Ves and Gloriana completed their overhaul of the Larkinson Clan’s only ace marksman mech. The Amaranto Mark III Revision 2 encapsulated the concept of extreme firepower much better than before. Although the Larkinson Clan regrettably lacked the super-class materials to further enhance the lethality of the Instrument of Vengeance, her practicality and damage output over time had drastically improved. No longer was the Amaranto forced to cycle her oversized luminar crystal rifle and wait for it to charge up to full capacity before firing a shot at maximum power. She was able to drastically increase her firing rate while sacrificing nothing aside from depleting her energy reserves faster and building up a huge amount of heat! These were serious problems to be sure, but they were manageable. Saint Stark did not have to fire her weapon at its fastest rate. She could exercise trigger discipline and wait until the situation had gone critical before furiously launching as many shots as possible in a very short time interval. Another way to deal with the energy and heat problems was to anchor the Amaranto Mark III to a compatible warship such as the soon-to-be-overhauled Torturous Scream. The shipwrights designed the sniper bunkers in such a way that they offered maximum accommodation to high-ranking mechs. As far as Ves was concerned, ranged powerhouses such as the Amaranto Mark III and the upcoming Promethea Mark II were more valuable than any warship primary gun battery! The latter may possess much more firepower according to the data, but the resonance-empowered attacks launched by ace mechs could not be judged according to common sense! Ves therefore had a strong incentive to make the Amaranto Mark III as strong as feasibly possible. This was why he found it regretful that Saint Davia Stark denied the offer to convert the Instrument of Vengeance into a D-arm. Letting the luminar crystal rifle mutate into a much stronger and more formidable form through the process of Demoncasting should have turned the Amaranto Mark III into a much more powerful threat! However, as Joshua’s example already showed, there were definite downsides to wielding a D-arm. Perhaps Saint Stark would have been able to suppress the uppity behavior of a D-arm by virtue of being an ace pilot with much stronger willpower than an expert pilot, but as long as the troublesome weapon grew stronger by absorbing lots of feedback, it would definitely pose a greater problem in the future! This instance taught Ves that not every ace pilot blindly pursued power regardless of the cost. He needed to be more mindful of which high-ranking mech pilot was willing to make use of D-arms in order to give them an edge in combat. He already harbored ambitions to convert the Riot Mark III into a D-mech, but he needed to approach it in a thoughtful manner. One of the biggest problems related to doing this was to preserve the existing personality of the mech to the greatest possible extent. Ves was already certain that Venerable Orfan would reject the option if it entailed outright killing and replacing her existing battle partner! Fortunately, Ves still had plenty of time to think on how to handle this sensitive subject. It would take a few weeks for Venerable Orfan to recover to the point where she could talk and move around again. Ves and Gloriana also needed to complete the Minerva Mark III Project before they could tackle the Riot Mark III Project. It would have been simpler for Ves if he Demoncasted a mech from scratch, but that was not an option for his older and more established living mechs. He truly needed to work on a solution if he wanted to introduce Demoncasting to a whole mech frame instead of just a module or an external piece of equipment. In any case, once Ves and Gloriana carefully completed the Amaranto Mark III Rev 2, they decided to move out into space and visit the nearest asteroid belt in order to test the performance of this much-anticipated machine. The pair currently stood behind the workstations of the main mech labs of the Tarrasque. Naturally, Jovie Armalon and Vector Loban also joined the party. They voluntarily assisted with the data collection and analysis effort and occupied their own workstations. "The Amaranto has deployed into space." "The acceleration rate of the Amaranto has improved by a considerable extent." "This is impressive! She is able to move at full acceleration, maintain her azure energy shield at its maximum strength, keep her active sensor systems at full power while only slightly reducing the new maximum charge rate of her Instrument of Vengeance." "Heat levels are rising faster than the Amaranto’s previous baseline, but they are less than calculated." "Saint Stark’s resonance strength has grown by a noticeable extent. She is able to resonate more effectively with HeatMate, thereby increasing the heat dissipation rate of the Amaranto." "Look at her shots! Her full-powered light beams are tearing apart the asteroid target!" Back when Saint Stark initially broke through, the Amaranto Mark III became affected by forced resonance. This was usually considered a rare moment for everyone to witness how much stronger the ace pilot became after he or she piloted a proper ace mech for a couple of years. The performance of an ace pilot and a mech in a forced resonance state was never supposed to represent their baseline performance. Just as expected, the power behind every full-powered attack blessed by the Phase King was indeed noticeably lower than the attacks that felled a lesser phase lord from an enormous distance. However, the increase in firing rate more than made up for this lacking parameter! Being able to charge up her rifle and pull the trigger at least 3 times faster than normal amplified the lethality of the Amaranto Mark III so much that she was able to destroy an asteroid significantly faster than before! "Welcome to the world of true first-class mechs." Jovy said with a smile. "First-class ace mechs are considered the strongest individual fighting assets after god mechs and dreadnoughts depending on the definition that you use. That doesn’t necessarily mean that the Amaranto Mark III has reached her limit. She has not. The Terran power reactor that you have opted to install into your masterwork mech is a fine product, but it cannot compete against the more advanced power reactors especially developed for ace mechs by our in-house R&D teams." "Those power reactors are also a lot more difficult to obtain." Ves said. "Last I inquired, the RA is currently suffering a shortage of your top-tier power reactors. The waiting list was 6 months long and I am sure that it has grown worse in the present day. I am fine with using a more modest Terran power reactor as long as it is reliable enough." One of the other reasons why he and Gloriana chose to make use of a less complex model was because it was more ’standardized’. The reliability of the power reactor model was high as the Terrans already employed it in numerous other recently produced or updated ace mechs. The power reactor also offered greater room for customization. This was important because Gloriana wanted to convert as much of the reactor design to archetech as possible. It would have been considerably more troublesome to do this on a more complex and high-end reactor model like the ones favored by the mechers. "We need to conduct one more test if possible." Gloriana announced shortly after the Amaranto Mark III Rev 2 made short work of an asteroid. "Ves, you told me that part of the upgrade to a seventh generation living mech entails greater support for the integration of a companion spirit. Is it possible to show this difference?" Ves shook his head. "Not really. Too little time has passed. One of the new features of seventh generation living mechs is the optional teaching and guidance on how to practice auxiliary qi cultivation methods. For companion spirits, it is possible to guide them into practicing and mastering more serious qi cultivation methods." "What cultivation method did you add to the Amaranto?" "I composed the Larkinson Curse Master Qi Cultivation Method as a way for practitioners to specialize in casting curses onto distant opponents. I based it on my own knowledge of curses and qi cultivation methods, but since I was in a rush, its initial application is relatively basic for the time being. This should be a good introduction for Vail as the companion spirit has a lot of power but lacks refinement." As far as Ves was concerned, it was enough to transfer his relatively basic but solid foundation on curses to Vail. The companion spirit only needed to know the basic theories before she could branch out and develop herself by improving her current arsenal of curses or inventing new ones that debilitated enemies in more interesting ways. Even though the improvements from this design feature had yet to bear fruit, Ves still instructed Gloriana to apply her companion spirit’s powers against a target dummy. The Tarrasque launched a disposable bot that was roughly the size of a corvette out into space. The construct served no other purpose than serving as a pretty resilient target dummy, so it had been piled up with lots of thick and sturdy salvaged transphasic alien warship hull plating. Ves did not expect to recycle any of the valuable materials, but he figured that it was worthwhile to destroy the bot in exchange for obtaining detailed data on the Amaranto’s current performance. "Start." Just like before, the Amaranto glowed brightly as her Instrument of Vengeance charged up at a fairly rapid pace. Saint Stark did not need to put any special effort to aim her weapon at a static target that was also not too far away. Once she pulled the trigger, an extremely bright and penetrating light beam shot out from her weapon’s muzzle and almost seemed to core right through the target dummy! Despite the incredible thickness of the frontal armor, the attack easily punched through multiple layers of transphasic armor plating. "Again. Target a different section. I don’t want you to eliminate the bot straight away." It only took a relatively short amount of time before the Amaranto was ready to fire another full-powered shot! This time, the Amaranto left a nearly identical hole in the armor layers. The attack managed to punch a little deeper, but the differences were still relatively minor. "Keep firing according to the previous parameters. Try to spread your shots as much as possible." The corvette-sized target dummy kept acquiring new holes in its structure. At first, the damage inflicted by the attacks were relatively stable, but as the condition of the large bot worsened, the damage inflicted by the resonance-empowered light beam attacks became worse! Part of it was because the Amaranto had already vaporized a lot of armor plating and could only attack the softer internal structure of the bot. However, Ves already controlled for these changes. The data still showed that the Amaranto inflicted increasingly more damage. It was as if her light beams had become 10, 20 or even 30 percent more powerful! As the bot retained only 25 percent of its original integrity, the final resonance-empowered light beam attack abruptly caused the construct to suffer a critical failure and fall apart! "The target is dead." Saint Davia Stark coolly reported. "My companion spirit could feel that the Execution Curse applied on it had reached a critical level. In the last attack, she had the option to ’detonate’ the curse, for a lack of a better word. This turned my damaging shot into a killing shot." "Interesting." If Vail was able to replicate these effects onto larger and more powerful targets such as alien battleships and phase lords, then the Amaranto would become the perfect executioner! 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝒆𝒘𝙚𝓫𝙣𝙤𝒗𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢 No priority enemy would be able to flee from her sight! All of the Amaranto’s attacks would be augmented by a curse that drastically compounded the damage suffered by targets that had already sustained heavy injuries!