The Mech Touch (Web Novel)
chapter-2804

The second Bright Warrior put up a stiffer fight than the first one. Having discarded its cumbersome shield, the defensive mech was able to maneuver more freely, allowing it to evade many attacks while launching more sophisticated counterattacks in return!

Yet all was not well with the metallic mech. The scaled biomech that pushed it back was faster and retained more of its original performance!

While it didn't display any drastic tricks like turning its legs into creepy tentacles, the Dragonscale Warrior's base performance was already good enough to suppress the Bright Warrior!

The performance disparity was too great. Even when Ves switched the Bright Warrior's design spirit from Goldie to Qilanxo, there was only so much Bavros could do to keep his mech together!

Venerable Jannzi reacted with surprise at this change.

"Can you do this with every mech?"

"Yes, but it's not as easy as it looks." Ves quietly answered. "And as you can see, a change in glow isn't a panacea."

There was no suspense to this battle in his eyes. The only way the Dragonscale Warrior would lose was if Trip Oxxon made a very big mistake or if Bavros suddenly became twice as good!

That latter part made Ves think for a bit.

Theoretically, he might be able to turn this outlandish claim into reality.

Yet Ves quickly discarded the notion. Performing Ancestral Possession in front of so many eyes would surely cause a lot of powerful people to grow suspicious at Bavros' suddenly jump in piloting skill!

This wasn't a controlled lab situation either. There was no other Bright Warrior nearby that was piloted by a suitable expert candidate who could donate his or her skills while the match proceeded!

Besides, one of the preconditions for activating this special ability was that both the source and the recipient were connected to the Larkinson Network.

Therefore, when the Bright Warrior finally fell after the Dragonscale Warrior simply opened up all of its old wounds, Ves did not express any dismay.

"We won!"

"Huzzah!"

"Biomechs aren't useless after all! The Epsilon Mosar was simply too awful. The other biomechs should be better!"

The swing in public opinion was drastic. The crowd seemingly forgot their discontent and avidly cheered the fact that Dr. Navarro finally achieved a victory in the second stage!

[The Dragonscale Warrior piloted by Trip Oxxon has won! So far, the score is 4-3 in favor of Mr. Larkinson! With only three matches left, Dr. Navarro has fewer chances left to end the second phase on a positive balance. Will his mechs succeed in reversing their previous outcome, or will they fall just like they did in the first phase?]

This question loomed over many people's shoulders. Only two matches had taken place, but a pattern already became apparent.

Both winning mechs had also achieved victory in the previous phase. Regardless of their unique qualities, the conditions they were in when they participated in their second fights were quite terrible!

The format of the design duel made it difficult for either mech designer to deliver a pristine mech. If they had two weeks time to fix up the mechs that had been savaged during the first phase, then the mechs that stepped into the dueling ring would have looked much better!

"It's kind of funny." Ves briefly chuckled. "This rule was originally meant to benefit Dr. Navarro. After all, biomechs are known for their regeneration ability. The problem is that three days is too short of an interval. Our mechs would probably look drastically different if we had six days to fix them up. Passive regeneration is a lot more effective if it has time to work its magic."

This was how biomechs were supposed to be used. Any force that deployed organic machines required less crew to operate and maintain them. If they incurred any damage, then the maintenance crews could simply submerge them into feeder pools and come back a month later.

The biomechs would likely be back in tip top shape as long as they weren't missing any limbs or something!

In fact, three days was still enough to fix a lot of minor faults. Ves could already see that from the way the biomechs operated smoothly compared to his own machines. Internal damage was much harder to deal with for a classical mech because a lot more manual labor was required to fix all of the affected parts.

The third match started pretty soon. The happy crowd quickly lost their cheer when one of the most dreaded mechs of the design duel stepped into the field.

The Ferocious Piranha Mark I Version B made an appearance once again. The second-class version of the infamous mech line had achieved an overwhelming victory the last time.

Its disorientation aura was so hard to deal with that even a mentally strong mech pilot like Katarina Volsemar wasn't able to maintain her concentration when subjected to its influence!

Now that she was piloting the mech herself, she reveled in what she could do with her former boogeyman.

The corrosive damage it previously suffered had only been partially fixed, but that didn't matter too much since the Ferocious Piranha still presented an extreme threat at close range!

"Now it's my turn to terrorize you!" She exclaimed!

In contrast, Rez Killigan did not look forward to this match at all. The Faerie Stinger may have received lots of attention from Dr. Navarro, but his impression of the previous match was still too strong!

Up above, Ves became a lot more attentive. He glanced frequently at Dr. Navarro.

"There is no way the Faerie Stinger is the same as before. Its original incarnation is woefully inadequate." He guessed.

Vincent nodded. "I wouldn't want to fight the Ferocious Piranha up close at all. I'd rather keep my distance and take potshots at it. There's no other way to defeat it in my opinion!"

As soon as the match started, it became clear that Dr. Navarro had the same thought.

The Faerie Stinger did not pull out any daggers. In fact, it didn't carry any melee weapons at all in order to reduce its mass.

Instead of resorting to blades, the mech wielded a slim carbine that was able to fire laser beams!

The biomech was already flying away from the dreaded Ferocious Piranha. Its carbine was slim enough to be fired with a single hand, which the organic light skirmisher took advantage of by rotating its weapon arm to an unnatural degree until it pointed straight backwards!

Laser beam after laser beam began to strike Ferocious Piranha's surface in quick succession. While the relatively light beams weren't capable of punching through the light mech's armor straight away, that would eventually change if this pattern continued.

"The Faerie Stinger should have been wielding a ranged weapon to begin with!"

"C'mon, Faerie Stinger! Keep your distance. Don't let that flimsy metal mech trap you into a corner!"

Ves noted that the Faerie Stinger featured a substantially more powerful flight system. Dr. Navarro not only invested a lot of effort to restore it, but also expanded upon it so that his biomech was able to exert considerably more thrust than before!

The difference became evident as the Faerie Stinger constantly outpaced the Ferocious Piranha.

Katarina Volsemar quickly grew frustrated with this state of affairs. If her Ferocious Piranha was able to catch up to her opponent, she had no doubt she would be able to make mince meat out of the Faerie Stinger!

Yet the current conditions didn't allow her to do so. Her mech was incurring more and more damage as laser beams continued to rain on her mech. All the while, the Faerie Stinger always remained a step ahead!

Even though Volsemar attempted to cut her opponent off by passing through the center of the dueling ring, Killigan wasn't stupid.

As soon as she took this route, Killigan halted his mech and changed his direction.

Since he personally channeled the Ferocious Piranha's power in the previous phase, he developed a healthy respect for its capabilities. He paid extra attention to the Faerie Stinger's positioning in order to avoid any possibility of getting close.

The only way the Ferocious Piranha was able to retaliate at all was by firing its pistol, but the weapon was so weak that the Faerie Stinger could easily hold on for a while!

Ves frowned as he observed the proceedings. He could tell that Dr. Navarro optimized the Faerie Stinger for short-duration fights. Its energy expenditure was quite high right now, and that was evident from the rising heat levels of the biomech.

Perhaps the biomech might run out of juice ten minutes later, but that was enough time for its laser carbine to finish off another light skirmisher!

Would this be the match where Dr. Navarro's work managed to overturn its previous result?

"Not necessarily."

The Ferocious Piranha was not without its own means. If the public could guess that the Faerie Stinger would opt to use a kiting tactic to avoid getting caught in the LMC mech's absurd glow, then so could Ves!

He had always known that the Ferocious Piranha model was susceptible to ranged attacks.

Normally, light mechs were able to utilize their superior mobility to evade most attacks. Yet this was not viable in the current situation.

First, the range between the two mechs was too short!

Second, the Ferocious Piranha was forced to fly in a direction that brought it closer to its target. Performing any form of evasive maneuvers merely extended the distance between the two! This was counterproductive and removed most chances of victory!

Therefore, playing the waiting game was not viable. It would have been a different story if the Ferocious Piranha was a knight mech, but since it was a mobility-oriented mech, the solution had to come from this direction as well.

Katarina Volsemar knew this as well. She knew that the Ferocious Piranha came with an extra option that she had been reluctant to utilize up until now.

"I can only activate it once." She grimly reminded herself.

There was only so much Ves could do to augment the Ferocious Piranha. If he had more time, he could have implemented a more reasonable solution, but since he only had a few hours to modify his light skirmisher, he resorted to a slapdash solution instead!

The new option was so extreme that it befitted its designer's nature. Ves rarely held back when it came to matters like these. Since the Ferocious Piranha would definitely lose if it encountered a ranged mech like the reworked Faerie Stinger, it was worth it to implement an extreme solution!

After hesitating a few more seconds, Volsemar winced as a laser beam struck a sensitive place on her mech.

She couldn't afford to hesitate any longer!

"Let's do this, then!"

She mentally pulled the trigger. Almost immediately, the flight system of the Ferocious Piranha blazed into life!

The light and energy it emanated suddenly rose by 70 percent! Such an abrupt boost of thrust put an immense strain on its flight system!

In fact, the more vulnerable parts already started to melt or fall apart due to the extreme stresses it endured!

Yet the abrupt increase in thrust also provided the Ferocious Piranha with a powerful boost forward!

"It's gaining on the Faerie Stinger! No, it's already catching up!" Someone alarmingly exclaimed!

Killigan panicked. He quickly instructed his Faerie Stinger to dive in order to delay the interception, but the Ferocious Piranha raced after it with much greater speed even as its flight system finally exploded, causing the LMC mech to lose its main form of aerial propulsion!

Yet even as the mech suffered this disaster, it came close enough to hug and entangle the Faerie Stinger with its limbs!

"Hahaha! I've caught you!" Volsemar laughed. "Take this!"

The Ferocious Piranha's glow slowed down Killigan's response, but that was of little consequence because the fragile Faerie Stinger had no defense against the daggers that stabbed into its flesh!

Before the pair of entangled mechs impacted the ground, emergency shield generators and heavy-duty antigrav modules quickly cushioned their fall and separated them from each other.

The eight match ended in yet another victory for Ves!