The Mech Touch

Venerable Brutus Wodin only had a very brief window of time to prepare his response against the incoming salvo of empowered positron beams.

Having held back for quite some time, Venerable Ghanso pumped more resonance in the wave of attacks than usual, giving them a destructive edge that allowed them to penetrate tougher mechs with greater ease than before.

Though the cost was significant, Ghanso knew he absolutely had to get rid of the Star Dancer before he could proceed with his mission.

"You only have yourself to blame for getting in the way of my mission to save the Larkinson Family!" He uttered with hatred.

The glow surrounding Charlemagne along with his Scarra seemed to fade as Venerable Ghanso struggled to channel his will after unleashing his powerful attack.

Sixteen beams of destructive positrons accelerated forward at relativistic speeds! While they weren't as fast as true lasers, at these ranges they pretty much reach their targets at an instant!

It was already too late for Venerable Brutus to dodge or evade the attacks if he responded after his opponent pulled the trigger.

However, expert pilots possessed considerable intuition. Their danger sense was constantly honed through battle, practice and even meditation.

This was one of the qualities that made them so difficult to kill.

Expert pilots also possessed a superhuman insight into the fighting style and reactions of their opponents.

Venerable Brutus had already sparred against Venerable Ghanso for a considerable amount of time! As a rifleman mech specialist himself, he rapidly gained a thorough understanding Venerable Ghanso's skills, personality, the strengths and limitations of his expert mech, the properties of his Scarra mechs and other crucial information.

The mind and brain structure of an expert pilot developed in a different direction from normal people. Even without implants, they gained the capability to process a lot of data and derive useful conclusions even without needing to go over every individual detail.

When their minds melded with the formidable processing power of a mech, this capability became supercharged to a degree that often made expert pilots seem as if they could read a few seconds in the future!

However, just like how the Hexer expert pilot was able to read his opponent, the reverse also applied!

Venerable Ghanso had tussled against many Hexer expert pilots over the course of the Komodo War. He squared off against many different expert mechs as well as a considerable amount of expert rifleman mechs.

He rapidly made up for his lack of foundation in second-class expert mech warfare by learning on the battlefield.

The Star Dancer was pretty typical for Hexer expert rifleman mechs. It featured excellent mobility, even for its mech type, but the rifleman mech's armor was not as great. While the armor system was tough enough to withstand a few full-powered attacks, they weren't meant to get hit in the first place.

From the beginning of their confrontation, Venerable Ghanso already formed a methodical plan to take down the annoying Hexer expert mech.

First, he purposefully targeted the Star Dancer's limbs. Everytime he and the mechs under his thrall fired a salvo of shots, he did not launch his attack with the expectation of taking out the Star Dancer in a single blow.

The mech was too darned agile and its expert pilot was too skilled in evasion to score a solid hit!

Instead, Venerable Ghanso went for the second-best outcome, which was to eliminate the Star Dancer's limbs.

While the mech's highly-advanced flight system was responsible for most of its mobility, the Star Dancer integrated many miniature thrusters and boosters throughout its frame.

Putting them out of action by destroying the limbs they were installed in was the best way to impair the Hexer expert mech's evasion ability!

Ghanso focused on taking out the legs first. The underside of the Star Dancer's feet incorporated powerful boosters that allowed the mech to make flexible course changes depending on how the mech orientated its legs. The other parts of the legs also incorporated several mini-boosters that added a bit of extra fine control for any complicated movements in space.

Once the Charlemagne and its Scarra took out the lower legs, Venerable Ghanso focused on eliminating at least one of the arms of his opponent.

This was much harder to do as rifleman mech pilots were trained to keep the arms of their machines out of harm's way. Without arms, how were they supposed to fire their rifles?

Even so, after removing the feet of the Star Dancer, the mech was less able to dodge incoming attacks than before!

One the arm got sheared off, the balance as well as the defensive capabilities of the mech had dropped. The Star Dancer had only one arm left to hold its rifle. It was unable to pull out any possible gadgets or sacrifice the limb as a makeshift shield. The loss of the limb also deprived the expert mech of even more mini-boosters.

It took a lot of effort to reduce the Hexer expert rifleman mech to this point.

During all of this time, Venerable Ghanso not only had to fend off attacks from the Star Dancer, but also had to keep his Scarra safe against the opportunistic attacks of the Leskin piloted by Venerable Banner Cross. He also had to preserve his Scarra against the multitude of other attacks launched by thousands of Glory Seeker and Crosser mechs!

Fortunately, he had 7 other expert mechs to cover for him. Even though he disliked his Vesian companion intensely, Venerable Foster had done a good job blocking attacks directed against his Charlemagne while distracting both the Leskin and any small fry.

Even so, his Scarra had shrunk by more than half at this point!

In an open space battle where there was no cover or terrain to shelter behind, the pseudo-expert mechs were too vulnerable to attacks!

No matter how much Ghanso tried to keep them moving in random evasive patterns, the load on his mind was too much and their specs weren't as good as his own machine.

He already accepted the fact that he would be losing his Scarra in this battle. He allowed Venerable Brutus and his other opponents to pick off the Scarra mechs one by one, adopting the mindset of trading them for other benefits.

After all, compared to trying to take down the much trickier and better-defended Charlemagne, it was much easier to go after the Scarra.

Once the Charlemagne lost its retinue, its threat was no longer as oppressive!

That was what its opponents thought, but what Brutus and the others didn't realize was that each Scarra mech they took down only liberated Venerable Ghanso's strength.

He was forced to deploy a huge amount of concentration, willpower and other mental resources to control all of the Scarra mechs through the asymmetrical neural network.

It was incredibly burdensome to keep those slaves in line.

Now that his opponents were sacrificing valuable resources to rid him of his burden, Venerable Ghanso felt more liberated than ever before.

He hardly piloted his Charlemagne without the need to drag his entire entourage along. His Fridayman superiors forbid him from piloting his expert mech by itself. As far as they were concerned, Ghanso constantly had to train his ability to control multiple mechs as much as possible. It took a lot of active training to become a proficient master over so many slave machines.

"I am no master." Venerable Ghanso contemptuously muttered. "I am a soldier. I am a savior. I am willing to give up everything as long as I can restore the Larkinson Family!"

The ideal he was chasing after centered his mind constantly kept him focused. His Scarra, his expert mech and his life didn't matter. As long as he was able to kill his cousin Ves, Ghanso was assured that the Larkinson Clan would collapse!

Thus, when Venerable Ghanso launched his killer attack on the Star Dancer, he drew strength from his desire to kill Ves, remove his poisonous influence on the Larkinson Family and collapse everything that the aberrant Larkinson had built over the course of his career!

The clan, the LMC and everything Ves had introduced to the Larkinsons would crumble as long as the ringleader was dead!

Just the thought of crushing Ves with his own hands sent Ghanso into an ecstatic frenzy!

"No one will get in the way of my goal of killing Ves!" He crowed. "No one!"

After being targeted by Venerable Ghanso's unexpectedly strong blow, Venerable Brutus knew that he was in a difficult spot.

If his Star Dancer was still fresh and intact, it shouldn't have been a problem for it to weave its way out of the cage of 16 resonance-empowered positron beams.

Unfortunately, it was far from its peak condition! Not only had it lost a considerable amount of thrusters and boosters, the fuel and energy reserves of the mech was also nearing depletion!

Even though Venerable Brutus managed to fell over a dozen Scarra mechs over the course of the battle, his mech had to expend a lot of effort in trying to keep itself safe against such a powerful opponent.

In fact, if not for the sacrifices of his fellow Glory Seekers, the Star Dancer would have long turned into another accomplishment on Venerable Ghanso's record!

When Brutus faced the incoming salvo, he knew his time was finally up. He had done the best he could to restrain the killer of over 10 Hexer expert pilots.

He didn't have the luxury to think about anything else. He needed to protect himself and do his best to preserve his own life! Only in this way would he be able to continue his mission of protecting his sister!

The instant before the positron beams came, Venerable Brutus rapidly formed a plan and immediately implemented it without any second thoughts!

First, he tilted his mech over. This not only minimized the target he presented to his opponent, but also allowed him to evade the positron beam fired by the Charlemagne.

The Charlemagne's rifle was stronger and more potent than the rifles wielded by the Scarra mechs. Its positron beam was not only more powerful on a technical level, but was also amplified to a greater degree by true resonance!

This unavoidably put the flipped expert mech straight on a collision course of another positron beam fired by a Scarra mech.

Even though the beam was less powerful and destructure, it was still capable of ripping straight through the relatively unprotected underside of the waist of the Star Dancer! Once the attack pierced through the crotch of the mech, the beam would definitely have enough energy left to do ruinous damage to the internals. Even the cockpit stood a high chance of getting affected!

This was why Venerable Brutus already activated the eject command. His cockpit was already starting to begin the ejection procedures even before the Star Dancer had moved.

Unfortunately, there was a small but significant delay before the cockpit fully detached itself and the flight system blasted apart to make room for the cockpit to launch out the rear!

The Hexer expert pilot knew he had to weaken or hinder the incoming beam even further to give him a shot at survival.

He had an idea.

At the same time the Star Dancer maneuvered so that its crippled legs met the incoming attack, the mech also fired a very quick attack of its own!

The rifle had already charged up for its next attack, but Venerable Brutus was unable to charge it with resonance due to lack of time!

As a result, a much-weaker positron beam spat out of the rifle and instantly collided with the beam fired by one of the Scarra mechs just in front of the Star Dancer!

Since the former was fired at a slight angle onto the incoming beam, the weak attack slightly managed to cancel out the resonance amplification of Ghanso's fatal attack as well as negating some of its other energy in a particular direction.

When the affected beam finally struck the Star Dancer, it pierced straight through the obstruction of the legs, punched through the waist before washing over the mech engine and many other nearby components, destroying them in an instant!

Yet by the time the remainder of the beam and its potent energies was able to reach the internals buried inside the upper chest, it had weakened to the point where the cockpit was able complete its launching procedures and eject out of the back of the doomed Star Dancer!

A scorched and partially-melted cockpit succeeded in launching away at high acceleration!

As the lives of expert pilots were very valuable, their cockpits were of high quality.

"HE LIVES!" Gloriana happily cried out as she noticed the cockpit zipping away! "Wait, he's still vulnerable!"

Though Venerable Ghanso had expended a lot to launch his latest attack, he was not content with the result. Venerable Brutus had hindered him from completing his mission far too much!

"You'll pay for delaying me." He vowed.

The Charlemagne adjusted the aim of its rifle and fired a quick shot at the cockpit! Venerable Ghanso didn't want to give anyone any time to rescue the fleeing escape device and its precious occupant!

"Die, Hexer!"