The Mech Touch

Venerable Joshua briefly recalled what he knew about his new challengers.

"The Rekkar and the Point Break. What an annoying combination."

The Rekkar was a solid medium space knight with a fairly balanced configuration. It was fast enough to keep up with its opponents in most duels but it was also sturdy enough to absorb a lot of hits. Its transphasic axe was strong enough to overcome defenses through repeated attacks.

What was notable about the Rekkar was that it was primarily designed by Master Zenie Bonakane. The Bubble Man's involvement meant it was all but guaranteed that the expert space knight would feature an incredibly powerful HiCap energy shield on top of a resonance shield!

The Point Break was a medium lancer mech that was designed by Master Contaro Aaken. This was an unusual combination because this particular Master Mech Designer happened to excel at designing kinetic artillery mechs!

One of the consequences of putting an artillery specialist in charge of designing the expert lancer mech was that it came equipped with a pair of powerful shoulder-mounted transphasic gauss cannons, just like the Shockshell.

However, the scariest part about the Point Break was its transphasic custom-designed lance. By developing it in a similar way as Master Aaken's famous artillery projectiles, the lance incorporated all kinds of technologies that made it harder, sharper and significantly more dangerous than before.

As long as the Point Break was able to impale its lance against any solid target, it was practically guaranteed that it would be able to punch through any form of defense through overwhelming power!

"I can't let the Point Break poke my meat suit!" Venerable Joshua concluded.

His intuition already sensed a lot of threat from the Point Break's lance. Its danger level was incomparable to that of the Rekkar's axe.

In mech combat, lances had always been the best solution to take down stronger and larger targets!

The enemy commanders did not choose wrong when they dispatched the Point Break to deliver the fatal blow onto the meat suit.

When Joshua passed on his concerns about the enemy expert mechs to the Phase King, the two quickly agreed on a strategy.

Pulling the two expert mechs out of warp travel was just the first step.

The giant meat suit waved its arm towards the Point Break.

"Blade!"

A glowing space blade formed in front of the meat suit and rapidly soared towards the Point Break as if it had been launched out of a cannon!

The Rekkar repositioned itself so that it could rely on its transphasic shield to block the space blade, but just as it hovered in the way, the resonance-empowered attack abruptly turned and circled around the expert space knight before closing in on its actual target!

The Point Break was not defenseless, though. Its frame was quite sturdy by nature and was also clad with quasi-transphasic armor plating.

However, instead of choosing to take the blow on its armor, the Point Break raised its transphasic physical shield which integrated a higher proportion of phasewater to enhance its resistance against transphasic and spatial attacks.

Yet just as the extremely fast space blade was about to impact the shield, it circled around yet again and impacted the Point Break resonance shield from the rear!

"Damn!"

Though the successful attack only drained the Point Break's resonance shield to an extent, it showed that Venerable Joshua possessed a higher control over his attacks than expected.

The meat suit did not end there, though. It waved its massive arms again and channeled even more energy into its fish-whale tissue in order to form an array of five space blades!

Soon, those space blades launched forward at great speed and completely bypassed the Rekkar in order to drain the Point Break's defenses even further.

"Close the distance!" Venerable Ulrik Valke urged his comrade as his Point Break began to open fire with its shoulder-mounted gauss cannons. "Those weird attacks are not based on any weapons mounted on that flesh monster. It probably takes a lot of concentration to launch those space balades. You can stop them from forming if you are able to get close and distract the enemy pilot."

Venerable George Baldassare scowled as his Rekkar tried to reengage its warp travel function, only to fail as the surrounding space was too disordered to activate!

"I'm trying my best, but this giant meatball seems to have a spatial inhibition power. Without a warp bubble my Rekkar can't catch up to its speed!"

Warp travel had already changed the nature of mech combat in the new frontier, but it was anything but invincible.

As long as there was a powerful enough device that could either strengthen or mess up the fabric of space, it was difficult for combat drives or warp drives to take effect.

Though the Titan-5 Project did not incorporate such a device, its Phaser fish-whale flesh made any form of spatial manipulation possible.

It didn't need a specialized inhibition module as long as it had access to enough energy and expertise!

As the Phase King sunk deeper and deeper into the meat suit, the enhanced Everchanger seemed to bring the massive exobeast to life!

There was no way the Rekkar and the Point Break could take advantage of their warp travel capabilities as long as they were within a certain range of the meat suit!

The story might have been different if the two Fridayman expert mechs incorporated more phasewater, but as mid-tier expert mechs the Gauge Dynasty did not invest too much in their development.

In comparison to the Rekkar and the Point Break, the Titan-5 Project incorporated over 10 kilograms of phasewater, most of which was locked inside phasewater-saturated fish-whale flesh.

With so much phasewater at its disposal, the Titan-5 Project actually performed like a weaker incarnation of the Phase King at the moment!

"How the hell can we even get close?!" Venerable Baldassare complained as his expert space knight never seemed to catch up to the retreating meat suit.

The Titan-5 Project continually harassed the Point Break by generating repeated spatial storms, space blades, spatial tears and other tricks that the Phase King had mastered over a million standard years of slow and steady development.

Even if the Titan-5 Project was incredibly weak compared to the Phase King's body at its height, the design spirit still retained most of his immense knowledge and mastery of spatial manipulation.

It didn't matter whether the Rekkar and the Point Break might be faster due to their higher thrust-to-weight ratio.

The meat suit constantly maintained a warp bubble around itself that easily allowed it to traverse a lot more distance than its opponents.

Catching up was impossible!

The only flaw was that the meat suit was still relatively easy to hit with ranged attacks due to its considerable bulk and its inherent lack of agility, but these were minor problems.

Numerous enemy ranged mechs had not stopped firing their weapons at the Titan-5 Project, but all they did was drain its spatial barrier at a relatively slow rate.

The only weapons that inflicted a bit more hurt on the meat suit were the transphasic shoulder-mounted gauss cannons of the Point Break. The projectiles hit surprisingly hard despite the limited caliber of the guns and they also had a special cracking effect that was capable of destabilizing spatial barriers a lot more effectively than usual.

However, this kind of threat was far from enough to make Joshua and the Phase King worried!

"Keep attacking as long as our energy lasts!"

At no point did the meat suit take the initiative to charge at the enemy in order to utilize its massive physical strength to punch its targets into pieces.

This led to a weird and discordant sight.

When people looked at the Titan-5 Project in its full glory, they automatically assumed that it was a mech designed for punching and brawling.

After all, why else design a mech in such a strong and brutal form? If not for its alien and inhuman traits, it would have looked like a scaled-up version of a heavyweight boxer!

Yet instead of fighting like a ferocious barbarian that had just gone berserk, it instead chose to put up a wizard hat and cast all manner of spells to pelt its enemies while boosting its own speed!

"Is this how mechs are designed these days?"

"The biomatter of that oversized fleshy mech has to be derived from phase whales! There is no other explanation why it is able to fight like one of those powerful alien creatures!"

"Those two mid-tier expert mechs stand no chance against the giant biomech. The Fridaymen should have dispatched a high-tier expert mech."

The current situation dragged on for several minutes. Though the meat suit's spatial attacks were not particularly strong, they still managed to chip away at the defenses of the Point Break at an acceptable rate.

Venerable Baldassare and Venerable Valke were at their wits end. At this time, the Rekkar had moved right in front of the Point Break, but no matter what the expert space knight mech attempted to do, it could do little to block any of the incoming attacks!

It was extremely frustrating for the pilot of a space knight to fail in protecting his comrades.

Every spatial storm engulfed an entire chunk of space, affecting both expert mechs at once.

Every space blade or other projectile was under high control and could easily bypass any obstacle in order to hit their actual targets.

The situation became so dire that the Point Break was soon on the verge of losing its resonance shield!

"We can't go on like this, Baldarasse. My Point Break will get consumed over time if we don't change our approach."

"Then what do we do, Valke?!"

"Retreat."

"What?!"

"We can't allow ourselves to get kited to death by this monster. Just go back and call for backup. We need a more powerful mech like the Skorpion Kommando to stop these oversized biomechs in its tracks!"

This was actually not a bad idea. The Rekkar and the Point Break decisively turned around and attempted to run back towards friendly lines.

Venerable Joshua and the Phase King weren't having any of it, though. They smelled blood and did not want their prey to escape alive.

"Chase!"

The Titan-5 Project warped forward and utilized its vastly superior traversal capabilities to keep up while continually launching more spatial attacks on the Point Break.

Soon enough, the enemy expert mech's resonance shield broke after getting bombarded by seven space blades in quick succession!

The next volley of spatial attacks that the meat suit launched towards its target began to bite into the armor and the weak points of the expert lancer mech.

Though the Point Break was not a fragile doll that would collapse at the first blow, it did not have a good way to protect its vulnerable flight system.

"My mech won't last long enough at this rate!" Venerable Ulrik Valke realized as he could clearly sense the constant spatial attacks chipping away at the defenses of his Point Break. "If I can't run, then I need to stake it all in a single throw of the dice. I need to charge!"

As Venerable Valke became more desperate, his willpower condensed a bit more, which directly strengthened the true resonance affecting the Point Break!

"I WILL NOT BE BOUND!"

Somehow, an invisible shackle broke, causing the Point Break to regain its warp travel function!

Venerable Valke did not relax in the slightest, though. The reason why he was able to break the inhibition was because he had supercharged his willpower and exerted it to an unhealthy degree.

He couldn't maintain this overloaded state for long, so he quickly urged his Point Break to circle around and accelerate directly towards the meat suit.

Now that the Point Break was able to form a warp bubble again, it finally had a chance of catching up to the enemy flesh machine!

The lance of the Point Break already started to glow as Venerable Valke infused it with power.

The weapon seemed to pierce through an invisible wall in space as the Fridayman expert pilot imagined that it tore right through the enemy mech's attempts to hinder the Point Break's advance.

"I WILL NOT BE STOPPED!"