both machines moved so quickly that it becdifficult for baseline humans to keep track of their movements!

The Dark Zephyr and the Jedda Sandivar were both fairly small machines that had predominantly coated in black, so it beca nightmare to follow their blazingly fast maneuvers with the naked eye!

Fortunately, their glowing Saint Kingdoms made it a lot easier to track their rapid movements.

To most observers, it looked as if two glowing energy bubbles continually bounced against each other before separating to circle around each other.

Each tthe two converged together, the Dark Zephyr's Saint Kingdom clearly deformed by a huge extent, thereby weakening Tusa's ability to weaken his current opponent.

In contrast, the Jedda Sandivar's hazy Saint Kingdom remained remarkably solid and stable despite its insubstantial appearance.

Fortunately, the Dark Zephyr was not a fragile machine that easily crumbled apart after getting struck by so much force.

The living mech's archemetal construction along with the use of excellent first-class materials finally began to demonstrate their usefulness.

When empowered by Tusa's true resonance, the Dark Zephyr's stormblade knives still remained strong and intact even when they blocked the more powerful strikes from the Jedda Sandivar's own pair of weapons!

Tusa felt anything but comfortable, though.

He recognized the weapons wielded by the Jedda Sandivar.

Ves and Ketis had worked together to develop a set of 'blessed weapons' for the ace mech of the Adelaide Mercenary Company.

The transphasic kamas may have been developed just before the start of the Age of Dawn, but they could already be treated as pseudo-hyper weapons from the fact that they were 'blessed' by the Phase King!

The penetration and cutting power of these kamas were high!

Fortunately, Saint Marissa held back her strength and did not borrow the Phase King's power.

That still did not make it easy for Tusa to prevent his upgraded mech from getting scratched!

The two powerful mechs began to confront each other more directly. The two machines continually maneuvered around each other while launching rapid strikes or moving to defend against incoming attacks.

"You are fast, but I am faster!" Saint Marissa exclaimed as she was clearly on the offensive most of the time.

The Dark Zephyr's excellent base performance allowed him to keep up with the rapid attacks launched by the Jedda Sandivar, but it was clear that the latter was just toying with its prey.

After launching a lot of rapid but relatively mundane strikes, Saint Marissa decided to kick it up a notch and demonstrate why having a Saint Kingdom mattered.

"<nullb>Mirage."

The mist surrounding the Jedda Sandivar thickened. It becso much better at interfering with the perception of both people and machines that even Tusa momentarily lost track of his opponent!

Behind!

The Dark Zephyr rapidly turned around, yet when the machine raised his stormblade knives to block the twin kamas, the feedback from the charge attack turned out to be much less than expected!

"What…?"

The living mech felt as if he had only clashed with a mech that was ten times weaker than before.

"Pay attention!"

The small but powerful leg of the Jedda Sandivar emerged from the opposite direction and gave a firm kick onto the rear of the Dark Zephyr!

The expert light skirmisher embarrassingly lost control over his own trajectory and needed a moment to stabilize.

Soon, two different Jedda Sandivars attacks from the left and right of the Larkinson mech!

Tusa did not foolishly try to defend either or both attackers. Instead, he quickly activated the Combat Warp function, enabling the Dark Zephyr to quickly hop away from his precarious position!

Yet even as the Dark Zephyr managed to move away quickly enough to almost pass through the boundary of his opponent's Saint Kingdom, a third Jedda Sandivar appeared with blazing speed and kicked the Larkinson mech back into the opposite direction!

Multiple real and illusory versions of the Jedda Sandivar tormented the Dark Zephyr.

Tusa's newly improved senses and the Dark Zephyr's state-of-

the-art sensor suites utterly failed to distinguish real and false.

Marissa's domain field was so much stronger and more developed that there was no comparison.

In addition, Saint Marissa honed her various powers and abilities for many decades. The two may be of the srank on the surface, but the Adelaide ace pilot was almost four times as old as Tusa!

Even though the mirages of the Jedda Sandivar were not as strong and threatening as the real deal, Marissa was able to maintain at least a dozen of them and control them to a very fine degree.

The mirage mechs did not hesitate to push Tusa to his limits by launching crazy suicide attacks!

Even if Tusa knew that they were false, they still posed enough of a threat to force him to defend against them, which subsequently gave the real Jedda Sandivar free reign to launch attacks at the most inopportune moments!

All of this suppression steadily caused Tusa to lose more confidence, thereby causing his Saint Kingdom to buckle even further.

In contrast, Saint Marissa's domain field beceven more oppressive than before! The female ace pilot continually gained more momentum.

"<nullb>False Becomes True!"

One of the Jedda Sandivars oddly swung its transphasic kamas into empty space.

Yet Tusa immediately becalarmed when the Dark Zephyr finally received his first pair of scratches!

Somehow, the missed attacks launched by the Jedda Sandivar actually managed to hit the Dark Zephyr while bypassing all of the defenses in the way!

Tusa was hardly the only ace pilot who possessed an offensive trick!

Due to the thick and almost impenetrable mist generated by Marissa's Saint Kingdom, Tusa completely lost the initiative as he could not escape this trap no matter where he flew or how much his Dark Zephyr sped up. The Jedda Sandivar constantly made sure to keep the living mech as close to the center of its Saint Kingdom as possible!

Tusa eventually couldn't hold it any longer. He wanted to be able to hold his ground against Saint Marissa without resorting to his trump card, but that was obviously an unrealistic dream from the beginning.

"Blackwing, it's time!"

"Chip!"

Shadow energy began to converge upon the Dark Zephyr's abdomen as the Dark Wind Module started to accumulate energy.

Tusa focused completely on defense and evasion as he tried his best to buy tfor his expert light skirmisher to accumulate energy.

He did not dare to let the Dark Wind Module reach full charge!

Not only did it have a chance of inflicting severe harm on an important strategic asset, but he knew that Saint Marissa would never give him the tto accumulate power for so long!

The lengthy charge tof the Dark Wind Module was a very obvious weakness, but Tusa was confident that he could improve upon it over time.

For now, he only waited for half a dozen minutes before he dared to launch an unstoppable charge!

"<nullb>Dark Wind Passage!"

A powerful shadowy streak immediately ran through the hazy Saint Kingdom and breached the other side!

Every false Jedda Sandivar in the way got popped in an instant.

As for the real ace mech, the actual mech remained hidden and untouched by this costly move!

Saint Marissa sounded amused. "This has lots of potential. Even I am not entirely sure whether my Jedda Sandivar can remain unscathed if struck by your power move. It is clearly not designed to help you fight against fast and powerful opponents like myself. Its power is beyond doubt, but its flexibility leaves much to be desired as you can only channel it in a single direction. This is a siege attack more than anything else, but it doesn't have to remain that way."

Tusa wound down for a moment. "What do you mean?"

"Once you truly begin to take control over your Saint Kingdom, you can alter reality and force your mech to change direction. If you break down the special move you just pulled off and only execute sof its components, then you may be able to launch a weaker but much more controllable shadow attack. That would have allowed you to strike all of my mirages and my actual ace mech at once. Forget about resonance strength for the tbeing. You urgently need to expand your repertoire. Do not make use of your mech as is. No mech designer can fully prepare a set of features that will allow you to fight at your full potential. The only way to truly master your light skirmisher is to use your living mech as a collection of building blocks to form your own combat system!"

That was the point where ace pilots were finally able to live up to the expectations of the public!