The Mech Touch

At least that was what it looked like. While the Crossers all maintained their excitement and their enthusiasm at the explosive performance of their new ace pilot and expert mech, the mood amongst the Larkinsons was completely different!

Sure, the Larkinsons were initially happy when they saw that the strongest mech pilot of their allies had reached an unprecedented level of strength.

Even though it was a pity that Reginald was not a Larkinson, he was still a solid ally and friend of their clan.

Then they realized that their proudest expert mechs were about to test their mettle against the very same ace pilot!

As much as they celebrated Reginald's successful advancement, they could vaguely tell that his power was far more than what the Larkinson expert pilots could compete against.

They only had to recall the awful time when the Olympus Mons piloted by Saint Yila Mayorka easily crushed the best efforts of the Larkinson champions to land a single blow onto the dwarven ace mech.

Even if Reginald had only advanced a short time ago and even if the Mars was technically still an expert mech did not provide much solace to the Larkinsons.

The power of this transphasic expert mech was too exaggerated!

As one of the first high-end expert mechs in the Red Ocean that featured an extravagant collection of transphasic mech parts, the Mars was most likely the strongest second-class expert mech in the Krakatoa Middle Zone!

As for the Larkinson expert mechs, while each of them possessed numerous unique features that allowed them to punch above their weight, there was only so much ingenuity could do to compensate for an absolute power gap.

Ves was not optimistic about the coming display at all, but he did not have any ideas for calling off the test.

First, he and his fellow mech designers needed to gather essential data on how the Mars performed against more extraordinary opponents.

Second, his own expert pilots needed to be taught a lesson. A solid defeat would most definitely cause them to feel more pressure again. Once they realized their own inadequacies, they would surely do their best to close the gap to Patriarch Reginald as much as possible!

Third, he and Gloriana needed to see precisely how bad the gap was between their old work and the Mars. They had already decided to upgrade the first generation of Larkinson expert mechs with high-end heartland-level components.

From the incredible performance of the Mars, it already became clear to him that they also seriously needed to consider the decision to integrate transphasic components in their old work.

How much they needed to prioritize this matter depended on how this coming confrontation unfolded.

He opened a communication channel to the pilot of the Minerva.

"You're in charge, Casella. I won't tell you what to do, but I need as much data as possible. The longer you last and the more varied the actions you undertake, the more useful data that you will generate. Try your best not to fight too monotonously or get beaten too quickly."

Commander Casella Ingvar made a sour expression. "We will try our best, sir, but frankly speaking most of this battle is out of our hands. We are at Patriarch Reginald's mercy."

"I am sure he is curious to see how much of an advantage he possesses against our expert mechs."

Though Professor Benedict had already instructed Reginald to prolong the battle, who knew how much the newly-ascended Saint would listen.

Now that he had obtained power beyond almost every person in the galaxy, Patriarch REginald must definitely have grown a lot more conceited than before!

His father already exhibited this personality flaw. The chances were great that the son was barely any better in this regard!

Ves just hoped that Reginald would be able to hold himself back long enough to conclude this fruitful testing session in a productive manner.

"Our expert mechs are going hot!"

Casella had already issued her first orders. She had immediately split her forces into two groups.

The Amaranto mounted against the Shield of Samar. The expert rifleman mech used the shoulder of the expert heavy space knight as a support for its formidable luminar crystal rifle.

Venerable Davia Stark did not hold back in the slightest! She not only charged her Instrument of Vengeance rifle at full power, but also activated the Overcharge resonating ability, which temporarily tripled the output of the Amaranto's power reactor!

If that wasn't enough, she also resonated with the Illustrious One, allowing her to activate the Passing Light ability, which had proven to bypass resonance shields in the past!

Activating all of these abilities at once and at full power was extremely strenuous to Venerable Stark. She had to resonate with multiple different entities in a different manner at the same time.

This compelled the middle-aged woman to split her concentration, making so that she had less attention to spare on her own defenses!

Fortunately, the Shield of Samar provided more than adequate cover to the Amaranto, allowing the latter to invest itself fully into its next attack!

"It's rare to see the Amaranto fire a maximum power shot." Ves looked interested as he rubbed his smooth-shaven chin.

In truth, there was one more way to empower the Amaranto's next attack further. However, that required Ves to manually resonate with his masterwork mech and transfer Blinky so that the Amaranto's next attack would be empowered with Worclaw energy.

While Ves was incredibly curious whether an attack of this magnitude was enough to threaten the Mars, he did not choose to employ it this time.

Not only was the MTA watching these proceedings like a hawk, Ves would feel enormously drained and tired after he made this move.

He would have to spend weeks to recover to his peak, which meant he wouldn't be able to rely on this trump card during this entire time!

"Maybe I should have a little more faith in Venerable Stark and the Amaranto." Ves hummed.

When the Amaranto finally let loose, its Instrument of Vengeance spat out a thick and bright light beam that instantly soared toward the Mars and struck against the exterior of the Saint Kingdom!

At first, the beam seemed to pierce through this insanely strong defensive bubble, but then it stopped after traversing just a dozen meters.

"...That's it?" Ves bewilderingly asked.

He knew the power of the Amaranto's full-powered shots quite well. Its power not only came from its custom luminar crystal rifle, but also came from the various enhancements that only this specific combination of expert mech, design spirit and expert pilot could produce!

Yet despite pooling all of their power together, the Amaranto failed to make substantial progress in overcoming the new expert hybrid mech's first layer of defense!

The other two Larkinson ranged expert mechs added their firepower to the mix as well.

The Everchanger's Vitalus rifle along with the Minerva's Irvan rifle not only shot in unison, but also targeted the part of the domain field that had just been pierced by the Instrument of Vengeance!

Yet despite striking the exact same spot at very similar angles, the Patriarch Reginald's Saint Kingdom continued to hold strong!

This level of performance was almost consistent with that of the Olympus Mons!

This was yet another illustration of the notion that the power of an ace mech was largely derived from the ace pilot.

The latter weighed substantially more than the former. This explained why a half-step ace mech like the Mars was still able to project a formidable domain field despite not containing any ace mech-grade resonating exotics!

For their part, the Larkinsons did not give up on their effort. The Amaranto, the Everchanger and the Minerva continued to launch persistent attacks, trying out many different attack methods.

They cycled through different luminar attack phase crystals to see which beam type posed the greatest threat against Reginald's Saint Kingdom.

None of them seemed to be particularly effective, though. Laser beams and positron beams simply winked out as Reginald straightforwardly willed the photons and particles out of existence once the energy entered his Saint Kingdom!

Slicer beams disappeared even faster as they weren't as spread out over a wider area.

Reginald did not even bother to stop the disruptor beams from striking the Mars. While they were supposed to behave similar to EMP attacks by disrupting any electrical systems, the Cross Clan's flagship project was too well-shielded, well-defended and well-constructed for it to be vulnerable to these attacks!

The only beam types that worked a little better were kinetic beams and light beams.

The former was made up of kinetic force which meant that Reginald needed to suppress it through brute force.

The latter were specifically effective against all manner of extraordinary phenomenon.

The Larkinson expert mechs with ranged weapons eventually settled on light beams as their primary mode of attacks. The expert pilots could all observe how Reginald's Saint Kingdom needed to put substantially more effort into stopping the light beams from corroding its integrity.

Yet despite the best efforts of Venerable Stark and company, their ranged attacks lacked the punch to overcome this insanely powerful barrier!

"It's not enough." Sara Voiken shook her head at the sight. "Domain fields are an expression of an ace pilot's ability to control the surrounding space using their mental power or willpower. It is well-known that ace pilots, even newer ones, are able to impose so much control over the reality around them that they can warp and manipulate any form of mass and energy in their reach as long as they are piloting decent mechs. It is apparent that the Mars in its current incarnation provides more than enough amplification for Patriarch Reginald to effectively control matter and energy at a strong enough level to snuff out any relatively weak attacks."

In other words, unless the expert mechs were able to consistently launch attacks that were at least as powerful as the Amaranto's full-powered shots, they wouldn't be able to whittle down the physical integrity of the Mars in the slightest!

All the attacks were doing so far was exhausting Reginald's force of will over time, which was quite futile because the ace pilot had plenty of mental capacity to spare after his explosive breakthrough!

Ace pilots were much greater than expert pilots in every single aspect. Their endurance was no longer comparable to that of expert pilots now that they had overcome their second major bottleneck!

Ves had long been proud of the extreme firepower that he managed to bestow upon the Amaranto, but it was surprising how access to new technology along with entering a more dangerous region could change his attitude.

While he felt it was acceptable if the Everchanger and the Minerva weren't able to overcome this challenge, the lack of threat from the Amaranto towards the Mars was a significant letdown!

The Amaranto was supposed to be his answer against singularly powerful individual threats! If it wasn't able to threaten the Mars when it was in its peak form, then how could Ves rely on it to take on other powerful threats in the future?

"I definitely need to upgrade her rifle in a future design round!" Ves vowed to himself.

At this moment, he suspected that not even ten expert rifleman mechs identical to the Amaranto was able to pose a serious threat to the Mars. Their collective firepower still wasn't great enough to overcome the incredible defensive threshold of Patriarch Reginald's Saint Kingdom!

"Our melee mechs are about to close in on the Mars!"

Ves perked up a bit when he saw that the other Larkinson expert mechs were about to go into action.

Yet when the Dark Zephyr approached first by virtue of its speed and entered the 'bubble' that denoted Reginald's domain field, the expert light skirmisher abruptly slowed down to the point it was frozen into place!

Even its powerful resonance shield that provided the mech with essential protection against outside influences collapsed like a bubble!

"This…"

"The disparity in willpower is too great." Professor Benedict calmly pointed out. "Venerable Tusa Billingsley-Larkinson is still a low-tier expert pilot. No matter how many tricks he can pull off in battle, when it comes to a straightforward contest of resonance strength, he has no chance of resisting!"

This was why the mech community often thought that it would be suicide for expert mechs to fight against ace mechs at closer ranges.

As long as the former entered the Saint Kingdoms of the latter, they directly subjected themselves to the whims of the opposing ace pilot!

"This is pure willpower suppression!"