The opening shots of the Amaranto and the Star of Liberation triggered other expert mechs into action.


    Those that were solely equipped with melee weapons still had to sit tight, but those with ranged weapons had no excuse anymore.


    The ranged expert mechs of the Hex Army and the Golden Skull Alliance began to fire at different targets and achieved immediate results!


    For example, the recentlypleted Carnare fielded by the Cross n already exhibited a faint shadow of the Mars.


    The Carnare was the personal machine of Venerable End Cross, one of the mech pilots that had been lucky enough to break through during the climax of the Purgatory Campaign.


    Even though Venerable End was just a low-tier expert pilot, the treatment he received from the Cross n was extravagant!


    It couldn''t be helped. The Cross n suffered from a shortage of expert pilots and had a lot of money to spare.


    Benedict Cortez, who was still a Senior Mech Designer at the time, expressly set out to emte the firepower of the Mars but in a much more manageable package.


    Though the renowned Larkinson mech designers did not take part in its development, the Carnare still turned into a powerful work.


    The expert mech possessed two standout features.


    First, Benedict integrated a weaker and more modest version of the original Magma Vein System into its design. This allowed the expert mech to channel and wield a lot more energy in a much more efficient manner.


    Second, the Carnare came equipped with a transphasic dual-type energy rifle!


    As Venerable End Cross targeted a space station that fell under the protection of a titan shield, he resonated with his expert mech and pulled the trigger without hesitation.


    Despite the fact that the space station in question still boasted a healthy titan shield, the Carnare''s resonance-empowered positron beam only partially collided against the powerful energy barrier.


    More than a quarter of the deadly particles of the original beam seemed to behave as if the thick titan shield did not exist and passed right through without any issue!


    This took some of the crew manning the stations of the orbital fortress by surprise. Before they could do anything else, the weakened but still-potent energy beam struck an armored turret.


    The same behavior happened again! While a significant proportion of the positron beam damaged the outeryers of the turret, a part of the stream of positrons continued to pass right through solid alloys before they eventually unleashed their potent destructive potential onto the critical internals of the defensive fixture.


    The powerful turret that had put a decent amount of pressure on the starships of the Hex Army lost all of its functions even though its frontal armor was not entirely breached!


    "Watch out! That expert mech has a transphasic weapon, and not a weak one at that!"


    The Cross n invested over 350 grams of phasewater to provide transphasic capabilities to the Carnare, and this was a pretty luxurious treatment for a machine assigned to a low-tier expert pilot!


    If not for the fact that the Cross n still had more phasewater than they knew what to do with it, the Crossers would have never been so willing to allocate so much of this strategic substance to a single machine!


    The Carnare''s transphasic energy rifle that Benedict had developed in cooperation with Melmen Advanced Systems possessed enough phasewater to allow its potent beams to move past the titan shields deployed by the defenders and several meters of thick alloys depending on their defensive properties.


    Many conventional defensive measures lost a lot of their power when struck by potent transphasic attacks.


    While armor and energy shields still yed a major role in mitigating the damage potential of attacks like the onesunched by the Carnare, it became clear that the mere existence of this new attack method had the potential to change human warfare forever!


    "The only defenses that canpletely block transphasic attacks are true resonance and transphasic defense systems! Everything else is just waiting for death!"


    This was a bit of an exaggeration. The orbital fortresses that made up the strongest parts of the Kosic Ring would not go down just because it was targeted by a few mechs armed with transphasic weapon systems.


    Their massive titan shield generators were buried deep within the interior of the enormous constructs. A huge amount of walls and other obstacles stood in the way between these critical defensive systems and attacksunched from afar.


    The Carnare''s effectiveness on this massive battlefield was therefore limited at this stage. The most that Venerable End Cross could do was knock out the turrets and asionally the mechs that were hiding behind the cover of intact titan shields.


    Other ranged expert mechs exhibited greater effectiveness.


    "So much hardware. So much to burn. It''s been a long time since I have entered a target-rich environment."


    Venerable Isobel Kotin had been waiting for this moment a long time. Ever since she broke through during the Purgatory Campaign and received her own expert mech a yearter, she had been looking forward to making a huge impact in the next major battle involving the Larkinson n.


    It was a pity that the Larkinsons spent 5 long years in Davute!


    Aside from sending out modest batches of mech units to fulfill mercenary missions, the Larkinson n did not encounter any hostilities.


    Venerable Isobel therefore became a lot happier when the n initially announced its participation in Operation Saturday Market.


    Though her personal resentment towards the Fridaymen was not that strong to be honest, she valued this confrontation because it could serve as an excellent opportunity for her to explore her power and search the limits of her current strength!


    "I''ve never been able to fulfill my duty to the fullest since I received you, Promethea. You can cheer up now, because these Fridaymen have been generous enough to give us plenty of targets to burn."


    Though the Promethea was not a masterwork mech and still had a lot to grow until it became a third order living mech, it had already reached a state of development that made it as responsive as a pet.


    The expert mech liked what Venerable Isobel was conveying. The Promethea became so excited at the thought of fulfilling the role it was made for that it began to resonate stronger with its expert pilot.


    A me-like purple corona surrounded the ck-and-purple mech. Both Venerable Isobel and the Promethea wanted to make their first proper debut in battle as memorable as possible, and the best way to do that was to disrupt the enemy as much as possible!


    Isobel scanned the battlefield and selected her first target.


    The Promethea''s custom Ignitron luminar crystal assault rifle did not possess the greatest uracypared to the Amaranto''s Instrument of Vengeance, but it should not be a challenge for it to strike a rtively stationary target from a distance.


    As she and her expert mech locked on to a defensive tform that was a bitrger than a corvette and boasted three powerful and urateser turrets, the Ignitron in the arms of the Promethea fired a rtively thin and modest positron beam at the target.


    The positron beam dealt a decent amount of damage on impact, but even if it was empowered by true resonance, the strike hardly managed to breach the cheap but abundant structural armor.


    This was the normal result of attacking one of the thousands of defensive tforms that orbited Pima Prime V. Each of them were rtively cheap and low-quality but much tougher than mechs because they traded mobility for a lot of mass!


    Even if expert mechs such as the Amaranto and the Carnare were able to knock them out with attacks that were strong enough, it was not worth it for their expert pilots to waste their willpower on destroying these ordinary targets.


    If not for the fact that all of the ranged mech units of Task Force Fury were preupied with breaking open orbital fortresses first, these defensive tforms would have long been torn apart in quick session.


    Now, Venerable Isobel was making a head-start on their destruction by targeting them first.


    The strangest part about her approach was that she did not target the defensive tform any further after striking it once. The construct was stillpletely operational aside from suffering a bit of damage to its structure!


    Isobel just took a brief look at the damaged section before she became satisfied with what she and the Promethea managed to aplish.


    "It begins." Isobel smirked and turned the Ignitron towards an adjacent defensive tform.


    The expert ranged mech fired another understated resonance-empowered positron beam. Isobel did not even deliberately aim her weapon at one of the turrets or any weak points of the defensive tform.


    Even if her attack ended up striking solid armor ting, Isobel still moved on to attacking another target!


    She continually sped up her attacks. It only took a few seconds at most to shift her aim to another target and umte enough energy and resonance to fire another attack at a defensive tform!


    Initially, the Fridaymen didn''t pay much attention to the Promethea.


    Compared to the much more threatening Amaranto that was capable of firing immensely powerful and destructive energy beams, the attacksunched by the Larkinson n''stest expert rifleman mech did not even manage to cripple its targets!


    It was more than 30 seconds before numerous Fridaymen began to feel that something was wrong.


    The crew manning the defensive tforms and the officers who supervised them from remote began to receive increasingly rming notifications.


    First, the heat levels of the defensive tforms started to rise at a drastic rate.


    Next, numerous systems andponents closest to the impact site started to malfunction.


    Finally, the crew members discovered to their horror that the defensive tforms struck by the Promethea had actually started to burn!


    "This is impossible! Hardly anything here is mmable! We only got struck by a single positron beam attack that only sted a chunk of the outer armor. Our sensors did not detect that our station had been doused with any propent."


    There was no logical exnation why the defensive tforms slowly began to get engulfed in mes.


    It was only after ruling out every other possibility that the Fridaymen finally reached the right conclusion.


    "It''s the Larkinson n''s new expert mech! The Promethea is the chief culprit!"


    As far as Larkinson expert mechs went, the Promethea was one of the simpler ones. It was not loaded with many features and did not possess aplicated design.


    There were three major differences that set it apart from other ranged mechs.


    First, it was equipped with methrowers that possessed a lot of destructive potential at close range.


    Second, the Ignitron integrated a resonating alloy called ARB-34. This artificial alloy happened to be highlypatible with Venerable Isobel Kotin.


    Its main function was to amplify Isobel''s me domain and imbue each energy attack with burning properties!


    This meant that when an energy beam struck a target, a fire would start that could slowly burn through solid matter that should ordinarily not be mmable in a given environment.


    Thus, the third and principal reason why the defensive tforms burned was because Venerable Isobel willed them to be engulfed in mes!


    Perhaps Venerable Isobel would have a hard time setting mes on an expert mech due to the interference of an enemy expert pilot''s force of will, but defensive tforms enjoyed no such luxury!


    "I haven''te close to reaching my limit." Venerable Isobel taunted as she continued to resonate with her expert mech and its special luminar crystal rifle.


    p Resonating with ARB-34 did not strain her a lot, which meant that she could not onlyunch a lot of resonance-empowered attacks without tiring herself out, but also maintain a lot of different mes at the same time!</anda>


    Before anyone knew it, over 40 defensive tforms had already caught fire!


    The ones that the Promethea struck first had already been rendered useless as the mes had burned too many critical modules such as the power reactor or the turrets!


    The enemies that observed how the Promothea continued to burn through the defensive tform as if she was igniting a wildfire along the Kosic Ring began to experience a lot more fear towards this ''simple'' expert rifleman mech!


    "Stop the Promethea! It can single-handedly gut the Kosic Ring if it continues to spread its mes!"