The Mech Touch

"Come on! Break already!"

From the moment the C-Man's turn came up, Venerable Vincent drove his expert mech straight at the deceptively small phase lord and started to unleash a flurry of punches at his target.

None of the punches seemed to bother the phase lord that much. The armored nunser's spatial barrier resisted every impact from the oversized fists of the C-Man with as much ease as with any attack.

Kicking made no difference either!

"What about this, then?!"

The advantage of a brawler mech was that they were more flexible and versatile in their movements than other mech types. Venerable Vincent took advantage of that by commanding his machine to embrace the phase lord with his arms in an attempt to hold or wrestle the alien powerhouse into submission.

What actually happened was that the C-Man could only hold onto the spherical spatial barrier at best.

The move did nothing to prevent the phase lord from rearing up his body in another attempt to shake the surrounding fabric of space with a powerful shockwave!

"Get back, Vincent! Don't resist this shockwave when you are as close as you can be! Retreat before it is too late!"

"You don't have to tell me!" Vincent squeaked as his C-Man rapidly let go and distanced himself from the threatening alien opponent.

However, when the C-Man already put several kilometers between himself and the phase lord, the latter did not go through with his power move and instead pointed a single hoof at the fleeing C-Man as if to mock Vincent's panicked response.

Vincent's face grew red with shame. "Don't mess with me, you bastard!"

The C-Man immediately turned around and went back to wailing the phase lord's spatial barrier with repeated punches again.

Though the previous incident did not seem like a big deal, many other people grew concerned at the implications.

"The alien is not a simple brute." Ves remarked. "He is a high-ranking individual in his own society, and I think his combat acumen is not low. This is not a nerd who happens to possess great personal power. This is a fighter who is at home on the battlefield."

According to the sources, all kinds of alien individuals could become phase lords. From military leaders to pacifist statesmen, each of them pursued the same path to godhood, making it difficult to distinguish whether they could make good use of their capabilities.

As the C-Man was ineffectually trying to punch through the phase lord's spatial barrier, the other melee expert mech did not stay idle.

The Blade Chaser Mark II weaved between the ranged attacks of the other expert mechs and flew close enough to charge at the phase lord's rear with the tip of his sword!

Since the expert mech had managed to build up a bit of speed, the piercing power of this thrust attack was considerable.

Yet despite putting the entire weight of the charging behind it, the sword utterly failed to make a single dent in the spatial barrier!

This was a sword that Ketis had specifically developed for Venerable Imon Ingvar, and was considerably sharper than most bladed weapons.

Not only that, but the Blade Chaser Mark II not only relied on the true resonance generated with Venerable Imon Ingvar to power up his charge attack, but also borrowed a considerable amount of juice from Commander Casella Ingvar as well!

Unfortunately for the two Ingvars, their combined strength failed to meet the exceedingly high threshold of overcoming exceedingly resilient defenses of the phase lord.

The only damage produced by this failed attempt to break open the phase lord was the destruction of the sword wielded by the Blade Chaser Mark II!

Imon's expert mech originally wielded two swords, so he was not out of the fight yet. The Blade Chaser Mark II already drew out his second sword but did not circle around to commence another attack right away.

Instead, Imon and Casella decided to fire the Gray Lotus at the resilient phase lord.

As the heirloom weapon became charged with Helena's death energy, it started to spit out gray beams empowered by resonance at the brave and powerful alien adversary.

Different from many other attacks, the gray energy beam did not get blocked in its entirety.

Though much of the power behind the energy beam did end up getting stopped, a small part of it successfully phased through the thin but absurdly powerful spatial barrier!

Once the remnant energy beam managed to overcome the most difficult obstacle, it proceeded to sink straight through the phase lord's oversized suit of armor and strike his naked body!

Though several people like Ves initially had high hopes of this surgical death energy attack, the beam appeared to have entered into a dark and bottomless hole.

The phase lord did not even twitch his body when struck by this exotic attack type!

Master Benedict shook his head at the sight. "The conventional components of the energy beam will get blocked. Only the more esoteric component can pass through, but its power is rather lackluster by itself. It may be possible to kill a dozen people in a row, but a phase lord is an entirely different sort of organism. Their actual body mass is enormous and they are strong in other ways as well. The Blade Chaser Mark II needs to fire that special gun at least several hundred times in order to seriously threaten the phase lord's life."

That took way too much time and energy!

Though Venerable Imon Ingvar did not get discouraged and continued to fire the Gray Lotus whenever possible, the phase lord was not about to sit still and allow himself to get poked by these death energy needles all day.

"Careful! The phase lord is rearing up his body again!"

The C-Man and the Blade Chaser Mark II did not delay in turning around and moved as far away as possible, but it turned out that the phase lord pranked them all again!

"Wait!" Ves called as he looked at the graphs showing the spatial fluctuations generated by the enemy powerhouse. "The phase lord is performing a different technique! Two different coordinates of space are beginning to fluctuate. Wait, he's gone!"

The phase lord teleported!

In one moment, he was fairly far away from everyone else.

In the next moment, the phase lord had teleported to a location that was close to the Minerva!

"The nunser identified our command unit and is attempting to take down the Minerva!"

The Minerva had been boosting the Blade Chaser Mark II all of this time, so the command-oriented expert mech had put down its guard to an extent.

Not only that, but the Minerva also maintained its distance from other friendly expert mechs in an attempt to prevent any area attack from affecting multiple of them at once.

While that meant that the phase lord could not easily attack multiple vulnerable expert mechs at once, it did allow him to confront Commander Casella Ingvar's expert mech by himself!

"SISTER!" Imon called as his Blade Chaser Mark II gained a desperate boost in speed! "Hang on! I'm coming!"

The Minerva was caught off-guard and Casella's reaction became delayed by the need to pull her power back from the Blade Chaser Mark II.

In the meantime, the phase lord had already closed the remaining distance and attempted to gore through the Minerva's fragile torso with his armored head!

A dark gold resonance shield prevented the phase lord from succeeding in this action, but the power of the attack combined with the lower defensive capabilities of the Minerva meant that it broke soon afterwards!

"The Minerva is exposed! Don't let her get hit again!"

Commander Casella Ingvar did not engage in any heroics. The Minerva did not pull out a backup knife so that she could dance with the phase lord.

Instead, the expert command mech wisely tried to back off while making sure to exert a little pressure by firing her luminar crystal weapon at the advancing opponent.

The Minerva quickly detached the long gun barrel from the Irvan in order to transform her into a lighter and more manageable submachine gun.

Soon enough, the shortened Irvan spit out a staccato of rapid-fire laser beams at the phase lord.

Though the nunser powerhouse experienced a bit of hindrance from all of the light flashing straight into his helmet's optical sensors, the phase lord continued to close the distance with the help of the more powerful warp bubble that he was able to generate around his body!

"SISTER!" Imon roared as he felt that his sister was much closer to death than before!

There had never been any time where he wished that his expert mech possessed more speed than now, but no matter how fast his Blade Chaser Mark II moved, he couldn't beat a member of a race who had been playing around with phasewater long before the human race became civilized!

Though the Blade Chaser Mark II and the C-Men weren't fast or close enough to make it in time, there were two expert mechs that did manage to make it to the phase lord in time to inhibit his actions.

The Conavis Mer Mark II piloted by Venerable Imaris Cross happened to arrive first.

However, the expert light skirmisher might as well resemble a fly because it utterly lacked the power to affect the phase lord in any way.

Its daggers bounced off the spatial barrier in complete disregard of the threat and the power of the weapons empowered by the true resonance generated by a seasoned veteran.

"I can't do anything!" Venerable Imaris Cross complained.

"Then get out of the way!"

A second light mech closed in shortly afterwards even as the Conavis Mer Mark II retreated from the unstoppable enemy.

Unlike the Cross Clan's expert light skirmisher, the one fielded by the Larkinson Clan possessed a bit of extra gear in order to cope against powerful opponents, particularly ones that could not be fought in a normal manner.

The Dark Zephyr did not bother to draw out his Unending alloy knives. Venerable Tusa Billingsley-Larkinson knew that they would be utterly useless when employed against a spatial barrier of this magnitude.

Instead, the expert mech drew out a pair of grenades from a couple of his bandoliers and tossed them towards the phase lord right away.

For good measure, the Dark Zephyr drew out another pair of grenades and tossed them right afterwards!

The phase lord actually slowed down and took the initiative to reinforce his spatial barrier as the first two grenades came close.

This appeared to be a prudent decision as the transphasic grenades exploded a short distance away, engulfing the phase lord's position with phasewater-enriched blasts!

Though the phase lord seemed to take these blows in stride, his advance had slowed, granting the Minerva a significantly greater reprieve!

The second pair of transphasic grenades arrived soon afterwards and peppered the disoriented alien 'god' with identical blasts!

The grenades produced a greater effect on the phase lord than any other measure employed so far!

"I wish those had Stormsurge payloads." Ves lamented.

He had been too much of a cheapskate when he equipped the Dark Zephyr with a set of decent but ultimately inadequate transphasic grenades.

"Our current measures are not enough." Master Benedict warned. "We need to employ our trump cards in order to neutralize this threat. The enemy phase lord cannot be allowed to threaten our units any further."

Ves firmly nodded. "Agreed."

In response to this, the Amaranto began to fully charge her Instrument of Doom while calling upon the blessing of the Phase King.

This was an exhausting process for both the expert mech and her pilot. They had already drawn upon the power of the Phase King many times before when they bombarded the enemy battleship, but they could still squeeze more shots if they put more effort.

However, as the Phase King began to infuse the Instrument of Doom with his unique presence, the phase lord abruptly stopped his pursuit.

The powerful alien completely forgot about the Minerva and turned his main optical sensors towards the increasingly brighter Amaranto.

For a moment, the area seemed to stagnate.

Then, a spontaneous spatial shockwave erupted from the phase lord!

"Much to the surprise of every human, an alien sound transmitted over many different communication channels!

"YUUAAEUAH!"

"Uhh, I think we made the cow angry!"

"Watch out, Stark! The phase lord is charging straight in your direction!"

The phase lord advanced at a considerably faster pace than before! He posed such an acute threat towards the Amaranto that Stark did not delay any further and pulled the trigger!

A blindingly bright resonance-empowered energy beam struck the phase lord head-on!