5104 Berserk Cat
The arche had miscalculated.
This became clear as soon as a giant explosion in the secure compartment inside the archeship became engulfed in a potent transphasic explosion!
All of the transphasic energy shields in the chamber failed to withstand the concentrated fury of all of the unstable energies contained within the fragile gem excreted by the gem cat in a hurry!
Once the dust had begun to settle, the arche lord and the arche warriors all picked themselves up from the deck and looked in dismay at the empty and ruined crater at the center.
"Yyuuaakaka!"
The dangerous captive had gotten loose!
Not only that, but the vengeful cat was out for blood!
"MEOW!"
The angry cat's cry seemed to ring throughout the entire archeship!
Even the arche crew members who were stationed further away could somehow hear the utter rage contained within Lucky's vocal outburst!
This shouldn't have happened. The arche lord felt great regret that he had taken the intruder too lightly.
The archeship endured a lot of damage before the aliens finally managed to capture the small feline culprit with great effort.
If the arche exhibited enough self-control and held themselves back from messing with this strange and dangerous mechanical creature, they might have been able to bring their prized captive back to a larger and more well-equipped archeship.
The aliens refused to believe that this tiny metallic saboteur had the power to escape from the sight of their higher leaders!
It was a pity that the arche lord couldn't restrain his urges. For one reason or another, he touched upon a great taboo, causing Lucky to go completely berserk!
The cat completely turned into a different beast as soon as he entered into an overdrive mode!
In this special state, Lucky completely set aside all long-term priorities and channeled much of his accumulated resources into generating a massive short-term boost!
The heat expelling from his steaming body was but a small hint of the extreme processes taking place within his hyperactive systems.
Lucky's sophisticated body used up massive amounts of matter and energy to fuel all kinds of powerful but highly inefficient processes.
The gem cat felt pained at how much waste was being produced. He could have derived a lot more benefits from all of the archemetal and other exotics he had eaten so far if he had taken the leisure to digest them slowly.
Unfortunately for the gluttonous cat, the arche lord had forced his paw!
Since rescue was nowhere to be found, Lucky had no choice but to liberate himself!
The consequences of his choices became increasingly more evident. His body rapidly took on the superior traits of the vast quantities of archemetal that he managed to bite in his prior rampage.
Supplemented by the accumulated essence of much of the exotics he had ingested over the last years, the gem cat experienced a massive transformation that affected almost every part of his interior and exterior components!
That was not all. In order to extend his evolution and make sure that he would gain enough strength to overcome all resistance on the ship, the overheating gem cat continued to gnaw on every piece of archemetal in his way!
The more advanced alien alloys he ingested, the more his incredibly advanced internal systems understood the nature and the working principles of archemetal and archetech.
Lucky's body did not just copy archemetal outright. It went a step ahead by deciphering the best traits of this powerful and almost organic-like classification of metal alloys before using these gains to form a new and exclusive variation of archemetal!
Lucky did not lose much of his prior advantages. The benefits of much of the most powerful and useful exotics that he had ingested in the past such as Rorach's Bone and Unending alloy blended into the superior archemetal composition that was beginning to define this upgraded version of himself.
The archemetal iteration of the gem cat had not only become tougher, more resilient and more elusive than before, but also began to exhibit traits that specifically countered the means utilized by his desperate alien pursuers!
"MEOW!"
The arche lord and the arche warriors chased after the berserk cat as soon as they recovered from the shockwaves unleashed by the earlier explosion.
Time was of the essence to them. Now that Lucky had resumed his eating spree, the archeship was steadily being eaten from the inside.
The arche could not allow their precious archeship to deteriorate beyond a critical point.
Once their vessel no longer possessed the means to maintain her active stealth, all sorts of problems would arise!
If the arche could not repair one of their damaged and half-eaten warp drives in time, both the aliens and human forces in the Corellix System would definitely finish off their ship and everyone inside!
"Kyaaakakak!"
The arche warriors furiously charged at the overheating cat in an attempt to constrain Lucky's movements!
The arche lord meanwhile utilized his comprehensive mastery over the surrounding archemetal to create passageways and activate transphasic energy shields to keep up with the flying cat.
However, Lucky became a lot harder to trap now that he had gotten free again!
He not only possessed a much greater familiarity of the tricks of his alien pursuers, but he was visibly growing stronger with each passing second!
When Lucky approached an important section of the archeship, three layers of transphasic energy shields suddenly barred his way!
If it was before, Lucky would have struggled to overcome one of them, but now his strengthened archemetal composition enabled him to resist the extradimensional barriers and push through the resistance with only a moderate amount of effort!
Lucky forcefully phased through the layers like he had just passed through a waterfall!
"MEOW!"
The transphasic energy shields that the native aliens liked to employ could no longer block the evolving gem cat's movements as before!
They only slowed down the cat long enough to enable the arche to continue to stay on the escaping cat's tail.
Seeing that energy-based defenses could no longer hinder the evil mechanical construct as much as before, the arche lord used his potent archeshell to communicate with the archeship and activate other kinds of countermeasures!
Turrets emerged from the ceiling and shot powerful barrages of transphasic energy beams at the cat.
Small transphasic warheads popped out of the bulkheads and exploded in close proximity to the escaped prisoner.
Solid archemetal walls slammed down from the ceiling and became fully energized in an attempt to block Lucky's passage through alternate means.
These measures might have been able to slow down the gem cat a lot more if he had not undergone a rapid transformation.
Yet now that the cat assimilated the best traits of archemetal, his resilience and his ability to cope with difficulties was no longer on the same level as before!
Many transphasic attacks impacted Lucky's archemetal exterior. Though the changes weren't too obvious, the patterns and texture of his bronzed and striped exterior bounced off energy attacks and physical attacks with much greater ease!
As the arche lord attempted to utilize his control over archemetal to employ more diverse countermeasures in order to suppress the rampaging cat, he suddenly found to his horror that his archeshell was beginning to encounter interference from the archeship.
"MEEEOOW!"
Crackles of electricity began to escape from the gem cat's transforming metallic body.
This showed that Lucky was beginning to touch upon the power of electronic resonance that formed the basis of archetech!
The consequences were dire for the arche.
Though Lucky had just come into contact with the power of electronic resonance, the inherent properties of his archemetal body along with his amazing assimilation abilities enabled him to harness this new part of himself at a rapid rate!
Though Lucky was not able to exert anywhere close to the precise and far reaching control over the archeship as the arche lord, the gem cat was still able to produce just enough messy electronic resonance to mess with the control of his main pursuer!
The turrets that were supposed to pop out and shoot at the cat no longer emerged as smoothly as before.
Their movements froze at times, and their aiming and firing processes experiences such severe lags that they almost shot at the arche warriors that were having trouble with keeping up with the cat!
Transphasic energy shields that were supposed to drain Lucky's energy reserves and slow him down for just an instant no longer looked as strong and stable as before.
Through the electronic resonance produced by the overheating cat, the barriers suddenly lost over half of their strength, or produced so much instability that they fizzled out before they could even do their jobs!
"MEOW!"
Though Lucky felt a lot of aches due to the extreme changes of his body and the excessive heat generated from his overloaded systems, he also experienced a massive rush of power!
His strength had grown so much and his proficiency in electronic resonance had improved just enough for him to change the dynamic of this fight!
The cat abruptly stopped his flight and began to turn his body around to face the pursuing aliens.
"Kyaaaikaka!"
"Huuhahaa!"
The arche warriors did not think much about Lucky's unusual behavior and readily charged forth with their archeshells set to collide against their target!
Yet even as they struck the domineering cat, their thick and solid archeshells passed through the cat without producing any measurable effects!
Their collisions could no longer threaten a gem cat whose phasing ability had undergone a substantial evolution!
The arche warriors were not slow in their thinking. They began to make use of all of the transphasic energy armaments mounted onto their shell to pressure their target, only to find that they were unable to track and hit the elusive cat.
Lucky had dove into the deck and used his electronic resonance abilities to resist the arche lord's attempts to displace the surrounding archemetal.
The arche lord's eyes widened as the increased interference from his target had reached a point where he could no longer effectively pursue the gem cat anymore.
In fact, it was the opposite now. Lucky had gained just enough power to turn the tables against his alien captors!
"Yhuiaaaa ykaaa!"
Just as the arche lord issued a warning cry, the vengeful cat leapt out of a nearby bulkhead and landed onto the archshell of a warrior!
"MEOW!"
The cat did not think about the fact that he was technically eating an organic product and bit into the archeshell with the intent to cause harm!
The alien victim cried out in pain as one of his most important body parts was being ruined with each passing bite!
The surrounding arche tried to dislodge the evil shell eater through many means, but all they did was cause more harm to the poor arche warrior in question!
Seconds passed by as the afflicted arche warrior grew weaker while Lucky grew stronger.
Compared to artificially produced archemetal, organic archemetal that had grown into a complete and harmonious shell possessed different properties that provided a massive boost to Lucky's control over electronic resonance.
"MEOW!"
The cat jumped onto a second arche warrior and worked to deshell the alien with even greater fervor!
The aliens all began to despair as they lost their proudest and most important physical features of their lives.
The arche lived and died by their archeshells. Losing it was one of the cruelest punishments that they could imagine. There was no greater shame, dishonor and loss of identity than to live as an arche that had lost his shell!
Once all of the warriors dropped, the steaming hot archemetal cat set his blazing green eyes in the direction of the fleeing arche lord.
The leader figure had already concluded that his hopes of containing or defeating the berserk cat were gone.
This was why he had resolutely abandoned his doomed warrior escort and ran towards the chamber that stored the most potent bombs on the archeship.
The arche lord was ready to blow up the entire archeship if that was what it took to put down this abominable shell eater!
