The Felixia Catstrikers were almost wiped out. One by one, Zeigra destroyed or disabled half of their mechs in the first three rounds.
Now, the fourth round annihilated every remaining humanoid mech in the fight. Both the spearman mech and the one-armed axeman mech that feebly tried to contain the brutal huge cat had finally succumbed from all of the damage they accumulated.
Every mech possessed a limit! To the two midrange mechs, they had already performed admirably for lasting so long against a huge cat engineered to destroy and consume mechs!
At this stage of the battle, Lady Miralix's Kinslayer was the only mech that stood in the way between victory and defeat. The lives of all of the mech pilots who ejected as well as the support personnel watching the battle with baited breath aboard the legged transports depended on the performance of the tiger mech!
Despite carrying such a huge burden on her shoulders, Lady Miralix no longer thought about her responsibilities. She no longer put any mind to her future ambitions, nor did she think about how frightening it was to confront a Crown Cat by herself.
She had fully given in to the rush of battle!
Both Lady Miralix and the Kinslayer fought with only one goal in mind: to defeat Zeigra! Their animosity towards the powerful huge cat compelled them to vanquish the arrogant huge cat and prove their worth as the true king of the forest!
\"No stinking cat will triumph against a true daughter of House Laterna!\"
While his exhaustion and his profusely-bleeding wounds sapped Zeigra's strength, the Crown Cat still mustered up whatever strength he could draw upon his battered body. The endurance of the huge cat had continuously confounded everyone from the hunting team!
\"Rank twenty, my butt! He's at least rank fifteen, if not higher!\"
\"I don't understand how he's able to keep fighting when many other cats would have slowed down by now! Is Zeigra extracting his energy from the chunks of mechs he's eaten or something?!\"
The huge cat certainly deserved to be regarded as a Crown Cat. Yet Lady Miralix exhibited no fear at all for challenging this formidable beast in single combat.
Zeigra may be powerful, but her Kinslayer still managed to keep up!
Even though her mech bore numerous claw marks and other scars of combat, as long as she avoided damage to the Kinslayer's limbs and other essential parts, she still had a chance of vanquishing her opponent!
Zeigra possessed an absolute advantage in size, strength and damage absorbing capacity. Despite his increasingly distressed state, the cat appeared as if he could still keep up the fighting for another fifteen minutes!
Lady Miralix knew her Kinslayer couldn't last that long! Having expended a huge amount of energy from the start of the battle, the endurance of her tiger mech would only see her through the battle for just five minutes at this rate!
That was too short!
Even if she stretched out her energy reserves, the damage that Zeigra inflicted on her mech continued to take its toll as well.
A battle of attrition pitted both sides to a brutal competition to see who outlasted the other! The Kinslayer significantly underperformed in this aspect compared to Zeigra, but Lady Miralix did not give up the fight!
She still maintained her confidence!
\"If I can't beat you with strength, I'll beat you with my skill!\"
The battle between the two cat-like entities became increasingly more violent as Lady Miralix no longer heeded any concerns about conserving the energy reserves or the integrity of her mech.
Instead, she urged her machine to circle around and launch risky attacks. Even if she failed half of the time, the strikes she landed succeeded in exacerbating the wounds that Zeigra already incurred.
Lady Miralix recognized that the key to victory lay in accelerating the bleeding! As long as Zeigra lost enough blood, he would inevitably slow down as the lack of blood circulation would severely hamper the functioning of his huge but very demanding body!
The Kinslayer's smaller size provided it with an advantage in spontaneity and explosiveness. Zeigra could be quite fast as well, but aside from pouncing forward, he had trouble keeping up with the Kinslayer as the tiger mech dodged and tried to circle around!
As the battle in the material realm heated up, the battle that simultaneously took place in the imaginary realm took yet another turn.
The spiritual presences that Zeigra and Vescas maintained in the imaginary realm echoed the circumstances in reality. The former still maintained an absolute advantage in strength over the latter.
If Ves had not injected his recently-created spiritual product with a dose of his own spiritual energy, then Vescas would have already succumbed by now!
\"What would have happened if I didn't intervene?\" Ves momentarily wondered.
Perhaps Vescas might not break apart, but it would have certainly drawn back its strength, thereby depriving Lady Miralix of the support she received from her mech!
There was a significant difference between piloting a mech that felt alive and one that felt as lifeless as a rock!
With so much at stake, how could Ves make a difference between the posturing that took place between the two uneven spiritual entities?
His previous efforts in annoying Zeigra's spiritual presence might have made a difference, but Ves doubted that he achieved anything too impactful.
The beast's spirituality was almost as strong as ever! Aside from its energy expenditure, Zeigra's spiritual presence still felt as aggressive and brutal as ever!
\"Whatever exhaustion and physical wounds Zeigra is suffering from, the damage isn't reflected to his spirituality!\"
That made sense to Ves, but it was still a disappointment to him. He couldn't find an easy angle to make any serious dent in Zeigra's spiritual strength.
The only way that Ves could pose a serious threat to the huge cat's spirituality was if he could muster up his complete strength, but that was easier said than done!
\"It's not like I can move my design seed from the deepest part of my mind and fling it forward like a cannonball.\" He muttered. \"Can I?\"
That was a silly idea. Ves had tried multiple times to move his design seed, but it appeared to be rooted in the core of his mind.
Trying to tear his design seed from its place in order to use it as a weapon was as silly as a mech tearing open its cockpit, grabbing hold of its mech pilot in order to use the body as a club!
Ves could not bring his full Spirituality to bear against his opponent, and this limitation annoyed him to no end!
How could he leverage his limited strength in the best possible way to tip the balance of the ongoing battle in his favor?
His eyes drew away from Zeigra's spiritual presence and started to lock into the spiritual presence of his spiritual product.
\"I can't do anything about Zeigra since his spirituality is active and at its most alert state, but it's a different story when it comes to Vescas!\"
Ves enjoyed a lot of leverage over his spiritual product. As for his creation, Vescas still responded and opened up to him, especially after he fed the newborn spiritual entity with additional spiritual energy when it needed it the most!
\"It's like a puppy who latches on to anyone who shows affection!\"
Vescas grew onto Lady Miralix when she continually interfaced with the Kinslayer. Now, it had become reacquainted with one of its birth parents when Ves helped it in its time of need.
The openness of his spiritual product towards him gave Ves an idea that might work.
\"What if I resonate with my spiritual product?\"
The theory was simple. Instead of adding his strength directly to a fragile spiritual product which couldn't handle anymore energy, why not find a way to resonate and amplify its existing strength?
One of the main preoccupations of a mech designer was synergy. Trying to piece different parts together so that their combination resulted in a much higher level of performance made a huge difference.
\"Just like how physical parts can achieve synergy, two compatible spiritual entities can achieve synergy as well!\"
However, Ves quickly bumped into the problem of how he could possibly resonate with his spiritual product.
\"I'm not an expert pilot.\" He mentally muttered to himself. \"Yet.. I can imitate some of their abilities!\"
His eyes metaphorically shined as the idea came into his head. He studied and witnessed the usage of an expert pilot's force of will enough times to know how they worked in principle!
Even if his understanding of the underlying mechanics was a bit fuzzy, Ves might as well try and see if he could achieve anything remarkable!
\"Is it possible that I can make Miralix and Vescas achieve unity between man and machine?\"
Ves mentally shook his head. There was no way he could fully replicate the steps required to achieve the legendary state of complete resonance. What Venerable Eloise Pelican and her Valiant Warden mech once achieved had only come about with the aid of a very powerful spiritual fragment!
With the lackluster strength of his spiritual projection in the imaginary realm, the best Ves could hope for was to provide a temporary boost to the Kinslayer's X-Factor by resonating with Vescas.
He decided to enact his plan. He first changed the shape of his spiritual projection. Instead of compressing it into a solid tentacle-like concentration of spiritual energy, he deliberately dispersed it into its more natural cloud-like form.
Of course, the burn rate of his spiritual energy increased as the corrosive winds of the imaginary realm as well as the pressure exerted by Zeigra's spiritual presence pounced on the weaknesses of this form!
To combat this, Ves attempted to muster up his thoughts and emotions and inject it into his spiritual projection in a special way. He was not very deliberate about what kind of elements he chose to incorporate into his pseudo-force of will.
The weak but coherent force of will that Ves invented possessed a very weird quality. He recognized all of the aspects of himself in it, such as his depth of knowledge and affection towards mechs as well as his beliefs and assumptions concerning his design philosophy. His force of will even possessed a dauntless quality, as if it dared to take on the galaxy!
Ves had no time to reflect on himself. Instead, he moved his pseudo-force of will to the spiritual presence of his spiritual product.
\"Open yourself up to me.\" He mentally whispered to Vescas. \"I want to help you. You need my help!\"
His naive spiritual product tasted the flavor of the approaching force of will and instantly took a liking for it! It hadn't yet grown sophisticated enough to be on guard, so it wholeheartedly embraced the force of will that felt so familiar with its own spiritual DNA!
\"Yes! Resonate with me! Empower yourself by synchronizing with my empowered will!\"
What happened next was hard to describe to Ves. His cognition blurred as something very remarkable and abstruse took place. His force of will seamlessly entered into his spiritual product and began to vibrate, for lack of a better word.
Due to the willpower infused in his force of will, it managed to retain its separate identity. Vescas could not do anything to absorb it without using force, but it would never do such a thing against an entity it loved!
Whatever Ves was doing started to produce results.
Vescas' spiritual presence in the imaginary realm started to firm up. While quantity or quality of spiritual energy hadn't increased, the rudimentary resonance taking place inside its core makeup amplified its existing strength!
The spiritual product no longer wavered against the suppression exerted by Zeigra's spiritual presence. Instead, Vescas started to exert its own form of pressuring!
Although its pressure paled in comparison to that of the Crown Cat, it nonetheless produced some effects!
The changes taking place in the imaginary realm quickly reflected back to the battle taking place in the material realm!
Whereas Lady Miralix felt as if she controlled her mech more fluidly, to the point of where her mech already begun to move before she inputted her thoughts through the connection, Zeigra experienced the opposite!
The Crown Cat's appeared less confident and his ferocity exhibited some instability!
As his wounds and his exhaustion continued to pile up, this subtle change in mentality compounded Zeigra's difficulties! The huge cat began to show increasing signs of hesitation!
