"<nullb>Mirage."
The mist surrounding the Jedda Sandivar thickened. It became so much better at interfering with the perception of both people and machines that even Tusa momentarily lost track of his opponent!
Behind!
The Dark Zephyr rapidly turned around, yet when the machine raised his stormblade knives to block the twin kamas, the feedback from the charge attack turned out to be much less than expected!
"What…?"
The living mech felt as if he had only clashed with a mech that was ten times weaker than before.
"Pay attention!"
The small but powerful leg of the Jedda Sandivar emerged from the opposite direction and gave a firm kick onto the rear of the Dark Zephyr!
The expert light skirmisher embarrassingly lost control over his own trajectory and needed a moment to stabilize.
Soon, two different Jedda Sandivars attacks from the left and right of the Larkinson mech!
Tusa did not foolishly try to defend either or both attackers. Instead, he quickly activated the Combat Warp function, enabling the Dark Zephyr to quickly hop away from his precarious position!
Yet even as the Dark Zephyr managed to move away quickly enough to almost pass through the boundary of his opponent's Saint Kingdom, a third Jedda Sandivar appeared with blazing speed and kicked the Larkinson mech back into the opposite direction!
Multiple real and illusory versions of the Jedda Sandivar tormented the Dark Zephyr.
Tusa's newly improved senses and the Dark Zephyr's state-of-
the-art sensor suites utterly failed to distinguish real and false.
Marissa's domain field was so much stronger and more developed that there was no comparison.
In addition, Saint Marissa honed her various powers and abilities for many decades. The two may be of the same rank on the surface, but the Adelaide ace pilot was almost four times as old as Tusa!
Even though the mirages of the Jedda Sandivar were not as strong and threatening as the real deal, Marissa was able to maintain at least a dozen of them and control them to a very fine degree.
The mirage mechs did not hesitate to push Tusa to his limits by launching crazy suicide attacks!
Even if Tusa knew that they were false, they still posed enough of a threat to force him to defend against them, which subsequently gave the real Jedda Sandivar free reign to launch attacks at the most inopportune moments!
All of this suppression steadily caused Tusa to lose more confidence, thereby causing his Saint Kingdom to buckle even further.
In contrast, Saint Marissa's domain field became even more oppressive than before! The female ace pilot continually gained more momentum.
"<nullb>False Becomes True!"
One of the Jedda Sandivars oddly swung its transphasic kamas into empty space.
Yet Tusa immediately became alarmed when the Dark Zephyr finally received his first pair of scratches!
Somehow, the missed attacks launched by the Jedda Sandivar actually managed to hit the Dark Zephyr while bypassing all of the defenses in the way!
Tusa was hardly the only ace pilot who possessed an offensive trick!
Due to the thick and almost impenetrable mist generated by Marissa's Saint Kingdom, Tusa completely lost the initiative as he could not escape this trap no matter where he flew or how much his Dark Zephyr sped up. The Jedda Sandivar constantly made sure to keep the living mech as close to the center of its Saint Kingdom as possible!
Tusa eventually couldn't hold it any longer. He wanted to be able to hold his ground against Saint Marissa without resorting to his trump card, but that was obviously an unrealistic dream from the beginning.
"Blackwing, it's time!"
"Chip!"
Shadow energy began to converge upon the Dark Zephyr's abdomen as the Dark Wind Module started to accumulate energy.
Tusa focused completely on defense and evasion as he tried his best to buy time for his expert light skirmisher to accumulate energy.
He did not dare to let the Dark Wind Module reach full charge!
Not only did it have a chance of inflicting severe harm on an important strategic asset, but he knew that Saint Marissa would never give him the time to accumulate power for so long!
The lengthy charge time of the Dark Wind Module was a very obvious weakness, but Tusa was confident that he could improve upon it over time.
For now, he only waited for half a dozen minutes before he dared to launch an unstoppable charge!
"<nullb>Dark Wind Passage!"
A powerful shadowy streak immediately ran through the hazy Saint Kingdom and breached the other side!
Every false Jedda Sandivar in the way got popped in an instant.
As for the real ace mech, the actual mech remained hidden and untouched by this costly move!
Saint Marissa sounded amused. "This has lots of potential. Even I am not entirely sure whether my Jedda Sandivar can remain unscathed if struck by your power move. It is clearly not designed to help you fight against fast and powerful opponents like myself. Its power is beyond doubt, but its flexibility leaves much to be desired as you can only channel it in a single direction. This is a siege attack more than anything else, but it doesn't have to remain that way."
Tusa wound down for a moment. "What do you mean?"
"Once you truly begin to take control over your Saint Kingdom, you can alter reality and force your mech to change direction. If you break down the special move you just pulled off and only execute some of its components, then you may be able to launch a weaker but much more controllable shadow attack. That would have allowed you to strike all of my mirages and my actual ace mech at once. Forget about resonance strength for the time being. You urgently need to expand your repertoire. Do not make use of your mech as is. No mech designer can fully prepare a set of features that will allow you to fight at your full potential. The only way to truly master your light skirmisher is to use your living mech as a collection of building blocks to form your own combat system!"
That was the point where ace pilots were finally able to live up to the expectations of the public!