"Purging Light!" Stark roared.
The largely depleted Amaranto Mark III mustered up all of the light energy she could gather and released it all in a single omni-directional explosion!
The resonance-empowered light wave instantly cleansed and purified the junior ace pilot's mind, causing her to shake off her traumatic recollection and fully regain her focus.
The expanding explosion of light was too weak to repel the incoming Lamia Kailamassu, but it at least gave Stark enough time to quickly adjust the Amaranto's posture so that her feet touched the surface of the dual-pilot ace mech first!
The Amaranto struggled to maintain her footing, but she was able to extend her legs and launch herself to the side with just enough skill and control to maintain control over her flight!
The ace marksman mech subsequently spun around on her axis and swiped her plasma bayonet in a sweeping slash!
The Lamia Kailamassu teleported right in the path of the plasma bayonet, just as Stark predicted!
The plasma bayonet glowed brighter and hotter as Stark poured all of her hatred and frustrations into the tip of her Instrument of Vengeance.
"Light Arts!"
The drastically more powerful and lethal bayonet struck the exterior of the Lamia Kailamassu, only to do nothing aside from leave a miniscule scorch mark on the resonance-empowered armor plating.
Even if this amounted to practically zero damage, it was already a considerably impressive accomplishment that a dedicated ranged machine was able to leave a visible mark!
"Are you tired already?" Alo said in genuine concern that sounded like a taunt in the current context. "Do you want to stop and rest now that your ace mech is close to running dry?"
"No." Stark snarled in response. "I will not stop until my machine cannot keep up anymore. My tech is allowed to fail, but my willpower must never break."
She was determined to fight to her limit as the Stewards Siamesia intended!
She would not accept any other outcome!
The Amaranto exerted the utmost of her flight system and maneuvered around the Lamia Kailamassu as best as possible.
Though she was not able to avoid most collisions, she at least tried to ensure she landed
a good hit whenever the two ace mechs came close.
As first-class ace mechs that possessed vastly more power than standard first-class multipurpose mechs, each collision between the Lamia Kailamassu and the Amaranto was enough to crumple practically every other small craft!
Yet the absurdly strong and thick armor system of the former and the exotic archetech construction of the latter enabled the two machines to withstand these forces quite well.
Of course, neither machines could endure this level of violence for hours at a time without the reality-defying properties of their Saint Kingdoms.
After many repeated collisions, Saint Stark understood to a much greater degree why the Stewards Siamesia opted to dual-pilot a single ace mech.
The advantages outweighed the disadvantages.
Rather than pilot two separate machines and disperse their power, they stuck to each other on a permanent basis and essentially doubled up their true resonance.
The maximum resonance strength an ace pilot could reach was 1545 laveres. Hitting this figure meant that they were being held back by their bottlenecks. The only way to overcome these barriers was to step onto the road to no return, and that was not a trivial decision to make.
This meant that ace pilots could remain stuck at 1545 laveres for decades or even centuries at a time.
From the General Axelar Streon to the Mace of Retaliation, each of them were biding their time while doing their best to accumulate as many advantages as possible for their ultimate attempt to ascend to godhood.
Before they began their ultimate challenge, the amount of true resonance they were able to employ would remain constrained by their ceiling for a long time.
It was due to this limitation that the Lamia Kailamassu was stronger than pretty much every other individual peak ace mech!
The powerful machine resonated with two peak ace pilots. The degree of reality distortion of two nearly identical Saint Kingdoms allowed it to get away with pulling off feats that only god pilots perform!
To put it in a different way, the Lamia Kailamassu possessed an effective resonance strength that did not come anywhere close to 3090 laveres, but was definitely a lot higher than 1545 laveres!
Saint Stark was unable to estimate an exact number. The lavere scale was not linear, but was instead determined by a complicated formula that completely went over her head. The resonance meters of the Amaranto Mark III were unable to measure the combined resonance strength of two Saint Kingdoms working together in total synchronicity.
Whatever the case, the combined willpower of the Stewards Siamesia was just so strong that Saint Stark still had no way in hell of gaining supremacy anywhere outside of the physical boundary of her ace mech!
This was the ultimate reason why Saint Stark continually failed to gain the upper hand in these bouts.
The tech used to power up both mechs were impressive.
The Lamia Kailamassu was truly worthy of its fame. It served its pilots extremely well
even though it had only shown off a fraction of its capabilities during hours of constant
sparring.
The amount of super-class materials stuffed inside her sizable mech frame was
considerable.
The dual-pilot ace mech exerted a lot more strain in order to apply constant pressure onto the Amaranto, yet it did not falter even once!
Its defenses, mobility and endurance parameters were frankly ridiculous!
If not for the glaring absence of any overt form of offensive capabilities, Saint Stark would have been tempted to call it the perfect ace mech.
The Amaranto never stood a chance.
That did not mean that Saint Stark wanted to deliver a poor performance.
Even if her foe was virtually undefeatable at her current strength and means, she still wanted to keep her head high and protect her pride!
She knew that if she bowed her head even once and admitted that she could never get the better of her adversary, her journey to become a god pilot would come to an end. As tiring as it was to fight for over 5 hours straight, Stark had come close to thinking about calling it quits, yet she always squashed these thoughts as soon as they emerged. She could never give up! She had a mission to complete! She had a cause to fulfill! The blood of the innocents stained her soul. Her desire to enact retribution burned
eternal.
Her willpower flared and her Saint Kingdom became reinvigorated.
Despite the increasingly more exhausted state of her ace mech, Saint Stark continued to