In the face of an incoming plasma sword attack, Venerable Jannzi felt much more confident than others in her expert mech’s ability to resist this powerful strike. Just like how the Amaranto embodied the concept of extreme firepower, the Bastion embodied the concept of extreme defense. The reborn expert mech passed up a lot of attractive options just to elevate her defenses further. Her mech frame was by far the largest and most massive out of all of the other Larkinson expert mechs. Her offensive ability was limited to just the Gravity Sword alone. Yet in exchange for allocating all of her remaining capacity towards defense, the Bastion’s ability to resist powerful attacks was unparalleled among other expert mechs! "I am a knight! I fight by protecting my people!" There was no other way for Jannzi to meaningfully contribute to this battle than to buy time for other units to evacuate Venerable Orfan. The longer her Bastion blocked the attacks from the incoming phase lord, the greater the chance of saving her friend and fellow clansman! Jannzi had a lot of confidence in her ability to fulfill her objective. Heavy space knight possessed the lowest amount of agency among all other mech archetypes. They were awfully slow, they lacked the means to attack at range unless they deviated from their standard configurations and they were not as good in attacking at close range as more offensive machines. Jannzi was willing to sacrifice all of these advantages just so that she could do better than anyone else at fending off critical enemy attacks. "We shall not break from this plasma sword!" People often speculated that the Bastion’s defenses were so strong that her defensive capabilities could rival that of some ace mechs! Now, Venerable Jannzi decisively put this assumption to the test by making her Bastion serve as a physical obstacle between the incoming plasma sword and the crippled mech frame of the Riot! She knew that she had to pull out all of the stops in order to withstand the might of the plasma sword. Though she had personally witnessed how the Riot succumbed so quickly when receiving a direct hit from the energy weapon, Jannzi never hesitated in her resolve to save Venerable Orfan and what remained of her broken expert mech. She held nothing back. Maximum Defense was not a special technique or ability. It was just a shorthand for activating every defensive measure that Jannzi and her battle partner could activate at the same time. The first line of defense was her resonance shield. One of the advantages of the Bastion was that she was so big and massive that she was able to accommodate a lot more resonating exotics than smaller machines. Jannzi was able to strengthen the resonance shield of her Bastion to a much greater extent! Considering the Bastion’s awful mobility relative to other expert mech, she certainly needed this advantage. The next line of defense was the iconic Rainbow Shield. Made up of a lot of Unending alloy, the reason why it carried an unusual name was because its hyper materials were split up and segmented into blocks. Each block was infused with the spiritual energies donated by Ves and many different design spirits! That turned the Rainbow Shield into a unique blessed weapon that was able to rely on the help of multiple different design spirits to better defend against different attack types. Right now, Jannzi called upon the power of Qilanxo, the design spirit she knew best! "Qilanxo, fortify my shield!" The design spirit answered her call. The Rainbow Shield lit up as the Unending alloy containing Qilanxo’s spiritual energy started to burn. The Rainbow Shield’s structure grew stronger and tougher while a small spatial barrier formed just above the surface of the exterior! While the spatial barrier was not as large and strong as that of a lesser phase lord, it was still a welcome addition! This was not enough for Jannzi. The Bastion’s Battle Skirt System engaged as well. The modular armor plating that previously hung from the waist down came to life and dynamically stacked behind the Rainbow Shield, causing it to become larger, thicker and more able to defend from wider angles. While the Battle Skirt System defined the Maiden of Adversity model that was loved by female mech pilots, the Bastion possessed the best implementation by far. The modular armor plates had been updated to much more modern and resilient transphasic hyper plating. Their linking mechanisms had been strengthened as well, allowing the plates to stay together and combine their strengths much better than before. The deployment of the modular armor plating caused the Bastion to look as if she was holding up a large metal umbrella as opposed to a tower shield! The additional coverage gave Jannzi greater confidence that no part of the plasma sword would be able to bypass her defense and inflict further harm onto the Riot. Jannzi had another trick up her sleeve to fortify the defenses of her modular armor plating even further. "Callisto!" "Yawl!" A lizard-like beast that shared a passing resemblance to Qilanxo emerged from her head and dove into the armor plates that had been reconfigured to improve the depth and coverage of the Rainbow Shield. The companion spirit helped Jannzi lighten her burden and micromanage her defenses a lot beter than usual. With the help of Callisto’s spatial talent, the blessing that Qilanxo bestowed upon the Rainbow Shield partially spread to the adjacent modular armor plating, thereby significantly increasing their toughness and damage resistance! All of this already sounded amazing enough, but there was still more. If the previous defensive measures failed to block the plasma sword, then the next recourse that Jannzi and her battle partner had left was to withstand the potent weapon directly by relying on the azure shield generator. The Bastion always reserved a lot of room for a larger-than-usual transphasic shield generator. This had since been replaced by a more powerful and advanced azure shield generator that relied on water-attributed E-energy to amplify the performance of phasewater technology. Even so, the biggest factor that made the Bastion’s azure shield generator better than anything else was due to size. The greater capacity of the expert mech not only provided more room for heavy-duty shield generators, but was also able to accommodate more heatsinks, energy cells, internal repair systems and other components that could make the azure energy shield last a lot longer than typical! The azure energy shield did not form a wide bubble around the machine, but instead stuck very close just above the exterior of the Bastion. This was a high-tech application of energy shields that was difficult to design and implement, but yielded improved efficiency as the energy shields were not blocking any attacks that would have passed harmlessly over or around the mech in question. There was one more measure that the Bastion could rely upon to fend off powerful strikes. This was the Bolton Armor that clad the mech frame. Integrated with over 8.6 kilograms of phasewater, the Bolton Armor excelled at repelling transphasic attacks but also performed fairly well in repelling plasma weapon attacks. The thick application of armor plating in every direction made it so that the Bastion had few true weak points. Even her rear sections were well-covered by thick slabs of armor in order to deny light skirmishers the opportunity to easily disable the expert heavy space knight from behind! The Bolton Armor was the primary means of defense for the Bastion when her Rainbow Shield and Battle Skirt System failed for whatever reason. Jannzi was not afraid of relying upon it as it was just as tough if not tougher than her Rainbow Shield. While the Bastion was not the most modern Larkinson expert mech anymore, her Bolton Armor was still recent enough that it was easy enough to apply a light amount of hyper materials to make the Bolton Armor more effective. The addition of hyper materials also happened to make it easier for the living mech to channel the passive enhancements granted by the Ascension Runes that the Bastion had accumulated over time and growth! Jannzi and her battle partner both agreed to stick to the extreme defense concept, so all of the Ascension Runes were formed from the Path of the Guardian derived from Qilanxo! The Bastion had never been able to test the full effectiveness of all 25 Ascension Runes she had accumulated so far until today. The Runes were already in effect, though they didn’t leave any visible traces. The Bastion’s armor plating grew stronger and tougher. They also increased the Bastion’s resistance to phasewater technology and spatial effects. All of these measures were fairly impressive on their own, some more than others. Only the Bastion was able to agglomerate each of them into a single heavy mech frame. No other expert mech could come close to matching her combined defensive prowess. Even then, there were many observers who believed that the Bastion could only withstand the incredible power of the phase lord’s plasma sword for a little while longer than the Riot Mark II. This was because the Bastion was still an expert mech! Discover stories at freewebnovel As long as Venerable Jannzi remained a high-tier expert pilot, her true resonance was not able to amplify the defenses of her Bastion to the point where she could properly block the attacks of an ace mech-grade opponent. That did not deter her in the slightest, though. As the extremely hot edge of the plasma sword was already falling onto her prepared expert mech, Jannzi’s heart swelled with courage. Venerable Orfan was still alive. She could feel it due to her link to the other female expert pilot. Since Rosa Orfan could still be saved, Jannzi did not think about retreating until rescue mechs had arrived to pull the broken mech frame of the Riot to safety! "I AM A KNIGHT!" She roared even as the plasma sword ruthlessly crashed against the resonance shield of the Bastion! Her willpower directly fueled the true resonance manifestation that served as the first line of defense! The blue corona magically held the plasma sword back, largely due to Jannzi’s sheer stubbornness in fulfilling her mission! Unfortunately, despite the advantages granted by the Bastion’s greater quantity of resonating exotics, the resonance shield of an expert mech ultimately did not defy reality to the point of completely neutralizing the power of the plasma sword. A few tense seconds passed before the resonance shield broke! The plasma sword exhibited faint signs of instability after it had been used to overcome a lot of resistance, but it still had plenty of energy left to assault the Rainbow Shield next! The giant translucent silhouette of Qilanxo emerged from the Rainbow Shield. The design spirit took offense at the plasma sword and did her best to reinforce the tower shield’s valiant resistance against the alien weapon! Amazingly enough, the Rainbow Shield held for an awfully long time! Seconds passed as it seemed to be able to fend off the plasma sword forever, but it had ultimately reached its limit when it started to heat up far too much to the point where the Unending alloy and transphasic alloys began to melt or vaporize! The once-beautiful Rainbow Shield got partially split in half! The only reason why it hadn’t been destroyed any further was because the modular armor plating from the Battle Skirt System stepped up and took over the burden! Reinforced by Callisto, the modular armor plating glowed brighter as they did all they could to hold back the hot plasma sword. However, direct contact with a plasma sword was extremely damaging to the systems of the armor plates. They broke before the alloy plating had begun to melt. This caused the components of the Battle Skirt System to separate and fall away as all of the electronics responsible for keeping them in place succumbed first to the overwhelming heat! The plasma sword, which began to look as if it was growing increasingly more unstable after forcing its way to cut through several layers of strong defenses, continued to pass through the remnants of the Battle Skirt System until it collided against the Bastion’s azure energy shield! The azure energy shield held the deadly weapon at bay remarkably well! "Venerable Jannzi is doing it! Her Bastion is holding up really well so far!" Zren-Divar uttered another roar of frustration as he continued to press his plasma sword forward despite all of the strain he was being subjected to at the moment. How come it was so difficult for him to finish off a single mech?! Why was this other mech so damn tough and stuffed with defenses!? The more the lesser phase lord grew frustrated at his inability to finish off a single expert mech, the more Venerable Jannzi felt as if she was fulfilling her greatest purpose! As a space knight pilot, Venerable Jannzi derived no greater pleasure than to save the life of a precious Larkinson. Though only a relatively short period of time had passed, her Bastion had succeeded in buying a short amount of time. She could already see that the nearest available mechs allocated to rescue duty had almost reached the broken Riot. This was not enough to save Venerable Orfan’s life. The rescue mechs needed to remain undisturbed by powerful enemies as they attempted to bring back the Riot. This meant that Venerable Jannzi needed to fend off the angry lesser phase lord even longer! "Come on, you misbegotten alien! Is this all you got?!" She roared even as her resonance strength grew with her rising mood! "Your plasma sword shall burn out against my defenses! Your teeth shall be broken by my Gravity Sword! As long as I am here, you can forget about taking away anyone else’s life!"