The Mech Touch

From the native aliens of the Red Ocean to the latest batch of pioneers who just passed through the greater beyonder gate, phasewater had become the most useful exotic to everyone.

Although humans were in the process of improving their many different applications of phasewater at a rapid tempo, the native aliens unquestionably mastered its uses to a much higher degree!

Even a relatively backwards and isolated race like the pescans had managed to refine their integration of phasewater in different forms of technology over many generations.

This gradual process of iterative improvements along with occasional exposure to more advanced transphasic products utilized by the nunsers allowed the pescans to make good use out of the small amounts of phasewater they were allowed to use for themselves.

The aliens invested much resources and effort into developing the four giant battle suits.

Each of them had originally been designed to guard the great chief of the native city state of Davute during formal addresses and other important events.

Though the speed and mobility of these towering metal suits were extremely poor, their defensive and offensive power more than made up for these shortcomings!

When combat constructs reached this size and scale, they no longer fit the definition of infantry suits anymore.

Although they had not quite reached the scale of mechs, they straddled the line between infantry and combat vehicles!

Even though an ordinary mech should be able to crush these thick and lumbering alien suits of armor, it was a bit too much to ask for a single swordmaster to defeat all of them at once.

This circumstance clearly showed how extraordinary warriors such as swordmasters could put so much work and effort into becoming strong, only to get surpassed by crude products of technology that only performed better by virtue of being a lot bigger!

Of course, Ketis was still a relatively junior swordmaster who was separated from her preferred equipment, but it rankled her a lot that four transphasic shield generators stood in the way between her and her latest opponents!

Her sword shimmered with stars as she continuously slashed them against the active energy shields in the way.

Even though Venerable Dise's Phase Cutter technique allowed Ketis to destabilize the transphasic energy shields with remarkable effectiveness, the alien shield generators possessed a surprising amount of capacity for resisting damage.

Ketis estimated that it would take around a dozen strikes to overcome an energy shield, and that still left her with three more that she also had to destroy!

"Break for me, already!"

The glittering points of light that struck the energy shield in the way had been gradually corroding the energy shield before her. Just as it was close to breaking apart, the damaged shield in question reduced its range, causing it to make way for a fresh and undamaged energy shield!

"What?!"

By pulling back the damaged energy shield, the giant battle suit that projected it could calmly restore its integrity and make it as good as new with much less trouble.

In the meantime, the energy shield projected by another giant battle suit could easily resist just as many attacks!

As Ketis slashed her sword against the energy shield, she felt more and more helpless as the aliens performed the same trick yet again.

A third energy shield stood in her way as the second one moved back so that it could recover to its original state.

"So this is why there are four of them." Ketis frowned as she hastily evaded three incoming laser beam attacks. "They are designed to work in unison!"

Their design and configuration clearly reflected that. So long as neither Ketis nor any other enemies were able to punch through multiple transphasic energy shields in quick succession, these dastardly giant battle suits would be able to rotate their regenerating energy barriers on a continuous basis!

While the energy required to power these transphasic energy shields was considerable, much of the bulk of these giant suits were dedicated to keeping them running.

The protection offered by their armor was not as much as the protection granted by their energy shields!

This fit with the trend of the Red Ocean. Only relatively poor states and organizations relied on armor to protect their assets from attacks. It was a lot more efficient and convenient to rely on strong energy shields instead!

"We can't go on like this!" Ketis cursed. "We need a better way to breach these energy shields. Do you have any trick up your sleeve, Lucky?!"

"Meeeeeooow!" Lucky whined and complained as he attempted to fend off a batch of reinforcements that had just arrived from afar.

Transphasic technology was his nemesis. The gem cat could easily kill any other soldier that made use of powerful tech and equipment, but once they made use of transphasic defenses, the cat instantly lost his biggest advantage which was the ability to phase through solid matter!

Since the entire prison structure was made out of hardy transphasic stone, Lucky couldn't even use his other favorite tactic which was lurk underneath the floor until he was able to position himself right underneath his next target.

As Ketis momentarily stepped away in order to evade another round of attacks, her intuition suddenly screamed out in alarm!

Her life was under threat!

Time seemed to slow as her glowing sword had just cut through the neck of another elite soldier.

She discovered that all four giant battle suits aimed their shrapnel cannons right in her direction.

"Your own comrades are in the way!"

More pescan soldiers had come to suppress her, which gave Ketis the illusion that the aliens would still be reluctant to commit friendly fire.

The aliens turned out to be a lot more ruthless than she thought!

Though the pescans in the way were just starting to turn back and retreat, Ketis had no doubt that many of them would get implicated by this cruel attack!

The realization that four different shrapnel guns were about to flood the entire space around her with lethal shards of transphasic metal sent her blood pumping harder than ever.

She instantly moved to defend herself against this devastating strike before she even put conscious thought on her plan.

The swordmaster jumped back and withdrew as far away as possible in order to reduce the concentration of shards that might hit her body.

She then retreated towards a pile of prone alien bodies that just happened to belong to former elite soldiers.

She rapidly dropped her body behind one of the armored corpses. She had oriented herself in such a way that she lay prone on a perpendicular angle to the four giant battle suits, thereby minimizing the chance that she would get hit by the spread of shards.

However, if any of the metal projectiles did manage to hit her body, they were liable to punch through her frontal armor and damage her organs.

This was why she used the remaining time she had left to lift up a nearby alien body and placed it on top of her combat armor.

She then made sure to activate her personal energy shield to its most powerful state while resonating with the sword that she had pressed between herself and the armored alien corpse.

It was only then that the large and powerful giant battle suits fired their shrapnel cannons!

"MEEEEEOOOOW!"

The spread of shards were so great that one of them happened to hit Lucky's body, which not only caused significant damage to his slender form, but also flung his mechanical body far away!

Since the wearers or controllers of the battle suits focused solely on taking down the threatening human, a lot of shards propelled in the direction of Ketis.

eαglesnovel`c,om Since she was not as small as a cat, her chances of getting struck were much higher!

Ketis gritted her teeth as the body she used as cover got hit over a dozen times!

Though the transphasic armor of the nearly intact but headless body absorbed many of the shards, a few of them cut straight through and rapidly depleted the personal energy shield generator that she had been using as a life-saving prop.

Its capacity was quite impressive due to being a product of high technology, but it had never been designed to resist so many strong attacks!

So many shards struck the energy shield at once despite the buffer of an alien body that it had finally broken!

"Ahh!"

Though much of the shards had lost steam by now, a few still managed to push through and inflicted severe damage onto Ketis' combat armor!

The borrowed combat armor gained several major holes as the shards embedded into the flesh of the swordmaster.

As soon as the momentary storm had passed, Ketis immediately threw aside the body and ripped out the three shards at rapid speed.

She just managed to pull them out in time to roll her body and evade a few laser beam attacks.

The violent motions didn't do her wounds any good!

Her damaged suit of combat armor struggled to plug the gaps and temporarily mend the wounds with emergency stopgap solutions.

Ketis actually grew impressed by how much functionality the Davutan combat armor retained after enduring a considerable amount of damage.

Though Ketis did not look tattered at the moment, her expression turned ugly now that she noticed that she became a lot more vulnerable to attacks.

If any pescan managed to score a hit on the holes in her torso and leg, the attacks were liable to inflict crippling damage!

This was the cruel reality of being a swordmaster. A mech could at least rely on large and resilient interiors to absorb a lot of damage without getting shut down entirely.

The human body was much more fragile!

It wouldn't be until she could become a sword saint that her body may be able to become a lot more resilient, but even then a decent mech could crush her with ease regardless of how much she strengthened her flesh and bones.

She heard that only a sword god could fully the might of a mech, but even then it was dubious whether such a human could resist the might of an ace mech, let alone a god mech!

Ketis groaned in pain as she retreated in a pathetic manner in order to prevent herself from getting hit by a second shrapnel cannon volley.

These alien mechanical monsters were too strong for her to fight against!

She deeply resented the fact that four oversized battle suits resisted her offensive and depleted her defenses.

She felt ashamed for scampering away like a coward.

Her feelings didn't matter, though. The pescan battle suits simply possessed too many advantages over her. She had a lot more confidence in beating them if she could isolate one of the large battle constructs, but that was not the case.

Should she just give up and circle around them? The powerful pescan tank was still intact and she was wasting far too much time on these machines.

"I can't do that."

Her pride and dignity as a swordmaster would suffer a heavy blow if she pulled back from this challenge.

While it was not unrecoverable, it would still leave an awful stain on her mental record.

Besides, as soon as these heavy combatants realized that they could no longer catch up to Ketis, they would probably move towards the main entrance and unleash their awesome might against the human forces who were least equipped to withstand so much power!

Ketis gritted her teeth as she hid behind cover that was distant enough to render the shrapnel cannons ineffective.

Many different plans coursed through her mind, but none of them sounded viable. The only ones that had the greatest hope of succeeding was by calling for support from the other human troops, but they already had their hands full with solving their own problems!