The Larkinson Clan gained its second ace pilot.
Although the journey that Isobel took to smash through her bottleneck was highly unorthodox and fraught with far greater peril than usual, her strength was undeniable.
By forming a purple sun around her expert mech through the explosion of forced resonance, Saint Isobel Kotin gave the Larkinson Clan a short preview of how she wielded her power now that she had unlocked an entirely new tier of strength.
As the purple sun continued to burn the large and extremely tall main trunk of the Emperor Tree, it looked as if nothing could stop the Promethea in her supercharged state from completing her goal.
The tree clearly suffered from the overwhelming heat spread by the purple sun.
Any part of its trunk that came in direct contact with Saint Isobel's exaggeratingly energetic Saint Kingdom burned within seconds!
Nothing could stop the purple sun from devouring the touch and metal-reinforced wood from drying up before crumbling into ash.
What was worse for the Emperor Tree was that its wood actively fed the purple sun!
The Saint Kingdom behaved like a starved beast that eagerly inflated as it devoured more and more of its prey. The purple sun visibly glowed hotter until its violent flames started to look like a bright magenta star!
Not even the ebony mechs could do anything to stop the purple sun from devouring everything related to the calamity tree.
When the Ebony First Sword courageously charged into the purple sun, it disappeared without any fluctuations!
When the Ebony Zeal attempted to bombard the Promethea that was at the center of the purple sun, the ebony seeds accomplished nothing of note!
So much heat radiated from the increasingly more fed purple star that the previously untouched sections of the Emperor Tree also started to dry up and burst into flames!
More and more purple flames started to spread from the purple sun.
The Emperor Tree was clever enough to understand it was almost hopeless to stop the purple sun from burning its trunk.
However, the descent of the purple sun had slowed down. It would take minutes for the supercharged Promethea to reach the surface.
This gave the calamity plant a chance to survive this encounter, especially if it was smart and informed enough to know that Saint Isobel could only sustain this outburst of power for a relatively short amount of time!
The tree did not work to attain an immediate victory, but instead shifted its strategy in order to outlast its most threatening opponent.
The supply of tree sap and wood energy no longer reached the purple sun. The Emperor Tree had clearly written off the parts of the trunk that came into direct contact with the purple sun.
Instead of trying to do the impossible, the tree instead focused on transferring its resources to repair and maintain the health of the trunk below that point.
The overwhelming heat radiated by the purple sun no longer burned up the bark and wood lower down the length of the trunk.
The abundance of tree sap covering the vulnerable wood and the wood energy nurturing all of the organic matter successfully formed an improvised fire barrier that prevented the entire trunk from burning down at an accelerated pace!
If this went on, it truly looked as if the Emperor Tree would outlast the purple sun's attempt to kill the calamity plant before Saint Isobel ran out of steam!
Unfortunately for the target of the Promethea's ire, its thoughts were too simple.
Though it looked as if Saint Isobel had gone crazy to the point where she had lost all awareness, there was definitely at least one intelligence driving the current state of the Promethea.
Saint Isobel may have gained the sheer power necessary to burn the Emperor Tree to death, but her endurance was seriously in doubt!
Forced resonance never lasted long. Newly ascended ace pilots always required a period of adaptation and consolidation before they could truly exert the power of their rank. They also needed a proper ace mech that was fully configured and calibrated for their extraordinary willpower.
Right now, Saint Isobel's circumstances were undoubtedly worse than that of Saint Tusa.
Unlike the Dark Zephyr Mark III which was the most modern high-end mech that the best mech designers of the Larkinson Clan were able to develop and deliver in recent times, the Promethea was a much older product of the Phasewater Generation.
Combined with the fact that the Promethea was much more of a second-class expert mech rather than a quasi-first-class expert mech, the machine was overstraining her mech frame to a horrendous degree.
Forced resonance was never a gentle phenomena!
Any mech that was not designed to perform at a power level that surpassed the pilot's current rank would inevitably suffer!
It was not an unusual phenomenon for heavily abused mechs to break entirely after the forced resonance state had run its course!
Combined with Saint Isobel's terrible physical state, the foundation of the purple sun was surprisingly fragile and brittle!
Yet still, the power of the duo could not be underestimated while they remained in this forcefully elevated state.
Right in the center of the purple sun, the Promethea finally did more than radiate her Saint Kingdom like a destructive aura.
The Ignitron rifle, which Saint Isobel forcefully shielded from the ruinous heat of her own purple sun with the help of her own willpower, quickly started to accumulate energy while pointing downwards.
The Promethea was supposed to be a ranged mech. Saint Isobel finally chose to utilize her battle partner in accordance with her role.
The Emperor Tree sensed the sharp buildup of heat and power inside the purple sun. It quickly started to release a waterfall of tree sap, uncaring about depleting its reserves!
"My flames can not be stopped."
Saint Isobel put truth to these words as a purple resonance-empowered energy beam that surpassed all of the ones launched by the Ignitron rifle shot straight out the purple sun and soared straight downwards!
All of the Solus Gas particles, tree branches and leaves that got in the way spontaneously ignited in an instant before beginning to propagate more purple flames in every direction!
The Emperor Tree was past the point of caring about the condition of its branches and leaves. Multiple conflagrations of purple flames broke out and started to light multiple layers of the tree crown on fire!
If the Emperor Tree did not do anything to retard the King Killer Flames, they would most certainly devour the rest of the branches and leaves that stuck out of the main trunk.
Yet that was not the intent of the shot.
When the supercharged purple fire beam passed through the crown, it continued to surge downwards at the speed of light until it finally struck the enormous mass of roots that were sticking out from the surface!
What happened next was completely outside of the expectations of the observers.
Instead of bursting out a huge amount of King Killer Flames that devoured all of the nearby roots as if they were flammable tinder, the energy beam instead produced an enormous explosion that outright blasted apart the roots and even managed to produce a large hole in the side of the trunk!
The Alfari Corps Detonation Corps!
Saint Isobel's comprehension and mastery of the mysterious techniques bestowed by an enlightenment fruit had not improved upon her breakthrough.