The Mech Touch

After the Skorpion Kommando became sandwiched by both the Promethea and half of the Nullifier Battalion, the expert space knight came under increasing suppression.

Though it was able to rely on its strong transphasic armor system to buy a lot of time for itself, the problem was that both the Promethea and the Nullifer mechs possessed enough firepower grind the Skorpion Kommando over time!

More crucial components such as the flight system, the various booster modules and the Skorpion Tail no longer looked as pristine as before as numerous hits damaged their exteriors and threatened to disable them entirely!

"Ahh!"

A powerful attack from the Promethea managed to damage a part of the Skorpion Kommando's flight system, thereby directly reducing its mobility to a small extent.

As the Skorpion Kommando came under greater pressure, Venerable Oskar Virathon became more vicious than before!

His expert mech's attacks struck harder as Oskar did not hesitate to take greater risks.

The Shield of Samar that consistently prevented the Skorpion Kommando from running away got struck by many sword strikes and numerous painful Skorpion Tail attacks!

The latter especially posed a great threat to the living mech. The Shield of Samar experienced great pain that fed back to Venerable Jannzi, causing her to grow angrier to the suffering that her opponent inflicted!

"MY FRONTAL ARMOR IS FULL OF HOLES." The Shield of Samar groaned. "I CANNOT ENDURE THESE ATTACKS MUCH LONGER. TOO MUCH OF MY INTERNALS ARE EXPOSED."

"Do you want to retreat?" Venerable Jannzi asked.

The Shield of Samar conveyed a clear sense of rejection. "NO. WE ARE THE ONLY ONES THAT CAN STOP THE SKORPION KOMMANDO FROM RAMPAGING THROUGH OUR REAR LINES. IT IS NOT JUST THE PROMETHEA AND THE NULLIFIER BATTALION THAT ARE IN DANGER."

The living expert mech was right. The Golden Skull Alliance could hardly field any other expert mech that could restrain the Skorpion Kommando!

Venerable Jannzi and the Shield of Samar therefore tried to endure the onslaught as much possible, hoping to spread out the incoming venom attacks as much possible

After experiencing the Skorpion Kommando's signature attack numerous times, Jannzi had become a lot more proficient at anticipating and mitigating its damage.

While her Shield of Samar wasn't fast enough to evade the deadly Skorpion Tail attack entirely, it was enough to deflect or redirect this powerful limb to the more intact sections of the living mech.

In addition, Jannzi's close relationship with Qilanxo allowed the latter to project momentary spatial barriers that offered modest but crucial protection to the exposed internals!

"Keep holding on, Sammie! The Skorpion Kommando is already starting to decline."

Jannzi managed to preserve the performance of her expert mech for a longer time by employing various techniques, but she could not keep doing this without a price. The most immediate consequence was that the Shield of Samar's irreplaceable Unending alloy armor was steadily melting away!

Although the loss of all of this bulky alloy reduced the mass of the Shield of Samar and made it easier for it to keep up with the Skorpion Kommando, the biggest downside aside from losing a lot of protection was that it was losing a lot of spiritual capacity!

Unending alloy played a crucial role in enhancing how much spiritual energy from its design spirit it was able to contain.

Each ton of Unending alloy that dissolved from its frame turned it into a weaker prime mech.

After so much of the Shield of Samar's exterior got worn away, the help that Qilanxo was able to provide became a lot more limited.

Venerable Oskar immediately recognized these changes and began to wait for the right moment.

As soon as the Shield of Samar attempted to defend itself against another Skorpion Tail attack, the stinger suddenly expanded and released a wider spread of corrosive fluids than before!

The cone of venom spread out into space and splattered across the entire surface of the Shield of Samar!

Many shallow holes began to form in the armor that was still intact, but what was even worse was that numerous exposed internal systems received damage as well!

Even if the damage to these parts were relatively limited due to their inherent resilience and the high degree of compartmentalization of the Shield of Samar, the expert space knight unavoidably stalled for an instant!

Venerable Oskar completely exploded with the energy that he had left!

"Hah! No defense is impregnable against my expert mech. Now that I've put you in your place, let me take care of your comrades and show you that your knightly duty is an exercise in futility!"

Though the Shield of Samar was more vulnerable than ever, Venerable Oskar still understood that it would take quite a bit of time and effort to defeat the hardy mech completely.

The Promethea and the Nullifier Battalion would never stand by and allow the Skorpion Kommando to finish the job.

Considering that the ranged mechs posed the greatest threat against the Skorpion Kommando at this time, Venerable Oskar urgently wanted to get rid of them first!

He had already set his sights on the damaged Promethea. Not only was it a lot more vulnerable than before, but destroying it would immediately relieve a lot of pressure.

Of course, Venerable Isobel did not allow her Promethea to become a sitting duck. She drove her expert mech to the rear of the Larkinson Clan in an attempt to delay interception while luring the Skorpion Kommando further away from enemy lines.

Since the mobility of both the Promethea and the Skorpion Kommando became impaired, it would have taken a long time for the latter to catch up to its target.

Venerable Oskar already arranged a solution to this problem.

"Kasia!"

The Star of Liberation that had been dueling the Amaranto for a while now was no longer in a good condition. However, Venerable Kasia Rezkin still managed to squeeze out a quick snapshot at the distant Promethea before she went back to restraining her main opponent!

The overlapping resonance-empowered laser and positron beam that quickly roared across the battlefield was not the strongest possible attack of the Star of Liberation.

Its power just happened to be enough to precisely strike the exposed rear of the Promethea!

Though Venerable Isobel's intuition detected the threat in advance, she was still too weak and her expert mech was no longer in a fit enough state to evade the attack entirely.

Two powerful energy blasts erupted from the rear of the Promethea in quick succession!

While the firepower outputted by the ranged high-tier expert rifleman mech did not succeed in destroying the Promethea outright, the latter's flight system was no longer operational as more than half of its components were destroyed.

"What is your status, Isobel?!" Jannzi urgently asked.

"My Promethea has lost the ability to move." The strained expert pilot reported. "Aside from a few boosters, my expert mech can't move anymore. My machine is drifting space and I can't do anything else aside from turning my mech around so that I can minimize its silhouette."

"Damn! The Skorpion Kommando is rapidly gaining on your Promethea and my Shield of Samar can't catch up. I highly advise you to eject."

"...I can't!"

"Please repeat that, Isobel."

"I can't eject!" The ranged specialist spoke. "The strike to my rear is worse than I thought. Too much of the ejection mechanism has malfunctioned to the point where the backup systems aren't even working anymore. I'm stuck!"

"What?!"

The news rocked Venerable Jannzi's mind.

With the way that Venerable Oskar was racing towards the crippled Promethea with his damaged Skorpion Kommando, Venerable Isobel would most certainly lose her life in a short moment.

This was something that Venerable Jannzi could never accept!

"We need to go faster!" Jannzi urged her battle partner.

Though the Shield of Samar was still able to rely on its Skidrock Drive to shakily engage warp travel and catch up to the Skorpion Kommando, the enemy expert mech already gained too much of a head start!

Venerable Jannzi rapidly processed the movement data and concluded that it was impossible for her Shield of Samar to catch up before the Skorpion Kommando could land a fatal blow on the helpless Promethea!

Her mind and will become more active than ever as she rapidly tried to figure out ways to prevent her fellow expert pilot from dying.

Nothing seemed to work. Even if she employed extreme measures, it still wouldn't be enough for her expert mech to intervene!

It was at this time that the Shield of Samar conveyed a short message.

"I CAN SAVE VENERABLE ISOBEL."

"How, Sammie?"

"SURRENDER TOTAL CONTROL TO ME." The Shield of Samar stated.

"Granted."

The expert pilot harbored total trust in her battle partner.

"IF YOU DO THIS, I WILL PUT OUR LIVES IN GREAT DANGER. I CANNOT GUARANTEE OUR SURVIVAL."

Venerable Jannzi briefly ran back the words she exchanged with Venerable Oskar.

In a situation where she was in the position to save her comrades at the cost of putting herself at risk, would she choose to do her duty and abide by the tenets of a knight?

She instantly made up her mind. "I am not Venerable Oskar! I am a protector! Iwill never abandon my duty!"

Her willpower surged with strength as she affirmed her conviction!

"THEN LET GO."

She did.

Pain instantly overtook her mind and body as a powerful presence forcibly wrenched away her control while also squeezing up her strength as if she was a battery!

Though Venerable Jannzi instinctively wanted to resist against this painful intrusion, she consciously suppressed her instincts because she fully trusted her expert mech to do what was necessary!

The Shield of Samar did not betray her trust. The powerful living mech took over control in order to start a number of different processes.

Its flight system exploded with a lot more power than before.

It overloaded its Skiprock Drive, causing it to amplify the Shield of Samar's speed even more at the cost of burning a lot of phasewater and damaging the combat drive's internals.

It also activated the Fatal Attraction resonating ability to a much stronger degree than before!

While the Skorpion Kommando was too far away for the Larkinson expert mech to catch up to, the Shield of Samar actually applied a strong gravitational pull towards itself!

It was as if Jannzi's expert mech was pushing itself behind its back!

Even though this kind of move should never work, the Shield of Samar's incredibly strong determination seemed to defy the laws of nature and succeeded in accelerating its frame forward a lot faster than normal!

Though all of these emergency efforts put the Shield of Samar under so much stress that it was already starting to malfunction, the larger and slower expert space knight rapidly managed to close the distance to the Skorpion Kommando!

The Shield of Samar didn't even have to do anything special. As long as it managed to collide against its target, the Skorpion Kommando would definitely miss its opportunity to finish off the Promethea!

As the distance between the two space knights rapidly closed, Venerable Oskar grew incredibly angry at Jannzi and her living mech!

"Fine, then! If you want to sacrifice yourself to save a weaker expert pilot, then so be it! You brought this on yourself!"

Venerable Jannzi sensed an incredibly strong threat from their adversary as the Skorpion Kommando rapidly thrust out its Skorpion Tail towards the approaching Shield of Samar!

The Skorpion Tail began to glow with incredible power as its stinger actually expanded, revealing a wide nozzle that was already filled with a lot of venom.

It turned out that Venerable Oskar already realized that his deployment in the field had come to an end. Before he pulled his Skorpion Kommando back to friendly territory, he wanted to empty all of the remaining corrosive fluids stored inside his expert mech at once!

This supervenom attack was so threatening that Venerable Jannzi gained the sense that she would undoubtedly die if her Shield of Samar continued to advance!

Nonetheless, Venerable Jannzi exhibited no fear at all during this desperate time. She continued to endure the pain and lend as much of her willpower to her expert mech as possible to ensure that they would succeed in saving Venerable Isobel and the Promethea.

As long as the Skorpion Kommando discharged all of its venom at once, it no longer posed a massive threat against other Larkinsons anymore!

At this moment of life and death, Venerable Jannzi felt more in tune with her principles, her conviction and her knightly virtues than before.

A small sublimation took place in her mind as her willpower continued to expand, thereby supplying her Shield of Samar with greater power.

However, just before her expert mech reached the Skorpion Kommando, Jannzi's eyes abruptly widened as her connection to her battle partner started to snap.

"No! We're in this together, Sammie! We promised to be partners for life!"

A powerful sense of fatalism overtook the expert mech.

"ONLY ONE SACRIFICE IS NEEDED."

The Shield of Samar forcibly activated the eject by itself, which rapidly caused its cockpit to launch from the rear of the doomed expert mech!

"NOOOOO! YOU CAN'T DO THIS, SAMMIE!" Venerable Jannzi hysterically called as her cockpit rapidly entered a trajectory that brought it towards the nearest friendly starship.

"LIVE FOR ME, JANNZI."

Though the Shield of Samar had lost its true resonance and prime resonance support, it still retained more than enough momentum to collide against the Skorpion Kommando.

The latter tried to prevent this as much as possible by prematurely spraying out its entire reserves of venom into space!

A large volume of phasewater-rich corrosive fluids based on several different formulas rapidly covered and engulfed the Shield of Samar!

Even though the Skorpion Kommando already used up more than half of its reserves, what it had left just a moment ago was more than enough to eat away at the remnants of the Shield of Samar Unending alloy armor system and dissolve enormous chunks of its internals!

The power reactor, the mech engine, the heat sinks, the energy cells and even the arms and legs fell apart or melted away!

Though the dying Larkinson expert mech still managed to collide against the Skorpion Kommando and inflict serious damage to its flight system while it was melting, its fate was most definitely worse!

By the time the Skorpion Kommando's venom had run its course, the Shield of Samar was no longer whole.

The mech wasn't even recognizable anymore as much of its frame had broken up into numerous streams of highly-deformed metal slag.

Only a few whole parts were left intact. Fingers, internal motors, a piece of the power reactor and more were all that was left of one of the most iconic mechs designed by Ves.

The only remnant of the Shield of Samar that was still whole was its head.

Aside from getting splattered by numerous drops of corrosive fluids, its iconic visage still remained intact, though it was completely devoid of power.

"Sammie…"

Venerable Jannzi felt completely defeated as she lifelessly sat inside her ejected cockpit.

Even though her expert mech had saved her life, Jannzi never wanted to be brought to safety!