"Overall Constriction"
Pope's ultimate goal requires the use of Elements with prominent area attacks to constrain the enemy's main forces...while halting their advance, simultaneously diminishing their numbers as much as possible.
Therefore.
When the explosion occurred at the entrance of the clothing store.
Pope had already established several portals leading to the outskirts of the enemy forces.
Sally and others cut in from the periphery, each unleashing area-of-effect ultimate moves, 'sealing off' the enemy...Initially, it was quite effective, but as time went on, the effectiveness of the area attacks was diminishing.
The Terminator Machinery that were destroyed by physical attacks, curses, and secret arts, would upload their internal data at the moment before death.
The CPU used by the central entity to manage the battlefield would add upgrade patches to the program for that combat zone based on the uploaded data.
"Adaptability" was faster than Pope had anticipated.
