Yet this time may be different. As the enemy phase lords continued to close in, the CE mechs conspicuously maintained their distance, making it clear that they did not intend to play any part in what was to come.
Instead, the warships all started to launch missiles at the leading greater phase lords!
"They are unleashing the same Dynapulse Disruptor Missiles as before!"
The native aliens attempted to crush the missiles mid-flight by squeezing it with the fabric of space, but the missiles appeared to be strangely resistant against these effects!
They flew unerringly through twisted and folded space until they accurately converged onto the two phase lords!
So many missiles detonated against the energy defenses of the two native gods that part of their enlarged bodies became obscured by all of the explosions.
Yet even if their views became obscured, Ves and the others keenly noticed that the clustered explosions actually managed to rupture the powerful spatial barriers, but just for a moment!
The warships of the 76th Dominator Warfleet had already primed their gun batteries. Each of them soundlessly boomed as they propelled a completely different kind of projectile towards their target than before!
Unlike the regular explosive shells that had inflicted effective damage to the hulls of enemy warships on the cheap, these ones were clearly a lot more expensive and high-end!
They soared through space at an even faster speed and slipped through the gaps in the spatial barriers with unerring accuracy.
Once they struck the bodies of the greater phase lords from various angles, several things happened at once.
The rounds that collided against the alien-grade superdimensional raiment actually fractured while only leaving scratches behind!
They broke apart far too easily!
"The rounds aren't transphasic?"
However, the raiments worn by the enemy phase lords did not cover their entire true bodies, so the rounds that managed to slip through the gaps and strike open flesh actually managed to penetrate past the skin and into the flesh.
They did not go past that, but this was already a respectable result for a non-transphasic round.
Yet that was just the beginning.
At first, the greater phase lords ignored the fractured metal that had lodged into their flesh.
Yet they soon regretted it as they began to experience a lot of pain from the injured parts of their true body!
When they turned their heads to look down at their wounds, they found to their horror that the flesh and other body tissue surrounding their wounds had begun to blacken and weaken!
"The rounds are toxic to phase lords somehow!" Gloriana gasped in surprise. "According to the annotations of the live feed, the new rounds are actually corrupting and breaking down the phasewater that sustains the transformed flesh of these phase lords."
Ves widened his eyes in shock and also a little fear.
Phasewater had become an essential component to sustain the life of every phase lord.
If a new weapon was capable of corrupting phasewater into another substance that did not possess the same properties, then it could easily drain the strength of a phase lord and cripple parts of his body!
"These Polybite phase corruptor rounds are another invention from the Polymath." Ves noted without too much surprise as the live feed essentially advertised the latest product demonstrated by the Dominators. "They are made from processing high-grade and mid-grade exotics in a special way that allows the finished product to gain a necrotizing effect against phase leader body tissue. The production cost is fairly expensive, but the greatest advantage is that its production does not use up any phasewater."
This was a critical advantage that should make the Polybite rounds a lot more accessible to more human forces!
At this time, the warships of the 76th Dominator Warfleet started to get serious. They split up into multiple squadrons and began to circle around the greater phase lords. They used the now-classic combo of Dynapulses to briefly open gaps in the spatial barriers before slipping Polybites to hurt the native gods!
While the greater phase lords were still able to cope with the damage due to their larger bodies and much higher phasewater content, the lesser phase lords had it much worse!
Their spatial barriers were significantly weaker so it took fewer Dynapulse Disruptor Missiles to create a gap in their defenses. They also lacked Saint Armors and so could not defend themselves as effectively against the poisonous rounds.
The Polybites also inflicted much more severe damage to their true bodies as losing dozens of liters of phasewater represented a much more severe injury for the lesser phase lords!
In a mirror to the Battle of Screed Tanner VI-F, the lesser phase lords lost their nerves first.
The Polybite appeared to be especially designed to inflict great pain on these arrogant native gods!
That combined with losing any feel or control for their injured parts of their bodies caused them to grow so spooked that some of them proactively used their own blades to cut off their necrotized flesh before the toxins could spread any further!
After suffering these heavy blows, the lesser phase lords no longer had any desire to challenge the strange new human warfleet anymore.
They all backed away in order to get out of range from the astoundingly effective new missiles and kinetic rounds.
This of course left the two greater phase lords without the support they expected.
Eventually, the pair of alien leaders made the sensible choice and chose to retreat.
Many human viewers became disappointed when they saw that the Dominators did not employ any other miracle weapons in an attempt to kill the retreating phase lords, but they had already delivered a stellar result as far as everyone was concerned.
For the first time since the start of the Red War, a fleet of mortal mechs and warships managed to defeat a superior force of alien phasefighters, warships and phase lords without relying on gods and magic!
The fleeters must already be salivating at the technological breakthroughs on display!
"We have to find a way to get our hands on the production methods of the Dynapulse Disruptor Missile and the Polybite Phase Corruptor Round at all cost!"