The Mech Touch

To be fair, how could he have known that the arche phase lords not only had the ability to push incoming enemies off-course, but also combine their abilities so seamlessly to produce the strength needed to succeed?

It became clear that the arche phase lords became a bit harder to deal with if they were able to work together to such an amazing extent.

After Ves made a fool of himself by smacking himself against the archeshells, he at least possessed the awareness to distance himself from his opponents and take stock of his situation.

No matter how many excuses he used, Ves largely wasted his time and failed to stall the forward progress of the arche phase lords.

He had lost most of his mind when he went on the attack. Just because he gained a bit of strength and skill did not mean he could beat up phase lords straight away!

Just as Ves tried to figure out what he should do instead, a first-class mech that was roughly a third of his size approached from afar and stopped by his side.

A communication signal directly connected to his cranial implant.

"Professor Larkinson, it is good to see you joining the fight!" Major Simon Jankowski greeted. "That said, we cannot afford to have you fly around and act on your own. It will be better for all of us if you follow our lead and coordinate your actions with us. As the highest-ranking mech commander in the field, you should follow my orders with as little questions as possible. Do you comply?"

The way the expert candidate talked to Ves had shifted by the time he spoke the last two sentences. He switched from an inferior tone to a more bossy tone.

This was a deliberate shift that was meant to signal that Ves needed to set aside all of his authority if he wanted to fight alongside the mechs of the Bluejay Fleet.

"I will comply." Ves bowed his head. "My expertise does not extend to command. I will put my trust and my capabilities in your hands. Use me however you see fit."

This was no time for him to show off and let his lack of combat acumen ruin the effort to win the battle. Ves still held the highest status among the soldiers, but that did not automatically translate into martial competence. He had no problem with putting down his ego and letting Major Jankowski order him around as if he was a minion.

In fact, Ves welcomed the expert candidate's guidance!

It was quite confusing for Ves to join the fray without knowing his place and what he should do at specific times. It was much better if Major Jankowski and the officers back in the Bluejay Fleet did all of the analysis and strategizing. Ves just needed to act like a dumb grunt and do what he was told.

That was good. That was exactly what he needed. He already had his hands full with trying to piece together a combat system that would allow him to combine his diverse but scattered advantages into a cohesive strength.

Sections of archshell lit up and began to pelt the incoming human phase lord as well as his accompanying first-class multipurpose mechs with transphasic laser beams.

00:17

Major Jankowski was pleased that Ves agreed to play along. "Please hold on to your current attitude, professor. I am not entirely aware of what you are capable of, but I can make reasonable guesses. For now, we need you to work with our mech units as an anchor and a linchpin of our offensive approach. Those archeshells are too good at forcing our mechs to maintain their distance. With your help, you should be able to buy us opportunities to get closer and weaken their spatial abilities."

His first-class multipurpose mech quickly blasted off and rejoined a loose wing of other powerful machines.

Ves followed suit as best he could, but did not really manage to fit into their formation. His mobility worked a lot differently from theirs, so he was not able to replicate their tighter turns and abrupt course changes.

However, he was keeping up more or less, and that was enough.

As the first-class multipurpose mechs circled around the archeshell ball, they did not remain idle. They oriented their torsos towards their primary objective and opened fire with whatever integrated ranged weapons they had on hand.

"Professor Larkinson, do you have any effective means of attacking from range?"

"No. Not against enemies as tough as these arche phase lords."

"Then we will be swooping in to attack. Do not try to overcommit. Just get in, use your staff as a club to attract the attention of the enemy phase lords and get out when we withdraw, understood?"

"What if the enemy phase lords gather their strength and push me away again?"

"That is good. The more energy they expend on keeping you at bay, the less energy they can spare for our mechs. Begin!"

The battlefield was no place for lectures or deliberations. Only action and timing mattered. Major Jankowski evidently thought that this was the time to strike, because 60 or so first-class multipurpose mechs acted in unison and either closed in on the ball of archeshells, or stayed behind and coordinated their firepower.

As Ves' true body along with a collection of mechs approached the ball from a single direction, the enemy phase lords already prepared to repel the obvious assault.

Sections of archshell lit up and began to pelt the incoming human phase lord as well as his accompanying first-class multipurpose mechs with transphasic laser beams.

The mechs were better prepared this time. They all hailed from the Red Association, so they were not only able to link their azure energy shields with each other, but also received more potent support from the pair of combat carriers that had flown close enough to share their own energy shields!

Even so, there was a limit to how much shield link technology could sustain the pressure.

Ves repressed the urge to flinch when the laser beams struck his spatial barrier. It was incurring significant damage, but it was still relatively fresh, so he was not too concerned about getting his flesh burned right away.

As Ves continued to keep up with the surrounding mechs, he noticed that they were not approaching at a faster pace. Instead, they controlled their velocities and made sure to evade the laser beams as best as possible.

Ves did not possess that sort of maneuverability, so he straightforwardly tanked most of the incoming shots with his spatial barrier until he remembered he had a better option at his disposal.

In the face of an incoming attack, the instinct of a phase lord was to summon a spatial barrier and let it resist the attack. Nôv(el)B\\jnn

However, an initiate in Dark Apostle Self Defense had a better option at his disposal.

Ves began to call upon the power of darkness once again while he began to spin his Oceancaller like a propeller.

His arms and hands moved by instinct. The skills he acquired through long practice that never actually occurred guided him into making the most effective movements.

As the Oceancaller spun around at such a speed that it looked like a blur in the eyes of most people, Ves began to draw upon the power of darkness from the surrounding environment and Blinky and infused it all into his polearm.

Ominous black energies spilled from his staff and quickly consolidated into a new barrier that successfully blocked the incoming shots!

"Let darkness become my shield!"

It helped that Ves also flexed his spatial abilities and tried to add transphasic properties to the darkness barrier.

Although a lot of darkness energy burned away after resisting the incoming transphasic laser beams, the barrier of darkness refused to admit weakness and stubbornly blocked the energy attacks, though at the cost of dispersing a portion of the darkness.

Ves could feel the strain of trying to maintain the darkness barrier when actively being attacked.

Strangely enough, Ves did not worry too much about whether he could sustain the effort. He was not really supplying this technique with his own relatively paltry darkness energy.

He instead sourced the darkness energy from others, though it was arguable whether Blinky should be treated as a separate entity or a split personality that gained a lot more independence than usual.

Whatever the case, Ves and the other mechs were able to get closer without straining their limited resources as much with the help of his stunt!

The arche phase lords tried to repeat their old trick and push Ves away, but it didn't work as well this time because he was on guard and moving at a more controllable speed this time!

Ves concentrated his mind and used his darkness barrier to resist the push.

"It worked!"

Some of the first-class mechs got pushed off-course, but their mech pilots quickly readjusted.

"Attack!"

The first-class multipurpose mechs had never ceased attacking with their varied mix of ranged weapons, but now that they had reached the archeshells, they began to use their powerful transphasic hyper melee weapons to inflict additional damage on the scarred and cracked archeshells!

Ves could not miss out on the action. He suspended his darkness barrier and no longer spun his Oceancaller anymore.

He instead began to stab one of the ends of his relic into a shallow hole. A few pieces of archemetal got loose, but that was all. Ves tried to leverage more strength from his true body and flexed his spatial power onto his weapon. He also borrowed the power of darkness to add more strength to his next strike!

"Darkness shall consume you!"

If there was anything Ves learned after learning how to fight like a Dark Apostle, it was that words always had meaning. So long as he wanted them to come true, then reality might be able to find a way to fulfill his desire!

What happened next seemed to be an example of this. The staff strikes began to chip away greater portions of the archeshell.

The alien whose shell was beaten into pieces clearly experienced a lot more distress. The arche began to fire more transphasic laser beams, doing a better job at suppressing the closest first-class multipurpose mechs.

None of them were immediately under threat as they continued to rely on shield link technology to avoid early retirement from the battlefield.

Ves was not mindlessly hitting the archeshell with a darkness-infused relic. He could not stop his mind from spinning. He was constantly trying to figure out how he could strengthen his attacks and inflict greater harm on the arche phase lord.

As much as he was doing his part, this scale of damage was negligible compared to the large archeshell!

He recalled everything he knew about how high-ranking mech pilots fought and the rules he discovered about E energy.

Although Ves lacked the characteristic willpower and true resonance of an expert pilot, he was still a very potent cultivator, though he channeled most of his energies towards creation rather than destruction.

This time he needed more of the latter, so he tried to think on how he could use his expertise to augment his blows further.

He concluded that he needed to harmonize with the power of darkness in the environment. He was not drawing enough darkness from the ambient energies, so he tried to leverage the power of his mind and spirit.

It was at this point that he began to harmonize with lots of small and unexpected malevolent spirits.

He pretty much forgot about them, but that did not mean they had ceased to exist. The nanomachine plagues that the first-class multipurpose mechs carefully tried to avoid were still working to chew through the archeshells.

Driven by the rudimentary evil spirits that Ves had managed to impart on them, they all took on the pre-programmed form of cats as they made their best impression of Lucky!

Although these spirits were not pure beings of darkness, the fact that they were born with malice in their hearts and that he happened to be their creator allowed him to harmonize with them surprisingly well!

It was… as if he could Commandeer them like how the Saint Commander blessed friendly troops with her true resonance!