The Mech Touch

At this moment, Ves had the sudden realization that the Everchanger truly was his quintessential work.

With Lufa's glow strongly imposing a sense of calm in the surrounding environment, Ves found that he had gained additional clarity on his existing work!

Out of all of his mech designs, the ones that managed to become masterworks stood out. Each of the latter possessed a unique spark of ingenuity that made them brilliant and memorable even if a hundred years had passed.

It was not an exaggeration to say that Ves treated each of them as his children. From the bad boy Devil Tiger to the mother hen Minerva, each of them exemplified a handful of traits that Ves had always wanted to impart into his mech designs.

The Everchanger was special, though. As Venerable Joshua braved the violent phasewater fluctuations generated by the Phaser fish-whales and the phasewater-rich Lake Continent itself, Ves experienced an illusion where time slowed down and where he gained a more thorough understanding of the Everchanger and its significance to his progression.

"The Everchanger… is the closest mirror to myself." He realized. "Many of its traits and functions are a reflection of my own traits and functions. I never noticed this before. Why did it take so long for me to recognize the similarity?"

As a mech, the Everchanger was defined by its adaptable nature. Although its core always remained the same, it was able to use its rotation of design spirits as masks that allowed the mech to adopt completely different personas and demeanors.

This sounded similar to what Ves was accustomed to doing when meeting with different people.

He became bossy and willful towards his subordinates.

He acted lovingly towards his wife and daughter.

He projected strength and confidence towards his allies and trading partners.

He lowered his head and tried to ingratiate himself towards the Big Two.

Just as how Ves put a lot of effort into molding himself according to the situation, so did the Everchanger!

The current engagement prominently showcased this feature as the Everchanger went from completely provoking the hatred of one group of fish-whales to trying to pass himself off as a harmless friend towards another group of fish-whales!

"And it's actually working!"

If Ves was known as the Devil Tongue, what kind of moniker would become associated with the Everchanger?

The Devil Mech? No. Ves already had the Devil Tiger.

The Shapeshifter? That wasn't quite right as the expert mech's physical form remained unchanged.

Ves shook his head. This wasn't important right now. What he truly cared about was finding out how extensively the Everchanger reflected its designer.

Did he subconsciously insert himself into a mech in order to make up for his regret for not being able to pilot a mech himself?

It sounded like a ridiculous proposition, but… who knew how much his latent desires bled through when he worked on this design project.

As a highly passionate mech designer, Ves was accustomed to letting his emotions, instincts and gut feeling guide his design choices even if there was no obvious rationale for making them at the time.

Perhaps the choices had always made sense to him. He just overlooked the underlying context in those instances.

The Everchanger was completed a year ago, but it took a close experience like this for Ves to gain this crucial insight about one of his proudest works.

Did he truly know his mechs as well as he thought?

The question sounded silly. Why shouldn't a creator know every single detail about his own work?

He led the design project and invested considerably more time, energy and passion in it than the other expert mech design projects he was working on at the time.

With how much of himself he put into his expert mech, he thought he already knew how it performed like the back of his hand.

"I was wrong. Even a maker doesn't necessarily know everything about his product. There are still depths to the Everchanger that I can still explore!"

As Ves turned his attention to the Everchanger, Venerable Joshua completely invested himself into his expert mech at the moment.

The burden on his shoulders was massive. Not only did he have to ensure that the pursuing Swarmers got fooled into thinking that he was in the camp of the Phasers, he also had to make sure that the Everchanger, himself and most importantly the Larkinson Patriarch managed to survive this brazen battle!

Fortunately, Venerable Joshua was not the sort of pilot who crumbled under pressure. No expert pilot easily succumbed when faced with danger.

Joshua stepped up and immersed himself even deeper into the Everchanger. Two almost became one as both of them became aligned by a common purpose.

Both of them united in purpose and will as they navigated the space while still trying to radiate Lufa's glow as far as possible.

Over a hundred fish-whales became affected by this new and completely unfamiliar phenomenon!

Since the Phaser fish-wales weren't known for their intelligence, they were not on guard against this effect at all. Even if they felt there was something wrong, the tranquility effect caused them to become a lot less alert about their current conditions.

"It's working!"

The Everchanger in its current form successfully managed to approach the Phasers without encountering overwhelming resistance!

Many fish-whales did nothing as the foreign mech flew over bodies.

However, that didn't mean that Venerable Joshua and the Everchanger enjoyed a comfortable ride.

There were plenty of Phaser fish-whales that were situated many kilometers away!

Unlike the fish-whales that were being affected by Lufa's grace, these more distant creatures weren't strongly affected. They only considered the Everchanger to be a little less threatening, but that didn't mean they would withhold their attacks.

The space surrounding the Everchanger wobbled and cracked as if it was a clay pot that was being tossed around by a bunch of hooligans!

"Aggh!" Venerable Joshua uttered as his willpower became strongly impacted by the burden of resisting the dangerous spatial attacks. "It's getting harder and harder to endure all of these attacks. It's like trying to swim through sand!"

Scores of Phaser fish-whales were exerting their phase water-derived abilities towards the mech in the distance that intruded into their territory! Their hostility was clear. The Everchanger did not belong here and needed to be destroyed or driven away as fast as possible!

Ves could feel the space around him becoming tense and uneasy. A normal mech would have folded or shattered after trying to navigate through all of the spatial disturbances.

The only reason why the Everchanger managed to remain minimally affected was because its resonance shield was openly resisting against the effects!

The true resonance formed by Joshua and the Everchanger was capable of resisting nearly every form of harmful effect.

Since the Phaser fish-whales did not employ true resonance themselves, their attacks which were ordinarily capable of devastating other fish-whales had much less effect against the Everchanger at this time!

Still, despite remaining intact for the time being, the drain to Venerable Joshua was considerable. As the weakest element of the pair, the expert pilot was still too new and underdeveloped to endure the rapid drain on his mental capacity.

Seeing that his willpower was being worn out at a distressing rate, Ves no longer cared as much about trying to deceive the approaching Swarmer fish-whales as much as possible.

If they stayed here for a minute longer, the Everchanger and its occupants might not be around anymore!

"Pull out!" Ves immediately ordered. "We've done enough. Ascend and try to circle around the Lake Continent. We can't go back the other way but we shouldn't distance ourselves from this landmass either. We need to make sure the Swarmer fish-whales get close enough to the Phasers to collide with each other!"

"I know! I'm on it!" Joshua replied while gritting his teeth!

The Everchanger rapidly rose up, causing it to open up its distance to all of the Phaser fish-whales.

Since the latter adopted a defensive posture, this meant that they had to exert their phasewater abilities over an increasingly greater distance.

This became an increasingly more difficult endeavor to the Phasers! The nature of their abilities meant that they were at their most devastating at mid range combat. It was difficult for them to maintain their power over longer distances as a lot of the energy they invested in their attacks were spread out in the surrounding environment.

All of this meant that while the Everchanger's glow no longer affected any of the Phaser fish-whales, the burden on the expert mech lightened considerably!

The space around the Everchanger was no longer as unstable as before. The Phaser fish-whales down below found it increasingly more difficult to exert their attacks on the fast but surprisingly tenacious metal machine.

Ves no longer paid attention to the Everchanger's condition. The data already told him that the burden had dropped to the point where the expert mech was able to endure the weaker spatial disturbances.

Even those were beginning to fade as the Phaser fish-whales no longer directed their attention towards the distancing expert mech.

Compared to trying to attack a foreign mech that exuded an ambivalent vibe, the Phaser fish-whales became a lot more concerned about the tide of Swarmer fish-whales that appeared to be descending right on top of the Lake Continent!

Even though the enormous flood of Swarmer fish-whales were still hellbent on chasing after the Everchanger, their pursuit inadvertently brought their vanguard to a height of less than ten kilometers from the surface of the landmass.

This distance already violated the Phase Kingdom's territorial integrity!

With roughly half a million Swarmers bearing down on the Lake Continent, the Phasers made the inevitable conclusion.

The Hive King sought to invade the Lake Continent!

Even if the attack wasn't meant to destroy the Phase Kingdom outright, an attack of this magnitude would almost certainly deplete the strength of its occupants!

The Phasers had no choice. When one of their archenemies had come this close to their core territory, the defenders were compelled to take action!

Each and every Phaser fish-whale on the landmass received an invisible signal that caused them to converge towards the invasion site so that they could do their part in blocking the tide of Swarmer fish-whales!

Storms and other exotic phasewater attacks enveloped the leading Swarmer elements!

The bodies of tens of thousands of fish-whales immediately tore apart or got cracked beyond oblivion!

A hurricane of red spilled in the space above the Lake Continent! The low gravity of the asteroid gently pulled down the spilled blood and contaminated some of the nearby water pools.

Surprisingly few chunks of flesh rained down, though. Before the remains of dead Swarmers could fall that far, rabid groups of hungry grunt fishes eagerly devoured the free pieces of food.

Hundreds of them began to slow down as their white hides began to grow blue, red and other colors.

However, these figures were utterly insignificant compared to the tide of thousands more white fish-whales that were diverting from their pursuit in order to approach the Phasers that had sought to destroy their group!

"It's working!" Ves grinned. "The Hive King must have gotten fooled by the earlier display! The Swarmers and the Phasers are colliding against each other!"

The rapidly unfolding battle made for an apocalyptic display. So many angry Swarmer fish-whales were braving the unrelenting storms and other weird phasewater attacks cast by their opponents!

None of them managed to make it to the surface. The Phasers were simply too good at destroying tightly-picked groups of opponents!

Yet no matter how many Swarmers lost their bodies, more were mindlessly driving their bodies forward!

In the meantime, Ves made a startling observation.

The elite fish-whales that ordinarily accompanies the cannon fodder were not moving forward!

Instead, they kept hovering beyond the range of the Phaser attacks.

What was even more concerning was that their numbers grew over time!

The elites coming from the rear along with the fish-whales that had recently evolved to their current states all converged into an increasingly more formidable assault wave.

"The Swarmers are getting serious!"