There were many theories that attempted to explain the variables that influenced the breakthrough chances of a high-ranking mech pilot. While no one had managed to deduce the full and accurate formula or model that explained all of the variables that could affect this low-probability event, plenty of people had formed a lot of guesses and unproven theories. Ves had developed his own understanding of what it took for mech pilots to break through. The Heaven Earth Man Trifecta developed by Ketis possessed strong logic, but it was too general and did not have good ways to quantify its variables. It was ultimately incomplete. It was a good theoretical model when expert pilots used it to strengthen their foundation and underlying qualifications to step up and become a greater version of themselves. However, once they had done all they could to improve their breakthrough conditions, they still had to work hard to actually trigger this life-changing event. That was an entirely different challenge. Much of it was a mind game of sorts. Expert pilots had to push themselves to the limit and exceed it just enough to prove themselves worthy of becoming an ace pilot, but not too much to the point where they would likely die before succeeding! As the Viola Magnifica System continued to become engulfed by war and death, an awfully large quantity of expert pilots that had ceased to grow any further had all chosen to place their trust in their recently improved foundations and seek greater challenges by confronting the dangerous phase lords! Venerable Orfan did everything she could to stay alive while proving her valor in battle. She piloted the Riot with greater skill and courage than in the past. The former soldier of the Bright Republic had grown far over the course of her service in the Larkinson Clan. Though she had never let go of the traits that defined her personality, she had tried her best to become more responsible and more deserving of the help that the Larkinson Clan had provided her over the years. Rosa Orfan realized that she could have never raised herself so high without the assistance of Ves Larkinson and the Larkinson Clan. While she most certainly relied on her own qualities to become as powerful as she was today, she did not want to become a hero whose accomplishments were largely attributed to external factors. She wanted to become strong enough to stand on her own two legs. This was one of the reasons why she purposefully rejected the decision to wait until she received the Riot Mark III. Venerable Orfan wanted to become a saint by relying on her own merits rather than attribute most of her success to the virtues of her luxuriously upgraded mech. As the plasma sword wielded by the opposing orven phase lord once again whipped close enough to her scrambling Riot to pressure his resonance shield further, Venerable Orfan realized that she could not keep this up for long. A few more near-misses like this would eventually cause her machine’s resonance shield to collapse entirely. The overstrained components of the Riot Mark II were already whining and groaning far beyond their usual levels due to how extensively Orfan pushed their performance. She could not afford to tackle this challenge by leveraging 100 percent of the Riot’s strength. That was simply not enough to make him last against Zren-Divar. As the fight dragged on, the orven phase lord grew wise to the tricks of his tormentors. The Valkyrie Krista and the Valkyrie Ursa were certainly annoying, but their attacks did not hit particularly hard. Their compact luminar crystal rifles hardly stressed Zren-Divar’s spatial barriers. Only their spear charges could inflict enough damage, but they needed to build up momentum first before their attacks could strike hard enough. The only other way for the two Valkyrie expert mechs to deal a lot of damage was to stay close and repeatedly strike their spears at the spatial barrier. As annoying as it was for Zren-Divar to turn around and swipe his plasma blade in the direction of the two Glory Seeker expert mechs, he still did so just to chase them away for a time! The Valkyrie Krista and the Valkyrie Ursa may not be as old as the Riot, but the two machines were not designed to resist plasma weapons of this scale either. What stood out from their combat approach was that Venerable Olivia Remus and Venerable Eona Ballentine took fewer risks when attacking the orven lesser phase lord. Whereas Venerable Rosa Orfan frequently put her Riot within striking distance of the enemy’s deadly plasma sword, the two Valkyrie mechs only dared to attack up close when Zren-Divar’s back was facing their direction! The short delay created by turning around to slash the plasma sword at their positions gave them enough of a delay to pull their lighter and more maneuverable machines out of the way with a much wider margin of safety! It was pretty clear to outside observers such as Ves and Casella that the duo of Hexer pilots that had become known as the Handmaidens of Death did not deliberately push beyond their limits in the hopes of triggering their breakthroughs! They were more than content with doing their duty and using the capabilities of their mid-tier expert mechs to harass and delay their opponent. Venerable Remus and Venerable Ballentine never thought about defeating their adversity in the first place. They already accepted the truth that their skills, experience and most importantly their expert mechs were not up to standard yet for them to realistically defeat this kind of opponent. "We’re outmatched, outgunned and outnumbered. Rather than hoping to defeat this phase lord with the three of us, we are better off trying to delay this big boy. If we are lucky, the other expert mechs have beaten back another phase lord and can team up with us to drive Zren-Divar away as well." "If no help is forthcoming, then at least we have done our best to delay and distract this phase lord as long as we could. There is no need for us to go all-out and take risks when Madame Gloriana Wodin has already promised us to upgrade our expert mechs in the next couple of years." The Handmaidens of Death clearly chose to make rational decisions. Even if they knew that this was not conducive to breaking through, Venerable Remus and Venerable Ballentine were not in a hurry to become ace pilots quite so fast. Both the Larkinson Clan and the Hex Army already accumulated a number of ace pilots. That reduced the pressure of expert pilots such as the Handmaidens of Death. They could take the time to wait and polish their skills further. Once the pair received their upgraded expert mechs, then they would try and push their limits, knowing that their superior machines could keep up with their ambitions. While it was well within their right to adopt a more prudent and patient development strategy, the problem with taking so few risks was that their effectiveness in distracting their current adversary was quite limited! Zren-Divar had already taken their measure. In his alien eyes, the two Valkyrie expert pilots were cowardly weaklings who lacked the resolve to win. The pilot of the Riot was different. He could feel the intense hostility and determination from the human inside the cockpit. The false god of the Larkinson Clan was fully committed to defeating him during this battle. This was why Zren-Divar took the threat posed by the Riot seriously. The expert spearman mech might not be as powerful as the other expert mechs on the battlefield, but when piloted by an aggressive human who did not fear him as much as she should, the Riot was doing a far better job at pinning him in place! This was why their bout developed into an asymmetric contest where both sides worked to make their enemies falter by any means possible. Neither of the two could expect to receive much support from their comrades and allies. Saint Linda Cross, Saint Dise Larkinson and Saint Commander Casella Ingvar already had their hands full trying to slow down the relentless advance of the Herald of the Void and the Lower Herdmaster. It was quite amazing how the three junior ace pilots, two of which were still being limited by their expert mechs, managed to keep the two greater phase lords preoccupied! Even then, they still needed the fire support from CFA warships and orbital defenses in order to prevent the most powerful alien combatants from advancing too quickly. The ace pilots could not afford to direct their attention and energy elsewhere because the greater phase lords may become free to inflict massive damage onto the orbital defense ring! "Heh. I don’t need the help anyway." Venerable Orfan muttered as she maneuvered her Riot for another risky attack run. The Riot’s resonance shield was on its last legs. Some of the heat of the plasma sword had already bled through the shield and begun to heat up the upper layers of the ExTrans Armor System. Despite the obvious risks of continuing to persist in her attacks without any additional support, Venerable Orfan preferred it this way. During the months-long Red Tide Offensive, Venerable Orfan had fought many battles under the auspices of numerous ace pilots. Their power and perception were so high that they were often able to bail expert mechs out whenever they overextended and put themselves into vulnerable positions. Although the ace pilots did not intervene too often, the awareness that it may be possible for them to take action had taken away much of the challenge of fighting against the native aliens. It was understandable for the ace pilots to prevent expert pilots from getting killed too often. There weren’t enough of them and they could always use more. Even so, Venerable Orfan personally felt she did not need a babysitter in order to succeed. Now that the greater protectors on the human side were fully engaged with the two greater phase lords, Rosa Orfan was fairly certain that this was the best and most authentic challenge that she could ask for at this time! Her blood pumped faster and her body ran hot. The grin on her face grew increasingly more unhinged as she reveled in the danger that she voluntarily chose to embrace! Discover exclusive tales on empire As her mood rose higher, she pushed her Riot harder, causing the expert spearman mech to charge a little faster and strike a little faster! Her intuition grew sharper. She evaded the deadly plasma sword attacks with clumsy but undeniably effective evasive maneuvers. Each time Zren-Divar missed his strikes, he grew increasingly more frustrated! His tempo increased. He attacked harder and began to employ various spatial abilities to hinder the Riot’s movements. This was exactly what Venerable Orfan wanted to attain! In the previous days, she managed to figure out that chaos was the element or concept that resonated with her the most. Just like the Riot, Venerable Orfan liked to sow chaos among her enemies! The more she could destabilize her opponent, the greater her advantage! She truly did not fear the increasingly more aggressive phase lord. Her Riot continued to vindicate her trust and always evaded the incoming plasma sword without fail. "Hahahaha! This is it! This is my life! I revel in the chaos of the battlefield!" Venerable Orfan’s mental state was so strong at this moment that she was able to shrug off most of the spatial disturbances by sheer force of will! "Do you feel it, Riot?! This is what I was made for! This is what I am supposed to become!" She could feel it! She could feel that she was approaching her upper limit! Just as Venerable Orfan could pierce the invisible barrier that blocked her path to becoming a saint, sudden mutations occurred on the battlefield! Over a dozen warship-grade laser beams attempted to strike the Riot from different angles! Though Venerable Orfan’s intuition had warned her of the acute danger a second or so in advance, that only gave her enough time to reflexively juke the Riot to the side! Unfortunately, her expert mech got hit anyway as the powerful laser beams did not converge at a single point, but instead created a momentary grid. 𝙛𝒓𝒆𝙚𝒘𝒆𝓫𝙣𝓸𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝒄𝒐𝓶 It turned out that several puelmer heavy cruisers had quietly brought their primary laser cannon batteries to bear against the Riot. Their advanced targeting and prediction systems had spent precious minutes modeling the performance parameters and evasion patterns of the expert spearman mech before launching a coordinated surprise attack! Their attempt was incredibly effective. No matter what direction the Riot moved towards, the expert mech was guaranteed to get hit by at least two transphasic hyper beams! The Riot’s luck had finally run out because he was struck by three laser beams this time! This was enough damage to exhaust his resonance shield entirely and melt a large amount of armor plating on the surface! Getting struck by the puelmer heavy cruisers was not immediately fatal to the Riot. What was truly dangerous was that the surprise attack interrupted the Riot’s rhythm and halted Venerable Orfan’s momentum for just a single instance! Zren-Divar was already on the move. It was clear that he had been in quiet communication with the puelmer commanders as he had already begun to chop his plasma sword straight in the direction of the Riot a moment before the laser cannon batteries had opened fire! "NO! ORFAN!" The Riot tried to evade the deadly attack, but the accumulated stresses on his systems proved to be too great at this time. Some of the expert mech’s components were a little bit slower to activate, and other parts were unable to perform at their full power. This ultimately caused the Riot to get struck by the burning edge of the plasma sword! Metal burned and half-melted parts flew out into a spray as Venerable Orfan’s expert mech succumbed to the attack!