The humans and alien craft that got caught in the spell array found themselves in a very different space than before.
Somehow, the E energy radiation around them exhibited completely different behavior. Instead of flowing passively from Messier 87 to outward directions, it had instead begun to form into complicated loops that caused them to change the surrounding space and produce all kinds of unclear effects.
While the humans had been warned in advance of what they should expect, the aliens enjoyed no such luxury.
The pilots initially became confused by how they ended up in a space filled with mist. While the density of this strange and insubstantial fog was not as severe inside the spell array, it reduced the range and effectiveness of all of their sensors.
Of more concern was the total cutoff of communications with the alien units located outside of this strange area.
When the phasefighters attempted to fly away in order to escape the confusing mist, they found that they weren't actually getting away!
Their sensors and positioning systems started to make all kinds of illogical observations. Despite traveling in somewhat straight trajectories, the craft somehow ended up looping around so that they passed by the same asteroids as before!
This was impossible!
Had a phase lord arrived and contorted this area of space into a closed loop? That shouldn't be possible given that no obvious spatial activity had occurred. The aliens were highly familiar with this series of phenomena and would have known if they were being affected by the power of a native god.
The humans must have employed a powerful trick. That quickly became the consensus among the alien fighter pilots.
The puelmer fighter pilots of the sole combination gunship that got pulled into the strange space gathered the most data and conducted a rapid analysis.
They were the first aliens to conclude that if they wanted to break out of this human trap, they should open fire at their surroundings and attempt to overwhelm the effect that trapped them in the same volume of space!
It was best if they concentrated their attacks in a single direction of coordinate so that they could quickly overwhelm whatever invisible barrier kept them contained! Although the theories formed by the puelmer fighter pilots were not completely correct, their solution happened to be the second-best choice they could make!
the key nodes or weak points of the active spell array, then they should be able to cause enough disruptions at critical junctions to produce a cascade of failures, thereby unraveling the entire spell array with minimal effort!
However, the native aliens shouldn't have brought such an expert along. The best they could do was to rely on brute force and fire lots of hyper weapons to disturb the flow of E energy radiation.
This process took a lot longer and wasted a lot more resources, but it would still be effective in this case due to the rudimentary quality and properties of the spell array! It couldn't be helped. The Red Collective had only begun to develop spell arrays relatively recently. None of its formation masters were any better than apprentices in their new and unfathomable craft.
In fact, it was not as if Melkor could make use of stronger spell arrays anyway. The entire point of deploying the confinement spell array was to conduct a ritual that would allow him to become a proper combat spell array master.
With that in mind, Melkor had to do two things at the same time.
He had to devote a significant portion of his concentration to verbally repeating a mantra while constructing a specific artistic conception in his mind.
The legion commander also had to actively control the active spell array.
The experience was rather weird and disorientating, but not as much as he expected. If he had to describe it, his control over the spell array was probably similar to that of piloting a Carmine mech, though he had never done that in person.
The descriptions vaguely matched. With that in mind, Melkor quickly tried to leverage his decades long experience as a mech pilot to get past the novelty and try to operate the spell array as quickly as possible.
He was beginning to make progress. He found that he could obtain a vague panoramic view of the three-dimension space that encompassed the confinement array.
He then found out that he could perform basic operations, such as reinforcing the containment barrier in a specific direction so that it could resist more violent and disruptive attacks.
What he found more useful was the ability to increase the density of the disorienting fog. This decreased the detection range of the enemy phasefighters even further, causing them to miss the mechs that were not all that far away from their positions.
"This confinement array is a lot more useful than I thought."
The ability to blind the perception of the enemy to this extent was quite powerful, though he knew it wouldn't work against more powerful entities that possessed proper defenses against these kinds of effects.
puelmer phasefighters might be great at detecting enemies in conventional space, but they were not equipped to counter an effect that the ball-shaped aliens had never encountered in the past!
Melkor found that he could do more with the array, but he lacked the proficiency, knowledge and cultivation to be able to make use of them at this time.
For example, if he was better able to master the operation of the array, he could selectively kick a friendly or hostile unit out of the spell array.
He could also allow for friendlies to pass by unobstructed while leaving any designated enemies trapped in the same space!
However, Melkor was still far from reaching that point. He also needed to get his
hands on a more powerful and advanced spell array to be able to do a lot of nifty stuff such as isolating every enemy phasefighter in their own isolated cages so that they could be defeated in sequence.
All in all, the world of qi formations had a lot of potential. While Melkor believed that the native aliens would eventually wise up and develop their own countermeasures against them, red humanity should always remain several steps ahead!
Instead of fantasizing about how he would be able to manipulate the battlefield once he became a stronger combat spell array master, Melkor needed to focus on his current priorities.
He largely disregarded what was taking place outside of the spell array and focused on continuing the ritual while directing the mechs inside to attack the confused
phasefighters.
While he was straining to exert more control over the spell array, he suddenly thought.
about using his companion spirit to enhance his connection.
The Jonas exited his head and entered the formation control artifact.
The idea actually worked!
As an energy-based lifeform, the feline companion spirit was able to interface with
the active spell array much easier!
Melkor found that Jonas was able to exert a bit more control over the spell array due to his inherent advantages.
It was like Melkor was struggling to see in the dark, only for a cat to be able to look at his surroundings as if he was in daylight!
The legion commander took advantage of this convenience and began to direct the trapped Avatar and Swordmaiden mechs to attack the phasefighters.
At this time, the spell array was already beginning to expose a few faults. The sustained attacks from all of the trapped phasefighters as well as the combination
A spell array wouldn't be able to fare much better. It was only due to its unconventional nature and properties that its containment was not fully susceptible to material attacks.
This was why the mechs couldn't arrive too soon. When the powerful melee mechs came close enough for the aliens to detect their approach, it was already too late for the targeted craft to evade!
The mechs did not attempt to attack all of the enemy phasefighters at once.