The Mech Touch

Chapter 7575 Divergence of Courage

The Dark Apostle suffered a major wound in the latest exchange of blows!

His superdimensional raiment gained a giant hole, leaving him completely open to follow-up attacks!

If that was not bad enough, a considerable amount of blackwater had melted through his shoulder, causing him to effectively lose strength in left arm!

The Dark Apostle, and by extension Ves, had become crippled!

This was a serious injury to a phase lord. Ves did not even know for certain whether it was even possible to make a full restoration. He already blamed his other self for being so reckless and self-sacrificing in battle!

"You idiot! You didn't have to take so many risks! You are not piloting a mech! A machine can easily lose an entire limb without serious consequences as long as there is enough money and materials to reconstruct the broken parts. The same cannot be said for our true bodies!"

Ves grew both alarmed and afraid!

He became alarmed when he saw his own body suffer serious damage for the first time since the start of this battle!

He had invested so much strategic resources into constructing the Superdimensional Giant Regalia precisely because he wanted to shield his true body from harm.

This was not supposed to happen!

He also started to experience genuine fear for his life. This was because he realized that the Dark Apostle possessed a fundamentally different attitude towards combat and risk-taking than himself.

While Ves did not consider himself a coward, he saw no shame in retreating when the conditions on the battlefield became too adverse. He never considered himself to be a warrior. That also meant that he never felt obligated to follow the rules of honorable combat.

The Dark Apostle had a different mindset. Perhaps he was born from Ves' unmet longing to be a soldier or warrior from the Larkinson Family. The Ascended Giant held himself to the standards of the champions of the human race, who overwhelmingly consisted of high-ranking mech pilots who were much more willing to go to extremes in order to trigger their breakthroughs!

It did not matter that the Dark Apostle was not a willpower cultivator. He became thoroughly infected by the notion that a true warrior and champion had to be willing to risk his very life in order to attain victory!

"Damnit!"

This was a fundamental contradiction between the two personalities!

Normally, Ves did not mind it if others possessed such admirable courage.

The premise to that was that if the soldier in question did not recklessly put his true body at risk!

Ves should have held a serious conversation with the Dark Apostle on this subject. This kind of behavior was absolutely unacceptable as far as he was concerned!

Unfortunately, they had neglected to hold such a talk, so Ves had no choice but to witness the Dark Apostle use and abuse their shared true body as if it was a disposable punching bag!

Wait.

Perhaps Ves may not be as powerless as he thought.

His Chosen Envoy must have registered his sudden spike in fear and his rapidly growing desire to extract his true body from this predicament.

At the same time, the Saint Commander could not have missed the ramifications of allowing the true pillar of the Larkinson Clan to perish on the battlefield at this time.

The Victrix glowed brighter as both of the Ingvar siblings no longer held anything back and invested all of their willpower and effort into their next attack run!

The metallic owl seemed to turn into a burning orange sun right before she crashed into the vulnerable flank of the Blackwater Summoner!

The Ingvar siblings did not waste the fantastic opening created by the Dark Apostle's sacrificial play and thrust the Murder Knife Mark III deeper into the already-damaged and exposed flesh of the greater phase whale!

As the Blackwater Summoner reared back in pain yet again, the suffering alien leader had already begun to mobilize multiple jets of blackwater to repel the source of the latest attack.

Normally, the Victrix would have pulled out the Murder Knife Mark III and beat a retreat before she got struck by a counterattack.

Both Casella and Imon chose a different approach this time!

They formed a silent consensus to end this confrontation as soon as possible. The longer it dragged on, the greater the chance that their leader and patron would suffer unimaginable consequences!

As such, they forcibly overloaded the Super-Destroyer System, causing the Destroyer particles to recklessly convert as much weapon-grade superdimensional matter as possible!

At the same time, the Minor Demon inhabiting the weapon went absolutely berserk!

The combination of these factors and more caused the tattered Murder Knife to exceed a limit.

It erupted!

Though the scale of the explosion was limited, the damage it inflicted was not light!

Not only did it annihilate several of the closest phasewater organs, it also propelled dozens of small but incredibly sharp weapon shards in every direction!

Given that the blast happened inside the greater phase whale's body, at least a dozen more phasewater organs suffered severe cuts and injuries!

This time, the Blackwater Summoner experienced true agony!

"$#&@!"

"MY BLACKWATER ORGAN!"

The greater phase whale briefly lost control over all of his blackwater, causing the liquid to spread and melt anything it touched, including its wielder's own raiment and flesh!

When the Victrix hastily pulled out of its wounded prey, it looked as if it had just survived a calamity.

At least one of the weapon shards had torn straight through one of the Victrix's gorgeous wings. This destroyed several small thrusters as well as other related maneuvering systems. Her mobility had taken a substantial hit as a consequence.

If that was not bad enough, a small quantity of blackwater had raked across her back.

The regular transphasic armor plating offered absolutely no resistance to this high-level substance!

Numerous components buried underneath the helpless armor plating melted directly when they came into contact with the blackwater. Though none of the parts were particularly vital to the functioning of the command fey, they still reduced her performance in multiple different ways.

All in all, the threat posed by the Victrix had dropped by a massive degree!

Not only had she lost her most lethal weapon, she also could not fight as swiftly and fluently as before.

This was a terrible development as far as Ves was concerned.

Just as he and the Dark Apostle readied themselves up for a brutal second round, their adversaries actually made a surprising decision.

"...%@$&#%!"

"...RETREAT! WE ARE NOT MEANT TO PERISH ON THIS DAY. I HAVE ALREADY OBTAINED WHAT I NEEDED FROM OUR NEW ALLIES. LET THEM DRAG THESE HUMAN INVADERS INTO DARKNESS."

The Blackwater Summoner managed to regain partial control over his blackwater. He opened his enormous maw and sucked much of this dangerous substance back into his own true body!

At the same time, the other greater phase whale that had been tangling with the Fiery Axe and a couple of other Ascended Giants had disengaged from his own fight and returned to the side of his superior!

Just four surviving lesser phase lords managed to pull back as well and converge with the two greater phase whales.

The sudden disengagement infuriated the Ascended Giants!

They had suffered grievously in the fight. More than half-a-dozen of their number had already paid with their lives, while many more suffered various injuries.

They had sacrificed too much to allow their enemies to cut their losses and run!

"Stop."

However, when their polemarchos raised his intact arm and issued a command, the surviving Ur-Titans and Flesh Choppers reluctantly halted their pursuit.

Were they just going to float around and watch as their hated foes make a clean retreat?!

"Why?!" The Fiery Axe asked as her rage screamed at her to disregard her superior's orders!

The Dark Apostle felt almost just as indignant as the strategos, but he did not lose his cool. He still managed to maintain the awareness of a leader, if only barely.

Besides, Ves had been constantly whining to him about not letting their shared true body go to ruin!

"We are no longer in a condition to win." The giant leader bluntly answered. "Look at me. Look at yourselves. Your superdimensional raiments are halfway towards falling apart. Your true bodies are bleeding out precious phasewater."

"So what? Our enemies are doing no better!"

"Resuming the fight will only cause us to achieve a hollow victory! What is the point of winning a fight when only two or three of us remain standing in the end? Let it go, Fiery Axe. This is already the best result that we can attain. We must prioritize strategy over pride. The former will enable our race to thrive and survive the dangerous years ahead. The latter will only get us killed at a rapid rate. There is no future for our race if we constantly provoke powerful enemies and suffer massive losses after every fight. Be smart!"

Though the Fiery Axe and the other giants still remained pumped with energy, their leader's words still managed to penetrate through their thick skulls.

Ultimately, their reverence towards their polemarchos and the logic of his arguments gradually managed to cool their fighting intent.

Now that they had sobered up, they understood that they could truly lose their lives for limited gains if they foolishly persisted in seeing this fight to the end!

"Clean up the battlefield. Prioritize on saving our wounded and dying comrades. Salvage the bodies and equipment of our dead enemies if you can. The fact that we can scavenge all of this stuff is proof that we have ultimately won this fight."

That was enough to soothe their damaged egos.

The native gods of the Red Cabal had indeed made massive concessions by withdrawing first!

Not only had they left behind the carcasses of numerous lesser phase lords and their remaining intact phasewater organs, they also left behind their corresponding Saint Piercers and Saint Armors!

Ves did not look down on all of this discarded superdimensional gear. The performance of their alloys might not be the best, but they were not terrible either. He could think of many uses of these materials once he had broken down the alien gear!

As for other spoils, Ves and the Dark Apostle stared at the many drops of blackwater that their source had been forced to leave behind.

The former wanted to capture as many samples as possible in order to figure out the secrets behind this mysterious substance.

The Dark Apostle wanted his other self to research this mutated form of phasewater just so that they could develop an actual defense against this new threat!

"How can we safely collect this blackwater?"

"I don't know. Give me a minute to figure out this problem."