MTLNOVEL Chapter 6712 Joshua's Own Power
Chapter 6712 Joshua's Own Power
Venerable Joshua had arguably made one of the stupidest decisions in his life.
He placed himself in a corner and practically begged the Bitter Swordsman to come and take over his body!
Such an action amounted to nothing less than suicide for most people. The Bitter Swordsman was the source of much of the Bitter Scimitar's extraordinary power. The demonic artifact spirit possessed power that was on the same level of a design spirit in certain aspects.
For Joshua to challenge this entity to a showdown over the control of his own body was not the wisest decision for that reason!
After the initial collisions, Joshua immediately understood that the Bitter Swordsman was both competent and experienced in these kinds of battles.
The artifact spirit started out strong. He leveraged his full power to amplify his momentum and suffocate Joshua. He also transformed aspects of his intangible self and turned into a demonic swordsman that actively used his resentment to draw upon a large amount of negative energies!
Though Joshua was able to block the flow of much of these dark and corrupting energies due to his willpower, the effort induced a lot of strain!
That was not all. The Bitter Swordsman did not just rely on his strong control over malevolent energies to wear Joshua down, but also took action more directly by flashing forward and launching a flurry of attacks with a spiritual copy of the Bitter Scimitar!
Unlike Joshua and the Everchanger, the artifact spirit was able to wield the Bitter Scimitar with a great degree of proficiency and control.
Even if the copy in his hand was not identical to the real D-arm, the artifact spirit was still able to rely on his great familiarity and understanding of the scimitar to simulate
its power.
The Bitter Swordsman's offensive kicked into an even higher gear when the weapon in his arm began to charge itself up by absorbing a certain type of E Energy!
"What?!"
Joshua reacted with shock as he could feel that the artifact spirit's weapon had actually imitated the phasewater-charged tech that was supposed to make the Bitter Scimitar so deadly against phase lords.
The difference between this version and the original D-arm was that the former absorbed life energy in order to empower its blade!
This was extremely bad news for Joshua as life E. energy happened to be his primary
element!
One of the sources of his strength had suddenly turned into a liability as the Bitter Swordsman demonstrated a scary capacity to feed off life energy and use it as fuel to amplify his attack power!
Joshua's willpower was being sapped at a considerably faster rate!
All of this was bad news for the expert pilot who issued this challenge. He had known that the Bitter Swordsman would fight hard for the chance to come back to life, but his offensive rhythm was so much higher than predicted.
Though the offensive blitz immediately put Joshua on the backfoot, his willpower was not that easy to tear down.
The battle that took place inside Joshua's body roughly mirrored the final battle that decided the ownership of Viola Magnifica.
The malevolent artifact spirit clearly relied on attrition warfare to wear down and tire out the expert pilot.
Joshua was able to hold his ground for the time being because his willpower was able to resist a lot of E energy attacks.
However, the Bitter Swordsman was a being who had reached a higher life state. Even if qi manipulators were at a natural disadvantage when facing willpower cultivators, the artifact spirit clearly understood that no one's willpower was infinite!
As long as the Bitter Swordsman kept up his attacks and actively drained as much life energy as possible, Joshua would eventually get exhausted, thereby making it easy to absorb him and take over everything in his possession!
Joshua could not allow this to happen. Staying on the defensive was a dead end strategy. He needed to go on the attack and rely on his greatest strength to reverse this situation!
However, what was his greatest strength?
Cooperation. He and the Everchanger had developed the art of cooperation to a much deeper extent than any other pair of mech pilot and living mech.
To his fellow peers, design spirits were like the icing on a cake. Only when an expert pilot needed to amplify the power of his blessed weapon did the power of a design spirit become a lot more relevant, but aside from that they acted like mascots most of the time.
Joshua was different. He did not regard the practice of borrowing the insights and power of design spirits to be a form of weakness.
Instead, he saw it as a way to achieve better outcomes by generating powerful
synergies.
The problem now was that Joshua had explicitly vowed to not draw upon the power of
his expert mech or any design spirit for this fight!
He had voluntarily waved away his greatest strength and advantage.
While he knew that this would put himself at a considerable disadvantage, he did not regret this decision.
He wanted to prove his strength by relying on his own merits for once. A breakthrough based on borrowing the power of a much more powerful design spirit such as Gaia or the Superior Mother would eventually turn into a flaw that would continually serve as a source of doubt going forward.
If Joshua wanted to prove that he was strong enough without relying on his 'friends', he needed to fight this battle by relying on himself!
His yearning to prove his strength and catch up with the likes of Saint Tusa and Saint Commander Casella had grown so strong that he was willing to put his life on the line! Joshua recognized that most of his previous breakthrough opportunities failed because he did not push himself enough.
He had come closest to breaking through during the battle against the Emperor Tree.
While he admitted that he had not been in the right mind by pointing his pistol at himself in the belief that comprehending the power of death would enhance his mastery over life, he still recognized that the best way to induce another breakthrough was to put himself in a similar situation.
Only when he was driven into a corner with no help coming would he be able to
unlock his greater potential.
Here he was. His current situation was very similar to that past incident. He had once
again turned his own weapon against himself!
The biggest difference between the two scenarios was that in one of them, he still had control over his own service firearm.
This time, he completely lost control over the Bitter Scimitar!
It would be more correct to say that he never really controlled the mysterious D-arm
to begin with. By opening himself up to a direct assault from its artifact spirit, Joshua initiated a fight that could not be stopped!
Win or lose!
Life or death!
Resist or capitulate! Joshua had no other choice but to fight for one outcome or another!
There were no complications anymore. There were no outside factors that could influence or interrupt the process.
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Swordsman was by putting up a fight instead of inviting others to do all of the hard
work!
Though the expert pilot felt far more vulnerable and threatened than before, he also
felt more
tune with his life!
His previous theory that coming in touch with death would allow him to deepen his appreciation of life was not wrong!
The greater the pressure, the more he valued his own being. He no longer took his life for granted and desperately wanted to fight to preserve his own existence!
"I can't remain passive like this! I need to fight back!" Joshua had already begun to push back, but it was difficult. Every time he concentrated his willpower and tried to attack or suppress the Bitter Swordsman, his adversary used his formidable reserves of negative energies to withstand the blows!
At the same time, the artifact spirit continued to drain Joshua's life energy, causing
him to speed up his exhaustion!
This wasn't working.
Joshua quickly realized that he not only needed to figure out a more effective way to
attack the Bitter Swordsman, but he also needed to reduce his energy deficit.
He soon came up with a promising idea.
The Bitter Swordsman was able to feed off his life energy because it was inherently
compatible and helpful to nearly every living entity.
What about other energies?
The demonic entity was clearly a being that was tainted with darkness, so what better
way to counter him by exposing him to the light?
While Joshua himself was not able to channel light energy as easily as the Illustrious One, it was not necessary for him to call upon the help of this design spirit.
He already possessed the capacity to channel other E energies that he was familiar
with! He just had to shift the focus to his companion spirit.
"Willy!"
A green long-haired cat joined the fight!
His appearance briefly took the Bitter Swordsman by surprise.
Willy may possess a separate identity from Joshua, but the companion spirit was not independent enough to constitute a different individual.
This meant that according to the Life Sword Pact that Joshua had formed with the Bitter Scimitar, Willy could be regarded as an extension of the former!
While the companion spirit was not able to affect the fight in his current state, Willy
quickly demonstrated his amazing versatility by doing his best to imitate the
Illustrious One!
Joshua had deliberately developed Willy as an avatar for other design spirits,
It became a lot easier for the expert pilot to channel the power of the likes of Qilanxo,
the Superior Mother and the Illustrious One when his companion spirit evolved into an incredibly versatile and adaptable vessel.
Normally, Willy simply opened himself up for design spirits to descend on him and manifest into a miniature version of themselves.
Just because the companion spirit was not allowed to do this anymore did not mean he had learned nothing from all of those possession attempts!
Both Joshua and Willy had developed a decent understanding of the light element due to all of the times the latter acted as a vessel for the Illustrious One. Now, Willy altered himself so that he not only strengthened his affinity towards the
light attribute, but also used all of the lessons he derived from the Illustrious One to
draw in light E energy and shape it into an energy shield!
The change happened quickly.
In one moment, the Bitter Swordsman merrily assailed Joshua by draining his life and
assaulting him with blade strikes.
In another moment, the Bitter Swordsman cried out in pain as Willy infused Joshua with radiance, causing him and his willpower to repel the malevolent being! Though Willy was much weaker than the Bitter Swordsman and was unable to fully drive back the darkness, the helpful companion spirit was at least able to make Joshua more resistant against darkness and slow down the drain of life energy!
Joshua began to grin. His initial use of Willy's talents caused him to realize that his
options were not as meager as he thought.
It turned out that he was capable of weaponizing other E energy attributes without
needing to borrow the help of other design spirits!
Willy had never handled E energy like this in the past, but he was a quick learner.
The companion spirit soon began to utilize Joshua's understanding of his own expert mech to shape light energy into a facsimile of a mechanical construct.
Soon enough, Joshua's soul was no longer surrounded by a simple light bubble.
Willy had encased Joshua in a lightcast imitation of the Everchanger! With a light energy version of the Vitalus luminar crystal rifle in one hand and the Heartsword in the other hand, Joshua finally felt in control again.
He was much stronger if he fought as an expert pilot!
T
1
his false mech!
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He had tried to resonate with Willy in the past, but the results were negligible because
his companion spirit was not a mech that was integrated with resonating exotics. Yet when Joshua resonated with the lightcast Everchanger, he found to his surprise
that he was actually able to generate a small but significant amount of true resonance!
Even if it was nowhere comparable to the real thing, this was still a massive
improvement!
How was he able to resonate with a mech that did not really exist?
"Is it... the Blood Pact?"
He suddenly thought back on the bond that existed between himself and the
Everchanger.
The lines between the two had blurred. From the moment they formed a lifelong bond
of mutual assistance and growth, the two had become one.
A part of himself had transferred over to the Everchanger, while a part of the
Everchanger had already transferred over to Joshua!
This had massive implications, but one of them was that he was able to simulate the Everchanger to a significantly greater degree than normal!
What did this mean?
Joshua would always have a version of the Everchanger by his side!
No matter how much he was separated from the cockpit of his 'Carmine' mech, he
would always be able to pilot a weakened version of the Everchanger by having Willy produce an E energy manifestation! "This... is my own power!"