The Mech Touch

Chapter 7589 The Decisive Strike

From the moment the giant crystal located in the approximate center of the temple complex became visible, multiple observers became stunned by the sight.

This was absolutely not an ordinary object!

It possessed a strong aura. It made Ves and other people feel as if it was an incredibly powerful reactor core. Given its astoundingly high energy concentration, it should not be surprising if it acted as the center power source for the massive temple complex!

The giant green crystal should never have been exposed in the open.

The huge black steles that previously kept it protected and out of sight no longer performed their primary duty.

The fact that the temple complex retracted this protective cover indicated that it was about to engage in a very dangerous and desperate act!

This quickly became evident when a small ball of nausea-inducing light formed just above the crown of this gigantic energy jewel.

Although it started out small, its energy density was already ludicrous!

When it started to grow in size, its concentration did not drop in the slightest, which meant that this highly threatening energy projectile was rapidly becoming more powerful!

"Be careful, Saint Orfan!" Ves warned despite knowing that his words were likely redundant. "Do not underestimate this planetary installation! Much of its properties remain unknown, but its peak energy level alone likely exceeds the defensive capacity of your mech. Don't be reckless!"

The smart play would be to create more distance and evade this super strike. As long as the gigantic energy crystal discharged its output in vain, the Riot Mark III would be free to devastate the temple complex.

Ves had a lot of confidence in the Riot's ability to evade this blow. The ace spearman mech may not be as elusive as the Dark Zephyr, but its inherent properties made it much more difficult to predict its movements!

However, Saint Orfan and her demonic 'partner' had no patience for these games. Both of them wanted to end this ordeal as quickly as possible.

Instead of moving away from the incredibly dangerous charging superweapon, the Riot Mark III instead chose to descend at an even greater speed!

Saint Orfan had thrown all caution to the wind!

This made it considerably more difficult for her ace mech to evade any eventual super strike!

"What are you doing?! Your ace mech is completely exposed! Its speed isn't enough to reach the surface or any meaningful cover before the crystal has charged up an attack that is powerful enough to breach all of its defenses! Do not overestimate the Riot's capabilities!"

Even if Saint Orfan's willpower had temporarily been boosted to the point the Riot reached the threshold of a senior ace mech, the resonance amplification was not enough to withstand an attack of this magnitude!

"You are facing the alien equivalent of a masterwork installation! Even if this temple complex does not work according to the same principles of a fortress-type superweapon such as the Obsidian Orb, it can still pose a very real danger to your machine! Just because your mech is superdimensional does not mean it is invincible. Any defense can be overcome by relying on excessive brute force!"

Ves had not even gone into the strange and exotic properties that the gigantic green crystal most definitely imparted into its upcoming attack!

He couldn't determine with absolute certainty what sort of oddities a victim suffered when struck by such a strike.

Perhaps it might empower the demon while at the same time weakening the ace pilot.

Perhaps it might drag Saint Orfan's soul straight out of her ace mech, causing her to lose her physical anchor and all of its essential protection!

Perhaps the entire Riot was about to become subjected to an overpowering beam of death that caused everything to decay!

Whatever the case, Ves did not think there was any possibility that the attack would bring anything good!

Saint Orfan might not have thought so much, but regardless of the incessant warnings issued by her intuition, she recklessly chose to face this lethal threat head-on!

It soon became clear what she intended to rely upon to solve this latest crisis.

Her ace mech no longer held its tier 3 Destroyer spear like a lance, but instead began to switch its grip and hold it above its head like a javelin.

The Riot Mark III adopted a spear-throwing stance!

"What?!"

Throwing a Destroyer weapon was a reckless move!

Although it was not unheard of, Terran expert mechs and ace mechs had occasionally done this in the past.

The results were very much mixed. Destroyer weapons were designed almost exclusively with melee combat in mind. The inherent volatility of Destroyer particles made it impossible to suppress their destructive tendencies once they left the range of an ace mech's Saint Kingdom.

In other words, throwing the weapon would cause much of its energies to go to waste!

What was worse was that the weapon would lose a large portion of its resonance empowerment.

Certain high-ranking mechs and mech pilots were better at increasing the permanence of resonance empowerment, but Rosa Orfan did not enjoy any strong advantages in this area.

The tier 3 Destroyer spear would definitely grow weaker and lose multiple advantages once it flew away from its wielder!

Ves did not think that Rosa Orfan was ignorant of the consequences. That was why he found her decision to be baffling!

There was not enough time to persuade her to change her mind.

Though Ves had imparted the teachings of Sacrificial Spear Throwing Method to the unstable ace pilot, Rosa Orfan thankfully did not channel this costly technique this time.

The Destroyer spear was not designed with this capacity in mind. Trying to perform this method anyway would probably result in nothing, but there is a small chance that a catastrophic outcome might occur!

Ves had already destroyed one precious weapon in the form of the Murder Knife Mark III.

He did not want to see the Riot Mark III squander her own quasi-relic weapon!

Even if a tier 3 Destroyer weapon was not unique, its scarcity and difficulty of reproduction probably made it costly for the Larkinson Clan to procure another copy!

"HATRED SHALL DRIVE MY SPEAR."

After spending a few seconds on locking its aim, the Riot Mark III decisively hurled its tier 3 Destroyer spear directly towards the gigantic crystal!

Surprisingly enough, as soon as the dark polearm left the ace mech's Saint Kingdom, it did not lose as much resonance empowerment as Ves expected.

Saint Orfan or her cooperative demon had imparted a special quality in the weapon that somehow increased the stickiness of the ace pilot's willpower.

Even as this particularly special quality rapidly weakened over time, the tier 3 Destroyer spear descended at such a fast pace that it was bound to strike its target before the losses became too serious!

It was as if a beam of extermination descended from the heavens to punish the unforgivable desecration of life.

A ray of pure destruction and hatred followed a straight trajectory and cut through all of the confounding mist and energies in its path!

Invisible energy shields and black crystal projectiles attempted to impede or redirect the Riot's transcendent fury, but these measures proved too feeble for the task.

By the time the descending Destroyer spear approached the gigantic green crystal, it barely managed to bypass the increasingly more massive energy accumulation before directly driving its destructive tip into its intended target!

For a brief moment, the entire space around the barren and cursed planet seemed to pause.

In the next moment, an explosion unlike anything else Ves had witnessed today engulfed the center of the deathborn temple complex!

A massive and uncontrolled outburst of mixed energies spread out from the center of the ominous facility and engulfed everything within a dozen or so kilometers!

The massive black steles that previously shielded the giant green crystal either faced total obliteration or broke into millions of pieces that immediately sprayed outward!

The forces unleashed by this cataclysmic detonation was so great that it only generated an earthquake that spread out across much of the hemisphere, but also blew back the Riot for a time!

The Dark Apostle braced himself and only experienced moderate discomfort. His altitude remained high enough that his superdimensional raiment offered sufficient protection, especially when he turned his damaged side away from the explosion.

As the blast completely wiped out the center of the temple complex, its outlying districts did not fare much better.

Towers collapsed. Entire walls and superstructures cracked into multiple pieces. The formation of entirely new hills and valleys completely disordered the alien architecture.

Nothing had escaped the devastation! Even the most peripheral structures became skewed!

Whatever foul rituals or qi formations powered the various functions of the temple complex, the scale of the disaster turned out to be so great that none of them functioned anymore!

Perhaps a small number of subunits still maintained partial operation for whatever reason, but the total loss of the temple's only central power source gradually caused the remaining facilities to fall into eternal slumber!

"..."

Ves and everyone else who paid attention to this development became speechless for a time.

They had not expected for Saint Orfan's impulsive attack to be so effective!

The Riot Mark III had never been designed with ranged combat in mind, but that did not mean it was helpless against distant adversaries.

While Ves lost some of his concerns about the survival of this precious D-mech, he still remained worried about the state of the tier 3 Destroyer spear.

He would definitely feel a lot of pain if it had shattered into countless pieces or got vaporized in its entirety!

As the dust slowly began to settle in the center of the collapsed temple complex, the aftermath became increasingly more clear.

The good news was that the gigantic green crystal had completely disappeared.

Not a single remnant of this strategic supernode remained in place. Not even the base of the crystal or its supporting structures were left.

Though Ves regretted the lost opportunity to salvage anything significant from this unique alien relic, he would rather see it disappear entirely than allow it to release a single devastating strike.

"Where the hell is the spear?" His other self asked as his eyes darted back and forth.

They did not catch sight of anything that looked like the tier 3 Destroyer spear. Whether it was still intact or broken into pieces, nobody knew, but Ves grew increasingly more distressed when he failed to determine its location!

"Oh, come on…"

As Ves continued to expand his search radius in a desperate attempt to avoid the worst conclusion, the Riot Mark III suddenly raised the arm that previously threw its spear.

The precious and nearly irreplaceable tier 3 Destroyer spear had somehow returned into the D-mech's grasp!

"WHAT?! HOW?!"

"That's impossible!"