The day had arrived faster than Ves expected. Time flew by as Ves and his wife returned to their grand stateroom and took care of their children. Neither of them spent any time thinking about their latest work or the preparations they needed to make for the upcoming testing session. Their work might be their passion, but their children were their legacy! "I missed you, mama!" 𝐟𝚛𝕖𝚎𝕨𝗲𝐛𝚗𝐨𝐯𝐞𝕝.𝐜𝗼𝗺 "Look at what I learned in school, papa!" A quiet evening passed. As Ves and Gloriana readied themselves for the next day, they inspected the new Instrument of Doom while supervising the preparation work for the upcoming testing session. The two did not plan to conduct an exhaustive demonstration this time because the Phase King needed to lend his strength to amplify every full-powered attack. It was fine if the Amaranto only fired its new weapon a couple of times, but the Phase King would definitely have to dip into its reserves if the Instrument of Doom kept spitting one energy beam after another! The Phase King needed to save up his resources for future battles where every shot counted. Once the expeditionary fleet dropped out of FTL travel and ended up in a quiet and empty star system, the Golden Skull Alliance performed its usual routine. Their current objective was to find Lord Pearian Yorul-Tavik or any clues related to him, so the Golden Skullers needed to make a serious effort into their search. Numerous speedy combat carriers split away from the combined fleet and headed to the inner system in order to scan the local planets and moons for any crash sites or other artificial traces. The chance of encountering anything of note was slim to none, but Ves didn't really care about that. He could have told everyone that there was no need to perform such an exhaustive and time-consuming search when good ol' Ylvaine could act as their compass. Ves had yet to ask Ylvaine for the precise coordinates of the missing first-class lordling. The distance between the expeditionary fleet and the man that everyone was searching for was still a bit too large at this time. The only solid piece of news that Ylvaine provided was that the man was still alive. That was enough for the Golden Skull Alliance to stick to its current plan. If nothing went wrong, the expeditionary fleet would gradually meander closer and closer to Lord Pearian Yorul-Tavik's location. Once Ves thought that his clan had stuck around long enough, he intended to obtain a definite answer from Ylvaine and retrieve the mission objective as soon as possible! Waiting until the expeditionary fleet came a lot closer to the scion of the Yorul-Tavik would make it a lot less costly for Ylvaine to obtain the man's precise coordinates! In fact, Ylvaine was already capable of helping the expeditionary fleet approach the man's location without expending a lot of energy. Knowing how much energy and effort it took to divine Lord Pearian's whereabouts made it possible to utilize a hot-and-cold approach to triangulate his position. Ves had already tasked the Black Cats to keep track of this data in the hopes that they could infer the direction and distance between the expeditionary fleet and their target. Hopefully, Lord Pearian had ended up on the Krakatoa side of the border. If the man crashed on the Zelmar side of the border instead, then the risks of retrieving him were vastly greater. This was because the chance of encountering a first-class pioneering fleet was too great! "I hope we won't end up wasting our time." Right now, he was more interested in testing his new weapon. As soon as it became clear that it was unlikely that there were other human forces in the star system, the expeditionary fleet approached an asteroid belt that provided plenty of cheap targets for the Amaranto. Larkinsons set up the testing session by completing various tasks. They deployed sensor arrays that could record the power and effects of the upcoming attacks. They deployed jamming devices around the testing site that could prevent any third-party listening devices from capturing any useful data. They also performed deep scans on all of the asteroids marked for destruction in order to understand their density and material composition. Figuring this out was crucial to gaining a more thorough understanding of how extensively the Instrument of Doom was able to threaten large targets! "Alright, Venerable Stark. We have set everything up. It's time for your mech to get into place. Please launch the Amaranto and move to the supplied coordinates." "Understood." Venerable Stark closed her eyes and felt out her expert mech. The powerful third order living mech might not be as talkative as the others of its kind, but it had a deep and trusting relationship with its pilot. Both Davia and the Amaranto were eager to learn how extensively the new weapon could change the equation. Their performance during the Battle of Pima Prime had disappointed them both. They should have suppressed the Sundered Phalanx with their firepower, but instead ended up in a mutual suppression battle against a powerful high-tier expert mech. Though the pilot and mech had played their part in preventing the Star of Liberation from threatening their comrades, they weren't exactly happy with being relegated to the background. Venerable Davia clenched her hand into a fist. "If I want to enact retribution, then I need to do more. I only have less than a century left to acquire the strength I need to fulfill my remaining life's purpose." Her burning motivation and conviction drove her to perform the best she could for this initial testing session. The Instrument of Doom cannon was a gift and an investment from the Larkinson Clan. If Venerable Davia couldn't harness the power of this powerful new blessed weapon, then she would not be able to receive as many upgrades and other goodies from the patriarch! She knew quite well that she maintained a transactional relationship with the Larkinson Clan. Everything would remain fine as long as she was stronger and more effective in battle than any Larkinson expert pilot. Not even the emergence of more and more Larkinson expert pilots could change this as the importance of high-tier expert pilots and ace pilots was far greater than a bunch of low-tier expert pilots! The fear and apprehension of getting overtaken drove Venerable Stark into doing her best to grow and adapt to difficult circumstances. Venerable Stark had already spent a lot of time familiarizing herself with many different energy cannon models within the MSTS. She also read numerous textbooks on this weapon type to quickly allow her to catch up to the pilots who specialized in the use of energy cannons for multiple decades. From the moment the Amaranto deployed with a hefty and oversized luminar crystal cannon in its grasp, Davia already felt rewarded for her efforts. Though the Amaranto clearly had to put a lot more effort into overcoming inertia due to the significantly greater mass of the Instrument of Doom, the expert mech did not lose its balance or deviate from its flight trajectory. Venerable Stark didn't even have to think about keeping her expert mech stable in space while performing complicated maneuvers with her Amaranto. This wasn't the case anymore. The cannon that looked as if it was at least a third as large as the machine that wielded it significantly. All of the crystals, the energy cells, the buffer materials and so on added so much encumbrance that the Amaranto would have never been able to handle the weapon with so much relative ease if it didn't enjoy all of the advantages of an expert mech! It took a bit of time for the slower Amaranto to reach its destination. The disappointing mobility demonstrated by the expert mech made it clear that it should never be sent away from the fleet or a defensive stronghold during an engagement! Ves did not mind this too much. He already took this shortcoming into account. In fact, the more the Amaranto suffered, the more he held out hope that the Instrument of Doom would pay off in the end! "The Amaranto is in place." Gloriana reported. "Shall we begin?" "Let's go, then. Venerable Stark, please rouse the Instrument of Doom to life!" "I was waiting for that order." For now, the weapon already looked impressive in its current state. Its mostly transparent crystal construction made it seem as if the Amaranto had just raided an art museum. Though the newly built weapon clearly possessed elements that identified it as a weapon, most laymen thought it was far too pretty and ornamental to serve as a weapon! What happened next only reinforced this impression because the weapon soon began to shine and shimmer in blue! Many different components began to channel energy and perform all kinds of essential tasks. Once the Instrument of Doom was ready to fire, the whale head-shaped muzzle began to glow a bit brighter and more ominously than the rest of the weapon. Ves and Gloriana double-checked the telemetry to ensure that everything was within tolerance. The weapon was so powerful that any catastrophic malfunction could damage the Amaranto and harm Venerable Stark! This was why the two mech designers did not allow the Amaranto to proceed until they were absolutely certain that the luminar crystal cannon was in order! Ves exchanged a brief glance with Gloriana before he transmitted the next order. "You may proceed with the first test shot, Venerable Stark. Don't try to resonate with the weapon or request the Phase King to amplify the attack. Before we do anything fancy, we need establish a baseline of its performance." "Understood. I will try my best not to resonate with the weapon, but this is difficult since it was made for this purpose." When the Amaranto fired its new weapon for the first time, many onlookers who had access to a live feed looked considerably impressed at the result. The Instrument of Doom's whale head had flashed with power as it unleashed the powerful laser beam! A third of the body of a mech-like target dummy became engulfed by the overpowering laser beam. Whatever materials it was made of only resisted the powerful attack for a brief moment before succumbing entirely! The powerful laser beam continued on with hardly any reduction in power before it dug into an asteroid located behind the vaporized target dummy. The beam drilled a deep hole into the fairly weak asteroid. By the time the Instrument of Doom stopped firing the laser beam, everyone tried to understand how much power the Amaranto could exert with its new weapon. "Wow… it went so deep…" "None of our other ranged expert mechs can drill so deep with a single attack." "Heh. This is child's play for the Amaranto." After firing a couple of identical shots against different targets, Venerable Davia received the order to resonate with the weapon. The attack that followed after this change was drastically different! Not only did the Amaranto and its Instrument of Doom begin to glow brighter and more energetically than before, but the beam that spat out of the beautiful muzzle was stronger, thicker and brighter than any typical attack launched by the Instrument of Vengeance! The resonance-empowered laser beam attack not only punched through multiple target dummies, but it also managed to drill from one side of an asteroid to the other side! "That's too powerful!" "The Amaranto hasn't even activated the transphasic function of the new weapon." "No mid-tier expert mech will be able to block too many of these attacks. The absolute firepower of the Instrument of Doom will be a nightmare to our future opponents!" Ves smirked as he imagined the reactions from other onlookers. "This isn't even close to its maximum power." Venerable Stark still had three more options to amplify the firepower of the Instrument of Doom even further. One of them was to tap into the resonating exotics that were specifically selected to amplify the energy cannon's damage potential. Another was to activate the transphasic function so that the energy beam would penetrate much deeper into its target. The last one was to activate the Phase King's blessing and borrow its formidable abilities to enhance the attack even further.