The Mech Touch

Ves became shocked at the strong posture of the Swordmaiden mech pilots.

Their performance exceeded his expectations.

They did not fight like normal swordsman mech pilots!

This immediately became evident when they successfully imitated a small part of Ketis' extraordinary swordsmanship.

While the Monster Slayers under their control were not able to perform dazzling sword techniques similar to the ones of the First Sword, their sword attacks were not normal in the slightest!

Ves grew confused as he saw that Captain Gheri and her fellow Swordmaidens had apparently developed a unique sword style that blended the strengths of many different factors together.

Although their unorthodox but highly effective combat solutions looked awfully messy and underdeveloped in his eyes, the power they wielded exceeded mortal limits!

Before this hunt commenced, Ves did not entirely know why Captain Gheri possessed so much confidence in her ability to counter the difficult abilities of the Giant Stone Eater.

Now he knew!

"They're fighting as if they are sword initiates at the scale of a mech!"

That was the most coherent description he could muster based on what he was witnessing in front of his eyes.

The Giant Stone Eater had begun to utilize its inaccurate rapid-fire rock shard rifles to suppress the aggressive swordsman mechs.

This was quite a good solution as the high firing rates made it a lot more difficult for the Monster Slayers to evade all of the attacks.

Even so, their fluid and proficient evasive maneuvers made it a lot more difficult for the Giant Stone Eater to track the mobile melee mechs as they circled around the forest of spikes!

Every few seconds, the Monster Slayers and their mech pilots combined their will and spirit to generate extraordinary power!

The mech and mech pilot seamlessly worked together to channel this power into their greatswords, charging them up so that they effortlessly sliced through all of the earth-empowered spikes that poked out of the ground!

Ves or rather Blinky looked closer at how the empowered swords interacted with the stone spikes upon contact.

The Monster Slayers swung their blades so quickly that it was hard for the companion spirit to capture what was happening at this distance.

However, the energetic swordsman mechs repeated their actions often enough to give Ves a few vital clues!

Ves had confirmed through his observations that none of the Swordmaidens had experienced any breakthroughs. They were pure mortals, though their willpower were all strong compared to other standard mech pilots.

Even though their talent was relatively poor, they made up for it with excellent swordsmanship and willpower honed through plenty of struggles.

Yet that was not enough for them to fight beyond their mortal limits.

The Larkinson Clan's production of companion spirit fruits had yet to reach a sufficient scale.

Though Ves was aware that the T Institute had already begun to hand them out to Larkinsons, the clansmen serving in the expeditionary fleet obviously had priority over these much-coveted fruits.

That meant that the Larkinsons assigned to the growing number of side branches of the Larkinson Clan still had to wait a few years if not longer before they received their turn.

That obviously did not stop Captain Gheri and her Swordmaidens from mastering a different approach to enhancing their combat effectiveness.

Somehow, they managed to combine their willpower with the spirituality of their first order living mechs to form a version of resonance!

Ves recalled the old phenomenon of false resonance, but this was a much stronger version of that because it possessed real substance!

Rather than relying on the mech pilot to develop a strong force of will, it was theoretically possible to form a similar phenomenon using the components from two different sources.

This could only be done if the mech and mech pilot trusted and knew each other at a deep level!

"How amazing! I never thought that this could actually happen in practice!"

This was a different approach to mech piloting or rather artifact cultivation.

Traditionally, artifact cultivators were always able to display greater combat power despite not being strong themselves.

They did so by borrowing the power of their artifacts, but that was just the start.

The truly powerful artifact cultivators did not merely rely on the power of their artifacts, but also combined it with their own inherent strength to produce amazing synergies that far surpassed the sum of all parts!

Ves was witnessing a case like this in front of him. The 6 Swordmaiden mech pilots worked so well with their own living mechs that they effectively fought like quasi-expert pilots!

In order to confirm his hunch, he pulled up the readings from the resonance meter of the Hymenoptera.

Usually, this meter should have played no role in this fight, but at this moment the specialized sensor picked up resonance manifestations that reached as high as 0.01 laveres!

"What?!"

This was on par with an expert candidate!

While none of the Swordmaidens came close to performing like an actual expert pilot, the fact that they were able to fight as if they were 1 level higher was already a miracle in his opinion!

As the Monster Slayers continued to work closely with their mech pilots, they effortlessly broke one powerful rock spike after another.

The forest was being cut down at a rapid rate!

This caused the Giant Stone Eater to take the threat up close a lot more seriously. The immediate response to this was that the mutated beast no longer lobbed any explosive rocks at the Crystal Lords.

Instead, the arms began to grow and lengthen to the point where they could directly toss their dangerous rocks at the swordsman mechs that were working their way inward!

This was another new adaptation that it had yet to display before.

Compared to the clearly ineffective artillery strikes of before, the earth monster's ability to threaten mechs with explosive attacks had become much stronger!

The disturbingly human-like arms directly tossed the rocks straight at the nearest two swordsman mechs.

The much straighter trajectory along with the strong force of this throw meant that the Monster Slayers had much less time to jump out of the way!

BOOOOM! BOOOOM!

The blast radius of these rocks were larger!

The powerful concussive blasts along with the release of lots of rock shrapnel affected the two machines to the point where their armor plating got dented!

Fortunately, the mech pilots reacted quickly enough to make enough distance to prevent any serious damage.

The Monster Slayer model designed by Ketis possessed a typical high mobility low defense configuration.

They could not afford to take any serious hits, especially ones that damaged their speed and maneuverability!

The Giant Stone Eater was evidently pleased with the effect of this new attack method, because its catapult arms quickly gathered another set of rocks.

"Evade!"

"Watch those catapult arms carefully!"

"Retreat as soon as those arms swing in your direction!"

BOOOM! BOOOOM!

The Swordmaiden mech pilots were much better prepared this time. They knew what was coming and already commanded their machines to evade before those explosive rocks came close.

Even so, the short range combined by the high velocities of the thrown projectiles made it so that none of the affected mechs could completely escape the damage.

They always suffered minor damage that dented their armor and shook their internals.

In the meantime, the rock shard rifles continued to pelt the Monster Slayers at random.

Even though the Monster Slayers were able to endure the pressure for the time being, Ves understood their design well enough that they could not tolerate repeated hits, even if none of them were particularly strong!

"Speed up, sisters! We are on a time limit here. We cannot afford to fight a battle of attrition. We need to mow down these spikes as fast as possible!"

Just as the six circling Monster Slayers managed to dwindle down the forest of spikes until there were only a couple of dozen left, the Giant Stone Eater had begun to accumulate a huge amount of earth energy!

The alert and vigilant Swordmaiden mech pilots had already commanded their mechs to suspend their current actions and beat a hasty retreat before Ves could issue his warning!

"Be careful! It is about to summon a second forest of spikes!"

The mutated beast did more than that. It summoned the powerful ground spikes while at the same time throwing both of its explosive rocks at a single Monster Slayer!

This was an incredibly dangerous combination that caused the targeted mech pilot a lot of distress.

"JUMP!"

Just as hundreds of rock spikes shot out of the ground, the six Monster Slayers leapt into the air and just managed to vault over the furthest needles.

The one exception was the Monster Slayer that was being threatened by the explosive rocks.

Perhaps she was driven by the acute danger posed by these two attacks, but the Swordmaiden mech pilot channeled so much of her willpower into her jump that her efforts combined with that of her living mech caused the latter to jump 50 percent higher and further than the rest!

It turned out that the mech and mech pilot had combined forces to empower the legs, enabling the vulnerable machine to escape the worst of this combination attack!

"What is your status?!"

"I am fine! My mech's lower systems have been overloaded, but they are otherwise in working condition. I can still fight!"

The Giant Stone Eater might have almost inflicted heavy damage onto one of the mechs, but the combatants remained undeterred.

The Monster Slayers turned around with a vengeance. The Swordmaidens became even more furious at the earth monster, and channeled all of their additional aggression into their machines.

The resonance meter started to spike more and more, showing that the changing mood had a real effect on the combat power of these Monster Slayers!

The spikes got chopped apart at a faster rate than before. The powerful and indomitable Monster Slayers continued to swing their abnormally sharp blades, using a derivative attribute of metal to cut through earth like cutting through wheat.

It helped a lot that the first order living mechs were also able to leverage a small part of the metal-attribute E energies in the environment!

Without this additional support, this extraordinary power manifestation would have been a lot weaker.

"Hmmm..."

The strength, the stability and the technique demonstrated by the veteran Swordmaiden mech pilots made it clear that this was a deliberate and highly practiced combat solution to them. This was not a power that they stumbled upon at random.

Ves began to develop a suspicion about this novel way of fighting with a mech. The blend between extraordinary swordsmanship, strong willpower, the spirituality

"Pilot." He asked the Heavensworder who was piloting the Hymenoptera. "Did Ketis teach the Swordmaidens how to fight this way?"

The male mech pilot smiled. "She did. She added a lot of new stuff to the Swordmaiden Sword Style. This is one of the projects that Swordmaster Ketis, Venerable Dise and others have been working on a way for ordinary mech pilots such as ourselves to defeat phase whales and other superpowered enemies. I heard they even worked together with the T Institute. Together, they managed to form a new approach that is currently in the testing phase. To be honest, only a small number of Swordmaidens have managed to reach this point. Captain Gheri and her sisters were among the first to master this approach by practicing their skills against many beasts on this planet."

Ves had a feeling that this was the case.

"So this is one of Ketis' latest brainchild, huh?"

It was brilliant. It was clever. It brought power to the masses.

Theoretically, no mech pilot had to undergo apotheosis in order to produce a form of resonance in battle.

They could rely on relatively common means to produce uncommon results!

Ves suddenly understood Ketis' bold ambition.

It was just like how Ves wanted to empower a lot of weak humans by giving them a chance to pilot mechs through the Carmine System.

If he was reading Ketis correctly, his former student wanted to give every swordsman mech pilot a chance of wielding the power of an expert pilot by supplying them with the right sword techniques and mechs!