6890 Saint Kingdom Suppression
As powerful as the First Sword Mark III had become, she was not a perfect ace mech.
Endurance was one of her greatest weaknesses. When she fought at full power, her energy reserves would not be able to sustain her output for a long time.
If Ketis had chosen to design the First Sword according to the Pure Version, then the ace mech would have benefited from Master Hijalt Mossclover's exclusive High-Density Energy Cells.
That would have significantly expanded the First Sword's energy reserves and enabled her to sustain herself for a much longer period of time.
Alas, Ketis opted to go for the Sword Fey Version instead, which meant that the First Sword had to forgo individual power in order to support the operation 33 sword fey.
Saint Dise was suffering from the consequences of this important choice.
If she continued to pilot a simple ace swordsman mech, then she would have remained confident in keeping the electro-reactant flight system active at full power.
However, the current configuration of the First Sword did not possess the energy buffer that she needed for her to sustain the current slugging match.
The Black Lord was much better positioned to fight at this range.
The Sirocco may have proven itself to be heavily disadvantaged when colliding directly against the Decapitator, but it turned out that it was a weapon that specialized in releasing destructive energy winds!
Combined with the firepower of the integrated ranged weapons, the First Sword Mark III's armor system continually sustained hits with very little chance of evasion.
Even if the individual attacks did not appear to be inflicting any noticeable damage onto the First Sword Mark III, that was only because the armor system was being energized as well as affected by true resonance.
Neither of these effects were permanent.
The armor-grade superdimensional alloy plating no longer functioned at their best if the ace mech exhausted her power reserves and the ace pilot wore out her willpower.
After that, the superdimensional armor system would definitely become a lot more vulnerable to sustained attacks. The ace mech could not afford to sustain too much damage because superdimensional matter was far too precious to squander in a fight with low stakes.
The Wind of Destruction clearly managed to deduce all of this. He quickly managed to deduce his win condition in a bout against a superdimensional ace mech that initially appeared to be impervious against all of his attacks!
Saint Dise gained a lot of respect for the elder ace pilot during this fight.
The Wind of Destruction had been mentoring and guiding her from the beginning of this sparring session.
Although the Larkinsons and the Devosans had already formulated a detailed plan on how the fight should unfold, there were still a lot of gaps that the Terran ace pilot thoughtfully filled with helpful lessons.
Of course, the Wind of Destruction did not verbalize any of his lessons.
Instead, he taught Dise through the attacks and the maneuvers of his ace multipurpose mech.
He may have come from a different swordsmanship tradition than Dise, but the two shared enough in common to be able to communicate with their respective swords.
The Wind of Destruction was not a gentle teacher.
As much as he wanted to teach the younger and less experienced ace pilot how to fight as a saint, he still held the obligation to uphold the reputation of the Devos Ancient Clan and the Terran Alliance.
This was why his Black Lord always exerted a high degree of pressure. The First Sword Mark III did not receive any reprieve and constantly had to endure one attack after another without interruption.
The iconic destructive winds unleashed by the swings of the Sirocco were much more horrendous than they looked.
Most people who viewed footage of these iconic sweeping attacks might assume that they were too wide and dispersed to inflict much if any damage against strong defenses.
This was not necessarily true.
The Black Lord's offensive posture was multifaceted.
The Terran ace mech's Saint Kingdom was strong and all-encompassing enough that the destructive wind energy attacks received more amplification the longer they remained in flight.
Dise suffered a heavy disadvantage in this regard as her willpower was so much weaker that her Saint Kingdom was unable to assert any control past the exterior of her ace mech.
The Wind of Destruction was therefore not only able to increase the threat of his destructive wind energy attacks, but he was also able to use his willpower to warp the surrounding space and make it less friendly for his adversary!
The First Sword Mark III's superdimensional armor may be tough enough to protect against many direct attacks, but it was not as infallible when confronting more esoteric effects.
For example, the Black Lord's Saint Kingdom somehow distorted the surrounding space, making it more dangerous and less predictable.
It was hard for Dise to describe the hindrances that her willpower tried and failed to overcome.
She struggled to raise her control over the First Sword Mark III, but failed to surpass a certain limit because the laws of physics themselves appeared to be breaking down within her adversary's Saint Kingdom!
Up did not always mean up. A heavy object could suddenly turn as light as a feather. Momentum might not be conserved anymore.
Although the First Sword was able to resist the worst of it, her lack of control over the immediate environment still caused the ace mech to suffer small but frequent glitches.
More importantly than that, her inability to spread her Saint Kingdom also weakened her sword fey.
This was one of the reasons why they performed so lackluster so far. Even though they all maintained enough connections to Dise and the First Sword to retain at least a modicum of resonance empowerment, they clearly needed more support when deployed against an opposing ace mech.
Ever since the First Sword Mark III turned into a drone mech, her sword fey became an important component of her combat power.
The problem was that Dise was still new to them. The sword fey were numerous and difficult to leverage beyond a basic level.
She understood the theory behind them. She had studied old legacy texts that the Red Collective managed to recover. Many of them described the use of sword formations that mysteriously tied floating swords together and enabled them to strike with far more power than they should.
Like many Larkinsons, Dise was already familiar with battle formations, but trying to translate that into her sword formation was easier said than done.
The sword fey were different from mechs. Dise found it necessary to multitask way beyond what she was accustomed to. If she was a drone mech specialist, then this would have been familiar ground.
Unfortunately, she was still too new at this. She had spent a bit of time on learning how to operate multiple spurs at once, but while she managed to learn the basics, she was still lacking in experience.
This prevented her from pulling off the few sword formations that she had managed to puzzle out ever since she received the First Sword Mark III.
She felt as if she was wasting the potential of her sword fey. None of the formations she employed so far were sophisticated and powerful enough to give her an advantage in this bout.
The Black Lord proved to be too fast and solid. The sword fey lacked the speed and power to seriously threaten the Terran ace mech at their current usage level.