The Mech Touch

Armed with modified low-powered laser rifles, the Bright Warriors configured for ranged combat all fired at the Dark Zephyr with no restraint!

A forest of bright beams lit up the surrounding space as they instantly attempted to strike the Dark Zephyr.

However, much to the surprise of the Larkinson mech pilots, most of the beams that were supposed to strike the expert mech simply surged past without hitting anything solid!

"Impossible!"

"What? The expert mech didn't even move!"

The rifleman mechs fired additional volleys at the elusive target. Though the Dark Zephyr kept zipping around the cordoned space like a nimble sparrow, the mech wasn't trying its best to dodge incoming attacks at the moment.

As long as the mech pilots worked together and fired their weapons in unison in a grid pattern, the chances of at least one of them striking their targets always went up. With enough mechs firing their weapons in a coordinated fashion, they could box in nearly every possible target!

Yet even when the Avatars, Sentinels and others leveraged their training to increase their hit rates against powerful opponents, not a single laser beam managed to land for real!

Every laser beam that reached the mech actually phased through it without encountering any hindrance. The ineffective beams innocently traveled further until they either hit something else or dispersed at extreme ranges.

"What is going on?! Are we fighting against a projection or something?!"

"My sensors are telling me the expert mech is certainly where I aimed my weapon at. My attack should have struck the chest plating!

To their credit, the Larkinson pilots soon figured out that they were affected by some sort of trick. They began to disperse their fire and attempted to cast a wider net.

It was at this point that the Dark Zephyr was feeling truly pressured. With hundreds of mechs firing in its vicinity, it took Venerable Tusa a considerable amount of effort to become aware of the attacks before they came and activate the right boosters in order to quickly displace his expert mech from the path of an incoming attack.

"We're firing at an illusion!"

"Keep dispersing our fire. The real expert mech must be under stealth or something!"

The hundreds of ranged mechs tried their best to poke in the dark, relying on random chance and coincidence to succeed in landing a hit.

So far, none of the ranged mechs managed to strike the Dark Zephyr, and that was a considerable embarrassment for the well-trained mech pilots!

Even if they were targeting an expert mech, it should not be this difficult to land at least one lucky hit. Yet the fact that the coordinates where the mech was visible and emitted plenty of heat and other energy emissions turned out to be empty was a considerable frustration to them all. The mech pilots simply didn't know where to aim their weapons!

Back at the design department, no one showed any confusion. The mech designers were all smiling as one of the strongest features of the Dark Zephyr was making full play at the moment.

"The resonance ability derived from Perfidious Steel is amazingly effective." Ketis remarked in an impressed tone. "I would hate to be the enemy who is tasked with intercepting this expert mech."

It didn't actually matter if the Dark Zephyr got hit by a shot in the dark. The fact that the expert mech's actual coordinates deviated extensively from its apparent coordinates meant that it was difficult to score continuous hits.

The way that Perfidious Steel took effect was not a straightforward distortion that could be expressed with a neat mathematical formula. There was an element of randomness in it, especially when Venerable Tusa adjusted the magnitude of his resonance with Perfidious Steel.

He could dynamically make the distortion weaker or stronger, which according to the telemetry he was currently using to good effect.

"The strain on Venerable Tusa and the Dark Zypher has reached a peak, though." Gloriana spoke in concern. "I'm happy that the expert mech lives up to its promises, but according to the data I don't think he can keep up this state for long, especially when he is also doing his best to keep his mech as evasive as possible."

Indeed, Venerable Tusa was not feeling as relaxed as before. His mind and will came under great strain as he had to concentrate fully on the movements of his mech as well as that of all of his opponents.

He continually resonated with both the flight system and the Perfidious Steel integrated in the mech in order to maximize the Dark Zephyr's evasion ability to the limit. Occasionally, a number of boosters activated in order to quickly push the expert mech out of the firing line of an incoming laser beam.

These boosters were amazingly fast, responsive and effective, but they were also constrained by the limited amount of potent booster fuel the Dark Zephyr was able to carry.

More than five minutes passed before Venerable Tusa and his expert mech started to flag. While it was incredibly admirable that the pair had succeeded in remaining untouchable for such an impressive period of time while under heavy fire, neither of the two were omnipotent.

However, seeing that neither Tusa nor his new expert mech showed any alarming signs, Ves and Gloriana decided to expand the stress test.

"General Verle, is the Eye of Ylvaine ready?" Ves asked with a grin.

"They are ready, sir, but the risks are considerable."

Ves dismissively waved his hand. "I don't think we need to worry about that. With all of their advanced targeting and firing systems, the Transcendent Punishers won't hit one of our own mechs."

"What if they succeed in hitting our expert mech?"

"Heh, you'll see what happens then. Don't worry. Everything is under control."

Under his instructions, the Transcendent Punishers stationed inside the bunkers on the hulls of the Spirit of Bentheim and the Graveyard activated their twin positron cannons.

Unlike the rifles held by the Bright Warriors floating in open space, the energy weapons of the artillery mechs were not depowered. While the Eye of Ylvaine pilots had set the power setting to its lowest possible point, there was no way for them to weaken the output of their weapons any further.

Still, the mech pilots led by Commander Taon Melin did not show any concern. They simply began to wait until their artillery mechs were ready before beginning to fire straight into the sphere!

Amazingly enough, even though they were denied any clear view of what was going inside due to the interference zone, the positron beams they discharged came dangerously close to hitting the Dark Zephyr!

"What the hell?!" Tusa yelled in alarm as he hastily managed to evade an array of over a hundred positron beams. "Those damned Ylvainans are cheating again!"

Just like how most ranged mech pilots would feel frustrated if they were tasked with trying to intercept the Dark Zephyr from range, it was Tusa's turn to feel as if he was being treated unfairly.

No matter how good the Dark Zephyr was able to remain untouchable when it engaged its Perception Distortion resonance ability, the Eye of Ylvaine was able to pierce through every lie and find the truth within the fog.

The characteristic ability of Ves' Ylvainan mech line had struck down countless sandman admirals in the past. The fact that the Eye of Ylvaine was able to rely on the same ability to come close to hitting the Dark Zephyr despite the lack of accurate coordinates was a testament of their unique strength.

The only reason why Venerable Tusa and the Dark Zephyr was able to avoid getting hit was because they were using their full strength and capabilities to evade attacks at the last second.

The Ylvainan artillery mech pilots may have been able to pin down the true position of the incredibly elusive expert mech, but they were limited by their piloting skill. Even Taon Melin was unable to match up against a genuine expert pilot in this little competition.

It wasn't until the Dark Zephyr began to run out of booster fuel that the situation abruptly changed.

"Damn! This is way too quick!" Venerable Tusa cursed.

Both he and his new expert mech felt frustrated that they were no longer able to evade attacks as easily anymore.

Denied an easy solution to move out of the way of incoming attacks at the last moment, the Transcendent Punishers finally started to achieve results.

Positron beams occasionally began to hit the expert mech, exposing its true coordinates to the other Larkinson mechs for just a moment.

It was quite strange to see how the Dark Zephyr got hit. The energy beam that struck the mech at its actual coordinates seemingly hit empty space. Yet the surface of the illusionary expert mech heated up despite the beam not getting anywhere close to it. The mech pilots all had to take the time to adjust their mentalities in order to rationalize what they were observing through the sensors of their own machines.

Still, despite getting hit, the Dark Zephyr exhibited no damage at all. The beams discharged by the positron cannons had been powered down, but even if multiple attacks hit the expert mech at once, its relatively thin but still resilient Unending alloy layer was able to withstand the incoming energy with ease!

Even after the Dark Zephyr got hit over a dozen times, it did not even show a single indication of damage!

"Venerable Tusa, let's test your defenses further. Activate your resonance shield and let us see how many attacks you can block."

When a bubble-shaped light blue corona surrounded the Dark Zephyr, the incoming attacks no longer hit the surface of the expert mech. They struck the shield and stopped without seeming to accomplish anything significant.

Many more attacks began to strike the resonance shield. As if guided by the attacks of the Eye of Ylvaine, the other ranged mechs followed suit and fired in the direction of the actual mech instead of where its distorted image was flying.

The resonance shield excited by the Dark Zephyr came under increasingly greater strain. While the attacks of the regular rifleman mechs were negligible, the positron beams discharged by the Transcendent Punishers were much more concerning.

Yet the resonance shield still managed to remain remarkably solid and stable despite enduring enough attacks that would have wrecked a regular mech at least ten times over!

"How powerful." Gloriana sighed in admiration. "A resonance shield formed with true resonance is incomparably more powerful than one formed by prime resonance."

Ves smirked. "The resonance shield surrounding the Dark Zephyr should be even stronger than that. Even though its current prime mech abilities aren't strong, if you look closely, you will see that its resonance shield is actually augmented with a bit of prime resonance."

If he hadn't predicted this and watched out for it from the beginning, he would have missed this as well. While he was unable to make any firm conclusions about the combination of the two different types of resonance, he had a feeling that the Dark Zephyr was able to rely even more on its resonance shield than usual.

Unfortunately, all of this power came at a price. As Venerable Tusa and the Dark Zephyr were continually pushed to their limits, they eventually faltered.

The resonance shield soon began to dim and crack. After getting struck by another volley of accurate positron beams, the shield soon broke, causing subsequent attacks to hit its Unending alloy exterior!

When Ves glanced at the projection displaying the pilot telemetry, several readings had reached levels that did not look great.

"The test ends here. Everyone, cease fire." Gloriana decisively commanded.

The Transcendent Punishers and the other ranged mechs all stopped firing. The Dark Zephyr no longer bounced around and started to slow down. The actual expert mech emitted a considerable amount of heat due to a combination of getting hit a lot of times by energy attacks and expending a lot of energy to maximize its evasion capabilities.

Despite not having deployed in space for a long time, the Dark Zephyr and its expert pilot were already largely spent!

"The staying power of the Dark Zephyr isn't great." Gloriana disappointingly said.

Ves shook his head and smiled. "We already accounted for this, remember? This is a deliberate design choice on our part. It's unfair to judge the Dark Zephyr's performance on how it performs under these extreme circumstances. In a real battle, all of those ranged mechs need to make a careful consideration whether it is wise to pour all of their firepower towards it. In the time they are preoccupied with taking down an untouchable expert mech, our other combat assets will be free to take action under much less suppressive fire!"

In the greater scheme of things, what the Dark Zephyr had just demonstrated during this test was that it would likely take thousands of regular mechs to threaten it at range! This was an amazing accomplishment and one that would likely be of great use in an actual battle!

Though the mech designers wanted to test the offensive capabilities of the Dark Zephyr as well, the expert mech and its expert pilot were no longer in peak condition.

"Sorry Ketis." Ves apologized to her. "We got a little bit carried away. We'll test the sharpness of the knives another time."

"It's okay." The Swordmaiden mech designer shrugged. "I can wait, and I am already confident enough that the Dark Zephyr can cut through anything seeing how well it has performed so far."

Though this was just the first trial, the Dark Zephyr had already proven its chops as far as the mech designers were concerned!