The Mech Touch

Venerable Davia Stark broke through.

Every sensor that was able to get a read on the Amaranto Mark III identified the undeniable manifestations of a second apotheosis.

Red humanity just became a little stronger than before after welcoming the ascension of a new ace pilot!

Many human defenders immediately cheered as they saw their hopes of surviving this battle rise higher.

Many high-tier expert pilots of the expeditionary fleet sincerely transmitted their congratulations to Saint Davia Stark.

Although they were all jealous that she had managed to take this crucial step first, the powerful expert pilots all felt confident that they could grasp their own chance during this battle!

As Saint Davia Stark broke through, she became stronger in every way. Although her accumulation was not too great, the fundamental transformation sublimated her willpower and spirit until she was able to birth a new domain!

The cat head prow of the Spirit of Bentheim that previously showed off the majesty of the Larkinson Clan suddenly began to glow brighter while exuding a strong threatening aura.

Anyone who held even the slightest contempt towards red humanity immediately felt guilty, as if the source of the newly formed domain would come to them and force them to surrender their lives one day.

The powerful domain of the latest ace pilot of the Larkinson continued to expand and take shape. E energy radiation from the environment supplemented its growth and helped to solidify the ace pilot's new foundation.

In the meantime, the Amaranto Mark III underwent a transformation of her own. The recently upgraded mech eagerly absorbed a portion of the powerful feedback released by her battle partner, using the energies to boost her growth and become a better living mech!

The compatibility between the mech and mech pilot had already been high, but it rose even further as the energies moulded the sophisticated archemech into a machine that better matched Davia Stark's domain and power expression!

The archemech continued to glow bright. The unusually high concentration of hyper materials in her archemech frame caused the entire machine to resonate with Saint Stark on a much deeper and stronger level than before.

The resonance meters shot up, breaking straight past the limit of an expert pilot and propelling all the way to 108 laveres before hitting a ceiling!

If Saint Stark's accumulation was greater, then it may have been possible for her to surpass Saint Commander Casella Ingvar's resonance strength.

This was especially possible considering that the Miracle Couple technically designed the Amaranto Mark III as a partial ace mech rather than a pure expert mech!

At this time, Gloriana's bold and forward-thinking decision to replace the expert mech-grade resonating exotics with ace mech-grade resonating exotics seemed prescient.

Although the Amaranto Mark III was not entirely an ace mech, she had definitely risen beyond the limits of an expert mech from the moment the Design Department completed her most recent upgrade.

This brought so many benefits to Saint Stark. For all intents and purposes, she was already piloting a quasi-first-class ace mech in many ways that mattered!

Though a part of her components, hardware configuration and operating system parameters were still tuned to accommodate a high-tier expert pilot, it was quite easy to perform shallow modifications and retune the Amaranto Mark III until she became a proper ace mech like the Dark Zephyr Mark III!

It was unfortunate that the Amaranto Mark III could only complete this transformation in a workshop, but it didn't matter too much for the newly ascended saint as the classification of resonating materials was by far the most important variable that differentiated expert mechs from ace mechs!

All of this meant that unlike many other pilots who broke through a second time, Saint Stark did not face as many constraints from her machine!

In fact, now that Saint Stark's resonance strength had become so much stronger than before, she no longer felt as much strain when trying to resonate with ChargeMate and HeatMate.

The two resonating materials comprised of a classic combination among ace mechs that relied heavily on energy weapons.

One of them was capable of directly converting true resonance into electrical energy.

The other was able to reduce a lot of heat by expending true resonance.

Although the effects sounded simple, they were absolutely powerful under the right circumstances!

The stronger the ace pilot, the more he or she was able to benefit from these two resonating alloys!

At this moment, Saint Stark had only just become an ace pilot, so she was not able to tap into the greater potential of the two resonating exotics.

It was already enough that she was able to draw out a part of their strength and make her ace mech a little stronger!

With the power of her explosive forced resonance, Saint Stark was able to sidestep the fairly weak power reactor of the Amaranto Mark III and improve the living mech's energy output so that it faintly surpassed the threshold of a first-class high-ranking mech!

When combined with the Endex System Version 3.0 which just experienced a considerable boost in efficiency and effectiveness due to the most recent willpower sublimation, the Amaranto Mark III was able to output even stronger energy beams than before.

The best part about many of the changes and improvements triggered by Saint Stark's breakthrough was that it was all persistent rather than temporary!

The newly ascended ace pilot grinned as her shining eyes gazed at the enemies in the distance.

She could practically feel the fear emanating from the phase lords that were located so far away that their massive bodies had to be viewed through magnifying telescopic optical sensors.

She no longer saw the phase lords as threats per se.

Though she always had to remain on guard against these powerful alien foes, right now the power balance was firmly in her favor!

"Up close, I am at your mercy. From afar, I am the executioner who shall harvest your lives!"

Saint Stark did not yearn to be invincible and omnipotent.

She only asked for one thing.

She wanted the power to kill her targets no matter how strong they may be. The ace pilot knew that as long as her foes remained at extreme range from her own Amaranto Mark III,

As long as Saint Stark piloted the Amaranto Mark III, she knew without a doubt that nearly any enemy became vulnerable to her Instrument of Vengeance so long as they were in the open and far enough away!

It just so happened that there were still 5 high-priority targets flying in open space!

The slow and steady advance of the native aliens had turned from an intimidating display to a shooting gallery as far as Saint Stark was concerned!

"Stark!" The Saint Commander transmitted an urgent message to the latest ace pilot of the Larkinson Clan. "How long are you able to last?!"

"Not for long." Stark scowled.

"Even with your new mech?"

"My new ace mech allows me to stretch my grown legs without hitting any limits, but that doesn't mean much if I have already run a marathon beforehand. I can feel that my explosion of strength is temporary. You've experienced the same thing. You should know what it is like. My mech has little to no influence on how long I can last."

That was the only downside to breaking through in battle. Though she was incredibly glad that she had finally gained the strength and status that she needed to exact her revenge on those who preyed on humans that could not protect themselves, she would probably have to retire from the battlefield from the moment her forced resonance ran out of steam!

"Then make the most of it." Casella Ingvar succinctly said.

"Oh, I intend to." Saint Davia Stark grinned.

The Amaranto Mark III flared with greater power than before. The ace mech had not weakened by any measure compared to before. In fact, she had grown stronger and was able to absorb a lot more E energy with the help of a domain that was powered by forced resonance!

The entire Spirit of Bentheim suddenly darkened as the Amaranto Mark III absorbed much of the light from the surrounding environment.

The living mech's Divurnas alloy worked much more effectively than before. It sucked in a torrent of light energy and channeled it all into the Instrument of Vengeance.

The oversized rifle already glowed like a blazing hot white star. Previously, the weapon struggled to contain so many different energies at elevated quantities.

Now, the most recent wave of willpower baptism along with the much stronger application of forced resonance effectively caused the weapon's tolerances to expand in an explosive manner.

The Instrument of Vengeance's concentration of energy exceeded that of the previous instance!

The native aliens weren't stupid. Even if they had difficulty making sense of what was happening inside the eye socket of the cat head prow of the Spirit of Bentheim, they knew an attack was coming!

This time, the phase lords no longer stupidly postured their giant and very exposed true bodies in the open.

The alien gods may be prone to arrogance and conceit, but they were not stupid, especially if they have lived for hundreds if not thousands of years.

The 5 remaining phase lords completely shed any notion of dignity and hastily warp traveled to the rear of the closest alien battleships, intending to use their formidable hulls as solid cover!

Saint Stark let out a noise of irritation. If she wielded the previous version of the Instrument of Vengeance, then she would have been able to defeat this foolish countermeasure by bending her energy beam at an angle.

Unfortunately, one of the changes that Ves had made to the Instrument of Vengeance was to replace Opticonium in order to free up capacity to integrate ChargeMate and HeatMate to the Amaranto Mark III.

Saint Stark did not think it was wrong to make this swap. Without the additional power and tolerances provided by the two ace mech-grade resonating alloys, her earlier strike wouldn't have been able to become strong enough to assassinate Khaso Leiyen.

Since she was no longer able to bend her energy beam attacks anymore, she may as well attempt to wound and kill the phase lords by relying on brute force!

"You are next!"

She did not pull out all of the stops this time. The Two-Step Execution Crystal was an Ultimate Module that was not as suited in the current conditions. Using it was time-consuming and would force her to make fewer shots than she would like.

Besides, her latest breakthrough had improved her in a way that made it a lot easier for her to maintain her accuracy at this range.

As soon as she trained her rifle in the direction of the Eight Lord of Takansha, she decisively pulled the trigger.

Another exaggeratingly strong and thick bright light beam lanced across space before striking at the battleships that the other orven phase lord used as makeshift cover!

Just as Stark expected, the energy beam pierced through the multiple layers of azure energy shields as if they were nothing and pierced through the hull as if it was only a minor speed bump!

After the beam instantly passed through the other side of the thick hull, it pierced through the other layers of azure energy shields that were oriented towards the opposite side before finally slamming into the defenses of the Eight Lord of Takansha!

The alien was ready for the attack. He apparently specialized in defense, because he did not just rely on his native spatial barrier to resist this overwhelming strike, but also conjured up four more layers of spatial barriers in front of his true body!
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Though the additional spatial barriers were significantly smaller and did not cover every angle of his body, the Eight Lord of Takansha was still able to put them in the way of the extremely powerful energy beam!

Three of the barriers broke in quick succession, but the fourth flared brightly before finally succumbing.

The native spatial barrier caught the remaining energy beam, but it had exhausted so much of its power that it finally fizzled out of existence.

The Eight Lord of Takansha looked weary, but relieved.

Then the eye socket of the Spirit of Bentheim began to glow again amidst the spreading darkness.

Saint Davia Stark was already preparing to launch her next strike!