In the command center of the Antonio Cross, many people started to get impressed by the duel between the Mars and the mysterious first-class multipurpose mech. Ves and several other people had already sent a message to the MTA in order to warn them about the appearance of human traitors. They had no idea how the mechers would respond to this news, but it was bound to rile them up given how much stronger the aliens had become due to human collusion. As Ves began to pay more attention to how well the first-class multipurpose mech was keeping up with the Mars, he began to imagine how powerful the MTA must be. Their numbers were incredible and they were able to field an incredible amount of mechs that performed just as well as the mystery mech that fought to protect the alien battleship! "Mechs like these are quite numerous, but they aren't as common as you think." Master Benedict told him after the older man noticed his fellow colleague's fascination. "Think about what it takes to equip a mech with a highly miniaturized shield generator that is able to project a transphasic energy shield of this magnitude." "It must cost hundreds of millions of MTA credits. Its performance is just too incredible considering that it is resisting as much damage as a fully-fledged warship." Benedict scoffed. "I wouldn't be surprised if its actual cost is over a billion MTA credits, especially if it is an experimental piece of cutting-edge high technology. The greatest limitation of high technology like this is materials. It takes extremely potent high-grade exotics to produce this extremely difficult technical feat. Do you think that the supply of these exceedingly high-performing materials is abundant?" "I am guessing not." Ves replied. "To be fair, many exotics can be found in many different locations. They are not exactly scarce per se. The real issue is that the demand far exceeds the available supply. Take a key material such as phasewater for instance. I estimate that the transphasic energy shield of that first-class mech can only be produced by a shield generator that has incorporated at least 3 kilograms of phasewater." "...I see what you mean." Ves replied. "It is easy enough for a typical first-rate state to equip one elite mech with this shield generator model. The state can even scrounge up enough available phasewater to equip a squad of mechs with this extravagance. Any further than that and the state will have to sacrifice other projects that also have an urgent need for phasewater." Master Benedict nodded. "That is correct. Phasewater is an exotic that has wide applications in many different fields and sectors. That makes it so that the available supply of phasewater can run out extremely quickly. Do you see why the MTA has implemented many measures to collect as much of this substance as possible? The mechers have the ability to harvest it themselves, but if they want to build more mechs of this high standard, they will quickly run out of their reserves, and that just applies to phasewater." "I see." Ves was not completely ignorant of the state of first-class mechs. Though he did not spend too much time on studying them in order to avoid getting afflicted by tech envy, he already understood that the amount of mechs relative to the population was much less. The cost of building mechs and raising mech pilots had become so much more expensive that most states tended to focus on quality rather than quantity. Material constraints probably played a role in limiting the absolute numbers of first-class mechs as well. With hard limits on how much phasewater and other rare materials could be obtained, it was better to concentrate them on a smaller group of top-performing mechs rather than a larger group of middling machines. This caused Ves to develop interesting questions about the origin of the mystery mech and its pilot. "Where does this mech hail from?" Ves wondered. "We might never know." Master Benedict shrugged. "I have been studying the design of the mech for several minutes, but I have yet to find any identifying features that can pin down where it was built and who worked on it. The mech was deliberately designed with deniability in mind. Its design is so devoid of eccentricities that many possible first-class mech designers could have designed such a mech. I believe that even the shield generator is based on more generic principles despite performing so well. It relies more on the raw power of phasewater and other high-value materials than on any exquisite tech or methods that can be traced to a specific developer." Anyone who was good enough to design such a strong first-class mech most definitely possessed the skill to prevent it from getting traced! Ves could speak from personal experience in this regard. While it may be a lot harder to avoid leaving any identifying markers with a more powerful mech design, a Master Mech Designer should easily be able to cope with this challenge. As the Mars and the first-class multipurpose mech continued to wear down each other's defenses, another development took place that finally pushed the battle into another phase. The fleet carriers and combat carriers that had previously split ways with the Antonio Cross finally managed to turn around the brown dwarf star! The flotilla of carriers came at an excellent time. While the enemy battleship had not yet lost all of its formidable cannons, the Mars successfully wrecked the most threatening primary kinetic cannon batteries as well as a decent amount of secondary laser cannon batteries. Even if the Mars no longer destroyed any additional guns, the high relative velocities of the flotilla relative to the Tower of Babel meant that it became exceedingly difficult to shoot down the fast-moving ships on approach! This was a much better scenario than what the Golden Skull Alliance originally planned for. Ves and the others originally assumed that the alien battleship would be able to retain her full complement of warship-grade armaments. However, now that the Mars had slipped inside the main defensive perimeter of the Tower of Babel, this huge threat no longer became such a big deal! That was not to say that the enemy did not try to prepare to meet the incoming wave of threats. Several high-quality starfighters deployed from the same hangar bay the first-class multipurpose mechs had emerged, but before they could go anywhere, a salvo of resonance-empowered positron beams easily shot them down before they could begin their defensive mission! Though the Mars had to endure a few more attacks from the first-class multipurpose mech in order to intercept the alien starfighters in time, Reginald found it was well worth the price! "Hahahaha! No one is going anywhere when I am around! Don't think about running away!" The approach of the Penitent Sisters and the Glory Seekers boosted his confidence and depressed the morale of his opponents. He already found that the enemy mech pilot's efficiency had dropped. "Are you scared now?" Reginald asked as he utilized his Saint Kingdom to gain a better read on his opponent. "Our mechs might not mean much to you, but we have beaten alien warships before. This half-ruined ship that you are trying to defend is already marked for death. You would stand a better chance of accomplishing something meaningful by running away while you still have the chance. I might be persuaded to let you go if you turn your mech around and get the hell out of this star system." Patriarch Reginald grew disappointed when the traitor pilot did not take the bait. It would have been so nice if the pilot gave in to the pressure and lost the courage to persist against the Mars. Reginald was confident that he would be able to contain the fleeing first-class mech somehow! The first-class multipurpose mech started to show off more nasty tricks. For example, the mech launched a small spread of missiles that actually contained highly illegal fusion warheads! The sudden launch of these potent missiles at short range might have caused many mechs to suffer, but the Mars and its pilot were different! As soon as the missiles escaped from their hidden launchers, Patriarch Reginald's Saint Kingdom acted on them with no restraint! Unlike the frame of the first-class mech, the missiles weren't directly connected to the mech pilot. They had wholly detached themselves from the machine they came from and operated through self-contained AIs and algorithms. Normally, that wasn't really important, but that just happened to give Reginald an opportunity to exert his unique strength! Every ace pilot possessed a strong ability or specialty. It was what defined them at this stage and also paved their way to their possible ascension to god pilot. Saint Yila Mayorka was able to bludgeon her targets with much greater physical force than her mech could produce. Saint Jeremiah Gauge was far more powerful when he fought with swords. Saint Saint Jelmer Osenring could produce massive, expanding shockwaves with every kinetic strike from his ace heavy artillery mech. Saint Marissa Lewandowski was able to obscure her ace light skirmisher and the surrounding environment by turning her Saint Kingdom into an obscuring domain that blinded everyone and everything inside. Given all of these powerful tricks, Patriarch Reginald's own domain should have been just as powerful or useful, but he never really had an opportunity to show what he was capable of in previous battles. This time was different, because he finally met an opponent who was stupid enough to launch missiles at the Mars! "Hahaha! Are these yours? Well tough luck, because they are mine!" The missiles had already entered the range of Reginald's expansive Saint Kingdom, so he was able to leverage his formidable willpower to forcibly take control over the missiles! He had no idea how it actually worked, but it wasn't important. Patriarch Reginald was an ace pilot that naturally sought to dominate his adversaries, and his extraordinary willpower reflected this obsession! Though the missiles were actually quite challenging for Reginald to subvert due to their sophisticated security measures and extensive precautions, his willpower ran through everything that stood in its way and finally managed to take over control before they could get close to the Mars! The four hijacked missiles only soared without direction for a moment before they shifted their trajectories to their new targets! One of them turned around and flew right back at the first-class multipurpose mech while the other three spread out and attempted to strike the hull of the alien battleship at three different points! The Tower of Babel somehow detected the danger she was in quite soon. Her tertiary gun batteries redirected their fire to intercept the missiles, managing to down just one of them before it was too late. The first-class multipurpose mech succeeded in shooting down another missile, the remaining two missiles already struck their targets before it could do anything more! Two powerful explosions engulfed different points of the alien battleship's hull! The fusion warheads were of limited power, but their might was so concentrated that by the time they had expended all of their power, the Tower of Babel gained two new holes on her structure! The performance of the alien battleship dropped even further, making it much more difficult for this formidable vessel to stop the advance of the incoming mech troops. As the aliens and the human traitors came under heavy pressure, the latest arrivals rapidly closed in from the distance. Soon enough, several thousand mechs deployed in space. Given that they launched from carriers that were already moving extremely quickly in space, the machines themselves were also approaching the Tower of Babel at high speed! Almost all of the mechs looked alike. The Penitent Sisters preferred to field the base form of the Valkyrie Redeemer Mark II, as the original model maintained the strongest connection to Helena. The Glory Seekers tended to field more specialized and varied variants of the Valkyrie Redeemer Mark II, so their machines were not entirely uniform. The most powerful among them were the two expert mech versions that the Larkinson Clan had especially designed for the Handmaidens of Death! Alongside these two Glory Seeker expert mechs, the Penitent Sisters also brought forth a champion. Venerable Joshua once again found himself taking up the responsibility to lead a troop of radical female mech pilots once again. "The initiative is all yours." Legion Commander Valerie Chancy transmitted to Joshua from one of the carrier vessels. "Our sisters will put their faith in the Daughter of Death and you. Good luck and kill as many aliens as you can. Make sure you get the timing right." "You don't need to remind me, commander." Joshua tersely replied.