The Mech Touch

To be honest, the resonance he achieved with Vescas could hardly be called perfect. Not only did his projected strength fail to measure up, he also suspected that he was fumbling the process.

In addition, the mixed and polluted qualities and attributes embedded into his pseudo-force of will prevented him from exerting it into a strong, coherent direction.

\\"Expert pilots like Venerable Foster are all single-minded in their beliefs!\\" Ves mentally recalled. \\"This makes it easier for them to exert the full force of their will in a specific application!\\"

Venerable Foster’s aggressive and domineering attitude complimented her extremely well whenever she sought to destroy her opponents.

Venerable Pelican’s motherly instincts and protectiveness allowed her to achieve superhuman feats whenever she fought to protect her friends and family.

The strength shown by both of them led Ves to surmise that simplicity did not detract from their strength. In fact, the purer their force of will, the easier it was for them to exert their powers!

\\"Unfortunately, I’m anything but simple.\\" Ves mentally sighed.

Just a single look at his messed-up pseudo-force of will revealed the difference.

The force of will of genuine expert pilots resembled glasses of water flavored with a specific, defined taste.

In contrast, his own bastardized version of a force of will resembled raw sewage!

The lack of purity in his mentality, as reflected by the unfiltered thoughts and emotions he imparted to his pseudo-force of will, meant that he would never be able to match an expert pilot on their home ground!

\\"I’ve made my choice long ago! The development of my spirituality has always been geared towards improving my ability to design mechs!\\"

The only reason why his turbid and polluted pseudo-force of will resonated with Vescas at all was because his spiritual product inherited his mental garbage!

The perfect match between the two made sure that at least some form of resonance took place!

The effects became increasingly more evident in the desperate battle that took place in the material realm.

The duel that Lady Miralix and her Kinslayer had started against Zeigra was beginning to reach its terminal phase. Both the mech and the huge cat were nearing their physical limits!

One of the forelimbs of the Kinslayer suffered an awful claw strike that resulted in a thirty percent reduction of its ability to exert force. The blow considerably hampered the mech’s mobility and offensive power!

However, Lady Miralix managed to make Zeigra pay for his overreach by pushing her mech beyond its limits and launch a brutal counterattack that tore through the hide, flesh and tendons of one of his already-injured hind limbs!

This was a crucial attack, because the partially-crippled limb ensured that Zeigra was no longer able to run away or launch powerful pouncing attacks!

The only way this savage duel between the artificial and organic cat would end was for one or the other to die!

Though some of the parts of the Kinslayer started to whine or buzz in a worrying fashion, Lady Miralix still invested her complete attention into the fight. She couldn’t afford to let herself be distracted by her increasing concerns!

\\"I still have a chance!\\"

She pushed her Kinslayer past her limits, demanding more out of its frame despite the damage preventing it from moving as smoothly as before.

Amazingly, the mech and its partially-crippled limb held up under the immense strain that Miralix forced upon its stressed and failing parts!

Though various parts of the mechs were already beginning to deteriorate to the point of breaking down, for now the most critical parts still held on during this crucial end stage of the battle!

While Lady Miralix and her Kinslayer still threw themselves fully at their opponent, Zeigra had slightly begun to wilt.

A tiny flaw in his mentality compounded the exhaustion and injuries afflicting his body. The constant pursuit and the lack of rest that plagued Zeigra during the past few days were finally showing their results!

No matter how much rest and recuperation the Crown Cat managed to eke out during the hunt, he never managed to recover to his peak condition!

Zeigra’s savage and unrestrained fighting style didn’t help much either. Though his high aggression yielded great results in the earlier rounds, the huge cat had expended huge amounts of its energy to take out all of the humanoid mechs of the hunting team.

Now, with just one mech left to defeat, Zeigra was truly starting to scrape the bottom of the barrel! The huge cat no longer dared to launch unrestrained attacks, and instead circled slowly to keep pace with the Kinslayer.

He let out an intimidating roar at the mech that closely resembled his own form. Zeigra took a lot of issue with the machine that learned from him and imitated some of his attacks!

As the two opponents postured against each other, the differences in bearing became increasingly more evident.

Whereas Zeigra’s confidence exhibited some flaws, the Kinslayer piloted by Lady Miralix seemed even more eager than ever to vanquish its opponent!

In fact, the Kinslayer subtly experienced some changes on a level almost no one perceived. Its braveness and its aggression became more pronounced. It was as if the mech wouldn’t stop attacking until its very last parts fell apart!

\\"You’ve done an excellent job, but I still need your strength!\\" Lady Miralix whispered to her mech. \\"You were made for this battle! We have to keep fighting until we fulfill our purpose!\\"

She had the illusion that the Kinslayer concurred with her sentiments. Through her connection with her mech, the focus and emotions she invested into the battle seemed to have elevated in a higher state.

Her bond with her mech had reached a state where she partially felt as if she had become the mech! Through some means that she wasn’t even aware of, her control over the machine had surpassed the technical limitations imposed on her by her neural interface!

The mech and cat suddenly launched against each other! The two cats barely missed each other as they both managed to land their blows!

The two cats quickly separated from the exchange of blows.

The Kinslayer acquired a new stretch of claw marks that marred the increasingly-distressed armor onto its flanks.

As for Zeigra, the huge cat roared in pain as thick, scarlet blood bled over his giant snarling face. What was worse was that pain continually erupted from his head due to the claws that the Kinslayer had embedded into its skull before detaching them from its paw!

Though Zeigra’s huge and immensely-resilient resilient skull prevented the claws from digging into his brains, the pain was almost unbearable to the cat! The blood that bled over his eyes and around his nose also interfered with his senses!

Another pain roar escaped the Crown Cat’s throat! The agony plagued Zeigra to such an extent that the beast raised one of his limbs in order to dislodge the detached claws pressed against his skull!

\\"Chance!\\" Lady Miralix’s eyes lit up.

She spotted an opening!

Her mech had already started to pounce forward just as Zeigra swatted the claws from his wounded forehead. The final batch of replacement claws had already slotted into the forepaws of her mech, its gleaming sharpness ready to tear into the flesh of the huge cat!

The nearly undetectable form of a translucent cat-like form briefly overlapped with the form of the Kinslayer as the tiger mech successfully pounced on the Crown Cat!

Sadly, not a single sensor managed to capture the brief apparition!

The most the sensors managed to capture were some anomalies readings that vaguely resembled fake resonance. However, the instance happened too rapidly to confirm that fake resonance had taken place despite the lack of resonating exotics built into the Kinslayer!

Lady Miralix herself jostled onto her piloting seat as the abrupt collision pushed the inertial dampeners of her cockpit to their breaking points!

Nonetheless, no matter how much abuse her physical body went through, her mouth curled into a razor-sharp grin as she enthusiastically urged her Kinslayer to bite Zeigra’s neck and activate the warming heat projector built into the throat of the mech!

\\"This is it! Unleash your might, Kinslayer! LET YOUR RAGE BURN THE LIFE OUT OF THIS CROWN CAT!\\"

The tiger mech endured an immense amount of battering as Zeigra frantically tried to dislodge the Kinslayer from his neck!

However, the Kinslayer’s proximity made it difficult for the Crown Cat to leverage its strength at the awkward angle that the mech had latched on to his vulnerable flesh!

In addition, the attrition brought the Crown Cat close to his limits and sapped his strength and energy to the point where his strength no longer overwhelmed the tiger mech!

Even so, the Kinslayer’s condition didn’t look much better either! Parts continued to malfunction at an alarming rate! Just making sure that it maintained its grip and bite onto the violently-shaking Crown Cat was already taking a huge toll!

\\"We’re doing it! He’s dying! Keep burning until there’s not a single shred of life left in his body!\\"

The Crown Cat released mangled roars as the heat and flames emanating from the throat of the tiger mech washed into his unprotected neck and constantly burned at his vital flesh!

While the flesh of the huge cats had been genetically-modified to resist a variety of damage including laser fire, the immense amount of thermal energy that the Kinslayer withheld until this final, pivotal moment was too much for any engineer flesh to handle!

Increasingly large portions of Zeigra’s hide and flesh started to char and blacken! Uncountable amounts of tissue were dying rapidly due to being overwhelmed by the heat and flames!

Zeigra’s desperate counterattack against the Kinslayer intensified for a moment, making it seem as if the mech wouldn’t be able to hold on, but slowly the huge cat started to fade.

The strength and frequency of his battering grew weaker! As more and more of his neck and other portions of his body succumbed to the heat, the functioning of his body started fail at an accelerating pace!

\\"BURN! BURN! BURN!\\"

Even though the Kinslayer lost some strength as well, the mech heroically persisted in its attack and continued to release its entire remaining reserves of fuel and energy to unleash as much damage to Zeigra as possible!

Still, there was a limit to how much the Kinslayer could hold on. At some point, the mech had exhausted all of its reserves.

The tiger mech’s throat ceased to emit its deadly payload as the heat projector itself had run out of juice! The component along with the entire mouth cavity of the mech had pretty much begun to melt!

The rest of the mech no longer possessed the strength to remain active. Its frame emitted forceful groans as its failing components could no longer hold it together! They’d been pushed well past their limits, to the point where the mech forcibly shut down lest its continued breakdowns resulted in debilitating damage!

Both the tiger mech and the huge cat slumped down.

Silence stretched across the battlefield.

The spectators of the battle aboard the legged transports stared at the footage with amazed astonishment.

\\"Who.. won?\\"

An exobiologist checked the sensor readings. \\"Zeigra’s lifesigns are fading...\\"

\\"He’s dying!\\"

\\"Does that mean we’ve won?\\"

\\"Lady Miralix is still alive!\\"

Everyone realized what that meant. Cheers spontaneously erupted from every member of the hunting team! They succeeded! Through the skin of their teeth, they defeated a formidable Crown Cat!

\\"We’ve won!\\"

The waves of success not only spread out in the material realm. Upon the moment that Zeigra succumbed, a radical change took place in the imaginary realm that occupied Ves’ attention!