Chapter 3340: Mustering Courage Commander Melkor did not know much about what Ves and the leaders of the Golden Skull Alliance were talking about, but evidently they were actually thinking about fighting an ace mech! This was an incredibly dangerous course of action, though the sudden appearance of a powerful Vulcanite mech did not signal good tidings for the expeditionary fleet. If they did nothing, they were liable to get destroyed anyway. The Larkinsons were proactive by nature and did not like to place their destiny in other people's hands. Instead of kneeling in front of a dwarven enemy and begging for mercy, Melkor and many other Larkinson soldiers would rather keep their backs straight and resist their inevitable doom! Against a threat that was more overwhelming than anything that Melkor had confronted up until now, his pride, dignity and responsibility as a leader did not allow him to falter! "We have beaten warships. We have beaten dark gods. We have beaten professional mech militaries. An ace mech is not much stronger in comparison! The good news is that it is alone. Don't worry about anything else. Just summon up your courage and do your best to wear down its defenses. As individuals, we are not a match against an ace mech. Together, even Saints can fall at our hand! For the clan!" "FOR THE CLAN!" "Ranged mech companies, invoke the Illustrious One! It looks like the enemy ace mech is burdened by the need to defend its mothership, so do not worry about missing!" Ever since the Avatars of Myth developed their own crooked method of activating a battle formation, they had developed it further. First, they were only able to invoke the Golden Cat. She was the easiest design spirit to invoke as every Larkinson was already bonded to her by definition. If that wasn't enough, the Bright Warriors they piloted also carried her presence. The Golden Cat's greatest boons were her effect on morale and her ability to allow for a certain degree of skill sharing. This had many useful applications and was adaptable in many situations. Melkor knew that this was not enough, though. There were many more design spirits at the Larkinson Clan's disposal and several possessed strong and distinct specialties that synergized better with certain roles. Since invoking specific design spirits was not only challenging, but also depended a lot on alignment and fit, an Avatar mech pilot could not call upon any of them. It just wasn't doable. For this reason, Melkor and his staff decided to give his mech pilots the choice to specialize in invoking only a couple of them at most. Spreading themselves too thin would do them little good. It was much better for the Avatars to spend their time deepening their understanding and connection to the most useful and compatible design spirits. Knight mech pilots specialized in invoking Qilanxo, which fit their inclinations extremely well most of the time. Lancer mech pilots did not have a clear choice at the moment, so their choices were largely based on preference and fit. Some chose to invoke Lufa in order to clear their minds of any distractions. Others chose Qilanxo in order to increase their odds of survival upon the dangerous moment of impact. A few even threw themselves onto Bravo! The ranged mech pilots of the Avatars of Myth all settled for the Illustrious One. Since none of the Bright Warriors were armed with gauss rifles or other physical weapons at the moment, there weren't any other viable alternatives at the moment. 𝑓𝘳𝘦𝑒𝑤𝑒𝘣𝘯ℴ𝘷𝘦𝓁.𝑐𝑜𝑚 It was not easy to get started with the Illustrious One. It was an entity modeled after a sentient alien race that was quite weird to say the least. The Avatars who chose to bond with the Illustrious One persisted, though. They only needed to rewatch the footage of the Amaranto in action in order to remind themselves what they were working towards! Since the Amaranto demonstrated the strength and potential of the Illustrious One most clearly, the Avatars benefited from an excellent model to base their own approaches. Enough time had passed since the Battle of Fordilla Zentra for the bulk of the ranged mech specialists to get their foot through the door. Each of the mech pilots in question clutched the luminar crystal medallions hanging on their necks. After centering their thoughts and doing their best to reach out to that unfathomable blinding existence, their eyes shone a bit as they experienced the majesty of an entity that was much stronger than they could ever hope to become. "Please, allow us to borrow your strength!" The Illustrious One answered their pleas. Though the help he could provide was limited due to the limited bandwidth of the rudimentary connections, he was still able to do enough to give the Avatar mech pilots a little push! "Load light beam attack phase crystals!" The Larkinson Clan had a lot more luminar crystal rifles at its disposal this time. The clan prioritized its production after confirming its incredible effectiveness in the previous battle. The overall damage output of the ranged mechs had increased by at least 20 percent on average, but that was not the most valuable gain from this upgrade program. The inclusion of multiple attack modes including the ability to fire light beams was a crucial advantage! Making it standard issue for this unique weapon system was meant to give the Larkinson Army a lot more teeth against expert mechs! "Since these light beams work so well in stripping the resonance shields of expert mechs, it should be effective in this case as well! Bombard the ace mech with light beams! We'll peel back its fancy shell no matter what it takes! If a thousand beams isn't enough, then we'll flood it with a million beams. If a million isn't enough, then let's try a billion!" The weight of fire from the Larkinson Clan was formidable. The Avatar ranged mechs were more eye-catching than most. Each of them glowed and their crystal rifles also began to glow in rainbow colors, allowing them to output more damage at marginally greater precision. The other legions of the Larkinson Army did not slack off, though. The Battle Criers fought with gusto and the Living Sentinels fired their rifles in volleys in order to maintain a consistent pace. Of course, the absolute leader among them was the Amaranto. Huddled safely behind a purpose-built defensive enclosure on the exterior hull of the Graveyard, the masterwork rifleman mech fired one high-powered shot after another. Venerable Stark did not pace herself because the Olympus Mons was too formidable of an opponent. It was no use conserving her reserves against a single opponent. It was better for her to front-load most of her damage so that the dwarven ace mech would be in a weaker state if it reached the expeditionary fleet. "The Olympus Mons… is like a mountain looming closer over our heads." She gritted her teeth as she experienced the horror of Saint Yila Mayorka to a much greater degree than other mech pilots. In fact, every other expert pilot was also able to sense the enemy ace pilot's oppressive will from afar. The Mountain Hammer was just that strong, and it did not help that she directed her hostility towards the Larkinsons! That last part was potentially fatal! The extraordinary willpower of an ace pilot was much heavier and more condensed than an expert pilot. Once an enemy entered the range of a domain field, they needed to do their best to retain their own sense of identity and pride. As long as mech pilots began to falter, it was all over for them at that point. If any mech pilot wanted to achieve greatness one day, they had to show enough courage and resilience under pressure to maintain their wits in these circumstances. No Larkinson mech pilot wanted to crumble for this reason! Along with duty, ambition drove them to resist as much as possible! As long as they passed this hurdle, they would come out as better warriors than before! The minutes passed by as the tension continued to rise. The mercenary mechs had already distanced themselves from the expeditionary fleet by at least 10,000 kilometers and showed no sign of supporting the desperate resistance effort against the approaching ace mech. It was all up to the ranged mechs of the Larkinson Clan, the Glory Seekers and the Cross Clan. For a long time, only beam weapons fired at the distant opponent. It was only when the ace mech came closer that the mechs armed with gauss rifles started to fire their hefty weapons. At first, their hit rates were fairly low. It was much harder to ensure a tight spread, but as the ace mech continued to catch up to the fleeing expeditionary fleet, it became easier and easier to hit the target. The Olympus Mons was like a moving mountain. It flew in front of the unknown dwarven frigate and projected its glowing domain field around the entire vessel to protect her from damage. So far, it appeared that the ace mech's domain field was just as strong as the beginning! Despite all of the beams and projectiles pouring the will-infused energy field, the expeditionary forces slowly began to lose confidence as they perceived their attacks achieved no noticeable progress. "Did we even drop its defenses by a single percent?" "It's as if we're punching a mountain. Attacking it will only break our fists in vain!" "We're like flies buzzing around a giant!" "Shut up! Stop damaging people's morale and keep shooting. Whether we're achieving something or not, we don't have any other choice!" The heroic effort to resist the advance of an ace mech began to look increasingly more like an impending tragedy. At 50,000 kilometers, the Olympus Mons caused everyone to feel as if they were staring at an avalanche from below. At 20,000 kilometers, the Olympus Mons pressed onto the mech pilots as if they were standing on a heavy gravity planet. At 10,000 kilometers, the Olympus Mons made it seem as if a moon was falling right onto their heads! Every individual experienced the escalating pressure differently. For example, other than the expert pilots, the best ones off were the MTA mech pilot embedded in the Larkinson Army. If the situation wasn't so dire, Jessica Quentin felt close to losing her composure. She had thought that the Battle of Fordilla Zentra was the last time the Larkinson Clan stupidly provoked a powerful enemy. It appeared her optimism was misplaced! "I think I understand now why so many mech pilots broke through in the Larkinson Clan." She wheezed. "Their patriarch of theirs just can't stop entering one crisis after another!" The Olympus Mons came closer without anyone able to stop its advance. Many ranged mechs had overheated to a dangerous degree or had to return to their carriers in order to replenish their ammunition or supplies. Yet despite throwing out enough ordnance to destroy many dwarven capital ships, the Olympus Mons showed an ability to resist and negate damage that far surpassed any second-class capital ship! Ves looked sick as he observed the unstoppable advance of the Olympus Mons. The combined firepower of the Golden Skull Alliance, including that of the Amaranto, achieved little aside from making Saint Mayorka breathe a little deeper! "If ace mechs are this powerful… then I can't imagine how effective god mechs truly are. It's no wonder that people say that god mechs can pummel any CFA battleship. The degree in which they can distort reality in their favor is even more powerful than what is happening in front of my fleet!" He thought that expert mechs were already unreasonable for being able to resist a lot of material damage, but at least they had to pay attention to the light beam attacks of his luminar crystal rifles. However, against the defenses of an ace mech, this weapon system did not attain any advantages. The luminar crystal rifles might as well be oversized flashlights as far as the Olympus Mons was concerned. "Watch out! It's activating a ranged weapon system!" A machine gun module poked out of the chest of the Olympus Mons and fired a rapid burst of 200 rounds in the span of a couple of seconds. These small, glowing rounds streaked across space at a stupendous velocity and shredded an entire mech company of Avatar mechs into pieces! Even though the rounds were so small, the force they delivered upon impact was as powerful as a heavy hammer strike! With every Bright Warrior mech struck by multiple rounds, their armor simply didn't stand a chance. The machines shattered and the cockpits inside their chests broke as well! "No!" The Avatar mech pilots inside did not even have the time to eject. The Larkinsons suffered their first casualties!