The burning wreck of the largest yurzen battleship caused the confrontation between the two disparate forces to enter into a new phase. The aliens no longer dared to take the lone human factory ship lightly anymore. Even though the Spirit of Bentheim had come by herself along with a modest amount of mechs, her 'firepower' exceeded their imagination! Human tech was too powerful and confusing for the aliens. These extra-galactic invaders not only possessed a dizzying amount of high technologies, but also appeared to be capable of making a joke out of the laws of physics! Flames were not supposed to be that effective against their starships! The conditions needed to make their alloys combust and burn outside carefully controlled lab conditions led them to assume that they could never possibly lose one of their largest and most well-defended assets through a simple fire. They were right. Venerable Isobel Kotin and her Promethea just so happened to harness more than a simple fire. The combination between the two combined so many advantages together that their synergy had broken through to an entirely new level! On paper, a low-tier expert pilot combined with a mid-tier expert mech represented a threat that was not inferior to a sizable warship! The fact that the pair only needed to sneak Kiroshi onto the hull of any starship in order to light the entire vessel aflame meant that their capacity and efficiency for mass destruction was unparalleled at their respective tiers! As Ves witnessed the Macharia Excelsia and the Amaranto directing their damage output at another yurzen battleship that was only a little smaller than the burning alloy wreck that had already drifted out of formation, he became inspired by what had happened. He began to gain a new appreciation and understanding of how extensively E energy radiation could change warfare forever. Although he had always imagined this profound shift in his mind, it always hit him hardest when he had a concrete example of what it actually meant in front of his face! The Age of Mechs was largely dominated by mechs and mech pilots. The Age of Dawn did not necessarily replace mechs, but exotic radiation unlocked a lot of additional means to enhance the performance of existing combat platforms! It all depended on how extensively these assets were able to leverage E energy radiation. Ves even began to develop more ideas about designing fire-themed mechs that could reproduce what the Promethea was capable of on a smaller scale! Even if these standard mechs were not able to harness as much fire energy as a prime expert mech, they could easily become a powerful force of their own by relying on a numbers advance! What would it be like to deploy a full mech regiment's worth of fire mechs in battle? The conflagration they could produce could burn entire cities! The destructive forces that they could evoke through their collective effort was no less than a genuine weapon of mass destruction! Ves felt extremely reluctant to put aside this promising idea. "I already have too many design projects on my hands. I really don't have room for other mechs." He turned his attention back to the battle. The powerful direct damage output of both the Macharia Excelsia and the Amaranto quickly induced a lot of strain on the defenses of the yurzen battleship in their sights. Combined with the fire beams launched by the Promethea that caused the enemy vessel's energy shields to endure constant thermal damage, it looked as if it was only a matter of time before this large and powerful warship shared the same fate as her predecessor! The yurzens grew increasingly angry, frustrated and afraid at these circumstances. Their own warships tried harder to damage or repel the Spirit of Bentheim, but the factory ship was difficult to catch under warp, and any successful strike failed to inflict any real damage due her unusually effective defenses. The alien vessels needed to get a lot closer to bring their more powerful and devastating gun batteries to bear. However, the puelmers continued to insist on keeping all of their vessels in place in order to protect Stingray 1 as best as possible. It became increasingly harder for the aggrieved yurzens to stick to the orders issued by the puelmers. For now, all of the yurzens hoped that the combined damage output of all of their warships would steadily drain the defenses of the Spirit of Bentheim and drive this dangerous human starship away! Just as the two sides reached a tentative new equilibrium, the other remaining mechs stationed aboard the Spirit of Bentheim began to make their moves as well. Both Commander Taon Melin and Commander Casella Ingvar had been waiting for this moment. The Transcendent Punishers had been withholding their fire for a long time. It was only when the operation had reached this phase that the classic Larkinson heavy artillery mechs finally came close enough for their cannons to effectively strike the distant enemy warships! Taon carefully studied the performance and the behavior of the enemy warships. His insights combined with the occasional whisper from Ylvaine granted him an understanding of how his unit could advance the objectives of the Golden Skull Alliance. "The yurzens are growing more and more frustrated with their inability to prevent their starships from suffering. Let us give them more reasons to worry about!" The Ylvainan mech pilots began to aim the old but still fairly powerful cannons of their Transcendent Punishers at the designated targets. Surprisingly enough, Commander Taon did not direct them to focus their damage output on the large yurzen vessel that was getting increasingly more surrounded with flames. Adding additional firepower to this effort would not make much of a difference aside from creating a hole in the energy defenses a bit sooner. What Taon actually wanted to accomplish at this time was to spread more panic and distress among the opposing aliens! "Open fire!" He roared! A score of Transcendent Punishers had precisely aimed their weapons in the direction of one of the many relatively small yurzen destroyers. The alien ship's transphasic energy shield flared up as it resisted the salvo of kinetic projectiles and positron beams! A surprising proportion of attacks managed to strike the destroyer despite her evasive maneuvers. The hit rate of the heavy artillery mechs had reached a whopping 75 percent! This figure could have been higher if not for the technical imperfections and limitations of the current generation of Transcendent Punishers. The effect of the opening salvo was less than impressive, though. The targeted ship did not actually look as if her energy shield experienced significant strain in resisting the attacks. Many alien destroyer-sized vessels were expressly designed to fight against starfighters and other comparable small craft. Their ability to resist the attacks of larger classes of warships was not good, but their defenses were still formidable enough to shrug off a lot of weaker attacks. As the Transcendent Punishers launched another salvo of attacks, the destroyer still did not look as if she was enduring any significant stress. Conventional attacks were normally highly ineffective against transphasic defenses! This had been the rule in the Red Ocean for a long time. Yet the Larkinsons were about to put this established truth in doubt yet again. "Are you ready, Casella?" Taon asked. "I am. The Minerva and I are about to take action! Make sure your men open up to me as much as possible!" The expert command mech remained sheltered inside the hull of the Spirit of Bentheim. There was little need for this strategically valuable masterwork mech to expose herself in order to exert a major influence in a battle. As Casella began to resonate with the Minerva, the two worked together to Commandeer all of the Ylvainan mech pilots as well as the heavy artillery mechs under their control! The process did not proceed as smoothly as they wished. They already expected this to happen as Commander Casella's relationship with the Eye of Ylvaine was not as good as her own Living Sentinels. Nonetheless, they were all Larkinsons who fought for the same side. By relying on these commonalities, Casella's force of will reluctantly managed to take root inside the hearts of her subjects! Each and every Transcendent Punisher that was safely ensconced inside a bunker began to glow and exude more power. Casella's willpower had descended upon all of them, enabling her to lend a fraction of her own power and resonance to all of these machines. The Sentinel Commander was accustomed to Commandeering hundreds if not thousands of mechs at once. She did not find it as challenging to spread her attention towards a hundred or so heavy artillery mechs. As the heavy artillery mechs began to fire their next salvo, their Ylvainan mech pilots all started to listen to a second authority. They were normally accustomed to receiving the guidance of Ylvaine, so they did not find it too disturbing to follow the intimate instructions of Commander Casella. The next time the Transcendent Punishers opened fire, the yurzen destroyer in question experienced a lot more distress! Not only did the hit rate increase to 90 percent, but every attack was empowered with a light amount of true resonance! The amplification granted by resonance was not too great, but it induced enough of a qualitative transformation to the attacks that they struck the destroyer's transphasic energy shields with extraordinary might! "Fire!" "Fire!" "Fire!" As the Transcendent Punishers simultaneously fired their weapons numerous times, their attacks steadily compromised the integrity of the alien destroyer's energy shield with every blow. Commander Casella willed the attacks under her direction to overload the energy defenses of her target, so the hefty quantity of resonance-empowered attacks continued to hammer the poor vessel without any sign of faltering! The alien destroyer tried her best to take shelter behind another friendly ship, but the problem was that the yurzens had instructed their warships to distance themselves even more due to the threat posed by the Promethea. The alien destroyer failed to move to the nearest form of cover fast enough for her relatively weak and less sophisticated energy shield to break! "Her hull is exposed! Now is the time to cripple her entirely!" The Transcendent Punishers began to inflict real damage as their resonance-empowered attacks impacted the relatively thin hull of the small warship. Gun batteries collapsed andbroke apart under the strikes of all of the gauss cannons. Entire compartments and hull sections started to get carved up by the might of the luminar crystal cannons. Soon enough, the Eye of Ylvaine under the direction of Commander Casella Ingvar had succeeded in reducing the disparity in numbers even further! No matter how weak this small alien warship might be, removing it from the board meant that additional mechs and mech pilots would survive the main confrontation that would occur hours later. The surviving yurzens stationed throughout the surviving warships grew a lot more stressed this time! The Promethea single-handedly struck fear in the hearts of all of the aliens serving on the larger and slower alien vessels that were all vulnerable to getting engulfed in all-conquering flames. The Transcendent Punishers with the support of the Minerva possessed just enough resonance-empowered firepower and accuracy to make the aliens serving aboard the destroyers concerned as well! The morale of all of these indigenous aliens deteriorated to a remarkable degree considering that the humans were heavily outnumbered in this absurd fight. Nonetheless, the Spirit of Bentheim could not keep this up forever. Her first-class transphasic shields started to get drained at an increasing rate. A single first-class power generator was not enough to properly support the demands of multiple transphasic shield generators. Perhaps there might be hope of repelling the Spirit of Bentheim and her dangerous contingent of mechs. It was at this time that the Everchanger chose to open fire. The expert hero mech had been holding his fire up until now because the Gray Lotus was not as effective at longer ranges. It wasn't until enough time had passed that Venerable Joshua and the Everchanger gained the confidence that they could hit their targets!