The Mech Touch novel Chapter 6712

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. Continue reading on freewebnovel.com

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.

Joshua was on his own, and that meant that the only way he could beat the Bitter 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 in tune with his life!

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!

Joshua felt so much better and more confident that he faintly began to resonate with his false mech!

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!"