5037 Diverse Strengths The battle against the wheednar raiding fleet presented the Golden Skull Alliance with a chance for the mech forces to test how much progress they had made since their last engagement. Ves, Ketis and many other mech designers confirmed the effectiveness of their newer mech models while also gathering ideas for future additions. As the battle continued to unfold, it became clear that the mechs of the Larkinson Clan performed the best due to various reasons! In a circumstance where skill was not as important as hard power, it was rather surprising that the Larkinson mechs managed to exhibit so much combat effectiveness against opponents as tough as warships! The Larkinson Clan had never been shy about investing more in the development and production cost of its own mechs. The living qualities of every mech made a substantial difference in boosting the control of every mech pilot. With two minds working for the same purpose, every living mech had a higher chance of surviving an engagement as it was easier for both human and machine to detect incoming threats in advance! Aside from that, the Larkinson mechs all possessed a large diversity of quirks and gimmicks that all made them better at their respective jobs! Nonetheless, the mech units hailing from the other partners of the Golden Skull Alliance tried their best not to fall behind. Each of them managed to showcase their strengths. For example, the Glory Seekers mainly favored the Hexer mechs designed by Ves and Gloriana. The Valkyrie Redeemer and its variants as well as the and Maiden of Adversity had become the mainstays of the Wodin-sponsored mech force. While neither of them were completely suited to fight against warships, their strong and distinctive glows augmented their performance where it mattered the most. For example, the Glory Seekers quickly discovered that the suppressive glows of their Valkyrie mechs easily passed through the intact transphasic energy shields and any other obstacle. A lot of wheednar crew members either collapsed in fright or made erratic movements that prevented them from focusing on their duties! As more and more Valkyrie mechs surrounded a wheednar cruiser and directed their identical glows at the alien hull, Helena's strong and oppressive presence began to envelop the ship from all angles! The consequences were obvious. The ship's responses slowed down. Her gun batteries fired less frequently while her transphasic energy shields depleted faster than before. The ship even began to launch escape pods despite the sheer idiocy of this action! Naturally, the Glory Seeker mechs easily cut down the escape pods with ease. The enemy cruiser vessel did not last long under the combined with the attacks launched by the Glory Seeker mechs. 𝒻𝘳ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝒷𝘯ℴ𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝑐ℴ𝑚 The Hexer mech pilots did not even have to call upon the assistance of any expert mechs to finish off their prey! The other alliance partners did not possess any special tricks, but were still capable of wearing down the defenses of the enemy warships in their own ways. Master Benedict Cortez designed a lot of mechs for the Cross Clan that possessed expanded energy reserves compared to other machines. Energy was the root of a mech's combat power. Any Crosser ranged mech was able to fire more powerful shots at extended periods of time! Any Crosser melee mech was able to carry around more armor and strike considerably harder! In this battle against an alien raiding fleet, the Cross Clan mainly fielded its ranged mechs this time. These larger rifleman mechs wielded much larger energy rifles that fired thick beams that straightforwardly dealt more damage without any other-bells and whistles! Their mech pilots confidently kept pulling the trigger against the warships in their sights with the knowledge that their mechs could take the strain! The Adelaide mechs on the other hand weren't as tough and filled with energy as that of the Cross Clan. As a mercenary force, the Adelaides placed a high priority on mobility. They expressly sent out a lot of faster and less sluggish mechs this time as they were least likely to get hit by stupendously powerful warship attacks. The Adelaide Third Fleet indeed suffered the least casualties out of the five partners of the Golden Skull Alliance. None of their mechs were slow or burdened with too much armor and equipment. Although their corresponding firepower was not as impressive, they fought a lot more confidently as they took advantage of their faster speeds and acceleration to frustrate the aim of enemy warship gun batteries as much as possible. The Boojay mechs were perhaps the least suited to combat against warships. Their heavy emphasis on melee combat meant that they did not possess as many powerful ranged mechs that could wear down the defenses of alien vessels from a comfortable distance. Nonetheless, the Boojays had made some adaptations as many of their machines carried hammers instead of swords and spears. Equipped with heavy blunt weapons, the Boojay melee mechs relied on momentum to deliver powerful impacts against transphasic energy shields! When Ves briefly directed his attention at the mechs fielded by the wannabe Terrans, he raised his eyebrows when he noticed that the simple-looking hammers were actually a bit more effective than they looked! "Those aren't regular hammers." Ves noted. He studied the sensor readings a bit more and figured out what made them special. "They have actually impregnated the hammerheads with a little bit of phasewater!" Even if the Boojay Family had been unwilling to expend more than a couple of drops of phasewater for each hammer, when approximately an entire mech regiment's worth of melee mechs began to drain a large warship's protection within a single minute! This little demonstration taught Ves not to underestimate any pioneering organization. The Boojays spent enough time in the frontier to adapt to its new realities. They wouldn't have chosen to join the Golden Skull Alliance if they hadn't made any preparations to fight against the aliens! As much as Ves and the other leaders were willing to let their mech units prove their mettle and finish off this relatively weak fleet of alien warships by themselves, the losses would be too great. This was why the Golden Skull Alliance leaned heavily on its high-end mechs and other measures to quickly neutralize this alien raiding fleet. While the three ace mechs continued to distract and drain the defenses of the most powerful orven battleship, the Larkinsons and Glory Seekers finally prepared to launch their most devastating attacks against enemy warships. "Prepare the battle formations!" "Oh, Helena, come and bless our attacks!" "Let us show these filthy aliens that hexism is stronger than any of their ancient phase whales!" Just like before, the Everchanger along with the Valkyrie Krista and the Valkyrie Ursa led three separate battle formations composed entirely of Valkyrie Redeemers or its variants. The aliens apparently did not recognize the threat posed by the battle formations. The wheednars and the orvens were much more preoccupied with shooting down the much more obvious threats up close! This granted the Penitent Sisters and the Glory Seekers enough room to align their thoughts, accumulate energy and summon three identical manifestations of the Daughter of Death! Different than before, the more favorable circumstances produced by the Red Ocean's relative proximity to Messier 87 had caused these gigantic depictions of Helena to become more solid and material! By this time, every alien could feel the danger of these approaching human 'archdemons'! A few warships even managed to fire a few powerful cannon salvos at the seemingly solid female apparitions, only for all of the shots to pass through Helena's bodies without making any substantial difference! As soon as the battle formations reached the most optimal ranges at the same time, they unleashed a wave of resonance-empowered death energy into the largest concentrations of alien warships! The wheednars did not group their warships as tightly as other alien races. They apparently lacked the discipline to pay close attention to the positioning of their vessels, which caused their overall formation to become quite messy. The Penitent Seekers and the Glory Seekers therefore tried their best to focus their attacks on the densest clusters of warships. In order to maximize the result of this crucial move, the other mech units had already put a decent amount of effort into driving the wheednar ships closer to each other! At this time, Venerable Joshua and his Everchanger had become fully connected with Helena. The normally lively expert mech exuded a strong aura of death and doom. Joshua already noticed that it became easier for Helena to descend on the Everchanger and for him to resonate with her. He had not felt this way since he last fought in the Nyxian Gap! When the Penitent Sister battle formation finally unleashed their infamous death energy attacks, the waves were noticeably larger and thicker than in the past! Each of them steadily traversed through empty space before passing straight through the transphasic energy shields and hulls of the intact alien vessels! The death energy waves did not weaken all that much after passing through their first warships. They continued on to sweep the next couple of warships in their trajectories. Each battle formation produced a different effect due to the resonance of each individual expert pilot. One battle formation attack caused the ships in its passage to malfunction as many different technological parts failed for inexplicable reasons! Another death energy wave killed all of the alien crew members in its way without any exception! The third death energy wave inflicted the greatest losses by far because Venerable Joshua skillfully steered its direction so that it was able to sweep a couple of additional warships before it finally expended its charge! Roughly a third of the alien raiding fleet had immediately lost all or at least a majority of their combat effectiveness. While the ships were still able to operate to a limited degree by relying on automated systems, the death of a large proportion of alien crew members meant that the vessels had become a lot easier to exploit! Nonetheless, Ves sat up a little straighter when he noticed that not all of the affected alien warships behaved as if they had become completely uncontrolled. "Helena." He softly called. "What gives? Is the effect of exotic radiation giving you any trouble?" A small manifestation appeared next to his command throne. "Do not blame me, brother." Helena said. "M87 may have strengthened these formation attacks, but do not forget that the aliens are benefiting from exotic radiation as well. These wheednars are surprisingly harder to slay when they shouldn't. When my energy passed through their bodies, I found that their relatively weak souls have become a little stronger." Ves furrowed his brows. If not just humans but also the indigenous aliens benefited from exotic radiation in the same fashion, then the Penitent Sisters and the Glory Seekers would soon have to discount one of their most powerful solutions against warships! "So these aliens are growing faster than the increase in power of our battle formations?" "That is not entirely the case." Helena replied with a frown. "I encountered another hindrance that has made it much harder for me to affect the lives of mortals in this dwarf galaxy. These wheednars... are strong believers of the native gods of the Red Ocean. Every race here holds the same beliefs. Faith can be a powerful force, brother. While I did not encounter any active resistance from an opposing god, just the belief itself is a powerful focus that has allowed all of these wheednars to protect their minds and souls to an extent. From what I found, the perished aliens primarily consist of those that were weak to begin with and those whose faith in their local gods were not that strong." II II . . . Ves had to wrap his mind around what he learned. Her explanation actually made sense in a certain way. From what he learned so far, exotic radiation had a tendency to produce all kinds of random positive and negative mutations on organisms if left alone. However, the strong and persistent mental activity of an intelligent human or alien was able to direct the effects of E energy radiation to an extent! Aliens who possessed strong belief that their supposed gods would protect them were much more likely to strengthen and firm up their spiritualities due to their superstitions. The longer exotic radiation affected the native aliens of the Red Ocean, the more they would be able to defend against not just the death energy attack, but also many other sorts of extraordinary attacks! It would be fine if there were many secularists among the nunsers, the puelmers and the other local alien races, but that wasn't the case! Practically every intelligent alien worshiped the phase whales and the phase lords as literal gods! This superstition was baked into the cultures of every native alien civilization! "This is not a positive development."