Chapter 7381 Dark And Orange Monster
Chapter 7381 Dark and Orange Monster
The momentum of the battle had shifted.
The activation of the Chaos Trigger had caused the Riot Mark III to go mad!
Its mutations became increasingly more unstable and aggressive!
The overloaded components forcibly squeezed out all of their power and potential without much regard for their integrity and lifespans.
Saint Orfan's resonance strength had increased by almost 50 percent, which was practically unheard of. Not even Ves anticipated that the Chaos Trigger could lead to such an explosive growth in willpower!
Yet for all of the dramatic boosts, the consequences were very dire to the ace pilot and ace mech.
Ves never really took safety into account when he originally designed the Chaos Trigger.
Saint Orfan found it difficult to maintain a clear mind.
She was enduring too many sensations.
The strain of her ace mech, the aggressive encroachment of the Prophet's Bane, the increasingly more serious counterattacks from the Sound of Revolution and her own spiralling madness all gnawed at her sanity!
The dramatic changes to the Carmine System had drastically altered the way that Saint Orfan interfaced with her machine.
The line between herself and her living mech had blurred even further, causing her sense of substitution with the mech frame to grow even stronger.
She felt every attack that the opposing ace mech landed on the exterior of the Mark III!
She felt every single flaw and malfunction that broke out across her new body!
She felt the power reactor heating up to such a dramatic degree that she had the illusion that her own heart was burning her body up from the inside!
It was all too much.
The pain and sensory overload would have overwhelmed any ordinary human by this time.
Even an ace pilot who had endured many hardships throughout her career could hardly keep herself anchored.
She constantly reminded herself that for all of this madness, the power she gained out of her suffering was very much real.
The performance of both the physical and intangible aspects of her ace mech had been forcibly raised to a much greater height!
Saint Orfan was not ready for this. Even as her mutating machine moved faster and struck harder, its movements also grew sloppier.
Yet despite all of these difficulties, she still valued the raw power that she had at her disposal.
This was because her ace mech finally had a chance to defeat the enemy machine!
While the gap in resonance strength was still too great, it was no longer as big of a gulf as before.
The Riot Mark III was able to accelerate faster, enabling it to catch up to the Sound of Revolution, if only barely!
This made all of the difference. So long as the gap in mobility got closed, the Riot Mark III turned into a real menace to the invading machine!
The two ace mechs collided against each other at a much greater frequency than before!
Different from the previous times, the Riot Mark III took the initiative. Saint Orfan gained more confidence in her agency. This became evident when her Saint Kingdom received another boost, thereby making her machine a little faster than a few seconds earlier!
This was the importance of confidence to high-ranking mech pilots. A better mood translated into greater performance, which subsequently boosted an individual's confidence even further.
Right now, Saint Rosa Orfan benefited from this positive feedback loop!
Her resonance strength had already surpassed 300, enabling her to reach an amazing personal record, but it turned out that this was not her limit!
"We are measuring 310 laveres from the Riot Mark III!"
"Impossible! This is way too much of an amplification! How can a beginner ace pilot multiply her resonance strength to such an exaggerated degree without falling apart right away?!"
"It has to be the new control interface! The rules that used to apply to neural interfaces clearly do not affect Carmine Systems the same way."
As people continued to speculate about how the Riot Mark III was able to perform so much better than before, Alexa Streon turned directly to Gloriana.
"What exactly is… the Chaos Trigger?"
The director of the Design Department did not issue an immediate response. Instead, she pressed her lips and remained silent for a dozen or so seconds.
"To be honest, Miss Alexa, I cannot give you a clear answer." Gloriana tersely responded. "Nominally speaking, it is the so-called 'Ultimate Module' that my husband single-handedly invented and brought to life to the best of his ability. I do not understand all that much. It is rooted in the Carmine System, which I barely understand to begin with. You would have to ask your question to Ves if you want a clearer answer than that. All I can say is that Ves has obviously played with fire yet again when he chose to implement this particular interpretation of an Ultimate Module. He locked it down for good reasons I am sure."
"Then why did he choose to unlock it at this time?"
"Look outside, Alexa. Do you see how much the battle has turned in our favor? The Chaos Trigger has changed our fate. We are no longer completely doomed to suffer a loss. This is a precious opportunity that Saint Orfan has bought by putting her sanity and health on the line."
The performance of the present version of the Riot Mark III continued to astound observers.
The scrappy junior ace mech far exceeded its boundaries, causing it to turn into a hot and unstable dark and orange rocket that even a senior ace mech had to take seriously!
Yet despite bearing the brunt of this amplified aggression, the Voice of Liberty did not lose his own confidence!
Though he was forced to divert his attention from his main objective, he skillfully controlled his guitar-wielding machine in order to endure the destructive and chaotic releases of power.
The Sound of Revolution adopted a more defensive posture.
Its guitar music changed from an aggressive to a more guarded melody. Its entire Saint Kingdom vibrated in a different manner. The space surrounding the ace mech grew a little more solid, making it more difficult for hostile attacks to maintain their strength and integrity.
The rhythmic sounds increased both in amplitude and frequency, causing the shaking to grow increasingly more loud and high–pitched!
These keening noises assaulted everyone who happened to be close enough!
Many attacks launched by distant mechs and warships encountered even greater obstacles than before.
Kinetic projectiles went off-course.
Missiles shook apart.
Energy beams diffused before they had any chance of striking their intended target.
The entire escort fleet had been rendered even more useless than before!
Without the ability to negate the enemy's Saint Kingdom, all of their 'mortal' attacks remained susceptible to extreme reality distortion.
The story was different for the Riot Mark III!
With its unstable but boiling Saint Kingdom, the dark and orange monster invaded the senior ace mech's Saint Kingdom and forcibly vandalized the immediate territories before landing telling blows against the enemy mech's armor system!
Though the Sound of Revolution was able to block or evade all direct attacks due to the superior skill and combat experience of its pilot, the machine was not able to block the discharge of destructive energies.
The Riot Mark III's penchant for destruction had grown even more powerful!
With the help of its key resonating material, the machine stimulated the dangerous nature of its tier 3 Destroyer spear to the extreme.
The Terran weapon gained a degree of lethality that extended far beyond its destructive edge!
Destroyer particles, both natural and artificial, continually became stimulated by Saint Orfan's burning willpower, causing them to output greater destruction than before!
Yet for all of this power, the Riot Mark III visibly worsened before everyone's eyes.
Even outside observers could detect the signs.
"The flight system is falling apart! Cracks are forming on some parts while others are beginning to melt!"
"It cannot sustain this level of performance! It should have shut down 2 minutes ago! I cannot explain why it is able to persist for so long!"
"What have the Larkinsons cooked up to be able to transform a normal ace mech into such a demonic machine? It has become a vessel of pure evil!"
The physical mutations partially mitigated all of the damage, but they could not solve every problem.
Saint Orfan and her ace mech were on a timer.
Anyone observant enough could make this observation, and that included the Voice of Liberty!
"How sad." Saint Conrad Morgenstern transmitted. "Is it worth it to risk everything just to be able to gain just enough power to delay me from my objective? Whatever devil's bargain you have struck, it is not enough to drive me away. I do not even feel the need to attack anymore, as you are inflicting plenty of harm on your suffering machine. In comparison, the armor of my mech has become marred, but my guitar continues to play without interruption. I only have to wait until you have run out of fumes before I bypass you and save our society from the horror of stolen resonance technology."
His dismissive words enflamed Saint Orfan!
Her sanity dropped by a huge extent as both she and the Prophet's Bane hated being treated with contempt!
"DO NOT UNDERESTIMATE OUR POWER!"
The Riot Mark III exploded into action! The machine spontaneously turned into a dark-and-range streak that crossed the distance at a surprisingly greater speed than before!
The Voice of Liberty was genuinely caught off-guard this time. It was only due to his excellent intuition and razor-fast reaction speed that he was able to jerk his ace mech to an unexpected direction!
Even so, the Sound of Revolution suffered its first proper attack since the start of this engagement!
A fair chunk of its lower torso got demolished as the tier 3 Destroyer spear drove straight through the weakened armor layers and destroyed everything else in its way!
Although only a relatively small portion of the side suffered a direct impact, the explosion of destructive energies upon contact inflicted greater damage to the nearby internals!
The Sound of Revolution experienced many abrupt system failures. Though it had managed to preserve its precious Guitar-Battle-Axe, its melody suffered a brief interruption as the Voice of Liberty had to redirect a lot more focus towards suppressing the spread of destruction energies!
By the time the ominous orange streak had turned back into a faltering ace spearman mech, the enemy ace mech had quickly stabilized its own condition.
The enemy's aura of invincibility had cracked!
Despite his prodigious resonance strength, his Saint Kingdom could not mitigate every attack!
However, as soon people shifted their gazes from one machine to another, their moods sank.
The Riot Mark III did not launch an immediate follow-up strike.
The reason soon became obvious.
It couldn't.
Whatever damage it managed to inflict onto the senior ace mech, it was nothing compared to the devastation wrought onto the superdimensional archemech frame!
The last attack run had obviously pushed the already-overloaded mech frame past its limitations.
The 'wings' of its flight system had snapped and melted. The artificial musculature of its arms had ruptured. Its torso had become riddled with jagged cracks. Its power reactor had suffered a small meltdown and was leaking excess heat and energy.
Most importantly, its Saint Kingdom had lost all of its momentum and became unprecedentedly weak!
And this was just the damage that outside observers could detect.
Its true condition had to be worse!
"The Riot Mark III's resonance strength has plunged below 50 laveres!" Alexa Streon reported! "Saint Orfan is still alive, but her willpower is… damaged! The data patterns suggest that she is barely conscious and in great pain. She and her machine need immediate relief!"
Gloriana's lips quivered at the sight of the current state of the Riot Mark III.
It was as if she had witnessed the self-destruction of her own child.
She already considered it a miracle that the Riot Mark III's overall shape remained intact.
It was very clear to her that her precious machine had lost all of its combat effectiveness.
The gambit failed.
Everyone knew what this meant.
"We lost." Gloriana unwillingly announced. "The Riot Mark III… has crippled itself. We do not have the means to repair its mech frame, let alone heal whatever invisible injuries that Saint Orfan has incurred."
The Sound of Revolution was no longer in good condition, but it could still move and fight!
"From now on, we are at the mercy of a hostile saint. Let us pray that he will not exact his punishment on the rest of us for conducting research on stolen resonance technology."