When the Endless Stomach struck, Saint Dise was already poised to react. She successfully evaded the zzamayel greater phase lord's initial strike, but this was just the beginning. The phase whales may regard themselves as high and mighty gods, but they were also shameless enough to gang up on a single opponent! The two had already determined their cooperative strategy. The Protector of Karnak became even more dogged in his pursuit of the superdimensional ace mech. Each time the First Sword Mark III attempted to back away, the greater phase lord came right behind. Even if the ace mech channeled additional energy into her Electro-Reactant Flight System to speed up her flight, the Protector of Karnak would just blink over, thereby negating the effort. What was really annoying was that the greater phase lord kept Dise guessing when he would launch his next salvo of transphasic missiles. Although the Protector of Karnak clearly tried to ration them, his reserves of potent missiles was greater than Dise initially expected. Her expression sank when she guessed that the Protector of Karnak had many different ways of storing a large amount of goods in his own true body. If he wanted to retrieve another set of missiles, he just had to dig them out of his partially unfolded body somehow. Dise had no idea how multi-dimensional physics worked, so she could not explain how it was possible for the jureg greater phase lord to pull stuff out of his own true body. Yet the reality of the situation meant that the ace pilot had to remain on high alert and never let go of her vigilance. As long as her focus slacked off at the wrong time, she would definitely pay for her mistake! Still, as difficult as it may be to put more distance between herself and the Protector of Karnak, she considered him to be a lesser threat compared to the latest greater phase lord to join the fray! From the way the Protector of Karnak maneuvered, he clearly wanted to drive the First Sword Mark III closer to the Endless Stomach. Dise had a pretty good idea why. She had never fought against a zzamayel greater phase lord, but she roughly understood what they were generally capable of. She knew that she needed to employ an entirely different approach to deal with these slime-like monstrosities. When the Endless Stomach maneuvered his way so that he was able to sandwich the First Sword Mark III with the help of the Protector of Karnak, the former made another attempt to pounce on his opponent! The First Sword immediately turned around and struck at the other greater phase lord, only to see the resonance-empowered blade passing straight through the slimy, amorphous body like it was cutting through jelly! Saint Dise scowled, but she had already expected this result. Even as the Endless Stomach opened up a large maw that was ringed with specially made superdimensional teeth, the First Sword Mark III's electric wings boosted her away in time, thereby preventing her from getting engulfed. "YOU SHALL NOT DEVOUR ME, YOU FILTHY MONSTER." Of all of the phase lords that ace pilots and particularly those that specialized in melee combat had fought against, the zzamayel variation was among the worst. The zzamayels were disgusting slime-like creatures that possessed no solid body mass aside from a core. Nobody had any idea how such a race could evolve to grow sentient and intelligent enough to become good at biotechnology and become one of the major races of the Red Ocean. What was even more outrageous was that the zzamayels also possessed the capability to become phase lords despite their strange physiology. Yet it was also due to their amorphous true bodies that their phase lords tended to be weirder than most. The most obvious one was that most melee and particularly cutting attacks were pretty much useless! Even as the First Sword Mark III continued to dance between the two greater phase lords and retaliate whenever possible, her superdimensional Decapitator passed through the Endless Stomach's unarmored form without inflicting any noticeable damage! The ace pilot felt as if her battle partner was just cutting through water! Seeing that the superdimensional properties of her powerful sword turned out to be completely ineffective in this situation, Saint Dise narrowed her eyes and began to execute a different and more powerful sword technique. "BLADESTORM." As the ace mech swung her glowing Decapitator, the greatsword unleashed an expanding storm that consisted of thousands of small sword energy attacks! The storm struck the Endless Stomach and began to cut through many portions of his body. However, the small and weak sword energy blades lacked power and dissipated fairly quickly. While the Endless Stomach suffered damage across his entire side, his slimy body simply closed the gaps and returned to his peak condition! Saint Dise knew that she had no chance of defeating and killing this greater phase lord by herself today. The best way to kill him was to destroy his core. Yet to reach it, her First Sword Mark III would have to wade through all of his slimy body. This was clearly not feasible, so she could only reduce his slime body first. There were many ways to accomplish this. Explosive weapons and energy weapons worked best at blasting away or vaporizing a lot of slime matter. Melee weapons on the other hand fared less well unless they possessed energy weapon properties as well. This was not the case for the Decapitator or the surviving sword fey. All of them were solid superdimensional blades that happened to encounter one of the few situations where their special properties turned out to be ineffective! In the end, Saint Dise found that she was slightly able to inflict more losses onto the Endless Stomach by using the flat side of her ace mech's mace to literally scoop away chunks of transphasic slime! Even then, the efficiency of this attack was so low that the First Sword would have to scoop all of this slimy matter for several hours in order to exhaust the Endless Stomach! When the Endless Stomach next attempted to swallow the First Sword, the ace mech was just in the process of repelling the Protector of Karnak's latest strike. This was bad! The zzamayel phase lord had picked a good time to strike. Not only was the First Sword not able to turn around and respond immediately, but the slimy monstrosity also contorted its body so that it was able to launch an extremity forward with much greater speed than expected! Saint Dise reacted in a split second. Her ace mech overloaded the safeties of the Electro-Reactant Flight System and forced it to give her a powerful boost, even if it came at the cost of strong wear-and-tear! While certain parts of the abused flight system were already starting to drop into yellow condition, the ace pilot already sent out her nearest sword fey in an attempt to intercept the transphasic slime arm. Fortunately, the ace pilot had kept them close to her machine in order to respond to emergencies like these. The sword fey plunged tip-first into the slimy arm. While they only parted through the transphasic matter without inflicting any permanent damage, they still managed to play a useful role! The slimy tendril lost cohesion, especially since it was relatively thin due to being extended from the main body. Although the limb already showed signs of recovery, it took time for it to regain cohesion. The successive sword fey strikes further weakened the limb and ultimately caused it to slow down just enough for the First Sword Mark III to slip away from its reach. Yet when Saint Dise attempted to recall her weapons, she found to her dismay that the sword fey couldn't escape their prison once they had entered its viscous embrace! Like glue, the Endless Stomach's transphasic flesh instantly transported the captured blades to the center of his body. There, the superdimensional teeth immediately began to grind on the sword fey, attempting to break them down until Dise lost all control over her weapons. The female ace pilot gritted her teeth. Through her true resonance empowerment, she could feel how the blades already started to succumb from the repeated grinding and biting attacks. If the Endless Stomach did not recently acquire his superdimensional teeth, then it would have taken much longer for him to damage the sword fey. However, now that he had received this massive upgrade, it only took a few bites for the sword fey to crack, deform and malfunction! Dise regrettably gave up on the weapons. She did not even think of going back to retrieve the sword fey. The mid-grade superdimensional alloy used to make them was fairly precious, but the Larkinson Clan had plenty more of it. There was no need to treat them as carefully as her Decapitator as they had already been designed with sacrifice in mind. In any case, the subordinate spirits returned smoothly to the First Sword Mark III. So long as they remained alive, the replacement sword fey would quickly regain the same life and personality. At this time, the battle between the First Sword Mark III and the two greater phase lords had entered into a stalemate. Both sides had figured out most of the core capabilities of their adversaries. Saint Dise no longer fought as aggressively as before. Since her ace mech was constantly outnumbered, she had little choice but to err on the side of caution. The Protector of Karnak and the Endless Stomach both cooperated smoothly with each other. They understood each other's strengths and possessed enough age and experience to understand how to best leverage their advantages. Even if Saint Dise was also able to respond better due to her growing familiarity with her opponents, their teamwork continued to improve, thereby making it difficult for either side to gain the upper hand. Another factor that played in the back of their minds was their consumption. Each of them expended large amounts of energy, willpower, phasewater and other resources. They also wore out their weapons, armor and other tech when applicable. The First Sword Mark III had not been fighting for too long, but Saint Dise knew that she was pushing her ace mech too hard in order to compensate for her own shortcomings. The reliability and health of the Electro-Reactant Flight System had dropped considerably. Dise did not dare to make too many high-risk maneuvers for fear of causing it to reach its breaking point too soon. The energy reserves of her ace mech was also draining at a rapid rate. In addition, her ace mech was only down to 19 sword fey, and she expected to lose more of them if she continued to fight against these two powerful opponents. The only consolation was that her opponents were also bleeding from this engagement. The Protector of Karnak had repeatedly used his blink phasewater organ in short intervals of time. That sort of abuse should defnitely take a toll on the greater phase lord. He was also expending a lot of concentration and possibly phasewater to amplify the spatial properties of his superdimensional claws and armor. While the effects were undeniably strong, Saint Dise possessed enough common sense to understand that this had to cost a lot to sustain! While phase lords tended to show greater advantages in terms of endurance due to their massive physical forms, Dise refused to believe that the Protector of Karnak could teleport under adverse conditions so often. She was waiting for the moment the greater phase lord had completely lost his interception ability. Already the jureg phase lord had been waiting longer and longer before he caught up through teleportation. Understanding his limit was of paramount importance! As for the Endless Stomach, the zzamayel phase lord did more than trying to devour the First Sword Mark III. The Endless Stomach released a cloud of transphasic toxins! The terrible monster attempted to weaken the First Sword Mark III by engulfing the entire machine in his own phasewater-infused poison!