The Mech Touch

"Huh?" Aurelia grew confused as she saw the powerful mech beginning to project a giant humanoid figure. "What is happening, papa?"

Her father, who had been teaching her a lesson on manipulation, struggled to accept the reality transmitted by the observation devices planted in the Ramage Repulsor System.

He first suspected that Cenatus Prospecting managed to hack them all. It was much more believable if the current footage was falsified.

However, he knew in his heart that the live feeds were all working fine. None of them were close enough to get affected by any interference. They were so well-hidden that it was impossible for a single party to sniff out all of them in a short amount of time.

Ves had no choice but to accept the fact that Saint Neville Magrin had reached a state that few mech pilots ever got to experience!

"The enemy ace pilot… has entered into a special state of mind, honey. Saint Neville Magrin… has attained the legendary state of Unity of Man and Machine. This is already scary enough if he is piloting a normal mech or an expert mech. If an ace pilot is able to reach this state with an ace mech… then the amount of strength he wields is unreal."

"How?"

"Humans have unlimited potential, my dear. You and I are constantly growing stronger. If we can do it, so can others. Each and every person can transform their spirit or willpower through exceptional means, thereby allowing them to summon much greater strength than anyone can imagine. Those who are able to succeed in this are the people who we truly need to pay attention to. They can be our greatest allies if they are on our side, but they can also become our most deadly enemies if they are on the opposite side!"

Aurelia became more and more awed as she was able to gain a faint glimpse of the immense power that Saint Neville managed to produce.

"Is he as strong as a god pilot, papa?"

"No." Ves spoke with certainty. "God pilots are much more astonishing than that. The Tower of Babel wouldn't even be able to remain intact if that was the case. Saint Neville has come close, though. The gap between his current state and his next rank has shrunk so much that…"

"Hm?" Aurelia turned her cute little head at her father.

"If my suspicions are correct, then Saint Neville has gained a much clearer idea on what he is working towards. The difficulty of becoming a god pilot… should be much less for him than usual!"

That alarmed Ves a lot!

Normally, he celebrated any event that allowed another god pilot to rise from the ranks of humanity.

The problem was that he did not want this to happen to one of his enemies!

It would be an absolute disaster if a new god pilot came into power who possessed an irreconcilable grudge against the Golden Skull Alliance!

Ves knew exactly what drove Saint Neville Magrin to this extent, and he clearly understood that he and his allies were primarily responsible for allowing this sequence of events to come into pass!

It was even an explicit part of his action plan!

Though he and his helpers were able to account for many possibilities, none of them thought that the most unlikeliest of events would actually take place.

Ves loosely estimated that the chance that Saint Neville Magrin might undergo a massive transformative boost in power was 0.1 percent or less!

That was already a generous estimate. Reaching the state of Unity of Man and Machine required the mech pilot to meet many strict criteria. Otherwise, it should have been a much more frequent occurrence on the battlefield!

As Ves tried to figure out where he miscalculated, the furious and empowered ace pilot didn't care about the magic of Unity of Man and Machine.

All he cared about was that his father was still with him, if not in body, then in spirit!

Saint Neville felt he could do anything as long as Otrus was still by his side!

"FATHER! YOU'RE STILL ALIVE! LET US COMBINE OUR STRENGTHS AND CRUSH THIS ALIEN WARSHIP! NO ONE IS ALLOWED TO TAKE AWAY YOUR LIFE!"

With the unflinching belief that his father was supporting him beyond his death, Saint Neville Magrin summoned more power and directed his supercharged ace mech to accelerate even faster towards the alien battleship!

He no longer cared about waiting for at least 218 seconds anymore!

He instinctively knew that he already gained the power to breach the alien battleship's defenses!

The Unrelenting abruptly sped up by several times! This was such a massive speed boost that even the aliens crewing the only warship on the battlefield grew alarmed.

What was especially dazzling was that the gigantic true resonance manifestation of Otrus Magrin became more solid and condensed!

It was as if Saint Neville's strong memories of his father were amplifying his current state of Unity of Man and Machine!

The aliens weren't stupid. They had fought against human forces long enough to develop a good understanding of the powerful and diverse means of the foreign invaders.

They had all learned that whenever something big was glowing with power, they were all about to have a really bad time!

The alien battleship no longer fired her guns at different starships anymore. The Cenatus Prospecting fleet had already disintegrated for the most part. Almost every fleet carrier had succumbed while the amount of surviving combat carriers had dropped by half.

Instead of wasting her firepower on finishing off these trivial targets, it was a lot more important to stop this gigantic growing human 'god' from getting close!

Every single primary, secondary and territory gun battery turned their powerful gun muzzles towards the approaching ace mech.

The slow but powerful primary kinetic cannons opened fire whenever they were able to do so, but before the powerful city-destroying rounds escaped the muzzles, the ace mech already evaded to the side!

Saint Neville Magrin's reaction speed had reached such an insane level that his actions were indistinguishable from precognition!

The Unrelenting even managed to evade many direct laser attack impacts!

Even as dozens of secondary laser cannons tried their best to weave an inescapable net around the Unrelenting, the powerful ace mech zipped around as if it was a light skirmisher instead of a medium hybrid mech!

Though the Unrelenting wasn't able to bend reality far enough to evade every incoming laser beam, the near-solid energy manifestation of Otrus Magrin easily sapped their strength!

The Unrelenting was unstoppable in this state!

It was as if Otrus Magrin himself was doing his best to protect his son from further harm!

This belief seemed to empower Saint Neville even further. His scorching hot eyes concentrated solely on the battleship that was responsible for 'almost killing' his cherished father.

As the ace mech braced its lance, the manifestation of Otrus Magrin lifted up its finger!

The lance and Otrus Magrin's arm were completely aligned. Both of them were united by a single purpose.

As the Unrelenting quickly closed in on the alien battleship, it started to enter into much more turbulent space!

It turned out that the alien battleship had shifted her spatial trap into a zone in front of the threatening ace mech.

However, the effect was far from matching the might of Neville's burning fury!

The ace pilot didn't even feel the additional resistance. The Unrelenting transphasic flight system was still accelerating the ace mech at an impossible rate!

By the time the Unrelenting was about to collide against the shielded bow of the alien battleship, Neville became unprecedentedly focused!

"MY FATHER COMMANDS YOU TO BREAK, SO BREAK!"

An incredibly powerful explosion erupted from the front of the battleship upon impact!

The ace mech along with its massive solidified Saint Kingdom collided against the bow of the vessel with such great speed and momentum that the energies released upon impact had reached cataclysmic levels!

No one except Saint Neville Magrin could track what was happening during this extraordinary interval of time!

Only Saint Neville could clearly feel that his 'father' had punched his finger through not three, but six orven segmented energy shields!

It turned out that the analysts employed by Otrus Magrin had underestimated the technology of the alien battleship.

If the Unrelenting had charged the enemy vessel in its previous state, then it would have been stopped at the fourth layer!

All of that was moot now that the Unrelenting had reached a completely different state.

The spear of the ace mech hadn't even touched any obstacles by the time that the giant glowing finger had destroyed every energy shield in its path!

​ Saint Neville barely had any time to process this massive result before the finger struck the hull of the alien battleship!

The bow was the strongest and most heavily-armored section of the alien vessel.

Layers of layers of Gugar Systems Arma-Lite DTT-F4 hull plating provided a lot of physical protection against both warship attacks and ace mech attacks!

Yet when the giant finger poked into the 'nose' of the alien ship, it managed to punch through all of those layers with unerring power!

The finger went deeper and deeper even as the surrounding compartment all sustained heavy damage!

Though the remaining limbs of the giant energy manifestation turned out to be more illusionary in nature, Saint Neville Magrin's amplified Saint Kingdom still crushed many ship components and pulverized the bodies of many alien crew members at closer ranges!

The ace mech drilled several hundred meters into the center of the alien battleship.

Not only did this devastating charge demolish a lot of essential offensive and defensive ship systems, but it also demolished many important compartments where officers and other essential crew members were stationed!

Overa third of all of the systems of the alien battleship immediately became inoperable because of this devastating charge attack!

At the end of the charge, the giant energy finger rapidly lost cohesion. Even the Unity of Man and Machine was not able to generate an endless amount of power!

Eventually, the shaped Saint Kingdom lost so much substance that the physical lance of the Unrelenting was forced to punch through the remaining core compartments of the battleship.

Once the ace mech finally lost all of its momentum, a brief pause ensued even as secondary explosions and other catastrophic phenomena engulfed the front half of the alien battleship.

Even though her rear half still remained functional for the most part, there was no doubt that the Unrenting had partially crippled her in just a single charge!

Saint Neville wasn't done. He wanted to do more than cripple the alien battleship. He wanted to destroy her utterly, and there was no better way to do that than to rampage through her insides where none of her warship-grade gun batteries could target his ace mech directly!

However, just as the powerful ace mech tossed away its ruined lance and lifted up its destructive warhammer, a powerful missile appeared out of nowhere and collided against the Unrelenting with such great force that the ace mech almost bounced out of the hole it had made!

The strange missile hadn't exploded upon impact. After a brief pause, it burst forward once again and somehow kicked the ace mech out of the hull of the alien battleship with so much power that a shockwave rippled through the surrounding space and shattered a decent chunk of the surrounding hull sections!

"Who dares?!" Saint Neville roared as he tried his best to force his Saint Kingdom to maintain its humanoid shape.

A single small shape emerged from the same hole.

The 'missile' turned out to be a surprisingly small armored alien individual.

Somehow, the alien was powerful enough to resist the might of an ace mech!

The Trampler of Stars could no longer command the battle from the seat of his power.

The fabric of space rippled around the powerful nunser warlord as the Trampler of Stars channeled the power of phasewater coursing through his veins.

The humans weren't the only ones who were capable of deploying gods on the battlefield.

The Trampler of Stars was determined to show these insolent foreign invaders how he came to be called this way his fellow aliens!