The Twin Weapons Tournament had come to a conclusion, and so did the founding festival. The celebration was a smashing success. It not only wiped away the fear and pessimism that hung over the Colonial Federation of Davute ever since the founding ceremony got spoiled, but also instilled new hope into the hearts of its citizens! Many mech pilots, mech designers, warriors and other talents showcased their strength and ability during the last seven days. Many new citizens and foreign travelers managed to stand out from the crowd and turn into heroes overnight. The Larkinson Clan also managed to distinguish itself a few times. While its mech pilots hadn't been able to live up to certain people's overinflated expectations, a few of them still managed to attain higher rankings, though none of them managed to win any championships in any truly important tournaments. For example, Lanie Larkinson came away satisfied after she ended her difficult run in the Davute Star Tournament. Out of the hundreds of thousands of mech pilots that competed in the Davute Star Tournament, she managed to persist in the first couple of days as the insanely brutal qualifying rounds tested the skills and the versatility of every pilot! Nonetheless, the few thousands of pilots that managed to make it through all of these cruel tests managed to convince everyone that they truly deserved to fight on the main stages! Though Lanie failed to perform well during the free-for-alls and other chaotic rounds, it didn't really matter. She only needed to attain a passing score in order to advance through the tournament. It wasn't until the matches turned into more traditional 1-on-1 mech duels that Lanie truly had a chance to get in her element again! Due to the number of competitors that remained, she still had to fight dozens of different opponents in virtual mech duels before she could subsequently demonstrate her strength in reality! Those were the most glorious matches of her life. She fought opponents ranging from highly regarded military mech pilots to a trusted retainer hailing from the household troops of a visiting aristocrat. Each of these elite pilots who managed to rely on their skills to make it through the same brutal rounds all possessed their own individual advantages! Each of them were much different than the Larkinson mech pilots that she sparred on a regular basis. Defeating them became progressively more difficult, but Lanie always felt more and more fulfilled with each opponent she subdued by relying on her martial ability alone. What gratified her even more was the support of the millions of people who entered the Clive Arena! "Lanie! Lanie! Lanie!" "Larkinsons are the best!" "Go kick their butts, little girl!" The further she advanced through the rounds, the more her relative youth and incredible skills stood out. She fought in a manner that spoke of skill, discipline, precision and above all else actual combat experience. Lanie was not some sort of professional athlete that lacked the determination to kill. She always fought all-out and did not hesitate to perform killing moves. She also didn't flinch away whenever her opponents sought to deter her by pulling off their own killing moves. In any case, the Clive Arena incorporated the latest advancements in transphasic shielding technology. There was no way the relatively basic tournament mechs could ever punch through the ultra-resilient protective barriers generated by starship-grade transphasic shield generators! It wasn't just her fighting skills that allowed her to overcome her opponents. She also trained hard with the tournament mech models with the help of the MSTS. This granted her a small but subtle advantage as she had managed to master her swordsman mech better than any other pilot taking part in this prestigious competition! Unfortunately, all dreams had to come to an end. Lanie did not know how many matches she had fought already. She only knew that she had made it quite far during the elimination rounds, where only a single defeat would spell the end of her participation. Her opponent happened to bear a familiar name. [Lanie Larkinson vs Oliver Clive] Compared to a youthful face that looked as if she had just stepped out of the mech academy, Oliver Clive looked like a grizzled veteran mech pilot who had lived through at least two full-blown wars! His entire demeanor conveyed restrained aggression and it looked as if he treated every other mech pilot in the tournament with contempt! It wasn't until Lanie fought against the opposing mech pilot that she understood what she was truly dealing with! Oliver Clive was not an ordinary elite veteran mech pilot. He was a monster! Amidst the loud and continuous roars and cheers, a section of the Clive Arena turned into a contested field as the swordsman mech piloted by Lanie immediately went on the backfoot as it became pressured by the spearman mech piloted by the descendant hailing from the Clive Consortium! "Go get him, Lanie!" "I believe in you, Lanie!" "No stinking men should lay a hand on a fair lady!" The crowd overwhelmingly supported the younger and prettier tournament participant, but their shouting had no effect on the thrilling match. It took everything Lanie had to fend off the fast and powerful spear thrusts of the opposing mech. As a man whose last name was Clive, Oliver's martial skills were stellar among second-class mech pilots. The decades he spent on performing his duties allowed him to hone his skills and develop a spear style that completely matched his own temperament. Even his augmentations were superior! His cranial implant could process so much data that Oliver could catch almost every detail that could play a role in the fight. If that was not enough, his understanding and mastery of the tournament spearman mech was also not inferior to that of Lanie. He even performed moves that suggested he knew even more. She had the illusion that Oliver understood all of the tournament mechs as if he had practiced with each of them for multiple months! This was not enough to cause Lanie to feel distressed. She might not be able to pilot her favorite living mechs, but she had never lost confidence in her skills, many of which she originally inherited from an expert candidate through an experimental process! Yet no matter how refined she could fight, she was ultimately a mech pilot in her twenties. She may have fought in numerous major battles, but these made up for a relatively small proportion of her life. Oliver Clive was much different! He had already spent over half of his life as a mech pilot! He took part in several campaigns. As a major organization rooted in the old galaxy, the Clive Consortium may not outright be at war with anyone, but it still got dragged in numerous different shadow conflicts and territorial disputes as many different rivals and competitors sought to inhibit its growth! Perhaps these secret wars were simply a matter of business to the people at the top, but the mech pilots who fought in the trenches regularly experienced brutality that represented the true darkness of human prosperity! As a veteran and a survivor of these conflicts, Oliver Clive brought a quality to the battlefield that Lanie could not possibly master due to her relative youth and inexperience. It was a quality that talent and prodigious skills simply couldn't replicate. Oliver's instincts had been honed through so many life-and-death battles that it had reached a beastly level! Whenever Lanie sought to feint her opponent and strike at the spearman mech up close, Oliver seemed to detect the scheme in advance and laid a trap that caused her to suffer! Instances like this happened over and over again, causing Lanie to feel increasingly more doubtful about her competence. Wasn't she supposed to be a champion? Shouldn't she have approached the limit of an ordinary mech pilot? Why was her intuition not as good as that of Oliver Clive? The more her attempts to strike at Oliver's mech failed, the more Lanie understood how much she was lacking compared to the likes of Oliver Clive! It couldn't be helped. The Larkinson Clan may have grown strong in a remarkably short amount of time, but much of its basis in strength rested on the quality and design characteristics of their living mechs. As far as mech pilots were concerned, their training was excellent, but few of them had received so much tempering in wars. The recruiting standards of the clan was heavily biased towards younger mech pilots who demonstrated plenty of growth potential. The clan generally refused to hire old dogs because they were too stubborn and set in their ways to fully adapt to the ideals and customs of the Larkinsons. In other words, the Larkinson Clan was lacking in beasts! Ultimately, the swordsman mech piloted by Lanie received far too many puncturing holes while the spearman mech piloted by Oliver Clive only received a few shallow slash marks in return. [Lanie Larkinson… has been defeated! Oliver Clive shall advance to the next round.] "Nooo!" "Our beautiful goddess has fallen!" "Larkinsons aren't supposed to lose!" While many different fans and spectators lamented her loss, Lanie ultimately became satisfied with all of the experiences she had gained from fighting so many different strong opponents. She ultimately ended her run in the Davute Star Tournament by attaining 164th place. This might not sound impressive in a smaller competition, but it was absolutely respectable given how many opponents she had to beat in order to make it this far! Pretty much everyone who attained a higher ranking was simply better than her. None of the competing mech pilots were below 35 years old, and many of them had at least two decades of active service under their belt! Lanie could not accept the notion that she got beaten due to her skills, but she was okay with losing due to lacking in experience and other intangible factors. Melkor greeted her once she left the boisterous Clive Arena with a silver star-shaped trophy in her hands. "You did well, girl." The Avatar Commander smiled as he patted her weary shoulder. "It doesn't matter if you end up in the top 200 or top 2000. Your true gains are much greater than that. Do you understand?" Lanie nodded her head. "I do. I never realized how many different kinds of strong mech pilots existed. I started to take my superior skills for granted and ignored how others were able to develop their combat strength." "Our clan is still too young." Commander Melkor sighed. "While I have tried my best to nurture the Avatars of Myth into an elite mech force, it will take a lifetime for my men to reach the desired standards. You cannot buy this kind of progress with money or technology. Only time and effort can make the difference. Even you have to abide by this rule." The restlessness and impatience in Lanie's heart had subsided a bit after hearing his words. His ideas happened to align with her own notions. "Maybe… I still need to hone myself further." Lanie guessed. "I have been working so hard to advance to the rank of expert candidate that I never really stopped and asked myself whether I am in the best state to do so. While I don't want to spend more time than is necessary as an ordinary mech pilot, if I can't beat the likes of Oliver Clive at my current level, I do not feel I deserve what comes next." "There are more variables at play than that. Don't forget that Oliver Clive's augmentation package is simply better in every way. He's a designer baby who received one gift after another during his childhood. The Clive Consortium must have pumped tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of MTA credits in his growth trajectory, and that is just a conservative estimate. You on the other hand received much fewer benefits but managed to grow so strong at half of his age. There is no reason for you to feel inferior at all, Lanie." Though she understood her reasoning, all of them sounded like empty excuses to Lanie. The fact of the matter was that she was still not strong enough. "Maybe I need to look into getting better augmentations…"