The Mech Touch

Chapter 7239: Rosa Orfan’s Conviction

Confronting the truth hurt.

When the false version of herself used the images of herself and other Larkinsons to put Rosa Orfan down, each point of criticism was grounded in truth.

The impact they had on her mood and confidence had been severe enough to push the expert pilot to the brink of giving up her life and existence.

This was how much she cared and how badly she was affected by her own failings!

Yet Rosa also realized that there was far more to life and fighting than fixating on her weaknesses.

All of those failings represented just one side of the coin. She refused to believe that she was able to become an expert pilot and make it up to this point without having her redeeming factors.

At this critical situation, she knew what she had to do in order to remove the final obstacles to breaking her bottleneck.

She had already completed the first step by honestly acknowledging her weaknesses.

However, the next steps mattered even more. What were her strengths?

“I am not the strongest, toughest or fastest pilot, but I can be good enough in all three! I am the one of the most well-rounded champions of the Larkinson Clan after Joshua!”

Venerable Orfan offered versatility. She was able to fight against a wider variety of opponents and only really had trouble with enemies that remained at a distance.

As long as she was able to get close enough, she could rely on the Riot’s defenses to withstand accurate attacks, and make use of its mobility if the enemy preferred more hard-hitting strikes.

Combined with her not so trivial offensive power, the expert pilot had always taken pride in being able to scrap and duel against many powerful opponents.

Yet this was not a proper description of her strengths as an expert pilot.

What was her greatest advantage? Every high-ranking mech pilot was unique.

“My greatest strength… is my persistence! I will never give up! I will always keep fighting!”

Though Rosa very clearly ignored her previous state, she believed with all of her heart that she was the gutsiest of all of the champions of the Larkinson Clan!

Compared to Venerable Jannzi who constantly had to think about how to block or mitigate incoming attacks. She might even have to make the difficult call to retreat in order to prevent her Bastion from crumbling apart entirely.

Venerable Orfan in contrast did not put nearly as much thinking into her actions.

She had often received complaints and criticisms regarding her irreverent behavior, but as far as she was concerned, she was making a positive difference.

She responded to potential threats faster than her peers and was not afraid of engaging in a disadvantageous matchup.

No matter how powerful the enemy may be, as long as she could make a difference, her honor demanded that she try her best!

The value of this mindset could not be overstated. In a war where heroes and gods became increasingly scarier and more lethal, possessing the guts to confront the alien monstrosities without reserve was exactly what many mech forces needed!

This realization also gave Venerable Orfan enough clarity when it came to her conviction.

She discovered that unlike many of her fellow peers, she did not possess a strong calling for protecting human civilization or the Larkinson Clan.

It would be false to claim that she cared as much about the Larkinson Clan as Dise and Jannzi.

Try as she might, she simply couldn’t bring herself to match their patriotism and dedication.

That was okay.

Venerable Orfan was her own person. She no longer felt the need to maintain a pretense of being just as loyal as the other champions anymore. There was room for many people in the Larkinson Clan.

So long as she maintained her obligations to the Larkinsons and met her contractual obligations, she would still remain useful to the clan.

That was enough.

The truth was that Venerable Orfan cared a lot more about herself. She admitted it. She was selfish and self-centered. She still cared about the people around her, but her incessant need to prove herself and keep up with the best of the Larkinson Clan was a reflection of how much she obsessed over herself.

She wanted to become strong. Not in order to rule over red humanity or reshape the Red Ocean in her image.

No, her goals were not so grandiose.

She simply wanted to become the strongest.

Yes, really.

It sounded like such a simple and juvenile goal, but perhaps not everything about Rosa Orfan had grown up.

Perhaps the only addition he could make to that goal was to have fun while doing it. She had spent too many days wallowing in her feelings of inferiority. Those were not good times. Rosa Orfan became resolved to face the future with a more optimistic mindset!

If she was weak, then she needed to push herself harder!

So long as she did not give up on herself, she would always be able to close the gap between herself and her ultimate goal!

This led her to formulate her true conviction for the first time.

“The careers of many mech pilots are beset by accidents and opportunities. It is difficult for us to survive all of the crap that the universe throws at us. Those who rise above the occasion are not always the prodigies or the blessed ones. Sometimes, a lucky bastard like me gets to earn her place among the greats. I will do everything in my power to become a god pilot no matter what is wrong with me. Everything! I will even make a pact with a demon if that is what it takes to come out on top! I FEAR NOTHING!”

Before the demon could press its attack and rely on its demonic strength to devour what remained of Rosa Orfan’s willpower, the Prophet’s Bane was suddenly taken aback when an explosion of willpower originated from what little Rosa Orfan retained!

“I THRIVE IN CHAOS!”

Venerable Rosa Orfan was no more.

Saint Rosa Orfan had come and taken her place!

As the former expert pilot finally triggered her long-awaited second apotheosis, a mutation immediately occurred!

Due to the mechanics of the Blood Pact as well as Rosa’s far-reaching state of demonic possession, the barriers between the two began to blur!

Both the Prophet’s Bane and Rosa Orfan found that they had lost control over themselves and became subject to the vagaries of the powerful breakthrough process!

Nobody could ever imagine that an expert pilot would be crazy enough to break through while most of her soul had already been devoured and partially assimilated by a potent Middle Demon.

This resulted in an unprecedented situation that the Progenitors of Mechs had never foreseen or planned against.

Despite the anomalies, the second apotheosis event was such a violent and overbearing process that it forcibly executed its steps without making any special adaptations in reaction to the new and unexpected variables.

As Rosa Orfan’s extraordinary willpower exploded in both quantity and quantity, it also began to merge with her original soul as well as the parts of herself that had already been occupied by the Prophet’s Bane!

The latter suffered a lot more than the former!

Due to how much the Middle Demon had conquered just before the breakthrough moment, it was being subjected to much more changes.

The problem was that the demon was not a mech pilot and was not compatible with the changes wrought by the second apotheosis event!

Only the parts of himself that he inherited from Venerable Orfan responded best to the current situation.

Much of what originally defined the Prophet’s Bane melted and got repurposed. The powerful transformation process did not care what the Middle Demon was supposed to be.

The birth of a new saint was set in stone. The transformation could not be stopped.

It took everything the Prophet’s Bane had to preserve his core identity and do his best to hastily adapt to the changes.

It had already suffered a lot when it was forcibly Demoncasted into a very different form inside the Riot Mark III.

Now, the Prophet’s Bane found himself unlucky yet again when the second apotheosis event forced him to contort into another shape!

It was all too much for the Middle Demon. He was mad to begin with, but he grew absolutely insane after being forcibly remolded to support Rosa’s rapidly growing willpower!

The soul of Rosa Orfan practically turned into a cauldron. Fueled and stirred by the energies released upon a second apotheosis, the delineation between the two became a lot weaker as they got mixed up by all of the profound changes!

Both the Prophet’s Bane and Rosa Orfan instinctively understood that they were merging into a single being!

Naturally, neither of them wanted this to happen, so they tacitly agreed to stop fighting against each other in order to do their best to preserve their identities and sense of self as much as possible!

Try as they might, the domineering breakthrough event repeatedly tried to break their resistance in a single-minded determination to follow a rigid set of instructions.

“I… will… not… let… chaos… erase… my… existence!”

While Rosa relied on her ballooning willpower to cling to the pieces that belonged to her, the Prophet’s Bane relied on its own demonic powers and its foothold inside the Riot Mark III to navigate the storm.

Neither of them knew what would become of them, but they knew that they had to go all-out in order to make it out alive!

From the outside, the breakthrough event was obvious.

After so many minutes had passed without anything happening, all of the observing mech designers became shocked when it finally happened!

The resonance meters beeped in alarm as they measured the birth of forced resonance that immediately exceeded the limit of an expert pilot!

“70 laveres! 80 laveres! 90 laveres!” Alexa called out in shock! “The numbers keep rising! Rosa Orfan is finally undergoing her second apotheosis!”

Gloriana meanwhile stared at the machine beyond the transparent screens.

“What-what is happening to our mech?!”

Ves pulled his attention away from the telemetry and observed the Riot Mark III.

Under its restraints, the exterior of the mech rippled as if it was a surface of a lake. Superdimensional archemetal shook and deformed as if an invisible god was squeezing it from all sides.

Though the Riot Mark III quickly bounced back into shape, it was still a disturbing sight!

As Rosa Orfan’s breakthrough continued, the expert mech slowly began to generate a Saint Kingdom.

While it started off weak, Ves could also sense a hint of threat from its expansion.

It lacked control!

Rosa Orfan’s condition must not be good for her to lose control over her own domain field.

This put the Tarrasque under threat!

The vessel immediately initiated an emergency lockdown to safeguard her many systems!

“Eject!” Gloriana immediately called! “Don’t teleport away the Riot. Just toss it into space! We can worry about the rest!”

She made the right call. Ves could no longer care about protecting confidentiality as the Riot Mark III turned into a danger that was too powerful to suppress.

When Rosa Orfan earned her sainthood, she was supposed to use her willpower to get everything under control!

Ves never thought that she would be able to become so strong, yet still remain unable to control her own power!

Both Ves and Gloriana activated the same ejection command.

The deck below the center of the workshop turned into a gap. The machine immediately sank into it after being pushed by the gravitic instruments of the warship.

Seconds later, an emergency hatch blew open and ejected the brand-new superdimensional archemech into open space!

The Bluejay Fleet had already implemented countermeasures to obscure long-ranged observation, but none of these methods were perfect.

The energy signature of the Riot Mark III affected by forced resonance was too strong to block through these measures!

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