Chapter 6317 An Image with Feeling The battle raged on as the Dark Zephyr Mark III Revision 2 quietly slipped away. The large and formidable jureg warships were still pummeling the defensive ring with their primary armaments. Their excellent sieging capabilities and their willingness to empty out their reserves of Aquapen Rounds meant that the defensive works were crumbling far faster than usual! Defensive installations worth as much as second-class capital ships or more were crumbling in droves. Large orbital space fortresses started to launch evacuation pods and shuttles as the highly-trained station operators needed to be brought away before the large structures collapsed in their entirety. Expensive first-class multipurpose mechs started to fall at an increasing rate. The enemy gunships predominantly fired transphasic rounds that shred through the azure energy shields of the first-class multipurpose mechs with much greater ease. On occasion, the gunships also launched their short-ranged but highly destructive transphasic missiles at a vulnerable prey, thereby preventing many damaged first-class multipurpose mechs from returning to the rear with their mech frames intact! Though the gunships only carried a limited complement of missiles, as long as they still had them, their lethality temporarily surpassed that of the powerful mechs they were fighting against! Of course, the Terrans were not letting the gunships shoot down their machines with impunity. A large proportion of first-class multipurpose mechs fearlessly weathered the storm and closed in on their targets, utilizing their superior mobility to quickly gang up on many gunships with at least 3 machines. The first-class multipurpose mechs relied heavily on their excellent space suppressors to weaken the gunship's defensive and offensive properties, thereby not only reducing the threat level of the heavy alien strike craft, but also soften up their defenses so that they could be taken down quicker! The asymmetrical matchup between mechs and gunships led to a lot of tragedies and feats of heroism. The jureg gunship pilots fought and died without any fear or remorse, and the Terran pilots did not show any intention to back down unless instructed otherwise! As the cauldron of war and death continued to expand from the center of the battlefield, nobody seemed to pay any further attention to a new first-class ace light skirmisher that had recently joined the clan. This shouldn't have happened. Ace mechs were too obvious, especially since they were surrounded by their own Saint Kingdoms that were very easy to detect. Although Tusa managed to retract his Saint Kingdom, this was not a feat that he could pull off to perfection. Saints bore their hearts and will to the entire universe and openly declared their existence. It went against their nature to withdraw themselves to such an extent. Yet somehow, the Messenger of Silence managed to turn his Dark Zephyr into the most unassuming mech on the battlefield. It was impossible. It was a contradiction. It was a paradox. How could an ace mech suddenly become no more interesting than a random piece of debris floating around in space? Saint Tusa knew why, because he was personally being subjected to the effect. The Messenger of Silence demonstrated several impressive feats at once. First, he separated a part of his willpower and imposed it onto the Dark Zephyr, completely overcoming the resistance of Tusa's own willpower. The disparity in strength between them was so great that Saint Tusa couldn't even muster up the thought of resisting! Of course, it helped that he did not consider the Messenger of Silence to be hostile. It was still scary that the peak ace pilot managed to overcome the instinctual defenses of another ace pilot! Tusa could see how useful it is to master the method to imbue a part of his willpower and Saint Kingdom onto external objects, but this was an advanced subject that demanded much greater resonance strength as well as the right application of technique. His eyes were already opened, though. He was confident he would be able to master a rudimentary form of this method sooner rather than later! Another feat that the Messenger of Silence demonstrated was the ability to rewrite reality to a much more extensive degree than directly applying willpower. For when the Messenger of Silence applied his Mirage ability onto the Dark Zephyr, Saint Tusa became directly exposed to the more powerful saint's willpower, and also his technique. Saint Dostoevsky did not hide the mechanics of the technique behind his Mirage ability. He deliberately exposed it to Tusa as a gift. Not that it would have hurt him all that much if his enemies knew how it worked. Only he was able to perform this particular technique. Knowing how it worked helped little because it could only be overcome by defeating his willpower, which was a tall order. There was not much that Tusa could understand or learn from the powerful saint's Mirage ability. It relied on concepts that were entirely foreign to him. They could even be described as his antithesis. What Tusa found most valuable about getting a good feel for the Mirage ability was the more general methods and applications demonstrated by the Messenger of Silence. The Saint managed to strengthen and broaden his ability to form a field of silence by channeling it through a very strong defined image. Tusa almost did not feel as if he was flying away from the orbit of New Cartagena at the moment. If he stopped paying attention with his normal senses and started to listen to his other senses, then he had the illusion that he was walking through the graveyard that he visited during his first meeting with the Messenger of Silence. A shout of absolute silence surrounded him as his passage did nothing to disturb the rest of the honored dead. The Messenger of Silence essentially framed his Mirage ability as a solemn visit to a graveyard. He somehow managed to transform his repeated devotion to the dead and his earnest tending of the graves of his fallen Terran comrades into a strong image, one that when infused with enough willpower, became strong enough to substitute real with false! It was as if Saint Dostoevsky literally replaced the reality in and around the Dark Zephyr with the reality depicted in his image! This was not an ability that normal ace pilots could replicate, especially when applied outside of their Saint Kingdoms. A technique of this magnitude already crossed into the territory of a god pilot! There was no way that Tusa could replicate the power and splendor of the Mirage ability! Even so, Tusa highly valued this silent lesson. He not only learned the direction where he should develop his own unique abilities, but also learned of the importance of building up strong images that could serve as excellent conduits of his willpower. He recalled Ves mentioning something about artistic conceptions in the past. This must be what he meant. Tusa wanted to experiment with it right away. He believed that if he worked together with his companion spirit Blackwing, he could obscure his Dark Zephyr even further! He refrained from doing so, however. His living mech was currently covered by the Messenger of Silence's strong Mirage ability. His willpower could not coexist in the same space as that of another saint. Reasserting his own Saint Kingdom meant displacing the current effect. That was not conducive to his goals. The Mirage ability was too useful, especially for an ace pilot like Saint Tusa who enjoyed being subtle at times. When paired with the effects of Solus Gas as well as limiting the energy consumption of his machine, the combination with the Mirage ability resulted in an ace mech that both human and alien forces magically dismissed as a damaged piece of cannon fodder that strayed from his unit or whatever. The native aliens could easily shoot down the errant mech, but it posed very little threat on its own. They all had more higher priority targets to deal with, so none of them spared any attention to the very subtle ace mech. What amazed Tusa even more was that even automated systems dismissed the threat posed by the Dark Zephyr! 𝘧𝓇ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝘣𝓃ℴ𝓋𝑒𝑙.𝑐𝘰𝑚 He would have thought that his ace mech would have tripped a few hundred alarms and attracted the automated fire of numerous warship gun batteries by now. Yet the alien programming seemed to get fooled as well, which emphasized the techniques utilized by the Messenger of Silence even more! The peak ace pilot imposed a change in reality that reached the conceptual level. The changes weren't illusionary at all. Reality had truly changed, if only for as long as the powerful saint's willpower remained active. Time passed by. More and more humans and aliens got killed. The leading figures of both sides made no moves, though. Neither the Whispering Winter nor the pair of greater phase lords took action in person. Part of that was to allow their general troops to do their jobs and consume their opponents as much as possible. Another part of it was that the side that moved the first in a high-level confrontation usually suffered a penalty. Unless the battle had reached a late phase or unless one of the sides could not stave off defeat by itself, then that was the time for the big boys to get into play. This was why sending the Dark Zephyr ahead so early was such a brilliant move. If Saint Tusa and his battle partner could successfully approach the two greater phase lords without getting 'detected', then that could enable him and the Messenger of Silence to gain the initiative by launching a surprise attack! Normally, making the first move was a bad idea, but this did not apply to successful surprise attacks! The emphasis was on surprise. As the Dark Zephyr slowly circled around and used the increasing interference as well as random pieces of floating debris as cover, the ace mech actually managed to get close! It would only take another minute before the Dark Zephyr reached his target position. The only problem was that there was not a single target position per se. In order to guard against a sudden sniping attack from the Whispering Willow, the Diffraction Lord had already employed his signature ability to project multiple mirror images of himself and the Biopod Mother across a large line. There were enough kilometers separating every identical mirror image from each other that the Dark Zephyr had to get close to each individual one in order to allow his sensors to distinguish between truth or false. The Diffraction Lord's power over this illusionary ability was so good that he and his fellow greater phase lord could be anywhere, even at the extreme end of the line of mirror images. What was worse was that he could also swap himself and the Biopod Mother to their illusionary counterparts without generating any obvious activity, thereby causing Tusa to declare a false positive! The best way to prevent that and give the Messenger of Silence a solid target to shoot with his Stella was to get close and activate the Dark Zephyr's new space suppressor to stop or delay any attempt to teleport away. The Larkinson expert pilot's expression went grave. That also meant exposing his Dark Zephyr, which would certainly draw the ire of two very angry and very close greater phase lords! Tusa smirked. Challenge accepted. Even though he was well aware that he was taking on an Ark-style challenge, there was a huge difference between himself and General Ark. He was an ace pilot. A fresh one, but a genuine ace pilot nonetheless. There was also another difference that gave Tusa greater confidence in his next move. The Messenger of Silence was a far better and more reliable form of backup than Patriarch Reginald Cross! Saint Dostoevsky wouldn't have sent the Dark Zephyr forward if he was unable to provide support at such a large distance. This situation was almost ideal for the peak ace pilot. The Whispering Willow remained safely in the rear, and was not at risk. The Dark Zephyr not only acted as its forward scout, but also served as a lightning rod of attraction that was bound to distract the two greater phase lords!