The Amaranto and the Promethea were both expert rifleman mechs, but fought in completely different ways. The former was the classic marksman mech that sat back far in the rear and took down high-priority opponents by targeting their weak points. Normally, that worked out great because every mech or starship possessed a weak point. Whether that was a hole in the outer surface, a joint with much less armor cover or the rear of a starship where the thrusters were dangerously exposed, there was often a way for the Amaranto to turn a battle around by crippling a powerful opponent with one, dazzling precision strike! The expert rifleman mech was not omnipotent, though. If that was the case, then the Golden Skull Alliance would have defeated its previous opponents with much greater ease. The greatest hindrances that impeded the Amaranto were energy-based defenses and lots of junk in the way. Right now, Venerable Stark found herself in a less than enviable position as much of the potent firepower of the Instrument of Doom kept destroying abandoned hull structures as opposed to more useful ship elements. Venerable Isobel Kotin and the Promethea actually faced the same problem, but there was a crucial difference. Ves had expressly conceived the Promethea as a ranged expert mech that could take down an entire warship by herself! Though Ves hadn't actually expected the Promethea to confront an armed capital ship of this caliber so soon, that did not detract from the fact that she was in her element at this time! More hull structure did not necessarily represent more hindrances that prevented Venerable Isobel from completing her objectives. Instead, when affected by her fire-oriented true resonance, the enormous structure began to get engulfed by increasingly more expansive flames. The Promethea's damage output produced a much more impressive visual spectacle than that of other high-end mechs! This was especially the case when the expert mech had a sufficiently large enough canvas for Venerable Isobel to express her power! "The ship… is actually on fire!" "This is impossible! How can a single expert mech produce so much damage? The hull is constantly heating up and melting as we speak! Solid alloys that have incredibly melting points are turning into molten slag with each passing second." Not only were the flames spread by the Promethea softening up the hull on a large scale, but they also made it easier for the other expert mechs to inflict greater damage to the formerly solid structure. When Ves looked at the data related to the effects produced by the flames, he saw that they were not that exaggerated. Venerable Isobel Kotin still possessed limits and her flames found it particularly difficult to 'burn' through more solid first-class materials. Oh, they were burning alright, but the speed in which they did so was incredibly slow! However, that did not matter that much as the inner hull incorporated lots of softer metals and materials that burned a lot easier! The result of all of this was that the purple flames began to reach deeper and deeper towards the middle of the alien battleship. This was an alarming outcome and one that most definitely spooked the alien crew! "The alien battleship is redirecting some of her gun batteries. They are about to fire on the Promethea!" "Careful, Isobel!" Ves didn't need to worry. Venerable Isobel had took into account that her Promethea would become a priority target after she single-handedly began to torch the Tower of Babel. The expert mech was far enough from the alien battleship to exacerbate any minor mistakes in aim. It did not escape the attention of the Golden Skullers that the Tower of Babel's formidable warship-grade cannons exhibited much poorer accuracy than before. Even if the Antonio Cross and her complement of expert mechs stayed much further away than the doomed starships of Cenatus Prospecting, it was rather strange that the warship had not produced any better results than a few rare glancing blows. "The laser cannons have become misaligned." Master Benedict made an educated guess. "When the Unrelenting charged straight into the forward half of the enemy battleship, the ace mech applied a massive amount of force during its charge. This not only resulted in a great amount of direct damage, but also warped and deformed large sections of the hull, including the rear half that mostly appears to be intact." Ves raised his eyebrow. "Shouldn't warships be more resistant to the negative effects of hull warping? They are dedicated combat units, after all. They are designed to withstand enormous blows and keep going." "Ordinarily, you are correct, but this is a special case. The full charge of the Unrelenting under the influence of Unity of Man and Machine was a sight to behold. The ace mech managed to charge deeper into the throat of the battleship than anyone could have imagined. It is exactly because Saint Neville Magrin managed to deliver a strike so deep into the center of the hull that the rear half got affected. Aside from that, the aliens aren't doing their abused battleship any favors by making any movements. There is so much dead weight attached to the vessel that it will only make the hull warp even more." In short, all of the gun batteries had become askew and urgently needed to be straightened out again. This was anything but simple unless the entire vessel was made out of smart metal. A full recalibration of all of the armaments could easily take months! All of this was good news to the Golden Skull Alliance. Ves worried less about the alien vessel producing any significant casualties. "The Promethea could still do more, though." While the expert ranged mech was inflicting a lot of damage, not all of it mattered. There were simply too many alloys to burn through. "Is there a way to stoke the fire?" Ves wondered. He briefly glanced at the list of assets on the battlefield before he developed an idea on how he could strengthen the Promethea. He opened a new communication channel to one of his masterwork expert mechs. "Casella!" "Yes, patriarch?" "Isobel and her Promethea could use an additional boost. Can you empower them with your Minerva?" "We've tried in the past, but it is not easy." Casella replied. "Expert pilots and expert mechs generally do not wish to develop a dependence on outside help. My brother is different because we are close siblings, but I do not share the same intimate bond with Isobel." The Ingvar siblings might not be Geminis, but they could probably join their notorious family if Casella embraced their unorthodox lifestyle. "Try again this time! Maybe the situation wasn't right previously. Isobel is struggling a lot at the moment so she should be much more receptive towards your assistance this time!" This was just a guess from Ves, but it was worth a try. The Minerva briefly interrupted her attempts to poke more holes into the battleship and approached the Promethea. The two female expert pilots talked privately to each other before the Sentinel Commander cautiously extended her power to Venerable Isobel. For a moment, the Promethea became more turbulent. The expert mech instinctively interpreted the extension of Commander Casella's true resonance as an invasion of her territory. The two expert mechs weren't harmonizing! It wasn't for lack of trying. Venerable Isobel Kotin and Commander Casella Ingvar both agreed with this measure, and their living expert mechs were more than willing to cooperate. Yet why weren't they making any progress? As Ves observed the two mechs with a critical eye, he saw that intent was far from sufficient to allow Casella to lend her power to another expert pilot. "Expert pilots are too exclusionary to external influences. That is both an advantage and a disadvantage. In this case, the trust and intimacy between the two female expert pilots aren't strong enough to overcome their inherent resistance." It reminded Ves of certain games where two different characters needed to level up their friendship in order to get a substantial buff to their battle strength. It might sound like a silly concept, but it actually existed in reality. The Gemini Family was a giant poster child of the power of intimacy! Clearly, the ties between random Larkinson expert pilots did not meet the high threshold. The fact that the two mech pilots belonged to the same clan and fought for the same people was not sufficient. "Forget about it." He transmitted to the two. "It was worth a try, but we can't waste too much time and effort on this when we are in the middle of a battle. Focus on doing what you can on your own. The battleship is showing signs of greater activity." There was no way the aliens were willing to go on as usual as a part of their proud warship was on fire! In ancient times, fire was one of the greatest threats of ocean-faring vessels. That hadn't changed now that ships roamed the stars. It just became a lot harder for them to catch fire due to the lack of highly flammable materials and other circumstances. However, if a starship did manage to catch fire for some reason, then that was most certainly a reason to panic! "We're detecting powerful spatial fluctuations!" A sensor officer reported. "What is the ship doing now?!" "The readings… the readings match the patterns produced by the enemy phase lord!" The god in charge of the alien battleship had finally decided to make an appearance! If the powerful vessel had no more readily available means left to repel the enemies at hand, then the phase lord had to make an appearance before the flames reached the intact portions of the ship. Ves zoomed in on the live feed that showed the phase lord emerging from a hatch on the side of the alien vessel. Nunsers were generally larger and more massive than humans, but the phase lord looked even greater than that, especially when he was wearing a thick suit of armor. Not everyone was aware that phase lords were actually much bigger than they appeared. As long as a significant proportion of their blood was replaced by phasewater, their physical bodies actually became a lot bigger! They just looked the same because a lot of weird spatial manipulation took place that shrunk the insides of their bodies. Ves wasn't able to guess the true size and mass of the alien phase lord. He could only vaguely guess that the phase lord was substantially more powerful than himself and his cyborg cat. This was a true powerhouse. Whereas Ves had to resort to cheap tricks, the nunser phase lord likely had to get to this point through hard word and taking risks! "Who is the phase lord going to fight?" That was the important question. Would the alien 'god' choose to entangle the Mars and prevent it from exerting any further pressure on the battleship's defenses? "The alien phase lord is moving away from the Mars! He… he is heading in our direction! He has already formed a warp bubble and will reach our position in a few minutes!" Ves and a lot of crew members aboard the Antonio Cross started to get a lot more concerned! They couldn't imagine how much destruction the phase lord could wreak if he got close to their vulnerable fleet carrier! "Should we request Patriarch Reginald to intercept the enemy phase lord?" "NO! The Mars must continue to keep the Tower of Babel occupied. Trust in our expert mechs! We have more than a dozen of them at our disposal. A powerful champion was on the way. No one truly knew how well the expert mechs deployed from the Antonio Cross would fare against an unusual alien menace. What complicated the situation was that no one had a clear idea on how to gauge the strength and combat effectiveness of alien 'gods'. Direct comparisons were extremely difficult to make due to a lack of data. The only way to know for certain whether the expert mechs could hold their own was to see them in action! 𝗳𝚛𝚎𝚎𝘄𝕖𝕓𝕟𝕠𝚟𝚎𝕝.𝗰𝕠𝐦 "At least our melee expert pilots are useful now." Ves remarked.