The Mech Touch

The two mechs squared off against each other. Neither Lyain Kepper nor Giles Harnacher were in a hurry to begin the fight.

Both mech pilots studied each other's swordsman mechs carefully.

It was obvious that while they belonged to the same mech type, their configurations were completely different.

The Heart of Victor was the larger and heavier of two. Though all of its mass and armor slowed it down, it also offered the mech a lot of buffer against powerful attacks, including those inflicted by a plasma sword.

While the mech designed by Team Larkinson would have been too rudimentary if that was all it had, the machine possessed at least two more advantages.

First, its chainsword weapon system granted it additional attack options. It did not have to get up close in order to deal damage, and that was a rare capability in a contest that prohibited ranged weapons.

Second, the glow of the mech exerted a dual psychological influence.

Lyain Kepper had always been a little intimidated by Giles Harnacher. The Wild Fighters who volunteered to take part in the Wild Brawl Bowl mostly knew each other as they regularly sparred and practiced with each other.

Harnacher had always established his superiority during these sessions. Though Lyain was able to win a few bouts, more often than not he had to admit defeat in front of the more skilled and talented swordsman mech pilot.

If Lyain was piloting any other mech, he would have entered this match with a lot less confidence than normal. Giles had left a considerable psychological shadow in his mind.

Yet with the Heart of Victor constantly propping up his confidence, Lyain no longer thought that he would necessarily have to be the lesser this time.

"I can beat you! I'm piloting the best mech in the Wild Brawl Bowl and I've received personal instruction from a swordmaster. There is no reason for me to lose this time!"

Just this mental shift was enough to ensure that Lyain Kepper would go all-out this time!

As for Giles Harnacher, he had always been confident in his own abilities. He did not need to be stimulated in order to chase after victory.

The only anomaly this time was that the glow of the Heart of Victor impacted him as well. Though the influence wasn't particularly significant for now, the foreign glow still affected his mental balance, if only slightly.

"How annoying."

Giles Harnacher knew that the only way to get rid of this sensation was to take out the mech in front of him! Nothing less would be able to restore his peace!

"Enough delays. Let's start."

The Rayvin finally activated its powerful plasma sword. A line of fixed plasma began to appear along its length! The deadly hot matter was solidly suspended in place by magnetic fields, which essentially turned it into a powerful cutting implement.

In fact, the tech wasn't actually too advanced. Industrial-grade plasma cutters were common tools in many plants and factories.

The most crucial difference was that ordinary plasma cutters could take their time to part through metal while the Rayvin's plasma sword had to accomplish the same in just a second!

This meant that the plasma sword actually expended a lot more power even if its scale was taken into consideration. Just leaving it active already outputted so much heat energy that the air around the weapon became distorted due to heating up the surrounding molecules!

This was an undesirable phenomena to the Rayvin. The mech only carried a limited amount of energy cells and could not afford to waste it all by acting as an oversized oven!

This was why the energy level of the plasma sword quickly receded to a more sustainable level. Though it was still outputting a considerable amount of wasted energy, it would only get back to full power when it was about to strike a target!

Even so, the Rayvin couldn't maintain this state for long.

Harnacher's main priority was to make sure that the Rayvin's plasma sword transferred as much energy as possible to the Heart of Victor. He no longer delayed the confrontation any further.

"Burn!" He roared as the Rayvin rapidly dashed forward with its plasma sword ready to strike!

Yet before the Rayvin could move past the halfway point, the Heart of Victor had issued its own response.

Kepper moved his mech to the side. His mech constantly had to stay on the move in order to remain responsive. It did not have to move as quickly as the Rayvin, but as long as it remained in motion, it was able to handle its weapon with considerably greater ease.

[The Heart of Victor is taking action! Watch its sword!]

The swordsman mech launched its sword at the Rayvin!

Chains continued to clatter as they grew more taut as the weapon it was attached to kept moving away.

Due to the mech's sidewards motion, the trajectory of the chained sword was not straight, but instead flew at an angle. The Heart of Victor was even able to affect the flight path of the thrown sword even further by pulling one end of the chain in a specific direction!

Clang!

While a tossed weapon was a considerable threat, a mech pilot as good as Harnacher easily dealt with this attack. The Rayvin turned the flat of its blade against the attack and managed to deflect the incoming projectile with a lot of effort.

Even though it was not easy to deflect such a substantial metal object, the Rayvin did so with minimal exertion!

Harnacher even instructed his mech to step to the side before the chainsword returned akin to a boomerang!

Lyain already expected his adversary to be able to defend against this attack with ease, but he did not give up on his course of action. The Heart of Victor immediately threw out its sword once again!

Though the Rayvin successfully deflected the weapon once again, the flat side of its surface began to show numerous scratches and slight stress marks.

A plasma sword was not as sturdy as a plain sword made out of solid alloys!

As a technological weapon system, the plasma sword contained plenty of internal components and circuitry. While all of these parts enabled the weapon to maintain such a hot edge, it also weakened the structural strength of the entire object!

This was a well-known weakness of the plasma swords. They simply couldn't withstand as much physical force, especially when it was applied at a perpendicular angle along their length!

All of this might sound complicated, but there was a simple way to preserve the plasma sword's integrity.

"I have to take out my opponent as quickly as possible!"

There was no way that the Rayvin would allow the Heart of Victor to launch its chainsword over and over again. Harnacher was already under considerable time pressure and the constant chain attacks only prompted him to go faster!

When the Rayvin almost caught up with the Heart of Victor, the latter had already retracted its weapon.

Lyain did not intend to throw his weapon again!

Instead, the Heart of Victor held the sword solidly in its grip and eagerly awaited the arrival of its enemy.

Fzzz-Clang!

A strange noise erupted as the two blades finally crossed in earnest!

The plasma sword attempted to cut through the flat of the chainsword, but the latter was too resilient to burn through in a short amount of time!

Although its surface layer was already beginning to melt in a distressing manner, the Heart of Victor quickly retracted its weapon before it began to launch its counter-attack!

The two swordsman mechs quickly began to exchange blows with each other. The differences between them became more clear over the span of a dozen seconds.

The Heart of Victor struggled to catch up with its adversary's moves. It was slower, bulkier and sometimes even failed to stop the plasma sword from moving past its guard!

The armor of Team Larkinson's mech sizzled at the plasma sword attempted to cut through the thick plating, to little avail.

There was plenty of buffer for the Heart of Victor to sustain this attack for a time!

Lyain Kepper did not waste this chance. The Heart of Victor's chainsword stabbed out and quickly forced the Rayvin to jump back before it suffered a strong blow.

"Tch! If I can do it once, I can do it again!" Harnacher spat.

The Rayvin jumped in again and utilized its superior agility and maneuverability to move its plasma sword past the chainsword and land another burning strike against the Heart of Victor's frontal armor plating.

Unfortunately, Harnacher was unable to land the attack on the surface that had previously been burned. His opponent was doing its best to keep its damaged sections out of the way of the plasma sword.

"So what? Your mech will keep incurring more scars until there is nothing left untouched!"

The Rayvin turned into a devil for the next minute. It continued to outmaneuver and land blow after blow on the Heart of Victor.

The beating was so one-sided to the audience that their expectations for Team Larkinson abruptly crashed to a halt.

"Why isn't the Heart of Victor fighting back?"

"It's too slow!"

"Doesn't that mean it's a bad mech?"

"I guess it is. How can Team Larkinson leave out a way for their work to fight against faster opponents? This match has become completely absurd!"

"I waited hours to see this mech win! If I knew it was going to get burned by this, I would have left this place a long time ago!"

As the disappointment and dismay among the crowd kept building up, neither Ves nor Ketis showed a lot of concern.

A few of the expert commentators also noticed a few clues.

[Have you noticed that while the Heart of Victor is continually incurring damage, Mr. Lyain Kepper has always been able to ensure the damage is spread out as much as possible? He even turns his mech a few times in order to make sure that the incoming heat damage is dispersed to the sides!]

[You're correct. There is little the Rayvin can do about it. It is fast, but not to the point where it can precisely control where its plasma sword can land. If this pattern continues, then the Rayvin might run out of power before it can breach the Heart of Victor's armor!]

The commentators were flabbergasted by this conclusion. The Rayvin was a powerful mech that showed a lot of superiority at the moment. How could it falter in such an ignoble manner?

Giles Harnacher realized his predicament as well. Although a large part of the Heart of Victor had already melted, much of it only affected its surface layers!

He had to try harder to concentrate the Rayvin's attacks on the same section of the enemy mech. To that end, he began to pilot his mech more aggressively! He needed to make bolder moves in order to inflict real damage onto the Heart of Victor!

It was at this time that Lyain Kepper finally smirked.

"I've been waiting for this, old friend. You've lost your cool."

Though the Rayvin's ferocity put the Heart of Victor in a much worse position, Lyain made a surprising move.

It stopped attempting to block or evade the incoming plasma sword and instead struck out with an all-out offensive strike!

The timing that Lyain had chosen was almost perfect! Even though the Heart of Victor was not capable of reacting too quickly, its move was still launched at a time when the Rayvin would find it difficult to change its course!

"Oh no you don't!"

The Rayvin's legs burst with lots of power that forcibly displaced the swordsman mech to the side!

Yet even as the mech evaded the incoming sword attack with a lot more speed than normal, the Heart of Victor turned its thrusting attack into a throw attack and launched the sword forward!

Though the blade of the sword failed to impact the distancing Rayvin, it cleverly threaded between the legs. The chain soon collided against one of the limbs, causing the Rayvin to act as a temporary fulcrum that caused the sword to spin around and fly straight back towards the Heart of Victor!

Lyain was already prepared for this and made sure his swordsman mech caught the blade. Once it did, the Heart of Victor entered a stable stance and began to yank the chain, causing it to press tightly onto the Rayvin's trapped leg!

Giles Harnacher had never imagined that one of his overreaching attacks would lead to such a result! As the Rayvin began to trip and fall due to one of its legs being pulled back from the angle, he belatedly realized that his opponent had been in control of this match from the beginning.

CRASH!

The Rayvin suffered one of the greatest humiliations a mech could suffer in a duel.

It fell flat on its face.

Though the swordsman mech quickly tried to climb back onto its feet, the Heart of Victor soon arrived and pressed its foot against the Rayvin's back, thereby completely removing its ability to move.

Harnacher was still in disbelief as he tried and failed to extricate his mech from its trapped position.

Unfortunately, the Rayvin lacked far too much physical strength to dislodge the weight that was pressing on its back.

Its plasma sword was completely useless as well! After all, how could the swordsman mech possibly swing its weapon so far back?

Giles Harnacher wasn't stupid. The more he pieced together the course of the battle, the more he understood that his opponent had held back.

"If you're this good, why did you endure so many attacks from my mech?" He transmitted.

"Because the chance of winning this match was higher this way. I just needed to wait for you to make a mistake before I could end you in a single move." Lyain Kepper responded. "Victory is my only goal. The damage that you have dealt to my mech will get fixed anyway."

Although Lyain was right, the strategy he adopted was still dangerous. If he wasn't good enough to prevent the plasma sword from cutting through the same section of armor, the Heart of Victor might have easily succumbed before the Rayvin revealed an opening!

The mech pilot wasn't interested in talking any further. It stepped up completely onto the Ravyin's helpless back. The excessive weight of the Heart of Victor quickly crushed the immobilized mech's armor and squashed all of the structural parts underneath!

[Team Larkinson advanced to the second round. The Heart of Victor has decisively crushed the Rayvin!]

This was a quick but bizarre victory! The audience clapped, but only reluctantly… The Heart of Victor hardly showed any brilliance this time. Was it strong or did everyone misjudge its strength?