The Mech Touch

When people attended the challenge matches on the day after the product reveal, they never expected trouble to occur.

Why would they?

Phoca Arena was the largest and most well-equipped mech arena on Bortele III. It had finished construction only a few months ago and made use of near-modern technologies.

Aside from the lack of hyper technology due to the unreliable nature of the tech and the relative scarcity of high-grade hyper materials at the time, the enormous facility was more than equipped enough to protect people from various dangers.

The Red Association also put a lot of effort into bolstering the security of the venue. Much of the surrounding blocks had been closed off from any form of traffic and intrusion.

The millions of people who attended the event on the first or second day had to subject themselves through rigorous and occasionally invasive tests.

Over a hundred first-class multipurpose mechs patrolled the entire site and the entire Bluejay Fleet constantly provided support from orbit.

Anyone who dared to launch an attack from a distance or tried to storm into Phoca Arena from any angle would doubtlessly get crushed by all of the abundant security measures!

However, as much as the mechers focused their attention on outside threats such as the launch of a city-killing laser superweapon or the surprise invasion of a powerful phase whale, they paid less attention to threats from within.

Ves and Master Xieliq Quan had been hovering high in the air besides one of the enormous transphasic energy shields that prevented the fighting within the arena ground from threatening the audience.

Both of them held this central and exposed position in order to increase their presence. After all, no mech designer wanted to be forgotten. They had to present themselves in order to make sure that people knew who had designed the machines that had managed to capture their hearts!

Neither mech designers should come to any harm. The mechers were not stupid and imposed high control over the entire arena. They carefully monitored everything that took place in every side and corner. Any observer that exhibited suspicious behavior of any kind would immediately receive a visit from a nearby patrol in order to verify that everything was in order.

Multiple highly transparent transphasic energy shields discreetly partitioned all of the seating blocks. Most people did not even realize that they had all been locked into their separate group cages, making it so that any explosive weapon or other dangerous measures would not be able to spill over and threaten other areas!

While the mechers had not pulled out all of the stops, they were so confident in their security measures that they failed to account for every possible angle on this crucial day.

They had made two grievous oversights.

First, they never expected that a 300-year old veteran Master Mech Designer turned out to be an enemy.

The old man had gone through the same stringent security checks as everyone else. In fact, the extreme quality and sophistication of his weird and self-developed augmentations even prompted the inspectors to call in additional experts to thoroughly verify that Master Quan did not try to smuggle in a hidden weapon of mass destruction or anything.

The fact that the old Master Mech Designer managed to make it through indicated that the mechers mistakenly saw no harm in his implants and genetically modified organs!

Of course, even if the mechers detected a few self-defensive measures that could pose a certain threat to people, they did not think that anything was amiss. Such surprises were common among the upper echelon.

The most important reason why the Red Association never considered Master Quan to be a threat was because it was unimaginable!

The renowned Master Mech Designer had made many contributions over the years. Despite his many setbacks and limitations, he managed to complete enough research and design enough mechs with added value to earn the status of a tier 5 galactic citizen.

This was just a single step before the more critical threshold of tier 4 where he would be able to talk with RA Master Mech Designers as equals!

If that was not enough, Master Quan also happened to be a long-time associate of the Mech Supremacist Faction.

"The mech supremacists vouch for him. He has contributed to many research projects over the years."

Much of the reason why he was able to access and experiment with so much alien and exotic technologies was because he regularly cooperated with numerous friends within the ranks of the Association.

When Masters tended to operate in the mech industry for such a long time, they inevitably became more entangled with the mech designers of the Association.

Naturally, the mechers never ceased to monitor and inspect Master Quan once in a while. They might not suspect that the old and revered second-rater held any subversive thoughts, but they at least had to make sure that the man had not been replaced by a clone or whatever.

Naturally, Master Quan passed all of these tests with flying colors. He even entered the Saint Kingdoms of numerous ace pilots over the years. This was one of the most difficult tests of all as ace pilots were sensitive to even the slightest hint of malice or ill will!

Yet despite the apparent depth of Master Quan's betrayal to the current human order, he never managed to trigger any suspicion!

The Cosmopolitan Movement had managed to stay afloat for multiple millenia. Its members spanned across all of human society and beyond. They managed to accumulate a lot of advanced human and alien technologies, and also became proficient at combining them together to produce all manner of exclusive hybrid inventions.

The cosmopolitans dedicated much of their research towards technologies that allowed them to remain hidden and unnoticed!

When they combined all of this tech with specially developed mental training programs, every qualified cosmopolitan gained the capability to circumvent all intuition-based detection measures and avoid drawing any excess suspicion onto themselves!

While it was possible for low-ranked cosmopolitans to betray their true allegiance due to flaws, an old and high-ranking cadre of the movement such as Master Quan would never show any vulnerabilities!

The mechers had erred in assuming that the long-time associate and meritorious contributor was on their side!

Not only did they fail to connect the dots concerning Master Quan's actual loyalties, the inspectors also made an erroneous judgment about the Dustweaver!

The mech designers responsible for inspecting the Dustweaver prior to the start of the challenge match never suspected any foul play.

They thoroughly inspected every nut and bolt of the machine. None of the components contained anything that looked incongruous or exceeded the limits of a quasi-first-class hero mech.

The only complication worth noting was that the inspectors did not fully understand all of the principles of the alien-derived tech used to make the molecular disintegrator.

Master Xieliq Quan always claimed that he had never been able to fully reverse engineer the alien tech that formed the central basis of his design philosophy. Around 20 percent of the alien components remained indecipherable.

If even the most knowledgeable and authoritative specialist in this alien tech did not understand all of these weird parts, then how could the inspectors and the remote first-class mech designers acting as consultants know any better?

All of these mechers had made a massive error in hindsight!

When the Dustweaver's weird and exotic mech parts shifted and reorganized themselves in a completely different configuration, the inspectors all made the horrible realization that they had missed the fact that the hero mech was actually an exotic killing machine!

Numerous mech designers could not imagine how Master Quan was able to design an exquisite mech that not only functioned like a powerful quasi-first-class transphasic hyper hero mech, but could also transform into a single-use superweapon!

"The entire mech has transformed into an upscaled hyper molecular disintegrator!"

Nothing was left of the original design! The Dustweaver had completely lost its identity as a mech in order to increase the power and other parameters of its supercharged molecular disintegrator as much as possible!

The bizarre contraption was unstable and already started to collapse as soon as it had taken shape. The reckless energies coursing through its system along with the extreme settings used to amplify the attack power of the transformed weapon meant that the Dustweaver was just a single step away from total collapse.

It didn't matter so long as it did its job!

Master Xieliq Quan had cleverly designed his explosive assassination tool to expend as much energy that it could possibly muster and release all of that excessive power through a single discharge of the molecular disintegrator!

The crackling noise that pierced into the ears of every spectator was a testament to the destructive output of this single-use superweapon.

The conventional form of the Dustweaver had already touched upon the limits of a first-class mech.

Transforming it into an alternate form and employing many special solutions to channel all of its power in a single overwhelming attack essentially enabled the Dustweaver to reach the performance of a true first-class mech for just a single instant!

What was important to note was that the lethality of the Dustweaver did not reach the level of a marginal first-class mech, but actually managed to rival the firepower of a medium or even high-tier machine!

"NOOOO!"

"Professor!"

The combined use of all of the alien, exotic and cosmopolitan-exclusive technologies resulted in an attack that broke everyone's cognition of what was possible.

The additional injection of lots of pure destruction energy transformed the nature of the molecular disintegrator discharge into an extraordinary attack wave that passed through all of the transphasic energy shields in the way as if they were nothing but air!

"How is that possible?!"

"Why do these traitors keep this tech for themselves? We could have armed many of our forces with shield-penetrating weapons if Master Quan took the initiative to share his proprietary tech."

No one could explain the exotic and indigenous technological principles that enabled the Dustweaver to launch such an insanely destructive attack.

Only the most hardcore nerds spared any attention towards the Dustweaver's amazing tech at this time.

The unstable contraption had already exploded and fallen apart after launching its final attack.

The nearby Elite Fey Fianna did not have the time to do anything to prevent the Dustweaver from completing its suicide mission!

As alarms continued to ring throughout the entire arena, everyone's attention rested on the two mech designers who previously got along as if they were friends!

"Is he... dead?"

"A conventional molecular disintegrator is already powerful enough to collapse 10 to 20 percent of the mass of a typical second-class mech. The one that just opened fire was at least an order of magnitude bigger and more powerful. There is no way that any human could survive a direct hit, especially when not a single energy shield had managed to do anything to stop and weaken the attack."

The first object to disintegrate and crumble into tiny particles was the strange metal curtain that isolated the target.

The metal sphere that was made out of Master Quan's transformed coat completely failed to withstand the destructive energies.

The second object to collapse was Master Quan's horrifying-looking body that had completely transformed and merged with his former coat!

A gleeful and fanatic smile adorned his face even as his skin and flesh had slowly begun to collapse.

The man seemed to possess the ability to resist the powerful molecular disintegration effect, but it only kept his body cells together long enough for him to see the results of his masterful plot.

His expression suddenly froze when he saw what had become of the Senior Mech Designer with a massive bounty on his head.

Instead of seeing the total disintegration of the first human phase lord, he saw that Professor Ves Larkinson had remained completely unharmed!

He and his gem cat shouldn't have been able to defend against the extremely destructive effect of the most powerful molecular disintegrator to exist.

Despair ran through Master Quan's volatile mind as he quickly saw the reason why Ves and Lucky managed to survive the assassination attempt unscathed.

The energy manifestation of a giant flaming cat had wrapped her form around the two in the final moment before the destructive energies had arrived!

"MIEW."