5364 Thick Skin
As the moon-sized phase whale slammed his massive dreadnought-sized teeth onto the comparably miniscule god mech, both sides watched with baited breath whether the attack had been effective!
The orven and puelmer defenders that had retreated all the way to the inner defensive sphere all possessed a huge amount of faith in their god.
In the mythology of the native aliens, the once supreme Elder Gods were the most powerful deities to have ever existed.
Though the Elder Gods had supposedly ascended from this plane of existence a long time ago, the phase whales were regarded as their chosen descendants.
The phase whales themselves fully embraced this belief. They challenged every other race that questioned whether the Elder Gods had designated them as the caretakers of the Red Ocean.
One of the driving reasons why phase whales as old as the Singularity Lord still retained his drive to live and pursue greater strength was because they all sought to reunite with their predecessors!
It was their lifelong dream to grow and evolve their titanic bodies until they had exceeded the size of the star!
The phase whales speculated that as long as they grew large and powerful enough, they would eventually exceed a threshold that enabled them to breach through a dimensional barrier and barge their way into a higher reality!
The aliens hoped to catch up with their predecessors and prove themselves worthy in this fashion.
With this eons-old goal in mind, the phase whales could not allow others to hinder their sacred mission!
The Singularity Lord therefore held nothing back when he bit down on the god mech!
As for the humans, the people who inadvertently got stranded in the Red Ocean had simpler drives.
They just wanted to survive. How could they possibly think about greater aspirations when there was a high likelihood that they could go extinct in a few decades?
While there were still high-minded dreamers among them, the vast majority of humans watching the broadcast all prayed for the Geneforger to remain intact enough to win the duel!
"Is the Geneforger still in one piece?" Andraste squeezed Lucky into her arms.
"I don't know, pumpkin. A god mech is really strong, but it is not the best idea to fight against a phase whale where he is at his strongest."
"There is no way the Evolution Witch has died from getting bitten by a whale!"
As every human waited for the truth to become clear, the enormous whale finally opened up his mouth again.
The recording system quickly zoomed in on the Geneforger.
"What?!"
"The god mech... has been cut in half!"
Many humans expressed their anguish and dismay at seeing the Geneforger broken!
It turned out that when the Singularity Lord bit down with full force, his incredibly strong mouth muscles managed to exceed the limitations of the Geneforger's God Kingdom and bit down on the mech frame with an immense amount of force!
As tough and resilient the Geneforger's transphasic exoskeleton may be, the biting force of a moon-sized phase whale vastly exceeded its tolerance!
The black organic plating cracked in half and allowed the teeth to cut right through the god mech's abdomen!
At this time, blood and viscera spilled from the two ends of the severed god machine.
The upper and lower halves of the Geneforger had become completely inert and unmoving.
Even its God Kingdom had disappeared, which did not bode well for the Evolution Witch's survival!
A clear sense of triumph radiated from the Singularity Lord. Sure enough. His inviolable body turned out to be strong enough to overcome the God Kingdom of his tiny and annoying opponent.
The teeth that he had strengthened in the event that he ever needed to fight against his fellow ancient phase whales turned out to be surprisingly useful in this case!
As his victory finally became clear, the triumphant phase whale acted on instinct and moved to swallow the broken god mech in an attempt to digest and learn from its strength.
The Evolution Witch was not the only one who craved for flesh.
Though an ancient phase whale was far too dignified to let his baser instincts dictate his behavior, the alien had grown jealous of some of the capabilities displayed by the powerful biomachine.
If he could learn how the Geneforger managed to become so strong despite retaining such a small size, then the Singularity Lord might be able to unlock the next step of his evolution!
Just as the Singularity Lord was about to ingest the severed pieces in a single massive swallow, the alien suddenly grew suspicious!
The ancient phase whale hastily aborted its current action and flicked out his thick and massive tongue in an attempt to launch the severed god mech away!
Just before the tip of the tongue managed to eject the two biomechanical pieces away, they suddenly came to life again!
The Evolution Witch's God Kingdom unfolded inside the ancient phase whale's mouth, causing the alien to feel as if he had suddenly lost control over his own mouth cavity!
As powerful as the tongue may seem, the reality was that it was a flexible limb that was not meant to be as strong as the phase whale's jaw muscles.
When it pushed against the reformed God Kingdom, the tongue slowed down just enough to allow the Geneforger's two pieces to hook each other with flesh tendrils and pull itself back into a single cohesive whole!
"JUST KIDDING."
A huge amount of cheers erupted in many households and workplaces!
All of the humans that watched the broadcast felt incredibly relieved when they saw that the god biomech was still alive and well.
"She's alive!" Andraste jubilantly cheered and threw Lucky in the air!
"Meow!"
Ves let out a breath in relief. "Getting cut in half from the waist is a dead sentence for most mechs, but that is not necessarily the case for biomechs as long as they are strong enough."
As the Geneforger had put itself back together, it did not keep its current form.
Instead, it began to curl in on itself while its hard exoskeleton plating began to merge and shape until it started to resemble a hedgehog!
Deadly spikes surrounded the solid ball-shaped mech from all sides. Once they had grown long and deadly enough, the god mech abruptly propelled itself into the mouth cavity of the gigantic phase whale!
Even the Singularity Lord understood how bad it would be if he let an intact god mech inside his stomach.
Fortunately, a solid wall of flesh blocked the passage to his inner body, preventing the Geneforger from slipping inside!
The spiked god mech simply collided against the fleshy wall with so much force that its spikes punctured through their surface.
The god mech then bounced away at an angle towards another section of the ancient phase whale's mouth!
An absurd spectacle took place.
The spiked god mech continually collided and bounced against the inner walls of the ancient phase whale's massive mouth.
The powerful machine did not lose any speed, but instead continued to bounce faster with every deflection!
Like a pinball gone mad, the Geneforger traversed hundreds of kilometers of distance at speeds that would have torn the body of the pilot apart from all of the excess forces that exceeded the limitations of any inertial dampener.
Fortunately, the Geneforger was a god mech that broke the rules merely by existing!
With each and every collision, the spikes drove deeper and deeper into the thick ancient phase whale's flesh.
Almost pure phasewater flowed from the tiny wounds of the serial collisions.
Hundreds if not thousands of kilograms of this precious substance spilled out of the Singularity Lord's body, but compared to the total amount of phasewater circulating inside his body, the losses were trivial.
Size made a huge difference. No matter how many times the Geneforger collided against the relatively softer flesh of his opponent's enormous mouth cavity, the wounds did not even cause any discomfort!
That said, the Singularity Lord was not about to let this farce persist!
"LEAVE!"
The alien's tongue finally shot out with just enough force to bounce the Geneforger straight out of the ancient phase whale's mouth!
This time, the god biomech did not resist the physical push.
Before the god mech got too far away, it reformed its shape until it began to resemble a wasp!
"YOU CANNOT GET RID OF ME SO EASILY."
The Geneforger's transphasic wings flapped at such a high frequency that it somehow gave the god mech a huge boost in mobility!
The wasp-shaped biomachine nimbly flitted around the phase whale's mouth and dove in with impressive speed!
The ancient phase whale had not yet gotten rid of its remaining tentacles, so the Singularity Lord attempted to block or push away the rapidly approaching god mech.
The tentacles missed!
The Geneforger had become so fast and nimble in its latest form that it deftly evaded all of the tentacles and avoided many of the areas that had become impassable.
In the few cases where the Geneforger had no other way of going forward, its lengthy stinger glowed just before it pierced through the tentacles in the way with great effort!
It was not until its stinger reached the main hide of the Singularity Lord that the Geneforger finally came to a stop!
It took an innumerable amount of years for the Singularity Lord to grow and reinforce his hide to its current state. The latest adaptations of the Geneforger failed to overcome this incredibly thick organic barrier.
That did not seem to bother the Evolution Witch too much. Her god mech flew away and began to approach the ancient phase lord from a different angle before diving in for another stinging attack run!
Again and again the Geneforger persisted in its attempts to drill through the alien's hide.
Though each and every blow should have been powerful enough to pierce through the defenses of a dreadnought, the Singularity Lord suffered negligible damage due to how little his body actually got damaged!
The alien's only shortcoming was that his huge and clumsy attacks were either too slow or too weak to materially affect the Geneforger.
It looked as if the two combatants had entered a stalemate.
Their defenses were just so absurdly strong that they couldn't really harm each other.
The Singularity Lord's massive body was a gigantic damage sponge in itself.
The god biomech was either fast enough to evade a lot of attacks, or resilient enough to shrug off the ones that somehow managed to hit.
"ENOUGH!" The Singularity Lord conveyed in his alien language!
The alien emphasized his frustration by exerting his spatial power to teleport a short distance away from the Geneforger!
This quick retreat interrupted the Evolution Witch's rhythm.
Though her god mech could easily fly forward and resume its stinging attacks, it gave its alien opponent a small respite.
"DO YOU DARE BREAK THE TERMS OF THIS DUEL?"
"THIS COMBAT IS FUTILE. LET US POSTONE THIS FIGHT."
"I REFUSE." The god pilot responded. "I HAVE MADE A VOW. I WILL SEE IT TO THE END. BESIDES, IF YOU THINK MY ATTACKS ARE FUTILE, THEN YOU ARE SORELY MISTAKEN. LET ME SHOW YOU MY TRUE POWER! ARISE, MY SPORES!"
Before the Singularity Lord could fully process those human words, his titanic body jerked in place as many different parts of his body started to spike in pain!
Various different points across his hide started to discolor and weaken. Strange organic growths that looked like sickly green veins started to grow and expand at a slow but steady rate!
While the majority of these hostile and tumorous growths remained on the surface of the ancient phase whale's body, a few of them had managed to spread deeper into the Singularity Lord's enormous body!
Some of them had even started to grow out of his crucial phasewater organs!
As the Singularity Lord opened his maw in rising pain and distress, it turned out that his mouth cavity was filled with the same ominous green veins!
The truth had become clear.
The Geneforger did not change into a hedgehog or a wasp for no reason.
It had merely adopted this form because it gave the amazing biomachine a good way to pierce through the surface layer of the ancient phase whale and secretly deposit tiny and unnoticeable spores into the bloodstream of the Singularity Lord.
Even though a highly evolved ancient phase whale should have long become immune to infections and diseases, the spores produced by the Geneforger were different!
Not only were these biological parasites made out of the small pieces of tissue samples that the Geneforger had secretly scraped off the Singularity Lord, but they also retained much of the phasewater characteristics that made them so strong and resistant!
"WHAT... HAVE YOU DONE, HUMAN?"
The Geneforger's God Kingdom pressed deeper into the Singularity Lord and had begun to invade his body for the first time!
The god biomech retained full control over the spores that it had injected into its opponent. Since the Evolution Witch managed to empower each of these parasitic organisms with a portion of her supreme willpower, they had become far more difficult to remove than normal.
As the Singularity Lord tried to remove the hostile growths that were spreading across his enormous body even now, his momentum weakened as it became clear that he was fighting a losing battle.
The Geneforger remained as tiny as ever, but its presence exceeded that of its opponent by an enormous margin!
The Evolution Witch exulted in her latest masterpiece.
"YOUR FLESH HAS BECOME YOUR OWN UNDOING."
