The Mech Touch

Whenever the Penitent Sisters engaged their battle network while piloting a Valkyrie Redeemer, they automatically defaulted to the battle formation associated with the death phase of existence.

It was the only battle formation that truly felt right for the Valkyrie product line.

During previous tests, Ves had gotten to know additional properties about this battle formation. The wave of energy it released was exceedingly deadly. While Ves had not dared to test it on any living humans, it was not that big of a deal to float some containers in space and fill them up with some inconsequential animals.

Suffice to say, none of the animals had a good time after they were swept by the energy wave.

What interested Ves more was how it changed when a prime mech entered the equation.

More specifically, he became very intrigued at what might happen if Venerable Joshua was the one that piloted the prime mech in question.

From a spiritual perspective, the Valkyrie Prime was a carrier of the Superior Mother's energy. The Unending alloy that made up its entire armor and much of its internal frame was all filled with the ancestral spirit's spiritual energy.

By itself, this 6300 Ves worth of spiritual energy was in its basic state. While the mech itself was slanted towards death, the Superior Mother was a spiritual entity that encompassed more than just the death phase of existence.

She was capable of embodying all six hexism phases.

It was just that she normally manifested just one of the phases at the same time. This was how Ves designed her and how she was meant to function.

He hadn't been imaginative enough to think whether he should give her the capability to channel multiple phases at the same time. That was an oversight that Ves slightly regretted. Creating new lifeforms wasn't easy. Any mistake he made could not be corrected as easily as he could do with mechs.

In any case, when Venerable Joshua resonated with his latest mech, the prime resonance he evoked reflected his life domain.

According to his studies, Ves determined that resonance always manifested in a form that highly suited the mech pilot. It was more of a human phenomenon than a mech phenomenon.

Of course, the mech also affected the character of the manifested resonance to a degree, but this was probably dependent on the strength of a mech.

Compared to true expert mechs, prime mechs were much more trivial. They also worked on different principles.

While the mech was technically themed around the death phase of existence, its spiritual foundation only measured up to around 110 Ves in strength, though it could be a little more now that an expert pilot had used it for a while.

What truly affected the form of resonance evoked by the Valkyrie Prime was both the pilot and the source of all of the spiritual energy dumped into the prime materials.

When Venerable Joshua, who possessed a strong and pure life domain, came into contact with the spiritual energy donated by the Superior Mother, what kind of resonance did they produce?

It was life. A mech designed to bring death became surrounded by a glow that exuded pure vitality. Didn't that sound ridiculous?

Yet it worked out fine. The Valkyrie mech line was originally designed to be a carrier of the Superior Mother, and life just happened to be one of her six domains.

In fact, the mutation that happened during her creation may have even strengthened this aspect of hers!

Cynthia Larkinson also possessed a life domain. Even if it had a different orientation than that of Ves and Joshua, it was undeniable that they shared a common root!

Therefore, when Venerable Joshua induced resonance in the Valkyrie Prime, he was evoking the Superior Mother's extraordinary attainments in life.

Ves found it rather coincidental that the life phase of existence also happened to be associated with boys. At least, that was what many Hexers thought.

While the Valkyrie Prime piloted by Joshua turned into a mass of contradictions, the mech in this state was anything but weak. The Valkyrie Prime was still able to channel the death-based abilities that it was meant to evoke.

Yet what happened if this same resonance spread onto the battle formation composed of lots of Valkyrie mechs?

Even Ves didn't know what might result from this combination.

He became even more excited than before. He always derived a lot of satisfaction when he was watching his creations work the way he designed them to, but he gained even more pleasure when he saw them being utilized to a greater degree than he initially envisioned.

This was a true creation!

This was what a true maker pursued!

An invention that only performed to their creator's expectations was a boring and predictable product. The lack of subsequent evolution, improvement or evolution signified that the creation was essentially dead and static.

Only an invention that could endlessly be improved after it was made was truly worthy to be called a living product!

All of these sudden realizations stimulated his design seed to an even higher state than before. The insights he derived from this battle would definitely benefit his work as long as he survived.

"It's time."

Ves and several other observers watched carefully as the sea of mechs parted aside in order to give the Penitent Sister battle formation an ample corridor to their intended targets.

The approaching mechs flew down the corridor as if they were akin to a kinetic shell being propelled forward by a railgun. The only difference was that the mechs all activated their Marked For Death ability when they came close, ensuring that the Bloody Herons would not be able escape the doom that was coming for them in the form of an extraordinary wave of energy!

To be honest, Ves had no idea what kind of energy the battle formation produced. The core of it seemed to be associated with death. This pure and intense death energy largely came from the Superior Mother, but was able to manifest into a coherent attack through the medium of a battle formation.

Yet what made this attack more remarkable than unusual was that it was surrounded by a glow of resonance that originated from the Valkyrie Prime!

It was as if a shell made of life enveloped a huge quantity of pure death energy. What amazed Ves was that the opposing energies didn't conflict or react adversely with each other.

Instead, they existed side by side, reflecting the fact that most of the energies came from the Superior Mother in the first place. It also proved that Joshua had become very compatible with the Hexer spirit.

When the V-shaped wave of death approached the Bloody Herons, the entire battlefield around this incident had slowed. The Holvein Grenadiers, the Silent Swords and the Corundian Giant mechs all seemed to pause in their attacks as their pilots became compelled to watch the results of the powerful attack.

Even the Larkinsons, Glory Seekers and Crossers slowed down a bit. The Larkinson mech pilots knew a bit more than most, but none of them aside from the veterans of the Battle of the Abyss knew what they were about to witness.

The shape and size of the energy attack was proportionate to the dimensions of the battle formation that originally launched it. The larger the battle formation, the more space it covered.

With around 180 mechs, the wave of energy just happened to encompass more than half of the Bloody Heron mechs that remained functional.

This was enough.

When the Bloody Heron mech pilots had become subjected to the suppressive glows of the Valkyrie Redeemers, they felt more than ever that their doom had come!

"No!"

The wave of pale white energy surrounded by green resonance passed through all of the mechs in its way without any obstruction.

It was as if some sort of ghost was merely passing through without taking the time to make any detours.

In just a short amount of time, the energy wave soundlessly passed through several hundred mechs. Not just the Bloody Herons, but also the other Fridayman elite mechs positioned behind them became affected.

Unfortunately, due to the dispersed formation adopted by the Fridaymen, only several mechs were affected in total. The only consolation to Ves was that the previous losses sustained by the elite mechs meant that this was definitely a high proportion!

The energy wave continued to fly forward past the formations of elite Fridaymen mechs, but no one was paying attention to it anymore.

Instead, every observer that was free enough to look was intently observing the mechs affected by the attack.

Around 240 mechs had been hit by the energy wave. Now, everyone waited to see what had happened to them. Had the mechs sustained damage? The attack didn't seem to have done anything to the machines. Was this some sort of failed EMP attack?

It wasn't until the Fridaymen attempted to contact the mech pilots residing in the mechs that they realized that something had gone horribly wrong.

According to the telemetry transmitted by the affected mechs, the mech pilots were still alive, at least on a physical level.

Yet their brain activity had gone completely silent!

In the ships of the Friday Coalition, the battlefield monitors and analysts had become completely stunned.

At one console in the command center of the Eager Condemnation, a certain Journeyman Mech Designer became increasingly more alarmed as she monitored the state of the neural network.

The neural network had become a lot more quiet. It abruptly exhibited only a fraction of its previous activity. What few Bloody Heron mech pilots were left alive were so shocked by what had occurred that the network automatically collapsed!

Fear had swept their minds, causing their thoughts to become too disordered to remain in sync with each other!

As realization spread throughout both friendly and enemy mechs, the Penitent Sister mechs did not bother to charge forward and impale their spears into the defenseless mechs.

Instead, they curved their path away so that they would not be colliding with any enemy mechs.

The battle formation quickly ended after the mechs had unleashed the combined attack.

The energy silhouette of the Superior Mother also faded.

The Valkyrie Prime appeared a bit less energetic than before.

Every action had a price.

An attack as powerful as the one they just unleashed took out a lot from them. Even with the assistance of Venerable Joshua, the Penitent Sister mech pilots all felt as if they had fought for an entire day! They could no longer concentrate as well as before.

It was enough.

When it became clear that the mech pilots affected by the attack were not about to recover anytime soon, the entire direction of the changed.

Commander Melkor quickly fired his weapon! His Vima Sun unleashed a bright laser beam that struck an exposed portion of a Silent Sword mech, inflicting heavy damage on the machine.

"What are you waiting for? Finish them off while they are still caught off-balance! Drive straight through the center and split them apart!"

The Larkinsons, Glory Seekers and Crossers quickly pounced on the enemy! Even though the surviving elite Fridayman mech pilots recovered fairly quickly, they had firmly lost the initiative! The absence of more than 250 mechs meant that they faced an insurmountable disparity in numbers.

There were too few of them left to fend off the remaining enemies, especially if the strange Valkyrie mechs were able to unleash a second energy wave!

However, as the increasingly less confident Fridayman mech pilots worried about a second possible attack, the first one had still not run its course!

When lots of Fridayman officers and analysts were focused on the changes to their mechs, a couple of officers aboard the Auralis suddenly sounded the alarm.

"INCOMING! The unknown attack is flying right in our direction!"

"Evade!"

"It's too late! Our fleet carrier won't be able to evade in time!"

The energy attack persisted far longer than anyone expected from something so weird and powerful. In fact, a normal attack from the death formation should have dispersed after traversing some distance, but this was not a normal energy attack.

As the death wave of energy continued to soar deeper into space, the life resonance surrounding it was slowly being consumed.

Life was sustaining death, allowing the energy wave to persist for a much longer time while retaining most of its potency!

The attack run performed by the Penitent Sisters was angled just right. It did not hit the Bloody Herons straight on but was instead angled just enough to allow the energy attack to reach the coordinates where the Auralis should have reached.

The timing was impeccable. The calculations were all on point. The only factor that potentially spoiled this second surprise was that the Auralis was slowly moving out of the way.

However, the Larkinsons deliberately targeted this fleet carrier in particular. It was the largest, heaviest and least maneuverable deep strike fleet carrier out of the five that the Friday Coalition had sent.

Even though a portion of the vessel had succeeded in moving out of the way of the impending wave of death, something else happened that confounded everyone.

The energy wave seemed to have gained some life of its own! Directed by a consciousness, the pale white wave surrounded by a dwindling corona of green resonance passed right through the length of the fleet carrier of the Gauge Dynasty.

Everyone had become speechless yet again.