Within the span of a minute, the mech pilots of the Catstrikers were being pushed to the brink! Zeigra’s aggressive attacks and maneuvering made it very difficult for Lady Miralix’s Kinslayer to approach from behind and savage the Crown Cat’s vulnerable rear with its claws. The huge cat was on guard after suffering from the initial surprise attack! \"This darned cat is too smart! He’s ignoring us!\" The humanoid mechs of the Catstrikers did their best to hinder Zeigra from turning his ire towards the Kinslayer. The tiger mech was their only hope of tearing the crown from the powerful cat! Despite the possibility that the cat might sabotage their mechs at any moment, the mech pilots stuck to their parts of the plan and boldly kept the raging, bleeding and berserking cat occupied! Nonetheless, an accident still took place as soon as their only remaining knight mech braced for another attack. Instead of fending off another claw strike, Zeigra dove straight forward and bit the side of the knight mech’s shield! With a powerful heave with his neck, the Crown Cat wrenched the shield away from its former owner’s grasp! \"Pull back!\" Too late! As soon as Zeigra succeeded in robbing the shield from the knight mech’s possession, he quickly pounced forward and pounced the mech to the ground! \"NO!\" Lady Miralix shouted! \"ATTACK! PUSH HIM OFF OUR COMRADE!\" Zeigra ignored the spear jabs, axe chops and claw attacks savaging his flanks and hind in favor of demolishing the mech it pressed down on the ground. A savage roar escaped from his throat as his claws cut its way through the thick but already-damaged chest plating of the offending mech! The mech pilot of the trapped mech desperately wanted to eject, but he couldn’t! Since the mech had fallen flat on his back, there was no way for the cockpit to eject and bring its occupant to safety! Awful screams soon flooded the comms as Zeigra vented his frustrations at his trapped and succeeded in piercing his claws through the cockpit! The Crown Cat uttered a triumphant roar before chomping straight through the damaged chest portion of the mech! Shortly afterwards, Zeigra lifted up his head while chewing a bite of mech sprinkled with the crushed and mangled body of a mech pilot! Both fear and rage suffused the other mech pilots. The fate suffered by their comrade intimidated the other mech pilots, amplifying their doubts which caused them to unconsciously relent on their assault. While Lady Miralix was under an incredible amount of strain as she tried to inflict serious damage to Zeigra, she still recognized the danger the fatality presented! \"Fight! Zeigra is right in front of us! This is no time to mourn our fallen comrade! Avenge his death by killing the perpetrator! Only then will we be able to honor his sacrifice!\" In this tense and perilous moment, Lady Miralix pushed herself and her mech to a degree that smashed her previous records! She had planned for this fight for years! Every mech pilot who emerged from House Laterna knew they were destined to test their mettle against a Crown Cat! Her will and determination never wavered even once even when she knew that Zeigra wanted nothing more than to kill her and her hunting team and ruin all of her efforts! Her bond with her Kinslayer deepened. If Ves still paid attention to the telemetry transmitted back to the legged transports, then he would have picked up that her connection to her mech deepened until it had reached the upper limit that her neural interface would allow! Going any further wasn’t possible as the Kinslayer’s neural interface model attempted to shield her brains and psyche from the negative side effects of such a dangerous connection. Even so, her mech moved and fought more fluidly than ever before! Zeigra continually attempted to catch the Kinslayer out, but Lady Miralix succeeded time and time again in slipping through the Crown Cat’s grasp. The Kinslayer moved in unison to her thoughts! The mech’s responsiveness towards her commands had become so remarkable that she felt as if she truly embodied the machine! This wondrous and immersive state saved the Kinslayer time and time again as Lady Miralix possessed an uncanny sense when Zeigra attempted to whirl around and launch a sudden strike! As long as she could keep this up, she could slowly wear Zeigra down! \"Hang on, men! Keep up the fight! Don’t let up the pressure!\" While the Kinslayer and the humanoid mechs barely managed to keep Zeigra contained, the removal of their only knight mech meant that the cat became a lot more unbridled! The spearman mechs were doing their best to pierce and bleed Zeigra’s flanks, but the cat’s increasingly aggressive counterattacks were taking a toll onto their already degraded mech frames! As the Felixia Catstrikers barely kept up with the raging Crown Cat in the material realm, a separate battle took place in the imaginary realm. Different from what Ves expected when his spiritual projection neared the coordinates of Zeigra’s spirituality, he encountered two spiritual entities instead of one! One cloud of spiritual energy dwarfed over the other. A combination of instinct, cunning and brutality suffused this roiling concentration. Ves tentatively identified it as Zeigra’s spirituality! Surprisingly, hovering close to this larger concentration was a smaller and antagonistic collection of spiritual energy. Ves immediately recognized its flavor! In fact, as its creator, Ves was more than familiar with its identity! \"Vescas! Why are you here!\" Now that he thought about it, why wouldn’t Vescas be here? His first true spiritual product was a spirituality strong entity. This meant that its presence amounted to more than a miniscule hole in the imaginary realm! Nonetheless, when Ves evaluated the spiritual presences of Zeigra and Vescas in the imaginary realm, he quickly realized that their strengths diverged significantly. Whereas Zeigra’s spirituality resembled a storm, Vescas’ spirituality only measured up to a tornado. Still, despite the disparity in strength, neither of them attacked each other directly. Ves could only speculate at the reason. Perhaps both of them were incapable of observing and interacting in the imaginary realm like Ves was doing. The result of their proximity was an indirect standoff where both sides influenced each other with the pressure of their auras! Zeigra held a significant advantage in this area. Not only did he possess a lot more spiritual energy, but its quality was a lot more sophisticated and mature! As for Vescas, the newborn spiritual product only enjoyed a week or so of development. This was way too short for it to match the spirituality of a maturing Crown Cat who already underwent frequent tempering in battle! Still, despite Zeigra’s superiority in this department, his spirituality failed to break Vescas’ spiritual presence. Even when it was suppressed on all sides, the spiritual product admirably held its ground! Its concentrated mix of stubbornness, faith in mechs and unrelenting fury shielded the presence from the brunt of its proximity to the stronger spiritual presence! \"Is this what happens every time two spiritually strong presences are locked in battle?\" Ves mentally guessed. Perhaps a battle between expert pilots took place in two realms at the same time! At the same time they locked themselves into battle, they were also pressuring each other with their spiritual presences in the imaginary realm! Right now, Ves recognized that while Vescas held its ground, it was still being suppressed by the stronger spiritual presence. Zeigra was simply too strong and could easily bring its pressure to bear on a flawed and recently-born spiritual product! \"What are the consequences if Vescas succumbs?\" Nothing good, he suspected. Though he didn’t think that Zeigra’s spiritual presence was capable of outright snuffing Vescas’ spiritual presence, the damage the former could inflict on the latter would certainly affect the Kinslayer’s battle performance! If Lady Miralix or the Kinslayer ever suffered a spiritual backlash from such an incident, then the pain and distraction might be enough for the Crown Cat to catch the tiger mech out! It would be game over for Ves, Lady Miralix and the rest of the Catstrikers if that happened! \"I have to step in and tilt the odds in our favor!\" Ves resolutely concluded. Yet... what could he do? While Zeigra’s spiritual presence seemed strong, in truth its magnitude probably matched his own. The problem was that Ves was merely projecting a portion of his Spirituality in the imaginary realm. Much of his spiritual strength was locked in his design seed, which he imagined as a solid crystalline mass of spiritual energy. This provided him with a lot of benefits such as strengthening his beliefs and amplifying the help it offered to his design work. Yet the downside to such an arrangement was that the effectively spiritual energy he could utilize for other applications was cut into a fraction of its former glory! \"Still, my Spirituality has grown in recent months. I have a bit more spiritual energy than before, and that’s not just due to replenishing what I’ve lost.\" His maximum capacity had slowly grown and still grew even now. Ves had no idea how much further it would grow, but as long as his design seed didn’t claim a larger share of the pie, he’d be able to exert an increasing amount of strength in other applications. \"Well, that’s still in the future. The issue is that I need to do something now!\" Ves suspected that the spiritual posturing that took place between the two spiritual presences might be one of the reasons why Zeigra hadn’t employed his strange corrosion ability yet. As strong as his spiritual presence seemed, Ves sensed some signs that hinted at exhaustion. \"It’s the same as when I’ve expended my own spiritual energy on something.\" He muttered. Zeigra’s spiritual presence wouldn’t be able to suppress Vescas’ spiritual presence if it weakened any further. If the latter gained some breathing room, it might be able to exert its own strength in a way that tipped the battle in the material realm in Lady Miralix’s favor! Perhaps Vescas’ spiritual presence might even be able to turn the tables and suppress Zeigra’s spiritual presence, causing the Crown Cat to fight a lot less confidently in his struggle against the Catstrikers! After taking in the situation, Ves decided to move into action. He extended his own spiritual projection forward and began to tentatively attack Zeigra’s spiritual presence. The closer he neared his target, the more he tried to sneak his way undetected. Zeigra’s spiritual presence was fully occupied with wearing down Vescas’ spiritual presence, which enabled Ves to sneak his spiritual projection up close. The spiritual projection subsequently attempted to take a bite out of Zeigra’s formidable concentration of spiritual energy. \"OUCH!\" Ves failed! The spirituality he attempted to siphon from the distracted spiritual presence hurt his spiritual projection! Apparently, it was a lot harder to mess with the spiritual presence of an entity that was awake and locked into combat! Not only did Ves failed to manage to steal a small spiritual fragment from Zeigra, but his spiritual presence also became alert to the presence of another interloper! Some of the pressure that Zeigra exerted over Vescas suddenly washed over him as well! Though the pressure wasn’t enough to affect his core consciousness or his design seed, it was a different case for his spiritual projection! The weaker concentration of spiritual energy from his mind started to lose some of its integrity! Ves quickly supplemented the losses from the attack by supplying additional spiritual energy to his spiritual projection! \"Damnit, it’s like adding more fuel to the flame!\" Ves found himself in the unenviable position of being forced to continue to drain his spiritual energy in order to maintain the strength of his spiritual projection. Each second that passed meant that more and more of his spiritual energy burned due to Zeigra’s attacks! Ves had to make the most of his limited time before he expended too much spiritual energy!