The Mech Touch

5877 Cataclysmic Power

As the fight was about to commence, Ves quickly prepared his equipment. He had made sure to stash away all of his redundant gadgets and tools inside the Vault of Eternity.

The only pieces of equipment that he dared to carry was the Unending Regalia and the Flower Parasol.

As shameful as it looked, Ves prized safety over dignity, so he firmly gripped the handle and made sure to cover most of his body behind the embroidered pink fabric.

He made sure to remember the various tools he could quickly pull out of his Vault if the situation called for it. Due to prior incidents, he already stocked his Vault with a multitude of spare nanosuits in case his current one fell apart for whatever reason.

If the clone of the Subjugation King forced out his true body, It would be embarrassing to fight in this pivotal battle when he was completely naked!

Despite his claim that he would be going all-out, he did not want to fight like a phase lord.

This was not a fight he could win by relying on physical force or spatial tricks. Unfolding his true body would be counterproductive as he would just turn himself into a bigger target.

For now, Ves wanted to rely on maintaining the merger between Caramond and Blinky.

A lot of time had passed since Caramond came to life. The ancestral entity had not only absorbed a lot more faith and spiritual feedback, but also managed to correct a lot of congenital defects by bathing himself with a bountiful amount of tribulation energies.

The previous two waves had been especially rewarding to Caramond! He was in a much better shape than before, and it showed in how much he expanded his Dreadfire Legion.

With hundreds of thousands of empowered Dread Marines at his beck and call, Caramond had become the effective leader of the most powerful elite infantry force in the Red Ocean.

Almost every Dread Marine that had spread out across the hull of the Dominion of Man had already taken advantage of the delay to quickly swap out their configurations and repair any damage.

Once they were qualified to get back into the fight, they got teleported at one of many strategic positions.

As Ves quickly swept his gaze around him, he minutely nodded in approval.

Even the fleeters recognized the futility of engaging in melee combat against the giant tribulation manifestation.

Many of the Dread Marines had all swapped to full ranged weapons loadouts. The remainder adopted a variety of defense, recovery and support loadouts in order to make the Dreadfire Legion last longer.

As Ves turned back to the Subjugation King, he suddenly went on guard when he sensed a sharp buildup of power.

His intuition sensed an acute threat, so he did his best to brace himself while bracing himself behind his Flower Parasol as best as possible.,

A thundering light crashed into him and released so much energy that Ves immediately bounced backwards!

"AHHH!"

Not only did Ves receive such an overwhelming lightning blast that it managed to break past the protection of the Flower Parasol, it also launched him back to the point where his armored figure crashed against the side of a primary plasma cannon battery!

"My armor!"

The Subjugation King's strike was too powerful!

Not only did it sing the Flower Parasol, it also fried dozens of surface components of his Unending Regalia! His combat armor transmitted several alerts about broken parts and systems.

It had been too long since Ves last upgraded it. His trusty suit of combat armor had fallen behind the times.

As Ves tried to recover from this brutal opening strike, his connection with Blinky made him aware that the fighting had already intensified.,

"Open fire!"

"Do not let up the pressure!"

"Spread out as soon as the target looks in your direction!"

The Dreadfire Legion had opened fire as soon as the clone of the God King had made his opening move.

An innumerable amount of missiles, plasma bolts, energy beams, explosive shells, kinetic rounds, gas clouds, burning propellant and other attacks struck the tribulation manifestation!

So many Dread Marines had opened fire with their best arsenal that the sheer amount of attacks directed towards the clone should have overwhelmed his defenses in seconds!

Ves did not believe that any ace mech could withstand an entire army's worth of firepower!

Many of the best weapons at the Red Fleet's disposal piled onto the clone and attempted to take the singular enemy out before he could launch another destructive attack.

None of the attacks seemed to make any difference.

The sheer quantity of attacks made by the Dread Marines should have been enough to overwhelm the Saint Kingdom of any ace mech, but the clone remained safe and sound as he relied on the protection of an extremely powerful energy shield!

The energy shield crackled with tribulation lightning but also carried an implacable quality to them. Not once did it show any sign of weakening. It looked as if the Subjugation King could keep it up forever!

However, the alien tyrant clearly did not have the patience to allow his clone to get wailed on for such a long stretch of time.

"<nullb>$#$#@&@."

"<nullb>INFERIOR CREATURES. YOUR SOULS ARE TOO WEAK."

The clone of the Subjugation King exploited this vulnerability by summoning tens of thousands of translucent chains before dispatching them towards all of the Dread Marines in closer proximity than others.

"Avoid the chains!"

"They are too fast!"

"Evacuate!"

"We can't! The alien is generating a spatial interference field that is blocking all forms of teleportation! Even the Rubicon cannot teleport anything in and out within a certain range from the clone!"

Many of the Dread Marines had been caught off-guard by the fact that the clone of the Subjugation King had suddenly taken away their greatest form of assistance!

There was no escape from the soul chains. Once they came close enough, they crashed against the transphasic hyper armor plating of the Dread Armors and pushed through with moderate effort.

Once the chains sunk into the bodies of the human soldiers, the compromised Dread Marines immediately turned around and began to open fire at their fellow brethren!

Many targeted Dread Marines quickly fell in battle as they did not expect the Subjugation King to subvert so many of their brothers and sisters in such a short span of time!

"Emergency override!"

"Shut down their weapon systems!"

While it was not wise to program safeguards into a combat asset that could activate at the worst of times, the fleeters evidently trusted them just enough to implement them into their strategically important Dread Armors.

Whatever means the Subjugation King used to subvert the Dread Armors did not extend to their programming. Their weapon systems abruptly fell silent as they refused to accept input of their brainwashed users!

That seemed to irk the Subjugation King. Power began to coalesce around the giant as he prepared to charge a powerful attack.

"<nullb>$%@$!"

"<nullb>YOU SHALL NOT DENY ME OF MY SLAVES!"

The clone unleashed a powerful blast of tribulation lightning that exploded with great force along the length of the hull!

The entire Dominion of Man shook as her structure suffered a massive penetrating attack that inflicted a lot of damage!

When everyone recovered from the cataclysmic strike, they became horrified at what the Subjugation King had done.

Tens of thousands of Dread Marines got wiped out in their entirety! Only ashes or scraps of their Dread Armors remained as the overwhelming attack proved to be too strong for them to fend off by relying on their ordinary defensive means.

What the clone did to the hull was worse. The Subjugation King had purposefully targeted a section of the hull that had already been weakened by successive attack waves.

What the latest attack had done was to finish the job and create a major breach that broke through the final layers of exterior hull plating!

The Subjugation King continued to repel all incoming attacks as he raised one of his limbs to perform another charged lightning strike.

"Do not let the enemy breach the Dominion of Man any further!"

"Take flight! Do not stay rooted to the hull. If the alien seeks to introduce more vulnerabilities to our dreadnought, then we should at least be able to persist in this fight!"

It was rather insulting for the Dread Marines that the Subjugation King did not consider them to be a credible threat.

While that would allow the Dread Marines to fire their weapons continuously without worrying that they would get slaughtered en masse, it was frustrating to realize that they had become inconsequential in this fight.

It was as if there was no way that mortals could pose a threat to an actual god!

Not even Caramond and Blinky were able to reverse the tide. Their ability to channel fire energy had grown stronger than ever, but they were still far from reaching the power level and the mastery of the elements as the Subjugation King!

While everyone scrambled to figure out a proper countermeasure against this alien tyrant, the Subjugation King stared at Ves directly again.

"<nullb>#$&%@."

"<nullb>RISE UP, MY SLAVE. DEFEAT ME IF YOU WISH TO PRESERVE THIS ARTIFACT SHIP OF YOURS. IF YOU REFUSE TO MEET MY CHALLENGE, I SHALL TEAR IT APART!"

The Subjugation King released his second cataclysmic lightning strike to illustrate his point!

The hull shook again. The Dominion of Man gained another breach! This time, it was larger and had managed to chew through an entire primary cannon battery!

These were the most potent direct weapons mounted on the dreadnought. They were practically irreplaceable as it was difficult to reproduce them without access to exclusive exotics that were only available in the Milky Way.

The loss of all of this high-end hardware was lamentable, yet the Subjugation King was already charging up to unleash a third devastating attack.

Ves gritted his teeth. This was a clear message that he needed to go on the attack!

"Dread captain."

"Professor?"

"I do not think I can abide by the promise of limiting my phase lord capabilities."

The captain of the Dominion of Man let out a sigh. "Do what you must. Despite their latest improvements, our Dread Marines… have proven to be incapable of defending our dreadnought. Only a champion can defeat another champion."

This was a familiar adage in the mech community. Expert mechs, ace mechs and god mechs had a well-deserved reputation for dominating the battlefield and demolishing a lot of mundane opposition.

The proper way to prevent these enemy champions from tearing everything apart was to field your own champions.

Ves just felt upset that he had to play this stupid role. The Dominion of Man utterly refused to field a single mech. Even if it did have a few expert mechs or ace mechs on retainer, it was more important to keep every piece of intelligence related to them out of the alien tyrant's reach.

Whatever the case, it was clear that the only way to proceed was to meet the Subjugation King's demand.

He stowed away his Unending Regalia as well as his singed and damaged Flower Parasol. It was a pity that he wasn't able to leverage his equipment better, but it was clear that they were not suited for a clash between giants.

Left in his nanosuit, he began to unfold his true body.

The sight was so interesting that the Subjugation King slowed his movements. The powerful being directed all three glowing eyes at Ves while his full body emerged from a dimensional space.

Ves did not feel surprised when he managed to surpass his previous maximum height. He hadn't been hanging around the battlefield for nothing.

As he continued to grow taller, he eventually reached a height that was roughly 1.5 times as tall as a typical mech!

That was not as big of an improvement as it sounded. His body may have grown bigger and stronger, but his phasewater organs remained the same for the most part. The lightning baptism clearly did not do anything to evolve them in any fashion.

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