Published at 18th of April 2026 7:41 am

Chapter 7462 A New Countermeasure

This chapter is updated by JustRead.pl

A part of her wanted to avoid making hard decisions.

URI-2461-V6 therefore stood out as a compromise choice. It did not excel in anything, but boosted her effectiveness in a broad range of combat scenarios. It would always be able to provide value no matter the circumstance.

The key resonating material also appealed to her because it complemented her rational approach towards combat. She used to take pride in her ability to fight smart. In order to waste as little shots as possible, she always had the habit of analyzing her opponents for any weak spots and targeting them with precision.

However, this approach often limited her due to the linear nature of her attack solutions.

Her energy beams could only fly straight and hit the first obstacle in their paths.

Her flames could only erupt at where the beams struck and could only spread like normal flames unless they were possessed by Kiroshi.

It was exactly because of her prior usage of her companion spirit that Isobel knew how powerful URI-2461-V6 could be if she could animate all of her flames, not just one at a time.

From bypassing fire-resistant sections to precisely burning the parts that mattered, being able to command her flames as if they functioned as her loyal troops, she could think of hundreds of interesting uses for this power.

Yet… was this truly what she desired?

One of her biomechanical fists started to clench.

The past version of herself that had never burned herself in an attempt to force a breakthrough may have been willing to embrace such a tactical solution.

Control was important in combat, and choosing a key resonating material that promised to grant her unparalleled control over her flames could solve many problems.

If URI-2461-V6 truly did what the Cybers promised, then any fears about inflicting unwanted collateral damage would be completely gone!

No longer did she have to be afraid of burning any friends and allies.

She also did not hold back her firepower anymore for fear of harming her fellow soldiers.

Despite these attractive advantages, Isobel still refrained from locking in this choice.

She initially found it difficult to rationalize why she did so, but she eventually managed to figure out the real reason behind her hesitation.

A part of her no longer wanted to outsmart her opponents.

She wanted to overpower them with raw strength!

Her traumatic encounter with the Emperor Tree had brutally taught her a lesson on how difficult it was to overcome an absolute disparity of strength.

Though Isobel still acknowledged the importance of control, she was no longer willing to sacrifice everything just to make her flames as safe and unthreatening to allies as possible.

What she truly wanted was to unleash all of her shackles and spread as many flames as possible!

She occasionally had dreams where she piloted a completed version of the Promethea Mark II that fully allowed her to indulge in her growing desire to burn everything down!

The larger and hotter her flames, the greater her satisfaction!

The more rational side of her felt disgusted at this. She knew that it was not healthy for her to desire to turn herself into a weapon of mass destruction and burn down entire planets!

Not that it mattered. She could not help but become captivated by its allure.

She clenched her alloy teeth.

Isobel never wanted to end up in a helpless and cornered position again.

Only by grasping absolute power would she be able to prevent herself from falling into the brink of death!

"Dise and Stark are finally making their moves." Ves uttered, interrupting her current line of thought.

The ace pilot focused sharply on the projected feeds as they showed two ace mechs in action.

Both of them had deliberately waited before they made their moves. The Saint Commander wanted to put as much separation between the advancing phase lords and the remainder of the enemy forces as possible.

She wanted to rule out as many chances for the alien phase lords to retreat with their lives intact as possible.

This unfortunately spared the incoming enemy champions from a lot of powerful attacks.

The Amaranto Mark III had to hold in her firepower for an awfully long time.

Usually, the ace marksman mech would have begun to snipe her targets from extreme distances many minutes ago!

When the Saint Commander finally permitted Saint Davia Stark to attack in earnest, she finally felt liberated from her shackles.

The Instrument of Vengeance had already been warmed up in advance. She had not let the waiting period pass in vain. A moderate amount of energy had already accumulated inside the oversized luminar crystal rifle.

Now, the formidable surged in power, causing both the crystalline rifle and mech to shine like an incredibly bright lightbulb!

The slender but greedy Amaranto Mark III accumulated power without any reserve, especially now she was physically linked to the hull of the Tortuous Scream.

One of the many changes that the Larkinsons had made to the orven battleship was to create many different 'foxholes' along many different points of her hull.

These shallow cavities may not look like much, but they provided just enough cover to a mech like the Amaranto Mark III.

They also featured hardpoints that allowed the ace marksman mech to link with the battleship's energy systems.

In other words, the Amaranto Mark III enjoyed almost the same advantages as all of the other bunker mechs!

Saint Davia Stark intended to take full advantage of this so long as no enemy champion managed to get close enough to drive her away.

Her eyes along with the sophisticated targeting system of her ace mech already locked onto a suitable target.

The rapid evolution of alien raiments made it more troublesome to achieve a one-hit-kill these days.

The Amaranto Mark III had developed a degree of notoriety within the high-level circles of alien society for that reason.

The existence of this lethal ace mech may have played a contributing role to the development of increasingly thicker and more resilient defenses among alien phase lords!

One of the aspects that Davia Stark had mixed feelings about was that she could not stop her living mech from telegraphing her most powerful attacks.

This was the price of drawing upon the power of light and borrowing the strength of the Illustrious One.

Both of them adored attention. They existed to be seen and noticed. It was practically heresy to think about hiding their radiance!

As such, Saint Davia Stark could only sigh helplessly as the approaching alien phase lords detected the new threat in advance and activated additional defensive measures to meet the imminent strikes.

For example, the orven phase lord that she had in her sights had withdrawn a foldable alloy shield from his back.

Though it was not tall or broad enough to cover his body entirely, it was still large enough to protect his head and his torso!

The thickness of the physical shield exceeded that of the raiment, thereby turning it into a very effective impediment against most attacks.

Perhaps this response might have prompted most of her peers to give up on assassinating this target.

Not Stark.

She knew what she was capable of, and what her Amaranto Mark III could do as well.

Multiple forms of energy and power amplification affected her Instrument of Vengeance.

Of particular note was the U-ERC Luminar crystal technology, which was an ingenious application of hyper technology and E-technology.

It could literally convert emotions into concrete power!

She had plenty of practice in doing so during prior battles.

At this moment, she found it difficult to channel a large amount of joy or fury. She could not bring herself to take a collection of lesser phase lords seriously.

Instead, she drew upon her feelings of contempt.

She harbored contempt towards the native aliens of the Red Ocean. She looked down on everything related to them. From worshipping phase lords as their gods to literally throwing away the lives of billions of soldiers without any sign of finesse, the aliens of this dwarf galaxy had thoroughly proven their degenerate and inferior nature.

The phase leaders in particular carried the blame for the anemic development of their civilization. It was only due to the external pressure of the human race that their society and technology finally entered the fast lane.

As her contempt towards the native aliens grew, the Instrument of Vengeance started to glow in a murky light.

The light conveyed a disturbing and nauseating feeling, as if just looking at it would make you sick!

Not every form of radiance was benign!

By the time the Instrument of Vengeance was almost fully charged, Saint Davia Stark briefly waited until she instantly pulled the trigger.

In an instant, a large and incredibly powerful beam of sickly light erupted from the muzzle of the oversized luminar crystal rifle and instantly crossed the void!

The beam arrived before the orven phase lord before anyone else could respond.

It should have struck the enemy's azure energy shield and spatial barrier before drilling straight through his raiment.

If Saint Stark had not overestimated the lesser phase lord's multi-layered defenses, then there should be enough power left of the energy beam to burn partway through the chest of the massive alien.

That did not happen.

For whatever reason, at the moment the ace pilot pulled the trigger, the targeted phase lord somehow disappeared!

"The Amaranto missed!"

"How can that be?!"

"Saint Stark is the most accurate mech pilot in our fleet! I can't remember the time when she last missed her shot. How are the enemy phase lords able to evade her strike?!"

"Multiple analysis engines went to work in order to decipher what had happened."

Their initial guess was that the aliens had relied on deception. Perhaps the target did not exist in the first place. What the Amaranto Mark III actually targeted was a very sophisticated and realistic decoy.

However, the spatial activity generated by the phase lord in question quickly allowed the Larkinsons to decipher the truth.

"The orven phase lord blinked several kilometers to the side 0.713 seconds before he was supposed to get hit!"

The humans were not that shocked that phase lords could teleport away, especially when the humans had yet to subject them to any warp interdiction effects.

What truly perplexed them was that the targeted phase lord did not blink away too early or too late. He did so in such a tiny window of opportunity that Saint Stark could not reacquire her target in time! "This is impossible! How can these stupid aliens predict the Amaranto Mark III's timing so well?!"

The Larkinsons desperately sought answers.

Their most likely guess was that the new raiments contained advanced computing systems that provided a large amount of auxiliary functions to their wearers.

Perhaps one of them accurately analyzed the behavior of the Amaranto Mark III based on historical data as well as ongoing observations and gave the orven phase lord an accurate prediction on when to teleport away.

One particularly bold speculation claimed that the phase lords may have resorted to cybernetic augmentations in order to achieve a greater fusion between their true bodies and their raiments!

This would result in a synergy that vaguely resembled the cooperation between a mech and mech pilot!

Another possibility was that the Red Cabal or the major alien races successfully developed a new generation of phasewater organs that possessed exotic capabilities.

There had been speculation that new advancements in materials, technologies and so on may have spurred the phase whales to develop powerful new phasewater organs that took advantage of the properties of hyper materials to grant qi cultivation-like powers to their own kind!

Currently, nobody had any definite answers. They could only keep their eyes out for more anomalies and hope that the native aliens did not present too many unexpected surprises.

Saint Stark had grown thoroughly angered by her latest result.

All of her contempt towards her enemies had gone away. These unusually well-equipped phase lords had thoroughly challenged her pride.

She channeled her mixed emotions into her Instrument of Vengeance as she prepared to unleash her second attack.

The red glow of fury and the purple glow of pride mixed together to produce a more weighty and ominous combination of magenta light.

This dark and moody radiance seemed to sap the light from the surrounding area.

For a moment, nothing else but the Amaranto Mark III and her iconic luminar crystal rifle mattered!

As Saint Stark and her battle partner set their sights on the orven phase lord yet again, they grew determined to wipe away their failure!

"WE SHALL NOT MISS A SECOND TIME."

Share