5124 Feed the Flames
Venerable Isobel Kotin observed with envy as the Macharia Excelsia and the Amaranto exerted serious pressure onto the alien warships.
While it was understandable that the Macharia Excelsia was able to land its shots with an impressive hit rate at these distances, the Amaranto's performance exceeded her expectations!
The younger Larkinson expert pilot underestimated the skills of the older guest pilot.
The Amaranto also truly showed to everyone that a machine that was entirely dedicated to long-ranged combat could accomplish this difficult feat with greater ease than others!
Isobel frankly could not even understand how Venerable Stark and her Amaranto could effectively calculate their firing solutions when their laser beams also turned by up to 45 degrees!
The complexity of trying to land a hit under those circumstances increased dramatically under those conditions!
"FOCUS ON YOUR OWN GAME, ISOBEL." The Promethea spoke. "WE HAVE OUR OWN ADVANTAGES TO RELY UPON. I MIGHT NOT BE A MASTERWORK MECH LIKE THE AMARANTO, BUT OUR RIFLE IS FRANKLY BETTER AFTER MY PROGENITOR HAS APPLIED A POWERFUL UPGRADE."
Venerable Isobel nodded as she focused her attention back to her own machine.
The power of fire surrounded the upgraded Ignitron Transphasic Luminar Crystal Assault Rifle.
Though nothing seemed to have changed on the surface, one of the six attack phase crystals that were usually chambered in the weapon had not only become a lot more purple, but actively absorbed the fire energies floating in the environment!
The more time passed by, the more the transformed prime crystal began to embody the element of fire.
"We should get ready to open fire ourselves." Isobel concluded as she noticed that the Spirit of Bentheim continued to close the distance.
Though the ship was taking more and more serious damage by making it easier for the enemy to land their many shots, Venerable Isobel hoped to bring the firefight back in the favor of her side by adding her own firepower to the mix.
"Ya. Ya."
Her purple companion spirit was already eager to contribute to the fight.
Different from the last battle, Kiroshi learned a couple of useful tricks from Ves. She had only just managed to figure out how to turn herself into a firebolt and propel herself forward!
Now, Venerable Isobel Kotin and the flaming purple cat just needed to see whether their recent gains could make an actual difference on the battlefield.
Their hopes were high, but it remained to be seen whether their abilities and their recently upgraded expert mech could give them the edge they needed to make a more substantial difference.
A sense of anticipation and excitement welled up inside Isobel. The expert pilot slowly broke her carefully controlled facade as the rush of battle started to put her into a more fervent state.
"The Amaranto can bend her beams like a noodle, but my own machine's damage output is a lot hotter! Come on, Kiroshi! Let's charge up the Ignitron!"
"Yayaaaa!"
The companion spirit phased through the cockpit and dove straight into the waiting Ignitron.
The weapon immediately seemed to grow hotter as Kiroshi entered the new fire beam attack phase crystal.
The combination between the two seemed to produce a mutually reinforcing effect that caused the attraction of fire energies to multiply by several times.
As Venerable Isobel began to resonate with the Promethea and the rifle occupied by her companion spirit, she found that the Ignitron rifle harnessed much greater power this time!
As a hot and flaming purple corona began to surround the prone Promethea at an increasing intensity, the weapon braced before the expert mech began to glow increasingly brighter as different energies combined together in a charge that held exceptional burning potential!
Venerable Isobel and the Promethea both started to grow concerned about holding back such powerful energies.
They felt as if the Ignitron rifle might explode if they failed to pull the trigger in the ensuing moment!
Isobel gave up on trying to strike at the smaller and weaker exposed targets and simply trained her rifle at a distant yurzen battleship.
As soon as she locked her target, she pulled the trigger!
"FIRE!"
"Yaaaaaaaaaa!"
Isobel almost gasped as she could feel Kiroshi riding along the stream of positrons!
This was the first time her companion spirit moved so far away from herself!
"It worked! The patriarch was right!"
Different from the Amaranto, the Promethea fired a resonance-empowered positron beam that was just a fraction slower than an equivalent laser beam.
Nonetheless, it also possessed transphasic properties, which meant that it could inflict much more effective damage against transphasic defenses.
The difficulty of striking an alien battleship was much lower. Isobel did not look too surprised that she managed to land her shot at this distance.
A silent but fiery purple burst of flames and energy struck the yurzen warship in question.
Though the vessel was a lot easier to strike than her smaller counterparts, her capacity to resist damage was also a lot greater.
Minor race or not, the yurzens clearly understood how to make the best out of their limited tech by making everything bigger!
At first, the alien officers and crew members did not even take the attack too seriously.
The native aliens learned much about their human foes. They understood that their opposition largely utilized second-class technologies and that ordinary expert mechs could not make a significant dent on their defenses.
However, a few observant crew members soon began to notice that the purple burst of flame that initially struck the segmented transphasic energy shield did not fade like normal.
This was not a normal phenomenon. Transphasic energy shields were not flammable, and their surfaces were too unstable to make anything stick for long.
The alien crew members began to exchange more alien words with each other as they tried to figure out a way to douse or shake off the flames.
The only reason why they did not exhibit more alarm was because the persistent purple flames did not stress the defenses of their battleship.
Several minutes passed by as the Promethea continued to charge her Ignitron rifle and fired flaming purple energy beams at the same target.
Not all of the shots hit their mark. Venerable Isobel was not as proficient as Venerable Stark in this regard.
"I'll just fire more often!"
Unlike the Amaranto, the Promethea did not expend too much energy to fire a full-powered attack.
Though the latter's damage output per shot was not as great as a consequence, it didn't matter to Isobel as each successful strike enabled her to pass on more flames to her target!
Isobel felt as if she was in tune with her Ignitron rifle. She completely forgot about using the other attack phase crystals as the only one that resonated the best with her was the new fire crystal!
The recently transformed sympathetic material was doing its job and more. It attracted more and more fire energies from the environment and used it to augment every attack with additional flaming potency!
The more Isobel utilized her Ignitron rifle, the more she gained a feel of her impressive new weapon.
She no longer felt jealous at the powerful weapons of other expert mechs anymore!
Who cared about the Instrument of Vengeance or the Hexfire when the Ignitron enabled her to make full use of her fire domain!
"Feed the flames!"
The Promethea exhibited more and more eagerness in her determination to add to the fire she had started onto the energy shields of the largest yurzen battleship.
Each time she managed to land a purple fire beam close enough to Kiroshi's current coordinates, the new burst of flames linked up with the existing ones, causing them to combine together to form a greater wildfire.
This not enabled Kiroshi to extend her time away from Venerable Isobel, but completely reinvigorated the flames that were having difficulty sustaining themselves after a time.
Shot after shot struck the enemy battleship until over 15 percent of her entire transphasic energy coverage became engulfed by a purple conflagration!
The yurzen officers and crew members could no longer ignore the fires that were increasingly blocking their sensors and inflicting constant damage onto their energy shields.
The alien battleship tried to shake off the flames in various ways. Her gun batteries shot directly at the flames, though this did nothing to diminish the fires.
The segmented energy shields shifted and rotated in the hopes that the flames would lose their anchors.
This did not work either as the fires either remained unaffected or because they deliberately moved whenever necessary!
The aliens grew completely confused at how stubbornly the growing conflagration stuck to their starship.
The flames did not entirely behave naturally!
It was as if they were truly alive!
What they did not realize was that this wild fantasy was far closer to the truth than they suspected.
With Kiroshi providing intelligent direction to the expanding fires, she had become the main contributor to the damage inflicted to the increasingly more beleaguered alien battleship!
When Ves observed what was happening from his command throne, he began to grin as he saw that his efforts to help Venerable Isobel out were vindicated!
From his perspective, the Promethea had truly begun to flex her strength as a prime mech!
Even though the immediate damage inflicted by all of the flames were not as good as a direct strike from an expert mech, the flames possessed a persistence that enabled them to steadily reduce the integrity of any energy shield.
Once the conflagration reached a point where they grew large and hot enough to cover roughly 30 percent of the energy shield coverage, the alien warship tried to move behind the cover of other friendly vessels.
The yurzens did not want to know what would happen if the purple fires surrounded the large vessel in every direction!
"Don't let that ship get away!" Ves urged. "Her transphasic energy shields are becoming increasingly more affected by the interference produced by the Promethea's flames. This is our best opportunity yet to punch through the protective barrier."
He was not the only one who recognized this opportunity.
Both the Macharia Excelsia and the Amaranto shifted their rifles away from their original targets and began to strike the yurzen battleship with powerful transphasic positron beams!
Even though their damage output did not add to the flames, they played an important role in damaging the segmented transphasic energy shields.
Still, the ship was built to take a beating. The aliens also made sure to rotate and change the orientation of their vessel, but that did not help as much as they hoped as Kiroshi simply moved so that she always offered the Golden Skullers a clear beacon to direct their fire!
Just as the yurzens believed that they could move their vessel behind cover fast enough to save their vessel from suffering real damage, the Macharia Excelsia suddenly started to behave a lot different than before.
The manifestation of the Phase King truly started to bless the ace mech's Hexfire rifle!
While the quick modifications applied by Ves did not truly enable the Phase King to exert much of his power, he was still capable of optimizing the transphasic properties of the weapon.
As the Hexfire rifle charged up as much power as it could, Saintess Ulrika Vraken finally pulled the trigger!
A bright positron beam quickly soared across space and struck the burning battleship!
The segmented transphasic energy shield finally broke after it already received so much abuse!
Though the alien warship quickly tried to compensate for this momentary gap in coverage by placing another segmented energy shield into place, the ship did not respond quickly enough for Kiroshi to slip into the gap!
The conflagration oddly began to shrink and grow cooler now that it had lost contact with the fire spirit.
While the yurzens briefly grew optimistic at this favorable turn of events, they soon realized why the earlier flames had lost power.
Kiroshi had managed to sneak onto the surface of the massive hull of the battleship!
A new fire broke out on the hull. Though it was a lot smaller and weaker than the earlier conflagration, the problem was that it actually began to feed off the thick but relatively weak metal hull!
A newer and far more alarming conflagration started to spread across the surface!
The greater the flames, the hotter they grew.
The hotter the flames, the easier it became for Kiroshi to burn the tougher and more heat-resistant alloys!
"The alien battleship's hull has caught fire! There is no indication so far that their fire suppression methods are working!"
