Chapter 6068 Fallen
After learning that neither the Everchanger nor the First Sword could come to Taon's rescue, the Ylvainan mech pilot knew that he could only rely on himself and his battle partner.
"WE NEED TO OPEN FIRE!" The Zeal urged. "I KNOW SHE IS YOUR CLANSMAN, BUT WE NEED TO DEFEND OURSELVES! WE ONLY NEED TO HOLD OFF THE ELEGANT RAGE UNTIL THE FORCED RESONANCE STATE HAS RUN ITS COURSE."
"It won't work… Lanie and her mech have become too powerful… they will finish us off in seconds…"
Despite being connected to the Zeal, Taon no longer responded to his heavy artillery mech's urgings anymore.
In fact, ever since he had been misled by the Emperor Tree, he had become deaf to most outside voices.
He could no longer trust their words anymore. How could he determine whether they were true or false?
Taon had no way of distinguishing one from the other!
His mind was in a mess and his emotions were roiling. His condition had deteriorated so much that he completely lacked the confidence to stop the Elegant Rage, let alone land a hit on the mutated mech when she was finally on the move!
Lanie may have become lost in her rage, but her piloting skills had become better than ever!
The earlier move showed that she had not only gained the power of an expert pilot, but also did not receive any hindrance from the Elegant Rage despite the fact that the living mech had recovered in a haphazard manner!
The unstable corona of power surrounding the Elegant Rage vibrated in a volatile manner. Taon could sense that Lanie's rage was building up towards another peak.
Her next attack run was bound to cripple if not outright destroy the Zeal!
"STOP IT, LANIE!" Venerable Joshua roared over the communication channel. "CALM DOWN AND RETREAT! THE LAST THING WE NEED IS TO FIGHT AGAINST EACH OTHER!"
The newly advanced expert pilot showed no indication of listening. Her fury continued to stimulate her willpower, causing her to grow stronger and more intent on taking revenge at Taon!
The resentment she gained from almost getting killed by a comrade she trusted with her back could not be resolved with mere words!
"OPEN FIRE, TAON!" The Zeal urged again!
When the living mech saw that his battle partner failed to shake himself out of his stupor, the machine decided to take unilateral action and wanted to pull the trigger himself!
However, the Zeal failed to attack the Elegant Rage! Neither his heavy artillery cannons nor his powerful Devora Cannon did anything to harm the enemy mech that had turned herself into a stationary target.
This was the perfect time to strike! There was no better opportunity to resolve the threat than to strike at the Elegant Rage when Lanie became paralyzed for whatever reason!
Unfortunately, his mech pilot refused to cooperate!
"No! I can't make the same mistake again!" Taon insisted! "I almost killed her once. How would I be able to prove my innocence when I attack her again?"
A part of Taon wanted to do whatever it took to survive, but another part of him felt guilty about what he had done to Lanie.
He almost killed her.
If not for her fortuitous breakthrough, she probably would have died for certain.
As his guilt continued to well up in his shaken mind, Taon was no longer able to maintain his focus on the immediate confrontation.
Perhaps… it would be better if he accepted the punishment he deserved.
If Lanie's resentment towards him could be dispelled by slicing apart his body, then perhaps… this was Taon's fate.
"YOU ARE GOING TO DIE IF WE DO NOT START FIGHTING BACK! LOOK! LANIE IS ABOUT TO LAUNCH HER ATTACK!"
Though Lanie briefly delayed her attack, the wait had done her a bit of good. Not only did her Elegant Rage complete a transformation that allowed her to channel forced resonance a lot smoother, but her entire mech frame seemed to have turned into a weapon!
The melee mech became covered by so many wooden thorns and metal spikes that just rolling her mech frame was enough to turn any target into a pincushion!
Of course, Lanie still relied on the Heartsword most of all to launch her attacks.
The weapon borrowed from the Everchanger was the only part of the Elegant Rage that retained its original form and qualities.
The Heartsword lost much of the true resonance that Joshua had invested into the weapon. The Elegant Rage and Kelly had somehow managed to absorb most of it, causing them to swell with the power of life, though it was also contaminated by other sources such as the Emperor Tree.
The diminished Heartsword was no longer as sharp as before. In addition, the remaining true resonance also began to actively resist its current wielder.
The Heartsword refused to be turned into a tool responsible for taking away the life of another Larkinson!
It obeyed Joshua's will and tried to make itself as difficult to hold as possible.
Yet in the face of the resonance state of the Elegant Rage, the Heartsword unwillingly remained a killing tool in the hands of an enraged female expert pilot!
Many dark and chaotic thoughts went through Lanie's mind. Her rage literally shaped her domain and caused her unstable resonance shield to shift in color!
It had started off silver shortly after her breakthrough, but it had continually turned redder with each passing second.
At this time, her resonance shield seemed to have grown as aggressive and thorny as the visible appearance of the Elegant Rage!
"TAAAAAAAAOOOON! I SHALL TAKE YOUR LIFE IN RECOMPENSE FOR MY PAIN!"
The mutated melee mech blitzed her way forward and reached the Zeal in an instant!
This time, Elegant Rage flew low and chopped her unwilling Heartsword at the underside of the floater platform!
The device developed by Ketis to allow Taon and his living mech to participate in this mission was not as flimsy as it looked, but it was unable to offer enough resistance to prevent itself from getting cult in half!
The Zeal instantly lost the ability to maintain his altitude. The broken floater platform had turned from a reliable means of levitation into completely useless pieces of metal!
As the Elegant Rage completed her attack run and looped around, Lanie did not want to wait for the heavy mech to crash to the ground.
The empowered melee mech swiftly dove towards her falling target and swung back the Heartsword in preparation to cut straight into the torso of the Zeal and reach the cockpit that was buried deep inside!
At this time, Taon had been shaken out of his stupor.
He did not feel shocked when the Elegant Rage dared to charge towards his heavy artillery mech and complete another attack run.
What he did not expect was for Lanie to target the floater platform that kept the Zeal aloft!
Eliminating it pretty much doomed the Zeal, but this was not how Taon wanted to lose his mech!
"TAON! OPEN FIRE AT THE ELEGANT RAGE! SHE IS COMING IN TO FINISH THE JOB!"
The Ylvainan mech pilot did not pay attention to the panicked pleas of his living mech.
He did not fixate on the Elegant Rage that was actively channeling all of Lanie's hostility towards his life.
Instead, he began to experience fear yet again as he felt his living mech falling to the ground.
This was a profoundly frightening experience to Taon. His expert mech did not possess any flight capabilities that could arrest his fall. Hardly any heavy artillery mech was equipped with a flight system for that matter.
Taon was not afraid of heights. He did not possess a phobia against falling either. He piloted multiple mobile mechs equipped with flight systems in the past.
However, heavy artillery mechs were never supposed to fall.
The Zeal would most certainly not come away from a fall unscathed. His armor system might be able to remain in one piece for the most part, but many of his more delicate internals would probably get shaken to the point where they malfunctioned!
What was worse was that losing mobility in the middle of enemy territory was a death sentence to Taon.
Taon might not have to wait for the Elegant Rage to land the killing blow onto his mech.
The Emperor Tree may be poised to launch its root spikes from below at any time.
The lost mech pilot might not have much objection towards losing his life at the hands of Lanie, but he did not want the Emperor Tree to enjoy the same satisfaction!
The fear induced by falling suddenly caused him to think about what he was doing with his life.
Why must he die?
Why was he pushed into this unwinnable situation?
Why had Ylvaine failed to warn him of this trap?
Why had he been so foolish to fall for the Emperor Tree's manipulations?!
Something broke inside Taon's heart.
This might be the most inopportune moment for Taon to suffer a mental breakdown, but as the Elegant Rage's borrowed weapon was closing in on the helpless mech frame of the Zeal, the pilot finally snapped!
"If everything is a lie… THEN EVERYTHING MUST GO TO RUIN!"
The Zeal somehow managed to adjust his Devora Cannon so that the muzzle pointed straight at the incoming mutated mech!
BOOOOOOOOOM!
The falling heavy artillery mech unleashed an attack unlike any other!
A normal attack from the Devora Cannon should have shaken the temporary resonance shield of the Elegant Rage at most.
What happened instead was that the resonance-empowered super-heavy transphasic gauss round overpowered the mutated mech's resonance shield and almost impacted against the hybrid wood and metal chest plate!
"TAON!"
If not for the fact that Lanie's excellent piloting skills and plentiful combat experience allowed her to place the flat of the blade of the Heartsword against the chest of her living mech in time, the potent projectile would have penetrated through the cockpit without a doubt!
As it was, the Heartsword managed to resist a part of the enormous force before the mech hand that held the weapon broke and lost its grip!
The Heartsword amazingly launched away with only a minor dent onto the blade.
Meanwhile, the Devora gauss round attempted to resume its attempt to pierce through the chest plate and shatter the cockpit, but it had lost just enough power for it to heavily dent and deform the armor layers instead.
An instant and desperate infusion of forced resonance hastily reinforced the cockpit and absorbed much of the remaining concussive forces from the powerful kinetic strike.
Lanie managed to preserve her life, though her Elegant Rage was drained of much of her forced resonance as a consequence!
Of course, this only fueled the maddened mech pilot's fury and caused her to develop an even stronger animosity towards the traitor!
The difference now was that Taon was no longer unable to resist!
"He broke through?! How?!"
As the Zeal approached the ground, the Emperor Tree finally unleashed a swathe of root spikes, each of which looked eager to impale or at least pummel the falling machine!
However, the brown resonance glow surrounding the heavy artillery mech not only blocked these spikes, but also caused them to weaken and crumble into dust!
BANG!
The Zeal finally crashed into the ground, yet miraculously managed to stay remarkably intact!
Even though the heavy mech was unable to prevent all damage, the Zeal managed to cushing his fall by expending much of his own recently acquired forced resonance state.
As an ominous and corrosive brown corona continued to surround the Zeal, the heavy artillery mech began to undergo his own mutations!
The armor plating seemed to rust despite the fact that it was not supposed to be susceptible to corrosion.
In addition to that, the heavy artillery cannons began to grow thicker, shorter and fatter!
"Hoot hoot!"
The Devora Cannon experienced a more radical transformation. The base grew thicker but the end of the barrel grew thinner. The entire cannon seemed to turn into a spike, though the purpose for this transformation remained unclear.
As Sirca possessed the transformed weapon, the mutated Devora Cannon seemed to have lost all signs of threat, but that only made it scarier!
However, the most extreme change occurred outside of view.
From the moment Taon snapped and broke through to the rank of expert pilot, all of his emotions became amplified by at least ten times if not more!
His fatalism towards his own life, his lack of satisfaction at how little he accomplished in his life, his distrust towards everything aside from himself and his vindictive desire to tear everything down that had led him on this path of doom all blended together and distorted his ascension to demigod!
The Zeal was not prepared for this. The third order living mech tried his best to support his pilot and absorb the breakthrough energies to serve his partner better, but the problem was that Taon's willpower had become far too corrosive and hostile towards other entities!
This included the living mech that Taon previously trusted with life!
"TAON! YOU ARE HURTING ME! STOP THIS NOW! I WILL DIE IF YOU KEEP DISTRUSTING ME! SNAP OUT OF IT, PARTNER! REMEMBER WHO YOU ARE! YOU ARE YLVAINE'S CHOSEN!"
"You… are not my partner anymore… No one… can ever be my partner anymore… As for Ylvaine, I will never have faith in him again. As far as I am concerned… all gods and prophets must fall to ruin. Only then will I have given my life meaning!"
"TAAAAAOOOoooonnn…"
A sacred partnership came to an end today.
As Taon's willpower kept reshaping the Zeal to the expert pilot's liking, there are appeared to be no place anymore for a battle partner that had previously served the pilot with complete dedication.
As Taon's willpower kept reshaping the Zeal to the expert pilot's liking, there are appeared to be no place anymore for a battle partner that had previously served the pilot with complete dedication.