Ves presented Saint Commander Casella Ingvar with compelling choices. ST-688 Archon and Dragon Scales both had the potential to qualitatively improve the performance of the Minerva Mark II to a large extent. Their unique properties would also mutate the Minerva Mark II by expanding her capabilities in different directions. Adopting ST-688 Archon would make the Minerva more dependent on large mech armies to reach her full potential. Casella did not mind this. Ace commanders generally tended to make a greater difference in large-scale battles. Even if their Command Fields did not encompass every friendly combatant, their presence and leadership alone had a positive effect on morale and coordination. Besides, it was not as if her Minerva became worthless if she was left with only a couple of hundred mechs by her side. She was still able to Enfeoff enough of them, turning them into Barons or Viscounts that could help her defeat opponents that outnumbered and outgunned her forces by ten times or more. As far as Casella was concerned, ST-688 Archon fit extremely well with her current needs. She was a fresh ace commander whose resonance strength was still measured at the bottom end of junior ace pilots. She was still too weak. With lesser and greater phase lords showing up at the frontlines in increasingly greater numbers, ace pilots bore a greater burden than ever. They were the only champions who could drive away or kill these alien powerhouses. ST-688 offered her a chance to increase her ability to cope with these phase lords. She could Commandeer more mechs and boost their individual firepower a little further. It also allowed her to Enfeoff more mechs and increase their temporary power even further. In short, the ability to increase her resonance strength by 10 percent, 20 percent or higher in the later stages of her career as an ce pilot was definitely a powerful boon! It would drastically shorten the amount of time that was necessary for the Saint Commander to reach important thresholds and gain the power to defeat the enemies that mattered. This was especially relevant in the Red War as humans who had become stranded in the new frontier lacked time the most. If they had a few more years of development, they could have put up a much better fight against the native aliens. As for the problem of ST-688 becoming redundant as she approached her peak? Casella did not care. She was more than willing to face a little more hardships in the far future so long as she was able to become a lot more effective on the battlefield in the present day! If that was all, then selecting ST-688 Archon as a key resonating material for the Minerva Mark II sounded like a braindead choice if not for the fact that there was a compelling alternative. Whereas ST-688 promised to amplify the Minerva’s strengths, Dragon Scales mostly served to plug one of her major weaknesses. Due to the mechanics of her Command Field, the Minerva’s empowerment was not equal. Weapons generally hit a lot harder, but defenses received less of a boost. Casella did not really understand why this was the case, but she was clearly able to tell that her Commandeered and Enfeoffed were not able to withstand that much more attacks. This was rather dangerous as empowering any of these machines instantly turned them into high priority targets. Their effective firepower multiplied by at least several times while their defenses only increased by a fraction of that boost. This effectively turned every Commandeered mech into glass cannons! Any decent alien tactician understood that it was necessary to neutralize these mechs as quickly as possible before they could do more damage. Targeting them may be difficult as Casella’s empowerment also increased the mobility and control over the machines, but as long as the retaliatory attacks were plentiful enough, no amount of evasion could prevent mechs from getting struck down. Melee mechs suffered especially badly because of this. Whenever Casella assigned melee Knights to attack enemy warships, they were always met with a torrent of intercepting fire! The Red War had dragged on long enough for the native aliens to understand that humans really liked their mechs. This caused the major alien races to design new ship classes and refurbish their older hulls to mount a lot more tertiary gun batteries than usual! Big guns were much more effective when used to take down fortresses and other warships, but their tracking speeds and firing rates were too inadequate when used against small craft. Smaller guns possessed much better advantages in this regard. A typical alien warship could easily accommodate hundreds of them. Without burdening their systems too much. Despite their smaller sizes and calibers, their firepower was still vastly superior to mech-grade armaments! This made it a nightmare for melee mechs to attack enemy warships. It was undeniable that employing melee mechs resulted in much faster takedowns. Their space suppressor modules still remained extremely effective at weakening any manifestations of phasewater technology up close. Casella’s empowerment amplified their performance even further, thereby causing enemy warships to rapidly lose their most important form of protection! Discover exclusive content at freewebnovel Yet even as her melee Knights were able to strip enemy warships naked at prodigious speeds, they were also prone to suffering a lot of damage in return! Casella tried to minimize their chances of getting hit as much as possible by making them circle around the hull at high speeds. It certainly helped, but as long as a warship had enough rapid-fire guns, a handful of mechs always became unlucky and got shredded to pieces! The problem became even worse when the aliens armed their warships with an abundance of transphasic missiles. By changing them to specialize in crushing mechs across large areas, these expensive missiles always produced painful casualties unless they got intercepted in time. In short, the native aliens had become increasingly wiser to the methods employed by red humanity. 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝒆𝒘𝙚𝓫𝙣𝙤𝒗𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢 The enemy did not have the ability to deploy melee mechs themselves, but they had plenty of alternatives to choose from if they wanted to get rid of small craft at close range! This was why the Saint Commander usually liked to elevate ranged mechs to Knights and Barons the most. Their offensive power was already good, so the boost provided by her true resonance was always great. As for the lackluster increase in defensive power, Casella was able to disregard this shortcoming so long as her Knights and Barons maintained enough distance from the enemy. However, there were times when Casella clearly preferred to Commandeer more melee mechs, but declined to do so because the price in blood would be too great. In the last battle that took place in the Viola Magnifica System, Casella could have taken down more enemy warships if she Commandeered more melee mechs. The Larkinson Clan fielded plenty of them. The mech pilots were willing to surrender much of their control and autonomy over their machines to her as well. She ultimately declined to do so because the stakes weren’t high enough to warrant the heavy sacrifices. The Viola Magnifica System was already as good as lost at the time. The only control that humans had over the situation was determining how much of a price the native aliens had to pay to conquer the star system. Ultimately, the aliens paid a lighter price because Casella was unwilling to drive so many Avatar, Swordmaiden and Penitent Sister mech pilots to their graves. Now, Casella saw a way to change this constraint. If she chose Dragon Scales as a key resonating material for the Minerva Mark II, then she would be able to Commandeer and Enfeoff melee mechs much more aggressively! While it was clear from the information provided by Ves and Gloriana that Dragon Scales did not make her Knights invincible, their margins of error would become much greater than before! The more she developed her resonance strength, the more exaggerated the increase in hard defenses. Many melee mechs that would previously get blasted to pieces would instead be able to survive long enough to retreat out of the line of fire and make it back alive! The differences might not be drastic in a single battle, but over time Dragon Scales could result in the continued survival of a huge amount of melee mech pilots! These were precious lives. Not only were they Larkinsons who often had family in the clan, they also possessed different talents. Who knew if any of them could become the next expert pilot or ace pilot of the Larkinson Clan one day! In a conflict as grueling and irreconcilable as the Red War, the human race was locked in a struggle that could drag on for decades. This war of attrition tested both sides for their ability to achieve their outcomes while minimizing their cost. To that end, Dragon Scales possessed great strategic value over the long-term. So long as the Larkinson Clan fought in a large number of low to medium-intensity battles, this key resonating exotic could be the key to minimize attrition and enable the Larkinson soldiers to live long enough to develop their potential! Aside from that, Casella could also follow the patriarch’s recommendation and learn how to apply the effects of Dragon Scales onto non-mech subjects such as starships. This did not come easy, but now that she had become a Saint, she found that it was possible for her to stretch and shape her Command Field over time. It was similar to training a dog to perform tricks. Doing it once or twice did not yield much results, but as long as Casella remained persistent, her effort should slowly produce changes and improvements over time. The more time she spent on training her Command Field, the more she could change its behavior and mechanisms. She had already talked to other ace pilots such as Tusa and Linda Cross, and they both explained that they saw this as an opportunity to direct their own pathway towards godhood. This was one of the defining traits that set ace pilots apart from expert pilots! The ability to take more active control over the development of their own strength allowed them to strengthen their existing powers, develop new abilities and complete their comprehensive combat system! Therefore, if Casella wanted to, she could deliberately expand the scope of her Command Field and make it more effective when applied onto starships. Yet… was that truly how she wanted to fight? There was a clear difference between desire and necessity. Necessity urged the Saint Commander to embrace the benefits provided by Dragon Scales and move towards preserving the lives and assets of any friendly unit that fought under the influence of her Command Field. Necessity also compelled her to choose the more immediate benefits of ST-688 Archon and ramp up much faster than normal. This key resonating alloy could help her become a deterrent against enemy phase lords much faster than usual! Both were equally valuable in her opinion, but necessity alone should not dictate her choice. What did she want for herself? What kind of god pilot did she aspire to become one day? She thought of her goals and conviction. That immediately brought up a host of unpleasant memories. One of her goals was to protect the Larkinson Clan, but it was no longer her only fixated. Her ultimate goal was to become powerful enough to bring her brother back to life. Imon Ingvar should have never died. Casella refused to accept the reality that he was gone forever. Since god pilots were powerful enough to blatantly violate the laws of reality, how much more powerful did she have to become in order to reverse the timeline of her brother’s death? There had to be a way! Casella hardened her eyes as she understood much better what she needed to do in order to make her deepest wish come true one day. "I have made a decision." She announced the two physical projections. "Both key resonating materials have their strong points, but I would rather prefer to enjoy the benefits of one over the other."