5125 Icon of War
The conflagration had spread!
As soon as the segmented transphasic energy shield coverage of the yurzen battleship exhibited a gap, Kiroshi instantly spotted the opportunity and slipped past this powerful barrier!
This temporary vulnerability wouldn't have been as serious if the kilometers-long alien vessel featured multi-layered transphasic energy shields.
However, the yurzens were only treated as a minor race in the Red Ocean. Their access to advanced tech and higher quality materials were severely constrained due to the deliberate suppression of the major races that always had the greatest say over the dwarf galaxy.
This was why the yurzens had no effective means to prevent Kiroshi from bypassing the most important defensive barrier that protected the large and relatively expensive warship from outside threats!
At first, the aliens hoped that the purple fire would run out of propellant to burn.
They assumed that the previous conflagration that had engulfed much of the surface of their transphasic energy shields had only managed to grow so big due to the constant follow-up shots by the Promethea.
Now that the energy shield coverage had been repaired, the expert rifleman mech that was able to fire purple flaming beams should not be able to supplement the relatively small that was locked on the other side of the barrier!
That was what the aliens thought at least. Their logic was not wrong, but how could they know that expert pilots like to defy common sense the most?
The 'small' purple flame was not an ordinary kind of chemical reaction.
It was alive. Controlled and centered around a companion spirit and empowered by the resonance of an expert pilot, the extraordinary purple fire took root into the light transphasic alloys that made up the outer layers of the alien warship.
Although the alloys utilized by the natives of the Red Ocean were not as tough as those utilized by the humans, their density and resilience were not low!
Their resistance towards heat and radiation was quite high, and few aliens could ever imagine that these dedicated protective layers could ever catch fire.
Yet that was currently happening under the conscious and deliberate actions of Kiroshi.
The spiritual cat not only invested her own strength into trying to make the alloys combustible, but she already drew upon the ambient spiritual energies in the environment to reduce her burden and feed the flames even more!
The quick crash course in fire spells taught by Ves before the battle granted Isobel and her companion spirit a lot of useful insights!
Though the companion spirit did not acquire a formal cultivation method that could truly enable her to harness the element of fire as if she was its incarnation, Kiroshi was nonetheless able to employ simple and rudimentary methods to take advantage of E energy radiation!
This was a power that the yurzens had yet to master or become aware of, so they could do nothing to prevent the living flames from absorbing the vital spiritual energies they needed to not only sustain themselves, but also enhance their burning properties even further!
The yurzens desperately tried to douse the flames that were slowly spreading across the hull of their largest warship. Their measures became more and more extreme.
Several large nuzzles surrounded the purple fire that had taken root and spouted large amounts of water and other fire-suppression substances.
Several nearby gun turrets lowered their cannons as much as possible before firing straight through the flames no matter the risk of hitting other exterior modules!
A few shuttles launched from the hangar bay and proceeded to launch a payload of bombs and missiles in an attempt to disperse the flames.
Even that did not work!
The flames completely ignored the ordinary forces that should normally be enough to douse them, and continued in their mission to burn through the thick but ultimately vulnerable layers of alloys that made up the exterior of the alien capital ship!
This time, the yurzens truly became desperate. After a short but intense deliberation, the aliens chose to commit an act of self-harm in order to avoid even greater damage down the line.
A transphasic missile launched from a port, only to turn around and explode right in the middle of the conflagration!
This powerful detonation tore a hole through all of the exterior layers and breached multiple outer compartments!
Many different sensor modules and nearby gun batteries either got vaporized or fractured into pieces as the transphasic explosion mercilessly engulfed all of these parts that took a lot of effort and resources to produce.
A gaping hole had been left behind in the hull. The crater went deep enough to destroy several layers of compartments.
If not for the fact that the yurzens stationed in the danger zone had been evacuated in advance, the self-harm would have been a lot more serious!
The idea of the yurzens was not all that bad this time. Since the strangely stubborn and persistent purple fire apparently needed to eat through solid matter in order to propagate, why not wipe out all of the nearby alloys and other materials?
The aliens did not believe that the purple fire could still exist when there was nothing left but vacuum in the vicinity!
Yet as the dust began to settle, the faint optimism that welled inside of the hearts of the yurzens quickly disappeared.
Distressed noises escaped from their alien mouths as they saw that the purple fire had somehow managed to survive the devastation!
Though it had shrunk and lost a lot of volume due to the explosion, Kiroshi still managed to keep herself together.
Not only that, she purposefully moved towards the large exposed hole in the hull and began to engulf the bulkheads and other structural parts that were weaker and softer than the exterior layers!
The conflagration quickly grew in size and scope as Kiroshi spread the fires under her control at a considerably faster pace!
The yurzens had ultimately made a counterproductive move. Instead of keeping the purple flames outside as much as possible, the act of blowing a hole on their own ship gave the persistent purple conflagration the opening it needed to burn the ship from the inside!
The yurzens began to panic even harder now!
Dozens of damage control crews tried to employ every measure to contain, redirect or suppress the flames, yet their actions were completely futile.
Scores of yurzens who strayed too close to the flames not only failed to reduce the threat, but also burned to death in an instant when the seemingly entelligent flames devoured all nearby life!
As the flames started to breach through the more important compartments and lit important ship systems on fire, the yurzen battleship began to malfunction to an increasingly greater extent!
Entire ship sections lost power while other parts simply exploded and shattered all of the adjacent compartments!
The more alloys the conflagration burned, the larger it became!
The greater the size of the flames, the hotter they burned!
This caused Kiroshi to gradually find it easier and easier to burn through more and more materials at once.
Even the toughest and most heat-resistant alloys incorporated in the battleship was no match to the endlessly hungry flames!
As the conflagration started to engulf 15 percent of the entire volume of the yurzen warship, the flames attracted so many fire energies in the environment that all of the yurzens stationed in the intact sections of the ship started to feel as if they had been stuffed into an oven!
No matter how well the temperature control systems kept everything cool, the yurzens had the illusion that they were already starting to get cooked!
A wave of fear spread throughout the crew. Their efficiency dropped as panic and indecision started to spread.
The alien captain was left with a difficult choice.
Various subordinates and advisors suggested one option after another, but none of their ideas had made a difference.
The honored yurzen captain observed the state of the battleship. Over a hundred warships built by his race as well as two puelmer ships that contained a host of advanced technologies could do nothing to prevent his proud ship from turning into a burning wreck!
The most ridiculous part about all of this was that they were all fighting against a single human starship.
The human vessel did not even mount any guns. The main culprit responsible for turning his large warship into a flaming coffin of metal was a single mech that was no larger than a typical starfighter!
The yurzen captain simply couldn't understand how such a tiny machine could almost single-handedly cause the downfall of his powerful vessel.
Unfortunately, reality stared right in his face. He could no longer deny the truth. Seeing that there was no way to rescue his vessel, he issued the fateful command in his own alien words.
The yurzens around him felt ashamed and depressed, but they did not dare to disobey their latest instruction.
They all left their stations and boarded the nearest intact escape vessels.
Hundreds of miniature shuttles and other oddly-shaped contraptions launched into space and distanced themselves from the fires as much as possible. They all flew towards the other friendly ships that had tried to stay away from the burning battleship in case the flames were contagious.
None of these developments escaped the sight of the Golden Skull Alliance.
Everyone aboard the Spirit of Bentheim grew amazed and astonished how the Promothea played an outsized role in the downfall of one of the largest and most threatening alien warships.
The yurzen battleship might not be as advanced as Stingray 1 and Stingray 2, but the sheer size and volume of her gun batteries turned her into a powerful threat against both mechs and starships!
Taking down this key asset brought the Golden Skull Alliance a substantial step closer to attaining victory without suffering serious losses in the process!
"Did you expect the Promethea to become this good, Ves?" General Verle quietly communicated to Ves over their private communication channel.
It took several seconds for Ves to respond.
"I did not expect for Venerable Isobel and the Promethea to be able to burn an entire battleship after taking advantage of a single opening." He slowly responded. "The new fire crystal integrated in the Ignitron is a lot more effective at channeling fire energies than I thought. The real star here is Kiroshi. Her ability to launch herself at the enemy and exert so much control over all of the resonance-empowered flames showcases the true potential of companion spirits. If Venerable Isobel can repeat this feat many more times against other alien starships, the total damage that she can inflict on the alien raiding fleet might surpass that of Saintess Ulrika Vraken!"
Expanding flames had always been a symbol of widespread destruction. The power of fire was incredibly powerful in combat, and being able to harness it to such a degree turned Isobel and her battle partner into an icon of war whose potential for mass destruction was the greatest within the Larkinson Clan!
Ves pretty much regarded Venerable Isobel as his own homegrown version of the Destroyer of Worlds!
Perhaps one day this humble low-tier expert pilot might also evolve into an all-powerful god pilot who could single-handedly make the galaxy burn!
He shook his head. He shouldn't get ahead of himself. Any pilot could turn into a ridiculously powerful force of nature if he thought this way about everyone.
"Let's continue to light a few more starships aflame." Ves suggested to General Verle. "Concentrate all of the firepower of our mechs on a single large starship. So long as we poke a single hole in the vessel's energy shield coverage, Kiroshi will be able to do her magic once again."
General Verle clearly shared the same idea. He grinned as the Spirit of Bentheim boldly began to move even closer!
"We are already taking this step. We will soon enter into a range where our Transcendent Punishers can begin to contribute their firepower. The alien warships will truly heat at that time!"
