The Mech Touch

Chapter 7229: Start of the Death Match

After Ves selected his demoncasting mold, he and his wife returned to the area where the process was about to take place.

By this time, his wife had completely divested herself of all responsibility. She questioned his actions and witnessed his decisions, but did nothing further. She neither stood in his way or supported his risky endeavor. This was her way to express her disapproval without breaking their relationship entirely.

Ves knew that he had to compensate her afterwards for being so tolerant. He knew how difficult it was for her to witness one of her ‘babies’ getting corrupted in front of her eyes.

Demoncasting had always put a foul taste in her mouth. The more she learned about this unholy process, the more she abhorred the entire concept of it. In her opinion, the perfect vessel should be pure and utterly free without taint. The Lionheart piloted by the so-called Saint General was one of the most representative examples of the ideal she tried to realize

Ves used to agree with her stance, but no longer.

In his opinion, a living mech did not always have to be a completely reliable and accommodating entity.

Certain mech pilots that did not fear adversity could benefit much more from piloting more powerful but also less stable machines.

Trading stability for power not only gave the pilots an edge that was difficult to replicate, but also kept them stimulated no matter how peaceful the situation might be. The automatic growth of demonic entities and the constant struggle for power between mech and mech pilot would force the latter to exist in a constant state of crisis.

This was not a big deal if it was related to a regular D-mech or D-arm.

If the mech pilot or warrior in question could no longer control his weapon effectively enough, he could always exchange it for another product.

The problem with this particular case was that Ves had converted the Riot Mark III into a Carmine mech.

Although Venerable Orfan could choose not to interface with the help of the Carmine System for the first time, Ves believed that she could never bring herself to reject this challenge.

She wanted to fight a contest of will and power against her D-mech in the most absolute terms possible!

The expert pilot was even willing to cut off her retreat route and accept the possibility of death in order to raise the stakes to the maximum possible level!

Venerable Orfan had studied the exceptional breakthrough conditions of her peers. She did not think she was better than any of them, only worse. That meant that in her mind, she needed to drive herself to an even greater level of desperation to dismantle her bottleneck!

This reassured Ves. Every time he entertained doubts, he thought about what his client wanted from him. She did not ask for a controllable and obedient mech. She asked for the most ruthless and extreme breakthrough machine that he could supply. These were two entirely different demands. What he was doing was not completely unhinged. He was just being a responsible mech designer by fulfilling the demands of a client.

Of course, Ves conveniently set aside the fact that the risk factors of this project had blown way past all reasonable safety standards.

Even the Design Department could not tolerate the uncomfortably high possibility of death of debilitation!

It was a good thing that Gloriana was powerless to stop him. If she was in charge, she would have definitely made the call to stop now that they had produced a flawed but tolerable expert mech.

When Ves looked at the Riot Mark III that had been placed in the center of the Demoncasting area, he truly felt it was a pity to subject this finely crafted and engineered product to barely controllable demonic corruption.

Based on his improved understanding of demonology, Ves understood the truth of Demoncasting a little better.

What he was about to do was not much different from letting demons directly possess powerful artifacts.

The use of Demoncasting Molds was meant to add more direction and control over the process.

Ves had never made use of the Prophecy Imbuement Demoncasting Mold, but he could guess its purpose easily enough.

According to a normal process, the use of this mold should allow the casted demon to impart its prescient abilities to an artifact.

Of course, the demon had to possess this capability in the first place, or else much of its power would go to waste due to the mismatch in properties.

As long as the artifact successfully transformed into an appropriate D-arm, Ves could easily imagine the weapon gaining the capability to read the actions of enemies in advance.

This could be useful in creating many useful applications.

For example, Ves could create a bell that would ring in alarm as soon as hidden enemies with ill intentions had sneaked close.

He could develop a shield generator that generated powerful but fairly small directional energy shields just in time to block an incoming attack.

He could also create a duelist sword that could grant its wielder short glimpses of what happened a second later to avoid mistakes and take advantage of fleeting opportunities.

In short, the Prophecy Imbuement Demoncasting Mold had a lot of wonderful uses. The only difficulty was finding a demon that possessed an affinity for the prophecy attribute, which was very rare.

That made this particular Demoncasting attempt so interesting to Ves.

As a mech designer who constantly wanted to experiment with novel situations, nothing could interest him more than bringing opposing elements together and watching the resulting excitement.

He had purposefully engineered a circumstance where he was about to stuff a Middle Demon derived from a failed prophet into a living mech that existed to break prophecies.

Conventional logic dictated that bringing two completely incompatible elements together would cause them to cancel each other out, either quietly or loudly.

“I really hope that doesn’t happen.”

Since Demoncasting dealt with living demons and living artifacts, the outcome of a forced confrontation could never be predicted with complete certainty.

Anything could happen, from complete repulsion of the demon to an uneasy coexistence between the old and new artifact spirits.

That made the process more exciting. The possibilities of failure made successful outcomes even juicer.

“C’mon.”

As soon as Ves set all of the parameters and checked them multiple times, he finally activated the unholy process.

“It’s starting.”

The Demoncasting Forge already restrained the Riot Mark III as soon as he arrived.

This came in handy as the expert mech spontaneously activated on his own and tried to wiggle away!

The machine knew that something extremely unpleasant was about to happen!

Unfortunately, the machine was unable to muster enough strength and leverage to free himself from his bonds.

While the Riot Mark III engaged in a futile act of resistance, the Prophet’s Bane got tossed in the dark red demonic flame that was constantly burning.

The Middle Demon did not scream, but its amorphous cloudy form began to shake in obvious pain!

It even lost its monochrome colors and began to acquire more red until it looked like a hot coal made out of cloud!

As the Middle Demon was slowly burning up, it began to lash out with whatever messy powers it had at its disposal.

Unfortunately for this malevolent existence, no one could hear its screams or become affected by its reality-bending powers. The ruthless flames devoured every scrap of loose energy and began to burn away at the essence of this evil being, beginning with its weakest and most fragile parts.

Ves paid close attention to this refinement process.

The Demoncasting process was mostly automatic, but that did not mean that he could sit back and relax.

He still needed to rely on his judgement and understanding to trigger the right steps at the right time.

He continued to let the Prophet’s Bane burn. The cloud of red exuded a sense of pain that made Ves uncomfortable despite the level of protection offered by the Demoncasting Forge.

His wife also grew less comfortable with the sight.

She found creation based on suffering to be a distasteful practice.

The only reasons why she put up with it was because it mattered to Ves and because the results might be able to justify the process.

Gloriana was not blind to the various crises threatening red humanity. She pretty much made peace with the fact that desperate times sometimes called for desperate measures.

That did not mean she was willing to do the dirty deed herself.

Ves paid no attention to his wife’s contemplations.

He focused all of his attention on the condition of the roasting demon.

He needed to find the right moment to pull it out of the demonic flames.

Too soon, and the demon would not be malleable enough to mold into the right shape inside the artifact.

Too late, and the demon would lose far too much strength and personality, thereby reducing the benefits it brought to the Riot Mark III.

Ves narrowed his eyes. He used all of his senses to understand the Middle Demon’s condition.

Although the Prophet’s Bane was definitely suffering a form of pain that was indescribable, Ves felt no sympathy for the demonic entity.

He wanted the Middle Demon to retain as much of its power and feistiness as possible, but it would do him no good if he pulled it out prematurely.

Ves had the illusion that he had turned into a chef that was about to cook a priceless piece of steak on a barbecue grill.

He needed to cook his ‘meat’ just right so that it became wonderfully browned on the outside, but juicy and pink on the inside.

This was hardly a good analogy, but it was the best way to quickly describe the current process.

It was all too easy to pull it out too soon and serve a steak that was very rare on the inside and not enough browned on the outside.

He may also pull it out too late, causing him to end up with a tough dark brown steak down to the very center.

While those ‘steaks’ were still edible, they were not the results he was aiming for. He needed to refine the Middle Demon to the perfect degree.

Just as the Prophet’s Bane was about to turn brighter and more golden, Ves abruptly fished it out of the demonic flames and hastily pressed it into the Prophecy Imbuement Demoncasting Mold!

He immediately activated the command that caused an apparatus to press the mold directly onto the shackled mech!

“It’s happening!” Ves uttered in excitement! “The Middle Demon is clashing against the living mech!”

The Riot Mark III turned into an arena that was being contested by two very different ‘artifact spirits’.

Different to how Ves and the Dark Apostle competed over their shared true body but eventually came to an uneasy sharing agreement, the Prophet’s Bane and the original Riot could never bring themselves to make peace with each other!

The Middle Demon was too feral, irrational and violent to even think about compromise!

The original living mech hated the thought of sharing and wanted to prove that he was worthy enough to remain Venerable Rosa Orfan’s battle partner!

The two instinctively understood each other’s positioning and fought a match to the death as soon as they came into contact with each other.

The Riot Mark III shook and vibrated as the two entities savagely tore at each other without any regard for caution.

Holding back or being timid would only cause them to lose momentum and get themselves killed!

The only way for them to survive and win the death match was to fight more ruthlessly than their enemy!

Ves initially expected for the powerful Prophet’s Bane to gain an immediate advantage in this fight. Its power level and threat level was higher according to his senses.

Surprisingly enough, the living mech was putting up a surprisingly good fight!

The original Riot had accompanied an expert pilot for a long time and enjoyed years worth of low-level willpower baptism. That had strengthened it in many ways and allowed him to withstand and endure far greater pressure than normal!

Another advantage enjoyed by the living mech was that it benefited from a home ground advantage.

The Riot Mark III was its vessel for a very long time, and it knew exactly how to draw strength from the mech frame in order to put up a better fight.

The death match was not about to end in a short amount of time!

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