The aliens crewing the enemy battleship were previously content to ignore the other human mechs and starships in the star system. They recognized that an ace mech was by far the greatest threat a human pioneer could deploy on the battlefield. As long as they could take down the Mars, the rest of the human mech force posed no threat! However, a part of that calculus changed once the other human units proved that they could pose a more substantial threat to the alien vessel. This was why the aliens showed a greater willingness to redirect a part of their formidable firepower towards the Antonio Cross and her compliment of expert pilots! "Incoming!" This time, one of the powerful laser beams managed to get lucky enough to inflict a glancing blow on the Cross Clan's fleet carrier! One of her energy shield's managed to block most of the blow, but it did not come without a cost. "One of our shield generators has been overloaded! Our engineers report that it will take at least 44 minutes to replace the blown parts and bring her back to operation!" "Turn our ship around and don't expose the same section towards the enemy battleship again!" The Antonio Cross experienced a few close shaves, but the Tower of Babel quickly gave up on striking the fleet carrier. The latter proved to be a lot more difficult to hit than other fleet carriers on account of her slender and relatively mobile profile! Perhaps the aliens didn't mind if they could strike down a human fleet carrier with ease, but that wasn't the case at this moment. Taking down a human fleet carrier only provided marginal help to the aliens as it did not directly impact the combat effectiveness of mechs already in the field. At most, taking down the Antonio Cross would damage the morale of the mech pilots and prevent the mechs in the field from replenishing their spent supplies. No one intended for this battle to drag on to this extent. Despite the amount of mechs that the Golden Skull Alliance had brought to bear, Ves and the others did not think that they would be able to win a battle of attrition. Even with only half of her hull left intact, the Tower of Babel was a typical battleship that could fight for several days if her crew managed everything well! "We are not wearing the Tower of Babel down fast enough." Ves frowned. "The Mars needs to circle around and attack the front half of the vessel." "The enemy battleship is making that harder by continually turning her rear side to our ace mech." "Then I guess we will have to rely on our expert mechs to put pressure on the enemy vessel's weak point." The alien commander wasn't stupid. The front sections of the damaged battleship represented a massive weak point. A mech as powerful as the Mars could easily finish what the Unrelenting started in a prior battle! This was why the alien crew did their best to utilize the strained maneuvering thrusters of the Tower of Babel to keep up with Patriarch Reginald's attempts to outflank the damaged vessel. Reginald became increasingly more annoyed at this. The distance between the Mars and the Tower of Babel was far enough that the ace mech had to traverse a lot of distance in order to change its angle towards the enemy vessel. "I need to get closer!" "Please wait before you approach any further! We do not know how effectively you can occupy the attention of the enemy battleship if you get entangled by the alien phase lord. Please follow the plan and make sure that the enemy battleship exposes her weak side to our expert mechs." Patriarch Reginald struggled for a moment. The plan demanded that he coordinate his actions with other mechs in order to maximize their chances of defeating the battleship, but that clashed with his personal desire to challenge the enemy phase lord! Although he could earn plenty of glory by contributing to the downfall of an alien warship, he would earn a lot more renown if he was able to defeat one of the famed 'gods' of the indigenous aliens in single combat! "I will maintain the current distance… for now." Reginald eventually squeezed between his teeth. "You better produce enough results. If we aren't making any progress, then I am going in so that I can do the job myself." The Cross Clan was used to this, but Ves did not look particularly good at the moment. Fortunately, the plan accounted for Reginald's willfulness. He was at least predictable in that aspect. As the Mars continued to circle around the battlefield, the alien battleship eventually exposed her ruined front side to the group of expert mechs. "Finally! We get to damage something more solid this time!" The ranged attacks launched by the expert mechs were no longer blocked by energy shields this time! Instead, the energy beams all struck the ruined and abandoned hull sections that comprised the front half of the vessel. Many chunks of hull structure melted or got vaporized when struck by the resonance-empowered energy beams of mechs such as the Minerva. The expert command mech looked a lot lonelier than usual this time. She worked best when she exerted her power over large formations of regular mechs, but it was deemed too risky to do so this time. The expert mechs may be capable of evading most of the long-ranged fire of the enemy battleship, but the regular mechs might not be able to match this capability. As such, the Minerva continued to fire her Irvan luminar crystal rifle while applying her Single Empowered resonating ability onto the Blade Chaser Mark II. Piloted by Commander Casella Ingvar's brother, the Blade Chaser Mark II once again fought in a manner that went against his own nature by carefully firing the Gray Lotus pistol at the distant battleship. Venerable Imon Ingvar and the Blade Chaser Mark II had to put a lot more effort into landing their shots. Neither of them excelled in long-ranged combat so they had to concentrate extra hard to allow the Gray Lotus' ominous energy beams to strike the enemy vessel's hull. "You're doing it wrong again, brother. You need to steady your mech further." Fortunately, Imon received the support of her sister this time. As her command-oriented power continued to meld with Imon's true resonance, the two were able to combine their forces and bring out the best of both! However, as their shots continually struck the damaged forward hull of the distant battleship, Imon did not sense any of the satisfaction that he landing any effective hits. Helena hadn't harvested any souls with the death energy that she generously donated to the Gray Lotus up to this point! "The front half of the enemy battleship isn't manned at all!" Imon Ingvar reported his observations. "I've been firing my gun at many different angles and positions, but none of them have done anything to pass through a bunch of empty compartments." The other expert pilots reported their own findings. "Our attacks are merely degrading the structural elements that the aliens have already condemned." Commander Casella Ingvar succinctly reported. "The hull sections that we are able to strike at this angle are unpowered and isolated from the intact sections of the enemy battleship. The aliens have essentially turned the derelict portions of the hull into a giant damage sponge! A first-class damage sponge!" A lot of faces turned ugly after they made this realization. The aliens had thought ahead and did not do their utmost to cut down the front half that had been ruined by the Unrelenting's massive charge a few days ago. Instead, the clever bastards had kept all of the deadweight attached in the event they needed all of this mass to function as an enormous buffer. Ves glanced towards the Amaranto. The expert rifleman mech fully charged her Instrument of Doom before opening fire with a blindingly bright positron beam! Out of the three beam types the Instrument of Doom could select, the positron beam inflicted the greatest damage onto material objects. The annihilation of particles along with the immense heat released from the reactions never failed to destroy a lot of structural elements! Yet when the gigantic penetrating positron beams of the most offense-oriented expert mech on the battlefield struck the hull sections, they produced lackluster results. The damage was not light. Despite the excellent material quality of the battleship, much of her powerful physical defenses were concentrated on her outer layers. Her energy shields along with the thick Arma-Lite DTT-F4 outer hull plating were able to resist a lot of damage. The former was no longer present while the latter was full of holes and cracks. The interior of the Tower of Babel was a lot softer in comparison. It should have been easy enough for expert mechs such as the Amaranto to squeeze their ranged attacks through the more vulnerable sections of the battleship's hull. However, that meant that every attack had to chew through hundreds of meters of bulkheads, abandoned ship parts and other miscellaneous junk! The results looked dramatic. The front half of the battleship looked like a fortress that was being broken down piece by piece. The Amaranto was able to produce the greatest amount of damage with every strike, but her Instrument of Doom possessed an agonizingly slow firing rate. Venerable Stark also no longer called upon the Phase King's blessing. Additional penetration power did not actually increase the amount of damage inflicted onto the ship. It only spread out the Instrument of Doom's damage output over a wider area. The other expert mechs couldn't inflict as much damage despite wielding faster-firing rifles. The damage output of these weapons was much lower, particularly if they happened to be spare equipment that weren't particularly attuned to any specific machine. Melee expert mechs such as the First Sword, the Riot and the C-Man looked exceptionally sad as they listlessly fired their loaned luminar crystal rifles at the exposed hull of the enemy battleship. The mechs and their pilots were at least good enough to hit the ship most of the time, but they weren't always able to land repeated shots in the same areas, which made it harder for them to concentrate their fire and penetrate any deeper. The only way for them to unleash their formidable close combat potential was to get close, but that was deemed too risky for the time being! The only other ranged expert mech that was doing well aside from the Amaranto was the Promethea. Compared to the bombastic up-front power exhibited by the Amaranto and her latest weapon, the Promethea did not attract that much attention at first. Every positron beam fired by her Ignitron luminar crystal rifle did not particularly damage a huge amount of hull structure. The damage upon impact was quite mediocre to be honest, and the Ignitron did not even possess any notable penetration properties. However, each and every monotonous strike from the Promethea left behind a strange purple flame. The oddly persistent fires mostly represented an extension of Venerable Isobel Kotin's true resonance and willpower, so they did not exactly behave like normal flames. The strangest part about these purple flames was that they pretty much burned every piece of solid matter they came across. It did not matter how tough or fire-resistant the alloys were, as long as the flames caught on, it undoubtedly burned and produced heat! At first, the amount of flames was negligible, but as the minutes passed by, they started to become a little more serious. Before everyone knew it, dozens of exposed compartments and hull sections had become engulfed in a firestorm! Ves became ecstatic at the sight! "Can you spread your flames any further, Isobel?!" "I… can't, sir. I am already doing the best I can, but I am stretching my limits at this moment. I won't be able to keep this up much longer either." "It's already enough as long as you can hold on for a couple more minutes." Ves replied. He wasn't satisfied with this answer. The Promethea was the only expert mech that was making this attempt worthwhile, but that would all stop once Venerable Isobel exhausted her willpower.