5361 The Fear of God
Even gods could feel fear.
Many native aliens had never imaged that their gods could suffer this kind of torment.
The elite orven and puelmer soldiers who had been assigned to the defense of the Tenth Tide Station all became terrified by how easily the Geneforger made a mockery out of their great god!
The Darkstar King did everything possible to resist the Geneforger.
He no longer tried to conserve his energy but expended it as much as possible to prevent himself from getting eaten!
He surrounded himself with 48 gravity wells at once!
The quantity was so enormous that the overlapping spatial warping effects completely disturbed the surrounding space and made it much harder for anything to get past.
Even if a powerful machine was able to push through all of the spatial warping, its trajectory should have deviated extensively enough for the Darkstar King to evade the threat!
Unfortunately for the powerful phase lord, the Evolution Witch showcased the complete futility of this draining measure by cutting straight through multiple gravity wells before severing the phase lord's left arm!
The Darkstar King roared in pain but recovered faster than before.
No matter how vulnerable he remained to physical trauma, he was still a greater phase lord who had gone through an unimaginable struggle to raise his phasewater concentration all the way to 92 percent.
His earlier loss had already caused him to get accustomed to this pain. The loss of another limb was most certainly traumatic, but a phase lord needed to endure greater suffering in order to grow to this point!
Just as the Darkstar King sought to attack the Geneforger before it could devour his other limb, the alien leader grew surprised when he noticed that the god biomech had already digested the biomass!
The Geneforger had grown even larger and taller than before!
The transformed god machine started to look as if it was a child of the Darkstar King!
"MORE. MY EVOLUTION IS NOT COMPLETE."
The hunger and desire radiated by the Evolution Witch's God Kingdom became palpable.
As the target of these overwhelming desires, the Darkstar King utterly felt as if he had been reduced to prey all of a sudden.
How could a dignified native god possibly devolve into such a pathetic victim?!
Even if he had lost two of his limbs all of a sudden, the loss was as crippling as it looked. The might of a greater phase lord was not completely related to the integrity of his limbs!
As the Darkstar King rapidly tried to devise a more effective means of attacking his current foe, the transformed Geneforger did not appear to be in a hurry to commence another attack run.
Instead, the orven-like biomonstrosity began to frown as it tried to experiment with its new body.
"YOUR FLESH IS WEAK, BUT MY WILL IS STRONG."
To the utter amazement of the Darkstar King and every other observer, the transformed Geneforger began to make a completely unexpected move.
The miniature clone of the Darkstar King successfully summoned a small gravity well in front of his floating form!
The gravity well was not that impressive. It was much smaller and weaker than the enormous ones that were powerful enough to tear apart entire cities.
That didn't matter to the aliens.
The Darkstar King already endured a lot of shocks during this battle, but the latest one was much more terrifying than the previous ones!
This was because the human god had actually managed to steal the orven phase lord's own technique!
This was impossible!
It took many years for phase lords to gradually master the art of manipulating the phasewater inside their own bodies.
Even though the Geneforger had only managed to replicate the size and power of a lesser phase lord, the fact that it managed to assimilate the Darkstar King's own strengths in a matter of minutes completely offended the aliens!
This was blasphemy of the highest order!
It was not enough for the invading humans to steal their territory and phasewater technology.
Even though the Evolution Witch had to rely on her overriding willpower to forcefully replicate all of the abilities of the Darkstar King, the fact that she was able to manifest the powerful of a genuine phase lord caused every alien god to feel violated!
No matter what, the humans could not be allowed to master the secrets of their own strength!
The Darkstar King gained renewed purpose! He completely abandoned his attempts to manipulate the battlefield and focused all of his strength on his body!
Spatial barriers along with other effects began to strengthen his true form in many different ways.
Even if his arms had turned into incomplete stumps, his legs were still fully intact!
After challenging so much power into his remaining limbs, the greater phase lord became confident enough that they could resist the physical impact of the Geneforger this time.
The Darkstar King uttered another space-rippling roar before he dove in with his legs first!
Just as his warping form was about to collide against the transformed Geneforger, the god biomech briefly disappeared from view before appearing slightly to the side!
This time the god biomech had managed to grab onto another severed limb!
Even as the Darkstar King started to recognize the utter futility of his latest measures, the Geneforger had already devoured the gigantic alien leg within a few seconds.
The god biomech's size had grown even further!
The bloodied grin of the orven-shaped god machine had become a lot more ominous as the Darkstar King finally started to give in to despair.
No matter whether he utilized his spatial manipulation abilities or his enormous body, none of it had posed any hindrance towards the human god!
"<nullb>MORE."
The Darkstar King looked a lot more pathetic than before as he tried to execute an emergency technique that would allow him to teleport several light-minutes away from his current location.
Yet as the Darkstar King's expended a lot of energy in an attempt to prevent his body from getting eaten any further, he discovered to his horror that the displacement effect did not take place.
"DID YOU THINK YOU COULD ESCAPE? MY WILL CANNOT BE DENIED. IN THIS KINGDOM, ONLY I REIGN SUPREME."
The Evolution Witch's God Kingdom completely enveloped the Darkstar King.
Even if it was unable to penetrate too deeply inside the greater phase lord's body, it was more than powerful enough to take control over the surrounding space and prevent any strange effects from occurring.
The Darkstar King was not strong enough to overcome the suppression of this ubiquitous God Kingdom!
Before the alien could make another move, the grown Geneforger disappeared yet again, only to appear in a different location with the Darkstar King's remaining limb in its alien hands!
The greater phase lord no longer took notice of the pain as he had already become subjected to an even greater suffering at this time!
At this point, the Geneforger had assimilated so much flesh that it looked as if the alien 'child' had gone through numerous years of growth.
Its four eyes gazed hungrily at the armless and legless body of the disgraced native god.
The way in which the Geneforger deliberately amputated the Darkstar King was humiliating to the native aliens!
Their faith crumbled step by step as they witnessed how utterly incapable their god turned out to be. Not a single time did the Geneforger suffer any significant damage.
Now, more and more humans and aliens started to wonder how much further the amazing god biomech could go. How far could it push its own evolution?
More and more aliens started to fear that by the time the Geneforger was done, the real Darkstar King would be replaced by a human mockery of the once-renowned greater phase lord!
If the imitated god was able to summon gravity wells and singularities as strong as the ones displayed by the authentic orven leader, then the faith of many fragile orvens might collapse in its entirety!
"I ENJOYED THE APPETIZERS. IT IS TIME FOR THE MAIN COURSE."
As far as the Evolution Witch was concerned, the biomass of the severed limbs was not all that valuable.
What she truly wanted to assimilate from the hapless greater phase lord was his all-important phasewater organs!
Chief among them was the phasewater production system bestowed by his phase whale masters!
So long as the Geneforger was able to steal this set of key alien organs, it became possible for the god mech to fully replicate the tyrannical bodies and the other amazing abilities of greater phase lords!
The Evolution Witch made no secret of her desire. The Darkstar King felt utterly trapped and incapable of stopping his opponent's next move.
Just as the upsized Geneforger commenced another blindingly fast attack run, the Darkstar King uttered an alien cry of helplessness!
A silent explosion occurred as lots of extraordinary alien blood spilled across space!
Unlike past physical contacts, the Darkstar King did not lose another part of his body at this time!
In fact, the Darkstar King had already disappeared from this location.
It soon became clear that the Darkstar King had been displaced all the way to the inner defensive sphere.
The orven god's life and remaining body was saved!
Even though it wouldn't take all that much effort for the Geneforger to penetrate the half-crumbled middle defensive sphere and catch up to the injured Darkstar King, the god biomech did not do so at this time.
A new opponent stood in the powerful organic mech's way.
"YOU ARE THE ANCIENT PHASE WHALE THAT THE NATIVE CALL THE SINGULARITY LORD."
The completely new presence had appeared in the original place of the Darkstar King while surrounded by an incredibly solid spatial barrier.
Age and majesty suffused the entire form of the phase whale as the Singularity Lord appeared in view of red humanity for the first time.
Compared to every other phase whale that people had seen before, the Singularity Lord clearly existed in an entirely different league!
It was not just his body that looked different. Even when it was still in its compact space-folded form, the Singularity Lord looked much more like an actual deity than the Darkstar King.
As the oversized Geneforger began to confront the ancient phase whale by extending its powerful God Kingdom, the Singularity Lord was able to resist the intrusion a lot better!
The ancient phase whale's apparent strength and mastery over space was powerful enough to prevent his adversity from taking total control of the immediate environment.
What was even more important than that was that the Singularity Lord's control over his whale-like body turned out to be incredibly solid!
There were no weak points or vulnerabilities. Not a single piece of hide of the ancient phase whale surrendered control to the human god pilot.
Although the Evolution Witch's unreasonably strong God Kingdom still managed to wrest a bit more control over the surrounding space, the lack of total dominance meant that she was not able to exert as much strength and suppression as before.
That was fine. The Geneforger possessed many more capabilities that did not require a total takeover of the environment!
A God Kingdom ultimately served an assisting function to a god mech. Their own physical frames, modules and equipment were ultimately their main means of waging combat against formidable opponents!
Once the two apex entities had taken each other's measure, the Singularity Lord finally made another move.
His body started to grow in size as he consciously unfolded the compressed space that kept his form at a reasonable proportion.
The Singularity Lord's physical body gradually stretched on for kilometers, tens of kilometers, hundreds of kilometers until finally stabilizing at a length of over 3700 kilometers!
This was an inconceivable size for any organism, no matter whether they evolved on land or in space.
Blood and other surrounding debris began to move towards the true body of the Singularity Lord without the alien leader making any other deliberate moves.
This was a sign that his immensely large organic form had already grown massive enough to form its own substantial gravity well!
In other words, the Singularity Lord was not only as large as a moon, but also possessed the mass of a comparable stellar object!
After a brief delay, the Singularity Lord released a subtle spatial wave that conveyed a completely alien message.
The people of the Red Two that was responsible for broadcasting the ongoing battle somehow managed to capture and interpret the ancient phase whale's attempt at communication.
Ves and many other people watching the live feeds soon heard a translation of the message conveyed by one of the leaders of the Red Cabal.
While the broadcasted sentence wasn't a literal translation of the Singularity Lord's exact words, they accurately conveyed his overall intent.
"THE TWO OF US SHALL FIGHT. ONLY ONE OF US SHALL LIVE TO DEVOUR THE OTHER."
The orven-like face of the transformed Geneforger responded with a ravenous grin.
"TERMS ACCEPTED. ON MY HONOR, I VOW TO DUEL YOU TO THE DEATH. LET US SHOW THESE MORTAL BEINGS HOW TRUE GODS FIGHT!"
Both sides knew that the outcome of this duel would likely determine the victor of this entire battle!
As long as one side lost the protection of their most powerful champion and protector, it became utterly vulnerable to the wrath of the surviving god!
