The Mech Touch

"This expert mech is tougher than it looks." Venerable Osaia Dukes snarled as his Quadknife continued to wail on the Dark Zephyr. "The Larkinsons have far too much money on their hands!"

Venerable Kismet Hawkes twitched her lips as her Filamon continued to pepper the Dark Zephyr's rear with as many filaments as it could land.

"Isn't that a given, Dukes? The Larkinsons are war profiteers. They have forsaken their loyalties to their original states and have thrown away all of their morals, all for the sake of enriching themselves through the suffering of our people. I don't know why they have grown arrogant enough to think they can beat us directly this time, but I see this as a blessing in disguise. As long as we eliminate the Dark Zephyr, we can break one of the important arms of the Larkinson Clan!"

"We can do more than that, Hawkes." Venerable Dukes replied even as his Quadknife continued to overwhelm the Dark Zephyr with a flurry of knife stabs. "Did you notice the factory ship that is strangely accompanying the enemy fleet? That's the flagship of the Larkinson Clan. As long as we can defeat all of these Hexer and Larkinson mechs, we have a straight shot at the creator of living mechs. Patriarch Ves Larkinson is known to ride alongside his troops in battle. I can already feel him staring in our direction!"

Whether Dukes was exaggerating or not, Ves indeed directed much of his attention towards the right flank of the battlefield.

It was a bit boring to watch expert ranged mechs such as the Amaranto and the Promethea in action as they had both become locked into monotonous shooting matches against their enemy counterparts.

Though it took a lot for Venerable Stark and Venerable Isobel to match their skills and wits against the foes that had made it their mission to contain the firepower of the Amaranto and the Promethea, much of the games and excitement were difficult to appreciate by external viewers.

Compared to seeing them evade incoming shots while launching their own at distant opponents, Ves much preferred to watch the unfolding clash between the Dark Zephyr and the pair of interesting expert mechs of the Nidin Vergers.

"Their fight will definitely turn into a spectacle!"

With the attitude of watching an exciting show, Ves leaned back in his chair and waved his hand to call up the design and specs of the Quadknife and the Filamon.

As a mech designer, Ves found the Quadknife to be a bold and daring interpretation of an expert light skirmisher.

It took a lot of courage to realize such a strange design.

"The Multi-Armed Designer usually applies her design philosophy to larger and more massive mechs. It's hard to support multiple arms on a thin and fragile frame."

Ves guessed that Master Ishi Veldam may have fallen into an experimental mood when she came up with the design of the Quadknife.

In general, light skirmishers were so small and light that it was hard to equip them with a pair of combat-capable arms.

Trying to apply another set of arms on top of that sounded crazy!

However, the ordinary rules didn't necessarily apply to expert mechs. The biggest reason why the Quadknife somehow made its four-armed configuration work was due to combining high-quality materials into advanced components.

The arms of the Quadknife were anything but ordinary. While they were thin and not too strong, they were still stable and sturdy enough to do their jobs without imposing too many limitations.

By opting to go for speed over power, the Quadknife was expressly designed to duel and defeat lighter and less-armored expert mechs.

Of course, it could also dismantle other powerful machines such as heavy mechs as long as it was able to find an opportunity to attack the rear or other vulnerable weak points of its targets.

The unconventional offensive configuration of the Quadknife could throw a lot of opponents off-guard.

Hardly any expert pilot encountered a four-armed mech before, let alone fight such an opponent in battle!

Even though the Quadknife was incapable of dealing powerful blows, it didn't matter too much as long as it struck enough times to wear out the resonance shields and armor of its enemies!

"This is actually quite a brilliant expert mech." Ves couldn't help but express his admiration of the design.

In his professional judgment, the Quadknife was not only a successful experiment, but also introduced new possibilities that did not exist before.

Ves didn't know why, but ever since this battle commenced, he had paid more attention to the Multi-Armed Designer's works than anyone else's. He could not stop himself from studying and deciphering the working principles of any Fridayman mech model that possessed two or three sets of arms.

What would it be like if he designed his own multi-armed expert mech?

"I would probably botch the job if I have to start from scratch."

Ves never explored this concept before and had no in-depth knowledge on how to pull off such a weird mech design.

This was why the works of Master Veldam became so attractive to him. Each of their forms and designs exposed much of the key design elements that made them viable.

Even if there were many secrets that Ves could not observe or master by himself, it was not necessarily for him to become as proficient in designing these mechs as the Multi-Armed Designer.

There was no point in imitating the works of a Master!

Instead, Ves found it much more interesting to take inspiration from the works of others and put his own spin on their ideas.

"The Master Mech Designers from the Gauge Dynasty are surprisingly good sources of inspiration." Ves amusingly realized.

He had already ripped off Master Toqueman Huron's neural networks and successfully his own brand of spiritual networks.

What would it be like if he studied Master Veldam's multi-armed humanoid mech designs and designed his own mech based on what he had learned?

This sounded awfully fun!

"There are many other Masters that have come up with their own unique ideas."

Every Master developed a signature technology that possessed their own charm, and each of them opened up his horizons on how diverse mechs could be. Ideas that previously sounded stupid suddenly turned into treasures as long as mech designers put enough effort into making them viable!

While the battle between the two sides rapidly escalated as hundreds of thousands of melee mechs began to collide and exchange blows against each other, Ves momentarily felt detached from the action as he experienced a minor epiphany.

His mind became filled with possibilities. Since he already treated Master Huron as an inspiration dispensing machine, what would he gain if he did the same to the rest of the Gauge Dynasty's lineup of Masters?

Could he develop a newer and more powerful version of a luminar crystal rifle if he copied elements of Master Bates' Slipstream rifle?

Could he design a 'poisonous' mech based on The Viper's works that was capable of breaking apart the armor of powerful mechs by splashing them with corrosive fluids?

Could he develop a unique flight system that was capable of performing a different version of Master Reizen's stuttered movement?

All of these ideas sounded interesting, but Ves soon regained clarity when he thought of how much time and effort he would have to invest in order to realize all of these scattered ideas.

He sighed and shook his head. "Not all of them are worthwhile for me to pursue."

For example, why would he waste his time on stuttered movement to begin with? Ves never developed a passion for mobility. That was the specialty of Juliet Stameros. It would be incredibly stupid for him to lose his focus on his core specialties and follow all kinds of fanciful ideas that did not have any direct relations to his design philosophy.

"At least I have been able to reinterpret neural networks into a version that is much more aligned with my specialty. I can't pull this off with every interesting piece of technology that I come across."

He stopped thinking about useless matters and turned his attention back to the unfolding fight between the Dark Zephyr and the famous pair from the Nidin Verger Mech Division.

Ves soon frowned as he continued to observe his expert light skirmisher's performance.

"Why is Tusa letting his expert mech get beat up? He ought to be much stronger than this! It is a joke for the Dark Zephyr to act as a punching bag!"

The fight between the Dark Zephyr and its opponents was difficult to track to normal people. A lot of observers would quickly grow confused and disoriented as the different expert mechs simply moved too fast and regularly changed directions!

The reason why the light mechs moved so much was because the Dark Zephyr was trying but failing to generate distance.

Each time it attempted to gain enough breathing room, the Quadknife always stuck close and never let the Dark Zephyr obtain a break!

The Filemon meanwhile also followed the Dark Zephyr at a distance.

Different from before, the Filemon was able to track the Dark Zephyr much more accurately. This was because the proximity of the Quadknife to the Larkinson expert mech effectively rendered the latter's Untouchable ability useless!

Most people who looked at this battle would think that the Dark Zephyr was currently getting beat up so much that it would succumb if it didn't receive any backup.

Ves was not most people.

"What the hell is Tusa doing?" He asked again.

It was only in the next moment that Venerable Tusa exposed his true intentions.

At this time, Venerable Dukes and Venerable Hawkes became confident enough that they could shred the Dark Zephyr before any backup arrived.

"Heh!" Venerable Dukes sneered as his Quadknife continued to rattle against the Dark Zephyr's increasingly frayed resonance shield. "These Larkinsons are too arrogant. Do they truly think a single expert mech is enough to stop us? They overestimate themselves!"

His Quadknife continued to stick close to the Dark Zephyr as if it was a barnacle. There was no way that Dukes would allow his prey to slip away at this point!

The Fridayman expert pilot became so focused on never letting go of the Dark Zephyr that he almost didn't respond when the latter suddenly drew out a grenade from one of its holsters and threw it out into space!

The grenade did not soar far away. Tusa had programmed it to detonate almost instantly, so once it did a lot of black smoke and sensor-dampening particles surrounded the area around the Dark Zephyr and the Quadknife!

"What?!"

Venerable Hawkes had tried her best to remain alert throughout this fight. She was aware that the expert light mech carried a bunch of grenades, and had even prepared to shoot them down if they became exposed.

It was a pity that it detonated only an instant after leaving the envelope of the Dark Zephyr's resonance shield!

After covering a modest part of space with interfering dust and particles, everyone temporarily lost sight and contact with either of the two expert mechs.

The Filemon lost connection with the Quadknife, but Venerable Hawkes was vaguely able to sense its location with the help of her powerful intuition and intimate familiarity with the four-armed light skirmisher.

The Larkinson Clan also lost almost all contact with the Dark Zephyr. The clan's command net did not receive any encrypted transmissions from the mech anymore.

The only way that Ves could vaguely track and determine the Dark Zephyr's condition was to check Venerable Tusa's condition through the Larkinson Network.

Only several seconds went by before the two obscured expert mechs finally emerged out of the black smoke!

As both the Larkinsons and the Gaugers observed the state of their respective machines, they quickly discovered that the situation had completely changed.

"What?! How could the Quadknife lost an arm?!"

"Why is the Dark Zephyr chasing after the Fridayman expert light skirmisher? Isn't it supposed to be the other way around?"

"Look at how fast the Dark Zephyr is moving! Has it been hiding its true speed all this time?!"

It turned out that Venerable Tusa had laid a trap all this time. No matter their experience and no matter their other capabilities, Dukes and Hawkes had fell for it and suffered as a consequence!