The Mech Touch



She was not a religious person by nature, but when she thought about whether her son could survive this event or whether Joshua would become a widower after this day, her heart started to sink.

Swordmasters normally did not lose confidence, but as an intelligent mech designer, she maintained a much clearer head than the battle maniacs who easily lost their situational awareness.

Though she did not possess a complete overview of the battlefield, she could see and hear enough from her vantage position that the human forces at the main entrance were beginning to lose momentum!

The brave Davutan guard forces regularly cried out in pain or agony, showing that the withering pescan suppression fire was rapidly taking a toll on their ranks.

Several honor guards had already perished and the remaining ones were hopelessly trying to do the work of a hundred soldiers.

The humans trapped in this pocket space had too few numbers, too little equipment, not enough supplies and too few pieces of quality gear.

"We can't win this battle without help!"

A real swordmaster would have had a much harder time admitting any form of weakness, but Ketis also differed in that sense.

After acknowledging that she did not have the power to alter the unfavorable circumstances of her side by herself, she became a lot more open to the idea of calling for help.

She initially thought about reaching out to the powerful design spirits that Ves regularly worked with. She then became stumped by the question on how she could call upon the power of these distant entities.

Ves made it look so easy. Ketis knew that it was a manifestation of his talent.

Joshua possessed a similar ability. The two men were so alike that they could have been comrades in arms if one of them ended up becoming a mech pilot.

She had learned from the both of them that it was easy for them to make contact with the design spirits.

If she wanted to do the same, then she just needed to pray to them and form some sort of connection.

However, Ketis was much different from Ves and Joshua. Their similar domains made them especially suitable for communication and cooperation. They were like warm and gentle spring breezes that anyone would like to embrace.

Ketis on the other hand possessed the typical exclusionary force of will that guarded the sanctity of her fundamental self. She was like a naked blade that cut whoever came too close.

She failed in her attempt. She understood that she would never be able to replicate her husband and her mentor's abilities.

"The only area that I am good at is pursuing greater sharpness."

For all of the time she spent on dabbling with other sword styles, she had never slacked off when it came to her personal sword style and techniques.

She had originally broken through because she wanted her sword to gain the ability to cut through anything.

Laughter escaped from her lips. "I'm not a good swordmaster. I became distracted by too much irrelevant stuff."

Instead of thinking about all of these useless matters, it was better for her to put all of her thoughts aside and focus solely on trying to cut through the barriers that stood in the way of her goals!

At this time, the four giant battle suits had grown tired of waiting for her attacks.

Under the escort of numerous pescan soldiers, these giants had turned around and steadily began to march towards the contested main entrance, making sure to keep the crippled tank within sight in order to repel any approaching saboteurs.

The goal of this siege breaking unit was clear. They were being sent to sweep aside the main opposition!

Ketis couldn't allow them to reach the entrance and get close enough to sweep all of the human troopers with their devastating shrapnel cannons!

Once the humans holding onto the main entrance were repelled, nothing Ketis could do on this floor would matter anymore!

Her eyes turned crazed as the optical sensors of her suit locked onto the four metal giants that represented the pinnacle of pescan battle suit development.

Their awfully slow traversal speeds was their only major weakness, and bought precious time for Ketis to get her act together.

Still, the energy and physical defenses of these four super suits were excessively high. Ketis had never even managed to scratch their armor. She first needed to breach their transphasic energy shields, but she had already discovered that she lacked the raw power to penetrate them in quick succession.

"Hahahaha!" She laughed again. "Why am I discouraging myself? I should be doing the opposite! If I don't believe in my strength anymore, what qualifications do I have to advance to a sword saint?"

The word 'impossible' shouldn't exist in her vocabulary!

Her willpower condensed even further as she set aside the parts of herself that was a mech designer and fully embraced her identity as a swordmaster.

The time for calculations and technical analysis was over.

Only a miracle could help her defeat her current foes. She needed to put all of her faith in the infinite power of a swordmaster.

Ketis resonated stronger than ever with Sharpie. The companion spirit started to integrate more deeply into the weapon, causing its edge to take on a considerably deadlier sheen.

Its ability to cut had been strengthened!

Although the logical part of her mind told her that her blade still wasn't sharp enough to cut through four powerful transphasic energy shields at once, her swordmaster persona yearned to resist this reality and produce a different outcome!

She stood up straighter as her resonance with her sword seemed to inject steel in her body.

Her injuries no longer affected her as much while her combat armor did not produce as many hindrances as before.

Every other concern or distraction faded away as she only set her sights on her immediate goal.

The distractions of battle faded away and many pescan soldiers faded from her awareness as she prepared to launch an attack.

"This is my only chance."

Her sword started to vibrate under the influence of her overwhelming desire to amplify its sharpness.

A high-pitched keening sound escaped from it. Anyone who looked at this sword and heard this special sound would know that its ability to cut through matter had reached a considerably higher level than before!

Whether this was enough, Ketis couldn't care anymore.

Her armored hand tightened its grip on the hilt as she accumulated her strength and willpower.

Once she had reached a threshold, she exploded out of her cover and charged forward at much greater speed than before!

She ignored the pescan soldiers along her path. Her unrelenting march seemed to have caught them off-guard. She easily evaded their attempts to land their attacks on advancing form.

Even though her combat armor possessed several holes that were only plugged by thin sealing materials, Ketis showed no fear against these attacks!

Her hyperconcentrated state had elevated her intuition and reaction speed to a new height, allowing her to weave and dance through the laser beams and projectile attacks as if she was able to read them a second or two in advance!

By the time the aliens realized they missed their shots, Ketis had already closed the distance to her targets!

The wind did not even whip at her armored shape as her true resonance seemed to cut through the air itself.

Not even air resistance could slow her down!

The sluggish but highly threatening giant battle suits had picked up on her advance.

The elite pescan champions who wore these monstrosities had always been on guard against her attacks.

Two of them had already started to turn around. Due to the peculiarities of their construction, they did not need to rotate 180 degrees in order to blast Ketis with their shrapnel cannons and other armaments.

It was already enough for them to turn 90 degrees to bring at least one of their cannons to bear against the swordmaster!

In order to ensure that these immense suits turned around in time, they unveiled a capability that they had kept hidden up to this point.

Powerful boosters mounted on their backs flared to life, causing the two repositioning giant battle suits to gain a considerable increase in their turning speeds!

Ketis' eyes minutely widened as she realized her life had come under enormous threat.

The aliens had laid a trap for her! They anticipated that she would make a last-ditch effort to attack the aliens.

It was one thing to get struck by the shrapnel cannons when she had been able to retreat in time.

It was another thing to get blasted by them when she was almost in point-blank range to these enormous guns!

Ketis faced an immediate test at this junction.

She could either repeat her previous actions and seek to preserve her life, or she could set aside her will to live in order to strengthen her will to cut!

In any other instance, she would have opted for the former choice.

At this moment of extreme focus and conviction, she chose to remain unyielding against adversity and deepened her determination to cut through everything!

"If you launch those shards at me, then I shall cut them into pieces!" She roared!

Her blade edge grew even sharper and deadlier as her declaration strengthened her true resonance by another notch!

As the distance rapidly reduced, Ketis had already begun to swing her keening sword in a wide horizontal arc.

She did not employ the Phase Cutter ability that she previously utilized to break down the integrity of the transphasic energy shields in her way.

As effective as this technique may be when employed against transphasic defenses, it was ultimately a technique developed by Venerable Dise. She was the only one who could employ it to its fullest potential.

Ketis possessed her own sword style and fighting approach. Her obsession with sharpness caused her to focus on this aspect and nothing else.

This ultimately caused her to launch the sharpest and most cutting attack that she had ever launched!

Even though the borrowed sword in her hand was not as sharp as her Bloodsinger under ordinary circumstances, the immense resonance amplified its cutting power to an insane degree!

The sword sang a loud and beautiful note as it cut through the air like the drop of a guillotine!

At the same time, two of the battle suits had spun on their axis quickly enough to fire at least one of their shrapnel cannons each.

Loud booms escaped from their muzzles as dozens of sharp and jagged pieces of precious transphasic metal flooded the surrounding space!

Many of them were bound to punch through Ketis' combat armor. It did not even matter if she could somehow intercept a couple of them with her sword. There were more than enough shards that could slip past her blade and strike her exposed body regardless!

However, Ketis did not think about all of that anymore.

She mustered up whatever willpower she had left and committed all of it towards her next attack!

"CUT!"

A blindingly white flash engulfed the entire floor!

Several loud and destructive sounds propagated through the busy battlefield. Both humans and aliens faltered in their attacks as they tried to regain their wits and figure out what just happened.

Silence descended in the immediate area where Ketis had just unleashed her entire potential to launch her sharpest attack to date.

The pescans around this site expected to see an armored human champion that was embedded with ugly metal shards.

What they saw instead looked so incredulous that the pescans could not accept their initial impressions.

All four powerful transphasic energy shields had been blasted apart. Not a single shred of them existed anymore as the earlier attack appeared to have breached them at the same time!

The giant battle suits were in a state that looked just as poor.

Ketis' sword slash had not just cut a neat and surgical horizontal line on one of the formidable suits.

Instead, she somehow managed to cut through all four of them at the same time!

That wasn't even the most outrageous part of what had happened.

The damage she inflicted on them was not limited to thin and surgical cuts.

Instead, at least a meter of solid matter had disappeared entirely!

It was as if Ketis' sword had irrevocably wiped a chunk of all of the transphasic armor plating, complex alien machinery and organic pescan matter out of existence!

The story wasn't over yet. The incredible sword slash she unleashed just a moment ago affected more than just her immediate foes.

Many more pescans and other obstacles further behind also exhibited the same fatal injuries!

Some of the pescans had lost so much of their bodies that only their heads along with their legs were left intact!

Everything else had been cut clean from existence by Ketis' ultimate attack!

A quick visual inspection allowed Ketis to conclude that she had easily cut the bodies of over a hundred pescan combat in an instant!

This… was impossible.

It wasn't until she shifted her gaze to her sword arm that she realized the truth.

Instead of holding the sword she had borrowed from an honor guard, she wielded an entirely different weapon at the moment!

The iconic shape and heft immediately sparked recognition in Ketis.

"What?!"

The Heavensword had somehow managed to cross the galaxies and directly substituted her previous weapon!

As she miraculously resonated with this transcendent blade, she could clearly sense that it was not a replica or a manifested phantom construct.

Having held the legendary sword several years before, Ketis knew without a shadow of a doubt that it was the real thing!

Just the enormous pool of heavenly energy buried deep inside this blade alone was enough to dispel any alternate possibilities!

It became increasingly clearer to the swordmaster that a slice of heaven had fallen into her hands!