The Mech Touch



"HHUURHGHGUUUGGGGG…"

The phase whale did not so much speak as convey a dreamy concept.

Ketis had no idea what the whale conveyed to her. All she wanted was to get rid of this threat before he could break apart the entire prison and endanger everyone trapped inside!

"I am not interested in your mewling, filthy alien." She sneered.

Conscious or not, the phase whale's emotional reaction to her and everyone else was marked with clear contempt and hostility.

Phase whales had a well-deserved reputation for being arrogant, and this captive monstrosity was no exception to this rule!

It was hard for giant organisms to treat smaller ones as their equals. Ketis was but one of many ants in the enormous eyes of the old and half-dormant whale.

Even though Ketis wielded a relic weapon that surpassed any technology that the phase whale had ever had ever seen, it was a pity that his perspective was too narrow.

The whale was unable to sense the full magnitude of what he was challenging! He was only able to observe a small portion of the incredible power that the weapon contained within its sacred vessel

The Heavensword took affront to the phase whale's dismissal. The weapon vibrated harder in Ketis' grip, causing it to generate a louder and more ominous buzzing sound that echoed across the large chamber.

Seeing that the phase whale continued to wake his slumbering organs and muster up more power, Ketis did not delay any longer!

Her entire body blazed with light and heavenly energy before it propelled forward like a rocket!

Though she was not able to execute any of her regular techniques with the Heavensword, she exerted the power of vibration in the strongest possible form.

As she charged forward, she thrust out the Heavensword and focused all of her will into punching through whatever obstacle she might encounter!

BANG!

It was as if she had collided against a planet!

A spatial barrier had flared to life as the tip of the Heavensword abruptly failed to press forward!

Ketis' body would have been squashed into pieces if not for the weapon reinforcing her body against the recoil of this collision!

Even though the potent heavenly energy and the vibration effect acting upon it allowed the Heavensword to slowly squeeze through the spatial barrier, its progress had slowed down enormously.

Ketis and the Heavensword had to exert a huge amount of effort to progress centimeter by centimeter.

It was already remarkable that they could get any further!

The vast majority of enemies never had a chance of breaking the spatial barrier, let alone cut through its higher-dimensional reinforcement at such a consistent pace!

"PUSH!"

Ketis could do little to help the Heavensword pierce through the phase whale's main line of defense, but she tried her best to conceptualize how the ancient weapon could punch through these defenses more effectively.

The Heavensword did not need her help. Its abilities and measures were far superior to anything that she could ever muster by herself!

As the Heavensword penetrated deeper and deeper through the spatial barrier, the phase whale began to experience more strain.

The half-dormant monster's phasewater organs were far from their prime!

If the captive whale had been in his prime condition, then it would have been able to leverage a lot more power against Ketis and the Heavensword!

However, his capture and extremely lengthy imprisonment had clearly taken a toll on the phase whale.

The quantity of phasewater contained in his body had been severely depleted as well, which left the creature with much less power at his disposal than normal.

This ultimately allowed the Heavensword to break through the spatial barrier that many others could never break!

The shattering of the spatial barrier did not produce any noises as it was not a physical object to begin with. However, its passing granted Ketis and the Heavensword a clear path towards the enormous body of the phase whale!

A part of Ketis briefly wondered whether it was possible for a human-sized weapon as small as the Heavensword could inflict effective damage against a phase whale whose body had grown as large as a starship, but she did not hold these thoughts much further.

Since the Heavensword exuded an enormous degree of confidence and certainty, Ketis put her entire faith in the artifact and eventually managed to stab it into the dry folds of skin and fat on the top of the creature's head!

The sword sank into the ancient flesh to the hilt before stopping.

Again, Ketis had been forced to stop once again.

She did not expect this to happen. She was certain that the Heavensword would cut through all of the skin, blubber, flesh and bone until it had drilled straight into the brains and cut the life of the most dangerous organism in the Davute System.

Instead, the sword had abruptly shaken off the desire to cut through the whale's organic matter and instead leveraged its considerable heavenly energy in a different manner.

The divergent fluctuations threw Ketis so off-guard that they broke her concentration.

"Wait… what are you doing, Heavensword?!"

The willful actions of the ancient relic weapon reminded Ketis once again that she never truly controlled the weapon in the first place.

It had only played along with her when it suited its needs!

Now that it had come into contact with an old, powerful but incredibly weakened phase whale, it suddenly unveiled a different set of motives!

The sword leveraged more heavenly energy than ever and began to pour it into the phase whale through the contact it had just made!

The sword no longer functioned as a weapon, but instead turned into a tiny needle that injected foreign energy into the phase whale!

"GHHHUURRAAAAAAAAA!"

The intrusion jolted the phase whale to such a degree that he woke up at a faster pace!

However, any attempts to dislodge the powerful sword from his body failed because the Heavensword had already infiltrated his organic systems!

The ancient weapon seemed to understand the biology and functioning of the amazingly complicated phase whale body. Its energy sank deeper and split up into many different tendrils that immediately began to freeze important organs, sever crucial nerves and squeeze out phasewater from organic tissue.

Although the phase whale's enormous body possessed a lot of internal defensive measures, none of them were capable of affecting a sabotaging influence that was largely immaterial and could not be touched or killed with transphasic attacks.

"HUUUGHHEHEHUUUAA…!"

The whale resorted to a more physical means of resistance. His gigantic body buckled and rolled as if he was a bucking bull trying to throw off a rider in a rodeo.

The Heavensword remained absolutely stuck in its place, and Ketis too maintained her footing on the ancient phase whale's dry and leathery skin.

It was not a comfortable ride, though!

The Heavensword became so distracted in its efforts to neutralize the phase whale that it had slackened in the protection offered to its current wielder.

Ketis gritted her teeth and tried her best to keep an iron grip on the weapon. She knew that letting go of it would definitely deprive her of a lot of protection!

"Is this… what you were after all along, Heavensword?"

The weapon did not respond to her query, but she wasn't stupid.

How easy was it for a grand work to traverse hundreds of thousands of light-years of distance and appear in an entirely different galaxy?

Unless the Heavensword mastered a more advanced method of teleportation, the amount of energy it expended to travel to the Red Ocean had to be astronomical!

In a circumstance where the current environment was no longer friendly to ancient weapons such as the Heavensword, the huge loss of energy could not be replenished so easily!

Ketis wondered whether it was worthwhile for the Heavensword to intervene in such a high-handed manner just to save her life.

Maybe the relic weapon truly valued her potential to make it further as a swordmaster than any citizen of the Heavensword Association.

Maybe the Heavensword had high hopes for Ketis to advance to Master Mech Designer and start forging little brothers and sisters to spread its heritage.

Maybe the ancient sword still had hopes that Ketis would come around and agree to become the next Heavensword Saint.

Ultimately, the Heavensword did not give her a straight answer. Its actions already spoke for themselves.

The more the Heavensword infiltrated the phase whale's body, the less options the massive creature had left to resist the intrusion.

At this point, the phase whale began to experience an emotion that he had rarely felt in his lengthy life.

He became afflicted by fear!

Emotions relating to distress and uncertainty dominated his psyche. This caused the phase whale to jerk and wrench his body harder.

His flight-and-flight instincts had kicked in, and all he wanted to do at this moment was to escape this prison and the abnormally powerful sword as soon as possible!

Unfortunately, the enormous chains that kept him locked in this gigantic cell for many ages had only partially been severed.

Around a dozen or so chains hung slack against his body as the prison facility had already cut them loose.

That still left at least twice as much that still remained whole and stuck to the surrounding walls. Each of these chains not only made sure that the gigantic inmate remained fixed in place, but they also blocked or heavily limited much of his spatial manipulation abilities.

For example, an unbounded phase whale could easily disappear from this pocket space and return to normal space on the spot. A creature that possessed so much affinity and understanding of phasewater had no need to pass through the exit that was originally built for mortal life forms.

That was out of the question at the moment. The original builders of this prison facility had been so thorough about constructing this crucial cell that it had built more than the required chains needed to keep the phase whale stuck in its place!

The phase whale resisted regardless because he was smart enough to sense an enormous threat to himself.

"Huuuwwhhaaaaaaaa!"

The whale forcibly roused himself from his slumber faster, inflicting serious damage onto his mentality and organs that had previously been put in a state of hibernation.

He did everything he could to summon more strength, protect his body from getting sabotaged and dislodge the tiny but extremely powerful sword that was embedded in his flesh!

It was to no avail. From the moment the Heavensword sank into his hide, his fate was already sealed.

Ketis grew increasingly more astounded as she became a spectator to this remarkable sight.

So much took place at this time that she could never study them all. She could only observe as much as she could with the help of the elevated senses granted by the Heavensword and store the data so that she could go over them later.

The relic weapon utilized so many refined techniques that she could spend decades on deciphering them all! Each of these methods represented valuable portions of higher-level swordsmanship and energy manipulation that she had never gotten in touch with before!

Eventually, the phase whale slackened off in his resistance. The Heavensword had crippled too much of his internal body systems that he could no longer control his own flesh, let alone dislodge the sword that was responsible for his weakening!

Once the phase whale's formidable phasewater organs had all been sealed through a mysterious process that made Ketis dizzy when she tried to study it in further detail, the Heavensword finally enacted its final measure.

It began to capture the phase whale in earnest.

"Hhhhhuuuuuuhhhgguuuaa…"

The whale sensed what the sword tried to do and began to exhibit fear.

The creature did not want to get caught!

The Heavensword did not care about the ancient whale's feelings. It began to weave a grand technique that caused it to exert more energy than before. A large amount of heavenly energy burned as the sword began to produce a powerful spatial effect over the entire body of its current prey.

Once the grand weaving was complete, it began to trigger, causing the space around the phase whale to distort and shrink in a particular way!

Starting from the point where Ketis stood, the massive aquatic beast's body began to shrink and distort as if it was being vacuumed by the Heavensword!

The speed in which this took place was astounding. It only took less than thirty seconds for the Heavensword to swallow the entire phase whale!