Chapter 7380: Unlocking the Carmine System Pulling the Chaos Trigger was a big deal. The consequences were serious, particularly because Ves designed it as an extension of the Riot Mark III’s Carmine System! Yes, the Carmine System! Ves did not fully understand his mindset during the time he came up with this idea and realized it, but he must have been in a particularly adventurous mood to experiment on the Carmine System. This was not an ordinary modification. The Ultimate Module was the equivalent of a companion spirit of a living mech, and thereby existed in a semi-independent state. This brought both advantages and disadvantages. From a design standpoint, Saint Rosa Orfan formed a Blood Pact with the Riot Mark III, which the Chaos Trigger was technically a part of. Yet because the latter remained in a locked and dormant state most of the time, the Larkinson ace pilot had only ever piloted the ’incomplete’ version of her battle partner. Against most enemies, the Riot Mark III in its basic configuration sufficed. A superdimensional ace mech already possessed a crushing advantage against roughly equal or weaker adversaries. Yet Ves did not solely design the Riot and its iterations to beat up the weak. He had many other assets at his disposal for this task. The original purpose of the high-ranking spearman mech was to address the threat of qualitatively superior opponents. The Riot Mark III needed to be able to punch above its weight while enduring powerful attacks in return. Even if it could not win the duel, it should at least be able to hold out and delay the enemy as long as possible! With that in mind, Ves devised the Chaos Trigger to give his work a more dangerous edge. The Chaos Trigger was a double-edged sword. It could theoretically increase the lethality of the Riot Mark III by a huge margin, but also put great strain on the pilot as well as mech frame. Before Saint Orfan could channel her explosive rise in power towards the right target, she first had to bear its impact through the overloaded Carmine System! Pulling the Chaos Trigger directly disabled numerous hardware and software limiters. In other words, the floodgates had been opened! The most immediate consequence of this was that the volume of blood cycling through Saint Orfan’s vestigial physical body and the Riot Mark III multiplied by at least 3 times! Not only that, but the density of mostly artificial blood had increased due to the injection of additional stimulants and other substances. Even the temperature had risen! The biological components of the Carmine System endured significantly more stresses than normal as a consequence, but they were still able to bear the difficulties due to their completely artificial nature. The same could not be said for Rosa Orfan’s body, which still possessed many of the frailties of the human race! If Saint Orfan still possessed a functional human form, then she would have cried out in pain at this time! Any normal human being subjected to this inhuman treatment from the overloaded Carmine System would have suffered excruciating pain before suffering a total physical shutdown. However, Saint Orfan’s current physical condition happened to play to her advantage. The ace pilot had become so disconnected to her partially assimilated body that she effectively experienced none of its pain and suffering. Of course, nobody knew what would happen if the vestigial body expired completely. It was not worth the risk to see what would happen. Preserving it still remained a priority. This was where the Riot Mark III’s Saint Kingdom came in. The only way for Saint Orfan to help her vestigial body tolerate the brutal treatment was to use her willpower to distort her reality. Once true resonance fortified her remaining physical form, it no longer deteriorated any further. The remaining technological instruments integrated into the preservation pod also helped to repair and sustain the vulnerable human flesh. While her physical condition reluctantly achieved stability, the same could not be said for her mental state. The physical aspects of the Carmine System closely mirrored its intangible aspects! There was a direct correlation between the Carmine System and the Blood Pact. The latter therefore experienced profound changes, many of which appeared to be volatile and unstable. The imperfect wall that mostly separated Saint Orfan from the Prophet’s Bane collapsed! Both the ace pilot and the Middle Demon that originated from her D-mech were forced to establish a closer and more intimate connection with each other. The forced convergence between two powerful and very hostile actors sparked immediate conflict as both sides battled for supremacy! Saint Orfan relied on her surging willpower to defend herself and launch counterattacks against the demon that had gained a huge grip on her soul. The Prophet’s Bane meanwhile relied on the strong base provided by its D-mech and its accumulated advantages to increase its ownership of the ace pilot’s soul! The conflict between both sides became a lot more intense than before. This was because the Chaos Trigger provided numerous boosts to both the pilot and machine! Fortunately or unfortunately, the drastic changes did not significantly alter the balance of power between the two. They entered into a stalemate where neither side could achieve complete dominance over their archenemy. "You will never be the death of me!" Saint Orfan spat at her own inner demon. "You can rage all you want, but I will gladly take your aggression and channel it at other enemies!" This was the true purpose of the Chaos Trigger. It sought to supercharge the Carmine System and cause a series of transformations that ultimately allowed the ace mech to exert much greater power than usual! The changes went beyond the Carmine System and the Blood Pact. Many limiters integrated into other components got removed as well. The Chaos Armor began to spill over its chaotic and anti-prophetic traits into the rest of the mech frame, causing them to undergo increasingly less stable and more dangerous mutations! The power reactor went into overload as well, causing it to output a drastically higher level of power at the cost of rapidly draining the Riot Mark III’s energy reserves. The flight system gained a destructive boost in thrust power while the tier 3 Destroyer spear became infected by additional energies, causing its energetic spear tip to sputter in a much more dangerous manner than before! All of these boosts were powerful, substantial and self-harming in nature. The various overloaded systems of the ace mech should have exploded or torn themselves apart in short order, but the ace mech’s Saint Kingdom forcibly increased their durability and enabled them to tolerate a lot more abuse than before! This was especially the case when the additional stimulation and the forced amplification of the Blood Pact caused the ace pilot’s resonance strength to soar! "The resonance meters are spiking!" Alexa Streon reported in a tone that conveyed both her excitement and concern! "The Riot Mark III’s Saint Kingdom is undergoing an explosive expansion! Its radius has increased by over 27 percent! Saint Orfan’s resonance strength has just surpassed 300 laveres!" The graph that depicted the overloading ace mech’s resonance strength not only registered a steep climb, but also much greater volatility than usual! This was expressed in much more frequent and intense hills and valleys! The strong rise in volatility indicated that the ace pilot and ace mech’s current conditions were anything but stable. Both of them were experiencing so many different stresses that it was a minor miracle that they could persist up to this point! With every second that passed, anything could go wrong. While the surging Saint Kingdom could suppress many problems, it was not capable of remedying every malfunction. Saint Orfan knew she was on a timer. She was expending her willpower at a much more prodigious rate. The Riot Mark III was beating itself up on the inside while also draining its energy reserves like no tomorrow. Nothing lasted forever, but their current conditions were so concerning that they might not be able to retain their combat effectiveness beyond 5 minutes! "Five minutes are enough." Saint Orfan determined. She needed to secure victory within this narrow window of opportunity. Even if she managed to persist for a few more minutes, she doubted it would matter because her opponent would have already destroyed the research specimen during this time interval. Therefore, she may as well go all-out and fight at her absolute best! "YOU!" She roared at the Voice of Liberty! "IT’S TIME FOR ROUND 2 NOW THAT I AM NOT A PUSHOVER ANYMORE!" The Riot Mark III blasted forward with much greater acceleration than before! Its overloaded flight system not only generated a greater amount of raw thrust, but the strengthened Saint Kingdom also provided stronger true resonance amplification! The combination of these effects significantly boosted the Riot Mark III’s mobility, enabling it to catch up to its adversary significantly better than before! Just as the Riot Mark III was about to fly close enough to drive its tier 3 Destroyer spear into the back of the Sound of Revolution, the latter was finally forced to respond! "How ugly." The Voice of Liberty still maintained his composure even as he was confronted by a very bizarre ace mech. "Whatever emergency measure that you have resorted to is more dangerous to yourself than your enemies. I can feel your pain. It is an ugly sound!" The Sound of Revolution turned around just in time to deflect the Destroyer spear with its iconic Guitar-Battle-Axe. As soon as the two weapons made contact with each other, the axe released a strange noise that not only disrupted Saint Orfan’s concentration, but also shoved the powerful spear aside a little further than normal! Strong vibrations rippled through the weapon and into the hand that held it. The vibrations continued to travel along the length of the arm before finally shaking the torso. These were not normal vibrations! They generated a strange form of resonance that amplified their destabilizing effects! The consequences were quite serious. Despite its excellent construction, the Riot Mark III briefly lost control over its mech frame! The rebel ace mech tried to take advantage of this opening by spinning its weapon around to unleash a quick and devastating axe strike at the ace spearman mech! However, unlike most machines, the Riot Mark III was able to withstand the resonating vibrations a lot better than other machines. This was not only due to Saint Orfan’s surging willpower, but also due to her battle partner’s inherent nature as a full superdimensional mech! Its actual mass and volume was far greater than its outward appearance! The vibrations generated by the Sound of Revolution therefore had to cover a lot more matter, and got dispersed before they could inflict more debilitations to the internals of the ace spearman mech. The Riot Mark III successfully parried the enemy ace mech’s second strike and even managed to release a chaotic flare of destructive energies. Though the enemy’s willpower heavily suppressed this sudden outburst, it caused just enough damage and disruption to push back the guitar-axe wielding machine! Saint Orfan did not relent on her offensive. She keenly smelled vulnerability in her adversary! Even as the opposing ace mech sought to avoid a confrontation at close range, the Riot Mark III pursued with dogged determination. Though its acceleration rate fluctuated due to all of the volatile activity, the Riot Mark III was still able to keep up and even gain on the Sound of Revolution! The two machines continued to collide their weapons against each other. If the Riot Mark III wielded a superdimensional weapon, then it may have been able to damage or destroy the Guitar-Battle-Axe in short order. Unfortunately, its current polearm did not possess any superdimensional upgrades. Even so, just the spillover of destructive energies caused significant harm to the opposing machine! The Sound of Revolution’s exterior became increasingly more pitted as the destructive energies attempted to corrode their way through the armor layers.