The situation outside Ulimo Citadel became more and more dire. The anomaly not only pressured the Larkinsons down to their souls, but also changed over time.

The danger had risen since Ves ventured into the darkness! After rescuing the Living Sentinels and the Battle Crier pilots who still managed to survive, the Scarlet Rose became stuffed with mech pilots who had just fought the battle of their lives.

Only a small number of Sentinel and Battle Crier mechs retained sufficient combat effectiveness to continue the fight. These bedragged, battle-scarred machines remained on standby while the fresher mechs that used to make up the reserves did all of the heavy lifting.

The ghost mechs had changed. Fewer of them emerged out of the darkness, but each of them possessed the strength of a real mech!

What was worrisome was that their numbers slowly increased. The fog spat out more and more solid grey mechs that mindlessly attacked the nearest mechs.

The non-existent intelligences driving these fake mechs remained as dimwitted and simplistic as ever. That made them easy to defeat, but that had never been the problem.

The true horror of the dark sphere was that its ghosts were endless!

A lot of Sand War veterans gradually experienced deja vu as they felt as if they had traveled back in time. The constant reformation of hostile ghost mechs reminded them of the relentless tide of sandman fleets breaking into human-occupied star systems.

Though no one wanted to relive those harrowing days, the experienced veterans who participated in the Sand War quickly began to direct their fellow comrades.

"Don't employ wasteful methods! Conserving your mech's energy, integrity and ammunition is your greatest priority!"

"Break up into groups of four mechs! Each group must rotate and handle every ghost mech as quickly as possible! Don't kill them from the front. Surround them and target their vulnerable rear. Real mechs can't withstand much damage at the back, and these fake mechs are no different!"

"Ranged mechs, don't intervene. Your firepower is finite. Only employ it when we truly need the help."

"We need to get out of here! Why aren't we out yet?!"

The Scarlet Rose attempted to exit the dark sphere some time ago. The problem was that the dark fog had intensified in a way that made it impossible to exit its confines!

The Scarlet Rose already traversed enough distance to reach the edge of the sphere, but for some reason the ship remained trapped!

The ship traveled in a straight line. It should have left the sphere or at least bump into other asteroids or something.

Instead, there was nothing but darkness, ghost mechs and the occasional debris or stray Larkinson mech.

This was bad news for everyone involved! Ves expended so much energy to rescue some of his mech pilots that he had consumed a huge amount of energy.

Just when his last P-stone drained its charge, another unexpected change took place.

An even larger bubble of protection overlapped with the tranquility field!

The surviving Sentinel and Battle Criers mechs brought their weapons to bear, only to drop them a bit when they welcomed the arrival of their remaining comrades!

"It's the Avatars!"

"Look, the Vandals and Swordmaidens are here as well!"

"Where are the Penitent Sisters?"

"I don't know, but they can take care of themselves."

The arrival of several hundred Larkinson mechs significantly boosted everyone's morale. What particularly emboldened everyone was that the other group was led by the expert candidates of the clan!

It turned out that Jannzi, Joshua, Tusa, Commander Orfan, Commander Dise had managed to collect the remainder of their fighting forces. They then sought each other out, causing them to bump into each other and pool their respective strengths!

Tusa Billingsley-Larkinson acted as the scout of this reformed unit. His fast mech was less bound by the boundaries imposed by the darkness than other mechs. In fact, he discovered the Scarlet Rose a few minutes earlier and returned to his comrades to guide them towards the ship.

Whatever the case, it was better to pool their strengths together than to resist the dangers of the artificial anomaly separately!

While Tusa bravely ventured away from the main group in order to watch out for any stranded Larkinson mechs, the other expert candidates each did their own part.

Commander Orfan's spearman mech heroically confronted the ghost mechs all by herself. With her elevated skill, she easily defeated every ghost mech within a couple of precise but powerful stabs.

Strangely enough, the ghost mechs she defeated took a much longer time to reform. It was as if the damage she inflicted was harder to repair than the mechs destroyed by other mechs and mech pilots!

It turned out that this was the case for the other expert candidates as well. Commander Dise's swordsman mech straightforwardly sliced the grey mechs regardless of what kind of moves they made. With her mech's unparalleled greatsword, no false mech could withstand more than a single attack!

Joshua's Quint was even more exaggerated. Though his masterwork mech currently came with a lancer mech loadout, he eschewed performing charges in order to conserve his energy.

Instead, Joshua fought similar to Commander Orfan, but his deadly lance seemed to possess even greater destructive might towards the grey ghost mechs!

It only took a single stab to pop the fake mechs. Joshua initially aimed at the weak points of his opposing mechs, but he eventually discovered that his Quint was somehow the natural enemy of these ghost machines.

Even if the Quint brushed the surface of its target with its weapon, the stricken ghost mech quickly dissolved!

As soon as he discovered this, Joshua ramped up his pace! The Quint flew back and forth and killed many ghost mechs in quick succession.

His aid turned out to be very necessary as the concentration of several hundred mechs attracted the ghost mechs like moths to a flame!

Apparently, there were no more outlying Larkinson mechs. This meant that the artificial anomaly concentrated all of its destructive efforts towards containing and destroying the Larkinsons trapped inside its belly.

The strength of anomaly constantly grew in strength. Strange cries continued to ring in the ears of every clansmen while other phenomena such as strange chills and grey hallucinations started to become increasingly more unsettling.

If the anomaly kept ramping like this, then Ves and the other Larkinsons trapped inside might buckle under the pressure!

In fact, Ves had already been forced to retract his efforts to channel Lufa's glow. Though powerful, he had completely drained every P-stone of the energy he acc.u.mulated.

"HOLD TOGETHER, BROTHERS AND SISTERS! WE WILL MAKE IT THROUGH ALIVE!"

Fortunately, the only defensive expert candidate in the Larkinson Clan took over his burden at the crucial moment.

Jannzi Larkinson shone brighter than ever as her Shield of Samar took over sole responsibility of keeping the darkness at bay!

Her willpower almost became tangible to Ves as her customized Aurora Titan mech took up a central position over the Scarlet Rose and radiated an immense aura.

With every other mech losing its glow due to the powerful dampening effect of the artificial anomaly, Jannzi's mech stood out as an exceptional pillar of hope with its mere presence alone.

Out of all of the expert candidates, no one dazzled the frayed survivors more than her! Each and every Larkinson recognized that they would have remained isolated and under much greater pressure if Jannzi did not elect to take over this heavy burden.

As Ves recovered from his mentally strenuous act, he stared at the projection depicting the Shield of Samar with increasing wonder and puzzlement.

He designed the Aurora Titan. He modified Jannzi's personal mech until it turned into a formidable defensive bulwark.

However, he always designed the super-medium space knight to defend against material threats. Aside from instilling Qilanxo as its design spirit, the Aurora Titan model wasn't supposed to perform like his upcoming Sanctuary model!

The oddest part of all of this is that due to the strong spiritual dampening effect of the anomaly, Qilanxo wasn't able to extend her presence to the Shield of Samar.

Yet somehow, this mech outputted a protective field that encompassed enough space to give hundreds of friendly machines enough room to fight and exert their strength!

Having tried to fend off the dark fog with the help of Lufa, Ves personally experienced how much effort it took to maintain a safe zone under these circ.u.mstances.

With the dark sphere increasing in strength, someone who was much more spiritually weak such as Jannzi shouldn't have been able to keep up this expenditure!

Yet somehow she was pulling a huge amount of energy from seemingly nowhere. It made no sense to him at all! No matter how freaky spirituality behaved, as far as he knew it still abided by the law of conservation of energy!

"Nothing comes for free! Not even energy!"

Planets remained livable and warm due to the stars shining over their surfaces.

Stars derived their energy from the immense thermonuclear reactions taking place in their cores.

The particles that enable these immensely powerful reactions originated from other processes.

The point was that energy did not just 'show up' from nowhere. Ves refused to believe that Jannzi had turned herself into a perpetual motion machine!

As he probed Jannzi and her mech further with his spiritual senses, he slowly discovered where the energy came from. The source surprised Ves quite a lot, because it turned out that the Shield of Samar itself actively supperted its mech pilot and supplied it with an abundant amount of energy!

Where did this energy come from? Why hadn't he noticed that the Shield of Samar acc.u.mulated so much spiritual juice? How come Jannzi's personal mech felt more alive than ever despite the absence of its design spirit?

Ves thought he understood mechs quite a lot. Now, it turned out that he missed a hidden aspect!

The Shield of Samar started off as the first production model of the Aurora Titan. He gifted it to Jannzi after she unexpectedly broke through to expert candidate at the space knight's reveal event.

Years passed as Jannzi piloted the mech through the Sand War and many of the battles involving the Larkinson Clan.

Each time, Jannzi bonded with her mech to a degree that exceeded the love and attention that other Larkinson mech pilots invested in their own machines.

Not even Joshua had vowed to dedicate his remaining piloting career to the Quint! He still held to a more conventional philosophy where switching to piloting other mechs was inevitable.

For some reason, Jannzi's extreme dedication towards her Shield of Samar caused the two to form a special bond with each other. The Shield of Samar became more than just a personal mech to her. It became her main weapon and her lifelong partner.

This must have caused the Shield of Samar to develop differently from every other Aurora Titan mech in existence. It gained individuality as it tailored itself more and more to its sole mech pilot.

This wasn't enough to explain where all of its energy came from, but it explained some of its unusual traits, such as the high degree of resonance that Jannzi achieved with her chosen mech!

The protective field that Jannzi projection was just as strong if not stronger than the tranquility field that Ves had maintained at great cost.

The difference was that while Ves amplified Lufa's glow by force through expending huge amounts of energy, Jannzi was able to achieve a similar result at a much lower cost!

"Is this the benefit of merging willpower with mechs?"

Ves sensed something special between the synergy that Jannzi and the Shield of Samar achieved. He also gained a much greater appreciation of spiritually-infused willpower.

It was no wonder that high-ranking mech pilots were regarded as gods in the making. Their ability to warp reality with the power of their wills was much stronger than Ves could ever accomplish!

Above all else, Ves finally recognized what his design philosophy could have achieved if he didn't obsess over utilizing design spirits.

For all these years, he unintentionally lost sight of one of the original purposes of his design philosophy.

"Individuality!"

Every mech was different! Every mech was unique! Even if they were derived from the same set of designs, each of them followed a different trajectory once they were made.

The Shield of Samar was one of the best examples of a mech that successfully diverged from the mold of its original design.

The mech that suited their pilots the best were those that achieved the highest fit with their partners!

This was one of Gloriana's original principles. Ves had long assumed that customization was primarily her territory, but it turned out that he was mistaken.

"I've been chasing the wrong goal all along! Instead of imposing greater uniformity in my products, I should have been aiming to expand their individuality!"

Each mech should be unique, just as each life form was different from each other!