The Mech Touch

"Meow."

Lucky nervously crawled onto the shoulder pad of the Unending Regalia.

Against armored infantry or a lone mech, the cat was confident he could fight them off. Resisting an expert mech or an ace mech was another matter, though!

Extraordinary mechs possessed too many advantages over Lucky. Not only did the machines enjoy a powerful scale advantage, the addition of expert pilots or ace pilots resulted in a powerful synergistic relationship where they could leverage awesome powers that were no less impressive than Lucky's capabilities!

The gem cat's powerful phasing abilities allowed him to pass through any solid obstacles, but the resonance shields of extraordinary mechs gave him no chance to sneak into a ċȯċkpit and ȧssassinate the pilot.

In fact, even if their resonance shields broke, expert pilots could still sense a presence like Lucky sneaking around. As long as they expended some effort, they could launch a powerful attack that could certainly overpower the cat's defenses!

If Lucky happened to become an enormous mechanical monstrosity that was at least the size of a mech, then he might be able to put up a decent fight, but he was currently the size of a common housecat!

Even if miniaturization was amazing, there were hard limits to how much power could be stuffed in a limited volume. Lucky needed to go through an exponentially greater amount of development to even match up against the likes of an expert mech!

"Hey. Don't panic. We'll try and get out of this. There's still a bit of distance between us and the enemy." Ves reached out and gently patted his pet.

He continued to listen carefully as the Crossers gave Ves a brief overview on what made ace mechs different from lesser machines.

"I won't speak much about ace mechs. My mech designer can tell you more about them." Patriarch Reginald gruffly said. "What I can tell you is that ace pilots are irresistible. You can still kill them if they are not in their mechs, but that never happens for obvious reasons."

The MTA would never let anyone get away with ȧssassinating an ace pilot! As long as its investigators employed their full technological capabilities to investigate a suspicious death, the culprits and the ones who ordered the hits would get exposed sooner or later.

Though Ves heard sporadic rumors over the galactic net that some people managed to get away with such a horrible deed, it only ever happened in the galactic center where the technology level was high enough to frustrate the MTA's search capabilities.

Patriarch Reginald continued his explanation. "As for when they are piloting their ace mechs, that is when they truly unlock their strength. An ace pilot's will is so grand and heavy that a Saint can only leverage his complete potential with the help of an incredibly strong medium. Once his condition is met, the result is a combination where something close to a god has descended onto the battlefield!"

That was quite a bombastic description, but it was too vague for Ves. What he needed wasn't fairy tales, but solid data!

"Can you be more concrete on how powerful ace pilots can be?" He asked. "For example, can you give us a quick estimate on whether our current lineup of mechs and expert mechs can defeat the ace mech?"

Much to his relief, of the others answered that it was impossible. That meant there was still a chance.

"We roughly know our own strength." Marshal Ariadne stated. "That is not enough for us to determine whether our chances of defeating the enemy ace mech are realistic. Similar to expert pilots, there is a broad range of ace pilots that can range from strong to almost invincible. None of them are weak, mind you, but as long as their ace mechs aren't too exaggerated and haven't progressed too much, it may be possible to take them down… but only at a ruinous cost."

While the Glory Seeker leader talked, Ves just received a critical report from the Black Cats.

"Ah, sorry to interrupt you, but our intelligence service has just obtained critical intelligence about the ace mech that just showed up. According to our investigation, the ace mech is a known machine in the Vulcan Empire. It is the Olympus Mons, a famed hammer-wielding ace mech piloted by Saint Yila Mayorka, the Mountain Hammer. She once served in the elite 5th Imperial Giants mech regiment, which is one of the honor guard units that is responsible for protecting the grand regent of the Vulcan Empire."

Everyone's eyes widened. This was an incomparably great identity. It was natural for the head of state or head of government of a powerful second-rate state to enjoy the highest degree of protection. As long as an ace pilot was loyal enough, he or she would not look down on guarding the highest leader of a state!

According to the intelligence brief that Ves received, the 5th Imperial Giants was not just one of the grand regent's protection duties, but also enjoyed a rich tradition. It was one of the best performing units in the rebellion and had always been based in the Uriburn Province, the center of power of the entire Vulcan Empire.

The reason why this mech regiment was called the Imperial Giants was because they were one of the few units that had been given the privilege of becoming the honored guards of the emperor of the dwarven state shortly after its founding.

Of course, since the Vulcan Empire's throne was empty, the Imperial Giants defaulted to protecting whoever occupied the office of grand regent.

"If she's one of the big dwarven chief's personal bodyguards, then what is she doing here?" Marshal Ariadne asked. "With the Vulcan Empire ȧssaulted on all sides, shouldn't this dwarven Saint 

"The report states that Saint Yila Mayorka and her Olympus Mons disappeared from the Uriburn Province almost eleven years ago. Could they have been staying on that dwarven frigate that camouflaged herself as an asteroid for all of this time?" Reginald questioned with a frown.

If that was true, then the patience and dedication that this so-called Mountain Hammer showed was certainly superhuman!

"Let's get back to the question at hand." Ves said. "How strong is an ace mech? How strong is the Olympus Mons? For now, it doesn't appear to be able to threaten us, but it will be a different story once it comes close enough to put its hammer to use. Can we repel it by bombarding it with all of our ranged mechs?"

"Unlikely." Patriarch Reginald shook his head. "In the Garlen Empire, it is a well-known rule that ordinary mech pilots should never bother to attack ace mechs. The reason for that is the domain field that these powerful machines can project in an area around their frames."

"What can this field do, exactly?"

"Domain fields or Saint Kingdoms as they are sometimes referred to are superpowered resonance fields that can stretch across kilometers. Ace pilots have much greater control of what goes on in their territory. They can easily block or weaken a massive amount of incoming ordinance because they all have to go through the target's domain field first. The effectiveness of the domain field is not low, so a single ace mech can easily block the attacks of entire mech divisions even if they aren't oriented towards defense."

"There are still limits to how long an ace pilot can keep up a domain field." Marshal Ariadne added. "The issue is that they can potentially sustain their domain fields for hours. Resonance-empowered attacks launched by expert pilots can deplete them a lot faster, but the differences in strength are too great most of the time. Besides, we only have a single ranged expert mech at our disposal."

That was bad news. The existence of something as strong and ridiculous as a domain field provided ace mechs with the capital to massacre tens of thousands of regular mechs while using their superior defenses and mobility to retain their initiative. No amount of regular mechs could stop these potent machines from pushing through their attacks or withdrawing if a powerful response was about to arrive.

Patriarch Reginald sighed. "Let me give you a bit of context, Patriarch Ves. Are expert pilots strong, you think?"

"Uhm, sure."

"According to a resonance meter, an expert pilot measures from 1 to 67 laveres. An ace pilot measures between 67 to 1545 laveres. In practice, no ace pilot will stay under 100 laveres for long. Their strength will quickly outpace that of an expert pilot to such a degree that each and every Saint can crush dozens of Venerables. This is why expert pilots are weak."

Ves shuddered underneath his Unending Regalia. "Do you really see yourself as weak?"

"That is how I always saw myself." Patriarch Reginald replied in a ridiculing tone. "Expert pilots are only strong to normal people. At our level, my fellow expert pilots and I are practically children. Our ability to leverage our will to produce true resonance looks impressive at first, but it is actually too weak and crude. Our proud resonance shields and resonance abilities are poor copies of the real deal. It is only at the level of an ace pilot that the laws of reality can finally be overridden by the laws mastered by the individual Saints!"

This was a new concept that Ves had never heard of. This was genuine high-end information that only a select group of people knew about.

Some of the traits about domain fields sounded similar to how he and his design spirits employed their own domains. However, they weren't capable of overriding one law for another!"

"When an expert pilot advances to ace pilot, his strongest combat means and the skills he has mastered the most will become sublimated into something greater." Reginald said. "For example, a swordswoman such as Venerable Dise will undoubtedly develop a domain field that is at least based around swords. They've moved beyond the level of mere specialties or techniques. They've evolved into that pilot's personal kingdom, a field where he can exert his strongest attacks with much greater strength, variety and control than before. This is already close to how actual god pilots fight."

Ves understood the gist of the Cross Patriarch's message.

To put it simply, expert pilots were merely upgraded versions of regular mech pilots. They were powerful to be sure, but they still possessed many of the weaknesses of mortal pilots. They were the equivalent of children who could pretend they were as strong as their parents, but in practice they just fumbled around with their toys.

The more Ves learned about ace mechs, the less confidence he held that his fleet could repel the approaching dwarven ace mech. Massed numbers no longer appeared to be as helpful. The only available options that might truly cause this monster to pause was to employ his expert mechs or his battle formations!

Soon, Ves received another notification.

"One of our scouting bots just came close enough to perform a reliable measurement on the resonance strength Olympus Mons. The readings currently average at 647 laveres."

Everyone looked heavy while Patriarch Reginald's eyes widened. Out of everyone, he knew what this meant most of all. This was already 11 times more laveres than what the Cross Patriarch was able to reach with his Bolvar Rage!

Yet that was a misleading comparison. The lavere scale was not linear but more complex.

In practice, the Olympus Mons was at least 100 times stronger than the Bolvar Rage depending on the criteria! The former could easily crush a company of expert mechs while only incurring light damage at most. That was why ace mechs were often considered to be the equivalent of weapons of mass destruction. There was just no stopping them once they unleashed their awe-inspiring might!

Ves softly gulped. "Is an ace mech who measures at 647 laveres an opponent that we can even resist?"

"...."