The Mech Touch novel Chapter 789

The Devil Razor in the middle of the lightning storm practically lost control as soon as more than a handful lightning bolts struck the machine in quick succession.

Ves knew that landbound mechs generally incorporated a decent amount of shielding against lightning attacks and EMP effects. They wouldn’t croak the second they walked out in a regular thunderstorm and got hit by a few lightning strikes because the metallic machines essentially stood out like giant lightning rods.

Yet any safety system possessed a hard limit. The lightning storm raining down from the vault of the gods already exhibited an intensity that surpassed the buffers of a regular mech like the Devil Razor!

"These aren’t regular lightning bolts!"

"The safeties built around the cockpit won’t be able to last much longer!"

At some point, the Devil Razor lost control over its movement to such an extent that it lost its grip on its weapon. Its knees also lost stability, causing the mech to keep over on the flat of its back!

Ves winced as the weight of the swordman mech crushed the gravitic backpack with its weight. The backpack had already succumbed to the lightning strikes, causing the antigrav field it emitted to stop compensating for the Devil Razor’s weight. This merely amplified the damage and caused the backpack to sustain so much fall and crush damage that its exterior broke and spilled out components everywhere!

Fortunately, Hokaz ceased to channel the massive lightning storm. With a victorious cry, it dispersed the storm and ended the lightning rain!

The victorious exobeast looked more majestic than ever as it raised its head in a proud angle. Its embedded crystals lost more than half of their glow, which indicated that the lightning storm attack had taken a lot out of the sacred god.

Still, this attack alone more than proved Hokaz’s chops as the Tyrant of the Wastes! The exobeast unleashed so many empowered lightning bolts that they could ruin an entire mech regiment if it approached in a tight formation!

The only consolation to the Flagrant Swordmaidens was that the energy-draining attack likely didn’t span more than a square kilometer at most.

If they ever fell into hostilities with the city of Mulak, then the Vandals and the Swordmaidens may be able to grind the defenders down by employing a dispersed formation adopting hit-and-run attacks.

"It took some time for the lightning storm to rain down." Chief Dakkon said. "Hokaz also hasn’t shown any capability of exerting fine control over the storm. It definitely isn’t able to avoid hitting its own allies."

That still left the Flagrant Swordmaidens with a lot of limitations in terms of possible tactics they could employ to defeat the exobeasts in a full-blown battle. It definitely wouldn’t be a victory without sacrifices as they initially thought.

Savages they may be, their ingenious man-beast connection enabled these natives to exert strength akin to a mature expert mech!

As the storm receded and Hokaz wound down from its battle mode with a satisfied bestial grin, Ves refocused the sensors of the fast transport to the beast, paying particular attention to the sensors that measured resonance.

"The connection between Hokaz and Karawin is a lot stronger than the one between Naeduvis and Pirisa!" Ves reported with a growing sense of amazement. "If these readings are correct.. then the connection between the exobeast king and its beast rider has reached the expert level! It’s strong enough to exhibit a similar degree of resonance to a genuine expert mech!"

Captain Byrd looked both amazed and horrified at the news. "What are you saying, Mr. Larkinson?!"

"Captain, I’m saying that Karawin is what passes for an expert pilot among their ranks and that Hokaz is his biological expert mech! No, in fact it surpasses normal conventions among expert pilots and their expert mechs! Hokaz is able to leverage as much power as an ace mech!"

Ace mech! That was one degree higher than an expert mech! If society regarded expert pilots as demigods, then ace pilots earned the distinction of half gods due to the destructive degree of resonance they could call upon!

"Will we need to regard Hokaz as an ace mech?"

"Not quite." Ves quickly tried to reassure the horrified Vandals. "All I’m saying is that while Hokaz exhibited power that has reached the threshold of an ace mech, it doesn’t appear to have the control or the endurance to sustain this level of strength. I doubt that Karawin is as strong as an ace pilot. I think this is a case similar to how an expert pilot entering the cockpit of an ace mech. The expert pilot can’t sustain the load of piloting such a powerful machine."

The theory that Ves spouted gave the Vandals a better perspective in the power dynamic between the beast riders and their exobeast partners. Dr. Tillman had already estimated the ages creatures like Hokaz and Naeduvis at several centuries old, with the exobeast king exceeding the second-oldest by a margin of at least two-hundred years!

To Ves, this realization fascinated him to no end, because he believed this man-beast connection may be one of the directions his design philosophy developed towards!

Was it not his desire to design mechs akin to these exobeasts? The thought of building mechs that lived and thought like these sacred gods and actively added their own prowess to the man-machine connection stimulated Ves to no end!

He needed to research the details of this man-beast connection!