"NOOOOO!"
"THIS CANNOT BE!"
"MURDERER!"
"HEXFIEND!"
"HONORLESS DOG!"
The reactions from the soldiers of the Sundered Phalanx as well as the citizens of the Gauge Dynasty conveyed an incredible amount of fury and dismay!
In fact, many other Fridaymen who hailed from the other coalition partners also exhibited similar reactions!
The loss of the Neo Amadeus was a great shame but not a completely unacceptable defeat.
The loss of Saint Jeremiah Gauge, a relatively young ace pilot who still had a bright future ahead of him was much more devastating!
Ace pilots were pretty much one of the few weapons of mass destruction that states and private organizations were allowed to employ on the battlefield.
Each of them formed a massive deterrent and elevated the comprehensive strength and prestige of their respective states.
Ace pilots lived for a long amount of time. While it was extremely troublesome to prolong the lives of expert pilots, it was a different case for those that had successfully experienced their second apotheosis.
As ace pilots came closer to turning themselves into energy-based life forms, their bodies became a lot more malleable to their power.
Even if they knew nothing about biology, just baptizing their biological human bodies with their willpower for many years was enough to transform their mortal coils in order to extend their lifespans!
In fact, expert pilots were capable of doing this as well, but their resonance strengths were too low for them to make any major differences.
Though the lifespans of ace pilots still varied wildly due to the differences in their domains and usage of their powers, it was not that difficult for them to live for up to 300 years without receiving any specialized treatments!
Of course, everything had limits and it was extremely hard for ace pilots to push themselves past this point.
Their only way to break their lifespan limitations was to advance to god pilot and attain immortality!
Of course, no one in the Friday Coalition ever thought that their ace pilots had a chance of becoming a legendary god pilot that would earn recognition from the entirety of human society.
It was already enough for Saint Jeremiah Gauge to be able to serve the Gauge Dynasty and by extension the Friday Coalition if he was able to pilot ace mechs for two whole centuries!
Now, in a time where Jeremiah's promising career had been cut short after fighting his first true battle as an ace pilot, many Fridaymen mourned this devastating loss!
What was worse was that the defeat of Saint Jeremiah and his Neo Amadeus immediately exposed the rest of the Sundered Phalanx and the intact parts of the Kosic Ring to the power of the victor!
Patriarch Reginald Cross did not experience any of the negative emotions of the people he hurt with his actions.
Instead, he experienced ultimate bliss for winning this duel and starting his glorious career as an ace pilot on the strongest footing possible!
Few ace pilots had the privilege of defeating an equal of theirs on the battlefield, let alone claiming their adversary's life as well!
Decades or even a century could go by before an ace pilot would ever be able to fight a serious battle against one of their peers.
This wasn't the case for Patriarch Reginald.
This victory had greater meaning to him than anyone else in his position. His confidence in his strength and skill had boosted to an incredible height. No one would be able to question his battle worthiness anymore. He was no longer a dubious ace pilot who mainly relied on the unreasonable strength of his ace mech or the assistance of external helpers to defeat his enemies.
It was all him! Reginald knew for certain that he fought and killed Saint Jeremiah by himself. No living mech and no design spirit had ever bailed him out like they did for the other mech pilots fighting on the main battlefield.
Even now, he could feel an extremely close and intimate connection to his Mars.
All of the previous instances where he piloted the Mars couldn't compare to how closely he was able to understand and control his ace mech!
He intuitively understood that even if he was separated from his Mars, he could always call it back to his side as long as it wasn't completely broken!
This was an exceedingly rare experience for ace pilots. Only those that had reached the end of their current phase would think about bonding themselves to their ace mechs to this degree, and it always took at least several years to complete the first phase of the Mech Body Merger Process.
Reginald actually suffered from a lack of information because he hadn't put much effort into studying the Mech Body Merger Process.
However, that did not stop him from enjoying and benefiting from the consequences of his actions!
"I… have become the Mars."
Strictly speaking, the Mars had become Reginald as well, but since he had gotten rid of its living personality, the phrase had little meaning anymore.
What was important was that the Mars became a part of him in a way that made him feel as if he could actively mold his ace mech to make it more suitable for him to pilot.
He had already done that to a large degree by baptizing it with his force of will. The Mars had improved in ways that Patriarch Reginald couldn't completely describe, but none of them were bad from his perspective!
His desire to pilot a stronger, tougher and more long-lasting mech had partially been realized due to the transformation that he had managed to spur on. It had played an important role in allowing Patriarch Reginald to win this crucial mech duel!
In fact, his Mars was still changing even now. By defeating the Neo Amadeus in single combat, the ace hybrid mech's god body mechanism was harvesting a lot more spiritual feedback than before! frёewebnoѵēl.com
The amount of people that actively watched the duel from remote and rooted for Patriarch Reginald and his Mars were too many to count!
Though a significant portion of that same audience became dismayed when Jeremiah and his Neo Amadeus lost, more people sincerely admired the powerful Mars and celebrated its success on the battlefield!
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