Chapter 6320 Debilitating Attacks Saint Tusa Billingsley-Larkinson felt he was in his element. His new Free Flight ability allowed him to truly exploit the potential of his powerful new ace mech. The Dark Zephyr exulted in the seemingly effortless way he danced around in space and evaded a lot of attacks with a sense of playfulness. The ace mech had yet to launch a single proper attack against the greater phase lords, but uncharacteristically Tusa did not mind that he was doing little else but fly around. The joy of flying free in enemy territory was a pleasure that was indescribable to Tusa. He loved moving fast and he loved frustrating his enemies by evading their attacks. Free Flight combined these desires and more and encapsulated them into an image that directed the application of his willpower in a much more comprehensive way. Free Flight was all Tusa needed because he only had one job now. That was to keep applying the Dark Zephyr's powerful space suppression field on the Diffraction Lord. The job became a lot easier when Tusa could delegate much of this task to Blackwing. His companion spirit was able to dedicate much of his concentration on resonating with the space suppression module, allowing Tusa himself to immerse himself with the wonderful sensations produced by the act of flying free. Saint Tusa did not have to do more, because he could completely count on his mentor to deal all of the damage on their behalf. He learned another lesson from this battle. Just because he advanced to the rank of ace pilot did not mean that teamwork had become invalid. He previously fought alongside Saint Marissa Lewandowski and Saint Kalasandra Boojay back when he was serving in the expeditionary fleet. While their teamwork was relatively decent, there was not that much synergy between combining two powerful light skirmishers with a spearman mech. This was entirely different. Pairing up the Dark Zephyr with one of the most potent ace marksman mechs produced such a fantastic synergy that Tusa wondered why the Messenger of Silence hadn't paired up with a saint who specialized in light mechs before! Perhaps Saint Dostoevsky did so in the past, but the ace pilots he partnered up with did not do as good of a job. Saint Tusa did not consider himself strong compared to his peers. He mainly managed to perform better than typical fresh ace pilots due to being paired with an excellent mech. The advantages of an ace pilot that specialized in evasion, Solus Gas integration and more produced a wonderful combination of advantages that just so happened to make him perfect for this job. Saint Tusa and his Dark Zephyr happened to be exactly what the Brusilov Fleet needed to counter the Diffraction Lord's confounding abilities. This made Tusa feel more fulfilled than ever. He had heard many stories about the combat prowess of greater phase lords, and experienced it first-hand to a degree. Even if he excelled at evasion, Saint Tusa was still cognizant that getting attacked by two different greater phase lords was an exceedingly dangerous proposition! There was only so much that his fantastic ace mech could do to bail him out of a sticky situation. There were two reasons why Tusa did not act on his mentor's warning to withdraw if the risks had become too great. First, neither the Diffraction Lord nor the Biopod Mother were good duelists. Their powers and inclinations both turned them into battlefield manipulators that preferred to leave most of the fighting to their minions while they hovered comfortably in the rear. Even if they possessed a few notable self-defense capabilities, it was clear that they rarely had to resort to brawling at closer ranges during their long lifespans! Second and more importantly, the Diffraction Lord had suffered a significant injury from the start, and continued to receive more injuries over time! The first attack was the most critical one as it had caught the Diffraction Lord off-guard. He had neglected to put up all of his defenses, and got struck by an extremely penetrating round that not only partially paralyzed him, but also damaged numerous important phasewater organs! Before the Diffraction Lord could even begin to respond to this provocation, he had already lost at least 20 percent of his combat effectiveness! Silence was Saint Dostoevsky's signature ability. Tusa was close enough to the victim to get a good impression of the formidable image that his mentor used to anchor and strengthen this powerful attack. The artistic conception behind the ability that earned the Messenger of Silence his title was surprisingly tame. When Saint Dostoevsky imparted his silence onto his enemies, he channeled his strong and sincere yearning for relief from the ghosts that tormented him for years on end. The man was so deeply afflicted by the ghosts that only he could see and hear that the only way he could shut them all out was to channel his willpower in a way that could silence his mental torment! Suffice to say, the peak ace pilot had a lot of practice in silencing his ghosts, which allowed him to apply the same conditions to others! The silencing effect was supposed to be a mercy, but when applied to enemies like the Diffraction Lord, he found that much of his body and many of his phasewater organs became partially or completely paralyzed. This lowered his combat effectiveness even further! He was much less able to focus on swatting down the annoying ace light skirmisher that was circling around his true body as the Messenger of Silence regularly fired Silence rounds that not only inflicted further harm, but also extended the paralysis effect! Still, it was not that easy to paralyze a greater phase lord. The Diffraction Lord might have suffered damage, but most of his body remained in good condition. When the powerful jurgen god actively took more control of his body and tried to repair or limit the damage, he was able to push back the effects of the Silence round by relying on the raw strength of his amazing phasewater-empowered physique! The Messenger of Silence had to fire repeated Silence rounds into his target in order to prevent the Diffraction Lord from regaining most of his strength. With every extraordinary gauss round that pierced through the jurgen phase lord's shell and inflicted damage to the flesh and organs, the Diffraction Lord had to do his work all over again. What did not help was that on the occasions that the Diffraction Lord managed to erase the effects of the Silence ability on himself, Saint Dostoevsky might alternate his attacks by firing a Suffer round instead! This was the complete opposite of his Silence round. There was no mercy in this empowered attack. 𝘧𝓇ℯ𝑒𝓌𝑒𝑏𝓃𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘭.𝒸ℴ𝓂 The peak ace pilot infused all of his suffering, pain and torment into the custom-developed gauss round before launching it from the muzzle of his Stella. Supported by an artistic conception that brought all of the ghosts that tortured the Messenger of Silence for many years, the Suffer round had a much worse effect on the greater phase lord's psyche! The willpower of an enormous phase lord was not as fragile as that of an ordinary jureg, but much of that strength was derived from his awesome physique and his advanced age. In terms of grit and courage, the Diffraction Lord could not even come close to any human ace pilot! This effectively meant that the Diffraction Lord's willpower was mainly strong due to quantitative instead of qualitative reasons. Compared to a peak ace pilot that overcame many life-threatening challenges while also needing to fend off the ghosts that tormented him day and night, the Diffraction Lord's tolerance towards mental attacks was far too weak! It was only because his body and his mind was so vast that the greater phase lord did not despair to the point of trying to commit suicide. Even so, the constant suffering produced by the Messenger of Silence's most sadistic attack constantly distracted the greater phase lord and made it harder for him to maintain his focus. The Diffraction Lord therefore became trapped in a loop of paralysis, suffering and distraction! The Messenger of Silence did not waste the opportunities created by Saint Tusa and fired his Stella as fast as he was able. Unfortunately, his firing rate was not that high. He was only able to make every shot count by infusing them with as much of his true resonance as possible. That was already enough to crumble the Diffraction Lord's defenses and damage more of his precious phasewater organs. Time was on the side of the human defenders. The longer this went on, more phasewater-infused blood spilled out of the jurgen phase lord's injured body! As the Diffraction Lord continued to grow weaker, the Biopod Mother finally chose to intervene. The female phase lord did not close in and utilize her superior physique to absorb the blows meant for her male counterpart. It appeared the two jureg phase lords were not close enough for the Biopod Mother to attract the ire of the Messenger of Silence. Instead, she decided to change the instructions of the tens of thousands of mech-sized biopods that she had flung into the surrounding space. The biopods no longer launched lots of ineffectual ranged attacks at the Dark Zephyr. The machine was too damn fast and maneuverable for most of the attacks to land. Even if they struck the ace mech, the Saint Kingdom had sapped much of the power of the attacks while the azure energy shield depleted the rest. The juregs needed to inflict more substantial damage, and the Biopod Mother decided to do so by driving her organic minions forward and induce them to self-destruct in close proximity to their target! Dozens of powerful explosions erupted in space as the biopods that got close enough to the Dark Zephyr triggered their bombs, which were all amplified by phasewater imparted by their progenitor! It was quite costly in terms of organic tissue and phasewater to induce these biopods to explode. The Biopod Mother could afford it, though. Not only was her PPS working hard to make up for the loss of phasewater, but her biology was much better attuned to convert other forms of mass into organic materials. More and more flesh grew to replace the portions that had been transformed and launched from her shell. This meant that even more hostile biopods proliferated in every direction, with most of them charging straight towards the Dark Zephyr before blowing themselves up in a short blaze of glory! The self-destruction of so many biopods threw Saint Tusa off his rhythm. He found himself forced to evade swarms of self-destructing organic transphasic missiles. Whenever they detonated at a fairly close proximity, Tusa's willpower and other resources were getting consumed at a rapid rate. His Saint Kingdom was not only working overtime to dampen so many incoming attacks, but the azure energy shield that kept his machine pristine was also starting to grow strained. The Dark Zephyr's defenses were getting tested like nothing else before. Each biopod exploded with the force of a first-class transphasic missile. While the ace light skirmisher was able to evade or outrun the vast majority of them, there was no way to truly avoid getting struck by the blasts if the ace light skirmisher wanted to stick close to the Diffraction Lord. Even the ability to occasionally escape the blast damage failed in this instance as the Biopod Mother cleverly relied on a large quantity of smaller self-destructive attacks as opposed to a single big bang! "I need help here, mentor!" Saint Tusa asked without any shame. "If these biopods continue to wear me down like this, my ace mech won't be able to stay for long. My Saint Kingdom is too weak to more effectively suppress the power of all of the explosions!" The Messenger of Silence's response came not too soon. Winter. A fragmentation round silently slipped close and exploded into many different fragments before it had struck anything solid! As soon as the fragments spread out, hundreds of biopods either died instantly or got injured and subsequently froze into popsicles!