Two out of three duels concluded in a satisfying manner.
Saint Dise Larkinson secured the most astonishing result.
After many years of struggle, she finally discovered her incredible potential as a manipulator of the metal element, and activated it in such a spectacular fashion that she immediately rammed through her bottleneck and broke through!
The power she displayed and the realization of the might she always dreamt of harnessing in her duel against the Muscular Swordsman convinced everyone that she deserved to attain her sainthood. Best of all, her breakthrough took place in fairly benign circumstances, so the probability that she had become distorted due to an extreme outburst of negative thoughts and emotions were practically nil!
All of this meant that Saint Dise was likely to retain the same degree of stability and reliability as she exhibited during her expert pilot days.
The same could not be said for the likes of Saint Commander Casella Ingvar and Saint Isobel Kotin. Both of them broke through under abnormal circumstances that concerned the higher ups very much.
The Larkinsons paid care and attention towards their only Saint Commander in particular.
No one had forgotten that her cherished brother, Venerable Imon Ingvar, died during an escapade gone wrong.
Even if General Ark Larkinson managed to avoid any blame due to the death of a vital asset under his command, Casella Ingvar was too compromised on this sordid issue and could not accept this objective verdict!
There was bad blood between the two extraordinary mech commanders. It would have been best if the two were placed as far apart as possible, but the needs of red humanity trumped these personal grievances.
The unsympathetic and overworked military strategists that were responsible for propping up the frontlines carelessly assigned the expeditionary fleet of the Golden Skull Alliance and the 77th Warborn Mech Division to the same star system!
Perhaps in the eyes of the Red Three, the Warborn fielded a lot of mech pilots that originally hailed from the Larkinson Clan and Cross Clan.
Since that was the case, they should naturally perform better when fighting alongside their compatriots in the expeditionary fleet!
That logic should have worked under ordinary times, but because of the unsolvable tension between Saint Commander Casella and General Ark, the two mech forces simply chose to request
assignments that put them at least one light-minute away from each other at all times.
That worked, more or less. Saint Commander Casella meticulously fulfilled her duties without complaint. She did not show any sign of abnormality towards the apparent presence of the Warborn in the Viola Magnifica System.
However, many Larkinsons secretly questioned whether the ace commander would remain this way when the native aliens conducted their next large assault.
Once the battlefield became engulfed in chaos, would the Saint Commander truly remain
well-behaved when the battle lines became compressed and the man who failed to take good care of her brother entered her reach?
Nobody could say for certain!
Ace pilots might appear just as human as a random person on the street, but had already crossed the halfway mark towards their journey to godhood.
They had already shed many aspects of their mortality that previously made them weak and vulnerable.
Yet were all traits that supposedly decreased their combat effectiveness truly negative?
The reduction or complete absence of human expressions such as fear, doubt and hesitation had made ace pilots a lot more decisive and fearless.
That was good if they had to hold the line against powerful adversaries, but the side effect was that it also made them more prone to taking radical actions that fell outside of the scope of their objectives!
This was the risk that came with handling high-ranking mech pilots that managed to break through under less desirable circumstances.
In any case, the Larkinson Clan did not have to worry about this risk factor when dealing with Saint Dise.
She was an honorable warrior.
Her conviction was upright and noble.
She had always prized her self-control.
A proper transition from an expert pilot to an ace pilot should not undermine these positive traits, but reinforce them instead.
Saint Dise should be moving closer and closer to the ideal swordswoman that she had always aspired to become!
Under the halo of her unexpected but undeniably breakthrough, the success of Saint Linda Cross became a lot less remarkable.
Unlike Dise who clearly overperformed in the most dramatic way possible, Saint Linda Cross merely met everyone's expectations.
Even if she was a fresh ace pilot who broke through relatively recently and had yet to prove her mettle in a serious battle, an ace pilot who had already stabilized her new condition was still a combatant that far exceeded the combat capabilities of an expert pilot in every way!
Their strength was not only higher, but their ability to adapt to adverse circumstances was considerably better.
Situations that stumped expert pilots would not faze ace pilots because the latter possessed a lot. more ways to express their power.
Although not even Ketis expected for Saint Linda Cross to take up her old arms again.
The Amphis Extremis resembled a gladiator as the ace mech had forgone its shield in favor of dual-wielding two chained weapons!
This combination proved too much for the Elegant Swordsman, whose flowing movements and creative attack angles got stifled by the extended and versatile reach of the Amphis Extremis!
That meant that the protectors that stood up for Ketis successfully managed to pass two out of three tests.
The Heavensword, which used to be held in the hands of the Elegant Swordsman, flew free again. The enlarged relic weapon did not make any drastic moves. It merely retracted the heavenly energies that previously comprised the Elegant Swordsman and the Muscular Swordsman before remaining in waiting.
The Heavensword did not make any further action against the Amphis Extremis and the First Sword. This was fortunate since the latter had to withdraw from the field in order for Saint Dise to recover from her breakthrough and give her the rest she deserved.
When Ketis studied the Heavensword from another live feed, she couldn't tell what it was thinking, but she could make a few guesses based on her observations.
The Heavensword was probably the most satisfied with Saint Dise. She was the closest thing to a true swordswoman among the mech pilots.
Over the course of her struggle, she had stepped up by imitating the Muscular Swordsman's method of harnessing the power of an element to augment his swordsmanship and open up new possibilities of attack and defense.
In other words, Saint Dise successfully vanquished her opponent by inheriting the swordsmanship principles 'taught' by the Heavensword!
Even if Dise only copied the principles and did not absorb anything else from the ancient sword cultivation legacy on display, this was already enough.
She could be regarded as a successful graduate of the Heavensword.
The performance of Saint Linda Cross was merely satisfactory. She was not a true swordswoman and never pretended to be one. While she recognized the value of a sword and relied on one to pass her test, she did not imitate the methods of her opponent to do so, but stuck to her own distinct fighting