The Mech Touch

The Thornbearer possessed an extremely powerful attack method. Its entire design was based around delivering fast and powerful stabs. Any mech that got struck even once would definitely receive a painful blow. The chance would be great that such an attack could easily breach through the armor of its opponent.

Once that happened, the performance of the damaged mech would definitely become impaired, thereby giving the Thornbearer an even greater chance of succeeding in its next attack!

The Heart of Victor could not allow itself to get stabbed even once. Yet instead of pursuing the more prudent course of action and assuming a more defensive posture, Lyain Kepper sought to lay a mark on the enemy mech with each exchange of blows!

Though it was extremely difficult for any mech or mech pilot to divert the course of a powerful and rapid spear stab, it was not impossible to pull off this risky move.

As long as the spear attack failed to hit its mark, the Heart of Victor always gained a brief window of opportunity where it could use its chainsword to land a fierce blow on the Thornbearer!

The only issue was that the frontal armor of the spearman mech was too strong!

If the Heart of Victor landed the same attack on the Zenomon Gamma, the axeman mech would have lost a decent amount of armor integrity.

The Thornbearer on the other hand was the product of a collaboration between a spearman mech specialist and a defensive specialist. The latter invested a considerable amount of attention and resources in making the Thornbearer as difficult to damage as possible!

[Even though the Thornbearer is not in a good situation at the moment, it is still not a great concern for Team Voiken. Their spearman mech's excellent armor system provides it with an enormous degree of fault tolerance. It will take forever for the Heart of Victor to penetrate through its opponent's thick frontal armor at this rate. In the meantime, the Thornbearer's mech pilot can keep varying its attacks in order to land a successful attack.]

[The Heart of Victor's is almost just as heavy as the Thornbearer but its defenses are definitely a tier below. The disparity is quite glaring and fully demonstrates the difference that a defensive specialist can make. Mr. Dulo Voiken deserves great credit for implementing such strong defenses with limited resources and severe time constraints!]

Though Ves briefly became concerned about the snail's pace of progress his competition mech was making, he became more reassured when he saw that the Heart of Victor maintained the upper hand throughout these exchanges.

Sure, the swordsman mech only dealt light damage with each successful attack, but so far the Thornbearer failed to succeed even once.

The difference was very glaring, and that made this sight so perplexing!

The more knowledgeable mech designers and mech pilots among the crowd were able to understand this current sequence of events much better than all of the laymen.

The mech designers clearly understood the strengths of the Thornbearer and expected the mech to hold a clear advantage in this duel. Although the Heart of Victor was also a respectably strong mech, it was supposed to experience a lot of trouble when fighting against an opponent with much greater weapon reach!

Meanwhile, the mech pilots tried to imagine how the battle would unfold if they were sitting in the cockpit of the Heart of Victor. They quietly admitted that they wouldn't have been able to hold out nearly as long as Lyain Kepper.

Many of them knew their way around with a sword, but it was practically a superhuman feat to parry so many powerful and threatening spear stabs in a consistent manner.

[Has Lyain Kepper broken through already?]

[That's impossible! We would have been able to witness a manifestation if that happened. From what I can see, the Heart of Victor isn't being affected by forced resonance at all. It's operating well within its existing parameters.]

[Then how can the Heart of Victor defy all of your earlier analyses and hold out so well against the Thornbearer? The strengths of the two mechs should be well-known by now! I don't see the Heart of Victor moving any faster or performing any stronger attacks.]

[It's not the mech that has changed… it's the mech pilot.]

Lyain Kepper's abrupt increase in skill and judgment did not go unnoticed. It began to dawn on more and more people that he was fighting way better than he used to in the first three rounds!

While Lyain was already a good swordsman mech pilot, the skill he displayed this time was insane!

An occasional feat of brilliance might not be that special, but pulling off a high-risk maneuver on a consistent basis was impossible at this level!

The only other conclusion that people could make was that Lyain Kepper had broken through to expert candidate, but that was clearly impossible. There were no signs of a breakthrough, and if the man had already broken through beforehand, he would have been barred from participating in the fourth round of the tournament!

After ruling one possibility after another, the expert commentators finally settled on a single, improbable explanation.

[If we assume that Mr. Lyain Kepper is still the same mech pilot as before, then an external factor must be responsible. The only explanation that makes sense is that the Heart of Victor is making up the difference.]

[But how? It's a mech, not an autonomous warbot!]

[Perhaps… we have unfairly judged Swordmaster Ketis' design capabilities. The swordsman mech that she has designed is more effective than what is obvious from the surface.]

Though not everyone agreed with this explanation, more and more people began to come around to Ketis again.

The results were just too dramatic this time! The only reason why the Heart of Victor hadn't defeated the Thornbearer already was because the latter was too tough.

Even so, after getting struck for over forty times, its chest armor was already bearing a lot of scars!

In fact, Lyain Kepper would have preferred to attack the arms like he did the last time, but the Thornbearer recovered too quickly for that. He had no choice but to attack whatever was convenient, which resulted in a lot of spread attacks.

Still, the current trend was highly favorable for him. As he actively cooperated with his living mech, he gained a massive boost to his fighting capabilities and his sword style.

He was not only able to react faster and more precisely than before, but also executed all of his sword techniques with far greater skill than he had ever thought!

It was as if Ketis was directly conveying a portion of her superhuman fighting skills to him. Though Lyain did not reach the level of an expert pilot because of this powerful influence, his performance already exceeded the limit of a mortal pilot and firmly placed him in the territory of an expert candidate!

With the help of all of this borrowed skill, Lyain became a champion beyond compare who could pretty much outfight any other regular mech pilot based on skill alone!

As the Heart of Victor continued to neutralize every threatening stab attack without fail, Ves briefly glanced to the woman responsible for making it all possible.

Ketis may look calm as she held her Bloodsinger in her arms, but Ves could sense her will being exerted.

The biggest reason for her difficulties was that Sharpie wasn't around her anymore! Her companion spirit had left her greatsword and quietly slipped into the chainsword of the Heart of Victor.

Ordinarily, this was impossible to pull off. A mech designer was only able to extend a piece of themselves to their masterwork products.

Ketis managed to circumvent this rule, though. She had conducted an experimental blood ritual on the chainsword that essentially allowed her to form a bond with the mech weapon.

A weak bond, but a valid one nonetheless. This connection allowed her to pass Sharpie on to the weapon and massively enhance Lyain's piloting abilities!

In fact, the Heart of Victor did not need to rely on this demanding trick in order to augment Lyain's performance. The mech already possessed this functionality itself and was able to strengthen and optimize his sword style to a lesser degree.

"I thought you wanted to save this trump card for the finals." Ves quietly said.

Ketis gritted her teeth as she continued her exertion. "The Heart of Victor alone can't fend off the Thornbearer by itself. It needs my help."

Ves reluctantly agreed with her judgment. He could see that Team Voiken truly designed an excellent mech. Their Thornbearer's comprehensive strength should have been enough to defeat most swordsman mechs!

Yet if Sara Voiken and Dulo Voiken were allowed to leverage their own specialties to increase the performance of their mechs, Ves and Ketis should be allowed to do so as well!

Nothing needed to be said about his own specialty. The Heart of Victor already provided a lot of active assistance to its mech pilot.

It was Ketis who was truly capable of revolutionizing the performance of her swordsman mechs. Though her toolbox of solutions was still limited at the moment, she was already capable of boosting the performance of individual mechs to an insane level as long as she was willing to make an effort!

She made the greatest possible use of all of her relevant advantages to give the Heart of Victor a powerful boost in effective performance, so much so that the power of her contribution exceeded that of any other mech designer in the tournament!

Only a swordmaster was able to provide so much active and direct assistance to a mech pilot!

The Thornbearer did not passive accept this slow march towards its own defeat. Its mech pilot, who was highly-skilled with wielding spears, kept varying the speed, force, timing and direction of its attacks in order to throw off Lyain's predictions.

Yet no matter how much the Thornbearer tried to surprise its opponent, the Heart of Victor managed to parry every confounding attack with as much ease as before. It was as if Lyain was able to read the mind of his counterpart in real time!

Crunch!

After inflicting yet another successful sword strike, the Thornbearer's armor simply couldn't take it any longer. Its sturdy chest had already become riddled with scars, but the latest slash had parted its final armor layer and exposed its internal structure!

Lyain did not relent even as the Thornbearer grew more desperate.

The spearman mech's erratic counterattacks did not avail it at all as the swordsman mech skillfully resolved these threatening attacks and stabbed its sword inside the exposed wound.

Smoke began to escape from the widening hole as the internal structure incurred more and more damage.

Surprisingly, the Thornbearer managed to hold out for five more minutes as its internal architecture was extremely well put together. Even if its entire left section had been savaged, it still retained 70 percent of its combat power!

Yet that did not change the outcome at all. The Heart of Victor continued to perform as if an expert candidate was in control, and such a level of strength was more than enough to defend against any desperation attack the Thornbearer might unleash.

The mech never pulled out any further surprises. This was no surprise to Ves as he already understood that this was a mech that concentrated all of its strengths onto its basic parameters, particularly attack and defense power.

Its mech design didn't have any room for trump cards or other surprises. It was just an extremely good basic mech that just happened to meet its nemesis.

What was most egregious about the Thornbearer was that it was so dedicated to performing the strongest stabs that it was highly inefficient or even completely unable to perform any spear moves. The mech was unable to slash or sweep with its spear because its thick armor layout was too tough, inflexible and confining!

After an agonizing display of torture, the Heart of Victor finally managed to land the killing blow onto the Thornbearer.

[Team Larkinson… has advanced to finals. The Heart of Victor has successfully toppled the Thornbearer!]