The Mech Touch novel Chapter 3168

Chapter 3168: Blinding Flash

A hundred kilometers was a large distance on land, but only a brisk flight in space.

Thousands of additional Larkinson mechs had deployed in space, but not because they needed to escort the second expert mech of the Larkinson Clan to its destination.

They weren't needed to protect the Sentry Project. The chance of the expert mech malfunctioning was virtually zero at the moment. If the mech contained any major flaw that could cause it to deviate outside of its optimal performance standards, then it wouldn't have become a masterwork in the first place!

A lot of bots went ahead and prepared the large region of space instead. While it was impossible to hide any laser beams that surged past the interference envelope and continued to soar into the distance, the Sentry Project itself would at least maintain some privacy.

The Dark Zephyr had already launched ahead and was hovering patiently in the middle of the interference zone. When Venerable Tusa was able to see and feel the approach of the masterwork expert mech, his face turned a little sour.

Any expert pilot would feel jealous when they saw such a fantastic mech. The probability of any of them receiving a masterwork was low. The few who were able to pilot them had won the lottery as far as everyone was concerned.

He soon calmed himself down. It was natural for a human to experience envy, but expert pilots like him were not supposed to be shaken by these weaknesses.

While this was not a real battle, it was still important for him to be in his best form.

When the expert mechs flew close enough to each other, the domains produced by their resonance overlapped with each other.

Venerable Tusa immediately had the illusion that a portion of his territory was being taken over by a more powerful presence.

He mentally inspected the resonance strength meter in order to see what it had to say.

"Damn! Wasn't she just below 19 laveres previously? How come she jumped to 23.58 all of a sudden?"

The sudden increase in strength signified that Venerable Stark had not only managed to harness her new expert mech to a high degree, but also experienced a minor breakthrough after a long time of not being able to pilot a mech that could fully accommodate her strength.

The lavere scale was not linear. An expert pilot who possessed a resonance strength of 5 laveres was not literally that many times stronger than an expert pilot who measured at just 1 lavere.

Even if this was the case, there were many other factors such as mech class and mech type that determined which one was more likely to defeat the other.

In general terms, a light skirmisher possessed a modest advantage against a rifleman mech.

Every child knew that if a light skirmisher ever got into point-blank range of a ranged mech, the latter was almost certainly doomed.

The only hope for the rifleman mech was to take an approaching light mech down before it closed the distance, but that was easier said than done. Many light mechs were primarily designed to thread through enemy fire, and the Dark Zephyr exemplified this archetype.

"Yet why do I have the suspicion that I am in trouble?" Tusa whispered.

Just the confrontation between their resonance fields already revealed a remarkable difference. Venerable Tusa was still young and had a lot of time to develop his potential, but that also meant that his current level of strength was still in the early stages.

Venerable Stark was different. Despite her lack of experience in piloting actual expert mechs, her age and life experiences had molded her will into a strong flame that allowed her to persist despite the long delay in obtaining an appropriate machine.

She had already experienced the lowest that an expert pilot could go. Every other challenge and difficulty seemed trivial in comparison.

Even so, that did not stop her from becoming more and more excited at the prospect of finding out how much power she was actually able to wield this time.

After a brief delay, a reinforced communication bot relayed a command from the Spirit of Bentheim.

"Before you can begin to test fire your weapon, let us make sure your mech is able to maneuver correctly. Please perform the following movements."

The Larkinsons rushed through the basic maneuvering tests. Unlike the Dark Zephyr, the Sentry Project was not a mobility-oriented machine.

The only reason why Gloriana and the other Journeymen wanted to see the expert rifleman mech move was to record the improved performance of a masterwork version of the expert mech.

The maneuvering tests proceeded without any problem. The Sentry Project wasn't capable of performing any extravagant moves, so Venerable Stark and everyone else was quickly able to ascertain how it moved.

"It's not a dancer, that's for sure." Ves muttered. "The improvement in mobility is so slight that there is no need for us to study it any further."

"Let's proceed with testing its defensive parameters." Gloriana instructed.

This was fairly simple. The Sentry Project flew back to the middle and maintained a stable position relative to the interference envelope.

A single bot warmed up its energy gun and fired a weak second-class laser beam onto the surface of the expert mech.

"The armor is holding."

The bot began to fire successively more powerful laser beams at different parts of the mech. Although rifleman mechs were not known for their defensive prowess, their expert mech counterparts were still a lot better protected.

The bot stopped firing when the Larkinsons gathered enough data to figure out how the Sentry Project reacted against laser attacks.

Another bot began to fire solid rounds at the Sentry Project. The mech endured increasingly stronger impacts but its armor held remarkably well.

These tests repeated several times until Ves and the others gathered enough data to figure out exactly how much conventional damage the expert mech was able to take.

"Let's proceed with testing its resonance shield."

This was a much more interesting test. Every expert mech incorporated resonating materials that were able to project such a useful ability. The ones incorporated in light mechs and slimmer rifleman mechs were substantially weaker, but as a different set of bots began to stress the glowing barrier, it remained incredibly strong!

The Larkinsons did not plan to test the limits of the Sentry Project's resonance shield in this specific test. It was too dangerous, especially considering that this work of art was not covered with Unending alloy.

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