The Mech Touch

As the Riot and the First Sword continued to gang up on the Shockshell, the glows of the two mechs actually began to meld with each other, thereby forming a response to the prototypical domain field generated by the enemy expert pilot.

The result of all of this was that a larger manifestation was able to appear in the material realm!

The apparition of the giant lizard became more solid as Venerable Orfan, Venerable Dise as well as their living mechs worked hard to support the powerful design spirit's descent!

At this point, Qilanxo had become so anchored to the material realm that it was even able to interfere more directly into the fight!

When the giant exobeast raised its massive head and roared, even the thunderstorm that surrounded the Shockshell became affected by Qilanxo's display of might!

"Venerable Rebecca isn't able to suppress Venerable Orfan and Venerable Dise anymore!"

"The Shockshell is still too strong! Its resonance shield is far from losing cohesion."

"Send backup to help the Riot and the First Sword wear down the Shockshell."

The battle between the expert mechs reached a more intense stage. Previously, the Shockshell relied on the amazing strength of its expert pilot and its powerful transphasic weapons to bully the two Larkinson expert mechs.

Now that Qilanxo came down onto the battlefield and actively tried her best to help with holding back the enemy, the Riot and the First Sword fought as if they became unleashed.

"Hahaha! Not so smug now, are you?" Venerable Orfan laughed as she went completely wild by launching one thrusting attack after another.

Her Unending alloy spear not only became infused with true resonance, but also carried a hint of Qilanxo's power, which significantly enhanced the damage potential and penetrative capabilities of the tip.

Though the Shockshell could still rely on its powerful resonance shield to absorb the incoming attacks, the attack frequency of the Riot was a bit too high!

Ever since Dulo Voiken had taken over as the lead designer of the Riot, he had worked together with Tifi Coslone to comprehensively upgrade the strength and speed of the expert spearman mech's attacking motions.

The pair achieved excellent results, as their efforts provided Venerable Orfan with a huge amount of help in this instance!

"No shield can last forever! I don't believe your shell can last forever against my spear!"

Venerable Orfan's rejuvenated confidence amplified her attacks and allowed her to better negate the amplifying effects of her opponent's willpower.

Though Venerable Rebecca still possessed an absolute advantage in this aspect, the problem was that she needed to split her concentration in order to defend against three opponents at the same time!

In particular, the intervention from Qilanxo had tipped the balance and finally put her in a disadvantage in the mental confrontation.

On top of all of this, Venerable Orfan had resumed her effort to erode the Shellshock's resonance shield through leveraging the Riot's Disharmony Barrier.

The Disharmony Barrier was another measure that specifically exploited and degraded the opposing mech pilot's willpower and mentality.

"I have never fought against an opponent that is as disgusting as you." Venerable Rebecca cursed.

Venerable Orfan burst out into laughter. "Hahaha! Thank you for the compliment! If you think I'm so disgusting, then I'll accompany you even more!"

The Riot's resonance shield shook and vibrated as it constantly tried to blend into the Shockshell's resonance shield. The pollution and disharmony of the former were so strong that Venerable Rebecca wasn't able to defend as effectively against enemy attacks as before.

While the Riot kept the Shockshell occupied, the First Sword unscrupulously attacked the expert hybrid mech from the rear!

Though the Shockshell had turned around its shoulder-mounted gauss cannons and continually fired powerful transphasic rounds at the expert swordsman mech, Qilanxo provided just enough protection to offset much of the damage from these attacks!

Without any other weapons hitting the exposed the First Sword, Venerable Dise was able to focus a lot more on attacking.

The Decapitator Sword glowed with true resonance as it struck against the Shockshell's resonance shield.

Once Venerable Rebecca realized that her Shockshell wouldn't be able to do anything else unless she got rid of the Riot first, she gave up on attacking the First Sword entirely.

"I'll destroy you first, then!"

The shoulder-mounted gauss cannons turned back to the front so that they could pound the Riot's chaotic resonance shield and accelerate its decline.

Venerable Rebecca already noticed how important it was to prevent the Riot from exploiting its Disharmony Barrier any further!

A flurry of electrical attacks, gauss cannon attacks, positron beam cannon attacks and hammer strikes impacted against the Riot's resonance shield!

Though the expert spearman mech was a bit tougher than the First Sword, it was still a mid-tier expert mech piloted by a fairly inexperienced expert pilot.

The Riot's resonance shield quickly weakened despite Qilanxo's best efforts to prop it up. The continuous damage output of a high-tier expert mech and especially an expert hybrid mech was too horrible!

Eventually, the Riot lost its resonance shield first, which prevented it from utilizing its Disharmony Barrier to degrade the Shellshock's own powerful protective barrier.

The damage was already done, though!

By the time the Riot's ExTrans Armor System began to get pounded by a combination of transphasic and more normal resonance-empowered attacks, the Shellshock's resonance shield was already starting to break apart!

"Break for me!" Venerable Orfan roared as the shadowy manifestation of Qilanxo also roared along!

The Riot's speartip glowed brighter as Qilanxo seemed to bless the weapon.

When the spear next struck the Shellshock, its resonance shield finally fell apart!

"Hah, you're vulnerable now!"

"The same goes for you, idiot!"

The battle between the three expert mechs entered an entirely new and more destructive phase!

Though the expert mechs also possessed conventional shield generators, they simply didn't last that long because of the frequency and power of attacks.

Soon enough, the Riot and the Shockshell began to take serious blows to their frame.

Since both of them were equipped with transphasic armor systems, they were able to resist the blows a lot better than normal.

The Shockshell's armor system only integrated 1.8 kilograms of phasewater, but since neither the Riot nor the First Sword possessed transphasic weapons, the expert hybrid mech was still able to minimize the damage no matter whether it was attacked from the front or the rear.

The Riot's armor system integrated around 3 kilograms of phasewater, which offered the expert spearman mech a lot more resistance against the transphasic attacks of the Shockshell.

In fact, Venerable Rebecca found out that the attacks launched by her Shockshell's positron beam cannons, electrorods and electrified legs didn't even seem to phase the Riot anymore due to their lack of transphasic capabilities!

"Tch. You Larkinsons have too much money!"

Venerable Rebecca simply gave up on utilizing those weapon systems. Though they were still capable of dealing damage, their efficiency against the Riot was so low that it wasn't worth the strain and energy consumption.

As the Shellshock continually tried but failed to deal enough damage to the Riot, the First Sword eagerly took advantage of the situation and continuously tried to launch attacks at the enemy machine's vulnerable rear.

If the First Sword could cripple the Shellshock's exposed flight system, then the expert hybrid mech would turn into a sitting duck in space. It would be easy to dispose of this powerful opponent at that point!

There was no way that Venerable Rebecca would allow this to happen. She had to give up on going all-out on demolishing the Riot and turn her Shockshell around just enough for it to block the First Sword's sharp attacks with its concussion shield.

The concussion shield was large and tough enough to resist the incoming sword attacks for a time.

Seeing that the Shellshock was not going down that easily, Venerable Dise's eyes glowed as she altered her fighting approach and began to launch powerful hacking sword strikes that were expressly meant to destroy physical shields!

The First Sword struck like an executioner chopping through the necks of prisoners that were sentenced to death.

Each and every heavy sword blow with the Decapitator seemed to kill off a part of the Shellshock at a time.

The pressure that Venerable Rebecca faced was unprecedented, especially when the tough and hardy Riot began to inflict real damage onto the Shellshock from the front.

"Why are you so tough!"

The Shellshock's transphasic shock hammer struck a heavy blow against the Riot's chest, which not only caused its transphasic armor at this section to crack and become engulfed by an electrical blast, but also caused the expert spearman mech to be pushed backwards.

Even though Venerable Orfan saw this attack coming, she made no attempts to block it at all. She believed in the strength and resiliency of her Riot. Though its transphasic upper layer was certainly starting to get beat up, the Unending alloy that lay beneath still remained intact for the most part.

"This ExTrans Armor System is really great!" Venerable Orfan praised while completely ignoring the immense cost required to replace any destroyed sections of armor plating.

She completely ignored Ves' earlier pleas about preserving the integrity of the Riot's armor system and did not hesitate to adopt a damage trading strategy.

As a result, the fight between the three expert mech turned into a race to see which of them would falter first.

Would the Riot be able to withstand the barrage of transphasic attacks, or would the Shellshock succumb from getting attacked from the front and rear at the same time?

At this stage of the battle, the influence from Qilanxo wasn't as great anymore. Though Venerable Rebecca still couldn't maintain complete control over the environment through her prototypical domain field, she was still able to exert enough strength to protect and fortify the defenses of her Shockshell as much as possible.

Still, after getting hit by repeated attacks, the Shellshock's armor and concussion shield finally started to show more cracks and holes despite their transphasic defenses.

The Riot's attacking ability was fairly strong, but the First Sword was even stronger!

Despite the thickness and the incredibly resilience of the Shellshock's unique concussion shield, the object's condition rapidly worsened as more and more cracks and tears dug into its surface

The First Sword's attacks grew sharper and sharper as Venerable Dise became more obsessed with breaking through this physical obstacle.

The Decapitator truly showed its value this time as it was not only able to offset a part of the concussion shield's ability to push and negate incoming physical strikes, but also dig deeper into the concussion shield's layers than with other weapons!

When Venerable Dise noticed that the opposing expert pilot had become a bit too preoccupied with trying to break the Riot first, the Swordmaiden expert pilot went all-out!

The First Sword raised its greatsword. Dise resonated with the Decapitator so hard that the weapon began to glow like a beacon!

An energy blade formed from the greatsword that was over three times the length of the actual blade!

Immediately afterwards, the First Sword accelerated forward and thrust the Decapitator forward!

"Sword of Lydia!"

A powerful explosion of light and energy erupted from the Shellshock as the sword energy blade as well as the physical blade punched through the weakened surface of the concussion shield and split it in half!

Though the power attack lost a lot of power and failed to penetrate the Shellshock's transphasic armor, the destruction of the concussion shield completely opened up the expert hybrid mech's rear!

"Cut off the Shellshock's wings, Dise! I'll keep it occupied as long as possible!"

The Riot pressed forward harder than ever and actively utilized its spear to hook around and lock the shock hammer.

This not only prevented the Shockshell from turning around to attack the First Sword, but also locked the expert hybrid mech in place for a time.

Venerable Dise clearly recognized the situation and did not hesitate to command her First Sword to launch an attack at the Shockshell's reinforced flight system.

However, just as the Decapitator sword was about to slice through a crucial component, a thunderstorm of immense proportions erupted from the damaged Shockshell!

The electrical storm was so powerful that both the Riot and the First Sword were flung away as if the two got repulsed by a giant magnet!

"What?!"

The power emanating from the Shockshell was so great that its thunder storm not only engulfed a sphere that was at least an order of magnitude larger than before, but also dispersed Qilanxo's manifestation by force!

Though a lot of people were confused why the Shockshell exploded with so much power all of a sudden, a few people immediately recognized what had happened.

"How could this happen!?" Ves cried out as he shot up to his feet! "Isn't this supposed to be an extremely rare occurrence!?"

As the Shockshell continued to engulf a vast portion of space around it with electrical bolts, a profound transformation took place in the mind of its expert pilot.

After 120 years of living, Venerable Rebecca Andus had finally loosened her shackles and triggered her second apotheosis!

The Medallion Guards already grew ecstatic once they figured out what had happened! They cheered and congratulated their hero for finally taking another major step towards godhood!

"Saint Rebecca!"

"Saint Rebecca!"

"Saint Rebecca!"