The Mech Touch

The Domingo Daren resembled a Crumbleshell on its surface, but actually hid a second purpose.

From a professional standpoint, Ves admired the imagination and commitment of the lead designer of this bestial expert mech. Not everyone was willing to design a mech that essentially turned it into a giant decoy that just screamed 'get close to me and hit me up close', only for that to be part of a nefarious plot to trap and immobilize an enemy expert mech.

It was not a design concept that fit an expert mech optimized for duels and solo engagements. It could only ever be employed when it fought alongside other friendly expert mechs.

The Domingo Daren's trapping elements were large, robust and almost impossible to break out of for a typical humanoid mech.

The insanely high defense factor of the First Sword's Unending alloy armor system was not capable of bailing Venerable Dise out this time. The clamping mechanism was well designed and did not have to rely on punching its sharp teeth through the surface of an enemy mech in order to keep hold of its catch.

The hunter and the hunted had exchanged roles yet again!

The First Sword exerted as much forces as its limbs allowed, but the kind of state it was in at the moment was similar to a human being bound by rope.

If the rope was just hanging around, then anyone with a sword could easily chop it in half as long as there was enough room to move.

However, when the rope was bound tightly around a person's arms and torso, then there was no easy way for a person to break free. The amount of force it needed to exert from its arms was way too insufficient compared to the strength of sturdy rope.

Ves didn't need to perform any supplemental calculations with his implant to be certain that the First Sword could not free itself from this unorthodox trap!

Even though Venerable Dise was not resigned to this situation and tried out various different tricks by resonating with her expert mech, the First Sword simply didn't possess the options that could break the clamp holding it in place!

"Any other Larkinson expert mech won't fare better either." He realized.

When he substituted his other expert mechs in the same position, he did not think the results would be any different. Neither the Riot nor the Dark Zephyr would be able to escape from this kind of trap.

The only exception in the expeditionary fleet was the Bolvos Rage. The high-tier expert mech not only possessed greater mechanical strength due to the virtue of its high-quality materials and components, but also possessed numerous integrated weapons that could output considerable damage if it wasn't able to employ its handheld weapons.

Ves had grown too complacent after he witnessed the stellar performance of Unending alloy in mech combat. What happened to the Valkyrie Prime proved that expert mechs that excelled in attack power could still breach it under specific circumstances.

Special measures such as the secret trapping mechanism of the Domingo Daren could screw over an Unending alloy expert mech without needing to overcome its hard shell.

That was the job of other dwarven expert mechs!

"At least that's not unreasonable."

The Domingo Daren could only do so much. Its design revolved completely around its gauss cannons, its strong defensive shell and the trapping mechanism it held in reserve against cheeky melee attackers who thought they could slay a turtle by getting close enough.

The expert turtle mech's cannons weren't even able to fire at its trapped prey. The cannons, which were half-exposed due to the removal of the upper shell, didn't possess high elevation angles and weren't capable of firing straight upwards.

Even so, the First Sword was in place and could no longer maneuver freely. This turned it into a perfect target for any follow-up attack, and the first one had already arrived!

The first one to arrive was not the Paravad that had already built up a formidable charge, but the faster and lighter Morko Mark II that had already gone a step ahead!

Though the avian light mech lacked the raw power of its larger and heavier brother, it could still deal quite a lot of damage as long as it built up enough speed, which it had already done!

The Morko Mark II instead surged forward while leading with its remaining intact. Its dwarven expert pilot resonated strongly with the limb, causing it to channel a will driven by hatred, desperation and an overwhelming urge to break the unbreakable!

The attack happened in an instant. In one moment, the Morko Mark II was blazing towards the trapped First Sword with great intensity. In the next moment, the avian light mech had already passed by, its claws showing clear signs of damage but its expert pilot was more than satisfied.

It turned out that the Morko Mark II managed to rend one of the arms of the First Sword! Though the damage wasn't critical, the ugly tears and the damaged mechanical parts represented the first true battle damage the expert mech suffered.

Ves winced at the sight. He could already tell that even if the arm remained to the rest of the frame, Venerable Dise could forget about exerting any force with the crippled limb. It was metaphorically holding on by a thread at the moment!

Up next was the Paravad, which had built up so much momentum that there was a high chance that it could punch through the chest armor of the First Sword.

Would Ketis' proud work be the first Larkinson expert mech to fall in this battle?

This became a very real possibility as Ves tried his best to figure out a solution.

He briefly directed his attention to the other assets on the battlefield.

The remaining Swordmaiden mechs were too weak to do anything.

The Battle Criers were already out, and so was the Valkyrie Prime.

The Dark Zephyr's state was too awful to match up against any of the Hivar Roarer expert mechs, not that it mattered. Venerable Tusa was doing his best to prevent the heavily-disadvantaged left flank from collapsing.

The Eye of Ylvaine could have done something if it activated its new battle network, but time was way too short and its regular firepower was not strong enough to free the First Sword or substantially damage the enemy expert mechs.

The Amaranto, which Ves had regarded as the best option to provide support for the Larkinson Clan's other expert mechs, was being heavily suppressed by the enemy!

Even without the Gauss Baron, the Slug Rangers did their absolute best to keep the masterwork expert rifleman mech out of play as long as possible.

The dwarven opposition recognized the great threat of the Amaranto and decided that it could not be allowed to fire its potent luminar crystal weapon against a vulnerable target again! The help it provided to the Dark Zephyr was just one of many instances where Venerable Stark managed to play a crucial role in the loss of a powerful asset.

If the Amaranto was allowed to attack other powerful enemies across the entire battlefield, then that would heavily suppress the activities of the dwarven expert mechs!

No one aside from Venerable Orthox wanted to get sniped by a potent ranged mech that had the potential to inflict crippling damage with a single hit. The suppression on the Amaranto was frankly unreasonable and put it under no less pressure than the Riot.

This was yet another consequence of getting embroiled in a fight where the enemy came with larger numbers. The Ferrils simply had more options at their disposal and could employ multiple solutions to the same problem.

In contrast, Ves and the rest of the expeditionary fleet was left with agonizing choices as they had to make difficult tradeoffs that supported one friendly mech unit at the cost of leaving other beleaguered mech units to their own devices!

No miracle happened this time. No mech pilot or expert candidate broke through at an opportune moment that could save the day.

In fact, several mech pilots from both sides had broken through during this engagement. The odds that at least one of them were able to push themselves beyond the limit was quite respectable.

The problem was that they didn't always last that long! Just like regular expert candidates such as Vincent Ricklin, anytime the warnet detected a mech that performed way above the norm, the AIs would perform a thorough analysis before concluding that the high-performing machine was either piloted by a promising talent or an actual expert candidate.

No matter the results, such mechs piloted by strong mech pilots were always targeted with great prejudice!

The goal was to eliminate them before they did anything that could reverse a losing trend or strengthen a winning hand by doing something as outrageous as breaking through.

Though the effort put into eliminating the talents identified by combatants or AIs was great, the cost would have been much greater if they waited until the targets in question broke through and wielded forced resonance to devastating effect!

"This is true war."

Such sights weren't common in other battlefields. In the Komodo War where the role of expert pilots was especially crucial, both sides did their best to strangle each other's talents and expert candidates in their cradle.

When Ves briefly studied the list of Larkinson expert candidates, he noticed that a couple of names had already been crossed out. The dwarves generally didn't waste their time on shooting down ejected cockpits but it was a different matter if there was a high likelihood they held expert candidates or talents that had the potential to become more.

Ves felt guilty for not even noticing them as they fought for the Larkinson Clan only to die before the expeditionary fleet had even reached the Red Ocean.

He reminded the kindness exuded by Lieutenant Hector Larkinson of the Living Sentinels. He was one of the few trueblood clansmen who seemed alright and would have been a fine addition to the expert pilots of the Larkinson Clan.

He was not as sad about Tamarin Larkinson's passing. Though he displayed great heroism as he fought against the vengeful Molten Hammers alongside other fellow Avatars, his stance on putting trueblood Larkinsons on top of everyone in the clan was an undesirable political stance.

The stubborn knight mech pilot would have become a major obstacle to Ves if he broke through. Now that he was taken out of the equation, that was one less issue to worry about.

The only displeasure Ves felt towards his passing was that the Larkinsons didn't gain any replacements that could fill up the missing slots. Less expert candidates meant less expert pilots in the future. Though Ves was not in the mood to design more expert mechs after he completed the current round of design projects, he reconsidered his stance after seeing the consequences of bringing too few expert mechs to a battle once again.

"We need to do a better job of protecting and nurturing our expert candidates!"

At this time, the Paravad had reached its end run! After taking sufficient time to build up a formidable amount of momentum like a lancer mech, it had circled around until it faced the rear of the First Sword.

Now, its sharp and highly-charged beak thrust forward with the mass and speed of an entire mech behind this attack.

"It's coming!"

A silent collision that lit up the optical sensors took place! So much energy had been released that a lot of other sensors failed to make sense of the situation at the moment!

This blow was the culmination of Venerable Merek's desire to fell the evil human expert mech. In his will, no human armor was impervious or unbreakable. With dwarven power and Vulcan's blessing, the dwarven expert pilot was convinced that his righteous charge struck true!

It took a few seconds for the interference to clear up so that everyone could see the aftermath of the devastating charge attack.