Chapter 7240: Horrendous Consequences “Rosa! Rosa! Can you receive this transmission?! Answer me! What is your current status?! The telemetry from your mech is all over the place! We don’t know what is taking place inside the Riot Mark III. Please tell us whether you are alright!” Saint Rosa Orfan’s breakthrough was anything but standard. The mech did not make any move, yet its exterior kept rippling and morphing as if it was on the verge of triggering a massive physical evolution. Yet there was another powerful force or multiple forces that prevented the machine from succumbing to madness. A breakthrough from expert pilot to ace pilot should never generate so many concerns. Expert pilots already possessed excellent control over their machines. Their boundless confidence fueled their extraordinary willpower, which granted them excellent mastery over themselves and their mechs. Becoming an ace pilot strengthened these traits beyond all previous limits. A saint was regarded as a pilot who managed to rise far above mortals because they were able to leverage the power of mechs much greater than others. To witness a breakthrough event unfolding where the Riot Mark III not only refused to make a single move, but also appeared on the verge of triggering uncontrolled mutations meant that something was terribly amiss! Was it the D-mech? Had the Prophet’s Bane thrown a spanner in the works? Or had the demon successfully devoured Rosa Orfan and broken through in her stead? All of these answers may be possible. Ves briefly shifted to the data that was supposed to report the state of the Riot Mark III’s energy reserves. They were fluctuating. They claimed that the Riot Mark III possessed a 5 percent charge in one second, and 17 percent in the other. The numbers kept rising and falling as if the mech suffered from a thousand glitches. While it was easy to dismiss these chaotic readings as junk data that did not reflect the actual state of the Riot Mark III, what if this was not the case? What if… Rosa Orfan’s Saint Kingdom was able to bend reality to the point where it could actually recharge the Riot Mark III’s energy cells? This was a level of reality distortion that Ves had never witnessed from a junior ace mech, but this was not a normal breakthrough! With the addition of a powerful Middle Demon, who knew how much stronger Saint Orfan’s breakthrough had become! Not only that, but forced resonance was different from true resonance. 𝑓𝘳𝑒𝑒𝓌𝘦𝘣𝘯ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝑚 Whereas the latter was always the product of control and synergy, the former was produced by an excess of powerful energies! This was normally good as it enabled an expert mech to briefly wield the power of an ace mech in advance, but that was not the case this time! The latest ace pilot of the Larkinson Clan was undergoing a distorted breakthrough. Her willpower may not reflect her actual conviction. Certain extreme emotions may have overpowered her more temperate ones. This temporarily turned her into an exceedingly powerful threat! The Bluejay Fleet was on guard. The 30 Ascended Giants were already prepared to launch into space and work together to subdue the Riot Mark III in case it went out of control. While the superdimensional mech was specifically designed to counter phase lords among other enemy types, it was unlikely to suppress so many human phase lords at once, especially if the latter was equipped with a handful of superdimensional gear and employed proper teamwork! Besides, Ves had deliberately kept the tier 3 Destroyer spear away from the Riot Mark III to limit how much damage the expert spearman mech could do by itself. While the Riot Mark III could technically penetrate spatial barriers and easily punch holes through phase lord raiments by relying on its full superdimensional archemech frame alone, it was not able to physically overpower so many Ascended Giants when they all held onto its limbs! The question now was whether the Riot Mark III was about to go on a rampage and whether it received the maximum possible resonance empowerment from the newly expanded Saint Kingdom. “Do we need to deploy, sir?” The Divine Spear asked as he had inflated to combat size and donned his raiment. The strategos did not care whether he was speaking to Ves or the Dark Apostle. “No. Please stand by.” Ves responded. “I think the appearance of so many Ascended Giants may provoke the Riot Mark III into lashing out. Remain out of sight. Let this event play out. I believe that Rosa would never allow her machine to harm her comrades.” Seconds passed by as many more people observed the Riot Mark III without comprehending what was taking place. Red humanity gained a new ace pilot. This was a cause for celebration, yet more and more people grew concerned whether Rosa Orfan measured up to the standards of Saint Tusa and Saint Dise. The Riot Mark III did not make any triumphant actions. It did not blaze in glory and exaltation. It simply hovered silently in space while its new Saint Kingdom uncomfortably settled over its rippling mech frame. Slowly but surely, the upheaval died down. The anomalous fluctuations dropped in intensity while the Saint Kingdom grew weaker but more stable. Ves had the sense that after a lot of exertions, Saint Orfan may have finally seized control at the cost of expending herself. Soon enough, the Saint Kingdom winked out while the Riot Mark III steadily powered down. “Rosa! Please respond! What is your condition?! Do you need rescue!?” The dormant mech remained completely unresponsive. After a brief delay, both Ves and Gloriana ordered a retrieval crew to tow the dormant expert mech back to the Tarrasque. They did so carefully while performing as many scans on the machine as possible. “The Riot has changed.” Ves stated when the machine had finally been returned to the shielded workshop. “The Prophet’s Bane… is in a weird condition.” “How so, Ves?” “I cannot… describe it. I have a strong feeling that we can obtain all of the answers so long as we open the cockpit and examine Saint Orfan’s condition.” “Is she okay?” “I don’t know. I do not believe she has died, but… she was definitely affected by unknown complications. We can only take a look to be certain.” After a bit of hesitation, Ves chose to enter the workshop to open the cockpit of the new machine himself. Gloriana and Alexa stayed behind in the control room for safety reasons. As Ves flew closer, he could feel more and more that the Riot Mark III possessed a different feel than before. It was as if he was confronted by a mech that had been broken down and remade, but still maintained the same appearance as before. The cockpit of a high-ranking mech was not that easy to open from the outside. It was bad design to give enemies an opportunity to make use of this backdoor to strike directly at the mech pilot! However, search and rescue teams still needed a way to get inside if anything happened that demanded immediate retrieval. This was especially important for a superdimensional mech that was nearly impossible to breach through mundane means! Given that a D-mech posed a much greater threat to its mech pilot than ordinary machines, Ves believed it was best to implement this safety measure! Of course, Ves had made sure to make the emergency unlocking process as convoluted and difficult to manipulate by enemies as possible. He had to waste more time than necessary and leverage the strength and control of a phase lord in order to finally get the hatch to open. Just as Ves was about to dive inside the cockpit and remove an unconscious and unresponsive ace pilot from her seat, he froze in astonishment. “What is it, Ves?! What are you seeing? Why are you not pulling out our new ace pilot?” Gloriana questioned her husband. “Your body is in the way of our external optical sensors. Step aside and let us see!” Ves looked confused, but did what he was told. As his body moved away, enough of an opening appeared for Gloriana and Alexa to view the interior of the cockpit at an angle. While the perspective was not the best, the sensors were still able to observe the dreadful state of Rosa Orfan. Both female mech designers grew speechless. “Am I seeing this correctly? Is this real, or an illusion?” “It is… real, Gloriana.” Ves slowly answered. “I can tell that it is real.” “Her body… how…” “We still know too little about D-mechs and the Carmine System. We especially do not know anything concrete about what happens when we combine the two. Now we know what might happen.” Ves and the others grew increasingly more horrified when a new reality stared in their faces. As if to rule out any possibility that this was an illusion, Ves cautiously entered the cockpit and reached out to touch Rosa Orfan’s nearly inanimate body with a gloved hand. He touched her flesh, which had largely grown dark and gray as if her body had undergone a demonic transformation that failed to complete. He touched the surface of her helmet. The superdimensional hard materials had partially melted and deformed to the point where bits of metal and composite materials had merged into the flesh and bone of Rosa Orfan’s skull! He touched the parts of her body and piloting suit that ordinarily pressed back against the surface of the piloting chair. All of it had been fused together. The boundaries between the three has seemingly faded, causing them to blend to the point where Rosa Orfan’s body had partially sunk into her own chair! This was a horrendous sight that would have killed any other person! Yet Ves confirmed with his own eyes and senses that the new ace pilot was not only alive, but in a stable condition. She was incredibly exhausted, and her new Blood Pact with the Riot Mark III was unusually strong and active, but Ves confirmed that the worst case scenario had not come to pass! So long as Rosa Orfan was still alive, then there was still hope for recovery! However, Ves immediately guessed that it was not so simple to separate man from machine this time. The biomechanical components of the Carmine System had merged so deeply into her body that separating one from the other had become a nightmare of a challenge! The piloting chair was the interface of the Carmine System, so when Rosa Orfan’s body integrated into the object, harming one would harm the other! They could not dismantle the piloting chair for fear of threatening the health of Rosa Orfan’s mortal coil! “I think… we have no choice but to call in the mechers.” Gloriana said. “This is beyond our capacity to solve.” “You… are right. Please inform Vector Loban. He needs to take a look at this himself.” Ves continued to remain in place as the mechers finally received permission to step inside and examine the latest and most abnormal masterwork mech produced by the Miracle Couple up to this point. The pair had developed plenty of weird machines, but the Riot Mark III definitely broke a new record! Gloriana was getting a new masterwork certificate after all. The only uncertainty was whether she would also receive a summons to present herself before a tribunal composed of Master Mech Designers. “Well, you have certainly strayed far beyond the boundaries of mech design.” Vector concluded. “I wouldn’t worry too much about the repercussions. Everything can still be explained away so long as the pilot lives and the mech remains functional. If the new ace pilot wakes up and declines to file a complaint, then we can still sweep this unpleasantness under the rug.” “I see. Thank you for your help.” “The Transhumanist Faction has already gained much analyzing this anomalous machine. We value novel data, and your Riot Mark III has defied normality in every way. We can significantly advance our understanding of mechs by analyzing this precious data.” 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! 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