The Mech Touch

From the moment the Minerva exploded, the entire battlefield seemed to pause for a moment!

The attacking orvens still fired their weapons at their human opponents.

The defending human assets fought back just as hard.

However, both sides seemed to pull back on their aggression a bit and refrained from making any overly risky moves as they began to divert a bit of their attention to the breakthrough taking place in the rear of human lines.

The Minerva clearly underwent a mysterious transformation that caused her to become stronger and more solid than ever.

Not only that, the living mech gained an even stronger imprint of her increasingly more powerful pilot!

Every human celebrated this phenomenon because it meant that the pilot had finally crossed a major junction in her career!

Only the greatest and most valiant of expert pilots earned a promotion like this. For Commander Casella Ingvar-Larkinson to break through on the battlefield definitely proved to all of her supporters that she was truly meant for greatness!

"She's still so young!"

"First, Tusa, then Isobel, and now Casella! What is it with this generation of the Larkinsons that enables them to race through the ranks and transcend into sainthood two or three faster than than most other mech pilots? I thought that ace pilots only had a realistic chance of breaking through when they have reached their 80's!"

"It has to be the Age of Dawn! Exotic radiation does something funny to all of these powerful pilots, and the Larkinson Clan happens to possess greater expertise in hyper technology and E-technology than others!"

"No matter. It is surprising that the older generation of Larkinsons are letting themselves get overtaken by pilots who weren't even born yet when they had entered their prime. According to my intelligence, Venerable Benjamin Larkinson, General Ark Larkinson and Venerable Davia Stark are projected to have the highest chance of breaking through, but the Larkinson Clan consistently defies those expectations."

"There is a pattern to this madness. It has to do with their culture and martial traditions. The Larkinson soldiers are notably more daring and courageous than others. They have embraced the New Elites Program more enthusiastically than many other groups. It is not a surprise that their younger expert pilots manage to ascend to sainthood first as their youth drives them to tackle greater challenges. They have not yet acquired the wisdom and temperance to conduct proper risk assessments."

"That doesn't make any sense. Commander Casella Ingvar is not known to be a risk taker. The opposite is the case. She prefers to adopt more cautious strategies. Her approach towards combat clearly emphasizes loss mitigation over maximizing merit income. Just look at what her Minerva and her mech units have done since the start of the combat. They have remained passive all this time!"

"...Ace pilots do not make any sense to us. We know far too little about them. What I do know for certain is that each and every one of them has deserved their rank. They are called saints for good reasons. Whatever the case of Commander Casella Ingvar's breakthrough may be, red humanity welcomes the arrival of another ace pilot as well as a high-potential future god candidate. A breakthrough before she had reached the age of 50 at least indicates an excellent combination of talent, opportunity and discipline. Her chances of breaking through again in the following century are higher than many of her peers."

"What is the secret of the Larkinson Clan? How can they produce so many saints?"

"That is a good question."

As many different parties continued to speculate on the cause of Commander Casella's breakthrough, the newly ascended ace pilot in question had just completed her highly eventful apotheosis!

Many pilots would be happy to break through. Not Casella. Although she had dreamed about this for many days, she was definitely not in the mood to appreciate her newfound power.

This was because for all of the power she and her companion spirit had gained, none of it could possibly bring her brother!

"It's not enough! It's not nearly enough! I can't bring him back yet! I need more power! I need more techniques! I need more opportunities!"

It was impossible to bring a dead expert pilot back from the dead. Though Casella did not know precisely how her brother died, her breakthrough had multiplied her intuition and gave her a much more instinctive idea on what caused him to die.

All she knew that her brother had somehow been put up against a nunser phase lord, and that his powerful adversary had impaled a massive weapon through the cockpit and torso of his Blade Chaser!

There was no coming back from this. No ordinary life-saving miracle could revive an expert pilot whose entire body got pulverized and split into messy organic particles before being spread across the vacuum of space!

Faint images and impressions flashed through her mind. Her special bond with her brother must have caused her to receive them, but her conscious mind must have overlooked them due to the huge strain of Commandeering tens of thousands of mechs.

Unfortunately, the distance along with other factors massively degraded the contents of her brother's last 'transmission'.

All she knew that her brother had somehow been put up against a nunser phase lord, and that his powerful adversary had impaled a massive weapon through the cockpit and torso of his Blade Chaser!

There was no coming back from this. No ordinary life-saving miracle could revive an expert pilot whose entire body got pulverized and split into messy organic particles before being spread across the vacuum of space!

It would have been much easier if his body or his head was still intact.

Yet because that was not the case, there was only one conceivable way for Casella to bring her brother back from the dead.

Time reversal!

To be honest, Commander Casella Ingvar didn't know the first thing about manipulating the fabric of time.

It was an extremely esoteric subject, and hardly any high-ranking mech pilot ever got play around with this mysterious force.

Human technology did not seem to possess any means to travel back in time either. She already deduced that if red humanity possessed this capability, people would have already taken action to prevent a lot of serious disasters.

Maybe she was wrong. Maybe there was a branch of humans that did manage to master this mysterious capability. The general public just didn't know about it, as exposing this trump card would have attracted far too many enemies.

Regardless, Casella doubted that she would be able to ask them to pay a massive price just to revive a single high-tier expert pilot.

What about the aliens?

There were so many different alien species in the cosmos. The phase whales were masters of space. Had they already made any inroads into mastering time? Time and space were connected from what she knew.

Even if no alien species in the Red Ocean had mastered the power to travel back in time, then surely there must be one in Messier 87!

The supermassive galaxy was so large and powerful that it was bound to be filled with native aliens that mastered all kinds of reality-defying powers!

When Casella made this realization, she had set a powerful new goal for herself!

She wanted to do whatever it took to travel to Messier 87 and find a powerful alien that possessed the capacity to reverse time or travel back into the past!

Her goal in seeking out an alien time sage was not to ask for this mysterious being's cooperation. She was not naive enough to assume that a prideful and arrogant alien powerhouse would condescend to cooperate with an extragalactic stranger even if she was willing to make serious concessions.

Neither was her purpose to learn from the alien time master. She knew she was smarter than most of her peers, but that did not mean she could learn entirely different talents and disciplines from scratch. She had no confidence in her ability to learn and master anything related to a subject as difficult and abstruse as time manipulation!

If she couldn't resort to these solutions, then there was only one feasible way she could bring back her brother with the talent and capabilities in her possession.

She intended to take control of the alien time sage and force him to obey her whims.

Command had always been her greatest talent and ability as an expert pilot. Now that she became an ace pilot, her ability to Commandeer friendly mechs and mech pilots and bestow them with a measure of her power had become even stronger and far-reaching!

Casella's multi-tasking ability had evolved so much that she felt she could Commandeer the entirety of the Larkinson Army if she wished!

She could even reach out and Commandeer non-living mechs belonging to third party mech forces if she wanted, though the effectiveness would be much more reduced.

It was not impossible for her to empower starfighters with her expanded capabililities!

The newly ascended ace pilot did not feel she could do the same to warships, though. There was just something so fundamentally different about them that caused her Command Field to reject this very notion.

Perhaps she could work on this limitation and remove it one day, but that would require her to commit to this, which she didn't feel like doing.

Her Command Field did not just improve in terms of quantity. What she cared more was the quality of her empowerment ability.

Just as she predicted, some, though not all, all of the mechs under sway had received a power-up that made them practically on par with low-tier expert mechs!

Casella already instinctively understood that her new ability had only just begun to show its potential. A quick glance told her that her resonance strength had shot up to 130 laveres.

This was enough for her to forcibly elevate just 35 mechs into temporary pseudo-expert mechs!

However, as her resonance strength grew, she looked forward to doing the same to hundreds if not thousands of Larkinson mechs in the future!

She could also increase the strength of the empowerment if she wished. This was rather difficult as she could only channel so much additional strength into weaker mechs.

Perhaps she might be able to forcibly elevate them into mid-tier or even high-tier expert mechs one day, but her resonance strength not only needed to grow a lot stronger, but she also needed to master her Commandeering ability to a finer degree.

Casella could never accomplish this in the short term. She also doubted whether it was useful to force ordinary mechs to perform so far above their normal level. The machines would probably fall apart and collapse as if they had gone through a particularly violent instance of forced resonance.

In any case, all of the new possibilities that she acquired by ascending to the rank of ace pilot sounded fantastic to a command-oriented pilot like herself, but she didn't care about them as much as she should.

That was because none of these abilities could help her bring back her brother.

One of the fundamental limitations of her Commandeering ability was that it only worked on friendlies. Whether they were Larkinsons or not, the other party had to be willing to accept her influence!

There was no way to go around this limitation. It was far too fundamental to her philosophy and command style.

Since this was the case, how could she possibly force the cooperation of an alien time sage from Messier 87 if they refused to be controlled by her willpower?

"I can't do it, but my companion spirit can! Isn't that right, Eleiha?!"

A large and powerful companion spirit emerged from her body. A winged snake covered by silvery scales majestically lit up the cockpit as she basked in her newfound power.

Just as Commander Casella ascended into a Saint, Eleiha simultaneously reached the second major cultivation rank as well!

"Sssha."

The most mysterious feature of this snake-like companion spirit was not her scales, nor her fluffy white wings.

It was her mesmering yellow eyes.

Eleiha did not previously possess such dazzling spheres a a few minutes ago. She acquired them due to Casella's strong and overwhelming desire to gain the ability to control her enemies by force during her breakthrough!

Though Eleiha's aura had grown a little more ominous due to this targeted mutation, Casella became pleased because she instinctively understood that her companion spirit successfully gained the potential to dominate the hostile and the unwilling!

"Together, we shall bring back our brother!"

"Ssssha!"

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