The Mech Touch novel Chapter 309

This deep inside the Glowing Planet, things started to get weird, especially when they entered the boneyard. The increased density of naturally-formed resonating exotics caused everyone to feel as if they took a dive into a lukewarm bath.

The pressure they felt could solely be felt in their minds. No matter how much they shielded their bodies, they couldn’t escape the pervasive thrum of power that radiated off the pieces of Rorach’s Bone.

In that regard, the mining machines had a field day excavating all of the trace materials. Picking up a couple of milligrams here and there became as easy as breathing water. However, the Mech Corps ceased to care about these scraps and started to hunger for larger samples of Rorach’s Bone.

The larger the piece, the better its potential. A thousand pinches of Rorach’s Bone couldn’t hold a candle to a single fingertip-sized sample. Most of the mining machines focused on seeking even larger samples of Rorach’s Bone.

Eventually, they hadn’t managed to find anything notable before trouble came knocking at their door. Everyone aboard the Gregarious Wrath ran to their stations when an alarm rang out. The Wrath’s long-ranged sensors detected a massive energy signal approaching their position.

"It’s a devourer king!" Chief Petrisc exclaimed as the researchers finished analyzing the readings. "According to the projections, this beast is ten times as large as a regular devourer!"

Ves had been afraid of this. While Venerable Drake easily mopped up the regular devourers, they never faced the true tyrants of the core of the Glowing Planet.

The Gregarious Wrath prepared for a hard fight. Every other mining vehicle swiftly retreated upwards while the Wrath moved so that her mechs had room to fight, not that anyone expected the regular mechs to hurt the devourers.

Through constant battle, the Mech Corps learned that the devourers were attracted to energy sources. In this case, the otherwise useless mechs at least served as bait.

"Ten seconds until the devourer king is in sight!"

The creature finally emerged from the walls of the core. The gigantic snake was at least half as large as the Gregarious Wrath. However, when it opened its endless maw in a challenge, it stretched wide enough to engulf the tunneler in a single gulp.

No one could imagine the extent of the damage should that happen. They had to stop the devourer king in its tracks.

"Are the dimensional smoothers ready to be overloaded?" Chief Petrisc asked an engineer in charge of keeping them safe.

"They’re still recovering from the last time we stressed them out. We only have a twenty-eight second allowance this time. Any longer and they’ll automatically return to normal levels."

That didn’t sound very good. If this devourer king put up a decent fight against their expert pilot, then the Wrath might not escape unscathed this time.

"Do we have any other countermeasures against the energy beings?"

"None..."

Even after many days of experimentation, the Gregarious Wrath remained as helpless before the devourers. Nothing could stop their advance except with the help of the effects stirred by resonating exotics. Out of the thousands of people in the deep mining expedition, only the Venerable possessed the ability to do so.

The Fire Worm emerged from the rear of the Wrath as flamboyantly as always. The mech’s oversized flight systems pushed the aerial striker forward in a direct confrontation with the incoming worm. The mech had already started accumulating energy inside the Wrath.

All of that poured into the rifle held in the Fire Worm’s arms. After a short moment where the energies piled up inside the rifle, the weapon spat out three bright lances of lasers.

The beams instantly struck the giant devourer’s maw, which strained to absorb the destructive energies.

"The devourer king is hurting!"

"It’s not enough." Ves shook his head. He worryingly held Lucky in his arms. "The maw is the strongest part of a devourer!"

Indeed, the triple laser beams hadn’t been able to inflict any notable damage other than giving the devourer some belly aches. After the Fire Worm expended all of the energy it accumulated in the rifle, started to charge its second set of armaments.

As the devourer king slowly inched up the tunnel with its maw opened wide, the Fire Worm released its most destructive blast of firepower. Two massives flares of flame almost engulfed the entire maw. The two flamethrowers continued to project streams of augmented flames until they finally ran out of energy.

"It’s still alive!"

Amazingly, the devourer king survived, though it hadn’t escaped unscathed this time. The flames had been so intense that it forced the energy being to shut its maw. This allowed some of the flames to scorch the devourer’s semi-corporeal exterior, inflicting severe burn damage to its front.

The devourer king became enraged. Just as Venerable Drake began to charge his mech yet again, the creature did something none of the stupid devourers had done.

The king dove through the tunnel and into the bedrock.

"Damn! This organism grasped our weakness!"

The fact of the matter was that the Fire Worm could only fight inside the tunnel. As much as Venerable Drake would like to, he couldn’t turn his mech into a ghost and chase after the devourer king.

This single move had completely negated their only advantage!

On the sensor plot, the signal emitted by the devourer king followed a looping path that brought it straight towards the side of the Gregarious Wrath.

"Overload the dimensional smoothers!"

The Wrath groaned as she pumped an abundance over power into the three devices the Mech Corps borrowed from the MTA. Everyone held their breaths. At least they bought some time for themselves to figure out a solution.

At least that was what they thought.