The Mech Touch

While Saint Linda Cross gradually managed to gain an advantage over the energy projection that held the actual Heavensword, the other two mech pilots were having a more difficult time adjusting to their own adversaries!

As expert pilots and fairly young ones at that, Venerable Dise and Venerable Joshua were weaker in many aspects.

They only possessed the seed of the strength of an ace pilot, so it was no surprise that their reaction speeds, combat acumen, true resonance amplification and other parameters did not score as high.

Fortunately, the sword wielding phantoms that confronted them were not as strong as the Elegant Swordsman.

The imitations of the Heavensword constructed out of pure heavenly energy lacked the destructive potential of the original, so they inflicted considerably less damage upon contact with a machine.

Helped to prevent the First Sword and the Everchanger from losing their arms or getting crippled after getting struck by their adversaries!

This was not an exaggeration.

No matter how much Venerable Dise and Venerable Joshua were able to leverage their willpower to strengthen the armor systems of their expert mechs, it did not matter if the base materials were inherently not on par with the alloys utilized by the more modern quasi-first-class or genuine first-class expert mechs of the Larkinson Clan.

The First Sword and the Everchanger were both waiting for multiple years to receive their long-awaited upgrades!

If they were able to fight in their Mark III incarnations, then they wouldn't be struggling so much in their 'duels' against two pure energy manifestations!

However, the two expert pilots also gradually realized that the Heavensword might not have responded to their presence in the exact same way.

What if the Heavensword invested a lot more heavenly energy in these phantom sword wielders?

The living expert mechs would have ended up suffering anyway, only this time incurring much more serious damage that was much harder to repair due to switching over to archemetal mech frames!

"This is looking more and more like a test rather than an unrestricted fight." Ketis concluded as she continued to observe the unfolding duels from a distance. "It is a good decision for the Minerva and her accompanying Battle Crier mechs to stay back."

Yet just because the situation appeared manageable for now did not mean it could go worse at any time.

It all depended on whether the mechs were able to keep up with the Heavensword's exacting demands!

When Ketis observed the performance of the 3 high-ranking mechs, one of them obviousl uffered more than the hers.

The Everchanger had fallen into an unfavorable matchup against the energy

Manifestation designated as "Teenage Swordswoman'.

Whether the current manifestation was actually modeled after a teenage female sword cultivator or not remained unclear.

One thing was for certain.

The Teenage Swordswoman was vastly more skilled and maneuverable than the Everchanger!

If the energy construct only possessed one of these advantages, then Venerable Joshua may barely be able to put up a decent fight together with the Everchanger.

Yet when the Teenage Swordswoman clearly demonstrated that she was able to combine her two advantages with great familiarity, her husband's disappointing swordsmanship and the Everchanger's outdated performance characteristics clearly couldn't keep up with the pressure!

"How disappointing" Ketis shook her head at Joshua's embarrassing display.

As an expert pilot with decent combat experience, Venerable Joshua was not a pushover. The reasons why he was being held back was partially because his Everchanger was long overdue an update, but that was not a completely insurmountable problem.

His root problem was that he spent most of his time strengthening his flashiest abilities and his synergies with different design spirits.

This caused his swordsmanship to stagnate. It did not help that most native alien enemies barely gave Joshua a reason to improve his weapon handling skills.

Now that the expert pilot was confronted by a real weapons expert, the enormous gap in skill, experience and judgment became evident!

The Teenage Swordswoman was practically toying with the Everchanger at this stage.

The giant energy manifestation whipped around the expert mech with short but explosive bursts of speeds, making it a nightmare to track her movements.

The tricky adversary took advantage of her superior burst mobility to launch incredibly fast attack runs that Venerable Joshua and his expert mech consistently failed to anticipate and block!

What Ketis found remarkable about the Teenage Swordswoman was that she wielded her weapon in a different way than the other ones.

Unlike the Elegant Swordsman who mainly relied on elegant, flowing slashing attacks,

The Teenage Swordswoman mainly employed piercing thrust attacks that continually needled a certain green-coated expert mech.

Time after time, the female energy manifestation exploded forth like a hurricane, continually outwitting Venerable Joshua by moving past his incorrectly positioned guard and poking the tip of the Heavensword copy straight through a joint or another weak

Point.

When the Everchanger belatedly tried to turn around to launch a counterattack, the Teenage Swordswoman teasingly bent her body around the Heartsword and glided away with seemingly little effort.

This routine repeated over and over again as the Teenage Swordswoman saw no reason to switch from a working formula.

As long as she could eliminate the Everchanger by employing the same monotonous tactic over and over again, then she would gladly poke the expert hero mech to death! The Everchanger was getting poked without managing to land a single successful counterattack. His opponent was just faster and more adept at reading his movements. The only consolation was that every piercing thrust only inflicted relatively minor damage onto the mech frame.

This was exactly what the expert mech was the least afraid of suffering.

While Venerable Joshua found himself unable to utilize his willpower to form a resonance shield, he was still able o use it to regenerate Everchanger's wounds.

Cut and broken pieces of metal merged together within seconds. Broken components spontaneously became functional.

The Everchanger had suffered much more extensive damage in the past, and managed

To regenerate from all of that in mid-battle!

This at least allowed the Everchanger to retain his undamaged condition. That invalidated much of the Teenage Swordswoman's intention of defeating her adversary by inflicting continuous debilitating wounds.

Even so, Joshua's willpower was finite. Each time he utilized true resonance to repair his expert mech, his mind and will became a little more worn.

The Teenage Swordswoman must be expending a fair amount of energy as well in order to pull off her swift and nearly unblockable attack runs, but the ease in which she moved made it seem as if she could easily keep this up for a long time!

On the whole, Joshua and the Everchanger had entered into a stalemate against their current opponent, and that was an optimistic interpretation of their fight.

That was not good enough.

If this was a test, then Joshua was clearly failing it! The Heavensword looked for strength, not a cockroach-like ability to withstand injury!

"Stop being so passive and attack!" Ketis growled. "Since your Everchanger can withstand its blows, just forget about defense and do your best to land your Heartsword on the Teenage Swordswoman!"

"I can't." Venerable Joshua replied through gritted teeth. "This energy manifestation is way too fast. Before my Everchanger is halfway to pulling off an attack, this damned woman has already evaded my attack! This is like fighting against the Dark Zephyr, but worse! This swordswoman is like a light skirmisher that is nearly immune to my ranged attacks. Do you know how awful that is for me and my battle partner? The entire point of a hero mech is to avoid fighting an enemy at her strongest and take advantage of her weaknesses. In this case, not only can't I do anything at range, I don't have any solutions

Up close either!"

Joshua, Willy and the Everchanger were already channeling Trisk as hard as they could

Manage!

The Free Bird was also freely cooperating with them to speed up the mech frame's movements, but there was a limit to how much the design spirit could boost the performance of a mech, even if it was the highly malleable Everchanger!

The expert hero mech was unable to boost his mobility to the level of the Dark Zephyr.

This meant that Venerable Joshua would always remain a step behind at his skill level!

Ketis grew increasingly more annoyed when she observed her husband's disappointing

Swordsmanship.

Venerable Joshua was not necessarily weak as far as high-tier expert pilots were

Concerned.

Objectively speaking, he was not that bad at wielding the blade compared to other unspecialized high-tier expert pilots.

Despite his refusal to dedicate himself to traditional swordsmanship, the private lessons that she especially taught her thick-skulled husband over the years had partially

Managed to settle in his head.

His swordsmanship should have put him in an adequate position against the vast majority of humanoid opponents.

Yet whenever he sparred against a genuine swordsman or swordswoman such as

Venerable Dise or Ketis herself, the gaps in skill level ultimately resulted in Joshua's

Defeat!

If the gap in skill was relatively small, then Joshua should still be able to muster up a counterattack even if the performance of his Everchanger was subpar.

It was clear that the gap in skill between Joshua and the Teenage Swordswoman was much bigger.

This was the difference between a true swordswoman and a part-timer.

Neither side had employed any offensive extraordinary abilities as of yet. They only

Employed a combination of the most basic sword techniques with their intrinsic strengths.

The Everchanger's only advantage at the moment was his unnaturally high capacity to withstand low-damage attacks.

The Teenage Swordswoman on the other hand made excellent use of her fantastic burst

Mobility.

Each time she exploded into motion, the energy manifestation seemed to summon forth

A gust of wind.

The Teenage Swordswoman moved with the wind as if she was a cute little sparrow. She was light, fast and seemed to possess practically zero weight.

If the Teenage Swordswoman was alive, then she would have uttered a few laughs cach time she poked the Heavensword into the lumbering frame of the Everchanger.

The expert hero mech wasn't known to be a slow or sluggish machine, but he may very well be so in comparison to such a fast opponent!

"Joshua! This isn't working!" Ketis hissed over the communication channel. "If I was in your shoes, I would have punished the Teenage Swordswoman for her lack of caution. You don't have any hope of responding fast enough to catch her when she enters within striking distance. You need to remember the swordsmanship lessons that I have attempted to pass onto you and employ proper judgment to predict how she will move the instant she charges forward. Once she initiates her attack run, she won't easily be able to change her course. That is the moment where you need to take action and move

Your Heartsword in place to launch a counterattack. If you move too soon, your enemy will preemptively outmaneuver you. If you move too late, your expert mech will receive another stab wound before you have any chance to strike her with your Heartsword."

"Are you kidding me, Ketis?! I can't possibly move fast enough to do all of that during this miniscule window of opportunity!"

What Ketis was asking of Joshua was an incredibly difficult request! Even if his swordsmanship was as good as that of his wife, he still would have struggled

To land a solid blow against the Teenage Swordswoman! The technical performance of the Everchanger was holding him back too much. Venerable Joshua had outgrown the current iteration of his expert mech many months

Ago.

To be honest, the artificial ceiling on his combat performance had become an increasingly greater source of frustration to the ace pilot candidate.

How long must he wait for Ves Larkinson to come around and start the Everchanger

Mark III Project?!

How long must Joshua continue to fight while feeling horribly outgunned by the native

Aliens?!

With all of these technical handicaps, how could Ketis possibly expect him to gain an advantage out of the swordswoman who frustratingly took advantage of his expert mech's greatest shortcomings?!

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