The Mech Touch

Chapter 7562 Dance in Darkness

Saint Tusa Billingsley-Larkinson let out a grunt in frustration as he commanded his ace mech to evade a disturbingly sharp probing attack.

When the opposing force unveiled its powerful and impossibly accurate superdimensional siege cannon, he knew that someone had to go out and tear it down as quickly as possible.

Saint Davia Stark attempted to do so first.

Her Amaranto Mark III had dug inside one of the specially designed sniper bunkers built on the surface of the Tortuous Scream.

Having fully linked up with the systems of the orven battleship, the ace marksman mech was able to draw a lot of power while also gaining full access to the flagship's full processing power and smart AIs.

Combined with the purifying power of the light element and the Amaranto Mark III's other advantages, Saint Stark should have been able to strike back at the relatively static orbital fortress.

Yes when the magnificently bright ace mech finally spat out a bright purple energy beam, the pride-fueled attack persisted only for a few seconds before disappearing into nothing.

"..."

"HOW COULD YOU HAVE MISSED, STARK?" Tusa questioned at the time. "THAT ORBITAL FORTRESS MAY BE FAR AWAY, BUT ITS ORBITAL TRAJECTORY IS ABSOLUTELY STABLE. YOU HAVE ALREADY PROVEN EARLIER THAT YOU CAN OVERCOME THE DISTORTION GENERATED BY THE DARK MIASMA."

"MY AIM IS NOT AT FAULT." Davia Stark defended herself. "MY ATTACK SOMEHOW FAILED TO ARRIVE."

"HOW? DID IT GET INTERCEPTED?"

"UNCLEAR. THE DARK MIASMA IS MUCH STRONGER AND MORE CONCENTRATED CLOSER TO THE PLANET. THE INTERFERENCE GENERATED BY IT IS MUCH MORE SEVERE AS A CONSEQUENCE. AT WORST, LONG-RANGED SNIPING AND BOMBARDMENT IS COMPLETELY INEFFECTIVE."

The humans thought they had already figured out the characteristics of the dark miasma.

It turned out that they had only scratched the surface of this incredibly debilitating phenomenon.

Not only did it grant a huge amount of nourishment and concealment to the deathborn, but it hindered other forces in countless different ways.

The fact that the dark miasma neutralized the means of the combined fleet to such a severe degree heavily limited everyone's options!

Saint Commander Casella Ingvar most definitely paid attention to this interaction.

She did not waste much time on issuing a new set of orders.

"STARK, CONSERVE YOUR RESOURCES. REMAIN ON STANDBY AND ONLY STRIKE AT APPROACHING ENEMIES. LEAVE THE COUNTERATTACK TO OTHER UNITS."

"I STILL HAVE A TRICK UP MY SLEEVE." Stark retorted.

"I KNOW, BUT THE ENEMY ORBITAL STATION IS NOT THE RIGHT TARGET FOR YOUR DEATH SEEKER. BESIDES, ITS CONSUMPTION IS TOO GREAT. YOUR FIREPOWER MUST REMAIN AVAILABLE FOR THE ENTIRE DURATION OF THIS ENGAGEMENT."

Saint Stark struggled to accept this instruction.

It took several seconds before she eventually relaxed her shoulders.

She still possessed enough discipline and self-control to set aside her pride and stubbornness.

She understood the Saint Commander's rationale. This was a large battlefield and there were plenty of enemies lurking inside the dark miasma. Her time would come eventually. There was no need to waste so much energy just to achieve so little in return.

"I SHALL COMPLY."

"TUSA." Casella addressed the fastest mech pilot in the combined fleet. "YOU KNOW WHAT TO DO. APPROACH THE ORBITAL FORTRESS AND DO WHAT YOU CAN. IF THE OPPORTUNITY ARISES, SABOTAGE OR DESTROY THE SIEGE CANNON. IF THAT IS NOT POSSIBLE, THEN STAY CLOSE AND CONTINUE TO MAINTAIN CONSTANT OBSERVATION."

"GOT IT, COMMANDER."

Tusa did not experience fear, but he could not help but to raise his guard to the maximum as soon as his Dark Zephyr Mark III separated from the main force and ventured off into the dark miasma by himself.

While his ace mech felt at home in the shadows, the oppressive darkness and all of the deathborn slamming into his Saint Kingdom constantly reminded him that he and his battle partner did not belong in this space.

There was no way for the Dark Zephyr to hide his presence and trajectory.

The deathborn race had already proven that it possessed an incredible decree of awareness of what passed through the dark miasma.

In contrast, the Dark Zephyr's state-of-the-art compact sensor suite failed to pierce through the churning dark fog around him. Resonance empowerment only mildly improved the results. The ace light skirmisher still remained depressingly near-sighted.

Tusa was not accustomed to going in blind like this. His evasion relied heavily on gathering data from the surrounding environment. The more his ace mech was able to register, the more confidently he could make the right movements at the right time.

The exaggerated contraction of his effective sensor range meant that the enemy could prepare all kinds of attacks without his knowing!

This also compressed his reaction time to an uncomfortably small margin. Just like how the combined fleet was almost unable to defend itself against the superdimensional siege cannon, the Dark Zephyr Mark III might not even have enough time to dodge a surprise attack!

All of this should have made Saint Tusa feel as if he was out of his element.

While this was indeed the case, he did not feel as discomfited as he should.

It only took less than a minute for him to press down his unease.

A grin started to appear on his face.

His heart beat faster, not because he was afraid, but because he grew excited!

The reason why his mentality underwent such a drastic shift was because he realized the benefits of fighting in this hostile environment.

He was no longer fighting under usual conditions. The advantages that he had relied upon to stay several steps ahead of his adversaries no longer applied this time.

Instead, he had to endure several debilitating handicaps, from suffering a severe degree of information asymmetry to not being able to receive as much remote support as before.

He and his battle partner could only rely on themselves to solve any immediate threats.

Nothing further out seemed to matter anymore. Neither the combined fleet or the distant orbital fortresses could exert much of an influence on his ace mech.

The only enemies that he truly needed to guard against were those that managed to sneak close to him. Tusa truly did not know what to expect, but he guessed that his adversaries would never allow his Dark Zephyr to roam free.

After several minutes of solitary flight, his intuition vaguely picked up signs of latent danger.

Though the dark miasma had shown little changes aside from becoming denser and more oppressive, Tusa's placed an immense amount of trust in his battle-honed intuition.

"Ha!"

At a seemingly random moment, the Dark Zephyr Mark III abruptly boosted to the side!

The ace light skirmisher did so not a moment too soon, because the position that he used to occupy had suddenly suffered a series of attacks!

The Dark Zephyr's sensor systems were only able to detect the thrust of four dark tentacles!

Tusa's eyes widened as he noticed the unusual nature of these strange extremities.

As a veteran champion of the Larkinson Clan, he was no stranger to aliens and their love for tentacles.

Yet these ones appeared much more threatening than the tentacles he witnessed in past engagements!

For one, these giant tentacles were all wrapped with concentrated death energy.

It was as if the tentacles purposefully attracted the negative energies.

This not only empowered their strikes with the power of death, but also caused limbs to blend in a lot better within the dark miasma!

Without the benefit of his intuition, Saint Tusa strongly doubted that he would have been able to react in time.

This was not all. What truly spooked Tusa was that the tentacles were all tipped with a familiar alloy.

The shine and coloration closely matched that of Saint Piercers and Saint Armors!

The claw-shaped tips looked as if they had been expressly designed to clamp down and dig through the armor of high-ranking mechs.

A superdimensional weapon's ability to neutralize true resonance made it especially deadly against expert mechs and ace mechs that lacked superdimensional armor.

Unfortunately for Saint Tusa, his Dark Zephyr Mark III just so happened to lack this protection!

The ace pilot cursed in his heart. The only true superdimensional ace mechs in the combined fleet were the Riot Mark III and the First Sword Mark III.

Aside from that, no other ace mech had been updated to the latest and most luxurious standards!

Tusa found this to be especially frustrating when all of the Ascended Giants were equipped with full superdimensional raiments.

Even if they were made of mid-grade superdimensional alloys, that was still better than the Dark Zephyr's own 'outdated' transphasic archemetal plating!

What made the ace light skirmisher's situation even more precarious was that his armor layers were much thinner than any other high-ranking machine.

Tusa knew without a shred of doubt that if those darkness-infused tentacles managed to strike his battle partner even once, there was no way to avoid crippling damage!

The safety margin of his archemech was simply too feeble in the face of this acute threat!

As the Dark Zephyr Mark III continued to fly almost blindly through space, Tusa kept his senses and willpower sharp.

His Saint Kingdom continued to maintain a high degree of awareness of the surrounding dark miasma, but its effectiveness remained limited.

Its range had shrunk by a considerable degree. Tusa had little choice in the matter. The larger the radius, the more he had to fight against the hostile environment. His willpower would bottom out within a quarter hour if he forcefully tried to double the radius of his domain field!

Yet Tusa still did not wipe the smirk off his face.

"COME AGAIN."

The hidden enemy powerhouse obliged.

Less than a dozen seconds later, four tentacles erupted from the side and sought to stab the Dark Zephyr Mark III from several different directions!

Each of the superdimensional-tipped tentacles cleverly sought to block several escape routes, making it a lot more dangerous for Tusa to evade in a random direction!

Yet somehow, Tusa made the correct choice. Without fully realizing where the enemy intended to strike, the ace pilot spontaneously chose to move in one of the few directions that enabled his machine to slip through the gaps!

His judgment and intuition had saved him once again!

"HAH! YOU MISSED AGAIN!"

The enemy did not seem reconciled with this result. Perhaps it had never encountered an adversary that was so supremely good at split-second evasions.

More tentacles came out of nowhere. They arrived from very different directions at random intervals of time.

Each one threatened to cripple or outright kill the Dark Zephyr if struck, yet each time the Dark Zephyr denied the enemy the satisfaction of landing a successful hit!

Tusa and his battle partner soon felt completely in their element. The dark miasma no longer seemed as awful as they thought at the beginning.

The limiting environment forced them to throw aside a lot of redundant advantages and fall back to the very basics that they relied upon to survive on the battlefield.

The ace light skirmisher no longer dodged as haphazardly as before. He instead began to dance his way through the fog.

Tusa had found his rhythm.

The Dark Zephyr had come closer to embodying his name.

At some point, the unseen enemy finally understood the futility of its approach.

The tentacled alien powerhouse no longer tried to give Tusa more practice opportunities.

"IS THAT IT? HAVE YOU GIVEN UP SO SOON?"

The darkness did not deign to issue a verbal response. The lack of any immediate reaction constituted a signal in itself.

"I EXPECTED MORE FROM AN ALIEN 'GOD'."

Tusa had already gathered enough clues to deduce that he had been assailed by the deathborn leader that had previously attempted to ambush the combined fleet.

Such a strong and clever leader shouldn't falter so easily, yet the seemingly fragile Dark Zephyr continued to remain pristine after being targeted so many times!

Though Tusa felt smug about this result, he did not dare to underestimate his enemy too much.

He knew quite well that the deathborn leader most definitely hid more capabilities. The powerful enemy just did not want to expose them at this time.