THE MECH TOUCH

Chapter 6850  First Test of the Minerva Mark II

The Minerva Mark II was so much more powerful than the Mark I.

Although not much time had passed, technology advanced extremely rapidly during the Phasewater Generation and the Hyper Generation.

In addition to that, the Larkinson Clan had become much wealthier and more capable than before.

People like Ves used to dream about designing first-class mechs a decade ago. Now, he could do it at any time and know that he had the capital to produce them en masse.

The leap from an outdated second-class expert mech to a genuine first-class ace mech was enormous.

The difference in tech, materials and refinement was so great that Casella couldn't help but become overtaken by the novel experience.

As the Minerva fed her with a huge amount of data that was far in excess of what other ace mechs supplied to their pilots, the Saint Commander was able to process it all with disturbing ease.

The influence of the Mentalist Crystal helped a lot with lifting up her mind. She felt considerably smarter by having this powerful resource at her disposal.

Yet even with this rare hyper material, Casella's mind was not weak, so she was already able to absorb and process the large amount of data without feeling burdened.

That gave her a much better understanding of the power she wielded. The numerical differences were vast in many areas. From energy shield capacity to the firepower of her newly upgraded luminar crystal rifle, the Minerva Mark II could unquestionably defeat 10 copies of the Mark I if everything else remained equal.

Yet beyond the huge technological performance uplift of the Minerva Mark II, what Casella appreciated the most was the liberation of her domain field.

The Mark I stifled her willpower and true resonance. The expert mech was only ever designed to accommodate expert pilots, so from the moment she exceeded that threshold, Casella felt as if her machine had turned into a slave collar that she had outgrown.

Although she did not literally choke herself by piloting the Mark I, it was still a distinctly uncomfortable experience.

She had been forced to hold herself back and restrain herself from exerting her new capabilities in a forceful fashion.

If she threw caution to the wind, then there was a real risk that the Mark I would break due to being pushed so far past its limits!

It was only now that she piloted the Mark II for the first time that the feeling of constriction had disappeared entirely.

Even without listening to the long-winded lectures of Ves or Gloriana, the Saint Commander could feel through her man-machine connection with the Minerva Mark II that she could channel all of her willpower without reaching any limit for a long time.

In fact, her current resonance strength was still low enough that she was not even able to sense the upper limit!

This meant that she could pilot the Minerva Mark II for a long time without having any concerns about needing another upgrade due to constriction!

As Casella continued to resonate with her Minerva, she rapidly grew more familiar with the resonating exotics that allowed her to amplify her domain field.

It was a lot harder to resonate with these materials, but so long as she exerted her full strength, she immediately noticed that her Command Field not only became significantly stronger, but also spread across a dramatically larger range!

Her Minerva Mark II covered the entirety of Diandi Base without any problem. It even spread below ground while encountering only moderate resistance.

Dense matter or highly voluminous matter impeded the spread of her Command Field, but not to a strong extent.

The differences became more pronounced as her Command Field continued to spread across the rural landscape where Diandi Base was located.

Nothing seemed to escape her senses as her Command Field spread. She was able to count every individual tree, detect many hidden listening devices, gain a view of the interior of every house and accurately map out every single human individual that lived in the region.

The amount of information was so overwhelming that Casella could not handle it even with her ascension to sainthood and the cognitive boosts provided by the Mentalist Crystal.

She quickly had to filter out the vast majority of data collected by her Command Field in order to prevent herself from getting overloaded.

In the meantime, her Command Field continued to spread as she resonated more and more with her machine.

When the resonance meter of her Minerva finally stopped at around 158 laveres, Casella quickly figured out that the radius of her Command Field stretched as much as 145 kilometers!

Compared to the 10 or so kilometers that Casella worked with before, this was a huge increase in range!

It was more than enough to cover several large but friendly fleets.

Her Command Field could even cross an entire battlefield and cover enemy forces so long as they engaged in combat!

That was a huge boon!

As long as their hyper defenses were not strong enough to block or weaken her Command Field, she would not only be able to collect a lot of intelligence about her enemies, but also generate psychic storms directly inside the hulls of enemy warships!

Of course, it was a fantasy for her to be able to wipe out the weak and vulnerable alien crews of enemy battleships all by herself.

Casella could already feel that Mindstorm Alloy was a powerful and high-end ace mech-grade resonating material.

Its potential was great, but its requirements were also demanding. She probably needed to exert a lot of willpower inorder to produce a strong or large enough psychic storm.

Range also played a large role. Casella needed to try it out to be certain, but she could intuitively feel that it was much more costly to generate a psychic storm at a distance as opposed to right in front.

This meant that her Minerva Mark II needed to participate more actively in combat and occasionally take the risk to approach her enemies in order to flood many of them with psychic storms.

She grew a little disappointed after making these realizations. It was likely that she could only realize the true potential of Mindstorm Alloy after her resonance strength rose further.

The only consolation was that she could instinctively feel that the potent Mentalist Crystal gave her a boost that should have made it more bearable to resonate with the Mindstorm Alloy.

It could mean the difference between a usable and unusable resonating ability in her current state!

She shook her head. This was just the first activation. The schedule did not accommodate any tests of the Mindstorm Alloy as it was much safer to conduct trials in space.

As her Command Field had reached the limit of its range, Casella briefly became fascinated by how she was able to gain a huge degree of awareness of multiple nearby villages, towns and cities.

The data that she was able to gather from the latter was especially huge!

Casella found herself forced to strengthen her filters once again so that she did not gather an excessive amount of data on every human that lived in the settlements.

She needed to be thorough about this. She could not afford to get overwhelmed by data when her Command Field finally enveloped an enemy fleet.

The Saint Commander proceeded to spend the next ten minutes expanding and improving her filters even as she directed her Minerva to perform many basic movements.

The experience of controlling the mech frame was entirely different. The limbs had much more strength and the mech frame was considerably stronger and more resistant towards damage than before.

The conversion to archetech gave her a very different sensation of how much she could push her new machine. The alien architecture granted her numerous advantages that probably wouldn't be relevant unless the ace mech found herself locked in combat against a real adversary.

However, she appreciated the safety margin all the same. The effects of Dragon Scales, the Battle Skirt System and the Close-Surface Azure Energy Shield Generator provided her Minerva Mark II with excellent protection against assassination attempts.

The only way the defenses of her mech could become any better was if it incorporated a lot of high-grade superdimensional matter.

Unfortunately, the mech designers rightfully reserved their limited supply of superdimensional matter to other high-ranking mechs that needed it more.

After the Minerva had run through all of the basic motions on land and in the air, the ace mech finally moved on to more interesting tests.

"Casella, are you ready to try out the newly upgraded Irvan transformable luminar crystal rifle under atmospheric conditions?"

"I am." She said as her Minerva floated in the air while carefully holding the aforementioned weapon in her arms. "Please give me targets to shoot at. I am eager to learn how much firepower I have at my disposal."

"Please wait."

Bots flew in from behind and took their places. None of them really made any attempts at evasion as they wouldn't be able to move fast enough to give an ace commander a real challenge.

Since this was mainly a test to determine the effective firepower of the upgraded Irvan, all of the target bots happened to enjoy strong protection.

"Eliminate the unshielded bots first. Make sure your rifle is set to marksman mode. Also make sure to use the purple fire beam attack phase crystal."

"Acknowledged."

The Minerva smoothly raised her rifle and pulled the trigger.

A fiery purple hyper laser beam of considerable strength struck a bot that was largely composed of multiple layers of transphasic hyper alloy plating.

The Minerva repeated her action against other bots, each of which was protected by thicker and thicker armor plating.

"Switch your Irvan to SMG mode."

The high-end luminar crystal rifle transformed. Its lengthy barrel folded away while the rest of the weapon became slimmer and more compact.

This enabled the Minerva to easily wield and shoot the weapon at fast-moving enemies at closer ranges.

Its firepower clearly suffered, but its firing rate rose so much that it could still pose a threat to most enemies.

The results provided the Larkinsons with a lot of useful information. They quickly determined how effective the Minerva Mark II could confront enemies by herself. They roughly understood how she would fare against elite phasefighters, smaller alien warships, larger alien warships and phase lords.

While Casella most definitely enjoyed the fact that she had much greater firepower at her disposal than before, she was not blind to the fact that it was still a lot less than that of a typical ace mech.

"Please tell me how the firepower of my Minerva Mark II compares against the firepower of the Amaranto Mark III."

"...Well, there is no comparison, really." Ves plainly admitted. "The Amaranto Mark III shares much of the same tech, but provides much more support for her much larger luminar crystal rifle. The Instrument of Vengeance also contains multiple features that your Irvan lacks. It can mean the difference between one-shotting a lesser phase lord or slightly weakening its spatial barrier. Your Irvan is not an Ultimate Module and also isn't amplified by any key resonating materials. Furthermore, it also lacks Harry Kaikkonen's exclusive ERC luminar crystal weapon technology, which basically allows you to strengthen your damage output by leveraging your emotions. Most importantly, the absence of a proper Saint Kingdom is a huge handicap."

The Saint Commander did not feel happy about this, but she understood why her Minerva was plainly not as good at dealing damage.

"I understand. The Irvan should only be used in self-defence."

"That is our intent in its design." Ves confirmed. "We completely designed the Minerva Mark II in a way that treats your Vassals as your primary weapons, your Knights as your secondary weapons, your Mindstorm Alloy as your special weapon and your Irvan as your holdout weapon. We could have strengthened your luminar crystal weapon by a considerable degree, but that would have entailed tradeoffs that weakened your Command Field or weakened the defenses of your ace mech."

The message was very clear. The only reason for the Minerva Mark II to fight with her luminar crystal rifle was if something had drastically gone wrong!

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