Chapter 7238: The Real Demon Ves continued to stare at the Riot Mark III with no clue what was going on inside. This was one of the few rare moments where he regretted that he had done too good of a job. No matter whether it was the Chaos Armor, the gem he had integrated into the original version of the Riot a long time ago or the special capabilities of the Prophet’s Bane, the D-mech still managed to resist his probes. Ves did not trust the telemetry transmitted by the machine. The scanners of the workshop could not overcome the chaotic interference produced by the Chaos Armor. Blinky’s excellent spiritual senses still could not take a peak of what was taking place inside either. It was as if he had accidentally turned the Riot Mark III into a demonic gu container. From the moment Venerable Orfan entered the cockpit and interfaced with the D-mech for the first time, a death match commenced where out of the two occupants, only one was destined to triumph. Ves felt a lot more concerned about the outcome of this particular competition. It was easy for him to throw a bunch of souls and demons into a gu container and let them sort out the winner by themselves. The demise of any one of them did not matter to him as he did not have a strong attachment to any particular life. Not even the Prophet’s Bane was indispensable to him. If another demon managed to defeat the remnant taken from the Doom of Remis gem, then the victor should at least have been able to assimilate a part of what made the loser special. This scenario never happened. The Prophet’s Bane had entered every brutal free-for-all with an advantage and came out of the Demon Mixers as the sole survivor several times in a row. There was no way that such a demonic entity was weak. Not even the willpower suppression of an expert pilot could hold it back for long. The only way out for Venerable Rosa Orfan was to advance to the rank of ace pilot. This was why Ves found it increasingly harder to cling to hope. He needed to be realistic. The more time passed without any visible breakthrough manifestations, the greater the probability that Venerable Orfan succumbed to her D-mech. “Ves…” “Patience.” He said. “We have not detected any positive or negative reactions so far. I can only assume that the two are still in conflict. I do not want to disturb it in any way. Let it play out. Who knows if Rosa Orfan is able to make a surprise comeback. I promised to her that I would not ruin her moment. She sounded very insistent that she did not want us to intervene and forcibly pull her out of the cockpit.” “It has been more than half an hour, Ves.” Gloriana reminded her husband. “This is an excessive amount of time as far as first activations are concerned. I will wait for another 30 minutes. If Venerable Orfan has not shown any sign that she has gained control over the Riot Mark III, then I will call in the mechers and have them intervene. We are operating in their warship, after all. Perhaps they can be of assistance.” Ves frowned, but he did not reject her suggestion out of hand. Perhaps it may be better to call in outside help if it became more and more obvious that the situation has gone out of control. As he wondered what the hell was going on inside the Riot Mark III, he remained unaware that Venerable Rosa Orfan had suddenly managed to halt her seemingly inexorable decline. In fact, she did more than stop her descent. As realization settled in, Rosa grew furious at how she had almost gotten hoodwinked into killing herself! Although she still did not know what exactly was going on with this weird space, she instinctively understood that this was part of a test of sorts. A test that she had been losing badly before Qilanxo emerged and woke her up to the truth. “It is too late.” The false Rosa grinned as she taunted the victim. “I was born from your feelings of inferiority. You birthed me to become the superior version of yourself. Look at your current state. So what if you got a reminder? Almost all of your soul has surrendered to me. I have claimed so much of you that there is very little that you have left to take back what you have lost. I only need to complete my final push in order to claim everything.” The real Rosa Orfan gritted her teeth. “You… are… wrong. I am… not gone yet. There is still… enough of me left to take back everything that belongs to me. Besides, you are a bad liar. You are not the better version of me. You are the spawn of the demon. My willpower is still my own. You have done nothing to earn it! As long as there is still a small part of me left, you can forget about taking over my will!” Her false mirror laughed in response! “Hahaha! Do you really think you have a chance now that you have regained your bravado? It does not work that way. Willpower alone is not a weapon. It only truly becomes powerful when you can combine it with your soul. Now that I have taken over much of it, there is too little ground for you to make a comeback.” “Oh really?” With the help of her willpower, the real Venerable Orfan started to regain the ground she lost! This became visible as the corruption that had engulfed her entire soul manifestation started to recede starting from the neck area. The resistance was much harder than she expected. The false version of herself might not be able to leverage any willpower, but she controlled so much of the soul that it was difficult for the real version of herself to make good progress. An added challenge to this competition was that she could not afford to be too careless and destroy any part of her soul. Rosa needed to work delicately enough to purify the corruption, which was much harder than it sounded. Yet as long as she was able to make any progress, she had hope of regaining what originally belonged to herself. Her confidence grew. Each part of her soul that came back to her allowed her to leverage her willpower more effectively. This would not only speed up her progress, but prevent her false self from making a comeback! “Get… out… of… my… head!” She roared as she gradually recaptured her upper torso and her shoulders. This sped up the real Venerable Orfan’s reclamation speed by multiple times. Her confidence soared as her advantage continued to snowball. However, despite being on the losing end this time, the illusion that represented the false version of herself still did not drop her smirk! “You could have given up painlessly, you know. Going out on a whimper is the fate that a loser and a failure like you deserved. Since you chose to put up a fight to the end, I have no choice but to make this a lot more painful for the both of us. Do you know that even though you have formed a Blood Pact, the demon has largely maintained his distance?” “Huh?” The false Rosa Orfan smirked wider. “I tried to do this the quiet way. I managed to take over most of your soul without making you feel as if you were under attack. That is because I am still a version of yourself. The reason why the demon kept its distance was to avoid alerting you in advance. Your willpower initially overlooked my presence, but the same wouldn’t happen if the demon arrived in advance. Not only would your resistance at the start be a lot stronger, but the ensuing struggle would also cause large parts of your soul to tear into pieces.” The real Rosa Orfan suddenly widened her eyes. She might not be the smartest expert pilot around, but she was not stupid. She readily figured out what this evil version of herself was trying to say! Before she knew it, the false Rosa Orfan completely opened herself up to the Prophet’s Bane! The foul demon eagerly took advantage of the opening and slipped right in through the Blood Pact! This caused the illusion of the false Rosa Orfan to mutate and acquire a handful of random demonic traits! “The real fight has begun!” The illusion had disappeared. The sudden intrusion of the demon had a devastating effect on Rosa Orfan’s soul. Not only did the Prophet’s Bane take over and devour the false version of herself, but it also leveraged its considerable strength into taking over the rest of the soul! “Ahh!” The real Rosa Orfan faced much more resistance than before! She had yet to regain enough lost ground to gain the upper hand in this confrontation. In fact, even if she was still in control over her soul, the expert pilot doubted that she would be able to hold back the demon for long. The Prophet’s Bane was too powerful! While his energy encountered a lot of difficulties in overcoming her extraordinary willpower, the demon had much greater reserves than she could imagine! At this moment, Venerable Orfan could feel the demon pushing her back to the point where she was losing control over her shoulders and upper torso. This further put the demon at an advantage. As the Prophet’s Bane rapidly assimilated the corrupted portions of her soul, it rapidly established its foundation within the Riot Mark III and its future human meat puppet. Now that the Prophet’s Bane had directly occupied large parts of her soul, Venerable Orfan was able to understand the demon a lot better. “It is too much!” There were hardly any barriers between the two. Due to the false Rosa Orfan’s complete surrender, the Prophet’s Bane had been very successful in assimilating much but not everything that belonged to the former. The demon knew everything about her memories, thoughts, emotions and so on. This knowledge allowed the malevolent being to quickly fortify its occupation of Rosa Orfan’s soul and strengthen its offensive! At the same time, Rosa Orfan also gained a large understanding of the demon. Much of it was incomprehensible to her, but she quickly figured out how bad it would be if the Middle Demon completely took her soul! Nothing of her would be left! Even her body would turn into a vessel to propagate the demon’s hatred and overwhelming desire to spread chaos! “Ahhhh!” As Rosa Orfan desperately tried to leverage her willpower to slow down the enemy advance, she began to experience greater pain than before! Unlike the false version of herself, the Prophet’s Bane did not care about minimizing damage and was all too willing to inflict damage in liu of surrender. What was even worse was that Rosa could faintly feel that her body was in pain! She had no idea what was going on, but her intuition told her that the Riot Mark III was seriously harming her body somehow! This two-pronged assault against her soul and body quickly drove the expert pilot into a corner. As the Middle Demon swept past her neck and began to take over her lower jaw, Venerable Orfan knew that she had run out of time! The false version of herself had been right. Bravado alone was not enough for her to resist the powerful demon that had already taken over most of her soul! Venerable Orfan already knew that this grave invasion had marked her in a way that could not be reversed anymore. Something fundamental had been broken or warped by the demonic invasion. The longer the Middle Demon took root, the less that the expert pilot would be able to salvage this mess! Despite her dire condition, Venerable Orfan paradoxically felt more alive than ever. Being driven to the point where a demon was literally gnawing at her soul had forced her to not only confront her many failures and shortcomings, but also use these truths as the basis of her conviction! “I… am… not… WEAK!” 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! Join The Mech Touch’s unofficial Discord server: https://discord.gg/APB5KCU