The Mech Touch

Though Ves had no way of monitoring the growth of Irene's new companion spirit at regular intervals in the following 2 centuries, it was already enough for him to be able to observe the difference in the far future.

Of course, that depended on whether Ves was able to observe enough clues from the Destroyer of Worlds once he returned to his present time. It might be a lot more difficult for him to complete this ambitious study than he wished.

Still, Ves strongly believed that granting Irene her own companion spirit would help her a lot, though he did not exactly know in what manner.

There were only two examples of companion spirits attached to human demigods before he jumped through the Time Gate.

Respa assisted Venerable Dise in combat by allowing her to form her own battle network with her fellow Swordmaidens.

Sharpie enabled Ketis to pursue the path of a swordmaster while still following her original trajectory of a mech designer.

Neither of these cases provided Ves with a good idea of how Irene's new companion spirit might assist the future god pilot. The new cat could do anything from acting as an extra supercomputer to helping the Destroyer of Worlds make accurate targeting predictions.

As the heavy-duty transport landed on the ground and allowed the Iron Hedgehog along with several other heavy artillery mechs to disembark, Ves briefly interrupted his study of Irene's cute new companion spirit in order to issue a complaint.

"Emma is not a dignified name!" Blinky protested.

Miew…?

Venerable Irene frowned at the purple cat. She possessed a much better understanding of what she was dealing with now that she had gained her own companion spirit.

"What sort of name do you propose instead, 'Blinky'?"

The Star Cat gestured with his paws. "How about something awesome like 'Ascalon' or 'Doom Cat'?"

The expert pilot did not look impressed. "You must come from a man. I am not changing my mind. My cat shall be known as Emma and nothing else. It is not as if many people will even know of her existence. Given that I have never seen or heard anyone able to pull out a cat from their heads, I assume that I need to keep her existence a secret."

Blinky nodded. "Yes. What I have just bestowed you is a method of augmentation that is highly experimental and difficult to replicate. It will literally take centuries to refine this innovative process to the point where it is stable and mature enough to be publicized and made available on a wider scale. Once that happens, the potential of humanity shall undergo a qualitative transformation. Many humans such as you will gain the capital to fight against the greatest threats to our civilization. However, there are many groups that do not wish to see this happen, so I humbly request that you keep this new capacity of yours a secret to everyone, from your own comrades to the most powerful leaders of the MTA."

All of this sounded incredibly profound and distant to Irene. She was far from the god pilot that she would become in the future, so any talk related to the survival of the human race and the affairs of the Mech Trade Association went right out of her head!

Perhaps her older self might interpret Blinky's words differently in the future, but that would happen long after his Mastery experience had ended.

An hour passed by as the Quillim troops that arrived at New Kreon immediately dug in and prepared to greet the advancing enemies.

The city was half-ruined like many of the other population centers that had a starship crash on top of them. Many structures were utterly ruined and lots of debris clogged up the streets.

What also posed a hindrance were all of the craters and uneven elevation that complicated the urban landscape. They made it difficult for mechs to traverse from one location to another, though they also provided additional cover against ranged attacks.

Currently, the Iron Hedgehog along with a dozen or so heavy artillery mechs readied themselves for action.

As the mechs with the longest range out of the forces deployed in New Kreon, it was up to these machines to soften up the Bontue mechs that were advancing from afar.

The intelligence gathered by the Quillims were accurate. The Bontues had indeed sent forth a vanguard consisting of all of the mechs that could quickly be dispatched to Dershin.

The Bontue vanguard was not meant to defeat the Quillim invaders outright, but to entangle and pin down their foes to allow for a follow-up force to catch up and deliver the coup-the-grace!

As such, it was vital to prevent the enemy vanguard troops from taking over New Kreon and use it as a springboard to siege Dershin!

"Venerable Mox, are you able to deplete the numbers of the advancing enemy mechs from this range?"

Irene evaluated the request as she studied the data fed through the command net.

The scout mechs tried their best to fend off the harassment of their Bontue counterparts. The real-time observation data was extremely precious and could theoretically enable her to make a lot of enemy lives miserable.

Still, she did not think that opening fire at this point was practical.

"How much ammunition do I have at my disposal?" She asked first.

It took a moment to call up the most up-to-date answer.

"Much of the special ammunition reserves for your Iron Hedgehog became lost after the destruction of your prior mech battalion. Our headquarters managed to scrounge up enough gauss rounds and explosive shells to give your expert mech two full reloads."

That was way too little. Heavy artillery mechs chewed through ammunition like nothing else. They relied on their volume of fire to rain down as much death onto the enemy positions as possible!

Irene Mox had always been accustomed to bringing a sufficient amount of spare ammunition to every battlefield. This allowed her to cast aside all concerns about restraining her firepower.

This was clearly not a good idea if she needed to count her projectiles.

"Then let us wait until the enemy troops come closer." She replied over the communication channel. "The probability of damaging a mech at a range of over a hundred kilometers is too low. This is especially the case when the Bontue mechs are dispersed and ready to perform evasive maneuvers. I will only be able to strike a target once every thirty or forty shells under these conditions."

"Understood. Inform us once you are confident enough to make your shells count."

She felt bad for allowing these distant enemies to come close without pressuring them with an over-the-horizon bombardment.

Irene understood quite well that even if she wasn't able to attain a high hit rate, the suppression effect could do wonders in sapping the confidence of her adversaries. This was why she was always in favor of shelling her enemies early.

"Be patient, Irene." Blinky said as he hovered inside the cockpit. "You may as well bring out Emma and play with your new cat."

The mention of her new 'companion' caused Irene to recall all of the questions that she wanted to ask.

Her intuition told her that Blinky might not hang around for much longer, so she needed to cherish this opportunity to gain the clarification she needed.

"What is Emma exactly?" She asked. "On one hand, I feel as if she is myself. On the other hand, she has a mind of her own. Will she ever grow strong enough to go her own separate way?"

"No. That won't happen. It is difficult to describe who she represents, but you can treat her like a second personality of yourself. Emma is still you, but she happens to come in the form of a cat. It is highly unlikely for you to rebel against yourself unless you suffer from severe personality disorders."

Seeing that Blinky was being helpful, Irene asked a few other questions, each of which had to do with Emma.

Ves rarely provided any clear answers, but he made sure to give Irene enough answers to prevent her from doing anything stupid in the future.

"Emma will slowly grow and adapt to your personal struggles and experiences." Blinky told the expert pilot. "Starting from this battle, your actions and your desires will shape her powers. She will gain abilities that will grant you unique new abilities that no one else can replicate. The greater you desire power, the more Emma will augment your combat effectiveness. This is a completely automatic and natural process, so you don't need to do anything weird to upgrade her strength."

"Understood. That is convenient to know."

Blinky peered deeply at Emma. "Your companion cat should already come with at least one ability that is based on your strength as an expert pilot. Try and feel her out. You should instinctively understand what she can do. Your cat should have a power that is applicable to combat."

"I think… I have a slight idea of what that might be." Irene said as she tried to explore Emma in her own ways. "I need to test it out in order to learn more."

She grew so curious that she couldn't resist the impulse to take action. Blinky promised so much and she had suffered so much pain that it was unacceptable for Emma to end up as a cute feline mascot.

Irene contacted the commander in charge of the Quillim forces in New Kreon and made a request to open fire.

"You informed us not too long ago that it is too early to start your shelling."

"I may have a method to inflict effective harm onto the Bontue mechs at this range."

"You may do as you wish. We trust in your skill."

The Iron Hedgehog began to brace itself onto the ground and armed all of its howitzers.

The muzzle velocities of the expert mech's heavy gauss cannons was much higher, but the only way to take down a moving mech was to hit the target directly. This was obviously impractical under the circumstances so Irene did not bother to arm them at this point.

Instead, it was the howitzers that she counted on this time.

She typically opened fire with all 8 of them, but this time she prepared to fire only one of them. The expert pilot took her time to calculate a firing solution on a Bontue swordsman mech.

This particular model was known to be quite fast and deadly at close range, but its armor was rather insufficient.

"Fire!"

A single howitzer boomed, launching a shell that flew high in the sky and quickly disappeared in the horizon!

Irene and many other Quillims who paid attention to this shot waited patiently for the shell to travel further while constantly being affected by gravity and air resistance.

Once the shell came close enough for the Bontues to detect its approach, all of the mechs of the vanguard began to move faster and more erratically in order to reduce their chances of getting struck.

Boom!

The distant resonance-empowered explosion only barely managed to scratch the swordsman mech's side armor!

Many people reacted with disappointment with this ineffective attack. Now that the Bontues knew that the Quillims were ready to begin shelling, it would be significantly more difficult to land an attack that hurt.

Irene remained unaffected, however. This attack merely served as a baseline as far as she was concerned.

She prepared to fire another howitzer. She used the available data to formulate a second ultra-long-range firing solution, but this time she added an extra step!

Miew!

Emma seemed to know what she should do. The cat began to glow with power as Irene resonated with her new companion spirit.

Once the fiery cat exuded a desire to annihilate the opposition, she flew upwards and phased through the ceiling of the cockpit!

The intangible cat continued to move through the thick and heavy structure of the expert heavy artillery mech until it had reached the howitzer that was preparing to fire.

Emma quickly found the explosive shell in the chamber and dove inside the warhead.

Irene had already resonated with the special warhead, but once Emma had fused to it, the shell radiated a lot more danger than before!

"What!?" Ves became shocked at the implications of what he just witnessed.

Before he could ask Venerable Irene what she intended to do, the pilot decisively pulled the trigger.

The resonance-empowered shell launched out of the howitzer and quickly flew many kilometers away!

While this was not anything new to Ves, what did surprise him was that Venerable Irene's companion spirit was able to break the range restrictions that normally prevented her kind from moving too far away from their principals!

Time seemed to stretch on as the seconds ticked by. Eventually, the single shell came close enough to threaten the earlier Bontue swordsman mech yet again!

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

Just when it seemed that the enemy swordsman mech had moved beyond the blast radius of the Iron Hedgehog's shells, the explosion that erupted this time was much larger and much more powerful than before!

By the time the explosion had faded, the sensors showed that the swordsman mech existed no more!

It had become exposed to so much destruction that its frame had fallen apart into a million different pieces of shrapnel!

Its mech pilot had no time to eject and died as his body instantly became pulverized!

"..."

Ves turned completely speechless at this result.

He understood a bit better now why Divine Irene Mox eventually earned her famous title.

Just as he was beginning to wonder how Emma could possibly make her way back to the Iron Hedgehog, a miniature sun appeared inside the cockpit.

That little explosion grew and gained definition until it morphed into Emma's intangible body!

Miew miew miew!