The Mech Touch

The phase lord's appeared to have no choice but to expose his real body.

He was much larger than he initially appeared. Upon reaching a size that was comparable to a typical corvette, the giant nunser thankfully did not grow any bigger.

He already made for an intimidating sight, though!

Even if this so-called 'Trampler of Stars' did not match the scale of mighty battleships such as the Tower of Babel, it was still rather scary to witness his true body.

If he was already strong and difficult to deal with when he was in his miniature form, how much worse would he be when he was in his full form?

Ves had no doubt that the phase lord became a lot more dangerous after this transformation. He could clearly feel how the immense power of the Trampler of Stars became a lot less constrained.

Though the alien still had trouble with reforming his vital spatial barrier, his physical body resisted the incoming attacks with a level of durability that matched the toughness of first-class biomechs!

Every single part of the phase lord's body was naturally reinforced with phasewater, some parts more than others. Though the giant nunser was most certainly accumulating a steady amount of damage, all of that seemed a bit pale compared to the immense bulk and inherent resilience of his body.

The phase lord looked incredibly furious. He had been tormented by these expert mechs far too long.

The powerful alien had lost the ability to transmit a message with the disintegration of his suit of armor, but the phase lord needed no words to convey the absolute animosity he held towards the human machines, particularly the Amaranto and the First Sword!

However, just as the Trampler of Stars was about to initiate the second round of combat, the alien sensed something amiss and turned around.

While the phase lord had been fighting against the expert mechs launched from the Antonio Cross, the Mars and the alien battleship concentrated on their own dance!

The Mars initially held an advantage and managed to inflict a lot of damage onto the ruined front half of the Tower of Stars!

Already weakened by prior attacks as well as the flames spread by the Promethea, the Mars came like a wrecking ball and not only opened fire with its ARCEUS System, but also came even close so that it could shred more materials with its shotgun!

Each blast from the shotgun poked a lot of new holes in a wider expanse of the hull. When the Mars flew even closer and began to chop at the hull with its transphasic axe, it started to make brisk progress towards the more intact parts of the alien battleship.

However, everything changed once the Mars neared the crucial threshold. Just as Patriarch Reginald was ready to destroy more meaningful ship compartments, he sensed an acute threat and quickly pulled his Mars back out before a powerful series of explosions engulfed a part of the Tower of Stars!

It turned out that the aliens had already planted explosives that allowed them to detach the derelict half of their battleship.

The violent explosions destroyed so many structural parts at once that the battleship essentially snapped in half!

No one cared about the burning and utterly ruined half of the hybrid alien vessel. What mattered was the intact rear half which had lost a lot of deadweight all of a sudden.

Though the balance of the remnant was completely different, it was undeniable that the ship had also become a lot smaller and lighter all of a sudden!

The separation of so much deadweight allowed the shortened battleship to regain the initiative in the fight and radically speed up her movements as well as fill up the gap in her defenses.

When the Mars next attempted to attack the most vulnerable side of the shortened battleship, the powerful positron beams fired by the ARCEUS System struck one of the segmented energy shields produced by a generator that the aliens had moved to this side in an emergency.

Even if it looked as if the vulnerable side was only covered by a single layer or two layers of energy shields at best, this was still a lot more than what the Mars could ordinarily punch through!

Normally, that was enough to deny Patriarch Reginald Cross and the Mars the satisfaction of ripping the alien battleship apart, but this time was different.

Reginald had already primed the special packages loaded inside the shoulder-mounted missile launchers of his ace mech.

It only took a single thought to launch both missiles in quick succession!

One of the new experimental Stormsurge Missiles flew ahead of the other and crossed the short distance until it exploded against the segmented energy shield.

Instead of producing a conventional explosive blast, a violent electrical storm came to life, scrambling and overpowering the transphasic energy shield with much greater effectiveness than ordinary EMP attacks!

As the phasewater-enhanced storm faded, so did the energy shield. The generator responsible for projecting it had completely overloaded!

The second Stormsurge Missile advanced much slower, but that allowed it to strike the second segmented energy shield with the same electrical fury as before!

Just as the second layer disappeared, the Mars quickly charged through the momentary gap before the aliens had any chance of plugging it with another set of segmented energy shields!

"Hahahaha! I'm inside now!"

Patriarch Reginald had lots of reasons to feel ecstatic.

There was a huge difference between staying on one side of an energy shield and the other side of an energy shield!

Even though the Tower of Babel's formidable array of orven energy shields were still operational, none of them could hinder the ace hybrid mech any further as the Mars had moved well past their minimum projection range!

"Those Stormsurge Missiles were worth their weight in phasewater!"

Expensive as they may be, the value these experimental products provided far exceeded the loss of a couple of kilograms of phasewater and a heap of money.

This was because as long as Reginald successfully took down the alien battleship, the Golden Skull Alliance was bound to salvage materials worth far in excess of what the Cross Clan spent!

The Mars immediately took advantage of its superior positioning by firing all of its integrated energy weapons at several different primary gun batteries!

Several extremely powerful resonance-empowered positron beams struck the thick and wide bases of several massive kinetic cannon turrets.

Though the human-developed first-class armor resisted the attacks to an admirable degree, they could withstand repeated attacks from the ARCEUS System.

The Mars had already fought for a while and outputted a lot of energy in the process, but its energy reserves were still relatively healthy thanks to the use of an extra energy pack.

The Tower of Babel did not allow the ace mech to attack her most powerful cannons with impunity.

Numerous defensive systems designed to repel starfighters and other close-ranged threats came online.

Hundreds of tertiary batteries had already been opening fire onto the Mars for a while now. The small but rapid-firing laser cannons, flechette cannons and interceptor missiles did little but induce more strain onto the ace mech's Saint Kingdom.

What was different now was that the Mars had come close enough for the Tower of Babel to deploy strange rods with holes along their length.

It soon became obvious what these rods were meant to do as powerful currents coursed through their structures.

Soon enough, incredibly powerful electrical bolts launched from the rods and struck the Mars with much greater violence than any other attack it had endured!

The bolts struck the Mars so quickly that the ace mech could not evade them at such a close range!

Powered by the gigantic reactors of the alien battleship, these electrical bolts struck the Saint Kingdom of the Mars with ruinous power, causing it to destabilize at an alarming rate.

However, it was not as if the Mars had no choice but to passively endure the attacks.

"Begone!" Patriarch Reginald roared as his Mars lifted up its transphasic shotgun and opened fire on one cluster of power rods.

The resonance-empowered pellets unleashed by this weapon instantly scythed the power rods at many different points, causing the rods to quickly collapse and tear themselves asunder as they no longer possessed the physical integrity to control the powerful currents!

The Mars also utilized its ARCEUS System to cut off the rods that were further away, causing them to snap in half without any suspense!

It only took a few more seconds for all of the electrical rods within range to be wiped off this side of the battleship's hull!

Though the small but annoying tertiary guns kept firing at the Mars on a continuous basis, Patriarch Reginald was too lazy to eliminate them. He directed his Mars to continue its assault on the surviving primary kinetic cannon batteries and just managed to eliminate a few more before he suddenly sensed the arrival of yet another potent threat!

Reginald wasn't arrogant enough to disregard this threat. He suspended the next attack and quickly commanded the Mars to evade.

The ace mech was more maneuverable than before, so it did not entirely make it out of the trajectory of a small but incredibly powerful plasma bolt!

In the end, the domain field of the Mars resisted much of the damage before the remainder of the belt only managed to scorch the leg of the ace mech.

Reginald became a lot warier though as he tried to guess what sort of threat may be powerful enough to launch that kind of attack.

He knew that the battleship was large enough to host a small contingent of starfighters.

What he expected to see was the appearance of a powerful starfighter that was able to match the performance of a first-class multipurpose mech.

What Reginald didn't expect to see today was the emergence of a genuine human first-class multipurpose mech!

He could scarcely believe what the sensor systems of his machine were feeding back to his mind.

The mech that emerged from one of the vehicle-sized hatches of the Tower of Babel was undeniably human without doubt.

Its shape was classically humanoid and did not resemble that of a nunser, a puelmer or a phase whale.

Its material composition appeared to be made out of relatively standard first-class alloys.

Though Reginald himself did not understand much about these materials, Master Benedict who had been paying attention to what was happening over here quickly informed the ace pilot that the alloys were not native products.

This was because they blended locally sourced exotics with materials imported from the Milky Way Galaxy!

Master Benedict was able to gather a lot of other clues. From the design of the first-class mech to the exposed weapon systems of the machine, everything about this newcomer was marked with an undeniable human brand!

Reginald could even feel that the mech pilot inside the cockpit of the impressive machine was human as well!

Yet why did this mech deploy in support of the aliens?

"Who are you?" Reginald aggressively queried over an open communication channel. "Identify yourself!"

The response from the first-class multipurpose mech was to fire at the Mars with a combination of integrated weapons!

A powerful plasma bolt as well as a more exotic attack method that came in the form of strange gravitic balls struck the Saint Kingdom of the Mars, weakening it further to a substantial degree.

Reginald shook in his cockpit. What he saw today broke his faith in humanity.

To see a member of his race fall to this extent was a traumatic sight to the ace pilot.

"You… you… TRAITOR!"

The Mars exploded with power! Its ARCEUS System fired a full salvo straight at the first-class mech, only for the traitor machine to resist the powerful with a transphasic energy shield that was strong enough to resist this astonishing blow!

Reginald did not know who or what the first-class mech was standing for, but it didn't particularly matter.

This was because every human traitor deserved his contempt!

"DIE, TRAITOR!"