The Mech Touch

As the others began to adapt to the latest turn of events, Saint Osenring's attitude towards his ace mech was beginning to shift.

With each pull of the trigger, his ace mech inflicted a bit more damage than before.

With each pull of the trigger, Saint Osenring allowed this so-called 'Phase King' to affect his ace mech in an intrusive way.

With each pull of the trigger, Saint Osenring became more and more addicted to the increased penetration power of his ace mech.

The ace pilot had utilized the heavy gauss cannons so many times that he knew exactly what they were capable of. He understood what sort of defenses they could penetrate.

This was why he had become frustrated with his current opponent. The unclean whale that had burst out of the Palace of Shame hardly weakened his defenses after all of this time!

To see that his ace heavy artillery mech was finally able to inflict actual damage on this powerful foe for once was a powerful motivator!

By the time his Thunderer Mark II unleashed its twelfth salvo, Saint Osenring's conversion had reached an advanced stage!

While he could never look up to a completely foreign entity, he appreciated the help provided by the Phase King.

The whale-like creature's comprehension of phasewater was so great that Saint Osenring couldn't even begin to understand what was going on. All the ace pilot knew was that this alien could pull off a lot of tricks and was firmly on his side!

The ace pilot even took the initiative to communicate with the alien spirit.

"So you're called the Phase King?"

"..."

"I see. It's close enough. How is my mech? Do you like it? Are my guns good enough?"

"..."

The ace pilot and the design spirit knew nothing about each other. They could only figure out what they could sense from each other, but when Saint Osenring earnestly tried to learn more about the Phase King, their compatibility began to rise, much to the detriment of their shared opponent!

The unclean whale began to suffer more and more serious injuries after the Thunderer Mark II truly got to work!

Though the shield bypassing rounds still wasted a lot of their power after passing through the powerful spatial barrier, what was left still struck the surface of the unclean whale with thundering force.

Entire craters of flesh collapsed and turned to mush as the impacts spread expanding shockwaves.

Blood and phasewater sprayed into open space as torn flesh and veins could no longer contain the powerful life fluids.

Saint Osenring constantly tweaked and changed the shockwaves generated by his true resonance after every pull of the trigger. Some of the effects inflicted greater damage than others, so the ace pilot constantly optimized his power expression in the hopes of maximizing the damage with every hit!

The other ace pilots gleefully took advantage of the massive weak points opened up by the Thunderer Mark II!

"BURN!" Patriarch Reginald Cross roared as he vented his frustration and repressed fury through his mechanical incarnation!

The ARCEUS System of the Mars fired multiple powerful positron beams that easily passed through the torn and ruined flesh before striking the deeper parts of the unclean whale's body!

Other mechs quickly followed up whenever possible. The Embodiment of Love and Sacrifice channeled the combined true resonance of the Gemini Saints and fired a singular, powerful energy beam that exploited the hole expanded by the Mars and finally managed to punch through a deeper flesh layer!

The creature visibly shook and arced his back in pain as the resonance-empowered attack launched by the combination ace mech damaged one of his more important organs!

"The target's spatial barrier has weakened by 3 percent!"

The news encouraged the ace mechs to step up their efforts. The Mars and the Embodiment of Love and Sacrifice continued to attack other damaged sections in order to wound or destroy as many phasewater organs as possible.

While it was a shame to burn or vaporize all of those phasewater-rich organs, Ves and the others would rather throw away additional loot because it meant that they could finally end this humongous threat!

As the damage to the phasewater organs gradually weakened the unclean whale's spatial barrier, it became easier and easier for the Thunderer Mark II to do its job.

The more its gauss rounds phased through the spatial barrier, the greater the kinetic forces and by extension the shockwaves tormented the corrupted whale!

The unclean whale tried his best to strengthen his main form of defense, but that meant that he would weaken his efforts to repel the other attackers.

If the powerful beast did not concentrate enough on trying to repress the small but highly threatening intruder inside his body, the parasite would be able to reach his sensitive brain a lot sooner!

If the whale did not concentrate enough on its tentacles to keep the other ace mechs at bay, the small but extremely powerful machines would be able to attack its body with impunity.

Given time, the cannibal whale would have been able to defeat any of his current opponents in isolation, but the problem was that the enemy did not hesitate to rely on the power of teamwork to assail his body!

Though the monstrous creature was able to keep going for a long amount of time by virtue of his massive body, sooner or later his enormous buffer would bottom out. Once there was no more fat or flesh to absorb the incoming attacks, the whale would suffer the ignominy of getting killed by these mechanical voribugs!

No matter what, the unclean whale had no choice but to break the status quo and fight for his survival!

"Watch out! The target has decided to go on the attack!" Saint Marissa Lewandowski warned as she sensed a lot of aggression from the massive creature.

Intact flesh transformed into strange organs that resembled organic weapon batteries.

Even the tips of all of the tentacles began to grow similar organs!

Many of the nearby ace mechs retreated out of action and were all poised to evade the unclean whale's counterattack.

Soon enough, the powerful organic weapon batteries fired over a hundred powerful gamma laser beams!

Many of them focused on whatever ace mech was nearby, but the small and nimble machines easily evaded the telegraphed attacks, much to the unclean whale's dismay.

The only ace mech that got struck by these powerful graser beams was the Thunderer Mark II!

The ace heavy artillery mech had utilized its thick, spider-like legs to anchor itself to an asteroid.

This made it difficult to evade the numerous powerful graser beams that were all powerful enough to irradiate the crews of notable capital ships.

Yet as soon as the volley of beams struck the Saint Kingdom of the Thunderer Mark II, they rapidly lost their strength until just a quarter of the power of those attacks struck the ace mech!

Even then, the graser beams failed to do more than scorch and melt a shallow layer of the ace mech's heavy armor plating.

Seeing that the Thunderer Mark II was much easier to hit than the other ace mechs, the unclean whale redoubled his efforts to take down this powerful artillery machine.

The monster grew more organic weapon batteries and did not hold back on expending his dwindling energy reserves to slay the Thunderer Mark II!

Though Venerable Joshua wanted to help block the damage with his Everchanger, he knew that he was not strong enough to contribute anything useful.

Just one of those powerful warship-grade graser beams would definitely be able to blast half of the frontal armor of his expert mech!

The old Shield of Samar would have been able to block at least a dozen more attacks, but even it had limits despite its thicker and more generous buffer.

"Relax, kid." Saint Osenring told Venerable Joshua the overall direct communication channel. The Santana ace pilot developed a much more favorable impression of the Larkinson Clan in the last few minutes. "I don't need your help. It might not look like it, but my Thunderer Mark II is almost just as tough as a space knight. It has been my experience that it is always best if my machine can take as much damage as it can dish it with its guns."

Although the repeated powerful graser beam attacks continued to melt more and more armor plating, the Thunderer Mark II hardly let up on the pressure.

"We shall help you, Osenring!" Saint Sandro Gemini shouted.

The Embodiment of Love and Sacrifice focused most of its power on launching attacks on the increasingly more exposed internal organs of the unclean whale.

However, the strange combination mech also carried a tower shield, which it used to good effect by positioning itself in the way of several gamma laser attacks.

It didn't even matter if the powerful gamma laser beams bypassed the ace combination mech.

As long as the beams passed through a portion of the combined Saint Kingdom of the Gemini Saints, they lost so much power that Saint Osenring could easily crush whatever was left!

The heavy artillery specialist no longer had to allocate as much power in his defenses, allowing him to put more effort into strengthening his attacks.

The Thunderer Mark II unleashed its most powerful shield bypassing rounds yet! They did not impact on ordinary flesh and hide as usual, but specifically converged onto the organic laser batteries within the ace mech's line of sight!

The unclean whale roared yet again as its powerful but fairly sensitive ranged attack organs were rent asunder by the succession of shockwaves!

As the unclean whale increasingly lost his ability to retaliate against his foes, the human ace mechs grew bolder.

The Mars dove forward and tried to cut the tentacles with its Whale-Cutting Saber again. This time Patriarch Reginald Cross managed to keep his ace mech safe by employing hit-and-run tactics.

The Jedda Sandivar continued to utilize its Saint Kingdom to blind and confuse the unclean whale's perception as much as possible, but the machine had also attempted to poke the creature's giant eyeballs!

The corrupted whale might have a vast reserve of flesh and blood, but its supply was not unlimited!

As the minutes passed by, the unclean whale continued to lose more strength.

Half of his tentacles were gone while more of his surface layers were damaged than untouched.

"The target is growing lethargic. There are signs that the whale is suffering from massive trauma to his internal organs."

"The remaining tentacles are no longer attacking as vigorously as before."

"The target is generating less localized spatial phenomena than before. The strength of his spatial barrier has dropped below 50 percent of its previously recorded peak."

"The unclean whale's average body temperature is dropping!"

Ves and many other humans began to breathe lighter and lighter. They grew more relieved when they saw that their final adversary was slowly getting ground to death.

Though it was a pity that the human mech forces could not vanquish their monstrous foe with a single, dramatic combination attack, they would take what they could get. Everyone just wanted to put an end to this tiresome and stressful battle.

Just as Ves was thinking about how his clan should approach the rest of the coalition in order to demand a greater share of the spoils, he received an unexpected message.

"Sir, the Gemini Family has just sent an emergency proposal to us. The Geminis urgently requests your input."

"What do those incestuous bastards want now?" Ves frowned in irritation.

"The Geminis… are no longer in favor of slaying our current target. They… they want to capture the whale alive!"

"WHAT?!" Ves jerked his exhausted body. "Are they crazy?! There's no way we can control an enemy of this magnitude!"

"The Gemini Family is willing to give it a try. According to them, a living phase whale is at least ten times more valuable than a broken phase whale. The Geminis are already negotiating with the other members of the temporary coalition in order to earn their support. We have heard that the Santana Group and the Lehrer Foundation are already in favor of this proposal."

Ves fell silent for a moment.

He sighed. "I'm too tired for this crap."