Chapter 6005 Strong Zephyr As Ves retreated to a safe enough distance, he shrunk his body down to human size but continued to float in the open. There was still a risk that he could get hit by an errant shot from a powerful weapon, but he was confident that he could withstand an errant blow. Ves refused to back off any further because that would make it harder for him to observe the performance of his latest work with all of his senses. "Mrow~!" Blinky, having returned to his fluffy purple cat form, hovered alongside Ves and observed the powerful flows of E energy around all of the machines. The Dark Zephyr attracted a lot of freedom and show energies. The living mech's Saint Kingdom had massively increased his effectiveness in absorbing and harnessing the power of exotic radiation. Even if Tusa was not too skilled with leveraging the potential of all of these energies, it didn't matter because the Dark Zephyr's extensive hyper technology had already been designed for this purpose! Harnessing freedom energy made the Dark Zephyr faster and more elusive. The machine already started to drift along the wind as if he weighed ten times less. The Dark Zephyr's Ultimate Module also quietly attracted a lot of shadow energy. The concentration of hyper materials and the use of Tristan's positive hyper gem powered up the Dark Wind Module, allowing it to take action at any time. "The fight is starting!" The Dark Zephyr abruptly boosted away from his former position and began to dance in the air as hundreds of powerful energy beams and projectiles attempted to land a hit on the high-tier expert mech! Even though the Dark Zephyr had not fully caught up to Tusa's newfound status as an ace pilot, the living mech's technical specifications were still high enough to evade the storm of attacks without too much effort! That was not to say that the mechs employed by the Red Association were incompetent. Each of them were not only equipped with at least a dozen powerful integrated weapon systems, but also coordinated their firepower to a remarkable degree. Every time the mech squad opened fire, they aimed their weapons to fill up every grid around their target. As a result, the mechers spread out their attacks in such a fashion that it would be impossible for a light mech to evade every attack. At least a couple of attacks should hit a machine like the Dark Zephyr regardless of how good he was at evasion. Yet the expert mech no longer played by the old rules anymore. In the blink of an eye, the Dark Zephyr Mark III flickered hundreds of meters away from his initial position! "Combat Warp!" Ves identified. Adrien Marceau's Combat Warp System granted the Dark Zephyr the ability to move in warp without needing to go through a long windup process. Although the Dark Zephyr's replacement flight system was not able to reach a high warp factor, this was an acceptable tradeoff as its Combat Warp System amplified the expert mech's short-range mobility. This made it so that the Dark Zephyr was easily able to sidestep and evade the combined firepower of 12 first-class multipurpose mechs! None of the sophisticated targeting algorithms programmed into the RA mechs produced any positive results. Even when the mech pilots manually tweaked and adjusted the firing pattern of the weapon suites of their mechs, none of the attacks came close to touching the powerful ace mech! If an attack came close to striking the Dark Zephyr, the Saint Kingdom that surrounded the fast machine was able to sap the strength of any energy beam or projectile that entered its range! In order to test this newly gained ability, Saint Tusa deliberately avoided the use of his battle partner's combat warp function. The Dark Zephyr still turned out to be fast and nimble enough to evade the vast majority of incoming attacks, but the mechers finally managed to land a few hits by continually launching coordinated attacks. Ace mechs no longer possessed resonance shields. Their Saint Kingdoms took over their functions. Ves was vaguely able to perceive a lot of incoming attacks losing 20 to 40 percent of their potency before they finally struck the Dark Zephyr's powerful new azure energy shield. While an attack launched by an expensive first-class multipurpose mech was not weak, the Dark Zephyr was still able to withstand these blows with his azure energy shield so long as the hits were not too frequent. The Dark Zephyr Mark III continued to dance and weave through the combined firepower of the mech squad for several more minutes. Saint Tusa did not appear to be in a hurry to go on the offensive. He was much more interested in familiarizing and improving his new evasion capabilities. Ves was thoroughly impressed by how much Tusa's breakthrough made the Dark Zephyr so outrageously better at avoiding damage. The living mech moved in the wind as if he was a carefree dancer. His evasive movements were initially a lot jerkier and more abrupt, but as Saint Tusa rapidly became familiar with the improved parameters of his battle partner, he piloted the expert light skirmisher with much greater control and fluidity! The RA mech pilots were no slouches either. Their skill and learning ability could never catch up to that of an ace pilot, but their advanced augmentations allowed them to adapt to Tusa's evasion much better than normal. The Red Association conducted the most research on high-ranking pilots. The mechers had developed a lot of tactics and coping strategies if their standard mechs ever confronted expert pilots and ace pilots in battle. "Space suppressors!" The RA mechs under the leadership of Major Jankowski finally decided to move this bout forward by activating their powerful space suppressors. The fabric of space around their flexible formation already began to solidify a lot. Due to the inverse-square law, any form of third-party transphasic technology or spatial phenomena that was close to the first-class multipurpose mechs should become a lot less effective! If the opposition was significantly weaker than the RA mechs, then their transphasic technologies may outright lose the advantages bestowed by phasewater. Yet when the Dark Zephyr did not do anything to avoid the combined space suppression field and moved closer, it became clear that the expert light skirmisher did not become affected in the slightest. The Dark Zephyr's Saint Kingdom easily negated this suppressive effect! Ves' eyes lit up. "Compared to other ace pilots, Tusa should be particularly more effective in negating spatial suppression." Tusa had managed to conquer the threat of phasewater a short time ago. His newly expanded domain was also largely empowered by the freedom element, which his machine relied upon to remain unrestrained. The Dark Zephyr may not be able to win the record for being the fastest light skirmisher, but he had definitely become one of the most difficult machines to restrain! The first-class multipurpose mechs possessed other means to weaken an opposing mech. Each of them were equipped with advanced ECM systems, yet hardly any of them took effect on the Dark Zephyr! The Saint Kingdom easily weakened many of the electronic attacks directed towards the expert light skirmisher. The Dark Zephyr's conversion into a full archemech also invalidated a lot of targeted ECM measures. The living mech's new tech base was better able to cope with these measures! Clang! Now that the first-class mechs attempted to attack the Dark Zephyr up close with the hope that their space suppressors might actually take effect, Tusa had no reason to withhold his sharp edge anymore. Clang! Clang! Clang! The first-class multipurpose mechs were fast, but their higher mass and the limitations of their mech pilots made it difficult for them to keep up with the Dark Zephyr. However, what made it even more difficult for the RA mechs to keep up with their sole adversary was the fact that the Dark Zephyr activated his own space suppressor! Although the expert light skirmisher was not able to channel as much electric energy to his space suppressor, the powerful amplification of true resonance multiplied the transphasic module's range and intensity by a huge extent. The consequences became apparent right away when the RA mechs visibly weakened when they came closer to the Dark Zephyr. Their azure energy shields lost strength and their own space suppressors lost a lot of backbone. Saint Tusa took advantage of the comprehensive weakening of his opponents. His expert light skirmisher weaved and danced through the opposing mech formation with absolute superiority. The Dark Zephyr's transphasic stormblade knives struck swift and accurate blows at every melee weapon or azure energy shield in the way. Each time a stormblade knife struck an azure energy shield, the latter received a powerful shock that destabilized it by a considerable extent. If not for the fact that the RA mechs relied on top-tier first-class power reactors to support their azure shield generators, a single flurry of electrifying blows should have been enough to expose their mech frames! However, the Dark Zephyr did not stick around long enough to concentrate his attacks on a single adversary. The matte black expert mech appeared content to test the defenses of the RA mechs by giving each of them a couple of knife strikes each. "Those shield links are annoying." Ves frowned as he continued to watch from a distance. He learned enough about shield link technology to recognize that the shield link modules installed on the first-class multipurpose mechs were not entirely suitable to the current situations. The shield link transceivers built into mechs were compact but limited in performance. They were remarkably good at receiving shield energy, yet were substantially less effective at transmitting it to other linked machines. If the RA mechs wanted to make the most of their shield link technology, then they needed to link up with a dedicated support mech or a starship equipped with more powerful shield link modules. Since these conditions did not apply to the current situation, Saint Tusa quickly recognized that his Dark Zephyr had a chance of breaching their defenses! The expert light mech suddenly sped up a little more. His limbs continually swung the stormblade knives back and forth, generating a large amount of pressure onto the first-class multipurpose mechs that could do nothing to fend off the assaults. The RA mechs had no hope of striking the Dark Zephyr with their ranged or melee attacks. The more the Dark Zephyr ran through their formation, the more difficult it became to trap the machine in a firepower net! With the combined suppression generated by a resonance-empowered space suppressor and a vigorous Saint Kingdom, the Dark Zephyr made up for any gaps in performance and quickly began to strip the azure energy shields of 3 unlucky targets. By concentrating his attacks on these 3 targets, Saint Tusa was able to stay mobile while weakening his targets faster than they could restore with the help of their limited shield links. "Broken!" The three first-class multipurpose mechs finally lost their protection, thereby causing them to become completely exposed to the Dark Zephyr's sharp stormblade knives! Saint Tusa immediately took advantage of this development and drove his expert mech forward. Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang! The powerful transphasic stormblade knives managed to pierce through the weak points of the first-class mechs with moderate difficulty. Despite all of the empowerment, the Dark Zephyr's quasi-first-class power reactor limited his performance in many aspects. It took a lot more effort for the expert light skirmisher to inflict serious or crippling damage to the RA mech's joints and surface modules! Tusa had attempted to stab a knife through the thick transphasic hyper plating of a first-class multipurpose mech, but the RA invested so much in its armor system that it actually managed to hold for the time being! The Dark Zephyr should be able to penetrate the thickest armor plating after launching repeated attacks onto the same location, but expert light skirmishers weren't supposed to fight this way. So what if the expert mech was too underpowered to pierce through the armor of a first-class multipurpose mech? By the time the Dark Zephyr was done with the three exposed RA mechs, their limbs, their weapon systems and even their flight systems became inoperable! The crippled mechs helplessly lost altitude before they were quickly teleported back to their motherships that were hovering in high orbit over the planet. Saint Tusa was not done with his sparring partners. He had already tested the Dark Zephyr's basic combat capabilities. He was ready to test his upgraded mech's more advanced capabilities. Shadow energy began to swirl around the Dark Zephyr, causing the machine to look more ominous and less substantial. The sixth generation living mech was about to employ his defining feature against his sparring partners for the first time!