The Riot danced on the razor’s edge as Venerable Rosa Orfan squeezed all of the performance out of the aged and outdated expert mech frame. While the newer machines such as the Lionheart and the Blood Star Mark II were much faster, tougher and more responsive, the Riot Mark II was a relic of a bygone age, a product designed for the sole purpose of dueling opposing expert mechs. It was clear to see for everyone with a bit of sense in mechs that the Riot was not faring well at all. Even if the living expert spearman mech was able to evade every plasma sword attack up to this point, the Riot only needed to make one mistake to suffer a crippling or even a killing blow. The good news was that Venerable Rosa Orfan was performing at her peak. She made no mistakes because she literally could not afford to make them. A slow response, a misread of the enemy’s movements or an overextension could easily cause her Riot to get melted by the plasma sword! The Riot’s resonance shield would not be able to resist for long. The mix of alloys that comprised his mech frame would only be able to resist for a short amount of time before succumbing. True first-class mechs made use of harder and more sophisticated alloys that were able to resist a wide variety of physical and energy attacks. Their heat capacities were exceptionally high and could buy precious seconds of time for the mech pilot to move a machine out of the way of a plasma weapon. Of course, mechs that were rated to resist plasma weapons more effectively were also ludicrously expensive. During the time the Larkinson Clan developed the Riot, it was a fantasy to acquire and make use of such rare and powerful exotic materials. To be fair, attempts had been made to help the Riot keep up with the times. His spear had been updated several times so that it gained transphasic and subsequently hyper properties. The Riot also gained enough room to equip additional gear such as grenades and firearms. The ExTrans Armor System that was unique to the Riot had also received updates over the years as the outer armor layer that suffered the greatest damage regularly got replaced by superior alloys. Unfortunately, there were many other aspects about the Riot Mark II that could not be upgraded so easily. The internal architecture remained vulnerable and could not resist as much damage as the internals of archemechs such as the Dark Zephyr Mark III. The Riot Mark II was still a good enough asset when used to fight against other human forces. The living expert spearman mech was also adequate in fighting against most warships so long as the machine was able to catch up to the vessels. What the lastgen expert mech emphatically was not supposed to do was to challenge a lesser phase lord directly and especially when the latter wielded a destructive plasma sword! The Riot Mark II may technically be classified as a quasi-first-class expert mech, but he was much worse at resisting the damage inflicted by plasma than the newer quasi-first-class machines such as the Lionheart! Given the disappointing performance parameters of the Riot Mark II, any sane mech pilot in control of this outdated machine would never choose to confront the lesser phase lord known as Zren-Divar. It would have made much more logical sense for the Riot to lead the low-ranking expert mechs that were responsible for exerting pressure onto enemy warships. It was too bad that Venerable Rosa Orfan was not a ’sane’ expert pilot. Her pride and self-esteem did not allow her to avoid this challenge! Besides, her actions still had meaning. If the Riot did not take the responsibility of attracting most of the attention of this plasma sword-wielding phase lord, then another expert mech would have been forced to take the expert spearman mech’s place. That would subsequently lighten the burden on another dangerous phase lord, thereby raising the chance of accidents. The human defenders could not afford to lighten their resistance against the 5 powerful phase lords. The expeditionary fleet of the Golden Skull Alliance fielded the most ace pilots and expert pilots out of all of the other forces stationed in the Viola Magnifica System, so there was no one to turn to for help. For now, the situation was somewhat stable, but mech commanders such as Casella Ingvar knew how precarious the situation had become. As an ace pilot herself, Casella understood what drove ace pilot candidates such as Venerable Rosa Orfan to flirt with certain death. Expert pilots generally only broke through under the most extreme circumstances. Having the right qualifications was not enough unless one possessed S-grade genetic aptitude such as the Chosen Human. Everyone else had to rely on a strong emotional stimulus in order to push their mind states past their peak and into a whole new realm. Casella only managed to break past her bottleneck at the cost of her brother’s death. She never wanted her glorious moment up to this date to become tarnished by this horrible event. What price would others have to pay just to gain a chance to break through and survive this pitched battle? Reality was not a fairy tale or an action drama. The heroes did not magically get to survive when they confronted the demon king. Casella knew this well, because her brother was one of the many victims who failed his challenge against a phase lord! The Saint Commander did not love the other Larkinson expert pilots as much as she did her brother, but she still cared for them in many ways. They were all comrades who were united by their desire to protect the Larkinson Clan and to fight for red humanity’s right to survive in this dwarf galaxy. They had known each other for a decade. Casella considered them her friends and maybe even her family due to how often they had fought together. Your next read awaits at empire Casella did not want any of them to die just to force their breakthroughs when they weren’t necessarily ready. The decision made by Venerable Rosa Orfan did not make much rational sense. At least Venerable Benjamin Larkinson piloted a fairly modern expert mech. His Blood Star Mark II may have missed out on becoming an archemech, but the powerful offensive knight mech was able to resist a lot more direct impacts than the Riot Mark II. Yet Venerable Orfan still took it upon herself to dogfight against the only phase lord that was able to punish mistakes with a brutal if not fatal strike. Suffice to say, Casella had a bad feeling about this. Perhaps the lessons that Venerable Orfan learned from Ketis’ new theory might spur on Venerable Orfan’s breakthrough. However, if the expert pilot overestimated herself or developed the wrong understanding of her own power, her ascension to sainthood may still be far away, which meant that she was at the verge of getting killed by Zren-Divar at any time! "What do you think, Ves?" She asked the patriarch of the clan even as she used her neural interface to transmit orders to different mech units. "Venerable Orfan is unnecessarily putting her life at risk. She doesn’t need to be so impatient. If she can wait until she has access to the Riot Mark III, I will not doubt that her breakthrough is only a matter of time. I can understand why she insists on challenging her limits now rather than later, but I still feel the need to pull her back and assign a safer task to her. Her ego might not like it, but she can suck it up. The needs of our clan comes before her own selfish desires." "And what do you think the need of our clan is, exactly?" Ves asked with a smile. The Saint Commander frowned. "Is it not your goal to quickly raise as many ace pilots of our clan as possible? The more saints we have under our banner, the stronger our foundation. Having more ace pilots at our disposal also helps to make other parties take us more seriously." "All of that is true, Casella, but that only applies in the short and medium term. While it is important for us to have enough high-level combat assets available to defend ourselves from hostile phase lords and dastardly cosmopolitans, those aren’t the enemies that we have to be worried about as long as we are able to overcome this difficult early period. There are much more terrible threats on the horizon." "Threats such as…?" Ves’ expression grew grim. "I can’t say. Let me just say that the ability to put up a fight against a god pilot or an ancient phase whale is the minimum requirement. We don’t need this right away, but if we don’t make enough progress to be able to defend ourselves against these powerhouses, our ability to survive in the long term becomes very small." "Are you claiming that if we cannot produce a god pilot from our own ranks fast enough, we will be unable to resist the threats that may arise in the future?" He slowly nodded. "You can say that. I have already said a bit too much, but I think it is fine since you are an ace commander. What matters is that you understand my attitude when it comes to expert pilots looking to force their breakthroughs to the point of putting their lives on the line. My policy is… let them try." Based on her understanding of the patriarch, Casella already guessed he might respond this way. "Why?" She still asked. "Champions are admired and worshiped because they are fearless. They are strong because they possess the courage to do what others shy away from. While that doesn’t mean that they must never retreat in the face of overwhelming opposition, it is up to the expert pilots themselves to decide when to retreat. Only by giving them enough agency to decide their own actions will they prove whether they have what it takes to not only become an ace pilot, but also prepare them to meet the much tougher demands of becoming a god pilot." "That is many decades away." Casella argued back. "Applying god pilot criteria to expert pilots is too premature. Each mech pilot must grow step by step in order to reach the top of our profession. We cannot adhere to the excessively high criteria of a god pilot right away. We are still mortals, some more so than others." "I know what you are trying to say, Casella, but it is too late to solve any problems and shortcomings when they become a peak ace pilot." Ves sighed. "They need to be able to handle themselves in this battle by relying on their own strength and judgment. Mech pilots are similar to mech designers in that both professions must learn how to independently solve problems. If neither of them exercises their problem-solving skills in the most stressful of circumstances, then they will never be ready to solve the ultimate test when they initiate the Mech Body Merger Process." "So that is it, then? You want to allow these suicidal expert pilots to charge recklessly at the enemy phase lords in the hopes of in the hopes that they can gain so much more growth from this costly battle?" Ves nodded again. "That is the gist of it. As far as I am concerned, our clan has already earned a profit with Saint Davia Stark’s breakthrough. She is not a Larkinson, though. She’ll be gone in less than a century, so we need to expand our ranks of ace pilots further in order to have enough of them to permanently keep our most important starships and bases protected. As far as I am concerned, we already have so many expert pilots that we can afford to make a few gambles." In other words, Ves was psychologically prepared to lose a few expert pilots, even the old-time ones that he had known on a personal basis for many years, just to see if he could gain an ace pilot of the highest caliber!