The Mech Touch

A total of seven heavily-armed guards opened fire on Ves! They all acted in unison and without warning!

The good news was that not every guard was in on the scheme. Thirteen more infantry soldiers from the Planetary Guard reacted with stunned shock at the unprovoked actions of their colleagues.

Why did they act without authorization?! Who told them to attack their foreign guest?!

"We must wash away the humiliation of our defeat!"

"Don't let him leave this arena alive!"

"Watch out for the cat!"

The rogue guards wearing heavy organic suits were hardly holding back in their attacks. They prioritized taking out the patriarch of the Larkinson Clan at all costs!

Due to the relative proximity of Venerable Jannzi, they refrained from utilizing any destructive area weapons, but that did not restrain them much as their biorifles were already potent enough by themselves!

Numerous positron beams, gauss rounds and explosive shells impacted Ves from the front!

"AHHH!" The poorly-protected form of Vincent uselessly raised his arms while desperately commanding his hover chair to move away. "Don't shoot me! I'm an invalid! I'm not a threat! I surrender!"

The crippled expert candidate did not wish to get caught in the expanding cross fire!

As the weapons held by the rogue guards finally fell silent, Ves' armored form remained standing.

The Unending Regalia did its job. Aside from ruining the vulnerable coating on the surface, the underlying metal layers did not incur any damage!

The rogue guards all paused for a moment. Even if Ves wore an excellent suit of armor, it was too ludicrous that not a hint of actual damage was visible!

Yet before they could resume their fire, a very slippery cat snuck up behind their formation and began to claw the back of one of the guards with an energy claw!

The potent energy claws tore right through the organic plates and directly cut the spine of the unlucky soldier in half!

"MEOW!"

"Behind us!"

Having slipped into the latest version of his Misfortune Harness, Lucky had turned into an incarnation of feline death!

For some reason, the remaining thirteen guards no longer stood silent. Perhaps out of a mistaken sense of needing to back up their comrades, they began to open fire at the Larkinsons as well!

"You brainless idiots! What is the point of attacking me?! I'm not your enemy, damnit! Stop firing at me and let me leave in peace. I just want to go!"

None of Ves' complaints had any effect. The outbreak of open hostilities happened so unexpectedly that many people caught in the storm simply didn't know what to do. Some of the panicky ones tended to look at the people they knew and blindly followed suit!

Ves abhorred this stupid response. It showed that for all of their training, the Planetary Guard troops were not that good at responding to a genuine crisis!

Even though he was confused and angry with the latest developments, he couldn't afford to waffle at this stage!

Anyone who shot him was an enemy. No exception. No matter who the Planetary Guard troops answered to, as long as they pointed their guns at him, they were already dead in his eyes!

The short battle soon turned into a slaughter once the Larkinsons got serious. Jannzi fired at the guards with an integrated wrist-mounted laser blaster. Even though her attacks were too weak to overcome the armor of her opponents, she still exerted a considerable degree of pressure!

Ves did not remain still either. He pulled out a kinetic pistol and pulled the trigger, causing the c.h.e.s.t armor of one of the guards to splinter from all of the damage it withstood!

"Don't shoot me! Get me out of here!"

Vincent on the other hand flew his chair further and further away from the heat of battle. Even though various projectiles and beams whizzed near his form, none of them hit him so far.

He wasn't important enough!

The battle at the exit did not last long. While Ves and Jannzi's attacks were only moderately effective against the combat armor worn by the elite guard troops, there was one more entity who sowed death left and right!

"MEEEOOW!"

Lucky furiously darted back and forth, clawing every hostile guard that he passed along the way. None of his opponents succeeded in blocking his powerful energy claws!

The only instance where Lucky failed to take the life of a hostile soldier was when his claws slammed against the energy shield of a Planetary Guard captain.

The officer was equipped with fancier gear!

Lucky yowled in frustration.

To be honest, Lucky could have eliminated the opposition a lot faster. Ves had ordered his cat to hold back, though. There was no reason for Lucky to expose his phasing ability.

The energy shield that enveloped the rogue officer's form did not last long. It turned out that his energy shield was a vastly inferior model that was generally issued to valued middle-ranked personnel!

Ves continually depleted the shield with his kinetic rounds. Lucky attacked the shield from the other side. The combination of pistol and claw attacks quickly exhausted the compact battery powering the mass-produced shield generator!

It only took a single claw to decapitate the rogue captain!

With his death, every hostile guard had died. The remaining Planetary Guard troops were frozen as they witnessed their comrades being massacred.

They didn't know what to do! Perhaps some of them wanted to assist their comrades, but the speed in which the Larkinsons demolished their foes prompted them to think twice!

As more Lifers were continuing to fight each other across the entire VIP platform, any sense of order had disappeared.

Normally, these respected experts and officials would calmly discuss their disagreements over a meal or something. If they wanted to resort to harsher methods, then they would never take action in person.

This was what their underlings were supposed to do! Why take risks at all when they were capable of dispatching plenty of disposable minions to do the job in their stead?

None of that was apparent at the moment. For some reason or another, Seniors, ministers and other important Lifers decided there was no better time to get rid of their opponents by pulling out their guns and opening fire in person!

Since all of their bodyguards were stuck at the other side of the fortified exit, none of the VIPs could leave the fighting to someone else. They all took action in person!

"This is crazy! This entire state has gone mad!"

Fortunately, none of the powerful Lifers spared any attention to the Larkinsons. Most of them were too caught up in their personal vendettas to spare much attention to the foreigner who briefly humiliated their state.

What worked in Ves' favor was that he had exhibited plenty of power. None of the Lifers qualified to enter this platform were suicidal. They did not want to become the next idiots who died after an energy claw tore out their throats!

"Open the gates and let us pass already!" Ves aggressively demanded the surviving guards.

"We can't! There are hundreds of bodyguards on the other side. If all of them engage in hostilities at once, this entire tree structure will collapse!"

"It's well on its way of burning down at this rate!"

Ves really didn't want to shoot these neutral guards, but their continued obstruction was grating on him. Did he have to shoot his way out of this warzone?

Before he could argue any further, the tall and giant tree structure shook. Massive groaning sounds echoed throughout the air as Ves and everyone else felt as if the floor underneath their feet was tilting.

The fighting quickly died down. A couple of bodies were littered on the platform, but most VIPs were still okay. Hardly any of them possessed military training, so they were unable to overcome the energy shields worn by their opponents.

"What's going on?!" Someone asked. "Are we under attack by mechs?"

"It doesn't seem like it. It's as if.. the tree structure itself is moving."

CRACK!

Justa few seconds later, the platform abruptly split in half! The tree structure g.r.o.a.n.e.d and convulsed as its entire trunk was splitting into multiple slender trunks!

It was as if someone animated the giant tree. The split trunks began to bend and swirl as if they were massive tentacles. Even though their movements were agonizingly slow, their humongous size meant that their movements were extremely violent!

"Fly!"

Everyone on the VIP platform activated their antigrav modules or other means of flight! The guards who were stationed on the other side of the top floor had taken flight as well.

At their level, none of them lacked the means to levitate themselves.

However, being able to float was one thing. Being able to fly away fast enough to escape the convulsions of enormous tree tentacles was another thing!

"AHHHHH!"

One VIP suddenly went splat as he got smacked by the tip of a tree tentacle!

A dozen guards launched into the distance as another tree tentacle collided against armored forms! The powerful impact most certainly exceeded the inertial dampeners of their protective armor, which meant that their bodies had definitely turned into a bloody soup!

Every survivor looked horrified at what had happened. The worst part about this was that this wasn't the only tree structure that had gone crazy.

All of the other ones were going berserk as well!

Hundreds of thousands of Lifers who went out to witness the design duel in person were suddenly caught up in a nightmare as their own elevated seating platforms turned hostile!

Since many of them were ordinary citizens, a considerable portion didn't possess any flight capabilities.

Tens of thousands of innocent civilians dropped to their deaths!

If the giant tree tentacles hadn't crushed or smacked them to death, then they most certainly lost their lives after impacting the ground!

Screams of women, children and other uninvolved people echoed throughout the entire disaster area! Ves and many other survivors couldn't process the madness of this act of slaughter.

What was the point!?

Since Ruuzon Arena's entire design revolved around surrounding the arena grounds with a crown of twisting tree structures, virtually every spectator got caught up in this tragedy. Those with flight capabilities started to cry and howl at all of the traumatic sights they witnessed.

In just a couple of minutes, all of the surviving Lifers had lost many friends, family and fellow citizens!

"Patriarch!"

Nitaa and the rest of the honor guard finally reached Ves and surrounded him in every direction. Venerable Jannzi and Vincent floated awkwardly outside the tight protective envelope.

"Meow."

Lucky felt more at ease. With the arrival of the bodyguards, his job of protecting Ves had become a lot easier.

"We need to get you out of here!" Nitaa insisted. "Let us fly to the landing zone. The Infinity Guard has already prepared their armored transport for evacuation."

"Where are their infantry troops? Where are their Guard Master mechs?!"

"The underground landing zone has turned into a battlefield as well! Mechs and soldiers belonging to different factions are fighting at ground level as we speak. The mercenaries are trying their best to extricate themselves from the crossfire, but it will take time!"

Damnit!

Ves gnashed his teeth.

"Lead the way! Get us away from these crazy trees before they start to launch wood ch.i.p.s at us or something."

A lot of other people had the same thought. They carefully maintained enough altitude to escape the reach of the tree tentacles and began to head to the sides in order to distance themselves from Ruuzon Arena.

Yet just as Ves and his group advanced a couple of hundred meters away, the air in front of them turned bright and hot as a giant laser beam inflamed the space in front of them! The beam was so bright and massive that the optical sensors of their helmets had to compensate for the brightness!

"The violence is spreading! There are mechs fighting below us! It's too dangerous to fly in the air!"

A revolution never remained calm for long!