The Mech Touch

There was a good reason why the Battle Criers acted counterintuitively, though. This soon became apparent when a pair of Battle Crier mechs that had been standing further behind had finally advanced forward.

Due to the limited supply of luminar crystal rifles, not every Battle Crier mech received one of the newfangled rifles.

The approaching mechs did not carry any useful weapons for that reason. Instead, they brought even more valuable cargo to the converging Battle Crier mechs.

The pair of mechs dragged over a large metal crate until they had reached the rear of the new mech formation.

After activating a silent signal, the crate automatically folded apart, revealing a special organic statue that had been hastily treated so that it could be exposed to vacuum.

Now, just as the Burza Fens made a mighty heave of its arm before throwing out its glowing, power-filled axe, the Battle Crier mechs along with the odd statue began to glow as well!

"STAND TOGETHER, BROTHERS! OUR DEDICATION IS INVINCIBLE AND LOYALTY IS IMMORTAL!"

Just before the spinning axe reached the formation of Battle Crier mechs, the entire formation began to glow in white as the Aspect of Tranquility began to look larger than life!

At the same time, the silhouette and projection of giant angel wings that looked like a scaled-up version of the feathered wings adorning the Aspect of Tranquility came into view. This giant apparition swept around the boxy formation of Battle Crier mechs and seemed to shield them against any attacks that came from outside.

This was a ridiculous display to the expert pilot of the Burza Fens. His thrown axe was far too powerful to be stopped by a mere physical projection or some kind of shared energy shield or something.

Indeed, when the spinning axe reached the giant angel wings, it passed right through as if the latter was nothing more than an illusion, which it surely was. The deathly axe struck a Bright Warrior right in the chest, causing the poor mech to get crushed to pieces!

However, the axe did not lose any force or bounce off into a random direction. Instead, it very purposefully ricochet into another nearby mech, where it crushed yet another poor mech before jumping away to attack another unfortunate mech with even greater speed and power!

"Hahaha! Your light tricks don't fool me! My axe-throwing skills are the best in my mech division and my Vulcan-forged axe is far more intricate than a simple weapon!"

Indeed, one of the measures used to keep the axe in a controllable flight was the special modules integrated in the heavy weapon. Although it seemed ridiculous to implement these features in an axe for an ordinary mech, expert mechs didn't play by the rules and could always bend them as long as their expert pilot was strong enough and budgets were sufficiently abundant!

Though the Burza Fens had never fought against an actual opponent since it was put into service, its dwarven expert pilot employed it plenty of times in live practice sessions.

When the Avido Berserker mech regiment was generous enough, they even paraded out practice bots or decommissioned mechs that had been converted into battle bots to serve as practice targets.

These were great opportunities for the dwarven expert pilot to practice his ultimate technique!

In every instance, the massively-empowered axe turned into a whirlwind of destruction, hacking every mech it came across. Every mech that got struck by the spinning axe would turn into a launching point that directed the weapon towards another target. Each time this happened, the axe would expend a bit of energy to increase the rotation and traversal speed of the weapon, thereby giving it greater and greater momentum with each hop!

This was not only the ultimate resonance technique of the Burza Fens, but also its best answer to one of its greatest weaknesses! The expert axeman mech was completely optimized for melee combat and did not possess any strong solutions against ranged opponents. However, by throwing its axe and allowing it to hunt down enemies by itself, the expert mech gained a powerful trump card that could give unsuspecting opponents a nasty surprise!

"Hahaha! Chop 'em to pieces! You human mechs are too weak!"

Initially, the spinning axe attack proceeded exactly as the dwarven expert pilot expected. After striking half-a-dozen mechs, the axe continued to gain speed, power and momentum, which was pretty strange to see!

Yet after it demolished a seventh Bright Warrior, the spinning axe actually began to lose a bit of speed. Though the difference was minute, by the time it shattered the tenth mech of the Battle Criers, it had lost a lot of power!

"What is happening?! My axe!"

While this was proceeding, the Battle Crier mechs continued to maintain their new battle formation without a care in the galaxy. The giant wings still glowed as bright as ever and the Aspect of Tranquility that anchored this entire manifestation had spread its calming glow far beyond its usual range!

While it simultaneously caused the mech pilots to lose sense of their emotions, they did not seem to mind it. The warm embrace of Lufa provided them sanctuary against the forces that they could not contend on their own. Although it was extremely hard for the Battle Criers to put themselves in the best state of mind to channel this special battle formation, with the Aspect of Lufa close at hand the difficulty of doing so had dropped to a trivial level!

Once it had bounced for the fourteenth time, the expert mech's axe had essentially lost all of the empowerment that should have kept it deadly. The Sanctuary Formation had apparently drained all of its energy and stripped it of its extraordinary character!

If not for the fact that the design of this axe incorporated a decent amount of resonating materials, the Sanctuary Formation could have depowered it faster!

Now that the dwarven expert pilot's will no longer enhanced its cutting and destructive power, it was just a mundane spinning object that could easily be evaded.

As the large formation slowly faded away, the Battle Crier mech pilots all regained their emotions but also became a lot more mentally exhausted than before.

Fighting against a dwarven expert mech was an incredibly stressful endeavor. Channeling their new battle network tired the Battle Criers out even further.

However, Dietrich and his other brothers thought it was worth it! The Burza Fens clearly invested a lot of power into the axe and to see it negated in a relatively short amount of time must be frustrating.

"This expert mech and its pilot can't fight forever. I don't believe it is still in good shape!"

Though it was difficult to judge how much fight an expert pilot still possessed, Captain Dietrich had been observing the enemy machine carefully and sensed that it had grown a lot more reluctant to fight the Larkinson Clan.

Weakness!

"Attack! Try and grab that axe if you can! This expert mech is a lot less scary if it doesn't have its weapon anymore!"

Unfortunately, the nearby mechs failed to capture the spinning axe. Even when it lost its extraordinary characteristics, it still contained plenty of maneuvering systems that deftly steered it away and back into the hand of the Burza Fens.

Even so, the dwarven expert mech exuded a much less savage aura than before. The Battle Criers became encouraged by the sight!

"Spread out and attack, same as before! Make sure to cover the expert mech's potential retreat path. Don't let it run!"

Captain Dietrich shouldn't have bothered.

"These tall folk…"

The dwarven expert pilot's pride had been completely provoked. After seeing these odd human mechs threaten his beautiful machine and foiling his attempt to destroy them in a single massive blow, he felt inferior. How could a powerful expert pilot such as him fail to beat a bunch of regular mechs?

His performance was shameful and completely disgraced the Avido Berserkers! Seeing these ranged mechs resume their attempts to cut through his expert mech's armor with their oddly-sharp beams finally caused him to boil over. A switch had triggered in his mind that completely set him off!

"DON'T MOCK ME, HUMANS! ALL OF YOU MUST DIE SO THAT I CAN WASH OFF MY SHAME!"

The expert mech exploded in fury as the expert pilot finally channeled the most infamous characteristic of the Avido Berserkers!

The offensive mech regiment had a reputation for training prickly dwarves who were quick to anger. This was normally a negative character trait for mech pilots, but the Avido Berserkers were different.

They fought at their best when they were completely overtaken by maddening fury!

It was as if the Burza Fens underwent a metamorphosis. Its weakening trend had reversed and the power that exuded from its frame reflected the drastic change in mood of its expert pilot!

Captain Dietrich cursed. "Expert pilots are so crap!"

The strength of an expert mech did not just rely on the machine itself. The condition of the expert pilot was also a major factor in how well it performed!

True resonance came about when an expert pilot utilized their force of wills to resonate with their machines. Since the willpower of an expert pilot was rooted in his mind, the person's mental state played an outsized role in how resonance affected and amplified the performance of an expert mech.

In the most extreme cases, an expert pilot's emotions reached such extreme levels that they performed well above their normal levels!

This was actually one of the proven methods for an expert pilot to advance to ace pilot. It was just too difficult and risky to succeed most of the time. Even so, Patriarch Reginald Cross was so desperate that he had sought to rely on this method to see whether he could find his chance in this battle!

After the Burza Fens turned into an avatar of fury, the aggressively glowing expert mech raised its axe and launched at the nearest Battle Crier mech. The machine in question had no chance at all and quickly crumbled as the Burza Fens hacked it into pieces with just a single, powerful blow.

"DIE!"

The berserk dwarf did not neglect his other weapon either. The Burza Fens accurately shot down human mech after human mech with steady, precise shots of its laser carbine.

The Battle Criers were losing more and more mechs with each second that passed! The Burza Fens had become too oppressive and too powerful for the Battle Criers to cope with. Even though their luminar crystal rifles were slicing the fast-moving expert mech on a regular basis, they had lost too many mechs for them to apply damage quickly enough to the berserk machine!

When Dietrich saw that the mechs piloted by his brethren were being culled one by one, a weight pressed onto his heart.

He knew that his unit had failed to complete its mission!

The Burza Fens exploded with such great fury that it seemed as if the expert pilot itself was propelling it through sheer willpower!

When the expert mech finally turned to Dietrich's Bright Warrior and chopped its axe down to hack it in half, the mech officer decisively pulled the eject lever.

His cockpit soared away just before the deadly axe obliterated the head and torso of his mech!

His luminar crystal rifle spun away like a discarded toy.

In the end, the best effort of the Battle Criers to defeat or at least stall a dwarven expert mech resulted in failure.

Had the Battle Criers fallen short in their planning? Did Captain Dietrich issue the wrong commands in battle? Or did they never have a chance from the beginning?

All of these thoughts and more plagued the maturing mech pilot who thought he had a chance to achieve a great feat.

Now, it turned out that he was still too naive. He desired power more than ever, but didn't know whether he would ever have the opportunity to break through in his lifetime.

"I've always been a failure…"