Chapter 5961 Dark Attack
Hyper technology had come a long way since the first year of the Age of Dawn.
Many scientists, engineers and mech designers collectively studied the new phenomena that emerged after the Red Ocean became bathed by exotic radiation.
Old families that retained ancient cultivation legacies also invested a lot of effort into deciphering the old texts for any solutions that could be applied in the modern era.
The combined efforts of these two groups resulted in blazingly fast advancement of hyper technology!
In one instance, the effectiveness of hyper technology increased by as much as 50 percent over a single quarter!
This extreme occurrence did not happen again, but it still served as a powerful reminder to everyone that hyper technology had a huge amount of untapped potential.
During the second year of the Age of Dawn, most mech designers and R&D teams no longer focused on attaining drastic performance gains. They had already picked all of the low-hanging fruit during the previous year.
What they sought to do instead was to explore the properties of specific hyper materials and develop unprecedented new design applications on the basis of their discoveries.
There were so many different E energy attributes out there that the list constantly expanded with each passing day.
Every new element translated into new possibilities. This led to a pattern of dispersal. A lot of researchers no longer tried to figure out how to perform new tricks with boring fire or water hypers anymore.
Instead, they sought to reduce the competition by studying more obscure hypers with attributes ranging from softness to delayed gratification.
This trend caused the field of hyper technology to undergo a rapid horizontal expansion. Now that it became much more difficult to achieve vertical progress, a lot of research institutions sought to make quick accomplishments by being the first to develop viable design applications for all kinds of strange and exotic elements.
Of course, the basic and fundamental ones such as the five classical elements still attracted a huge amount of attention. It was just that only the larger and more well-funded research institutions were able to remain competitive in these areas.
In any case, not many research institutions invested research into studying the darkness element.
There were a number of issues related to studying them. Darkness energy fell into the category of negative energy, which instantly repelled a lot of researchers.
Negative energy tended to affect people in a detrimental manner. People became angry, depressed, morose and even suicidal in a few cases.
Darkness tended to be more difficult to control than other elements due to its incredibly broad meaning and definition. It was tied to so many associations that it was easy for experiments to produce accidents because the manipulation of darkness energy produced radically different results than expected.
Further, the demand for hyper technology related to the darkness element tended to be skewed towards more covert and clandestine applications.
There was little honor and glory to be earned in this research direction. Many of the mech designers and research institutions assigned to explore the darkness element did so with the purpose of improving stealth mechs and all kinds of other unsavory devices.
This was why the darkness element already managed to earn a bad rep in the mech industry. Anyone who was depraved enough to incorporate darkness hypers in their mech designs was reckless at best, or deliberately malicious at worst!
Ves did not agree with this common sentiment. While he readily admitted that it was easy for flawed and weak-willed people to get corrupted by darkness, he believed he was exempt from this trap.
Since the last lightning tribulation event directly incorporated the darkness attribute to his nascent domain without any contamination, Ves gained a thorough comprehension of this element without any additional biases or other unpleasant baggage.
It was a remarkably pure and sterile way of embracing a new element. Though Ves could do little about the biases and associations he already possessed, they were not strong enough for him to treat darkness as a source of evil.
Instead, Ves recognized the amazing potential of this broad and versatile element. Its scattered meanings and chaotic collection of concepts provided a near-infinite amount of versatility. Darkness was so flexible and malleable that he could transform it into a wide range of design applications!
As Tusa continued to take in these words, he began to imagine different scenarios for the Dark Zephyr.
Many of them showed different ways his living mech could inflict damage onto a large and sturdy target like an alien warship.
While the products of his imagination all looked cool in different ways, the images did not resonate with him. This showed that this was not how he wanted to channel the power of darkness.
"Chip! Chip!"
Since Tusa found it difficult to come up with an image, he began to lean more towards Blackwing, who embodied the darkness element on his behalf.
The companion spirit entertained a handful of different ideas before fixating his mind on one specific means of attack.
Tusa imagined the Dark Zephyr dancing his way towards a large alien battleship, evading every intercepting attack that tried to stop the ace mech's approach.
When his battle partner came close enough, Tusa performed the Leap of True Freedom technique, enabling the expert light skirmisher to bypass the energy shield layers as if they did not exist.
The scenario up to this point was familiar to him. What was new this time was that the Dark Zephyr did not stop.
The machine made no attempts to reduce his forward momentum nor try to circle around the hull of the enemy vessel.
Instead, the living ace mech continued to charge forward to the point where he was on the verge of crashing directly into the hull!
Ace mech or not, Saint Kingdom or not, the Dark Zephyr at this level would not be able to withstand this ruinous impact without incurring damage, not at this speed and the thickness of the enemy hull structure.
Yet instead of producing the expected result, the Dark Zephyr somehow turned into a shadowy phantom and phased right through the hull of the enemy vessel!
A blink of an eye later, the Dark Zephyr managed to emerge out of the opposite side of the hull, where he promptly transformed back into his corporeal form.
A quick Leap of True Freedom later, the expert light skirmisher deftly bypassed the intact transphasic energy shield on the other side and went on his way.
In the meantime, the 'tunnel' in the structure of the enemy warship that the Dark Zephyr just managed to pass through started to darken and weaken before collapsing entirely!
In the meantime, the 'tunnel' in the structure of the enemy warship that the Dark Zephyr just managed to pass through started to darken and weaken before collapsing entirely!
Secondary explosions engulfed the weakened sections, causing the ship to suffer crippling damage that ended her participation in the battle!
This was an amazing scenario.
Yet Tusa and Blackwing were not done.
It turned out that the alien warship was not floating in space by herself, but instead lined up in a row of over a dozen identical battleships.
This neat formation proved to be the alien fleet's downfall as the Dark Zephyr continued to pass through each of the warships in a single straight line!
It took a remarkably short time for the blazingly fast ace mech to reach the opposite end of the formation!
Seconds later, all of the remaining warships began to partially collapse while becoming beset by their own secondary explosions!
In just a single attack run, the Dark Zephyr singlehandedly crippled 12 alien battleships!
"This... this it. This is it! This is what the Dark Zephyr should become! My battle partner should become a mech that neutralizes everything in his path. My machine shall become the ominous wind that leaves only darkness in his wake!"