The Mech Touch

Everyone in the meeting room grew impressed at Venerable Tusa's accomplishments in strengthening his prime abilities.

Patriarch Reginald Cross held the most appreciation. Although the Larkinsons had shown off prime resonance and specific applications of it before, they had never reached this degree of strength and utility before!

To Reginald, the addition of prime resonance to expert mech was akin to increasing the fighting machine's trump cards!

"It is similar to putting more resonating materials in an expert mech!" He realized.

The problem with resonating materials was that many of them weren't compatible with each other. There were only so many different types of resonating materials that mech designers could add to a mech frame.

This was one of the reasons why Patriarch Reginald wanted to add prime resonance to his upcoming Mars Project so badly. While it appeared that prime materials were extremely hard to come by, they apparently did not impact the performance of resonating materials!

If his Mars Project was built the right way, then he would be able to develop abilities like the ones that Tusa had developed with his 'partners' one day!

"Alright, Tusa. Thank you for your clarification." Ves said with a smile. "I hope that each of you have drawn lessons from his approach. He has worked hard to realize the potential of the prime mech aspect of his Dark Zephyr. He is significantly further ahead than all of you, as befitting our fastest expert pilot."

Ves had become so impressed by Venerable Tusa's latest advancements that he became tempted to upgrade the Dark Zephyr right away.

Of course, now was not the time. The Dark Zephyr's performance hadn't fallen behind yet and Ves wanted to wait until he had access to much better tech and materials before designing a refit of his first true expert mech.

"Venerable Stark." Ves turned to the guest pilot of the Larkinson Clan. "You have made a lot less progress than Venerable Tusa. The new special attack that you have developed has a lot of potential, but it has not yielded any notable results in your earlier bout."

"The Bolvos Rage's resonance shield was unusually strong and thick. We will do better against a more ordinary expert mech." Davia Stark replied as she crossed her arms.

She had not spent as much time as Tusa in refining her application of prime resonance. She had focused more on the fundamentals and her usage of the Amaranto's regular resonance abilities.

To her, the best way to increase her combat effectiveness was to make her routine actions as impactful as possible!

This entailed specific improvements such as increasing her accuracy at extreme ranges or being able to plan out and predict the trajectory of her arcing beam attacks in a split second!

Ves already understood that Venerable Stark was still motivated enough to keep up her training, so he did not ask any further.

"Venerable Orfan." He turned to the next expert pilot on the list. "Your resonance ability has come as a pleasant surprise to all of us. Can you tell me more about this new trick that you have developed?"

"I call it the Disharmony Barrier. It's exactly what it says."

The woman proudly explained the basics of how her ability worked. The theory behind it was surprisingly simple relative to the impact it had achieved.

"Qilanxo deserves most of the credit." She graciously said. "She is the one that figured out the finer details. I am the one that is responsible for sustaining the Disharmony Barrier and directing it to the right opponent."

"It is a truly effective means of attack." Patriarch Reginald voiced his appreciation. "My resonance shield lost cohesion far too quickly as your ability attacked its foundation. I hope to see you disrupt our actual enemies with it. A lot of enemy expert pilots will become unpleasantly surprised when they see their first line of defense crumbling because of your disruption."

Both Venerable Jannzi and Venerable Joshua looked intrigued when their colleague explained her new ability.

In theory, any expert mech with Qilanxo as its design spirit should be able to employ a similar ability!

"Rosa, are you willing to share your insights and teach this ability to me as well?" Jannzi asked.

"Sure." Orfan straightforwardly answered. "I'm actually curious to see whether you and your Shield of Samar can pull off the same move. I get the feeling that it's not so simple even if our mechs share the same design spirit."

That was a good response from the former Flagrant Vandal officer. She could have gotten possessive about her own ability and tried to keep it to herself in order to increase her value.

"Can you add me as well?" Venerable Joshua asked. "My expert mech can't channel Qilanxo as well as your own machines, but I still want to try and see whether I can gain an extra weapon against my future opponents."

"You're welcome to join the party, Josh."

Personally, Ves had little confidence that Venerable Orfan was able to propagate her Disharmony Barrier. He had rerun the footage of her struggle against the Bolvos Rage and figured out that the Riot itself provided one of the key ingredients to make the remarkable ability work.

Neither the Shield of Samar nor the Everchanger incorporated any chaos gems!

Perhaps the two expert pilots would develop a different kind of barrier with Venerable Orfan's instruction.

Ves turned to Venerable Dise.

Though he had praised Tusa's efforts, the truth was that her application of prime resonance was by far the most refined! Her excellent swordsmanship combined with inheriting the Heaven Association's traditional swordsmanship resulted in the development of unsurpassed new sword techniques, none of which she showed today.

Now that Ves thought about it, swordmasters did not actually resonate with their weapons in the same way that expert pilots did with their expert mechs.

The swords did not incorporate any specific resonating materials as far as he knew. Instead, the swordmasters developed deep and emotional relationships with their own swords, causing them to become alive in a sense and turn into a more suitable channel of their wielder's strength!

In other words, Venerable Dise and First Sword were the standard bearers of prime resonance!

No other combination of expert pilot and expert mech could replicate the remarkably high combat power that this specific combination displayed in battle because it was too difficult for others to meet all of the requirements!

"I don't consider my techniques to be prime abilities." Dise explained to the rest. "The design spirit of my mech is also Qilanxo, but I don't make a habit of borrowing her strength to execute my techniques. I only need myself and a good weapon in order to perform my special moves. Outside of the cockpit, that weapon is my trusty greatsword. Inside the cockpit, that weapon is both the First Sword and the Decapitator in its hands."

In other words, Venerable Dise was less reliant on external sources than the rest!

Though she possessed a lot more control over her techniques, she passed over the benefit of borrowing the strength and special qualities of powerful design spirits to her special techniques.

Everything had a price, but it was good that at least one expert pilot in the Larkinson Clan followed a different path.

"Jannzi." Ves turned to his least-favorite expert pilot in the Larkinson Clan. "You have harnessed several new gravity-related tricks in your spar against Venerable Linda Cross, but these are not based on prime resonance, correct?"

The younger female expert pilot nodded. "I have been spending most of my time learning how to take advantage of GT-535. Whenever I resonate with it, I can choose to apply the gravity my mech and I are generating in different ways. I had a lot of difficulty in harnessing it at first, but after several months of focused practice, I have managed to gain enough control that I can harness gravity in battle. The problem in my last practice fight was that my gravity manipulation was a bad match against another expert space knight."

Ves nodded. "Your example illustrates that not all resonance and prime abilities are effective in every situation. Each of you needs to think carefully on what you do. If possible, try your best to develop different abilities that can cope against different threats. For example, have you ever tried to use your own gravity manipulation power to speed up the movements of your own mech, Jannzi?"

She looked annoyed. "Don't underestimate my intelligence, Ves. I tried that out pretty soon after you upgraded my machine . I tried creating a gravity well in front of the Shield of Samar, thinking it would drag my mech forward, but somehow my heavy mech isn't budging."

"A shame." Ves genuinely said. "It would have been great if your huge and sluggish mech was able to accelerate as fast as a medium mech at the very least, but I think I understand why you aren't able to exploit this interaction."

Conceptually, it was like trying to lift up his own body by using one of his arms. His arm and the rest of his body was part of a closed system, so displacing himself in this manner was impossible without the use of an outside factor.

"Have you been able to develop any new prime abilities with the help of Qilanxo?" Ves asked.

"My prime abilities augment my resonance abilities. I perform both of them at the same time if I want to project the strongest energy barrier. I think the combination of both will yield the greatest possible defense that I can muster."

"That is a good approach. Your Shield of Samar's primary mission is to protect others from getting damaged, so the better this barrier, the more people you are able to save!"

Developing more abilities was not necessarily useful if none of them were particularly strong. Venerable Jannzi's approach was highly suited for her own situation.

It was interesting that Venerable Joshua took a completely different approach.

"Joshua. You've resonated with several different design spirits and used completely different resonating abilities in your practice fight against the Bolvos Rage. How many resonance abilities have you developed up to this point?"

"Nine so far. I am still trying to make something happen with Kalo and the Titania since they recently became available."

"What?!"

The other Larkinsons were astounded by Joshua's efforts!

"I try to develop at least one form of cooperation with every design spirit that I can work with." Venerable Joshua clarified. "It helps with improving my relationship with each of them. I haven't been able to spend much time refining all of the new abilities that I have developed like Tusa. They're all very basic and weak to be honest. I spent most of my time improving my cooperation with the Illustrious One because our fleet is lacking in ranged firepower."

"I see."

The Everchanger was a complicated mech as far as prime resonance was concerned. Ves had to put a lot of thought behind this aspect of its design in order to make it truly compatible with every design spirit.

The consequence was that the Everchanger was never able to match the other expert mechs when it came to forming deep connections with any single design spirit.

Since Venerable Joshua was disadvantaged when it came to developing strong prime abilities, he opted to go for quantity instead!

This was a good choice for an expert pilot that liked to remain versatile. The entire mech concept of the Everchanger was about using the right means to target an opponent's weaknesses.

Ves grew curious at what Venerable Joshua was capable of after working with so many different design spirits.

"Can you briefly explain all nine abilities?"

"Sure." Joshua shrugged. "They are all rather basic, so don't get too excited. Let me begin with Ylvaine. I can borrow his help to guide my attacks just as if I am piloting an Ylvainan mech. If I work together with Lufa, I can forcefully calm down nearby mech pilots. If I combo this with my Hero's Glow resonance ability, I can potentially pause an entire battle…"