Chapter 324: The Machine Soul Rejoices
It must be said, Aoko's reaction was incredibly fast. The moment she realized she was trapped in a barrier, and Cheng Tian was preparing a high-threat skill she couldn't comprehend, her first reaction was to transform back into her Morph Ball form.
She immediately released a Sticky Bomb, attempting to blast open the floor directly beneath her to escape.
But unfortunately, Cheng Tian's barrier wasn't a hemispherical dome; it was a complete half-sphere, with the ground also covered by the barrier, and it was sized to synchronize with the mecha's data.
In other words, to get out, she would have to honestly deal over 500 cumulative damage to the barrier with her mecha.
The simplest, yet most difficult, way to remove the barrier.
Thanks to her and her mecha's immunity to Sticky Bombs, Aoko remained in place, allowing the force of the explosion to affect her.
The Sticky Bomb indeed lived up to its name, successfully gaining a damage bonus when facing Cheng Tian's purely confining barrier trap. One bomb instantly dealt 150 points of damage to the barrier, nearly a third of its health.
But unfortunately, because she had just blasted Cheng Tian down from the ceiling, and Sticky Bombs could only be held two at a time with a manufacturing cooldown, this allowed her to lose her last chance to escape.
The elaborately bound thick book in Aoko's right hand looked intimidating, but what was truly at work was the mutated frontal lobe within Cheng Tian's glabella!
The player Aoko, similarly curled into a ball in the cockpit, only felt a blinding flash of light before completely losing consciousness.
And at the same time, the 'Energy Armor' Aoko was wearing, from the Birdmen ruins, and the 'Metroid' she was currently piloting, both instantly changed their paint schemes, turning a terrifying cyan, identical to the zombie units in the Metal Slug world —
Ten Commandments of Mecha Arts!
Book of Ys Enhanced Mode!
[Book of Ys: Heart: Golden Legend / Lv4, Heart Priest professional equipment, off-hand artifact. Equipment requirement: Heart Priest. Durability 60/60.
The exclusive artifact of the Heart Priest, the leader of the Six Priests in the Ys Origin worldview. It is a symbol of both position and status. The Fact family relied on this 'Heart' book to comprehend and inherit the unique sorcerer abilities of the Heart Priest.
While holding the Book of Heart —
All your main professional skill casting costs will be halved, and the efficiency of 'Holy Radiance Purification' and 'Demonic Nightmare Erosion' will be doubled.
You will be immune to all S-rank Lv4 or below, or S-rank below Lv14, mind-type spell controls, and have a 50% base chance to backfire on the source.
Your Spirit attribute will not be affected by any 'attribute reduction' effects; this effect has priority.
All your non-professional 'Heart' attribute-related skills will receive additional effect enhancements. Currently affected skills are — Ten Commandments, Hundred Demons' Night Parade, Soul Salvation. (Lv4 additional enhancement)
Ten Commandments — Additional enhancement: Effective targets expanded to include up to Boss templates and player units. Units converted into living corpses will gain the 'High-Pressure Blood Column' skill.
Hundred Demons' Night Parade — Additional enhancement: Effective targets expanded to include up to Boss templates and player units. When the skill takes effect on an enemy, you can choose 1 out of 4 random demon or yokai phantoms as the target's transformation form; when the skill takes effect on yourself, you can limit your transformation forms to within the scope of 1 game title.
Soul Salvation — Additional enhancement: In any instance, you will automatically search for and save innocent souls that may exist within a 500-meter radius, and can expand the salvation range based on the current instance's modifiers. The current instance's savable innocent souls are expanded to the 'Machine Soul' category, and the innocent machine souls appear in an iron color.]
[Additional Comment: Taking the Book of Heart resulted in five of the six Books of Ys being missing, but based on your special relationship with the Twin Goddesses, the remaining five priests dare not speak out in anger.]
[Additional Hint: Under the influence of the instance modifier 'Mecha Combat', some of your skills, when converted into 『Mecha Arts』 derivatives, have undergone corresponding changes in effects and targets.
For example, the target of the Ten Commandments has changed from 'Human-exclusive' to 'Humanoid Machine-exclusive'. Living corpse units are converted into puppet machine units, and the additional skill has also changed from 『High-Pressure Blood Column』 to 『Electromagnetic Energy Burst』. Using a '3.5-inch floppy disk' can remove the puppet machine state.]
Although theoretically Cheng Tian could use Soul Fragments to enhance this profession-exclusive Book of Ys, when he had money, Cheng Tian wouldn't be particularly frugal. Coupled with Cleria Ore Powder, Cheng Tian threw all his income from his Ys Origin journey into this book after leaving feeding fees and vehicle maintenance fees, just barely managing to enhance the equipment to Lv4.
It can only be said that it truly lives up to its Golden Legend-grade professional equipment status; even without enhancement, its original effects are exceptionally strong.
And its Lv4 additional effect after enhancement is actually equivalent to simultaneously granting the Ten Commandments, Hundred Demons' Night Parade, and Innocent Souls critical qualitative enhancements equivalent to Lv7 or even Lv10.
Although the Metroid looked like a ball, its abbreviation was still 'Armored Executioner', which is a 'Humanoid Walking Tank', falling within the scope of humanoid mecha classification, so it still couldn't escape the control of the Ten Commandments.
The Ten Commandments, with its target transformed from humans to humanoid machines, instantly changed from radiation affecting genes to a virus affecting machines.
Logically speaking, the target of Cheng Tian's Ten Commandments should have been the Metroid in front of him, not the human pilot inside. But interestingly, because the skill itself could simultaneously affect up to two targets with a chain effect, while Aoko herself was fine, her energy armor, which had 'exoskeleton armor' properties, was caught in the chain control.
This was clearly not good news for Aoko, who was extremely reliant on her energy armor.
Not only was her body completely hijacked by her energy armor, but the Metroid's cockpit hatch also opened on its own, and cyan-colored armored steel fists directly pulled Aoko out, person and armor alike!
Pulled out, Aoko still couldn't move, forced to stand at attention, bound by the energy armor.
At this moment, the purple restraint barrier was lifted by Cheng Tian, and the Metroid, having discarded the burden in its belly, directly moved towards Cheng Tian.
As a type of combat vehicle, humanoid mechas in the Armored Warriors worldview naturally have the attribute of only being able to be deployed or recovered normally before and after combat. As long as the combat on the current battlefield had not ceased, Cheng Tian would not be able to bypass the rules and store the mecha in his inventory, let alone that the mechas held by players had undergone exclusive authentication, temporarily putting a lock on them.
But for Cheng Tian, this lock was not effective.
In Aoko's view, Cheng Tian's Aoko merely placed his armored steel fist on the Metroid. Soon, the cyan paint on the Metroid was removed, but along with it, the exclusive authentication with Aoko was also removed, and then —
It was directly added to Cheng Tian's vehicle matrix!
Cheng Tian could even clearly feel a joyous fluctuation, like that of a living creature, emanating from the system core of this mecha.
The Machine Soul rejoices!