The Mech Touch

Many people grew shocked when they witnessed the takedown of the Riot Mark II.

In one moment, the expert spearman mech impressed many observers by how well it outmaneuvered the lesser phase lord known as Zren-Divar.

The orven martial god was hardly an easy opponent to contain. He was armed with a plasma sword and also wore a high-tech raiment that shot out energy beams and occasionally boosted his movement with the activation of thrusters.

Yet the Riot performed exemplary under the circumstances. Venerable Rosa Orfan had mastered the art of piloting her expert spearman mech for many years. She knew exactly how far she could push her systems.

Through a combination of skill, judgment, intuition and guts, she successfully stalled an opponent that was much bigger and much more lethal than her expert mech!

If she was able to keep this up for a while longer, there was a good chance that she may actually be able to pierce her bottleneck and undergo her second apotheosis!

Yet just as her resonance strength began to grow past previous limit and break a new personal record, the puelmers had unexpectedly intervened!

The puelmers never built battleships. Their physical statures were small, so they had a different appreciation of size than most other races.

Despite boasting a length that was less than 1 standard kilometer, their heavy cruisers still earned a lot of fear and notoriety among humans.

Whereas orvens and nunsers all-too-frequently squandered huge amounts of resources to build the biggest and most massive homeships, the puelmers always sought to maximize the efficiency and effectiveness of every cubic meter of hull structure.

Their guns did not boast the largest calibers, but the use of advanced and optimized high technologies caused them to hit harder and more precisely than the gun batteries utilized by other races!

It turned out that the puelmer heavy cruisers had been hanging back and used their long-ranged armaments to exchange fire with the CFA sub-capital warships.

However, the puelmer officers always paid attention to the fights between the champions. The clever aliens keenly understood that the downfall of phase lords would have a devastating impact on the alien armada.

If Zren-Divar perished or suffered a severe setback, morale throughout the alien fleets would plunge. The orvens would especially become discouraged as the humans managed to disgrace not one, but two of their gods! Stay updated with empire

This was why the puelmers chose to intervene. Their sophisticated computer systems had already built up an extensive model of the Riot’s movement patterns and knew exactly where to aim their crazily accurate laser cannons in order to guarantee at least several hits!

Under normal circumstances, the Riot should have been able to resist enough laser beam attacks to withdraw and take shelter behind a starship or an orbital fortress.

However, the Riot had already eroded his safety margin by occasionally getting struck by the positron beam cannons mounted on Zren-Divar’s raiment and getting a bit too close to the extremely hot blade of plasma sword.

Venerable Rosa Orfan knew what she was doing. She was aware that her expert mech’s resonance shield had been dwindling. Instead of making the more prudent and logical decision to back off or at least fight less aggressively than before, she persisted in her aggression and made herself far too vulnerable to what happened next.

The Riot Mark II repeatedly played with fire and eventually got burned, both figuratively and literally!

What was worse was that the Riot played with fire when he was still in his Mark II iteration instead of the much more powerful and capable Mark III version!

This meant that Venerable Rosa Orfan could no longer shield herself from the Mark II’s many technical inadequacies.

These might not matter much if she fought against more reasonable enemies, but by choosing to confront a lesser phase lord, these technical shortcomings and limitations may have become her undoing!

Many Larkinsons looked aghast when the Riot failed to evade the plasma sword that struck his exterior and melted or vaporized so much plating of the ExTrans Armor System that parts of the expert mech already split apart!

As the half-molten fragments of limbs, armor plates and more critical components sprayed into the expanse of space, the remnant of the Riot’s mech frame floated away as if it was a broken and discarded puppet!

"Is she still alive?!"

"What is the state of the cockpit!?"

The Riot Mark II no longer maintained any active data connections anymore. His ability to transmit and receive signals had been completely destroyed due to the blow he had suffered.

The Larkinsons had to rely on their sensors and scanners to quickly ascertain the state of the expert mech and the expert pilot.

"The cockpit… is damaged and deformed, but it should still be partially intact!" Ketis analyzed based on the sensor readings and observation data. "I fear that the reinforced shell of the cockpit may have been breached. If that is the case, then Venerable Orfan may have suffered from severe exposure to thermal energy. Her piloting suit can provide limited protection against heat and burn damage, but she needs to be brought back in order to receive treatment right away!"

The Riot Mark II had been crippled, but his ExTrans Armor System had not completely failed. The dual mix of Unending alloy and more modern first-class transphasic hyper alloy plating had done its job and resisted just enough energy damage to keep the cockpit whole more or less.

This meant that Venerable Orfan could still be saved!

Doing so was difficult as the puelmer heavy cruisers were already preparing to fire their precise laser cannon batteries yet again.

"CEASE!"

The Commandeered Transcendent Punishers Mark III no longer bombarded the Herald of the Void, giving the greater phase lord more breathing room to pummel the Amphis Extremis.

The Saint Commander instead instructed the heavy artillery mechs to fire their massive Devora Cannons at the puelmer heavy cruisers that sought to take advantage of the Riot’s inability to defend himself!

Hundreds of high-velocity transphasic hyper gauss rounds that were all empowered by the true resonance of an ace pilot soared across space and thundered against the segmented multi-layered azure energy shields of the alien heavy cruisers!

Even if their azure energy shield generators were stronger and better than the ones employed by other races, the puelmer vessels were still limited by their limited size and scale.

As the Transcendent Punisher Mark III’s reloaded their Devora Cannons and prepared to fire another salvo of empowered siege attacks, the puelmer heavy cruisers quickly switched from offense to defense.

The alien captains and officers panicked! They no longer channeled a lot of power to their energy weapon batteries, but instead diverted all of that energy to their azure energy shield generators in order to bolster their defenses as much as possible!

Even so, Saint Commander Casella Ingvar did not intend to let the puelmer heavy cruisers off this time!

It had been a mistake for her to ignore the threat they posed against other assets. So long as they remained active and operational on this battlefield, they could easily shift their targets and take advantage of the weakness of other crucial expert mechs.

"Hold on for a while, Linda! I need to take care of these puelmer heavy cruisers right away! My Knights will remain busy for a time, but my Barons will still be able to support you during this time."

"Go ahead, Casella." The Crosser ace pilot responded even as her ace offensive space knight began to glow a lot brighter and hotter than before! "I have just activated the Volcanic Outburst Mode of my ace mech’s Magma Vein System. I can hold back the Herald of the Void by myself if I have to, but only for a few minutes."

"Are you sure?!"

"Yes! Go save your colleague!"

The Saint Commander decisively pressed on with her rescue action.

While she agreed with Ves that the expert pilots of the Larkinson Clan should have the freedom to make stupid decisions, she did not want her old friends and comrades to die when there was still a chance that they could be saved!

In any case, the Riot Mark II’s challenge had come to an end the moment the expert mech had lost the ability to fight, so Casella wasn’t ruining Venerable Orfan’s chances of attaining a breakthrough.

While Casella tried to use her Knights to put the puelmer heavy cruisers on the defensive, she used her Barons to put pressure onto the phase lord responsible for crippling the Riot!

The brand-new Karma Cutter mechs had already shown off a portion of their capabilities as they intervened in the mech battles and systematically took down one elite phasefighter after another.

The Saint Commander had retained 40 of them for the purpose of Enfeoffing them, causing the powerful quasi-first-class rifleman mechs to gain power that was equivalent to a low-tier expert mech!

Prior to this moment, Casella had utilized their rapid-fire Null Rifles to pelt the greater phase lords with highly disruptive Null Rounds.

Now, she quickly changed their assignments and commanded them to drown Zren-Divar with resonance-empowered hyper bullets!

While the volume of attacks put much greater strain on the spatial barrier of a lesser phase lord, Zren-Divar forcefully endured the attacks and continued to fly forward while raising his plasma sword.

He looked as if he was determined to finish the job even if he started to incur real damage!

The Valkyrie Krista and the Valkyrie Ursa no longer fought as cautiously as before.

The Handmaidens of Death did not want to see a respected female expert pilot perish in front of their machines, so they drove their expert Valkyrie mechs to assault and savage the orven phase lord in the rear!

However, Zren-Divar’s spatial barrier still remained strong enough that he had the luxury to ignore the two annoying expert mechs for a time!

As the lesser phase lord easily caught up to the crippled and drifting Riot, he continued to weather the high volume of incoming attacks and forcefully chopped his plasma sword down onto the expert spearman mech!

"Fatal Attraction!"

Just as Zren-Divar imagined the Riot melting and splitting apart from his plasma sword, the Riot’s crippled mech frame strangely drifted out of reach from his weapon at the last second!

At most, the broken mech frame’s proximity to the plasma sword had caused a few more components to melt!

"Jannzi! Good job!"

The Bastion had come to the rescue!

The expert heavy space knight had always been hovering not too far away from the fights between the champions of both sides.

Venerable Jannzi knew that she would be of greatest use if she stood by and waited until an unexpected crisis or accident had occurred.

Though her relatively slow Bastion was not fast enough to catch up to the Riot and shield Venerable Orfan’s machine from the coup-de-grace, Jannzi still had another trick up her sleeve!

She resonated with GT-535, the key resonating exotic that had been developed by Master Moira Willix during one of her past projects.

The resonating exotic granted the Bastion limited control over gravity.

This was enough for Venerable Jannzi to activate a resonating ability that caused her Bastion to form a gravitic link with the Riot, causing the two to converge upon each other!

While this temporarily saved the crippled expert spearman mech from total eradication, it still did not solve the threat posed by the angry lesser phase lord!

Zren-Divar continued to ignore all of the ranged attacks that were sapping his spatial barrier and continued to fly forward before swinging his plasma sword with fury or an angry native god!

This time, the phase lord did not want to be fooled again. He deliberately advanced closer and slowed the speed of his weapon swing so that he could exert much better control over his attack.

Venerable Jannzi had no other choice but to stand her ground and shield the Riot Mark II from harm!

"Maximum Defense!"

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