The Mech Touch

The four expert mechs took a substantial risk by penetrating deep inside the enormous fleshy body of the Titania.

Fortunately, the risk wasn't as high as before. After suffering from successive battle formation attacks including one that damaged both its flesh and psyche, the Titania's feral consciousness had lost complete control over its body!

The enormous walls of flesh around the four expert mechs did not squeeZe or try to block their passage.

Just in case, all four machines maximiZed the power of their resonance shields just in case.

Even if the Titania was just pretending to show weakness, the expert pilots were all confident they could break out of every trap!

"Damn, all of this dead and brittle flesh looks gruesome." Venerable Orfan commented as the four mechs just entered a large but dusty internal cavity. "We should employ the dust formation attack more often."

"It doesn't work as well against mechs. Their armor is too hard. Only their upper layers get shaved off. It is much more effective against softer targets such as this giant astral beast that mainly relies on quantity for strength."

"How do you know that, Dise?"

"I spend time with the Penitent Sisters."

"Alright, that's enough! Focus on the mission, ladies!" Patriarch Reginald transmitted through their short-range communication channel. "There's a lot of organ-like bits here, but one of them must be the brain or the heart of this massive beast. Even if we aren't attacking the right organs, they must still be important in other ways! Now get to work!"

The Cross Patriarch felt rather upset that he and his Crossers hadn't contributed that much to the battle so far. Sure, the ranged mechs under his command were doing steady work on whittling down the Titania from afar, but their attacks were only doing the equivalent of damaging the astral beast's skin.

The Larkinsons and the Glory Seekers had accomplished much more with their miraculous battle formation attacks!

Though the Titania behaved as if it was close to death after suffering so many biZarre attacks, Patriarch Reginald remained vigilant in case the big monster recovered all of a sudden.

Though he wasn't a biotech expert or anything, he knew that giant organisms like the Titania tended to be extremely hard to kill!

They had evolved under harsh circumstances where they were constantly being bombarded by radiation. They could suffer under all kinds of accidents as they grew up. On top of that, they also had to be able to fend off attacks against other astral beasts.

All of these harsh circumstances pressured many astral beast species into developing an enormous amount of vitality. Their huge bodies and their redundant organs allowed them to survive even if half of their bodies became crushed.

This was why neither Patriarch Reginald nor the other expert pilots expected any immediate results. They just controlled their mechs to attack every organ within reach with the hope that they could get lucky or at least bring the Titania further away from its recovery!

Powerful resonance-empowered attacks lit up the dark inner cavity.

The Bolvos Rage generated the greatest lightshow. The hybrid mech was armed with a suite of powerful weapons that damaged multiple organs at once.

Missiles soared from the back of the high-tier expert mech and struck many random organs that had already been weakened by earlier attacks.

The Bolvos Rage's shoulder-mounted positron turrets automatically fired at different organs, seeking to burn and vaporiZe the grayish alien flesh without mercy.

If Patriarch Reginald encountered a particularly large organ that had not been sufficiently weakened, his expert mech let loose with its large chest-mounted positron cannon. The bright and powerful beam produced by this weapon module never failed to break open the particular agglomeration of flesh that looked important in some way!

The arms of the Bolvar Rage did not remain idle either. One arm launched plasma bolts from its wrists while the other arm swung an axe through every bit of flesh in the way!

Through these efforts, the Bolvar Rage easily inflicted damage that exceeded that of any other expert mech inside the giant beast!

The second-most damaging mech was the First Sword. The expert swordsman mech piloted by Venerable Dise was armed with a greatsword that was great at inflicting damage on large targets. No organ could resist getting cut by its masterwork blade, especially since they were unable to put up any form of defense due to the Titania's impairment.

"This isn't enough!"

In order to amplify the First Sword's damage output, Venerable Dise resonated with her mech and blade. With the help of the resonating material called Bissonat, her force of will generated a long and sharp energy blade that extended well past the tip of the already-long Decapitator!

When the First Sword swung its weapon next, it managed to tear a large piece of flesh around the expert mech!

Slice after slice caused the defenseless tissue to be cut to pieces. The First Sword already managed to destroy the organs in the vicinity!

Compared to the destructiveness of the Bolvos Rage and the First Sword, the other two expert mechs did not do as well on this front.

Neither the Riot nor the Amphis possessed any special solutions that could allow them to inflict mass destruction. This was not a surprise to anyone as the mechs allocated a lot of their power to their potent defenses.

Even so, they were still expert mechs. The damage they dealt to the inner flesh tissue of the Titania was not light!

Spears landed like artillery shells on vulnerable flesh. A heavy chainsword slammed into organs with the force of a meteorite. Both the Riot and the Amphis were making steady progress.

Though none of the expert pilots felt that they had struck any decisive blows, the mass damage they inflicted was certainly having an effect on the Titania!

Numerous indicators such as its lack of recovery and its dwindling energy generation showed that its decline was accelerating instead of slowing down. The massive beast was dying slowly and sure.

It just wasn't happening fast enough to everyone's liking.

"This is taking forever!" Venerable Orfan complained. "Maybe we should call in the other melee mechs to speed up the demolition process."

"No." Venerable Linda Cross shook her head as she commanded her Amphis to throw its heavy chainsword at another vulnerable organ. "They cannot survive if the astral beast regains control."

Venerable Dise grunted in agreement. "We are already doing enough as far as I can tell. Can't you feel it? The beast is strong, but it is continuing to grow weaker. We might not even need to kill its brain at this rate."

Though none of them knew how critical all of these organs were, it became more and more evident that they supported many different important functions that allowed the massive organism to stay alive.

After 9 minutes of uninterrupted destruction, a change had finally occurred.

The Titania… had gone still.

The four expert mechs continued their spree of destruction just to be safe and all of the mechs outside continued to open fire as well, yet the sensation was different this time.

The utter lack of reaction from the Titania made it look as if they were beating at a dead carcass!

The astral beast's flesh parted a little easier and the blood that flowed through the monster's arteries had lost a lot of pressure.

"Is it dead this time?"

"I seriously don't know."

This was a strange outcome to the mech pilots. They were accustomed to celebrating their victory once their enemies fled or crumbled into pieces. In these situations, it was always obvious when the battle was over.

The battle against the Titania was different. While one side consisted of several human mech former, the other side only encompassed a single giant astral beast. The latter didn't operate like the former and that constantly threw the humans off their game.

Even if it looked as if the Titania had sustained so much damage that there should be no way that it could recover with the intact flesh and organs it had left, who knew how these astral beasts truly worked? They were biZarre forms of life that had evolved to be as resilient as possible against so many different threats in space.

The uncertainty surrounding the astral beast's actual state presented the Golden Skull Alliance with a conundrum.

Should they continue to beat up this huge mountain of flesh or should they slow down and see what they could do at this point?

"Is it possible to capture this astral beast alive?"

What would be the point of that? It's too big and powerful to be kept as a pet and I doubt it has any research value."

Ves frowned as he observed the distant astral beast as it continued to get hit by thousands of ranged attacks. The shower of energy beams and kinetic projectiles continued to do a lot of harm to the Titania's body, but they still hadn't penetrated all the way to the inner cavity where the four expert mechs were doing their work.

"This is taking too long and I don't think it's useful to attack the Titania any further." He opined.

"The astral beast might be deceiving us, sir." General Verle cautioned. "It has surprised us once before, remember?"

"I know, but I'm pretty sure it is dead or so close to dying that it can't pose any threat to us anymore. Let's slow down our attacks and send in additional probes to examine the Titania's current state."

"That… might give the astral beast the time it needs to recover."

"Then let us install a lot of explosives that can be triggered to blow if the astral beast is still alive!"

General Verle's projection did not look supportive of this plan. "With all due respect, this is hubris, sir. It is much safer to treat the Titania as a research subject once we truly know it is dead. The best way to do that is to damage it to such an extent that it has fractured into multiple pieces."

"No! Don't do that! Let's not try and damage this astral beast any further than we need to! Don't you realiZe how much we can gain if we are able to study and even recover all of the intact organs and so on? It will be a lot harder to make these gains if everything is being flung in different directions. Have you forgotten about the presumed superluminal travel capabilities of this astral beast?"

This time, General Verle could no longer remain unmoved. His projection stared deeply at Ves.

"You think there is phasewater inside the Titania."

"I'm not thinking about it. I know it. There is a lot of evidence that the Titania originally resided in another star system. How could it have possibly traveled here, then? It is so big that I doubt that any other astral beast or intelligent species went through the trouble of transporting this meat mount to this location. The only reasonable answer that is left is that the Titania moved here by its own power, and as a creature that is native to the Red Ocean, that means it must have certainly utiliZed an organ that acts as a natural warp drive!"

Ves grew increasingly more certain of this conclusion. The evidence was there. Though none of the scanners picked out the presence of phasewater, the valuable substance was notoriously difficult to find from afar.

Strong scanners had to be deployed a lot closer in order to uncover where the astral beast had stashed all of its phasewater.

Perhaps the attacks of the four expert mechs had already caused them to spill in every direction. Ves really didn't want to see this happen!

"Let us use one more means in order to prove the creature is dead." Ves proposed. "Let's send in Joshua."

Venerable Joshua was famed for being able to attune to pets as well as humans… Since the Titania was also supposed to be a living organism, the expert pilot should be able to find out whether the Titania was truly as dead as it seemed!