The Mech Touch

5961 Dark Attack

Hyper technology had come a long way since the first year of the Age of Dawn.

Many scientists, engineers and mech designers collectively studied the new phenomena that emerged after the Red Ocean became bathed by exotic radiation.

Old families that retained ancient cultivation legacies also invested a lot of effort into deciphering the old texts for any solutions that could be applied in the modern era.

The combined efforts of these two groups resulted in blazingly fast advancement of hyper technology!

In one instance, the effectiveness of hyper technology increased by as much as 50 percent over a single quarter!

This extreme occurrence did not happen again, but it still served as a powerful reminder to everyone that hyper technology had a huge amount of untapped potential.

During the second year of the Age of Dawn, most mech designers and R&D teams no longer focused on attaining drastic performance gains. They had already picked all of the low-hanging fruit during the previous year.

What they sought to do instead was to explore the properties of specific hyper materials and develop unprecedented new design applications on the basis of their discoveries.

There were so many different E energy attributes out there that the list constantly expanded with each passing day.

Every new element translated into new possibilities. This led to a pattern of dispersal. A lot of researchers no longer tried 13:10

to figure out how to perform new tricks with boring fire or to a pattern of dispersal. A lot of researchers no longer tried to figure out how to perform new tricks with boring fire or water hypers anymore.

Instead, they sought to reduce the competition by studying more obscure hypers with attributes ranging from softness to delayed gratification.

This trend caused the field of hyper technology to undergo a rapid horizontal expansion. Now that it became much more difficult to achieve vertical progress, a lot of research institutions sought to make quick accomplishments by being the first to develop viable design applications for all kinds of strange and exotic elements.

Of course, the basic and fundamental ones such as the five classical elements still attracted a huge amount of attention. It was just that only the larger and more well-funded research institutions were able to remain competitive in these areas.

In any case, not many research institutions invested research into studying the darkness element.

There were a number of issues related to studying them. Darkness energy fell into the category of negative energy, which instantly repelled a lot of researchers.

Negative energy tended to affect people in a detrimental manner. People became angry, depressed, morose and even suicidal in a few cases.

Darkness tended to be more difficult to control than other elements due to its incredibly broad meaning and definition. It was tied to so many associations that it was easy for experiments to produce accidents because the manipulation of darkness energy produced radically different results than expected.

Further, the demand for hyper technology related to the darkness element tended to be skewed towards more covert and clandestine applications.

There was little honor and glory to be earned in this research direction. Many of the mech designers and research institutions assigned to explore the darkness element did so with the purpose of improving stealth mechs and all kinds of other unsavory devices.

This was why the darkness element already managed to earn a bad rep in the mech industry. Anyone who was depraved enough to incorporate darkness hypers in their mech designs was reckless at best, or deliberately malicious at worst!

Ves did not agree with this common sentiment. While he readily admitted that it was easy for flawed and weak-willed people to get corrupted by darkness, he believed he was exempt from this trap.

Since the last lightning tribulation event directly incorporated the darkness attribute to his nascent domain without any contamination, Ves gained a thorough comprehension of this element without any additional biases or other unpleasant baggage.

It was a remarkably pure and sterile way of embracing a new element. Though Ves could do little about the biases and associations he already possessed, they were not strong enough for him to treat darkness as a source of evil.

Instead, Ves recognized the amazing potential of this broad and versatile element. Its scattered meanings and chaotic collection of concepts provided a near-infinite amount of versatility. Darkness was so flexible and malleable that he could transform it into a wide range of design applications!

Unfortunately, Ves was limited by what he could do due to the physical constraints of reality.

Ves tried to explain this as succinctly as possible to Tusa.

"Now that my wife and I are finally making actual progress in reimagining your battle partner as an archemech, a lot of capacity is freed up all of a sudden. It takes less parts and components to design an archemech that performs almost identical to that of a conventional mech. This is one of the most compelling reason why we insisted on applying archetech to all of our expert mechs."

"What does this have to do with darkness?"

"A decent amount of space has become available in your mech design. We have already reallocated the newly available capacity into strengthening various areas such as armor plating, sensor systems and additional energy cells. Even after doing all of that, I made sure that there is still enough space left for darkness hyper materials. Your battle partner can accommodate one module that can add what we previously called a prime ability to your machine."

Venerable Tusa was very familiar with prime abilities. He employed them often enough during his own deployments.

"Okay. I can follow you so far. What are the limitations?"

"There are too many for me to explain in full." Ves sighed. "Darkness is an incredibly versatile element, but trying to express that in realspace is harder said than done. I need to identify and procure the right darkness-attributed hyper materials. They not only need to be resilient enough to withstand hard knocks, they also have to be of the highest grade in order to keep up with the growth of the Dark Zephyr for at least an entire mech generation. Lastly, most darkness hyper materials are much more suitable to be expressed in a specific manner. Not many variations of darkness hyper materials have been cataloged in the databases that I have access to. This will limit your options to an extent."

The projection of Venerable Tusa looked confused. "Tell me what I need to do in order to get this done."

Ves decided to simplify the decision-making process. Not everyone had the patience or the knowledge to appreciate the full scope of what he was trying to add to the Dark Zephyr.

"You need to state a preference. I already know you want to increase the offensive power of your machine, but there are multiple ways to do so by relying on the darkness element. How do you want to augment the attacks of the Dark Zephyr? Do you want your mech to concentrate his power and let it all out in a single explosive burst? Do you want to soften up large targets by spreading corrosive energies that can weaken any material it comes into contact with? Or do you want your expert mech to emit a psychic field that inflicts pain and suffering on the minds of every nearby enemy combatant?"

Tusa looked a bit overwhelmed.

"I never knew that you could realize all of these possibilities with the darkness element. I am not entirely sure what is best for the Dark Zephyr. You are the mech designer. You should know what is best."

Ves shook his head. "I know what I would choose based on the knowledge that I have, but there is no single best choice. There is only the most suitable choice."

"Is there a difference?"

"Yes. Each mech pilot is unique. What works well for you may not work well for another mech pilot. Let's do this. You already understand your expert mech in his current form, but think about the future of the Dark Zephyr. What should your mech stand for? Use your own words to describe what sort of impact the two of you should have on the battlefield."

The expert pilot began to envision a future version of the Dark Zephyr.

He dreamt that he had become an ace pilot.

He imagined that the Dark Zephyr kept up with him and became a much more powerful ace mech.

Once his new and upgraded machine entered onto the battlefield, it demonstrated a combination of speed and elusiveness that made it impossible for any alien warship gun to track the vast-moving machine.

However, moving fast was not enough for the Dark Zephyr to defeat all of his enemies. When the living mech approached an enemy ship, the machine mysteriously disappeared, only to appear right inside the transphasic energy shield envelope of the vessel!

Now that the Dark Zephyr entered into striking range of an enemy hull, the picture in Tusa's imagination started to get fuzzy.

How did Tusa want his expert mech to cripple or destroy the enemy warship?

Should he pursue speed and somehow force the Dark Zephyr to overexert himself and burst out with a powerful energy release?

Should he pursue efficiency and let the Dark Zephyr circle around to cripple all of the easily accessible weak points of the vessel?

"Don't think about what is best, or what is most efficient." Ves continued to provide guidance. "Let your mind go free. Better yet, let Blackwing's mind go free as well. Try to imagine how you would like your Dark Zephyr to crush the enemies in your way. Do you want to be subtle or discreet, or do you want to sow terror and discord? Do you want to inflict mass destruction, or do you want to be surgical and precise?"

As Tusa continued to take in these words, he began to imagine different scenarios for the Dark Zephyr.

Many of them showed different ways his living mech could inflict damage onto a large and sturdy target like an alien warship.

While the products of his imagination all looked cool in different ways, the images did not resonate with him. This showed that this was not how he wanted to channel the power of darkness.

"Chip! Chip!"

Since Tusa found it difficult to come up with an image, he began to lean more towards Blackwing, who embodied the darkness element on his behalf.

The companion spirit entertained a handful of different ideas before fixating his mind on one specific means of attack.

Tusa imagined the Dark Zephyr dancing his way towards a large alien battleship, evading every intercepting attack that tried to stop the ace mech's approach.

When his battle partner came close enough, Tusa performed the Leap of True Freedom technique, enabling the expert light skirmisher to bypass the energy shield layers as if they did not exist.

The scenario up to this point was familiar to him. What was new this time was that the Dark Zephyr did not stop.

The machine made no attempts to reduce his forward momentum nor try to circle around the hull of the enemy vessel.

Instead, the living ace mech continued to charge forward to the point where he was on the verge of crashing directly into the hull!

Ace mech or not, Saint Kingdom or not, the Dark Zephyr at this level would not be able to withstand this ruinous impact without incurring damage, not at this speed and the thickness of the enemy hull structure.

Yet instead of producing the expected result, the Dark Zephyr somehow turned into a shadowy phantom and phased right through the hull of the enemy vessel!

A blink of an eye later, the Dark Zephyr managed to emerge out of the opposite side of the hull, where he promptly transformed back into his corporeal form.

A quick Leap of True Freedom later, the expert light skirmisher deftly bypassed the intact transphasic energy shield on the other side and went on his way.

In the meantime, the 'tunnel' in the structure of the enemy warship that the Dark Zephyr just managed to pass through started to darken and weaken before collapsing entirely!

Secondary explosions engulfed the weakened sections, causing the ship to suffer crippling damage that ended her participation in the battle!

This was an amazing scenario.

Yet Tusa and Blackwing were not done.

It turned out that the alien warship was not floating in space by herself, but instead lined up in a row of over a dozen identical battleships.

This neat formation proved to be the alien fleet's downfall as the Dark Zephyr continued to pass through each of the warships in a single straight line!

It took a remarkably short time for the blazingly fast ace mech to reach the opposite end of the formation!

Seconds later, all of the remaining warships began to partially collapse while becoming beset by their own secondary explosions!

In just a single attack run, the Dark Zephyr singlehandedly crippled 12 alien battleships!

"This… this it. This is it! This is what the Dark Zephyr should become! My battle partner should become a mech that neutralizes everything in his path. My machine shall become the ominous wind that leaves only darkness in his wake!"

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