A dance between three expert mechs quickly commenced. The Promethea used the Shield of Samar as a pillar and constantly rotated around the expert space knight as it continually struck the Skorpion Kommando with exploding energy beam attacks. The Shield of Samar tried to lock down the Skorpion Kommando or at least slow its attempts to circle around to strike at the Promethea directly, but Venerable Jannzi found it incredibly difficult to keep the enemy high-tier expert mech under control. Venerable Oskar Virathon was just too strong! Though he was not as advanced as Venerable Rebecca Andus, he still possessed the capital of a high-tier expert pilot. As he became more accustomed to the Shield of Samar's ability to pull his Skorpion Kommando closer with the power of gravity, he became more proficient with countering this effect. It became harder and harder for Jannzi to keep the Skorpion Kommando contained! "He's too strong! I can't slow him down that much anymore!" Jannzi and the Shield of Samar's attempts to slow down the Skorpion Kommando was as difficult as a human trying to stop a rampaging bull. When the difference in power between two entities were too great, the efforts of the weaker party only had minimal effect. This was unfortunately the case for Venerable Jannzi as her resonance strength and willpower development simply couldn't keep up against her current opponent. The Skorpion Kommando wasn't interested in destroying the Shield of Samar at all. Even if Jannzi's expert mech had just lost its tower shield, it still featured a lot of bulk on its frame that would take multiple attacks to overcome. Even if the Skorpion Kommando managed to get through the remaining defenses of the Shield of Samar, the Promethea would have inflicted a lot of damage by this time. Venerable Isobel Kotin's new explosive attack method were already dealing substantial amounts of damage to the Skorpion Kommando's round shield. The shield was not as thick and resilient as Jannzi's Unending alloy tower shield. Sooner or later, the Promethea would be able to chew through it and attack the more important parts of the Skorpion Kommando! Venerable Oskar Virathon only became angrier and more determined to take out Venerable Isobel Kotin than ever as a result! "I used to be like you once, Jannzi." He spoke as his expert space knight attempted to bypass the Shield of Samar and strike the Promethea with his Skorpion Tail. "I used to be a brave and honest knight mech pilot who put my life before the lives of others." "What changed? What caused you to build up so much resentment?" Jannzi asked as she did not let up in her attempts to block and stall her opponent. "MY COMRADES LEFT ME BEHIND, THAT WAS WHAT HAPPENED TO ME!" Venerable Oskar exploded! "When the Hex Army was on the verge of overrunning our mech units, a group of friends and I volunteered to act as the rear guard and buy time for the rest of our troops to reorganize and launch a counterattack." "Let me guess. That counterattack never came, right?" "My own commander left us for dead! That bastard lied to me! He told me he would come back and help me defeat the advancing Hexer troops, but what he actually did was order a hasty retreat, relying on me and the rest of the rearguard to give him an opportunity to save his own cowardly skin!" "I'm sorry to hear that, Oskar, but a knight must help regardless of how he or she is treated. Your actions must have saved the lives of many Fridaymen mech pilots who would have otherwise perished, thereby causing your state to suffer a lot more losses than otherwise." Though Venerable Jannzi wasn't entirely certain whether she would be willing to delay the enemy under those circumstances, her principles would have compelled her to stall the pursuing enemies if her services were necessary. "THAT IS PURE NONSENSE!" Oskar furiously responded to Jannzi's remark. "I am an expert pilot! My value is greater than thousands of regular mech pilots. Not even mech officers are as indispensable as me. Those cowards who discarded me like a pawn should have been the ones to stall the closing Hexer mechs instead! It is their job to serve as cannon fodder so that strong demigods like myself can stay alive and contribute much more to my state!" Venerable Jannzi almost couldn't believe what she heard. What Oskar had just said went against everything a knight pilot stood for! The extreme selfishness and lack of care that her opponent directed towards his 'lessers' was appalling! "You… are everything a knight pilot must avoid." "Don't bother with trying to shame me." Oskar contemptuously said. "Knightly virtues are horribly outdated! All of those rules and customs that the knight pilot community attempts to saddle onto us are nothing but cynical attempts to brainwash us into cannon fodder. In the eyes of other people, the only purpose of mechs with shields and high defenses is to act as mobile punching bags!" "That… that's a lie!" "It's the truth, you naive woman! Just ask your own leaders, if you dare. None of them respect you as a warrior that deserved to be treated with as much dignity as other expert pilots. They merely see you as a defensive asset that they can use up as they wish. Take this battle for example! Aside from sending you a single expert rifleman mech, all of the other Larkinson mechs around here are completely ignoring what is happening to you! They would rather fire their guns elsewhere than to Venerable Jannzi briefly paused for a moment as she couldn't help but harbor a bit of doubt. This tiny interval briefly caused the Shield of Samar to slacken for an instant. Venerable Oskar keenly recognized this weakness and instantly burst out his willpower! "BREAK!" His Skorpion Kommando unleashed another true resonance blast that broke the gravity pull on it once again! This allowed the Fridayman expert mech to finally bypass the Shield of Samar and approach the Promethea! "Isobel!" "I'm not that helpless at close range!" As the Skorpion Kommando came awfully close, the Promethea suddenly lifted up its two arms and activated its wrist-mounted flamethrower modules! Two incredibly hot streams of purple flames completely engulfed the space in front of it with overwhelming heat! Venerable Oskar was caught off-guard as his Skorpion Kommando entered head-long into the expanding flames! The propellant formula utilized by the Promethea was extremely expensive and fairly difficult to buy on the market. However, it was especially formulated to fight against expert mechs. Though the Skorpion Kommando was way too tough for the flames to burn it down in a short amount of time, the hot flames temporarily blinded its sensors, causing it to lose sight of the Promethea! By the time the Skorpion Kommando escaped the flame cloud, its target had already taken shelter behind the Shield of Samar again. The Skorpion Kommando suffered light burn damage across its frame, mostly because Isobel's willpower was incomparable to that of Oskar. "Nice trick, lady, but it won't work again." Oskar stated as his Skorpion Kommando resumed its offensive as if nothing had happened. The two Larkinson expert mechs continued to struggle in their attempts to hold back the powerful enemy machine. The Skorpion Kommando eventually lost its shield after it endured too many attacks from the Promethea. This allowed Venerable Isobel to target the exposed frame of the Skorpion Kommando. Unfortunately for her, Venerable Oskar always made sure that his expert space knight never exposed its back. The frontal armor of the Skorpion Kommando was still strong! The powerful high-tier expert mech didn't seem to have weakened in the slightest after losing its physical shield. Instead, the absence of this sizable object seemed to have liberated it a bit. It became a bit faster and more agile. If not for its relatively sturdy frame, it could have been mistaken for an expert swordsman mech! Though Venerable Oskar hadn't been able to fulfill his wish of striking down the Promethea, he was still able to inflict a steady amount of damage onto the Shield of Samar. The latter's Unending alloy armor system withstood the edge of the transphasic heavy sword fairly well, mostly by virtue of its thickness and excellent material hardness. Unfortunately for Jannzi, the famed strength of Unending alloy appeared to be completely helpless whenever the Skorpion Tail struck with great force! Each time this strange limb struck the Shield of Samar, its stinger pierced through the upper layer and punched deep enough to inject a sizable amount of corrosive fluids. Empowered by Venerable Oskar's formidable will, the Skorpion Kommando's venom rapidly ate away just as much Unending alloy as before. It was as if the Viper specially formulated a substance that was solely designed to destroy the Unending alloy that the Larkinson Clan famously employed! While a certain mech designer was wailing at the sight of so much Unending alloy being melted away, the Skorpion Kommando finally managed to get past the lumbering expert space knight and gain a chance to strike at the Promethea once again! Though Venerable Isobel's expert mech let loose with its pair of flamethrowers once again, Venerable Oskar already anticipated this move. The Skorpion Kommando did not advance straight towards the Promethea but took a detour and circled around once again, allowing it to escape most of the flames! "Isobel!" The Skorpion Kommando struck the Promethea's resonance shield with both its sword and its Skorpion Tail! This time, the latter sprayed a formula that was especially designed to destabilize and drain resonance shields. Though the Promethea's ability to resist incoming damage was not as bad as the old Amaranto, it was still rather deficient in this aspect due to emphasizing offense. The Skorpion Kommando not only let its corrosive venom do its work, but also bashed the Promethea's resonance shield with repeated powerful sword strikes! "Get away from my friend!" The Shield of Samar eventually caught up and physically pushed the Skorpion Kommando away! "Haha! You can't stop me, little knight! You're only delaying the inevitable!" Though it took a bit of time, the Skorpion Kommando soon managed to escape the entanglement of the Shield of Samar once again! After ignoring and fending off the flames unleashed by the Promethea, the Skorpion Kommando launched another flurry of attacks that finally broke the former's resonance shield! Venerable Oskar had been waiting for this moment. Now that the Promethea had no other protection left aside from its thin and inadequate transphasic armor system, the dreaded Skorpion Tail arced forward with incredible speed and power! The Promethea lifted up its powerful Ignitron luminar crystal rifle in an attempt to use it as a makeshift shield, but the segmented Skorpion Tail easily twitched and bypassed this pathetic obstacle! "THE MODERN KNIGHT IS DEAD!" Venerable Oskar viciously stated! "KNIGHTS NEVER FIGHT ALONE!" Venerable Jannzi roared! The Shield of Samar glowed with resonance a short instance before the Skorpion Tail could strike at the Promethea. Jannzi not only connected deeper with her expert mech than ever before, but also established a closer connection with Qilanxo! The shadow of a giant reptilian exobeast appeared above the Shield of Samar! "PRIMAL AEGIS!" The masterwork expert mech began to embody Qilanxo to a greater degree, allowing the design spirit to extend a more distant spatial barrier that covered the Promethea just in time! The Skorpion Tail struck the spatial barrier with such great force that it quickly collapsed. This defensive measure was not strong enough to stop the strongest attack from a high-tier expert mech! Due to this brief blockade, the Skorpion Tail had lost a lot of power and speed. Even so, the delay was so minimal that it still went on to strike the Promethea, though its stinger failed to punch as deeply into the transphasic armor plating of its target than intended. A dangerous amount of corrosive fluids splashed across the surface of the expert rifleman mech. The machine could do little to nothing to stop the substance from spreading and corroding the armor. The fact that it was transphasic only mildly slowed down the progress of this attack! Though the weakened strike failed to cripple the Promethea in a single blow as Oskar intended, the attack still managed to eat through the Larkinson expert mech's exterior and damage a part of its internals. The Promethea's performance quickly dropped! "My mech is hit!"