The Mech Touch

As far as expert mech battles went, the fight between the Shield of Samar and the Skorpion Kommando was not that exciting.

The only notable fact was that the Skorpion Kommando had advanced closer to the invading fleet than other mechs!

However, despite the fact that it had put itself into an extremely vulnerable position by extending so far away from friendly lines, Venerable Oskar Virathon did not take the threats around him seriously!

The reasons why he possessed such confidence was because of his unflinching confidence in his strength and the strength of his expert mech!

The Skorpion Kommando was arguably the most powerful melee expert mech on the battlefield.

In contrast to the Star of Liberation that reigned over longer distances or the Shockshell that possessed a broad array of armaments that made it viable at multiple ranges, the Skorpion Kommando was designed to function as a pure independent close-ranged assault machine.

It possessed an impressive degree of mobility for a space knight, but still retained much of the high defensive characteristics of defensive mechs.

What was even more unreasonable was that the Skorpion Kommando also possessed plenty of offensive power in the form of its thick and heavy sword along with its characteristic Skorpion Tail!

Venerable Jannzi deeply understood that an expert pilot that demanded to pilot a mech with such an aggressive configuration had no intention to protect other friendlies or cooperate with other comrades.

Just as its name suggested, the Skorpion Kommando was meant to function like a venomous predator that could single-handedly approach an enemy position and cause a lot of disruption.

Many nearby ranged mechs including the Transcendent Punishers Mark II's fielded by the Eye of Ylvaine found themselves unable to threaten the Skorpion Kommando!

"It's too tough and too fast!"

More ordinary ranged mechs such as the Rifle Warriors were completely unable to track the dizzyingly fast movements of the Skorpion Kommando. Though the enemy machine was classified as a space knight, much of its mobility characteristics matched a light skirmisher!

Even if the mechs managed to get lucky enough to get in a solid strike, the powerful defenses of the Skorpion Kommando effectively rendered the attack useless!

The Transcendent Punisher Mark II's attained better results, but it cost a lot for them to constantly try to foresee the Skorpion Kommando's incredibly agile movements.

General Verle eventually called the ranged mechs off. "Your firepower is needed to suppress the Blackened Reapers and the Witch Shatterers as well as provide fire support to our most hard-hit melee mech units. Leave the Skorpion Kommando be. The Shield of Samar is already locking it down and more appropriate help is already on the way."

The Skorpion Kommando posed a considerable headache for General Verle. Who knew what this enemy expert mech might do if it was able to approach a key capital ship such as the Spirit of Bentheim.

It would have been better to eliminate it right away, but the amount of assets needed to do so was so disproportionately high that other friendly units would lack the support they needed.

Therefore, a strange situation took place where the Skorpion Kommando no longer attracted as much firepower as before.

The pressure on Venerable Jannzi increased a lot as a consequence because her expert mech needed to prevent the Skorpion Kommando from getting any closer to the main fleet. The Shield of Samar also had to endure the powerful attacks of the enemy powerhouse as best as possible!

Two different resonance shields flared as the mechs exchanged powerful blows with each other.

The powerful blue glow around the Shield of Samar flared each time the Skorpion Kommando hacked at its target with its heavy sword.

The weapon seemed to have been designed to attack heavy targets as its unusually high density allowed it to hit as hard as an axe.

This was not a weapon designed for finesse!

The Unending alloy sword in the hands of the Shield of Samar was almost just as heavy and possessed unnatural sharpness courtesy of Ketis.

However, both mechs struck against each other with the flat of their blades because this was a better way to wear down the resonance shields of their opponents.

It took a long time for the two mechs to exhaust each other's initial defenses. The Skorpion Kommando was backed up by the willpower of a powerful high-tier expert pilot while the Shield of Samar was so large that it was able to provide plenty of support for its resonance shield.

The only strange part about this mutual exchange was that the Skorpion Kommando had yet to employ its infamous Skorpion Tail, but Jannzi knew it was only a matter of time before it would strike.

As the Skorpion Kommando kept bashing its sword against the Shield of Samar, Venerable Oskar Virathon continually built up his rage against his opponent.

"You are so weak, but your expert mech is too damn tough. Only a coward would fight inside a tortoise shell!"

The Shield of Samar's flared with anger as the living mech took offensive to the Fridayman expert pilot's words.

Jannzi felt the need to shoot back. "Your attitude and your words betray your lack of honor. A true hero and defender would never forsake his allies and fly solo."

"YOU KNOW NOTHING, YOU LITTLE KID!"

Venerable Oskar became so stimulated by Jannzi's words that his expert mech exploded with power!

The sickly green glow surrounding the Skorpion Kommando grew brighter. The expert mech charged forward and used its round shield to collide against the Shield of Samar!

Not only that, the Skorpion Kommando increased the speed and power of its sword strikes, causing the Larkinson expert mech's resonance shield to weaken at a rapid rate!

"Is this the best you've got? Your attacks are only tickling my expert mech." Jannzi taunted as she deliberately sought to attract her opponent's hatred. "Your decision to challenge a defensive mech like mine is foolish. Your space knight doesn't have the power to threaten my battle partner."

To be honest, Venerable Oskar was genuinely surprised at how much damage the Shield of Samar was able to resist. He could clearly feel that Venerable Jannzi was still a fairly young and weak expert pilot. Her resonance strength may be fairly good among other Larkinson expert pilots, but she was completely unable to match his own power!

It was the expert mech itself that posed a huge amount of hindrance. As a heavy mech, many of its technical performance parameters were much higher than usual. The higher amounts of resonating exotics responsible for generating a resonance shield meant that it was much harder to exhaust this defensive layer than with lighter expert mechs.

On top of that, the Shield of Samar was also one of the most powerful living mechs of the Larkinson Clan.

It was old and had grown so much alongside Venerable Jannzi that it was finally starting to display the true potential of living mechs!

For example, one of the ways the Shield of Samar helped was to make it easier for Jannzi to resonate with it. Though the two weren't able to achieve Unity of Man and Machine under the current circumstances, they had come a lot closer to it than any other pairing on the battlefield!

The Shield of Samar in cooperation with Venerable Jannzi moved a bit faster, dealt a bit more damage with its sword strikes and most importantly enhanced its defenses to a greater degree than normal!

Normally, the power of the true resonance generated between an expert mech and an expert pilot was largely dependant on the latter's willpower alone, but this time it was different!

The formidable spiritual foundation of the Shield of Samar acted as an amplifier of Jannzi's resonance, allowing her to enhance her mech's performance by 20, 30 or even 40 percent depending on the exact function!

Much of the synergy generated by the two went on to enhance the defensive parameters of the Shield of Samar!

That wasn't all.

Unlike Venerable Orfan and Venerable Dise who tried not to rely too much on Qilanxo, Venerable Jannzi had no qualms about working together with the big lizard.

As Jannzi slowly deepened her cooperation with Qilanxo, the design spirit became more and more able to channel her power through the Shield of Samar.

Not only did Qilanxo help to weaken the resonance-empowered sword and shield strikes of the Skorpion Kommando, but she also began to project a thin spatial barrier that substantially bled away a considerable amount of incoming damage!

The Shield of Samar fully showcased its ability as one of the most exemplary living mechs of the Larkinson Clan!

Its triple classifications as an expert mech, a masterwork mech and a prime mech resulted in so much strengthening that it was able to endure much longer against a high-tier expert mech than usual!

Venerable Oskar's obsessive hatred against his opponent cooled a bit when he saw that his Skorpion Kommando still remained stuck at the same stage for over a minute.

This was a confounding result to him. The Shield of Samar was lasting a lot longer than it should, and much of it had to do with the other living entities he was able to sense inside the mech!

"I've met and fought against my fair share of living mechs, but yours is definitely the most disgusting of all! Do you think you can fend me off with additional help? Then think again!"

Oskar became so tired of the stacking defensive boosts of the Shield of Samar that he no longer cared about withholding his trump card.

The Skorpion Kommando did not come with too many bells and whistles in order to ensure that all of its basic parameters were as high as possible. The only real gimmick it possessed was its Skorpion Tail.

After Oskar resonated with this long and segmented limb, it shot forward with so much power and speed that it looked as if it hard turned into a powerful beam of light as it struck against its target!

"No defense is impervious to my stinger!"

The Larkinson expert mech's resonance shield and other barriers immediately became so destabilized that they were unable to recover as quickly as before!

That wasn't the extent of the attack. It turned out that when the Skorpion Tail struck its target, the special stinger had discharged a special corrosive fluid that disrupted the functioning of the resonance shield.

Venerable Jannzi tried to get rid of the corrosive fluid, but it had spread out too quickly.

Soon enough, the Shield of Samar became exposed as its formidable resonance shield finally popped!

"Hah! The real game begins now!"

The Shield of Samar already stalled Venerable Oskar for quite some time. This was an unforgivably long delay as far as the Fridayman expert pilot was concerned.

The Skorpion Kommando began to hack at the Shield of Samar with even greater vigor than before, but the expert heavy space knight could rely on its thick and incredibly sturdy tower shield to block most of the incoming attacks!

The excellent toughness of Unending alloy made most incoming sword attacks ineffective.

No matter how much Oskar empowered his blows with his powerful true resonance, his sword wasn't able to dig as deeply into the Larkinson expert mech's tower shield as he wished.

"If you think a simple shield can stop me, then think again. I love tearing down shields like yours!"

The Skorpion Tail struck again, this time punching its sharp stinger as deep into the tower shield as possible!

The stinger released a different formula of corrosive fluid this time. Empowered by Venerable Oskar's formidable willpower, the substance turned into Unending alloy's nemesis and rapidly ate away a huge chunk of the tower shield!

A noticeably large and expanding gap had formed in the Shield of Samar's defensive equipment!

Ves, who had only mildly been paying attention to fight so far, reacted with utter shock and dismay at this outcome.

"No! How can so much Unending alloy melt away?!"

Unending alloy was an irreplaceable material to the Larkinson Clan. If chunks of it ever got lost, Ves had no way to get any replacements!

"Verle! Don't let the Shield of Samar sustain more damage! Hurry up and help Venerable Jannzi repel the Skorpion Kommando. We need to get rid of this scourge as soon as possible!"

If the Skorpion Kommando kept attacking the Shield of Samar with its lethal Skorpion Tail, tons of Unending alloy would corrode away by the end of the fight!