The ergence of fifteen expert candidates ca as a very welco surprise to Ves. So of the figures he had long marked out as promising had finally taken the critical and most difficult step of realizing so of their spiritual potential!
For a long ti, Ves was completely clueless about what allowed regular ch pilots to beco expert candidates.
ch pilots with spiritual potential were fairly rare, but there were plenty of them in the Larkinson Clan. Part of this is due to the high recruitnt standards.
After all, those with spiritual potential usually enjoyed so modest advantages in piloting chs. Many people interpreted this as an aspect of talent. Those with talent enjoyed greater resources and attention, which also prompted them to put more effort in their training in order to et the expectations of their peers and teachers.
In prior months, the Larkinsons recruited quite a good amount of these talented ch pilots. Yet so far, none of them had succeeded in breaking through the critical barrier to expert candidate.
As far as Ves was concerned, this hurdle was as pivotal and arduous to overco as the jump from Apprentice ch Designer to Journeyman ch Designer.
It was for this reason that Ves was surprised that not only the Ingvar siblings, but plenty of other Larkinsons broke through!
He noted that a fair amount of the new expert candidates piloted the Bright Warriors he had recently enhanced. Not all of them were 100 or 75 percent saturated. In fact, the expert candidates from the other ch forces such as the Sentinels piloted comrcial chs that Ves had nothing to do with! These expert candidates broke through without the help of LMC chs!
This caused Ves to make so guesses. Piloting spiritually-enhanced chs clearly helped, but they were not a critical necessity. Certainly, the astounding battle that involved multiple overpowering god-like entities must have certainly pushed them over the edge, but getting fifteen new expert candidates all at once seed a bit too exaggerated.
Ves speculated that there was another factor that eased their breakthroughs. Sothing that applied to all of them, not just the ch pilots of the Bright Warrior model.
His eyes snapped to the huge but opaque vortex spinning lazily throughout space. This damn vortex was an enduring mystery of the Nyxian Gap and sothing that might even be the cause of the spatial warping.
Could bringing the imaginary realm closer to the material realm be the primary reason why so many ch pilots advanced to expert candidate?
Was the main reason why most spiritually-active pilots never found their opportunities to advance because they weren't in the right environnt?
Aside from stimulating their potential through life-and-death battles, perhaps a better and safer way to help them advance was to bring them to areas where the imaginary and the real overlapped with each other!
Of course, that was easier said than done. The Nyxian Gap was an abnormal region where the imaginary realm was already pressed to the material realm. In civilized space, the two realms were more strictly divided, as they should be. Anomalies almost never took place in normal space.
At this ti, the chs piloted by the newly-advanced expert candidates exchanged their first blows against the dark god known as the Inexorable One!
The ranged chs had already veered away and were firing their laser rifles at the giant grey bird with coordinated attacks. Hot laser beams struck the head of the Inexorable One.
"Aim for the eyes!" Captain Casella Ingvar commanded. "It might not do anything to this huge monster, but it will give us an easy way to concentrate our firepower!"
Usual ranged attacks did nothing to the materialized spiritual body of the dark god. Not even the enriched nuclear missiles launched by the Bright Warriors inflicted any serious damage on the giant bird.
This was different! Though the laser beams fired by the handful of chs seed weak, each of them were empowered by resonance. This gave the attacks so bite, just enough to inflict so real wounds on the dark god.
One ch in particular caused Inexorable One a fair amount of grief. The resonance infused in the beam caused it to darken to an extent.
These less eye-catching dark red beams did not light up the surrounding space as much as the other attacks, but they pierced deeper into the dark god's spiritual body.
Not only that, the insidious attacks also contained a corrosive elent, causing the wounds to grow more severe.
The eyeballs of the Inexorable One were taking quite a beating!
The Inexorable One intimidatingly spread her wings and released a sharp cry! Though the shrill spiritual waves buffeted the incoming chs with violent oscillations, the resonance shields produced by forced resonance provided them with adequate protection!
"Cry all you want, you overgrown chicken! We Larkinsons shall never falter!" Imon Ingvar roared as his swordsman Bright Warrior was the first to arrive!
With a sweep of his ch's bright, glowing sword, his ch struck the left wing of the Inexorable One. His blade had barely cut into a giant feather before a small but intense explosion rocked the wound!
Though Imon briefly wondered where the explosion ca from, he was too caught up in the struggle to pause. His Bright Warrior agilely moved back as the huge wing attempted to slap his machine aside!
Though the Inexorable One tried to distance herself from the annoying chs, the lee chs constantly assaulted her wings. Empowered by forced resonance, the damage output of these chs had reached a level where the wings were steadily taking more and more damage.
The Inexorable One released another angry shriek! She flapped her wings regardless of the chs assaulting them. At the cost of incurring so damage, she managed to free her wings long enough to flap them in a peculiar way.
A large amount of vortices erged around her! The temporarily-empowered chs all got caught in them. The resonance shields did their best to shield the chs from these traps, but none of them possessed Venerable Tusa's ability to ignore them outright!
Only Imon Ingvar managed to free his ch. His bright golden resonance shield burned like a star. The spiritual vortex that trapped his Bright Warrior steadily weakened until the ch finally ca free.
"Hah! Your tricks don't—URK!"
His ch got caught in yet another vortex. While his shield slowly caused it to burn, it took too long for his ch to regain its freedom!
In the anti, the Inexorable One managed to slip away. After she finally managed to gain so distance, a rain of empowered laser beams kept hitting her eyes.
Her mounting rage caused her to direct her ire at the ranged chs.
Perhaps sensing the challenge in the Inexorable One's stare, Casella Ingvar abruptly stopped her fire. "Careful, the big bird is targeting us! Spread out and don't get hit!"
The ranged chs hastily split up from each other, but that did not stop the Inexorable One from flapping her wings and darting forward!
With a vengeful shriek, the Inexorable One raised her talons forward and caught an unlikely Vandal ranged ch in her grasp!
"No! Eject!"
"I can't!"
After catching her prey, the Inexorable One increased the force applied by her feet. Her sharp talons pierced through the weakening resonance shield of the trapped ch.
As soon as the resonance shield finally popped, the talons cruelly sliced through the ch, instantly slicing it into pieces!
Casella and every other expert candidate montarily hitched their breaths.
A new expert candidate of the Larkinson Clan had died just a short ti after breaking through!
The ranged ch the Vandal expert candidate piloted was just an outdated military ch. Its defensive paraters were not much different from regular third-class chs. Such low defense was completely useless against an overwhelmingly powerful opponent.
Buoyed by her success, the Inexorable One repeated her attack. She swooped in on another ranged ch and caught it with her talents! The Living Sentinel's resonance shield lasted even shorter than the last one. With a powerful thrust of her beak, the dark impaled the cockpit of the fragile ch and instantly crushed the body of yet another valuable expert candidate!
"Damnit, we need the help of our lee chs! Help them get rid of the vortices!"
The ranged chs no longer focused their fire on the Inexorable One and shot at the traps keeping the lee specialists in place. The lee chs for their part actively attacked the vortices as well, allowing them to get free a bit faster.
Imon Ingvar was the first of the batch to get free. His ch bravely flew forward like a bright golden cot.
"Your opponent is , you damn bird!"
"Imon! Wait!" Casella called out.
Her brother did not listen to her words. To her, he was acting foolhardy again. Normally, that wasn't much of a problem if the only enemies he faced were pirates, but this ti they were fighting against sothing greater!
The violent approach of Imon Ingvar's ch quickly attracted the big bird's attention. The Inexorable One gave up chasing after another ranged ch and instead swooped in the direction of her latest challenger!
"Help him! Shoot the bird's legs!"
Powerful laser beams raked the bird's legs, but the attacks didn't cause enough damage to dissuade the Inexorable One from going through with her attack.
As the dark god and glowing ch clashed, Imon managed to chop into one of his opponent's feet! A bright explosion exacerbated the damage and crippled the limb for a mont!
Unfortunately for him, the other talon managed to grasp and lock his ch into place. The Inexorable One already began to apply a lot of force. Imon scread as his forced resonance rapidly faded.
"Imon!"
Casella Ingvar grew more desperate and poured more power into her attacks. Her crude thods did indeed result in greater damage to the Inexorable One's leg, but her forced resonance faded even faster!
With a cruel glint in its damaged but regenerating eyes, the Inexorable One crushed the ch she grasped with her foot!
While her talons managed to dig into the ch, they failed to slice the ch into pieces! A Bright Warrior was vastly more resilient than a third-class ch. Though the ch was slowly being compressed, the cockpit and so of the internals still remained intact.
Seeing that her grip failed to crush the golden ch, the Inexorable One reared her head back as if she was about to peck it with a single, crushing blow.
"LET MY BROTHER GO!"
In desperation, Casella exceeded the safety limits of her ch's laser rifle. She poured all of her will and urgency into the attack.
As soon as she pulled the trigger, a dark beam sliced across space and impacted the Inexorable One's damaged leg!
The powerful attack not only inflicted more damage upon impact, but also corroded and froze a modest portion of the spiritual flesh around the wound. The damage quickly grew severe enough for the limb to snap!
Even though Casella felt more tired than ever, she smiled as she saw a fellow Bright Warrior ch picking up the damaged wreck of her brother ch.
The fight wasn't over yet, though. Angry at the loss of her leg, the Inexorable One attempted to regenerate the limb, only to be stopped by the dark corrosive energy exacerbating her wound.
Seeing that these annoying chs had dealt more damage than they ought to, the grey bird furiously flapped her wings and attacked another glowing Bright Warrior ch with her beak!
The first peck dimd its resonance shield.
The second peck popped the resonance shield entirely.
The next pecks after that rapidly caused the chest of the ch to cave in. Just a few seconds later, the Inexorable One's pointed beak rose with a smidgen of blood marring its tip.
It had not taken long for the dark god to fell another promising expert candidate. She was truly inexorable!
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