The Mech Touch

The Lionheart might not be as new and cutting-edge as the Amaranto Mark III, but it was still a good representation of how far the Miracle Couple’s high-ranking mechs had reached!

From the excellent integration of powerful phasewater technologies to the farsighted implementation of the Giantslayer Mode, the Lionheart had been explicitly designed to facilitate General Ark’s transition to an ace pilot.

Though his delay in breaking through for so long had prevented him from realizing his machine at its full potential, those days were over now.

As an ace pilot, General Ark was finally able to use the more demanding capabilities of the Lionheart without worrying about breaking or mishandling the machine.

As his expert mech wielded an overcharged plasma sword, he felt more powerful than ever!

His momentum was so great at this time that his opponent actually flinched as the next collision pushed him backwards!

The Cleansing Light burned with such lethal radiance that the lesser phase lord’s plasma sword was already beginning to sputter on contact!

"Trying to kill a Larkinson is the last mistake you shall make!"

Zren-Divar’s response to this was to command the integrated energy cannons of his raiment to fire at his Lionheart at full power!

However, as soon as the transphasic energy beams exited the muzzles, they already started to weaken as they passed through the Lionheart’s Saint Kingdom.

By the time the beams finally struck the expert command mech’s shining surface, they only left shallow scorch marks behind! Discover more content at empire

"My turn now."

The enemy was not the only one who possessed integrated energy weapons.

The much smaller fourth generation luminar crystal cannons embedded into the mech frame of the Lionheart unleashed a salvo of deceptively small and thin bright light beams.

The properties of these energy beams were similar to the ones launched by the Instrument of Vengeance, but their scale and power was much smaller.

Even so, the energy beams fired by the Lionheart were still damaging and penetrating enough to surgically carve through the armor plating of the enemy’s raiment.

General Ark did not allow his Lionheart to target random spots of his enemy’s armor plating.

They instead focused on burning specific points in the lesser phase lord’s raiment that happened to be shielding vulnerable electronics and other important internal components!

The raiment suddenly began to behave unstably as its power transmission lines got cut off, its energy cells blew up and its sensors became fried.

To add insult to injury, the integrated luminar crystal cannons also demolished the much larger but also more vulnerable integrated energy cannons belonging to the enemy!

The armor was turning from a valuable combat tool into a metal coffin that was increasingly limiting Zren-Divar’s movements.

General Ark took advantage of his opponent’s faltering momentum and pushed his Lionheart to attack more aggressively!

The expert mech empowered by forced resonance briefly withdrew, only to circle around and swing the supercharged Cleansing Light in a wide slash that promised to inflict ruinous damage to anything it struck!

The lesser phase lord hastily made a turn and backed off just enough for him to be able to block the strike in time!

Even so, Zren-Divar not only got pushed backwards a bit further, but his plasma sword also endured greater strain!

The condition of the phase lord’s energy weapon had reached a distressing level. Zren-Divar had already abused the weapon to a considerable extent by using it to burn through all of the defenses of the Bastion.

The lack of resonance empowerment made its components considerably more vulnerable to the stresses of high-intensity combat.

Although its solid components still remained strong and reliable, the downside of using such a high-tech weapon was that its operations were ultimately at the mercy of the durability of its most weakest critical components.

The weapon began to release smoke as its most delicate internals already started to fail.

Ark could not possibly miss this development. He renewed his assault and forced his Lionheart to withdraw, only to circle around just enough to build up more momentum and crash against the phase lord with great force!

Although the enemy’s plasma sword was well-built, the Cleansing Light was so much stronger and better, especially now that he had switched on its Giantslayer Mode!

The repeated collisions widened the differences between the two champions.

While General Ark grew more and more courageous, Zren-Divar grew increasingly more hesitant as his proud plasma sword was beginning to fail after being subjected to so many stresses.

When the Lionheart charged at its opponent for the fifth time, General Ark finally spotted an opening!

"Hear me roar!"

His companion spirit Noah had been lurking inside the head of the Lionheart throughout all this time.

The companion spirit had grown a lot stronger after Ark broke through. Now, the white lion opened his mouth and unleashed a mighty roar that was directly amplified by the head of the Lionheart!

Sound did not transmit across space, but the resonance-empowered roar unleashed by Noah was a more metaphysical attack that passed straight through Zren-Divar’s helmet and shook his gigantic brain!

For a tiny instant, Zren-Divar froze. Though the lesser phase lord quickly recovered due to the size and strength of his physique, the momentary interruption had been enough for the Lionheart to swing down the supercharged Cleansing Light at the enemy’s plasma sword at one of its growing weak points.

Before this collision, the skilled lesser phase lord had been fairly good at making sure to divert incoming pressure towards the stronger sections of his energy weapon.

Yet because of his momentary distraction, the most he could do was to maintain a rigid hold onto his weapon.

This proved to be a disaster as his much larger but more vulnerable plasma sword snapped!

A small explosion occurred as the phase lord’s powerful weapon finally succumbed from all of the abuse.

Zren-Divar temporarily found himself without a functional weapon and was pushed to the backfoot.

Though the experienced alien fighter immediately tried to use his armored fists to punch the incoming expert mech away, the Lionheart deftly and skillfully evaded the hasty attacks and slashed its Cleansing Light straight into the armored shoulder and chest of its adversary!

The raiment tried its best to resist the resonance-empowered plasma, but the scorching white light was able to burn through the transphasic hyper alloys with considerably greater ease!

This critical occurrence highlighted the difference between willpower cultivators and everyone else!

As long as the willpower of the mech pilot was strong enough, he or she could defy reality and produce miracles that were impossible to replicate through conventional means!

While the Bastion was able to resist the enemy’s plasma sword for an unnaturally lengthy period of time, the high-quality armor plating of Zren-Divar’s raiment could not survive a single slash from the Cleansing Light!

Even though the Lionheart’s energy reserves were already getting drained at an extremely prodigious rate, so long as there was enough juice to keep the Giantslayer Mode active, General Ark did not even think of backing off for fear of running out of energy.

If Saint Davia Stark was able to finish off her opponent before her forced resonance state came to an end, then General Ark should be able to do it as well!

"Witness my power!"

The poor lesser phase lord never gained any breathing room. The Lionheart may be a lot smaller, but it was also a lot faster and agile, especially after its pilot became an ace pilot!

It was as if the orven phase lord was being assailed by a rapidly-moving glowing comet!

The bright white Lionheart continually battered the phase lord’s raiment from multiple angles. Every slash vaporized through multiple tons of transphasic alloys that should have normally put up a much better resistance against plasma attacks.

However, because General Ark’s entire willpower was devoted to dismantling and killing his adversary, the overheating Cleansing Light forcefully broke down the armor and burned the more fragile internals into ash in a remarkably short amount of time!

Eventually, Zren-Divar had little choice but to shake off his half-ruined raiment just to free his body from his useless burden.

He managed to retrieve a backup sword from his rear holster, but the weapon did not deter General Ark in the slightest.

The Lionheart did not try to outmaneuver the enemy’s long and thick metal blade even though it had enough mobility to make it possible.

General Ark wanted to do more than to defeat the enemy lesser phase lord.

He wanted to defeat the alien champion in such a domineering and convincing fashion that no observer would think of him as weak and ineffectual ever again!

This was a rare opportunity to completely turn people’s established opinions about him around.

He also saw a good opportunity to formally introduce himself to the wider establishment of red humanity with his debut performance as an ace pilot.

Just like how Saint Tusa Billingsley-Larkinson had made enough of a name for himself to receive invitations to fight alongside the top champions of other forces, General Ark wanted to earn similar credentials!

His burning ambitions fed into his Cleansing Sword, causing it to grow hotter and brighter just as it was about to collide against his enemy’s own backup sword!

"My light shall burn away your shadow!"

The Cleansing Light burned right through the blade as if it was as vulnerable as the armor plating of the lesser phase lord’s raiment.

The Lionheart completely dismissed the threat posed by the shortened blade and continued to surge forward as well as upwards until its supercharged plasma sword finally seared right into the skull and into the massive brain of the phase lord!

Zren-Divar froze.

His true body may be greater than that of the Lionheart, but the latter’s Cleansing Light still proved long and powerful enough to inflict fatal damage to the lesser phase lord’s critical brain!

The Giantslayer Mode had fulfilled its purpose. It successfully enabled the wielder of the mech plasma sword to finish off an alien giant.

What happened was not an illusion.

Zren-Divar had been systematically overpowered before he finally succumbed to the might of the Lionheart in its strongest state to date!

The expert command mech looked especially valiant now that it had gone still in its moment of triumph.

Its handsome projected blue cape gave the glowing machine a royal appearance. Its majestic lion’s head only added to its impressive stature.

Ark had finally switched off the Giantslayer Mode. It had already been active long enough for it to begin inflicting permanent damage onto the parts that received excessive heat and strain, far beyond what they could tolerate even when they were strengthened by forced resonance!

This was a sign that Ark still needed to raise his resonance strength further before he could think about keeping the Giantslayer Mode active for a longer period of time.

The energy cells of the Lionheart could also use a massive upgrade. Ark noted with a bit of concern that his expert mech’s energy reserves had already dipped below 20 percent!

It was worth it. General Ark knew he wouldn’t be able to last much longer because the crash that followed after his breakthrough surge came to end would put him out of commission regardless of what happened.

Although the Venerable Davia Stark still retained the crown for possessing the greatest firepower among all of the Larkinson ace pilots, General Ark Larkinson had proven in his own way that his offensive power was not necessarily inferior while possessing far superior defenses and mobility!

Sure, the Riot, the Bastion and the mechs empowered by the Minerva had pitched in and partially expended Zren-Divar’s resources, but the Lionheart had ultimately been responsible for killing the lesser phase lord!

This was quite an accomplishment considering that phase lords were often able to preserve their lives and retreat whenever they fell behind.

General Ark gained a much greater appreciation for his Lionheart. Ves and Gloriana really designed an excellent mech. He just hadn’t been strong enough to appreciate its full power and capabilities until today.

The Lionheart began to glow brighter despite the fact that the expert command mech had reluctantly holstered its inactive plasma sword.

The amount of people who admired Ark and his Lionheart had risen by a dramatic extent!

Ark basked in the glory of the moment. Even as his Lionheart steadily withdrew from its forced resonance state, its powerful radiance still remained strong, giving observers the illusion that it had still retained much of its combat strength!

The calls already began without Ark needing to prompt his men.

"Saint General!"

"Saint General!"

"Saint General!"

Ark couldn’t help but grin with pride.

A Saint General should outrank a Saint Commander, right?

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