Chapter 7324: The Demon’s Influence An ominously glowing speartip sank directly into the battered exoskeleton of a Level 6 Goliath. The Sudhar Goliath in question immediately buckled in pain! Yet even as it suffered a serious injury, the alien megavoribug did not get paralyzed by the blow. Every voribug strain and species was bred for war. Pain only served to warn them of threats. The creatures did not know fear. The only proper response to pain was to lash out against the source of their injury! As such, the Sudhar Goliath demonstrated an unusual amount of velocity by swiping its claws right back at the ace mech that dared to penetrate its exoskeleton! "PATHETIC." Saint Rosa Orfan never took the Level 6 Goliath seriously from the start. She had picked it out among the numerous megavoribugs besieging a team of Ascended Giants because it was strong enough to offer resistance but not to the point of delaying her too much. With the power at her disposal, it would be shameful for her if she was not able to eliminate a mere Level 6 Goliath within a minute. The pressure exerted by her Saint Kingdom already made a substantial difference to the beleaguered giants. Not only was the Level 6 Sudhar Goliath completely unable to follow through on its attacks, the other lesser Goliaths within range started to experience an unsettling degree of pain and discomfort. While the pain was nothing to them, the unusual effect slightly disoriented them. Their coordination suffered as they seemed to move out of sync with each other. The Goliaths quickly tried to move away from the Riot Mark III. It was only after they left the range of the Saint Kingdom that their coordination got fully restored. Saint Orfan did not pay attention to them. They were too weak in her opinion. They should be left for the giants. Ever since she partially merged with her living mech, the way she perceived reality had changed. Her mind and her perception expanded to a degree that was frankly inhuman. Even without deliberately paying attention to her surroundings, her Riot easily evaded the attacks launched by ranged voribugs. The ace mech's resonance-empowered flight system allowed it to weave a slightly oblique path that enabled it to charge towards the injured Level 6 Goliath! The voribugs did their best to hinder her advance. Not only were the attacks of ranged voribugs increasing in volume, they also sent a swarm to engulf and interfere with the ace mech's performance. "MERE GNATS." Saint Orfan did not bother to launch a deliberate attack against the cannon fodder bugs that attempted to block her mech's vision and interfere with her flight. As soon as the bugs entered the range of her Saint Kingdom, the pseudo-Destroyer particles began to do their work! The ace pilot stimulated them as best as possible, causing them to become more active and generate more destruction energy. While the concentration of destruction energy was not particularly high, it still posed a serious hazard against the weak bodies of the basic variants of voribugs. They only lasted a few seconds before the power of destruction eroded their eyes, their exoskeletons, their internal organs and most importantly their small and vulnerable brains. Every bug that entered the Saint Kingdom appeared to be corroding and decomposing at an unnaturally fast rate. Not a single bug managed to withstand the hostile environment long enough to reach the Riot Mark III! What impressed and frightened observers the most about the Riot Mark III's extraordinary domain field was that its effectiveness remained constant even as the mutated voribugs attempted to overload its capacity. Having fought against many different expert mechs and ace mechs since the start of their invasion, the mutated voribugs had discovered long ago that Saint Kingdoms were not inexhaustible. They were the amplified manifestations of the extraordinary willpower of ace pilots. Willpower sounded magical, but it was actually just another form of energy. High-ranking mech pilots could make use of it to bend reality according to their will, but they could not do so without a price. Everyone had a limit! Even Saint Orfan could only wear down the bodies of so many cannon fodder bugs by expending her surging willpower. Despite this consumption, she was not afraid. This was because her machine turned out to be well-suited to clear these bugs! It would have been a different story if she had chosen to integrate a different key resonating material to her expert mech, but Terran Destroyer Amplification Material perfectly fit her current needs! TDAM acted as an incredibly effective amplifier in her ability to wield the destructive power of her tier 3 Destroyer spear. While it mainly served to strengthen the direct offensive power of her main weapon, Saint Orfan appreciated its other functions a lot more. The most annoying part about fighting the voribugs had always been to deal with their swarms. With the help of TDAM, Saint Orfan gained access to a low-cost swarm-clearing solution. Even a relatively fresh junior ace pilot such as herself did not need to exert that much resolve to continually erode the bodies of every bug that entered her domain field! Saint Orfan did not care too much about these bugs, she felt pleased that she did not have to resort to more intensive moves to clear away this obstruction. The problem that significantly slowed down other defenders posed no obstacle to her! There was nothing the voribugs could do to stop her ace mech from going for the kill! As bug after bug continued to get annihilated without achieving any noticeable result, the group of Goliaths struggled to form an effective response. They clearly wanted to reform their formation and attempt to assault the Riot Mark III from multiple directions, but the Ascended Giants that previously suffered the brunt of their attacks got in their way! Now that the tables had turned, the Faceless Giants that had escaped the specker of death unleashed their fury on lower-level Goliaths! Their plasma weapons burned against squirming flesh and dull exoskeletons. Their armored bodies circled around and purposefully blocked the retreat of the frantic Goliaths. "It's payback time!" Saint Orfan did not acknowledge the Faceless Giants, but her ace mech flew more aggressively due to their actions. They demonstrated an implicit degree of coordination without exchanging any words. They understood each other's intentions quite clearly. As such, nothing stood in the way of the Riot Mark III. It was going straight for the kill. The Sudhar Goliath in question clearly understood the threat. It did not bother to adopt a defensive posture. Instead, it triggered a strange mutation that caused its hard limbs and exoskeleton to fuse until it had formed a giant clawed appendage. The Goliath clearly sought to inflict a crippling blow against the Riot Mark III before it went down! Saint Orfan simply huffed at this development. "YOU ARE NOT QUALIFIED." With this dismissive remark, the Riot Mark III uncharacteristically did not evade the powerful claw, but allowed it to directly strike at its Chaos Armor even as the ace mech slammed its dangerous spear directly into the Goliath's massive body! Enveloped within a field of willpower, chaos and destruction energies, the Level 6 Goliath remained frozen as its giant alien eyes stared at the state of the living ace mech. The Riot's Chaos Armor remained completely spotless. The machine had not bothered to active its energy shield and did not channel a great amount of true resonance through the armor plating. Saint Orfan intuitively knew that the Level 6 Goliath's most desperate attack could not possibly pose a threat against her machine body. She just wanted to see the results for herself. Only when the outcome took place before her new senses did she grew reassured that her judgment and intuition did not lead her astray. If she still had control over her human body, she would have grinned like a shark. Compared to the spotless state of her exquisite D-mech, the Level 6 Sudhar Goliath already looked disabled. The first spear strike had breached its exterior while spreading a copious amount of resonance-empowered destruction energy into its internal body issue. While the resilience of its higher-quality biomass allowed the Sudhar Goliath to withstand the energies much better than a cannon fodder bug, it lacked the extraordinary power to neutralize the devastating power. This was the biggest deficiency of the Goliaths. The power granted by their genes could not produce a force that could effectively counter such an attack! The Sudhar Goliath could only resort to the most stupid solution, which was gradually wearing down the destructive energies by sacrificing a lot of biomass. It worked to an extent. So long as it did not suffer another blow, the Goliath would have been able to recover after devouring a lot of cannon fodder bugs. Saint Orfan did not give the Goliath the reprieve it needed. The second blow not only destroyed a number of important organs, but also flooded the surrounding flesh with even more destructive energies! The Sudhar Goliath already reached a limit. Too much of its biomass was getting corroded. It took far too much resources and effort to repair all of the damage in a short amount of time. Its exoskeleton was half-broken. Its long and mutated claw had lost all of its strength. The Level 6 Goliath had lost its qualification to act as a speed bump against the formidable new superdimensional ace mech! While Saint Orfan could have left the job of finishing it off to the surrounding giants, a sudden impulse insisted on doing the deed herself! Only when her spear plunged into the disgusting flesh of the megavoribug and crushed all of the vitality remaining in ita body would she gain true satisfaction from this small victory. Even as her ace mech circled around to inflict the killing blow, a part of her awareness grew critical at her latest 𝐟𝗿𝐞𝚎𝚠𝐞𝚋𝕟𝐨𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝕔𝕠𝚖 thought. "Am I still... myself?" She had a feeling that the Prophet's Bane had already begun to bleed through her personality. This was despite her constant effort to isolate the corrupted part of her soul! From what she could surmise, it was not that simple to keep the demon out of her actual self. It did not take much time for her to come up with a possible explanation. Anytime she engaged with an act that closely aligned with the nature of the demon, she might subconsciously draw upon its strength to amplify her actions. She already managed to observe that the persistence of her destruction energy already exceeded her expectation. Compared to what she recorded during her practice sessions, the destruction spread by her attacks exceeded her estimates by at least 30 percent! This was a noticeable power boost. It could mean the difference between injuring and crippling a Goliath! Though Saint Rosa Orfan welcomed the damage boost, she also knew that taking advantage of it would give the Prophet's Bane an opportunity to resume its takeover attempt. "So what? I am not afraid of you. Since you tried to take me over, I will do the same to you. I will turn myself into a demon if that is what it takes to erase your hold onto my soul!" Staying on the defensive was not her style. Saint Orfan wanted to do more than outlast the demon. She wanted to conquer it in full! Therefore, the idea of loosening her suppression and giving the Prophet's Bane enough space to exert its power started to sound increasingly more attentive. Saint Orfan knew that she was playing with fire by contemplating such a dangerous proposal, but she believed the only way for her to overcome this lethal challenge was to demonstrate unparalleled bravery! Fear beget fear. Constantly remaining on guard against the Prophet's Bane would only cause her to increase her sense of inferiority towards this foreign invader. Only by staring the demon in the eye and proactively attempting to conquer its power did she see hope in overcoming her trial!