The Mech Touch

If Ves was drinking a cup of coffee right now, he would have spurted all of it out of his mouth at this time!

"How the hell have these Avatars become so good?!"

He always tried to keep up with the current state of his diverse and unique mech forces. He had a good grasp of the overall strengths and weaknesses of every mech force. He also possessed an overall judgement of their ranking.

The Swordmaidens were the strongest, followed closely by the Penitent Sisters. A substantial gap existed between the two and the remainder. The Avatars of Myth and Flagrant Vandals had fallen too far behind to catch up in a short amount of time.

This was why Commander Melkor was desperate to allow his Avatars to lead this operation. If he and his men ever wanted to surpass the powerful female mech pilots, they had to go above and beyond in order to regain the throne!

Melkor and a lot of Avatar officers thought very hard about how they could close the gap. They realized that they had to acquire a unique advantage that they could depend upon to give them an edge in battle.

One of the reasons why the Penitent Sisters and the Swordmaidens were so stupendously scary in battle was because Ves bestowed them their unique battle networks.

One of them used the extremely powerful Superior Mother as its nexus while the other centered around a living expert pilot!

Due to their notably high degree of unity and cohesion, the Penitent Sisters and Swordmaidens were able to activate extraordinary battle formations that could launch massive, battle-changing strikes that could harvest hundreds if not thousands of lives at once!

Every other mech force was insanely jealous at what the Penitent Sisters and Swordmaidens possessed. Yet other than the Battle Criers, Ves denied the request to fashion battle networks that were tailored to others.

Ves was actually quite willing to strengthen the combat prowess of his soldiers in this manner. It took relatively little effort on his part to provide powerful trump cards to his troops.

Yet the requirements to establish and activate a battle network were quite harsh. The mech pilots that channeled a battle formation had to be united by a common cause and become as aligned and homogeneous as possible.

Theoretically, only twins and very close relatives should achieve close to perfect integration.

Short of that, the highly intensive training standards along with the strong martial cultures of the Penitent Sisters and Swordmaidens served as an adequate substitute.

The rest were too messy to match this level of dedication according to Ves.

Was this really the case, though?

Commander Melkor didn't think this was the case. Sure, the Avatars had grown so large and numerous that a lot of differences had emerged.

The longer-serving Avatars were a lot more jaded and mature than the ones that joined in recent months.

The small number of trueblood Larkinsons always felt more privileged than the large number of adopted clansmen who had only recently embraced their values.

The Avatars who originated from second-rate states always felt that they would eventually be able to supplant the ones who came from third-rate states like the Bright Republic and the Sentinel Kingdom.

With so many contradictions within the Avatars, Commander Melkor had already tried and failed to impose a greater degree of conformity among his men.

Nothing stuck and it would take far too much time and much greater effort in order to mold his Avatars into identical fighting machines.

One day, the Avatars racking their minds over this problem came up with an alternative solution.

"Trying to unite thousands if not tens of thousands of Avatars is undoable. What if we take a step back and try to gather like-minded mech pilots into smaller units? It is much easier to foster unity in a mech squad or a mech company!"

The Avatars experimented with this idea and achieved positive results during their initial attempts. Commander Melkor was highly encouraged by the results and approved further attempts to convert more mech companies into highly homogenous units.

The easiest way to accomplish this was to gather people together of the same backgrounds!

For example, the mech pilots who all clutched their Golden Cat pendants and invoked the ancestral spirit were either truebloods or former citizens of the Bright Republic!

Of all of the people in the clan, only the original Larkinsons and those who knew of their reputation were able to develop the most intimate connections to the Golden Cat.

That turned them into a model which other Avatars were supposed to follow!

Now, this special experimental unit of Larkinsons were finally showing their worth on an actual battlefield!

Unlike before when they were confronting the black mechs, this time they were confronted by aerial enemies who wouldn't be able to shake off the Larkinson mechs so easily.

This was the perfect stage to debut the new Avatar Invocation Method that Commander Melkor and his officers had cooked by themselves.

What was remarkable about this was that the Avatars never involved Ves or asked for his assistance at any point. The Avatars were very prideful and they wanted to show the patriarch that they did not need anyone's help in order to expand their own methods.

Now, their hour had finally come, and the first mech companies that had successfully mastered their new exclusive technique were fighting harder than ever in order to vindicate all of the effort put into this initiative!

"Invoke the Golden Cat!"

"Invoke the Golden Cat!"

Two more mech companies experienced an invisible transformation that subsequently improved their effective performance by at least thirty percent!

This difference might not sound so drastic, but in a fast-moving clash where every difference mattered, this improvement was nothing less than a revolution.

The ranged mech company that had just invoked the Golden Cat aimed and overlapped their fire to a much more effective degree. They not took down enemy mechs at a faster rate, but also suppressed any Diyast mech that was about to launch a fatal blow against a friendly machine.

The melee mech companies outfought the mechs opposite them to such a devastating extent that the handful of MTA mech pilots fighting alongside them were filled with questions.

In truth, their skill and ability allowed them to perform even better on an individual basis, but the rising momentum of so many Avatar mechs affected the course of the battle to a much greater degree!

[What happened to these Larkinsons?!] Miss Petrov, who was piloting a lancer mech, expressed her befuddlement. [Did they simultaneously inject their bodies with stimulants or something?]

Miss Quentin shook her head as she did her best to keep up with the advancing Avatars and chop enemy mechs with the sword of her own machine.

[They haven't lost control. Far from it. They exhibit even greater precision and coordination than before. That is not what typical stimulants can do. Whatever these Larkinsons have done, I can feel their momentum rising!]

Commander Melkor grinned with pride as the battle swung in the favor of the Larkinson Clan.

The Avatars were finally showing their worth under his leadership!

"Surround the Diyast mechs! Don't let them fall back to their sea carriers!"

The Ferocious Piranhas began to harass and block the rear of the diminishing enemy mech troop. While the Diyast mechs initially outnumbered the Avatars and Vandals in the field, the last few stratagems successfully whittled down this disparity.

Now that the Diyasts lost more than a hundred mechs in a short amount of time, their situation became even less optimistic.

If the revenge force couldn't overcome the Larkinsons when they held this advantage, how could they possibly reverse the situation now that the superior Larkinson mechs faced less pressure?

Even though the Diyast mech pilots were very loyal to their cause, they were not immune to swings in morale. They could easily sense that the high tide that they were riding on had crashed straight into a dyke.

The Diyast mech force did not possess much advantages to begin with, but now that the orange-and-grey mechs were falling left and right due to the heroic performance of a handful of enemy mech companies, the dream of the Diyast Family might never come to pass!

Surging morale boosted every Avatar mech pilot that fought against the Diyasts. Even if they weren't a part of the special mech companies that had invoked the Golden Cat, the 'regular' mech pilots still fight with more skill and confidence than even in their best training sessions.

How could the Diyast mech pilots possibly match this boost? Their fighting spirit constantly eroded as they lacked a pillar that could prop up their morale and rally their confidence. Ernesto Diyast was not an accomplished war leader and could do little to encourage his men to stand their ground.

"My revenge… my family…" The surviving Diyast hollowly uttered in the command center of one of the sea carriers. "No! I can't let my quest for vengeance fail! Not when I have worked so hard to get to this point! Men, forget about fighting these Larkinsons! Just chase down those fleeing combat carriers and take them all down! As long as any of them plunge into the ocean, the Purnessers will enter our domain!"

It was a sound plan, and it might have actually worked if he had issued this order at the start.

However, their entanglement against the Larkinson mechs had become so devastating that the remaining Diyast mechs were too few in number to succeed in this plan!

They tried anyway. The Diyast mechs all split up and tried to circumvent the crazy Bright Warriors and the devious Ferocious Piranhas.

Yet this half-baked initiative that had started too late was destined to fail.

The Avatars did not allow their opponents to leave unopposed. The Bright Warriors stubbornly gnawed at the heels of the escaping Diyast mechs and either forced them to stop and fight or simply defeated them straight away!

Any Diyast mech that succeeded in slipping through the net were quickly chased down by a pack of ravenous Ferocious Piranhas. The Vandal light mechs were able to catch up to any medium mech without fail, so the attempts to get away by the latter seemed very farcical.

As for the light mechs that outraced the Ferocious Piranhas, their numbers were too few to threaten the combat carriers that had already distanced themselves from the hotspot.

The empowered ranged mech company might not have the blessing of Ylvaine, but their overall performance received a collective boost that was just enough for them to down the dodging enemy light mechs by coordinating their fire.

From the moment the sea carriers submerged back into the water, the Larkinson Clan knew that it had accomplished its victory.

"The Avatars and Vandals have won!"

"Hail the Larkinson Clan!"

"Hail the Golden Cat!"

The operation to evacuate the Purnesse Family was settled even before the third wave of Larkinson mechs arrived.

With the help of a new combat method, the Avatars of Myth succeeded in pioneering a new battle approach!

Back on the Spirit of Bentheim, Ves was lost for words.

He had long thought that he was the only one who was qualified to invent new spirituality-based methods in the Larkinson Clan. No one came close to matching his competence in spiritual engineering.

Though he was aware that he had a long way to go before he could catch up to his mother, in his clan he always considered himself to be the sole authority in this field!

Yet now, the Avatars of Myth encroached upon his domain despite possessing no expertise in spiritual engineering.

"How?" Ves asked.

He turned around and pinned his eyes towards the Larkinson Mandate. He could feel smugness radiating from the Golden Cat.

"Get over here!"

He did not bother to ask Nitaa to hand over the book. He activated a hidden command and commanded the antigrav brace to detach from Nitaa's combat armor and fly straight into Ves' outstretched hand!

Once he held the book in his grasp, he communicated directly with Goldie.

"What have you been up to these days?!"

Nyaaaaaaaaaa.