?Chapter 6373 One Step Ahead The fight between Ves and the 5 arche lesser phase lords might look exciting, but it was child's play compared to the main confrontation between the strongest transcendents on both sides. The Dark Zephyr armed with a borrowed tier 3 Destroyer spear was the only machine that held back the two greater phase lords from destroying the Bluejay Fleet! It was quite ridiculous how a single ace light skirmisher was able to hold back two formidable opponents, but the Bluejay Fleet had done everything it could to stack the deck in its favor. Under the leadership of Admiral Tensen and other highly professional first-class military officers, every ship and system operated at their peak. The valuable time spent on analysis and targeted preparations paid off in spades as the warships were easily able to cover each other and prevent themselves from getting overpowered by the inferior enemy warships. The Bluejay Fleet also had 325 first-class multipurpose mechs at its disposal. Although their quality was not entirely uniform, they still represented the peak of standard combat power of red humanity. Even if their numbers were paltry compared to second-class mech forces, their power reactors were so much more amazing that their firepower could not be underestimated! Combined with the much stronger firepower of the warships of the Bluejay Fleet and the Rosfield Cannons of Fort Rock, the greater phase lords learned that confronting a top human force without bringing enough assets on their own had overestimated their capabilities! The firepower and comprehensive solutions available to the warships of the Red Two were never easy to deal with! With the Tarrasque and the Babylon Excavator at the lead, the relatively modest number of sub-capital warships completely dominated the infiltration-oriented enemy fleet and strained the resources of the greater phase lords. Plasma bolts, hyper transphasic positron beams, exotic missiles, gravitic weapons and more continually assailed the two greater phase lords. Above all else, the overlapping warp interdiction fields and the space suppression fields generated by all of the friendly assets continually limited the spatial capabilities of every phase lord. The actions undertaken by the well-equipped and technologically advanced 'mortals' suppressed the greater phase lords a lot more than they imagined! This should not have happened! Just the Arena Lord of Ya'gwasa alone should have been able to overpower a single junior ace mech before tearing the rest of the Bluejay Fleet apart! The Distance Shaper only accompanied the more powerful phase lord as insurance, but also to make sure that their target did not manage to flee or teleport away with the help of a powerful transphasic gizmo. Yet even with the help of the Distance Shaper, the Arena Lord continually failed to eliminate the first obstacle in his way! Saint Tusa Billingsley-Larkinson did not take his continued survival for granted. He vehemently crushed any notion of conceit in his mind. Each time he and his battle partner worked together to predict a lethal strike and take actions to evade it by a distressingly slim margin, he understood extremely well that he could have easily died if he made just a single mistake in his action sequence! He never had to test his control over his machine and his evasion skills more than today. The Arena Lord not only came into this battle with an abundance of combat experience, but he was constantly getting better at predicting Tusa's moves. If Tusa remained exactly the same as he was at the start of this fight, then the torso of the Dark Zephyr would have gotten impaled many minutes ago! The only way to stay ahead of the Arena Lord was to improve harder! The threat of getting pulverized by the formidable Saint Piercer weapon pushed Tusa's willpower past its previous limits at an unprecedented pace! 174 laveres. 178 laveres. 182 laveres. 186 laveres. Each increment of willpower strengthened Tusa's Saint Kingdom just a bit more, allowing him to boost the speed and other performance parameters of his Dark Zephyr just a bit more. Since he piloted an ace light skirmisher, even a minor enhancement to mobility resulted in a substantial boost in survivability. Saint Tusa relied heavily on growth of his Saint Kingdom, his growing understanding of the Arena Lord and the substantial cover of the Bluejay Fleet to keep his Dark Zephyr mostly intact. Even so, he failed to stop his adversary from raking his Dark Zephyr four times in total! Each time, Tusa and his battle partner were able to make split-second course changes that turned a crippling strike into a grazing strike. The Dark Zephyr no longer looked as pristine as before. The side of its torso and its limbs all incurred cuts that ran straight through the archemetal parts life a hot knife through butter! Even if light skirmishers were among the least durable mech types in existence, the Larkinson ace pilot felt incredibly disappointed that his machine could not withstand a single blow against the rule-breaking weapon wielded by his adversary. Tusa had high expectations for his upgraded machine. Ever since the Dark Zephyr acquired the strength of an ace mech, he thought a new era had arrived. Ves and Gloriana addressed many of the weaknesses and complaints of the previous iterations of the Dark Zephyr. The machine may still retain the configuration of a light skirmisher, but the living mech's offensive and defensive capabilities were not as pathetic as before! At the very least, Tusa expected his Dark Zephyr's sophisticated archemetal parts to be resistant enough to withstand one or two blows from a phase lord, but for his ace mech to f I completely in this aspect made him feel incredibly aggrieved! This actually played in his favor, because his frustrations and his resentment for his own weaknesses added a lot more fuel to his growth surge! Ace pilots were amazing in this aspect. As long as their willpower became stimulated, they could undergo a metamorphosis in mid-battle! That had not happened to Tusa, but his progress was still fast enough to stay ahead of the Arena Lord, if only barely. The ace pilot was very cognizant that if he slowed down by just a little bit, his body might turn to chunks of frozen flesh and blood in the next instant! "Why is he moving faster?!" Tusa questioned as he kept his senses sharp for another Saint Piercer strike. "Phase lords don't rely on immaterial stuff like willpower in order to improve their performance over time. They only rely on their phasewater and what they can do with it. How the hell is he moving faster despite sticking to his current size and bulk?!" "ALL OF THE ATTACKS THAT THE ARENA LORD HAS INCURRED SO FAR HAS LARGELY STRIPPED OFF PIECES OF HIS RAIMENT" The Dark Zephyr explained. "THE REMOVAL OF SO MUCH HIGH-DENSITY MASS HAS LOWERED HIS BURDENS AND INCREASED HIS RANGE OF MOTION. HOWEVER, THIS IS NOT ENOUGH TO EXPLAIN HIS UNNATURAL INCREASE IN AGILITY AND REACTION SPEED." "Do you have any guesses, partner?" "THERE ARE ONLY THREE POSSIBLE EXPLANATIONS. THE FIRST EXPLANATION IS THAT THE ARENA LORD POSSESSES A PHASEWATER ORGAN THAT IS SLOW-ACTING BUT PROVIDES A GREATER BOOST OVER TIME." "The Arena Lord is a pit fighter who has fought and won more duels than we can count. I can definitely imagine that he would implant himself with an organ that can improve his performance in long, drawn-out fights." "THE SECOND EXPLANATION IS THAT THE DISTANCE SHAPER IS SECRETLY TRANSFERRING HIS POWER TO THE ARENA LORD. HAVE YOU NOTICED THAT THE ORVEN GREATER PHASE LORD HAS BECOME LESS ACTIVE AS THE BATTLE HAS RAGED ON? IT IS NOT WISE TO ASSUME THAT THE DISTANCE SHAPER HAS BECOME LESS ACTIVE. HIS BODY IS STILL GENERATING ELEVATED LEVELS OF HEAT, SO HE IS MOST DEFINITELY EXERCISING HIS POWERS." Tusa narrowed his eyes. He could not afford to direct his focus towards the more distant greater phase lord, but just thinking about this large orven space wizard unsettled his heart. "I think you are right. The Arena Lord and the Distance Shaper may belong to different species, but there has to be good reasons why they teamed up with each other. Their specializations and abilities synergize well with each other." "THE THIRD EXPLANATION IS THAT BOTH OF THE AFOREMENTIONED THEORIES ARE TRUE AT THE SAME TIME. IN FACT, MY CALCULATIONS INDICATE THAT THIS IS THE MOST PROBABLE OUTCOME. POWER DOES NOT COME FROM NOWHERE. THE DISTANCE SHAPER IS SOMEHOW ABLE TO TRANSFER HIS POWER TO THE ARENA LORD, WHO CHANNELS IT INTO A SPECIALIZED PHASEWATER ORGANS THAT AUGMENTS HIS PHYSICAL CAPABILITIES." If that was true, then Tusa may be racing against time. If the Distance Shaper continued to feed his strength to the Arena Lord through an unknown mechanism, then the latter would eventually become strong and fast enough to catch the Dark Zephyr! This was bad because there was a limit to how much Tusa could improve during a single fight. As amazing as his improvement may be, there was no instance where a fresh junior ace pilot managed to promote to a senior ace pilot during a single engagement. Such exaggerated growth spurts were impossible to attain in practice! "Solutions?" "WE NEED MORE HELP, AS LONG AS YOU CAN LAST LONG ENOUGH, THE MECHS THAT HAVE DEALT WITH THE ARCHE LESSER PHASE LORDS WILL TURN AROUND AND REINFORCE OUR POSITION." "Not enough. There is not much more that the Bluejay Fleet can do." Tusa instantly shook his head. "These greater phase lords are much more resistant towards small caliber firepower." "THEN WE NEED TO FIND A WAY TO DISRUPT THE COOPERATION BETWEEN THE ARENA LORD AND THE DISTANCE SHAPER." That was a challenge because Saint. Tusa and his ace mech failed to detect the channel that the Distance Shaper used to transfer his power to his fellow greater phase lord. The ace mech flew in the space that separated the two greater phase lords many times but failed to detect anything suspicious. It was either an abstract mechanism that completely flew over the top of Tusa's head, or it was buried deep within a dimension that was out of his reach. The Dark Zephyr offered another suggestion. "IF WE CANNOT FIND THE CHANNEL, THEN WE STRIKE AT THE SOURCE INSTEAD. WE HAVE YET TO ATTACK THE DISTANCE SHAPER. I BET THAT THIS BIG PHASE LORD IS MUCH LESS ABLE TO COPE WITH OUR ATTACKS THAN THE ARENA LORD." Tusa did not immediately accept this idea. "I have been thinking about targeting the Distance Shaper many times, but it is a bad idea to shift my attention away from the Arena Lord. As soon as I attempt to move away, he will try to thrust his Saint Piercer into your back." "THEN WE NEED TO RESORT TO OUR ABILITIES TO CIRCUMVENT THIS ATTACK," "Our Banish resonating ability won't work against the Arena Lord. His body is too solid and massive to cut off a portion of his limbs. Banishing the Saint Piercer won't work either. I don't know what this weapon is made of, but it is probably so solidly built and saturated with phasewater that it's impossible to cut off a piece of this long weapon." If Tusa was a lot stronger, then he could have been able to cope with this situation a lot better, but his growth so far was not enough to give him the qualifications to Banish anything related to the Arena Lord. "THAT LEAVES OUR ULTIMATE ABILITY. WE ONLY HAVE ONE CHANCE. IT IS ALL-OR-NOTHING, SO WE MUST USE IT AT THE RIGHT MOMENT AT THE RIGHT TIME. IF WE WANT TO ATTAIN THE BEST RESULT, WE NEED A DISTRACTION. IN ADDITION TO THAT, YOU NEED TO COMBINE YOUR BORROWED WEAPON WITH THE DARK WIND PASSAGE ABILITY." "Those are heavy demands." Saint Tusa rapidly considered this plan and agreed it was probably their best shot to turn this situation around. As he continued to focus on keeping his Dark Zephyr a step ahead of the Saint Piercer, the units that previously fought against the arche lesser phase lord finally began to swing and add their firepower to the effort to stop the greater phase lords! Ves became available as well. If there was one person in the Bluejay Fleet that could produce a distraction, it would definitely be the infamous Devil Tongue!