The Mech Touch

When Venerable Joshua successfully won the bet and managed to preserve his life, he grinned like crazy.

He did it! He conquered the Bitter Scimitar!

The potent weapon had finally surrendered to his control!

As he began to feel out the newly subdued D-arm, he noted that the resentful artifact spirit still chafed at the terms imposed on him. He most certainly did not like to hold back against his current wielder!

Yet what could he do? Joshua had bonded with it with one of the most binding spiritual agreements, the Life Sword Pact.

No matter what kind of traitor or rulebreaker the Bitter Swordsman may be, he had pledged his own corrupted soul to the terms of the pact!

This was how Joshua managed to do what he previously thought was impossible!

Though the risks were high, Joshua had managed to find his strength and proven his superiority.

The Bitter Scimitar was under his complete control!

The mysterious D-arm did not simply stop its resistance towards his efforts to harness its full features and potential.

Joshua was actually able to compel the artifact spirit to cooperate with him on anything he wanted.

For example, shortly after he activated the phasewater-charged blade setting, the Bitter Swordsman begrudgingly but obediently worked to strengthen and optimize this mode so that it increased the cutting power of the scimitar to the uppermost boundary!

This made a huge difference!

Though Joshua could not measure how many percent better it became at neutralizing and piercing through transphasic defenses, he instinctively felt that the spatial barriers generated by the Eight Lord of Takansha shouldn't be a problem anymore!

As his confidence and optimism swelled, the Everchanger glowed brighter!

A bright green corona surrounded the expert hero mech, causing him to look like a defiant soldier that attempted to pull one last feat of heroism in the hopes of reversing a losing battle!

Time was of the essence. The Bitter Scimitar had already swallowed 100 grams of phasewater to enter into its highly active setting.

Joshua did not spend the few seconds that passed by in vain. He rapidly understood what the weapon was capable of and how he should best wield his D-arm now that it fully opened up to his control.

When the Everchanger finally went into action again, his performance was radically different than before!

The Bitter Scimitar which previously inflicted mediocre damage against the Eight Lord's energy barriers suddenly began to inflict visible tears in their structure!

"Look at the Everchanger!"

"Wow! His weapon has become much more powerful!"

"That's the power of phasewater-charged technology. I can't imagine how much phasewater the Everchanger has burned in order to destabilize the spatial barriers so much."

"It's wrong. This is not the kind of power that phasewater-charged technology can produce. Even if we account for the amplification produced by hyper technology and true resonance, the new scimitar is so much more powerful and effective than any other bladed weapon that it is already getting close to matching the effectiveness of Saint Piercer arms! Is this the Larkinson Clan's attempt to imitate those infamous alien weapons?"

Not too many people paid attention to the Everchanger considering that there were bigger and stronger assets on the battlefield.

Yet those that had a considerable stake in Joshua and the Everchanger's success noticed that the pairing had suddenly burst out with greater power than they had previously shown!

The Eight Lord of Takansha was taken aback by the sudden explosion of aggression from the Everchanger. The lesser phase lord had previously dismissed the green expert mech as a low-priority threat, but now the alien had to revise his evaluation because his spatial barriers were getting torn up in a matter of seconds!

Venerable Glendale and Venerable Rodrigo of the 77th Warborn immediately adapted to the Everchanger's drastically increased effectiveness.

The Greenaxe and the Bloodripper began to circle around and attack the rear defenses of the lesser phase lord.

Neither of them had any hope of tearing down the spatial barriers as quickly as the Everchanger, but they could prevent the enemy from concentrating all of his energy defenses in the direction of the most acute threat.

The two living expert mechs also positioned themselves in a way that allowed them to stall the Eight Lord of Takansha should he decide to make a retreat.

As the Everchanger continued to tear his way through the successive layers of spatial barriers, Joshua did not settle for the current results.

He could do more. He could do a lot more. Willy was already trying to put his newly discovered capabilities to good use, and Joshua took the time to communicate with his resentful D-arm.

"Work with me, and you shall taste the blood that you so dearly crave." Joshua told his sentient weapon. "If you help me kill this lesser phase lord, then I promise you that if no one else has a greater claim on his soul, I will allow you to devour it for yourself, but only if he dies at our hands."

The artifact spirit was taken aback by this offer. Why was Joshua trying to be so generous after he had worked hard to compel absolute control over the D-arm?

It didn't make any sense from the perspective of the Bitter Swordsman!

"We could have spared all of the arguing and fighting if you cooperated with me from the start." Joshua admonished the artifact spirit. "While I do not regret that I have bound you to a pact, I don't want our relationship to be defined by its restrictive terms. There is still a chance for us to set aside our stupid grievances against each other and cooperate earnestly with each other. What do you say? Would you like to work with me to kill aliens and gods not because a stupid pact is forcing you to follow my lead, but because we can help each other grow stronger?

The Bitter Swordsman was not able to make a firm decision on this matter. The very nature of his being resisted the notion of cooperating with a living person and an expert pilot no less.

If he was as feral and irrational as before, he would definitely reject this overture!

However, the Life Sword Pact changed him. The differences were too numerous to mention, but one of the most important consequences was that he was able to understand his new life partner a lot better.

There was no way the Bitter Swordsman could miss the meaning and the sincerity behind Joshua's words!

The Life Sword Pact also caused the Bitter Swordsman to absorb a portion of the expert pilot's strength regardless of whether he wanted it or not. His irrational fury had abated as a surge of reason and control had reasserted themselves in his chaotic mind.

The Bitter Swordsman realized that he had lost his purity. By agreeing to form a lifelong pact with Joshua, he unwillingly developed a sense of intimacy and understanding towards the living human expert pilot.

This was not supposed to happen!

As a soul that had been consigned to damnation before being forced to inhabit a weapon artifact, the Bitter Swordsman had become another soldier of the other side.

The living were supposed to be his enemies!

One of the reasons why the Bitter Swordsman kept hindering and tormenting Joshua previously was because the two were fundamentally opposed to each other!

The only ways for the two to stop fighting against each other was if one of them fled, surrendered or died.

There weren't supposed to be any other options!

This caused the artifact spirit to fall into confusion.

Surrendering to Joshua felt bad. The Bitter Swordsman felt humiliated by his loss and did not want to be puppetted by his new master. If there was a chance for him to regain a semblance of his dignity and raise his status to a near-equal partner, then that was better than the alternative!

The only downside was that the artifact spirit had to be willing to set aside his original mission and mandate.

Was it more important for him to maintain his hostility towards the living, or would he rather make his cage more pleasant and enjoy the illusion of control?

The Bitter Swordsman did not take long before he made up his mind.

The artifact spirit acquiesced.

Joshua laughed. "Hahaha! Good! We are already doing great, but we can do better if you are actively participating in the fight. Get ready, because we are about to claim this phase lord's head!"

The Bitter Scimitar's performance did not change right away, but Joshua already felt that the weapon had become more responsive and more willing to follow his lead.

For now, the D-arm had become as pliable and willing as a typical living mech. Though the Bitter Swordsman was not able to place all of his trust into Joshua straight away, any progress was better than nothing!

As Joshua had gained new realizations about his power and his capabilities, he had been thinking more and more about what kind of pilot he wanted to become. Discover stories with empire

Versatility had become his greatest strength, and he fully intended to develop it to the fullest.

However, if he wanted to master every power that could be used to defeat his opponents in the future, he clearly could not settle with cooperating with the limited amount of design spirits available for cooperation.

Joshua strongly believed that if he wanted to expand his repertoire, he would have to seek out other formidable existences and befriend them to the point where he could borrow their power.

As long as he learned enough about the nature of the borrowed powers, he and his companion spirit would be able to reproduce weaker versions of them without any external assistance!

This would be one of his new goals and ambitions. He needed to become stronger in order to protect his family and his clan, and the best way to do so was to master a hundred different E energy attributes!

He would definitely have to travel around a lot in order to complete this ambitious goal. He suddenly felt the urge to roam around and meet new people and enemies. He wanted to descend to the surface of untamed planets and familiarize himself with the interesting powers developed by gifted calamity beasts.

Perhaps not all of them would be willing to befriend him and share their insights on their own capabilities. Joshua would try his best to change their minds by force if necessary.

His goal was never to subjugate and enslave all of these unwilling entities.

Joshua already figured out that his stance on this matter would have far-reaching effects on his progression as a high-ranking pilot.

He strongly rejected the notion of becoming a tyrant and an enslaver!

Though he wouldn't necessarily show mercy to those who resisted him, he would still respect their decisions on whether they wanted to share their secrets with him. If they ever decided to cooperate with him, then they had to do so voluntarily, and not because he coerced them against their will!

Joshua hoped that the measures he took against the Bitter Swordsman would be the last time he forced another spirit to submit to his control.

He would much rather expand his versatility and master a hundred different E energy attributes while still maintaining good relations to the entities who taught him over the course of their friendships.

By understanding their powers and attributes well enough, he would be able to cooperate with them on a deeper level!

"Let's put this theory to the test!"

The Everchanger was already making good progress in dismantling the energy defenses, but the problem was that the Eight Lord of Takansha became so spooked that he already tried to flee to the rear!

The expert mech needed to speed up his pace, or else it would become untenable to persist in the effort to slay the phase lord!

Soon enough, the Everchanger began to attract more E energy from the environment.

What was remarkable was the expert hero mech no longer predominantly absorbed energy of a single attribute.

Instead, the expert mech gained a more complex aura as he began to absorb as much life energy, space energy, death energy and darkness energy as possible!

The unusual combination of elements immediately started to alter the properties of the expert mech and the phasewater-charged scimitar.

Though the Everchanger initially found it difficult to balance between all of these attributes at once, his true resonance gradually molded these forces into a cohesive combination!