Ves finally realized what a proper heavy artillery mech was like. Although he already formed his own answers through all of the theory he learned recently, all of the textbooks answers he came across could not equal a live demonstration! It did not matter whether there was a 200 year gap between the current time and his own present time. The way that mechs fought hadn't really changed all of that much in the intervening years. It also did not matter that the Iron Hedgehog was an expert mech rather than a standard mechs. Many rules in combat remained universal regardless of the properties of the individual combat machines. Ves was able to distinguish all of these factors and model a combat scenario involving a group of standard heavy artillery mechs. When Ves imagined how his Transcendent Punishers would fare in similar scenarios, he quickly concluded that the battles would never be able to progress so well! "They don't have a strong capacity to attack with indirect fire." The Transcendent Punishers were first and foremost designed to function as bunker mechs. Indirect fire was pretty much non-existent in a spaceborn environment as gravity did not alter the trajectories of projectiles with mass. When put on land, the Transcendent Punishers became much more limited. The luminar crystal cannons that Ves had always been proud of were only capable of direct fire, which meant they could not fire over structures and always had to come close enough to expose them to direct counterattacks! Although the Transcendent Punishers could still rely on its pair of heavy gauss cannons to reluctantly strike targets from a distance, Ves knew that they were not designed to be operated in this fashion. "Two cannons aren't as good as eight cannons, let alone sixteen cannons!" They were designed to operate in space over longer distances where muzzle velocity was one of the most important parameters of combat effectiveness. It was difficult to reduce the power settings of these gauss cannons to a large extent, but this was often necessary in order to allow them to arc over hills and buildings and strike at targets with a reasonable amount of effectiveness. Though Ves was unsure whether he should design a dedicated landbound heavy artillery mech in the future for his clan, he preferred to solve his Transcendent Punisher's deficiencies in this aspect. "Maybe there is a way to get the best of both worlds…" He muttered. He came up with the idea of making his Transcendent Punisher more modular. Why settle for one configuration or another when the Eye of Ylvaine could change the weapon loadout of its heavy artillery mechs before a deployment? "This is actually a great idea!" It adequately solved the dilemma between optimizing a mech for spaceborn and landbound combat. 𝑓𝘳𝘦𝑒𝑤𝑒𝘣𝘯ℴ𝘷𝘦𝓁.𝑐𝑜𝑚 The mech pilots might grumble at the need to train two substantially different skill sets, but his mech pilots should be able to handle the additional challenges. As for his first mech commission with Davute, Ves was more inclined to design a dedicated landbound heavy artillery mech. It was not suitable for large military forces to bet too much on a one-size-fits-all approach. The Larkinson Clan could get away with it because its fleet possessed a limited mech capacity and could compensate for many performance drops by investing lots of money! The Federal Military of Davute could not adopt such an approach because its circumstances were much different. Although Ves didn't exactly know whether he wanted to make his first commissioned mech for Davute viable in space battles, it must definitely perform well on land! Ves truly desired to replicate Venerable Irene Mox's amazing performance in this campaign. The combination between her meticulous calculations and the Iron Hedgehog's weapon loadout resulted in an impressive impact on the battlefield, one that could be replicated as long as Ves designed the right heavy artillery mech! He became inspired by how well Venerable Irene Mox was able to expedite the conquest of this city. Dozens more difficult cities like this still remained on Korinna V, but it became clear that the defenders had no solution against the Iron Hedgehog. "There aren't enough expert mechs among the Bontue defenders." Ves concluded. This admittedly helped a lot. Venerable Irene Mox wouldn't be able to shell the Bontue positions so brazenly if she had to remain on guard against attacks launched by enemy expert mechs. However, expert pilots were rarely assigned to second echelon units such as planetary garrisons. They were much more often assigned to main mech forces that were expected to undertake the most difficult responsibilities. "The Bontues on this planet are doomed if they continue to go on like this. The Iron Hedgehog is too great of a force multiplier!" After conquering the city, the Quillim mech battalions spent a brief moment of time repairing their mechs and stocking up on supplies. They stayed only as long as it took for the higher ups to send another mech unit to occupy and rebuild the city. There was no need for the powerful mech battalion and its incredibly useful expert mech to stick to defense. Just as the Quillim mech forces were about to advance to another city, the situation in space had changed! "We are suspending our offensive." "Keep restoring the defenses of this city!" "The Bontues blew up the titan shield generators! There is no way to restore them. We can only put our own ones into place, but headquarters have yet to assign any replacements to this site." "Get ready to pull out in a hurry. Don't waste your time on dragging away our heaviest supplies. Leave them behind if we must!" It did not take long for the optimism among the men to take a turn for the worse. A mech officer swung by Venerable Irene Mox in order to give her an update. "The Bontues have unexpectedly sent reinforcements to this star system. The arriving enemy mechs outnumber our spaceborn assets by over two-to-one. It is not tenable for our forces to remain on this planet." Venerable Irene Mox felt pissed at the thought of undoing much of the hard work in taking over this planet city by city, but there was nothing she could do to affect what was happening in space. "Will we get pulled out?" She succinctly asked. "Yes. You are a priority asset, so you will board the first combat carrier that touches down." Once it became clear that the Quillim forces on the ground were beginning to pack up and leave, Ves wondered whether his Mastery experience would come to an end at this time. He already got what he wanted for the most part. He had learned what good heavy artillery mech were like and understood the routines of a highly proficient expert pilot. This was more than enough material for him to develop a solid and highly impactful heavy artillery mech concept for Davute! As Ves continued to think about what he learned from an expert pilot who possessed the potential to become one of humanity's strongest heroes in the far future, Irene boarded her expert mech and moved it towards an open park that offered enough space for a landing combat carrier. Several Quillim ships that were previously resting in orbit had begun their descent and started to become visible to the naked eye. "Wait… is that smoke trailing from the combat carrier…?" "Please contact the ship and ask for an update." "Our hails aren't going through! Communications are either jammed or the ship isn't picking up our signals." "Uh sir, if the descending combat carrier doesn't begin to slow down soon, it will violently crash onto the ground." "This is not the only ship that is falling in an uncontrolled descent!" "GET TO COVER!" Once it became clear that the starships that were supposed to bring them away had lost control over their flight, everyone became afraid and quickly ran for shelter! The faster mechs had no problem reaching the entrances of the half-ruined bases that they had captured from the defending forces. The slower mechs were not as fortunate! The Iron Hedgehog possessed an incomparably powerful set of weapons. Its armor was also thick enough to resist plenty of enemy counterfire. However, its mobility remained poor, just like any other heavy artillery mech. Its four limbs helped with maintaining stability and traversing more complex terrain, but it did not do much to speed up its flight towards the nearest shelter! Venerable Irene Mox rapidly estimated the time it took for her mech to reach a safe area. She also tried to calculate the trajectories of the crashing combat carriers and estimate how much devastation they could unleash. She even tried to estimate whether the underground bases would collapse due to the impending crashes! Ves may be smart and good at performing calculations himself, but only his Spirituality had made it through the Time Gate. Since he did not have the support of his cranial implant nor his augmented brains, Ves quickly found himself unable to keep up with Venerable Irene Mox's rapid calculations. He did not know what kind of conclusions the expert pilot had made, but she eventually stopped her flight and adjusted the aim of all of the weapon systems under her control. Each of them began to aim their muzzles at the approaching combat carrier that was beginning to grow increasingly larger! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! Irene did not dare to take her time and fired her weapons after she quickly formed her firing solutions! Ves looked with amazement as his host was likely fighting for her life at this moment! The Iron Hedgehog fired its projectiles at a faster rate than before. The heavy gauss rounds struck the inoperative combat carrier first. Their resonance-empowered strikes crumpled the bow armor of the vessel. Subsequent attacks penetrated the compartments of the ship, but did not do much in breaking the vessel apart! This was why it was important for the Iron Hedgehog to rely on its explosive shells to break the ship apart. The shells possessed different flight characteristics. Irene had to form separate firing solutions for them, yet during this time of danger, none of the shells fired by the howitzers failed to land in the holes formed by the gauss cannons. BOOOOM! BOOOOM! BOOOM! The falling combat carrier quickly began to look increasingly ragged at the front as the resonance-empowered explosive shells shattered numerous compartments and inflicted heavy damage to the structural elements! Irene knew she was locked in a race against time. If her Iron Hedgehog wasn't able to break up the ship completely, the bulk of her hull structure would crash close enough to the expert mech's location to cripple or destroy it utterly! She was not reconciled with her death! She still needed to take revenge on the Bontues! Her eyes almost turned manic as her potential bloomed considerably greater than Ves expected of an expert pilot at her level! Irene's resonance strength spiked, allowing her to empower the damage output of her expert mech to an even greater degree! BOOOOOOOOM! Eventually, her continuous strikes through the middle of the hull finally bore fruit. The Iron Hedgehog had weakened the crashing combat carrier to such an extent that it finally broke into several pieces! BOOOM! BOOOM! BOOOM! The Iron Hedgehog kept firing in order to break up these pieces into smaller chunks of debris. The continuous explosions also helped a lot with diverting the downward trajectories of the remains of the combat carrier. Once those pieces of debris were about to hit the surface of Korinna V, Venerable Irene Mox resonated with her expert mech as much as possible in order to strengthen and reinforce its resonance shield! BOOOOOOOM! The entire ground around the park rumbled and went into upheaval as thousands of tons of starship debris crashed into the city and cratered the landscape! The powerful crashes not only ruined an entire city district, but also heavily impacted the Iron Hedgehog! Its resonance shield managed to resist the incoming impacts to an extent, but quickly broke as a large hull section directly collided against the expert mech! The shockwaves produced by the violent collisions also caused the ground underneath the Iron Hedgehog to shake like nothing else Venerable Irene Mox had ever experienced!