The Mech Touch

After unleashing a powerful shriek, Cynthia Larkinson's mutated energy projection dove forward and began to do battle against the Unending One!

To his surprise, his mother was doing far better than Nyxie! While Ves was still trying to recover from all of the shocks to his spirit, he could still see how she was putting the Unending One through his paces.

Strangely enough, Ves sensed that his mother was significantly weaker than the tentacled whale. What actually gave her ability to contend against the dark god was that her utilization of power was far more refined than he had ever seen from any powerful spiritual entity!

Her ragged robe stirred as she lifted her clawed and scaled hands. After contorting her fingers in various shapes, a dozen giant vines appeared from in front of her and shot towards her target.

The Unending One released an angry roar and attempted to entangle the incoming vines with his tentacles. Yet as soon as the two met each other, the tentacles bled and tore as the vines suddenly released sharp spikes!

The vines soon wrapped around the immense bulk of the Unending One, causing him to roar with pain. His strong body thrashed and released a copious amount of dark fog. The vines eventually broke, but at that time, Cynthia had already launched her next attack!

A pair of ethereal creatures that looked like a cross between a wolf and a dragon surged forward and began to bite the Unending One's tentacles. Each time they bit, they chewed through the tentacles in their mouths with remarkable ease!

While the dragonwolves didn't actually look very very strong, each time the Unending One inflicted severe damage to them with his attacks, the summoned creatures rapidly regenerated their wounds.

Unless the Unending One crushed them completely, the dragonwolves would keep restoring to their peak and continue their harassment.

The dark god decided to ignore the annoying creatures and instead direct his ire at the woman in his way. The Unending One opened his maw and released a powerful dark beam at his foe, only for the mutated woman to disappear and reappear a distance away.

Her scaled arms and hands swirled in a smooth circle. Her glowing purple eyes glowed brighter as an incredibly complicated energy diagram appeared before her body.

Ves tried his best to study and record everything he saw into his implant, but for some reason his attempt completely failed! No matter how closely he wanted the details of his mother's mysterious diagram, his brain simply refused to record it. He tried multiple methods to record what he saw, but he had seemingly bumped into some sort of hard rule that stated that copying it was not allowed!

The diagram floated in place for a few seconds before fading away. In its place, a large sword made of energy manifested into existence.

Ves couldn't help but be fascinated by the sword's appearance. Though he couldn't glean too much details, he sensed the sword was not only an ancient relic, but one that had developed its own intrinsic life!

"This is a sword with a consciousness!" He gasped!

When his mutated mother grasped the handle of the sword, her entire aura changed. It became more focused and restrained, but that did not make her look any less deadly.

Without moving forward, she swung her sword, releasing some kind of energy wave that cut through some of the tentacles of the Unending One before cutting his flesh!

The dark god could not endure this affront! The Unending One darted forward with great fury, causing the two titanic entities to be locked in an intensive struggle.

All the while, the spiritual pressure they emanated caused more and more Larkinsons throughout the fleet to lose consciousness. If not for the automated backup systems keeping everything running, some of the surviving mechs and ships would have crashed against each other.

Still, Ves recognized that these circumstances were anything but ideal! His mother may have gained the power to duel the Unending One on even grounds, but there were two more dark gods on the battlefield!

The Blinding One continually blasted Goldie and the Quint with light beams and other attacks. His radiance shield glowed as strong as ever as he struck at the very heart of the Larkinson Clan. Goldie suffered so many blows that her body started leaking glowing blood-like essence. She was visibly weakening with every blow she suffered!

NYAA NYAAAA!

As for the Quint, there was no way for the masterwork mech to remain intact after suffering multiple blows from the dark god. Though the Blinding One directed most of his power against the Golden Cat, the Quint suffered its fair share of blows, causing its reinforced armor to succumb first before its regular armor began to degrade.

If not for the protection of the temporary resonance shield that Joshua gained after he had broken through, the Quint would have already succumbed!

Even so, Venerable Joshua's extraordinary breakthrough manifestation was already starting to lose steam. Complete resonance was far too demanding for him to sustain for long. The continuous damage inflicted by the Blinding One didn't help matters either.

No matter how much he, the Quint and the Golden Cat wanted to sustain this state, he was finally reaching the limit of his capacity!

"Nooooo! I can't.. hold… any.. longer!"

To his regret, his exceptional state had finally run its course. The Golden Cat's energy projection finally dissipated. Though this spared her from getting slain by the Blinding One, she was unable to block the luminar dark god any longer!

As for the Quint, the mech visibly dimmed as its resonance shield and other resonance effects faded away as well. Joshua looked exhausted in his cockpit as he felt as if he had squeezed every drop of potential from his mind and body.

There was nothing left for him to resist the Blinding One!

Without resonance, he was like an emperor without clothes. The Quint wearily raised its Unending lance, but Joshua knew it was futile. Not even this fantastic weapon could make a meaningful difference if he was close to losing consciousness himself!

"You have fought admirably, kid." A gruff transmitted over an open channel. "Now let a real soldier show you how to fight!"

Joshua wearily raised his head in confusion. "What? Who?"

Before he knew it, a rapid form flitted past the sensors of the Quint! The form quickly collided against the radiant shield of the Blinding One!

Different from last time, the charge actually penetrated through the dark god's protection!

To his astonishment, a winged bestial mech had shown up and boldly struck the Blinding One with much more effectiveness than he could have imagined.

As the tiger mech continued to claw and bite into the robe and particularly the crystals adorning it, the Blinding One released yet another omni-direction flash to get rid of the annoyance!

Yet despite releasing such a potent flash, the tiger mech avoided getting blown back. A rust-red glow surrounded the machine, causing it to resist and negate the attack!

"Expert mech!"

The Devil Tiger, the first true masterwork mech made by Ves, had finally appeared on the battlefield!

The mech emerged through the portal shortly after Cynthia Larkinson's energy projection had passed through.

Strangely enough, the Devil Tiger had passed through the portal without undergoing any mutations or abnormal changes. A strong aggressive will surrounded the extraordinary tiger mech as it began to savage the Blinding One!

The luminar dark god seemed to act increasingly more alarmed as he tried several ways to repel the expert mech. Yet all of his attacks, whether it was light beams, guided bolts or simple swipes with his hand, the Devil Tiger's powerful flight system allowed the mech to evade most of the attacks.

The few attacks that did land on the expert mech only weakened its resonance shield for a moment. The Devil Tiger's resonance shield was remarkably stable and abundant, signifying that it was piloted by a genuine expert pilot who was much more seasoned than him. The readings from the resonance meter only confirmed this observation!

"Where did this expert pilot and expert mech come from?"

While Joshua and many other Larkinsons had a lot of questions about the appearance of the bestial mech, they were still grateful for its intervention.

Though the difference in power between the Blinding One and the Devil Tiger was actually quite big, the latter was putting up an excellent fight!

The Blinding One's inherent weakness in close-ranged combat left him unable to deal any significant damage to the expert mech. The few times he managed to land a blow, the Devil Tiger mostly resisted the damage with its resonance shield.

In the rare cases the damage went through, the mech only suffered moderate damage before its structure automatically readjusted until none of the marks of damage remained!

Through the use of clever if not brilliant judgement, the expert pilot constantly attacked the Blinding One from angles that made it tricky for his large humanoid form to attack the pesky mech.

In fact, calling it pesky was an understatement, because the damage the Devil Tiger inflicted was very real!

Instead of focusing on the flesh of the dark god, the expert mech instead worked to damage and demolish the crystals adorning the shield.

Each time the Devil Tiger managed to crack another crystal, the defenses of the Blinding grew a little dimmer. It was clear that the expert pilot intended to weaken the Blinding One first!

With the Unending One and the Blinding One meeting their match, Ves and many Larkinsons sighed in relief. The unknown reinforcements that had emerged through the portal were not only on their side, but also strong enough to fend off the powerful entities!

Yet there was still another dark god arrayed against the Larkinson Clan. Space around the Larkinson fleet seemed to shatter as Qilanxo let out a pained roar! Her energy projection collapsed as the Inexorable One's talons slashed against the Shield of Samar with incredible force!

Though the Unending shield managed to resist the sharp blow, the curled talons of the grey bird reached around the tower shield and punctured deeply the side of the Shield of Samar!

Jannzi's personal mech instantly lost functionality on its damaged side! It no longer possessed the strength to hold up a sword and all of the other system failures caused it to retain only a fraction of its strength.

"Hold on, Shield! Our family still needs us! We can't fall!"

Yet no matter how much she wanted to continue the fight, her failing mech was unable to do what she wanted. If she piloted a real expert mech, then she wouldn't have ended up in this sorry state too soon. It was unfortunate that the mech she decided to partner with was ultimately not a genuine expert mech.

Just as the cruel-looking grey bird attempted to swoop in and cut the helpless Shield of Samar in half, a large volley of nuclear missiles impacted the Inexorable One's form!

Though the powerful explosions unleashed by the shoulder launchers of the Bright Warriors failed to inflict any serious harm to the Inexorable One, the huge explosions did stop her from delivering the coup de grace!

As the Inexorable One turned her avian head to see who had the temerity to challenge her, she saw a motley collection of more than a dozen mechs soaring forward!

A fair amount of them consisted of gold-coated Bright Warriors, but there were plenty of other mechs that belonged to the other mech forces.

What made them special was that each of them were surrounded by unstable resonance fields.

When Ves looked at the advancing mechs, his eyes almost popped out of their sockets.

"Expert candidates! They've broken through!"

The intense battle and the increasing pressure the mech pilots faced had caused many of them to faint or become so suppressed that they could barely lift a finger.

However, a few of them found themselves thriving under the pressure. With the survival of tens of thousands of Larkinsons at stake, they somehow rose to the occasion and condensed their nascent, prototypical force of wills!

The breakthroughs not only freed the mech pilots from much of the hostile pressure, but also powered up their mechs through forced resonance, thereby giving them the capacity to challenge gods, however briefly!

"Charge forth and clip this evil demon's wings!" Casella Ingvar roared over the channel.

"We're eating hot wings tonight!" Imon Ingvar excitedly added!