5358 The Darkstar King
The Throne of Lies was not alone.
The dreadnought was accompanied by many escorts. Their sole mission was to prevent any alien unit from threatening the nearly irreplaceable monument of human power.
All kinds of smaller but still fairly powerful cruisers and destroyers saturated the coordinates of the Darkstar King with weapons fire!
The relatively short range should have caused the attacks to hit their targets with at least 90 percent accuracy, but the reality was that only 14 percent managed to strike the spatial barrier of the Darkstar King.
Shortly after the formidable orven phase lord bypassed the human ace mechs, he summoned an array of weaker but more sustained gravity wells.
These gravity wells bent the spacetime in the surrounding area. This caused every incoming attack to follow crooked trajectories.
Combined with the remarkably fast and agile movements of the gigantic humanoid alien leader, it became incredibly difficult for the escort vessels to slow down the enemy's advance!
The officers and crew of the Throne of Lies did not panic, though.
They never really put too much faith in the ace mechs of the Red Association from the beginning.
The fleeters had tangled against alien phase lords multiple times since humanity entered the Red Ocean. They had already taken into account that they would have to defend their strongest warships against alien decapitation attacks.
The hull of the Throne of Lies turned away from the Darkstar King a lot faster than a 15-kilometer long vessel should be able to move.
The powerful ship had retracted her ECM arrays and took on a more streamlined form. This made it look as if the dreadnought was ready to scram rather than continue her attempts to disturb her alien opponents!
Still, no matter how quickly the Throne of Lies could accelerate away, there was no way a ship of her size could outrun a greater phase lord, especially at short range!
The Darkstar King had already been readying his phasewater organs for a stronger attack.
Instead of trying to test the defenses of the human dreadnought, he was ready to take her out all at once by evoking a much more devastating ability!
"We are detecting much stronger spatial fluctuations from the greater phase lord! The readings are three times greater than his previous significant exertion!"
Many people started to grow nervous for the Throne of Lies. Many of them had already learned enough about phase lords that many of them could crush warships by employing their powerful spatial abilities.
However, just before the greater phase lord could engulf the coordinates of the dreadnought with a miniature singularity, the Throne of Lies disappeared from view!
Just a short instant later, the space that was previously occupied by the enormous hull became engulfed by a much larger and stronger singularity!
The alien god visibly strained himself to create this more powerful black hole!
The center looked a lot darker while its effective range was obviously many times greater than before.
No matter which direction the Throne of Lies had quickly boosted towards, it should have been extremely unlikely for the large and relatively sluggish dreadnought to completely escape the effective range of this ultimate attack!
Yet to the astonishment of the Darkstar King and the many observers, the Throne of Lies was nowhere to be seen!
Not a single piece of debris had gotten loose.
Not a single trace of the dreadnought could be seen within the active singularity.
The orven phase lord displayed a very human expression of shock and incredulity as he realized that the Throne of Lies had somehow evaded an attack so powerful that it was sure to damage the RF flagship.
Pure anger overcame the powerful god a moment later! The leader figure let out a silent scream of rage that shook the surrounding space in every direction!
It turned out that the orven god's action was not only an emotional outburst, but also a wide-area attack that also functioned as an active sensor pulse.
Nothing could remain hidden when they became subjected to the powerful spatial ripples.
Thousands of hidden probes and other small devices spread into the surroundings malfunctioned or blew up straight away!
Yet no matter how far the spatial ripples traveled, not a trace of the Throne of Lies could be seen.
Where did she go? How did she manage to evade the Darkstar King's blow?
It was not until the Throne of Lies reappeared several hundred kilometers away from her last known position that the answer became clear!
Her hull gradually shimmered into view as she disengaged her active stealth system.
It turned out that the dreadnought possessed an outrageous ability to hide!
So many people reacted with shock at this because the difficulty of keeping a 15-kilometer monstrosity perfectly hidden had often been regarded as an impossibility!
Normally, stealth vessels tended to be small and light.
It was already a stretch to develop stealth cruisers. Their greater mass, volume and energy activity made it far too challenging and expensive to prevent them from getting detected by many different sensors and scanners.
For whatever reason, the Throne of Lies completely defied this well-established convention and fully showcased her ability to hide from the senses of an alien god!
"There is more to this than an active stealth system!" Ves exclaimed as he became thoroughly impressed by the tech demonstrated by the dreadnought. "The Throne of Lies couldn't have moved out of the area of effect of the greater phase lord's strike by relying on her sub-light propulsion system. The only other explanation is that she is equipped with a silent, instant short-range displacement function."
In other words, the immense dreadnought was able to hop across space!
Perhaps the range might not be that impressive, but jumping hundreds of kilometers away without generating a lot of disturbances was incredibly useful for a stealth vessel!
The Throne of Lies did not appear from stealth just so that she could taunt the Darkstar King.
She began to launch over a hundred transphasic missiles that directly converged upon the angry and frustrated greater phase lord!
Shortly afterwards, the dreadnought fired her white ion beams at the same target!
The beams struck the greater phase lord first despite the fact that the alien had surrounded himself with numerous gravity wells.
It turned out that the targeting systems of the Throne of Lies had already corrected for the distorted trajectories!
The greater phase lord experienced a bit of discomfort, but the white ion beams failed to destabilize the strong and solid spatial barrier.
The transphasic missiles arrived a moment later. Over two-hundred of them got caught in the gravity wells when they unexpectedly moved to block the incoming warheads, but the rest managed to get close enough to detonate close to the large target's position!
The explosions were much different than before!
Instead of producing wide-area EMP effects, the missiles detonated with so much energy that they engulfed an enormous chunk of space!
The Throne of Lies and the surrounding escort ships even became partially affected. They would have sustained a lot more damage if they hadn't moved away!
"Antimatter missiles!"
Though not all of the missiles contained antimatter warheads, enough of them had managed to make it through that they subjected the greater phase lord with an abundance of powerful attacks!
Even the missiles that got caught in the gravity wells exploded with titanic power!
Once the intense heat and radiation had faded to a more reasonable level, the site became clear again.
"Where is the Darkstar King?"
"Damn, he managed to get away at the final moment as well!"
Phase lords possessed a much greater grasp of space. Their ability to displace themselves was much stronger compared to a massive warship.
"This is one of the frustrating things about fighting phase lords. As long as they feel that they are in danger, they can teleport themselves away!"
The Darkstar King likely exerted himself by teleporting away from the danger zone, but the damage could have been a lot worse!
The greater alien phase lord did not express any further frustration. He instead began to focus on the mission and treated the Throne of Lies with full respect.
The alien was able to rely on his superior mobility and powerful attacks to deter the Throne of Lies from committing to a standing battle.
Perhaps the defenses of the formidable dreadnought were strong enough to resist all of the miniature singularities, but the fleeters did not want to take the chance!
This caused the Throne of Lies to adopt a hit-and-run strategy.
The vessel regularly entered into active stealth in order to elude her hunter. The Darkstar King was forced to release constant spatial pulses to track down the elusive vessel.
If her adversary ever came close enough to launch a powerful singularity attack, the dreadnought did not hesitate to teleport several hundred kilometers away, often while remaining in total stealth!
Anytime the Throne of Lies became visible for a short amount of time, she fired as many white ion beams at the greater phase lord as possible.
She did not launch any further missiles, though. Perhaps her inventory was running out, or perhaps she no longer attempted to take out the powerful greater phase lord by herself.
The duel between the dreadnought and the greater phase lord started to turn into a battle of attrition.
Both sides tried to force each other to expend as much resources as possible while conserving their own.
Every white ion beam attack, every singularity attack, every stealth activation and every spatial displacement steadily wore them out in various ways.
The Spark Reactor of a dreadnought may be theoretically inexhaustible, but the parts and systems that made use of all of that endless energy supply were not as durable!
At the same time, the mass and volume of a greater volume was much larger than how the Darkstar King presented himself!
His phasewater concentration was as high as 92 percent, which meant that his body was able to fold so much space that it was practically a pocket space in itself!
After the Darkstar King managed to catch up to the Throne of Lies only for his singularity attack to miss its mark for the umpteenth time, the alien leader finally had enough.
The greater phase lord felt ashamed for his inability to destroy a single human warship. He had never been denied to such an extent ever since he reached his current level of power!
The alien no longer held himself back and began to undo the spatial folds that kept his body the size of a small starship.
"We are detecting an enormous unraveling of folded space! The greater phase lord is bringing out his full body!"
The starships that happened to be a little too close all got crushed or pushed away with great violence as a titanic orven body appeared in space!
In just the span of a few seconds, the Darkstar King grew in size until his length surpassed 350 kilometers!
Even though the size and mass of his body still fell short of that of an ancient phase whale, he had become so large that a single swing of his absurdly long arm was enough to smack aside an entire fleet!
The absurd size of the real body of the Darkstar King caused every orven on the battlefield to become incredibly inspired and worshipful.
It was no wonder why phase whales and phase lords were regarded as gods in the Red Ocean!
Any lesser organism that managed to catch sight of such a stupendously enormous body would all fall prey to their instinctual reactions!
Even the humans who watched the live feeds of the ongoing battles exhibited a similar reaction to this absurd sight!
Now that the Darkstar King had released all of his shackles that kept him in a more presentable form, the alien leader was in no mood to tolerate the existence of the human dreadnought any further.
The greater phase lord stretched out his arm and started to summon a much more powerful singularity than before!
Though the Throne of Lies had already engaged her active stealth system while preparing to teleport several hundred kilometers away, the Darkstar King's attack range had become a lot greater now that he had reached his full form!
The alien monstrosity even managed to track the remarkably small disturbances produced by the Throne of Lies's silent displacement tech!
The gigantic alien arm moved.
An enormous singularity that was at least several times larger and more powerful engulfed the approximate area where the Throne of Lies had appeared under stealth!
As the deep dark hole eventually dissipated, everyone tried to see whether the remarkable RF dreadnought had finally been caught.
Much to the surprise of the Darkstar King, the Throne of Lies remained completely intact and undamaged.
The full-powered singularity did manage to cover the dreadnought's coordinates, but before it could warp or crush the 15-kilometer hull, another party intervened!
A glowing and incredibly powerful bubble surrounded the Throne of Lies. It clearly looked a lot different from the dreadnought's now-iconic azure energy shield.
The bubble originated from a machine that was only a fraction of the size of both the Throne of Lies and the Darkstar King.
Though the new entrant to the battle looked practically microscopic compared to the continent-sized greater phase lord, the sheer amount of willpower exuding from its tiny frame made it impossible to ignore its presence!
The vast majority of people watching the live feeds instantly identified the iconic sight of this famous machine!
"It's... the Geneforger!"
The Geneforger was the only organic god mech in the Red Ocean!
As the greatest pride and joy of the Transhumanist Faction of the Red Association, the Geneforger was the proud god mech of Divine Lucie Miyazaki, otherwise known as the Evolution Witch.
The arrival of this legendary god pilot completely changed the dynamic of this battle!
