The Thunderer Mark II could barely be called a living ch at its current state.
As the possessed Everchanger slowly retracted its tal palms and cautiously exited the formidable ace ch's Saint Kingdom, the ace ch could finally resu its job.
Though Ves hadn't been able to do as much as he wanted out of this mont of contact, he was proud of the work he had done to the ace ch.
When he ca up with the plan to change an ace ch, he beca aware that it was impossible to turn it into a different machine.
A heavy artillery ch that centered around inflicting massive area damage through propagating kinetic shockwaves would probably fare poorly if it switched to using laser cannons all of a sudden.
chs at this level weren't pure machines anymore. They had all beco avatars or vessels of their respective Saints.
As much as Ves hated what Patriarch Reginald Cross had done to the Mars, the man simply didn't know any better. His thods aligned with the more traditional theories and approaches that many of his peers had relied upon before.
In the brief mont that Ves ca into contact with the Thunderer Mark II, he could sense that Saint Osenring was a similar kind of person. The man was extrely possessive of his Thunderer Mark II and did not tolerate any unauthorized changes.
This gave Ves both a headache and a challenging puzzle. How could he make the Thunderer II stronger and more alive while retaining its original character as much as possible?
Ves decided that the answer would be to make its current identity more pronounced.
Rather than trying to steer it away from its original state, Ves sought to enhance it by making it alive while making as few changes as possible.
This resulted in a rather rudintary and imperfect life form that was more comparable to the first order living chs that he used to design and make in the past.
The only way for him to turn it into a second order living ch was if he could tinker with the physical design of the ace ch, but that was out of the question.
As it was, infusing the Thunderer Mark II with life while refraining from making any further alternations had worked to an extent.
Even now, Ves could already feel the Thunderer Mark II reaching out to its ace pilot in a more active and affectionate manner than possible.
If Saint Osenring was accustod to piloting living chs, then he would have accepted the love and trust expressed by his own machine.
Instead, the man had beco so touchy and freaked out by all of the changes that he had beco more distant to his ace ch instead!
This was a sad state of affairs and it reminded Ves that living chs had a long way to go before they beca a universal standard in the ch community.
It also didn't help that Ves had to make more essential alterations to the heavy gauss cannons of the ace heavy artillery ch.
These proud weapons were by far the most important systems of the Thunderer Mark II. Saint Osenring understood quite well how they worked and how they were constructed.
Yet now that the ace pilot tried to resonate with those very sa guns, he began to encounter a lot of alien and unfamiliar elents.
This was the most iffy part of Ves' plan. He had little choice but to implent more drastic changes to the heavy gauss cannons in order to align them to the Phase King.
Fortunately, Ves didn't have to worry about tying the Phase King to the Thunderer Mark II even though it had only barely transford into a living ch.
The Phase King only needed a small window of opportunity to latch on to the powerful ace ch.
After Ves had made additional changes to the spiritual foundation in relation to the potent weapon systems, the armants had even turned into blessed weapons of sorts. Forming the connections were easy due to how much phasewater they contained.
Of course, Ves wasn't happy with his rush job. The Instrunt of Doom wielded by the Amaranto maintained much greater ties to the Phase King. The amount of influence the design spirit could exert on that standalone energy cannon was astounding.
As for the Thunderer Mark II, Ves could perceive through the Everchanger that Saint Osenring struggled to open up his defenses to the foreign and alien design spirit.
Ves was tempted to open his mouth and give the man a reminder, but he figured that anything he said would backfire.
Ace pilots were stubborn like that. Ves had already learned his lesson after his last ch-related interaction with Patriarch Reginald Cross.
Right now, the Thunderer Mark II was taking a lot more ti to open fire. Dozens of seconds went by as the gauss cannons were charged and ready to unleash their latest salvo of shield bypassing rounds at the distant unclean whale.
"This stupid idiot." Ves muttered.
It was unfair to bla Saint Osenring for his hesitation. Ves had imposed a drastically different ch paradigm on him all of a sudden, but the fool of an ace pilot should have been able to tell that the changes weren't ant to inflict any harm!
The more ti the ace pilot wasted, the greater the chance the unclean whale could inflict horrible damage against the other ace chs!
Already, those slender toothed tentacles had already brushed against the Saint Kingdoms of so of the lee chs.
The Jedda Sandivar which was trying to occupy the unclean whale at the front was having it worse than most. There were tis where the ace light skirmisher ch had almost been boxed in by a forest of tentacles.
Fortunately, the Adelaide rcenary Company did not skimp on the armor of the Jedda Sandivar, so the phasewater-infused teeth only managed to graze and scratch the upper layer of the ace ch's armor.
Still, the unclean whale continued to refine his thods as ti went on. Even the Mars had been smacked by a tentacle as Patriarch Reginald foolishly tried to cut through his opponent's blubber with the Whale-Cutting Saber.
"I don't have ti for." Ves muttered. "Joshua! Switch the glow of your expert ch to the Solemn Guardian and try to amplify it as much as possible!"
"Uhm, are you sure about that, sir?" Joshua responded. "Saint Osenring will not take it well."
"Just do it! We are still comrades in arms, so the man won't attack you or anything. I just want you to nudge this guy into action seeing his personal feelings are getting in the way of his duty!"
The ever-adaptable Everchanger smoothly switched its design spirit once again.
Though Ves had lost his intimate connection to his favorite expert ch, he smiled when the aura and the deanor of the Everchanger swap in an instant.
The Solemn Guardian was one of his earliest, weakest and least impressive design spirits.
Ves had thought many tis about butchering before putting his early work back together in a stronger and more improved form.
He never acted on this impulse because he feared his other design spirits might not trust him anymore after he cut apart one of their own kind.
He was glad that he did so because the Solemn Guardian's glow was much simpler and less alarming than that of other glows.
The Everchanger naturally exuded a sense of trust. It conveyed the image of a patriotic war hero that sought to inspire fellow soldiers to do their part in the field.
After Venerable Joshua resonated with his expert ch and deliberately amplified the reach of its current glow to the point where it wrapped around the Saint Kingdom of the Thunderer Mark II, there was no way that Saint Osenring could ignore this new influence!
The Thunderer Mark II shook a bit.
For a mont, Ves feared that the ace ch was about to turn one of its many formidable guns towards the Everchanger.
The ace ch eventually did not do so. It instead kept its guns aid squarely at the true enemy.
"I think it's working, sir!" Venerable Joshua reported. "Saint Osenring isn't hesitating as much anymore."
This beca clear when the heavy gauss cannons of the Thunderer Mark II began to glow and convey an entirely different presence.
Though the Phase King was unable to channel much of his energy into the newly-blessed cannons, he gained just enough access to change the way that phasewater affected their output.
It was as if a cleaner had entered a ssy apartnt and began to clean up the sses. Nothing had been added or removed, but the simple act of rearranging the crude transphasic design application was starting to produce asurable changes.
Soon, they fired.
Ten powerful gauss cannons bood at once, propelling potent resonance-empowered transphasic rounds at blazing speeds!
When they finally crossed the distance and impacted the spatial barrier of the distracted unclean whale, the rounds initially shattered into pieces like before.
Many observers who paid close attention to this attack salvo beca disappointed, but their mood quickly surged when they saw that a small portion of the gauss rounds had actually succeeded in phasing through the powerful defensive barrier!
"Impacts registered! We have detected 9 individual impacts onto the hide of the unclean whale. The Thunderer Mark II's latest attack salvo has successfully managed to pass through the target's energy defenses for the first ti!"
Cheers already erupted at a few places, though their celebrations were still premature.
Ves furrowed his brows as he zood in on the image of the impact sites. Only small shards of solid alloy managed to phase through the spatial barrier. There was so little left of the original gauss rounds that the unclean whale didn't even feel the attacks!
However, this was just the start.
When Saint Osenring saw that the odd changes to his ace ch enabled his last attacks to inflict real damage to his adversary's flesh, he beca a lot less wary and suspicious about the alterations.
As he beca hungry for more, he slightly lowered his vigilance towards the alien creature that had connected his machine. Though the ace pilot still didn't trust this phase whale-like presence too much, his desire for greater firepower pushed him to embrace the changes.
When the Thunderer Mark II opened fire once again, the Phase King had been able to exert even more influence on its gauss cannons.
The next rounds slamd against the spatial barrier once again, but as the powerful projectiles shattered into pieces, the shards that successfully phased through this obstacle had beco larger than before!
This ti, the unclean whale slightly shook as his hide began to get struck by the remnants of the Thunderer Mark II's firepower.
When the third salvo struck the corrupted phase whale's flesh, the creature actually began to experience pain as the shards not only pierced deeper through the blubber, but also unleashed noticeable shockwaves that tore a lot of nearby biomatter!
By the ti the Thunderer Mark II fired its fourth salvo, the unclean whale noticed that the shockwaves coursing through the side of his massive body was killing or damaging an even larger portion of his flesh!
"The target is visibly showing pain reactions! The Thunderer Mark II is inflicting more harm on the unclean whale than any other ace ch!"
"The beast isn't able to heal the damage inflicted by the Thunderer Mark II as fast as other injuries. Too much biomass has to be shaken apart at once for the unclean whale to regenerate in a tily manner!"
"We recomnd the other ace chs concentrate their firepower on the body sections softened up by the Thunderer Mark II in advance! This is our chance to get past the blubber and land our attacks on the internal organs of our adversary!"
"Pass on this suggestion to the other ace chs. We cannot afford to squander the openings generated by the Thunderer Mark II!"
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