The Mech Touch



Though the power that Ketis wielded was overwhelming, she barely managed to get a handle on it. The Heavensword in her hand was far too profound and powerful to be harnessed that easily!

However, if nothing else, Ketis could always keep it simple.

A sword slash remained a sword slash.

The biggest difference between slashing the Heavensword and slashing a more normal blade was that the former always produced a gigantic sword energy wave!

It was as if the Heavensword was a pressure valve that let loose a destructive burst of sacred energy that smited all of the foes that Ketis designated as her enemies!

Though the sword alluded to her that one of its many helpful properties was that it could distinguish between friend and foe, Ketis did not dare to test this ability.

It didn't matter too much. She was surrounded by pescans! It was easy to pick a direction and get close enough to her opponents to wipe many of them out at once!

Her incredible display of might and enormous light show did not go unnoticed.

She had quickly alarmed the pescans to such a degree that they began to fire their weapons at her with massed attacks.

None of the attacks went through!

Ketis fearlessly met the barrage of laser beams, kinetic projectiles and occasionaly explosive warheads without flinching a single time.

Even the transphasic weapons wielded by the elite pescan soldiers failed to make any headway into breaking the heavenly barrier generated by the Heavensword!

This left her free to concentrate on her attacks!

"My blade shall sweep you away!"

WOOSH!

With such a dense crowd of pescans, Ketis wanted to reduce her numbers as much as possible!

This was why she unleashed a slash in every direction that produced wider but less concentrated sword energy waves.

Despite the reduced penetration power of these energy attacks, their width and range had become at least twice as greater!

It was as if a punishing hurricane had engulfed the pescans. No matter whether they were in cover or not, when Ketis slashed the Heavensword in their direction, nobody was able to maintain their footing!

Structures, armor and flesh became struck by all-encompassing heavenly energy that inflicted both physical, heat and more exotic forms of damage, all at the same time!

The only pescans that could resist such might were the elite pescan soldiers who happened to be situated far away.

Instead of getting riddled with burning holes, their heavy forms had merely been swept aside while much of their transphasic armor plating had been rendered useless.

After Ketis had swept in each direction, she loosely estimated that she managed to kill over 300 pescans outright, while inflicting severe injuries to at least 300 more!

"Reeeiiaaa!"

"Ruueencaaa!"

"Uuuuuuwawa!"

Ketis drove the pescans mad with the immense power she displayed!

The aliens had never witnessed anything like it before. They had a basic understanding of the strength of human mechs, but they never expected that a single infantry-scale champion could fight like one of their awe-inspiring gods!

Almost every native alien in the Red Ocean had learned that it was blasphemy to challenge a god.

Right now, more and more of them believed that Ketis was actually a human god that had come down in person to punish them for their aggression towards the human race!

The strangest part was that the manifestations that Ketis displayed in her current form did not match the descriptions of what gods were supposed to be like, but these differences hardly mattered when her power was just as overwhelming!

Ketis demonstrated her capacity to fight like one of the native gods in so many different ways. From generating an impenetrable barrier to accelerating herself to extreme speeds, she was like a miniature phase whale that utilized weird techniques to inflict mass devastation!

Many of the aliens became so oppressed by the 'godly' displays of the Heavensword and the fall of so many of their comrades that they dropped onto their knees and gave up all resistance!

Other aliens became more incensed and started to attack Ketis even harder in an attempt to overwhelm her defenses!

Ketis knew that one of the best ways to judge a group of people was to observe their reactions when they had been pushed to the brink.

As far as the pescan race was concerned, their people were rather average. They did not entirely lose heart, but they did not possess remarkable resilience either.

Only a minority of their leaders and officers displayed much higher faith and conviction. It was through these key individuals that the pescan combatants maintained a measure of cohesion!

It was all useless to Ketis. Her might was too strong and her proficiency in wielding the Heavensword slowly improved.

When groups of pescans took shelter behind a stack of transphasic energy shields, Ketis took one contemptuous look at them before slashing the Heavensword in a decisive slash!

"Cut!"

Her willpower wasn't strong enough to shape the output of the Heavensword's sword energy attacks.

However, with the relic weapon's permission, she was able to 'pilot' the sword by passing on her intentions and instructions.

The sword decided how to channel its boundless energy into useful attacks.

Ketis paid close attention to how the Heavensword interpreted her latest attack.

She could sense through her active connection with the sword that it took out a dash of heavenly energy and compressed it in a reasonably thin blade.

Although the Heavensword was able to concentrate the energy quite a bit, it did not really excel in this aspect.

Heaven possessed infinite possibilities, but it took a huge amount of strength and control in order to harness the greater possibilities of the Heavensword!

Without an effective wielder, the Heavensword only compressed its sword energy into a relatively thick pancake and called it a day.

That did not mean that Ketis dismissed this rough technique. She could see that the Heavensword also performed a more profound operation.

It molded the sword energy to the point where it began to do what Ketis had always tried to produce through her own sword techniques but never really succeeded in practice.

The Heavensword extended its lethal edge into the higher dimensions, and not just a couple of them. The grand work was able to affect hundreds if not thousands of separate dimensions, each of which possessed their own unique strengths and properties!

The implications of this became obvious when the gigantic sword energy crescent struck the layered transphasic energy shields and cut through the solid barriers where the pescan soldiers sought to resist the incoming storm.

None of these defenses latest more than an instant as the overbearing sword energy attack cut through both their material and higher-dimensional matter like a hot knife through butter!

It was exactly because the Heavensword inflicted fatal blows onto the higher-dimensional phenomena produced by phasewater that the transphasic defenses collapsed with ease!

Normally, Ketis wouldn't have been able to sense or observe any of this, but the Heavensword empowered her perception and comprehension to such an insane degree that she could clearly perceive all of this phenomena taking place!

Ketis had gained the vision of a god!

The insights she harvested from this brief exposure was immensely valuable. It had always been hard to advance her theories on the more metaphysical and esoteric subject matters.

In addition to that, she hadn't been enjoying her studies on phasewater theory that much. Transphasic tech was the latest major trend in the mech community, so she was obliged to understand how it worked.

Now that she could see all of the difficult theoretical subject matters happening with her own expanded senses, her comprehension of phasewater theory experienced several major breakthroughs in the span of just a few seconds!

"So that is how it is!" Her eyes shone with divine comprehension. "Phasewater's material properties aren't all that important. What truly matters is how it expresses itself in the higher dimensions. If I want to damage it effectively, I don't have to destroy its manifestations in those very same dimensions by relying on brute force. I can use more efficient methods to disrupt all of that higher-dimensional stuff."

Phasewater's visual form was just the tip of the iceberg. Its true depth was much greater and more difficult to describe.

However, the 'ice' underneath the waterline wasn't all that solid. It was a lot more fragile and ephemeral than Ketis expected.

By applying clever and ingenious methods, she could theoretically come up with the tech or sword techniques that could weaken transphasic defenses to such an extent that she could cut through them with a regular blade!

In fact, this was sort of the basis of Venerable Dise's Phase Cutter technique, but it was far too flawed and rudimentary.

Though Venerable Dise was able to produce the desired result, she did so by relying far too much on her force of will and true resonance to fill up the huge gaps and transform failure into success!

Although Ketis could not replicate the exact methods employed by the Heavensword, she could still collect a lot of hints and use them to refine her own applications.

"I have an idea."

She resonated with the Heavensword and tried to induce the sword to shape its heavenly energy into a vibrating saw.

The principle behind this was to destabilize the powerful sword energy to the point where parts of it spilled over into the higher dimensions!

Even if this happened only momentarily, the constant vibrations meant that the sword energy effectively touched a lot of random dimensions in quick succession!

When Ketis swung the mighty Heavensword again, the gigantic sword energy attack it unleashed upon a cluster of reinforcing pescans vibrated at such a high frequency that it began to produce a high-pitched noise!

"Sing for me, Heavensword!"

The sword itself vibrated at a similar frequency while she held it in her armored hand, causing it to produce a noise on its own!

Ketis gleefully watched as the vibrating sword energy attack overcame the transphasic defenses with ease.

Although it seemed as if there was no difference from before, the exuberant swordmaster could clearly sense that the vibrations produced a real effect!

If the Heavensword relied more on brute force to break through the strong defenses, now it had depended more on finesse to achieve the same result!

The sword energy retained its strength at a much better rate as a consequence.

The sweeping horizontal attack not only broke through a lot of energy shields and hardware while killing dozens of pescan soldiers, but managed to retain enough strength to keep going!

More and more aliens, structures, defenses and other obstacles got cut from waist height as the sword energy attack just kept going!

It wasn't until the vibrating attack had reached the other side of the open hall that it finally ran out of juice.

Yet before the sword energy finally dissipated, the vibrating attack drilled through the transphasic stone wall that every assumed was impervious to almost all forms of damage.

"Five meters!"

The Heavensword managed to cut through five meters of solid transphasic matter!

This was a profound feat, especially for the aliens. They knew more than anyone else how difficult it was to drill through strong walls that were expressly designed to contain powerful phase lords.

The fact that Ketis managed to cut through them with so much ease further amplified the defending side's belief that she was a powerful sword goddess!

Now that she had managed to learn the crucial knack of this method, Ketis grinned even wider underneath her helmet.

Her killing efficiency had skyrocketed now that she discovered the power of vibrations!

The Heavensword buzzed even louder under her deliberate manipulations. She had become excited beyond words.

The aliens that still remained coherent shivered as the Heavensword's aura conveyed her predatory intent.

"As punishment for your crimes against humanity, I shall allow you to become my practice targets for the prototypical form of my latest technique!"

Ketis went absolutely wild! She flew across the contested floor like a missile and unleashed so many vibrating sword energy attacks that nothing remained intact after her intervention!