The Mech Touch

The Thunderer Mark II could barely be called a living mech at its current state.

As the possessed Everchanger slowly retracted its metal palms and cautiously exited the formidable ace mech's Saint Kingdom, the ace mech could finally resume its job.

Though Ves hadn't been able to do as much as he wanted out of this moment of contact, he was proud of the work he had done to the ace mech.

When he came up with the plan to change an ace mech, he became aware that it was impossible to turn it into a different machine.

A heavy artillery mech that centered around inflicting massive area damage through propagating kinetic shockwaves would probably fare poorly if it switched to using laser cannons all of a sudden.

Mechs at this level weren't pure machines anymore. They had all become avatars or vessels of their respective Saints.

As much as Ves hated what Patriarch Reginald Cross had done to the Mars, the man simply didn't know any better. His methods aligned with the more traditional theories and approaches that many of his peers had relied upon before.

In the brief moment that Ves came into contact with the Thunderer Mark II, he could sense that Saint Osenring was a similar kind of person. The man was extremely possessive of his Thunderer Mark II and did not tolerate any unauthorized changes.

This gave Ves both a headache and a challenging puzzle. How could he make the Thunderer II stronger and more alive while retaining its original character as much as possible?

Ves decided that the answer would be to make its current identity more pronounced.

Rather than trying to steer it away from its original state, Ves sought to enhance it by making it alive while making as few changes as possible.

This resulted in a rather rudimentary and imperfect life form that was more comparable to the first order living mechs that he used to design and make in the past.

The only way for him to turn it into a second order living mech was if he could tinker with the physical design of the ace mech, but that was out of the question.

As it was, infusing the Thunderer Mark II with life while refraining from making any further alternations had worked to an extent.

Even now, Ves could already feel the Thunderer Mark II reaching out to its ace pilot in a more active and affectionate manner than possible.

If Saint Osenring was accustomed to piloting living mechs, then he would have accepted the love and trust expressed by his own machine.

Instead, the man had become so touchy and freaked out by all of the changes that he had become more distant to his ace mech instead!

This was a sad state of affairs and it reminded Ves that living mechs had a long way to go before they became a universal standard in the mech community.

It also didn't help that Ves had to make more essential alterations to the heavy gauss cannons of the ace heavy artillery mech.

These proud weapons were by far the most important systems of the Thunderer Mark II. Saint Osenring understood quite well how they worked and how they were constructed.

Yet now that the ace pilot tried to resonate with those very same guns, he began to encounter a lot of alien and unfamiliar elements.

This was the most iffy part of Ves' plan. He had little choice but to implement more drastic changes to the heavy gauss cannons in order to align them to the Phase King.

Fortunately, Ves didn't have to worry about tying the Phase King to the Thunderer Mark II even though it had only barely transformed into a living mech.

The Phase King only needed a small window of opportunity to latch on to the powerful ace mech.

After Ves had made additional changes to the spiritual foundation in relation to the potent weapon systems, the armaments had even turned into blessed weapons of sorts. Forming the connections were easy due to how much phasewater they contained.

Of course, Ves wasn't happy with his rush job. The Instrument of Doom wielded by the Amaranto maintained much greater ties to the Phase King. The amount of influence the design spirit could exert on that standalone energy cannon was astounding.

As for the Thunderer Mark II, Ves could perceive through the Everchanger that Saint Osenring struggled to open up his defenses to the foreign and alien design spirit.

Ves was tempted to open his mouth and give the man a reminder, but he figured that anything he said would backfire.

Ace pilots were stubborn like that. Ves had already learned his lesson after his last mech-related interaction with Patriarch Reginald Cross.

Right now, the Thunderer Mark II was taking a lot more time to open fire. Dozens of seconds went by as the gauss cannons were charged and ready to unleash their latest salvo of shield bypassing rounds at the distant unclean whale.

"This stupid idiot." Ves muttered.

It was unfair to blame Saint Osenring for his hesitation. Ves had imposed a drastically different mech paradigm on him all of a sudden, but the fool of an ace pilot should have been able to tell that the changes weren't meant to inflict any harm!

The more time the ace pilot wasted, the greater the chance the unclean whale could inflict horrible damage against the other ace mechs!

Already, those slender toothed tentacles had already brushed against the Saint Kingdoms of some of the melee mechs.

The Jedda Sandivar which was trying to occupy the unclean whale at the front was having it worse than most. There were times where the ace light skirmisher mech had almost been boxed in by a forest of tentacles.

Fortunately, the Adelaide Mercenary Company did not skimp on the armor of the Jedda Sandivar, so the phasewater-infused teeth only managed to graze and scratch the upper layer of the ace mech's armor.

Still, the unclean whale continued to refine his methods as time went on. Even the Mars had been smacked by a tentacle as Patriarch Reginald foolishly tried to cut through his opponent's blubber with the Whale-Cutting Saber.

"I don't have time for." Ves muttered. "Joshua! Switch the glow of your expert mech to the Solemn Guardian and try to amplify it as much as possible!"

"Uhm, are you sure about that, sir?" Joshua responded. "Saint Osenring will not take it well."

"Just do it! We are still comrades in arms, so the man won't attack you or anything. I just want you to nudge this guy into action seeing his personal feelings are getting in the way of his duty!"

The ever-adaptable Everchanger smoothly switched its design spirit once again.

Though Ves had lost his intimate connection to his favorite expert mech, he smiled when the aura and the demeanor of the Everchanger swap in an instant.

The Solemn Guardian was one of his earliest, weakest and least impressive design spirits.

Ves had thought many times about butchering before putting his early work back together in a stronger and more improved form.

He never acted on this impulse because he feared his other design spirits might not trust him anymore after he cut apart one of their own kind.

He was glad that he did so because the Solemn Guardian's glow was much simpler and less alarming than that of other glows.

The Everchanger naturally exuded a sense of trust. It conveyed the image of a patriotic war hero that sought to inspire fellow soldiers to do their part in the field.

After Venerable Joshua resonated with his expert mech and deliberately amplified the reach of its current glow to the point where it wrapped around the Saint Kingdom of the Thunderer Mark II, there was no way that Saint Osenring could ignore this new influence!

The Thunderer Mark II shook a bit.

For a moment, Ves feared that the ace mech was about to turn one of its many formidable guns towards the Everchanger.

The ace mech eventually did not do so. It instead kept its guns aimed squarely at the true enemy.

"I think it's working, sir!" Venerable Joshua reported. "Saint Osenring isn't hesitating as much anymore."

This became clear when the heavy gauss cannons of the Thunderer Mark II began to glow and convey an entirely different presence.

Though the Phase King was unable to channel much of his energy into the newly-blessed cannons, he gained just enough access to change the way that phasewater affected their output.

It was as if a cleaner had entered a messy apartment and began to clean up the messes. Nothing had been added or removed, but the simple act of rearranging the crude transphasic design application was starting to produce measurable changes.

Soon, they fired.

Ten powerful gauss cannons boomed at once, propelling potent resonance-empowered transphasic rounds at blazing speeds!

When they finally crossed the distance and impacted the spatial barrier of the distracted unclean whale, the rounds initially shattered into pieces like before.

Many observers who paid close attention to this attack salvo became disappointed, but their mood quickly surged when they saw that a small portion of the gauss rounds had actually succeeded in phasing through the powerful defensive barrier!

"Impacts registered! We have detected 9 individual impacts onto the hide of the unclean whale. The Thunderer Mark II's latest attack salvo has successfully managed to pass through the target's energy defenses for the first time!"

Cheers already erupted at a few places, though their celebrations were still premature.

Ves furrowed his brows as he zoomed in on the image of the impact sites. Only small shards of solid alloy managed to phase through the spatial barrier. There was so little left of the original gauss rounds that the unclean whale didn't even feel the attacks!

However, this was just the start.

When Saint Osenring saw that the odd changes to his ace mech enabled his last attacks to inflict real damage to his adversary's flesh, he became a lot less wary and suspicious about the alterations.

As he became hungry for more, he slightly lowered his vigilance towards the alien creature that had connected his machine. Though the ace pilot still didn't trust this phase whale-like presence too much, his desire for greater firepower pushed him to embrace the changes.

When the Thunderer Mark II opened fire once again, the Phase King had been able to exert even more influence on its gauss cannons.

The next rounds slammed against the spatial barrier once again, but as the powerful projectiles shattered into pieces, the shards that successfully phased through this obstacle had become larger than before!

This time, the unclean whale slightly shook as his hide began to get struck by the remnants of the Thunderer Mark II's firepower.

When the third salvo struck the corrupted phase whale's flesh, the creature actually began to experience pain as the shards not only pierced deeper through the blubber, but also unleashed noticeable shockwaves that tore a lot of nearby biomatter!

By the time the Thunderer Mark II fired its fourth salvo, the unclean whale noticed that the shockwaves coursing through the side of his massive body was killing or damaging an even larger portion of his flesh!

"The target is visibly showing pain reactions! The Thunderer Mark II is inflicting more harm on the unclean whale than any other ace mech!"

"The beast isn't able to heal the damage inflicted by the Thunderer Mark II as fast as other injuries. Too much biomass has to be shaken apart at once for the unclean whale to regenerate in a timely manner!"

"We recommend the other ace mechs concentrate their firepower on the body sections softened up by the Thunderer Mark II in advance! This is our chance to get past the blubber and land our attacks on the internal organs of our adversary!"

"Pass on this suggestion to the other ace mechs. We cannot afford to squander the openings generated by the Thunderer Mark II!"