The Mech Touch

Chapter 7263: Poorly Prepared

The fight between the Divine Arsonist and the Ekstrom Goliath unfolded into a spiritedspectacle.The former decisively gained the upper hand for a time as his flamethrower burnedaway all of the cannon fodder while simultaneously inhibiting the Goliath's rapidrecovery capabilities.However, the flamethrower's direct lethality against the Ekstrom Goliath was not thathigh.its flesh and harder organic matter turned out to be remarkably resistant towards fire.The main reason the insectile giant burned so much was due to being covered by a largeamount of propellant.Once this substance burned out, the thermic reaction automatically ceased.The Ekstrom Goliath must be suffering immensely while it was still covered with burningpropellant, but its exoskeleton layers were so thick and resilient that they were notbreaking down as fast as the Divine Arsonist wished.In order to hasten its demise, the Ascended Giant proactively charged forward andpierced the megavoribug's body with repeated spear strikes.The Divine Arsonist made sure not to puncture his enemy randomly, but target everypart or organ that seemed important!The spear drilled through what appeared to be the head of the Ekstrom Goliath morethan a dozen times.It also drilled deep into its rear as well as its abdomen. The weird and largely sphericalshape of the ugly Goliath made it difficult to determine whether the Divine Arsoniststruck anything important.The rest of the voribugs did not remain idle during this time.In order to save the burning Goliath and prevent the Divine Arsonist from stabbing andburning it to death, the other voribugs frantically mobbed the Ascended Giant and usedtheir bodies to bite the flamethrower into pieces!Without the protection of his spatial barrier, the cannon fodder bugs managed tobecome a much greater hindrance than before.Not only were the bugs clinging to all of his limbs as if their lives depended on it, theywere also trying to pry away his weapons from his possession.This could not be tolerated.It was much harder for the voribugs to mob an ace mech since the latter was able to relyon its Saint Kingdom to drastically weaken any enemies that got close.However, phase lords lacked this distinctive advantage. No matter how weak thevoribugs may be, they were much more threatening when they were able to gather ingreat enough numbers!In order to prevent the voribugs from causing accidents, the Divine Arsonist becameforced to activate his flamethrower a lot more frequently than he wished.This significantly impaired his ability to damage the Ekstrom Goliath.While he was able to spray more flames onto the megavoribug, they were just burningthe giant creature on the surface.Very few flames reached the interior of its body.As soon as the fire on any surface part of the Ekstrom Goliath died down, it immediatelybegan to regenerate.It did not matter too much if the Divine Arsonist made sure to spray his flames into theGoliath's mouth on a regular basis.The big bug simply cannibalized its own existing biomass in order to replenish andstrengthen its exoskeleton armor!The Divine Arsonist continued to struggle against the resistance generated by all of thecannon fodder.No matter how many bugs he burned, more always took their place!To the Ascended Giant, the cannon fodder bugs ceased to be individual soldiers in hisperception.Instead, the bugs acted more like a particularly aggressive active energy shield!The more the Divine Arsonist tried to use his flames and spears to kill the EkstromGoliath, the more the annoying insects tried to get in his way!As a soldier of the Faceless Giants, his ability to get these annoying bugs off his raimentwas minimal.Aside from spraying flames and manually squashing them with his limbs, the DivineArsonist had no good way of eliminating them. He was not strong and important enoughto acquire any phasewater organs that could strengthen his ability to generate adamaging spatial field around his body.If he had just one phasewater organ that was good at eliminating or disrupting nearbycannon fodder, then he wouldn't have struggled so much to get these annoying bugs offhis armored true body!The fight between the Divine Arsonist and the Ekstrom Goliath continued to drag on.The latter began to accrue more and more wounds as the flames continued to inhibit itsregeneration.Although most of the highly penetrating spear attacks punched fairly deep, the actualdamage to the body was rather minimal.It was the equivalent of poking lots of needles into a meatball.The Divine Arsonist grew more and more frustrated. His superdimensional spear simplyfailed to inflict any crippling blows.He was no closer to killing the Ekstrom Goliath than before!Eventually, the flames died down.When the Divine Arsonist pulled the trigger of his flamethrower, his weapon produced aweak spurt before falling silent.He had exhausted his supply.An awkward moment descended on this side of the battlefield."Crap." The Divine Arsonist said.The fight immediately turned around at this point.The Ekstrom Goliath had suffered a considerable amount of surface damage and anunknown degree of internal damage, but it still possessed a lot of vitality.As soon as the Goliath was no longer on fire, it swallowed a large amount of bugs andrapidly started to heal its injuries.All of the burned exoskeleton parts started to regenerate. All of the holes in its body gotplugged in less than a minute. The regeneration speed was so fast and complete thatmany newcomers couldn't believe that the savage and uncivilized voribugs coulddevelop this capability.As the Ekstrom Goliath rapidly recovered its physical condition, it immediately began torenew its offensive against the Divine Arsonist!It charged into the human phase lord and managed to dent the chest armor with its horn!The regenerated Goliath did not let its target off after that. Instead, the megavoribugclosed in and utilized its claws and other body parts to slash and bludgeon theAscended Giant's raiment.The transphasic claws were not that effective at penetrating the Ekstrom Goliath'stransphasic armor, but the frequency of attacks was so high that the Divine Arsonist'sraiment soon turned into a battered mess.The Ascended Giant tried his best to fight back, but he found it difficult to focus on hisopponents.He became flooded by voribugs!Unlike last time, he no longer enjoyed the protection of his spatial barrier, which meantthat the insects easily stuck to his raiment!Its integrity started to waver right away.The armor plating began to get chewed up by hungry mouths.The more delicate components such as sensor systems and the flight system began toincur serious damage.The Divine Arsonist shuddered inside his deteriorating raiment.What would happen once his armor was gone?His body would get swamped by voribugs that would love to do nothing less than striphis body down to the bones and maybe more.No matter what, the Divine Arsonist could never allow himself to suffer a defeat bygetting devoured by the weakest and filthiest alien insects that he had ever seen!Seeing as the voribugs were chewing into the large shoulder-mounted missile launchers,the Divine Arsonist finally decided to make use of his final trump card."DIE!"A large amount of missiles streaked from the launchers and quickly crossed the distancebefore slamming into the body of the Ekstrom Goliath!The powerful alien immediately became engulfed by high-quality transphasic missiles!The payloads of these missiles had been designed to strip the spatial barriers of phaselords and compromise their raiments.When utilized against the mutated voribugs whose understanding and integration ofphasewater technology remained unclear, the effectiveness of the powerful if admittedlyexpensive transphasic missiles happened to be even greater!The rapid succession of blasts practically engulfed half of the body of the EkstromGoliath!By the time the barrage came to an end, it was clear that the Ekstrom Goliath had lost somuch biomass and physical integrity that the creature would have died without anysuspense.Yet as the flesh and open wounds continued to squirm, the body of the megavoribugactually started to knit together again!Huge swarms converged onto this location. The nearest ones directly turned into foodwhich the Goliath utilized to rapidly replenish its missing body parts!It was utterly baffling to see how quickly the Ekstrom Goliath regenerated.Any other organism would not be able to believe the descriptions, but witnessing itsaction was more than enough to convince any skeptic.The Ekstrom Goliath rapidly regained its body and started to assail the Divine Arsonistwith no intention of holding back!The Goliath fought bolder than before now that it knew that the Divine Arsonist hadexpended its flamethrower.The fight turned into a slugging match.The Ekstrom Goliath was fully prepared for the possibility of fighting against elite enemyunits.The Divine Arsonist had given up on utilizing his superdimensional-tipped spear.While its penetration power was exceptional, it was not able to inflict enough damagethat would stick.The Ascended Giant would rather punch the Ekstrom Goliath!Unfortunately, this method of attack proved to be almost as ineffective as the last one.The Divine Arsonist was not prepared to fight against the current generation of Goliaths.In the end, he figured out that the most effective way to damage the Ekstrom Goliathwas to use his hands as claws and literally tear the Ekstrom Goliath apart piece by piece!The fight turned exceptionally savage and brutal at this stage of their fight.Ves wanted to palm his face.The Divine Harpoon did not look happy either.Even if the Divine Arsonist was not a particularly strong Ascended Giant, he stillrepresented the Phase Lord Department.To demonstrate so many deficiencies was a serious problem."The flamethrower's capacity is too low." Ves said. "In future deployments, the DivineArsonist should choose whether to carry more missiles or a much larger propellant tank.He shouldn't be so indecisive and choose to enter the field with both. Against themutated voribugs, it is better to rely on his flamethrower. I do not see the point incarrying such a small propellant tank.""I agree. From what I know of the Divine Arsonist, he is actually saving up merits toexchange for a dimensional propellant tank. This way, he can remain fast and agile whilestill able to spray a large amount of flames."That made sense, but it also meant that the Divine Arsonists staying power was ratherlow.As the group continued to observe the savage fight between the two champions, therewas plenty to criticize here as well."Spears have proven to be highly effective against high-ranking mechs as inflictingslight damage to the internals can already cause an immediate and tangible drop inperformance." Vies spoke. "However, against a mutated voribug that is bred for war anddesigned for organic redundancy, it is difficult for a spear to inflict much damage. All ofthese stabbing wounds do not strain the Goliath's regeneration capabilities all thatmuch. The Divine Arsonist had to rely on his hands for lack of a better alternative.”Lord Richard Brownstone smiled and gestured at the other projections. "This is why wehave equipped most of our high-ranking mechs with both melee and ranged plasmaweapons. We have found that they are effective at overcoming the voribug's extremeenvironmental conditions. Plasma weapons can be demanding, but they cansimultaneously inflict damage while also inhibiting regeneration.”This put Ves to thought. Plasma weapon tech was not the only solution that he couldresort to, but it was still a good choice barring any alternatives."The Ascended Giants all need to be equipped with plasma melee weapons andnumerous more. Harpoon, I need you to start this transition from within our current unit.""I shall do my best, sir. We need to employ more than plasma weapon tech in order todeal with the emerging bug threat."

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