The Mech Touch

Venerable Imon Ingvar and Venerable Dise weren't the only expert pilots exercising their piloting skills today.

The latest expert pilot to emerge from the Larkinson Army was still new and unrefined in his strength expression. He required a lot of personal instruction in order to guide him into constructing his own unique fighting style that would define his career as a demigod.

There was another new expert pilot that also needed to develop her unique battle methods.

Unlike her brother, Commander Casella Ingvar had the benefit of piloting a completed expert mech, a masterwork no less!

While she spent a fair amount of her time on practicing her personal combat abilities, that was not the direction she wanted to focus upon as she evolved into a better expert pilot.

Her Command Field was her true specialty!

For this reason, she often worked together with other friendly mechs in her practice bouts against other expert mechs!

This time, she teamed up with two mech companies of the Living Sentinels.

One of the mech companies consisted entirely of the new Sentinel-exclusive mech models that had recently been released.

Although the Spirit of Bentheim did not produce a lot of copies of the new Rigid Spine and Rigid Wall models, the Living Sentinels still received enough of them to begin systematic training.

Right now, the new defense-oriented mechs formed a defensive sphere around the Minerva.

The expert command mech should never be caught in the open due to its strategic importance. It must always be covered by a sufficient escort of other machines!

This was why the Rigid Walls surrounded the Minerva from each side. Their thick tower shields did not quite link up with each other, but when combined with the bulky frames of the space knights, it was not that easy to circumvent their defenses!

If that wasn't enough, the Rigid Spines deployed behind the space knights had extended their spears through the notches of the tower shields.

This caused the formation to resemble a hedgehog!

There were multiple reasons for Casella to arrange her troops this way. Not only did it provide all-round protection against maneuverable light mechs, it also allowed the expert pilot to extend her Command Field across all of her Commandeered mechs with minimal wasted energy!

The 80 Sentinel mechs under Commander Casella's command therefore projected a surprising amount of threat towards Tusa.

The expert mech that served as the Minerva's practice opponent this time did not immediately go on the attack because of that. The thorny melee formation had become much more formidable now that Casella had Commandeered the entire formation!

"Our expert mechs are getting more and more ridiculous!" Venerable Tusa complained. "Don't get me wrong. I think it is good that our mech designers are improving their work, but can't they give an oldster like me some slack?!"

"Fairness doesn't exist on the battlefield." Commander Casella replied to the light mech specialist. "Are you going to attack or do I have to make the first move?"

"Heh, show me what you've got!"

The shield sphere slightly expanded and opened more gaps in the sides. The reason for doing this quickly became evident as silver-coated Bright Warriors wielding luminar crystal rifles became visible!

Due to the nature of the current formation, only a limited number of rifleman mechs were able to train their weapons at the Dark Zephyr.

Venerable Tusa did not dare to underestimate these Sentinel mechs, though.

Under ordinary circumstances, his Dark Zephyr could easily break open this formation of mechs and mech pilots and cut them down with impunity.

Now that they had come under the control of Commander Casella, their coordination and power had reached another level!

This immediately became evident when a dozen lightly-empowered laser beams struck towards the Dark Zephyr!

The Commandeered ranged mechs exhibited near-perfect coordination as they each fired their weapons in a box around the expert light mech.

Venerable Tusa and his expert mech's ability to evade attacks was legendary! The pair had become so good at anticipating and evading ranged attacks that Commander Casella saw no point in trying to lead her attacks.

The Dark Zephyr encountered this kind of response many times these days. It was the standard answer to a light mech that was just too difficult to predict.

Even so, Tusa did not show any concern at all! Getting boxed in was difficult to deal with but his current opponents were not numerous enough to pin down the Dark Zephyr!

"Hah! You need a lot more ranged mechs in order to land a hit on my mech!" Tusa laughed.

The Dark Zephyr freely weaved around the shots even as it circled around the spherical formation.

The ranged mechs guided by Commander Casella always fired their weapons at the right time and in the right direction, but with so few weapons being brought to bear at the same time, it was still difficult for the Commandeered mechs to land a blow on the expert light mech!

The easiest way to increase the odds of hitting the light mech was to alter the formation of Sentinel mechs. If all 40 of the ranged mechs were able to aim in the same direction, the Dark Zephyr was bound to get hit by an empowered laser beam!

However, Casella did not choose to do so because she did not wish to break the current formation and expose the rear.

The purpose of this practice session was to figure out how she could protect herself against an enemy expert light mech!

To that end, the Sentinel Commander decided to go serious and employ her Command Field in a more specific manner.

"The battlefield is my chessboard!"

Up until this point, Commander Casella's Command Field only extended far enough from the Minerva to cover her Commandeered mechs.

Now, she extended it by a kilometer, thereby covering the entire dome of the sphere where the Dark Zephyr was displaying its acrobatics!

The Commandeered ranged mechs under command immediately altered their firing pattern.

Instead of firing at all of the sides and corners around the Dark Zephyr in the hopes of achieving at least a single hit, the enhanced and guided ranged mechs were actively trying to track and predict the elusive expert light skirmisher!

"What?!" Venerable Tusa exploded as he suddenly had to exert a lot more effort to dodge the incoming attacks. "This is impossible! I know your Sentinel mech pilots can receive your help, but this is insane!"

Although the Sentinels had yet to land a hit, they had come a lot closer this time!

This was not just because they received more guidance from Commander Casella.

The true reason why they were able to pose a greater threat towards the Dark Zephyr was because the target in question was moving through a region of space where Commander Casella had faintly spread her will!

Though her Command Field was not even close to matching the power of a genuine Saint Kingdom, it already possessed a shadow of a domain field in advance.

No matter where the Dark Zephyr dodged and weaved, Venerable Tusa always felt that his expert mech was being tracked and observed by a cold and calculating mind.

As Commander Casella became increasingly more proficient at performing her operations, her opponent felt increasingly more cornered.

He needed to get more serious!

"Let's try this then! Perception Distortion!"

The Dark Zephyr increased its distance from the Sentinel formation and began to display its signature resonance ability!

Although this ability was far from reaching its full effectiveness at this relatively short range, it still provided Venerable Tusa with a much-needed safety buffer!

Attacks that should have struck the Dark Zephyr instead passed through as if it hit empty space!

After a minute of seeing her sure-fire attacks fail in this manner, Commander Casella narrowed her eyes.

Her Command Field became more active as she resonated even deeper with the Minerva.

THIS FLY SHALL NOT ESCAPE OUR SIGHTS.

As Commander Casella deepened her ability to perceive the space around the Minerva, Her Commandeered mechs proceeded to fire at angles that should ordinarily miss.

However, after only a few seconds of altering her approach, one of the laser beams finally struck the Dark Zephyr's resonance shield!

"Damnit!" Venerable Tusa groaned as he recognized that he had lost this challenge. "That Command Field of yours is too absurd. If the firepower of your Commandeered mechs isn't so weak, you can slaughter any expert light mech that flies into your range!"

Commander Casella curled her lips in pleasure. She gained a lot of satisfaction from this success.

What was even better was that she wasn't the only one to feel this way!

"We've done it, ma'am!"

The mech pilots that she connected to with the help of her command field were not mindless bots. They were flesh-and-blood humans who continued to maintain their awareness and fight alongside her as she commanded them in battle!

Now that Commander Casella had figured out the knack to tracking the Dark Zephyr despite its best efforts to distort her perception, Venerable Tusa eventually admitted defeat.

His Perception Distortion resonance ability was effective at fooling observations, but what Casella was doing went beyond that.

Her Command Field was a direct extension of herself, so as long as an enemy mech flew into her range, it couldn't hide its actual position from its awareness!

The Minerva was a natural nemesis against stealth mechs and machines that relied on subterfuge and deception!

"Unfortunately, it is difficult to extend the range of my Command Field." Casella softly sighed.

The patriarch speculated that there were two ways for her to be able to increase the space that she could influence in this manner.

After enough time had passed for Casella to grow her resonance strength, she had activated her Command Field to the limit and found that its range had barely increased.

By performing multiple measurements on different days, it became apparent that the Command Field's growth rate followed the cubed root relationship.

This meant that even if she grew stronger, it was extremely unlikely for Commander Casella to engulf an entire battlefield with her Command Field. This was especially the case in spaceborn battles where fights across distances of hundreds if not thousands of kilometers were relatively common!

Unfortunately for Venerable Tusa, Casella's lack of range was not that relevant to him considering that it was always effective against melee mechs!

Seeing that there was no way for the Dark Zephyr to avoid getting hit for the time being, Tusa decided to go on the attack.

"Watch out, Sentinels!"

The Dark Zephyr abruptly changed course and charged towards the spherical formation!

The Sentinel ranged mechs no longer played a role at this point.

Instead, Commander Casella directed much more attention towards the melee mechs under her command!

"Strike the Zephyr and block its path!"

The Rigid Walls did not have to do much except to brace for a possible impact.

The Rigid Spines readied their spears and waited to stab in the right direction at the right moment.

Venerable Tusa did not choose to charge straight forward. The enemies right in front were too prepared against the Dark Zephyr's approach.

Instead, the expert light mech circled around for a few seconds before randomly deciding to launch its attack run!

"Repel!"

The spears in front of the Dark Zephyr rapidly struck forward under the guidance of Commander Casella!

However, the lightly-empowered speartips eventually struck nothing as the expert light skirmisher turned out to be an illusion!

"It's a clone!"

An instant later, the Dark Zephyr stopped behind the Minerva.

One of its Unending alloy knives was pointed towards the neck of the expert command mech.

The other knife was pointed straight onto the vulnerable expert mech's back.

"You still have a long way to go before you can repel an expert light mech." Venerable Tusa smugly said.

Commander Casella closed her eyes for a moment as she calmly accepted this little loss.

"I will learn and do better next time. I did not expect you to go all-out this time."

"The real enemy will not hold back on you. Remember that, commander."

In truth, Venerable Tusa didn't want to suffer a humiliating defeat this time.

He had quietly employed the Endless Paths prime ability to create a decoy of his expert mech.

At the same time, he activated the Untouchable ability so that his actual machine could phase through the wall of Sentinel mechs in front!

After practicing with these prime abilities so many times, Venerable Tusa's application of them had become a lot more refined!