The Mech Touch
Chapter 7184 Enflamed Madness

Chapter 7184  Enflamed Madness

The duel went off to a quick start as both human phase lords zipped across the cold airless environment of Jotunheim like racing shuttles.

At first, it appeared that the Dark Apostle held a decisive speed advantage. His more modern and optimized equipment granted him a distinct advantage in linear acceleration.

The bat wing-shaped flight system was able to produce greater thrust and push the challenger forward with slightly greater power than the competition.

Yet the Fiery Axe did not stay behind for long.

She started gaining progress by lowering her mess with the help of a special phasewater organ.

This was an unusual choice of organ.

Most phase lords developed an obsession for becoming the biggest, heaviest and strongest of their kind. They constantly sought to increase their phasewater concentration in order to grow bigger and achieve physical superiority over their peers.

Mass was everything to a phase lord.

Mass was responsible for increasing their dimensions.

Mass protected them from damage and injuries.

Mass conveyed greater physical might and endurance.

This was why the Marigal organ was such a popular choice among martial phase lords.

Although its inclusion increased the mass and density of a phase lord by a hefty margin, it was often worth it because the changes conformed to their obsession.

The Fiery Axe turned out to be a deviant who chose a less conventional development route.

Instead of trying to turn into meaty tanks that could withstand a lot of hits and dish out heavy attacks in return, she adopted a fighting paradigm that had a lot in common with light mechs.

She sacrificed brute force in exchange for mobility. Though her reduced mass and her weaker true body brought several disadvantages, she could still make it work so long as she made excellent use of her advantages.

Right now, she clearly gained the upper hand in the race due to her superior acceleration!

The acceleration of an object could be calculated in several ways, but one of them was by dividing the net force acting on the body with its mass.

In a situation where the thrust power of her flight system and her own inherent flight capabilities as a phase lord remained constant, lowering her mass by 10 to 20 percent actually yielded a slightly greater proportionate increase in acceleration rate!

For example, reducing the mass by 10 percent yielded an increase in acceleration rate by 11.11111 percent!

A reduction in mass by 20 percent resulted in a more exaggerated increase in acceleration rate by 25 percent!

If the Fiery Axe became powerful enough to reduce her mass by 50 percent in the future, she would effectively be able to improve her acceleration rate by 100 percent!

That meant that she was able to speed up twice as fast as before, which was a shocking advantage, especially when fighting against enemies that adopted a similar approach to combat!

This was when Ves realized that the Dark Apostle was in serious trouble at the moment.

Even if the differences were not too big due to the Fiery Axe's immature phasewater organ and lack of proficiency in its use, it was still enough for her to gain the initiative in this duel.

Of course, her hits would not strike as hard due to her reduced mass, but that did not matter too much when the Dark Apostle's raiment was fairly light on armor. The Dark Wing Raiment was much thinner and less robust than the Flame Lord Raiment.

The Fiery Axe also utilized a combination of high technology and hyper technology to activate a superheated blade that was practically on fire, enabling it to inflict burning wounds that generated greater pain and could not be regenerated as easily as wounds caused by cold alloy blades.

As the female phase lord came close enough to be able to chop down her axe onto the Dark Apostle's rear, the latter clearly could not sustain this race any longer.

The challenger turned and met the incoming Fiery Axe with the shaft of the Dark Tooth!

Fire and darkness collided at a single location, causing an eruption of energy that soon saw the two phase lords bounce away from each other!

The shaft of the Dark Tooth gained a shallow cut mark. It still lit up in heat before it cooled a few seconds later.

Upon the moment of impact, a small wave of fire energy had splashed across the Dark Apostle's lightly armored body.

Fortunately, the damage inflicted by this secondary effect was minimal. The dark miasma that cloyed sickly around the Dark Wing Raiment had successfully managed to neutralize the fire attack.

The two duelists only remained separated for a short amount of time before they converged again!

"Haha, again!"

The Fiery Axe became increasingly more affected by her lust for battle. She threw aside much of her complicated thoughts and fully dedicated herself towards high-speed martial struggle!

Her lighter mass gave her enough of an edge in acceleration to feel she could dictate the confrontations.

Right now, she wanted to stick to her adversary and never let go! Frenzy or not, she still remembered what her opponent could do if given a chance to throw his spear, so the Fiery Axe decided to defeat the progenitor before he could reproduce this technique!

This put the Dark Apostle at an immediate disadvantage. Knowing that there was not much point in running, he decided to be more proactive and launch as many counterattacks towards the Fiery Axe as possible.

This was not supposed to be difficult as he had designed the Dark Tooth for this kind of confrontation. Its shaft was thick and dense enough to resist plenty of axe blows and its length was shorter in order to improve its performance in intense close quarters combat.

For a short amount of time, their weapons repeatedly struck against each other.

The Dark Apostle found himself on the defensive more often than not. The Fiery Axe may not be the largest and most heaviest axe-type weapon that a phase lord could wield, but it still possessed enough mass and a chopping edge to be able to inflict a crippling injury with a single good strike.

What was more important was that the Fiery Axe was also capable of inflicting greater-than-average damage to spatial barriers!

The Dark Apostle's spatial barrier often bore the brunt of his failures to intercept and block the female phase lord's aggressive attacks.

In the few times that the Dark Apostle launched a counterattack, his Dark Tooth inflicted substantially less damage to his adversary's spatial barrier.

The good news was that the Fiery Axe apparently neglected to implant any phasewater organs that could strengthen her spatial barrier.

The bad news was that each time the Dark Apostle landed a sharp hit with his spear, the Fiery Axe was able to land her own counterblow in return!

This was an exchange that was not in the Dark Apostle's favor. He tried his best to compensate by leveraging the Minor Demons locked in his Dark Tooth, but all it did was to make the weapon spread more dark clouds that did not seem to affect the Fiery Axe all that much.

The fire energy released from her raiment and iconic weapon burned away much of the ambient darkness E energy.

Her raiment also protected her from the subtle influence of the Corruption Orb.

During the previous preparation time, Ves had arranged for the Corruption Orb to be taken out of the damaged but surviving Flame Lord Raiment and installed into its dedicated pocket of the Dark Wing Raiment.

The fit between the two artifacts was much higher.

The Dark Wing Raiment seemed to come alive with the integration of a small but potent source of darkness energy and other negative energies. It made the raiment so much more dangerous and intimidating that the technicians responsible for inspecting it and preparing it for deployment could not stand being in its presence for long.

Yet this time, Ves discovered that the Fiery Axe did not show any obvious signs of being affected by the corrupting aura of the Dark Wing Raiment!

One of the game plans that Ves and the Dark Apostle had devised was to repeat one of the gambits from the previous duel.

17:47

They had achieved considerable success by using the Corrupting Orb to make the Unshakeable King more irrational and less able to control himself.

Yet this time, it didn't work in the slightest!

When Ves studied the leader of the Flesh Chopper Phalanx with greater attention, he could see that this was not a coincidence.

Aside from relying on the fire-themed raiment to burn away the ominous clouds of corruption that came close enough, she was also relying heavily on her companion spirit to keep her mind pure by metaphorically lighting it on fire!

It did not surprise Ves at all that the Fiery Axe had chosen to develop a companion spirit that had already attained notable success in practicing a fire qi cultivation method.

The companion spirit now served as one of the strongest defenders of her principal's mind. Spiritual flames continued to burn inside the woman's massive skull.

Though it practically rendered the companion spirit useless for other tasks, it didn't matter due to the importance of his current mission.

The companion spirit's job was not to keep the Fiery Axe sober. This was impossible because fire energy was filled with passion, fury and excitement.

So that was exactly what the companion spirit tried to promote. The spiritual flames not only served as a firewall against contamination, but also fired up the female phase lord and caused to become completely engrossed in the duel!

This alone served as a powerful form of protection against the negativity that the Corrupting Orb attempted to insert into the Fiery Axe!

Even if the touch of darkness was somehow able to bypass the protective flames, they could find no purchase in the Fiery Axe's mind because it was already dedicated to the fight!

In other words, there was no opportunity to drive the Fiery Axe irrational and insane because she had proactively embraced her own madness!

"Hahahaha! Again! Taste my fiery blows!"

The Fiery Axe grew more excited as she fought. Her axe blows repeatedly clanged against the shaft of the Dark Tooth. Her attacks did not show much variation. She didn't bother to pull off any faints, which meant that her opponent could easily read her moves and block them in time.

However, her attack frequency was so high that the Dark Apostle was no longer able to launch any counterattacks!

If he dared to stop his blocking efforts, he would just get struck with a flaming axe, and that was quite a serious outcome!

Right now, the Dark Apostle had given up on trying to launch any counterattacks. He just wanted to survive the current sequence and wait for an opening to arise.

There was no way the Fiery Axe could sustain her offensive rhythm for too long. She was burning energy like mad in an effort to tear down her opponent in the fastest possible speed.

The Dark Apostle found that as long as he focused his all on defense, his energy consumption was not as high. He would be able to win the long game, but only if the Fiery Axe failed to land a hit and only if the Dark Tooth was able to withstand so many axe blows.

"The Dark Tooth won't last at this rate." Ves pessimistically informed his other self. "The power of her blows is weaker due to her reduced mass, but if she can't chop our spear in half with 20 blows, then 50 may be enough, especially if she strikes the same section of the spear shaft. You need to switch up your strategy because this is not a winning trajectory."

How was the Dark Apostle able to do that when he suffered a distinct mobility disadvantage?

So long as he was not able to outspeed his adversary, he would not be able to take the initiative!

Thank you for reading my work. If you wish to support The Mech Touch, please vote with your golden tickets!

Purchase Privilege for The Mech Touch! Read a varying amount of chapters ahead of regular readers while enjoying a 99% discount on unlocking new chapters!