The Mech Touch (Web Novel)

A fiery clash commenced!

Despite their similarities, the Purgatory Envoy and the Fortunate Devil both adopted different concepts!

The striker mech designed by Ves already turned into an aggressive machine in the hands of Joshua. Due to its lack of armor, the Purgatory Envoy needed to take the initiative in order to create its own advantages.

Standing in place and forcing the duel to devolve into a battle of attrition would definitely play in the hands of Joshua's opponent!

In contrast, the Fortunate Devil could afford to be patient. While its mobility was garbage and its flamethrower was a little weak, the mech was clad with armor from top to bottom!

As Ves studied Jovy's handiwork, he recognized that his competitor was a very tough nut to crack. Though the rear armor of the Fortunate Devil was not very impressive, as long as its rotating torso could keep up with the circling attempted by Joshua, it was impossible to exploit its main weakness!

"What a very tough mech!" Ves commented.

"Outlasting an opponent is also a way to win." Jovy confidently responded. "To be honest, I had a lot of difficulty adjusting to the limited capacity of my mech. I figured the only way to get some space was to make everything bigger."

The Fortunate Devil was taller and thicker than the Purgatory Envoy. Already, its substantial mass showcased its advantages by resisting and spreading all of the heat inflicted by its opponents throughout the rest of its frame!

"What a powerful heat-conducting armor system!" Ves gasped.

The cheap armor plating that Jovy piled up on his mech was not exceptionally resistant against heat. Its heat capacity did not stand out either.

Jovy only focused on adding one considerable advantage to his mech. It was difficult to cripple the Fortunate Devil!

This indirectly countered the main attack mode of the Purgatory Envoy. Joshua gritted his teeth as he maneuvered his mech around its larger opponent. Flames spewed from the integrated flamethrowers. Twin bursts of concentrated blue flames spat out from the arms and tried to sear through the armor of a leg.

Unfortunately, the fairly directional streams of fire failed to melt the armor section!

Though the section heated up considerably, already the hot armor plating rapidly transferred the thermal energy to the adjacent plates of armor. In turn, those armor plating passed on the heat to its neighbors, thereby dispersing the heat throughout the entire flame, causing its exterior to slowly heat up as a whole!

"Tch." Joshua spat in frustration. "This is taking too long!"

Though the Fortunate Devil wasn't able to bring its flamethrower to bear on the moving Purgatory Envoy all the time, once it did, Joshua always chose to retreat.

While the mech designed by Ves was capable of withstanding some heat, Joshua needed to ration the defenses of his mech as much as possible!

Already, he could tell that this duel was going to take some time to resolve!

The Purgatory Envoy couldn't chew through the armor of its opponent fast enough, while the Fortunate Devil's offensive option was rather weak!

For some time, the match seemed to devolve in a steady and boring pattern.

Unlike the flashy moves and quick maneuvering of normal mech duels, a battle between two fire-spewing striker mechs had automatically turned into a test of patience!

Despite the lack of action, everyone spectating the duel worked with mechs for a living. No one looked down on the low-specced mechs because they were both rather good for mechs designed in a matter of days.

It was because their designs had been rushed that they recognized Ves and Jovy's competence. Other Journeymen at their ages would have never been able to deliver something at this quality level within the same span of time!

Aside from the technical details that could be gleaned from the competition mechs, the observers also carefully looked for something exceptional.

Everyone knew that the dueling mech designers possessed remarkable specialties.

The one developed by Ves was already rather clear on the surface. Despite rushing its design, the Purgatory Envoy exuded a glow that wasn't much weaker than that of the Little Angel!

Though the MTA delegation didn't really know what that meant, both Ves and Gloriana knew that this was a considerable improvement from the past!

If Ves could already impart a glow that was this strong in a mech designed in a couple of days, then what if he applied his innovations to a proper mech design?

Gloriana turned to her boyfriend. "Is this the result of your breakthrough?"

He grinned. "That, and more. You'll see, hopefully. I already instructed Joshua on what to do. If the Purgatory Envoy works the way I think it does, it will likely be able to deliver a very nasty surprise to the Fortunate Devil!"

That would take some time, though. Right now, the two mechs were just trying to wear each other down. It was too difficult for either striker mech to exploit any advantages when they were both in good condition.

The Purgatory Envoy's glow didn't provide any solutions to this problem. Aside from making Joshua a lot more in tune with his mech, the MTA mech pilot didn't even show any signs of flagging despite the fact that he was within close range.

As for the Fortunate Devil, the heavily-armored machine performed steadily and held all of its care close to its chest.

Ves finally couldn't contain his curiosity any longer.

"Mr. Armalon, Master Willix provided me with a brief excerpt of your record. It stated that your specialty is probability manipulation. I have spent a lot of time on figuring out how that actually applies to your mechs. Can you elaborate?"

"Why certainly." Jovy openly replied. "Let's start what my design philosophy is actually based upon. Normally, if an object bumps into a hill, it has to climb over it in order to get past this obstacle. At the micro level, this doesn't always take place. Instead of bouncing back or expending energy to ascend the hill, there is a small but realistic chance of tunneling straight through the hill."

This phenomenon was known as quantum tunneling, and played a huge role in lots of human tech. Anything that took place at the scale of atoms could be explained with the help of quantum mechanics.

Whenever something included the word quantum, then uncertainty always followed. There was no way to determine the momentum of a moving particle at the same time as figuring out its coordinates.

This involved some very complicated concepts, but to put the long story short, reality constantly rolled an endless amount of very tiny dice in order to run itself!

"What does quantum tunneling have to do with your specialty, exactly?" Ves asked.

He had some suspicions, but he wasn't certain about any of his guesses.

Jovy seemed to know that. This wasn't the first time he dealt with confusion. He waved his hand towards the arena.

By now, the two mechs had made some progress.

The Purgatory Envoy constantly tried to exploit a weak point, but failed in all of its attempts. Eventually, Joshua decided that rather than waste time trying to outflank his opponent, he would rather focus on applying all of the damage on a single section that didn't rotate as fast as the torso.

The legs!

With its integrated flamethrowers spewing focused gouts of hot blue flames, the Purgatory Envoy pointed them downwards and began the very slow process of melting through the armor that protected the legs!

As much as the amazing heat transfer effect of the Fortunate Devil's armor system transferred all of the thermal energy elsewhere, it did not happen at once.

Joshua knew enough about striker mechs and mechs in general that he just had to transfer enough heat on the same spot to overload this defensive measure!

The mech pilot of the Fortunate Devil knew he was in a bit more danger than before. Part of the reason was because the legs and especially the feet were not ideal locations to transfer away the heat.

If the Purgatory Envoy pointed its integrated flamethrowers at the chest plating of the mech, then the heat applied to this location could easily be dispersed to the arms, head, lower torso, rear armor and legs!

Yet by only heating up the bottom parts of the Fortunate Devil, the rate of heat transfer had dropped by at least a half. This was because the heat couldn't be transferred further downwards. The floor of the arena was not as good as conducting heat as the Fortunate Devil's specialized armor composition!

However, even as the Fortunate Devil's unwieldy but very well protected flamethrower only managed to land an intermittent amount of red-hot flame onto the Purgatory Envoy, its mech pilot kept his cool and did not change his methods.

It was… as if the MTA mech pilot was waiting for something.

"Quantum tunneling is something that is solely associated with electrons, photons and other subatomic particles." Jovy calmly continued even as his mech gradually fell into a leeway. "What if it's possible to achieve it on a larger scale? What if you could make a mech physically tunnel through a solid wall as if it didn't exist? What if the mech could fire a round at a battleship that tunneled straight through the hull plating in order to damage the vulnerable interior?"

Didn't this sound like what Lucky was doing on a daily basis?

Ves frowned. "In order to achieve that, trillions of dice rolls have to land on the right number. The probability of something like that happening is so tiny that the galaxy will probably end before something like that happens."

"Ah, but a mech designer can dream, right?" Jovy said. "This dream is the start of my ambition. All of those dice you mentioned are perfect and proper. However, one day, I had a thought. What if you could replace those proper dice with loaded dice?"

"…What?"

That was some statement! Replacing the dice that reality rolled with your own loaded dice was a very daring way to distort outcomes. It was such a radical and absurd statement that Ves would have never been able to come up with it himself!

The twinkle in Jovy's eyes made it clear that he was expressing his true passion.

"When you flip a coin, there is a fifty perent chance of landing heads or tails. However, if you can access this coin and alter it so that the side that represents heads is heavier than the other, then you will have effectively increased the odds of landing heads!"

This was just cheating reality! Ves was truly impressed with Jovy's guts. Not every mech designer possessed the courage to break reality's rules to this extent!

"This is just a single instance at the micro level, though." Ves pointed out. "I admit that achieving this change on a single subatomic particle is already impressive, but that hardly allows an entire mech that consists of an unimaginable sum of atoms to tunnel through a solid wall."

"It's a work in progress." Jovy replied. "You see, once you get the hang of the trick, you can easily apply it again. Once you are able to automate this process to an extent, you can quickly scale up this effect on a substantially larger scale! Watch!"

The MTA mech designer waved down to the arena grounds, causing everyone to pay close attention to the two flame-bathing mechs.

Just as the Purgatory Envoy was making good progress in melting the Fortunate Devil's legs, its left arm suddenly sputtered. The constant release of fiery blue flames had abruptly dropped by half.

Its integrated flamethrower had malfunctioned!

Ves immediately straightened his back. "That's impossible!"

He knew his mech design the best. Though the Fortunate Devil's flamethrower had inflicted plenty of damage on the left arm, Ves deliberately made it resilient to heat.

Considering its surface damage, the left arm still had a long way to go before its internals started to reach a critical heat state.

"This is the result of my design philosophy!" Jovy proudly declared. "As long as there is an infinitesimally small chance of malfunction, it can be amplified!"

What a horrible effect! Probability manipulation turned out to have a lot more punch than Ves expected!