The Mech Touch

"How can the Valkyrie Redeemer lose?!" Gloriana complained.

The mech she favored the most had put up a good fight. Carter Day even adopted a more aggressive approach and tried to pull off a few charges.

Yet the relatively small fighting area prevented the Valkyrie Redeemer from being able to perform at its best. The mech was much more suited to fight in open space where there was virtually an unlimited amount of space to work with. Without enough room, there was no way for the Valkyrie Redeemer to build up a sufficient charge!

"It's the hair." Ves muttered. "The Frokyn is very tricky to deal with. I don't know what it's made of, but it is exceptionally resilient against physical attacks."

The hairs moved like tentacles and entangled the Valkyrie Redeemer's spear whenever it came close. Not only that, but they functioned as a damage cushion that negated a lot of damage.

It was as if the mech was surrounded by a permanent energy shield!

The end result had become increasingly more clear. After the Valkyrie Redeemer exhausted its Starburst grenades, it was only able to rely on its death-based glow to induce a lot of discomfort towards Mireilla Linschoten.

Yet even if the Valkyrie Redeemer was able to accept the presence of a male, there was no way to forge synergy between the two. The Valkyrie Redeemer's performance was only adequate, which wasn't enough to overcome the disadvantages it faced.

"It's all because they put a male inside the cockpit!" Gloriana complained. "This isn't fair! Now, the Valkyrie Redeemer has incurred a lot of blows from the axe that are difficult to repair!"

She was right to feel upset. The Valkyrie Redeemer got struck several times by a biometal axe. The powerful weapon damaged large portions of the mech's frontal armor before the female mech finally succumbed.

All of that battle damage would take a lot of time and effort to repair.

"It's okay." Ves said as he placed his hand on her palm in an attempt to calm her down. "The Valkyrie Redeemer will rise again. The damage looks bad but large portions of it can easily be replaced. I think the Frokyn doesn't look so good either. If there is one lesson that I have learned from witnessing the transformation abilities of biomechs, it's that they always pay a price for their power!"

The Avarra Tomar that the pair had witnessed in Prescott Museum was a typical example of this. The biomech practically burned itself apart in order to fuel its berserker rage.

Once the duel had ended, the Frokyn didn't outright collapse, but it didn't look healthy either. Its bushy hair all turned grey and shed from the mech within a minute. The biomech's flesh looked shrunken and drained as if it had sacrificed its own health to generate all of that animated hair.

While it probably didn't take much effort to restore the mech by feeding it with nutrients and allowing it to grow back to its peak, this was not an instant process.

Once the arena operators cleaned the battlefield, the fifth and final match of the day commenced.

This time, the mechs that emerged from the sides possessed no significant flight capabilities.

They were too heavy to be able to lift themselves under their own power under standard gravity conditions.

"The heavy mechs have come."

Even laymen were able to recognize the last pair of mechs as heavy machines. They were larger than anything that had entered the dueling ring. Compared to slimmer and lighter machines such as the Ferocious Piranha, the mechs about to fight the fifth match of the day were several times more massive!

The Transcendent Punisher exuded a holy presence as usual. Just like the mechs that came before, its usual constraints no longer applied anymore, allowing it to accommodate any mech pilot, even someone who wasn't an adherent of the Ylvainan Faith!

Even though Ves didn't expect the mech pilot to synergize well with the heavy artillery mech, he at least hoped it was enough to activate the mech's iconic ability.

It's mech pilot was a heavy artillery specialist called Gwineth Ulser. Her brief record did not reveal much. Aside from informing everyone that she was an active serviceman, her public profile only revealed that she was good at multitasking.

The mech pilot of the biomech was also a woman. Ilse Lieberman was also a heavy artillery specialist, but she belonged to a different mech division. Her profile noted that she achieved high marksmanship scores.

This was quite a frightening claim. Accuracy mattered a lot to artillery mechs. Even though the distance between the two mechs wasn't much, it was still useful if a mech pilot was able to target the weak points of an opposing mech.

In order to down a mech, it was already sufficient to destroy the internal components that were vital to allowing the mech to function. Trying to destroy the entire armor system of a mech was not that useful in itself.

The two heavy mechs possessed several similarities.

They were both hexapods. Six legs extended from the underside of their fat and broad torsos. The legs not only provided the mechs with exceptional stability, but also allowed the mech to move its prodigious mass without worrying about losing its balance like bipedal mechs.

The two artillery mechs also boasted similar performance parameters. Even though their shapes diverged, they were both slow, massive, weighed down by armor and carried several potent weapons.

Yet this was where their similarities ended.

The Transcendent Punisher was a familiar sight to the Larkinsons. Its main armament consisted of a pair of gauss cannons and a pair of positron cannons. Together, these weapons were able to inflict heavy damage onto any immobile target, particularly other heavy mechs!

Yet the opposing mech didn't look like a vegetable either.

"It looks like a beetle." Vincent summed up. "A fat beetle."

Dr. Navarro gave his heavy artillery mech an imposing name. The so-called Swarm Monarch looked like a larger, more combat-oriented version of the utility beetles that usually perform the role of cleaning and maintenance bots in LRA society.

Unlike many of his other mechs, the Swarm Monarch was covered by a hard exoskeleton that offered solid protection from attacks that came from every direction, even below.

Four big nozzles extended from the back of the Swarm Monarch. Two of them were able to swivel directly forward but the other two were only able to maintain an upwards angle.

It seemed that the latter two cannons were capable of lobbing shells in order to bombard targets from above, thereby bypassing any terrain or other obstacles in the way.

This wasn't very relevant though. The dueling ring was completely flat so there was nothing standing in the way between the two mechs. Both of them possessed a clear line of sight against each other and they had already trained their weapons to fire as soon as the signal was given.

[Let the final match of the day commence!]

Both mechs instantly exploded into action!

Both six-legged mechs had already begun to move. They slowly moved in a circle. This not only allowed them to maintain their current distance towards each other, but also prevented the ground at their position from collapsing or becoming unstable due to excessive bombardment.

In the beginning, the Transcendent Punisher immediately unleashed a lot of direct firepower.

Gwineth Ulser did not hesitate in firing all of the Ylvainan mech's armaments!

Gauss cannon slugs slammed against the front of the beetle's exoskeleton plating. Positron beams struck the beetle's organic plating as well, causing significant sections of its surface to heat up or deform!

The Swarm Monarch did not let the classical mech beat it up without hitting back. Two of its organic muzzles immediately unleashed positron beams of their own!

Of course, the thick surface of the Transcendent Punisher easily withstood the initial strikes. One of the reasons why heavy artillery mechs possessed so much armor was because they were designed to take out enemy counterparts!

An artillery mech that boasted little armor usually didn't last very long on the battlefield!

A mech with high threat such as an artillery platform with lots of guns always needed a way to mitigate damage.

Since all of the heavy weapon systems weighed the artillery mechs down, it was not feasible for them to rely on mobility to evade incoming attacks.

The only solution left was to pile as much armor as was feasible and hope that the mech was able to last a little longer than the opposite mech!

Ves expected to witness a straightforward slugging match. It wasn't as if the mechs could do anything else such as closing in on each other in order to trample their opponents. They were too slow and unwieldy to perform those moves!

"Look! The beetle is firing its second set of guns!" Realla pointed out.

Ves immediately sensed something wrong. The arcing projectiles didn't seem like regular shells. They only soared for a short amount of time before descending on top of the Transcendent Punisher.

No explosions ensued. The projectiles didn't appear to be explosive at all. Instead, Ves and the other Larkinsons looked astonished as the 'shells' came to life!

"They're.. they're beetles!" Gloriana shrieked!

The small and squat beetles moved quickly and jerkily. They seemed to possess some rudimentary intelligence because they immediately moved to the relative weak points of the upper side of the Transcendent Punisher.

Once the pair of beetles found their positions, they began to bore through the relatively weak armor sections with a strange drill extended from their mouths!

Not only that, they also released acid that softened up the upper layers, allowing the drilling beetles to achieve faster progress.

"Damn!" Ves slammed his fist against the armrest. "The Transcendent Punisher can't shake those beetles off! We never thought to implement any countermeasures against insects of all weapons!"

Even Gloriana found the situation to be absurd. "Those beetles are too effective! How can they drill so fast when they're so small?!"

The answer soon became evident. The beetles slowly deflated as they continued their drilling. Eventually, they exhausted all of their reserves, causing them to fall over and die.

It didn't matter. The Swarm Monarch had already fired several volleys of additional drilling beetles during this time!

Soon enough, the Transcendent Punisher hosted a dozen drilling beetles. Ves figured that the Swarm Monarch could have lobbed additional beetles onto its target, but Ilse Lieberman was clever enough to realize that she would quickly exhaust the 'ammunition' reserves of her biomech.

The Swarm Monarch could only carry so many beetles! Launching too many of them at once would only cause a lot of surface damage to the Transcendent Punisher because the beetles weren't able to occupy the same position at once!

While the Swarm Monarch let its drilling beetles do the work, it continued to apply pressure by firing its positron beams at the legs of the Transcendent Punisher.

The legs weren't as resilient as the torso, so they were relatively easier to damage!

Targeting the lower half of the Transcendent Punisher also prevented the Swarm Monarch from killing its own beetles. Although they seemed resilient to both heat and physical damage, they didn't look like they could survive a direct hit.

It was too bad that none of the weapons carried by the Transcendent Punisher was able to aim its weapons along its own surface! They simply couldn't angle the cannon muzzles so low!

"I'll definitely fix this shortcoming." Ves vowed.

Even though the Transcendent Punisher looked as if it was getting stung to death, it was not the only mech that was suffering.

Its prodigious firepower was heavily savaging the Swarm Monarch! The constant, direct volleys savaged the front of the mech so much that it was forced to angle itself in order to avoid exposing its heavily-injured sections!

Not only that, but Gwineth Ulser finally achieved the right conditions to activate the signature ability of the Transcendent Punisher.

Its glow became more active as a different presence reluctantly lent its power to a non-believer!

"It's starting!"