The Mech Touch

6024 Dark Wind Blowing

Many soldiers on the battlefield could not afford to becdistracted, but they all heard the news nonetheless.

Saint Tusa had entered the battlefield!

Not only that, he instantly managed to cripple or inflict severe harm onto multiple hyper battleships that had been responsible for felling so many mechs and mech pilots!

Each of these prized orven battleships had proven to be a reaper of human lives. Their abundance of fully powered tertiary transphasic hyper laser cannon batteries had already becresponsible for producing many new traumas among the surviving soldiers.

To see these terrors of the battlefield getting their comeuppance with so much ease provided a huge amount of relief to the troops!

"Tusa! Tusa! Tusa!"

Morale across the expeditionary fleet shot up as their third ace pilot continued his hunt against the most threatening alien vessels on the battlefield.

The Dark Zephyr had fully unfolded his Saint Kingdom by now! A bright blue zone enveloped the black machine, allowing the living mech to inspire greater hope and courage from every mech pilot that was able to track the expert light skirmisher's passage!

It was remarkable how thoroughly Saint Tusa's entry into the battle tipped the balance.

The expeditionary fleet went from fighting a bitter struggle to gaining the upper hand in just the span of a single minute!

"<nullb>Leap of True Freedom!"

"<nullb>Dark Wind Passage!"

Another shadowy streak ran through yet another hyper battleship!

Just as in the previous cases, the unfortunate vessel in question began to suffer widespread malfunctions as many power generators, shield generators and other important ship systems fell apart for inexplicable reasons.

Many important orven officers and crew members had succumbed as well! Their deaths were particularly horrific in the eyes of the survivors as the bodies of the victims seemingly blackened before disintegrating into particles of ash!

While it was impossible for a single attack run to neutralize a large enemy battleship in totality, Tusa received enough intelligence about the layout of these alien battleships to know where he could do the most damage.

Each the crippled another threatening battleship, the mech forces made sure to follow-up on the strike and collapse the weakened defenses of the damaged vessel!

With the surprisingly rapid downfall of the most threatening hyper battleships, the Torment Fleet quickly lost its backbone!

Not only were the human mechs no longer taking as many losses as before, but the morale of the orvens serving on the intact warships plunged to the bottom!

It had always been the alien raiding fleets that fought and died like worthless voribugs. When was it supposed to be their turn to get killed by the human invaders?

No matter whether they were low-caste or high-caste orvens, each of them died just as easily when attacked by human mechs!

As the Dark Zephyr finished off the fifth alien hyper battleship, the remaining surviving enemy vessels quickly becoverwhelmed by the mechs that attacked and swarmed them with a vengeance.

Eliminating so many powerful alien warships early freed up thousands of mechs, allowing them to concentrate their attacks on weaker and more outdated vessels.

Unlike the modern alien vessels that had improved so much with the help of stolen human technology, the older orven warships lacked all of the latest advancements, causing them to inflict less damage and collapse much faster!

Tusa could already tell that there was hardly any need for him to join this frenzy. The mech forces had taken serious losses, but their quantity was still so great that there were more than enough intact machines to maintain a decisive advantage.

"There is only one enemy left."

Performing 5 different Dark Wind Passages in quick succession had been a strenuous effort to the new ace pilot. He had taken a risk by pulling off the last one as he hadn't been sure whether he or his expert mech still had enough power left to destructively phase through one end to the other end of the enemy battleship's hull!

Fortunately, his intuition did not steer him wrong. His Dark Zephyr had not ended up stuck in the middle of the enemy vessel. If his living mech remained operational somehow, it would have been incredibly awkward to tear his way out of the enormous metal cage.

The ace pilot took the opportunity to recover from his previous exertions. He also checked the condition of his expert mech.

"How are you, battle partner?"

"I CAN STILL FIGHT, BUT… I DO NOT THINK THE DARK WIND MODULE IS DESIGNED TO BE ACTIVATED SO MANY TIMES."

The state of the Ultimate Module was not great at the moment. When Blackwing separated from the mysterious module, the companion spirit could already tell that its archemetal components had exceeded their safety levels.

It was a small miracle that the Dark Wing Module managed to stay intact!

If not for the fact that much of it consisted of archemetal that had been reinforced by true resonance, the Ultimate Module would have likely exploded by this time!

As an ace pilot, he should have been able to keep his cool, yet when he first went into action, his surging emotions overwhelmed his reason!

Getting held back for so long and witnessing so many Larkinsons perishing without accomplishing anything that was truly meaningful in their lives had made him angrier than he thought.

The fact that Tusa did not even notice that he was going overboard warned him that possessing strong willpower was not always beneficial.

What he wanted did not always conform to what was best in a given situation!

There was a tand place for a Saint to go over the edge and exceed their limitations, but this should never be done on a regular basis.

Even ace pilots weren't that unreasonable!

After spending a bit of tcatching his breath and gaining a better idea on how much fight he had left, he focused his attention on the Eminence of Torment.

The alien phase lord had definitely noticed the rapid downfall of his precious fleet. Despite being covered in a gigantic suit of armor, the Eminence had definitely becafflicted with rage!

Nonetheless, the orven also lived up to his apparent reputation by constantly trying to back away from the battlefield.

The Eminence of Torment wanted to get as far away from the expeditionary fleet as possible so that he could activate a warp bubble and leave his human adversaries behind!

"<nullb>I decree that you are moving slower."

Saint Kalasandra Boojay's latest decree had mysteriously taken effect, causing the beleaguered phase lord's acceleration rate to drop by as much as 30 percent!

This effectively prevented the Eminence of Torment from moving out of the range of the Spirit of Bentheim.

The factory ship was the main culprit responsible for limiting the mobility of the enemy phase lord!

The recently shipped and installed Zeta-65 Warp Interdictor may demand a huge amount of energy in order to operate, but the Polymath and Spacelock's latest joint invention was especially effective at weakening phase lords!

Seeing that he could not run away, the aggrieved phase lord fixated on the Spirit of Bentheim and wanted to smash the factory ship once and for all!

The Eminence of Torrent ignored the Royal Jeem's persistent spear attacks and trusted that his spatial barrier and remaining transphasic energy shields would hold for the tbeing.

The giant alien instead focused all of his attacks on the Spirit of Bentheim!

The factory ship's azure energy shields immediately started to buckle from all of the graser cannon attacks.

Other fleet carriers attempted to shield the Spirit of Bentheim against damage, but their defenses did not last very long!

"<nullb>Get lost!"

"Saint Marissa has arrived!"

The Jedda Sandivar was no longer needed to suppress the remnants of the Torment Fleet.

The ace light skirmisher rapidly closed in on the Eminence of Torment and began to surround the phase whale in the middle of a disorienting smoke cloud!

Engulfed by Saint Marissa's domain field, the powerful alien becsubjected to another weakening effect as he suddenly lost his ability to observe enemies more than a few hundred meters away!

While the phase lord was still able to track the movements of the Royal Jeem, the Eminence of Torment was unable to track the Jedda Sandivar and the Spirit of Bentheim.

The factory ship quickly changed trajectory and moved far enough away from her old coordinates to prevent the phase lord from striking her hull with repeated attacks in the sdirection.

Not that it mattered that much. Saint Marissa's disorienting smoke cloud not only obscured the Eminence of Torment's perception, but also caused him to lose his sense of direction and orientation!

The alien could no longer determine which direction was galactic coreward, rimward, spinward or counterspinward!

Even those who were located well outside the smoke cloud could clearly guess that the alien had beccompletely lost as he uselessly fired his graser cannons into many random directions!

Despite the power of his high-energy cannons, they never cclose to striking anything. Space was simply too big, and it becexponentially harder to land a hit at targets that were further away!

Still, Commander Casella instructed every Larkinson mech unit to back away just to be certain!

"Retreat! Do not get affected by collateral damage! The phase lord is a trapped and cornered beast at this time. Let our ace pilots claim the glory of defeating this powerful leader!"

Saint Marissa and Saint Kalasandra had been fighting and training alongside each other for years. They understood each other very well and seamlessly worked together to grind down the Eminence of Torment's annoyingly effective energy defenses.

Even though the Royal Jeem had managed to shatter so many segmented transphasic shields that it had removed an entire layer, the Eminence of Torment often used his spatial barrier to give his ship raiment's energy shields tto recover!

By continuing to alternate his defenses, the Eminence of Torment substantially prolonged his survival, giving him more tto focus his attacks on his only visible target, the Royal Jeem!

As powerful as the ace spearman mech may be, the frequent spatial attacks and graser beam strikes constantly sapped the Royal Jeem's reserves.

Saint Kalasandra's domain field had blocked and reduced the power of over a thousand attacks, causing it to grow increasingly more worn and exhausted.

While the addition of the Jedda Sandivar partially relieved the Royal Jeem, the Eminence of Torment did not experience that much threat from the ace light skirmisher.

The Jedda Sandivar's attack power was too weak!

The only way the elusive ace mech was able to inflict stronger blows was by building up a lot of speed before charging at its target!

This was not an efficient method of attack, and fared especially poorly against the Eminence of Torment's outrageous energy defenses.

The Eminence of Torment grew a little more confident. Although the humans had demolished his fleet, his power combined with the power of his massive suit of armor resulted in a lot of synergies that gave him a chance to fight his way out of this ambush!

Yet before he could work towards exhausting the Royal Jeem's Saint Kingdom, the powerful alien sensed an acute threat approaching from behind!

It was a pity that the Eminence of Torment was unable to react fast enough to respond to sudden change!

"<nullb>Leap of True Freedom!"

In an instant, a third Saint Kingdom had emerged!

This one pressed uncomfortably close onto the phase lord's body. The Eminence of Torment grew alarmed when he noticed that none of his energy defenses had managed to stop the expert light skirmisher from bypassing his defensive envelope!

The Dark Zephyr did not activate his Ultimate Module and risked the possibility of crashing into the phase lord's resilient flesh.

Instead, the powerful mech rapidly approached the graser cannons mounted on the back and shoulders of the large phase lord and began to strike them with a pair of transphasic stormblade knives!

Lightning crackled across the phase lord's ship raiment whole entire chunks of graser cannon barrels and other pieces of metal alloy separated from the phase lord's body!

The Eminence of Torment panicked and attempted to swat away the Dark Zephyr by moving and rotating his body.

However, the Dark Zephyr proved to be fast and agile enough to keep up with the phase lord's movements!

"Forget about the graser cannons, Tusa! Destroy the transphasic shield generators and power generators! We have already identified their approximate locations! Strip away the alien's defenses so that we can kill, no, subdue him! This is our best chance of capturing an alien phase lord alive!"

All three ace pilots becshocked at the audacity of this instruction.

Could they truly defeat the Eminence of Torment without claiming his life?

The challenge excited all three of them! They becdetermined to pummel the Eminence of Torment into submission!