5366 The Radiant
AU phase whales that managed to live for at least tens of thousands of years valued their lives a lot.
They rarely engaged in battles and avoided unnecessary confrontations as much as possible.
Even though they had grown their bodies to such a stupendous size that it had become exponentially more difficult to kill them, they still did not want to leave anything to chance.
This was why all long-lived phase whales invested a lot of time, resources and effort into developing strong escape abilities.
In any case, their mastery in spatial manipulation constantly expanded over time. It would be a waste not to put all of that power to good use!
The Singularity Lord excelled at creating black holes, but he was also fairly proficient at generating wormholes.
This was the basis of his strongest and most foolproof escape ability!
As long as he exerted enough phasewater and energy, he could form a wormhole that connected to any location that he had prepared in advance!
The Singularity Lord had lived for so many years that he had created a lot of different dimensional boltholes.
He installed special wormhole anchors in each of those secret locations that he could flee towards if his life ever came under threat!
Yet even as he dialed in his location and triggered his ability, the wormhole that was supposed to form around his body failed to take shape!
The stability of space at his location had abruptly strengthened by many times, thereby preventing the old alien from deforming the surroundings into a wormhole.
The whale realized to his dismay that the humans had made the fabric of space a lot more solid shortly before he activated his emergency ability!
It wasn't just the Geneforger that utilized its oppressive God Kingdom to increase the stability of the surrounding space.
When the First Armada backed away from the duel between the gods, its starships had deployed all kinds of strange pylons in a circle around the battlefield.
These pylons happened to be newly developed space suppressors that utilized hyper technology to suppress spatial activity at a much greater effectiveness than before!
The pylons were deployed much further away from the more central regions of the battlefield.
When combined with the starships that were equipped with their own space suppression modules, the overall effect was that the battlefield had turned into a spatial cage that made it harder for anyone to escape through different measures!
The space suppressing effect was at its strongest in the periphery.
Theoretically, the human pylons and starships were too distant to exert a strong suppression effect on the Singularity Lord.
There were several additional factors that caused his escape attempt to fail.
The first ones were the dreadnoughts!
The Throne of Lies and the Guns of Armaggeddon were stronger, tougher and more difficult to deal with than any other human starship. Their space suppressors were also much stronger as their Spark Reactors were able to feed them with much more E energy.
When these dreadnoughts had maneuvered themselves on opposite ends around the Singularity Lord's current position, their combined suppression effect could not be underestimated!
Even then, the efforts of the dreadnought paled in comparison to that of the Evolution Witch!
Not only did she command all of the compromised body cells to work against the spatial ability, her Geneforger also came equipped with a space suppressor module that became ridiculously strong when it was amplified by her willpower!
In order to ruin the Singularity Lord's chances of escaping as much as possible, the god biomech had deliberately attempted to close the distance so that its space suppression effect affected the cowardly whale as much as possible!
At this time, the infected Singularity Lord understood that the humans had beaten him at his strongest game!
Ancient phase whales prided themselves on their unsurpassed mastery and control over space.
Not even the other alien races who desperately tried to imitate the authentic descendants of the Elder Gods could rival the darlings of space.
Yet in this pivotal moment, the humans not only dared to challenge his domain, but also succeeded in their attempt!
"DECEIVER!"
The hateful humans kept the space suppressors hidden up to this point, preventing the Singularity Lord from adapting to their existence.
Now, all of the space suppressors acting on the surrounding space hampered his ability to manipulate space.
When the Singularity Lord tested out his power by generating a singularity close to the Geneforger, the god mech did not even slow down in the slightest.
The singularity had weakened by a considerable extent!
Though it was still stronger than the ones generated by the Darkstar King, they had fallen well below the level where they had any chance of harming or controlling the Geneforger!
The long-lived alien understood extremely well that it was not a good idea to fight in a hostile environment.
The whale needed to get away or at least fall back to the inner defensive sphere. There, he could rely on backup to prevent too many space suppressors from dominating the entire battlefield.
Yet as the Singularity Lord turned around and tried to retreat from this dangerous position, his acceleration and traversal speed had become a lot slower than before!
His enormous moon-sized bulk no longer swam as fluidly through space like before. It was as if everything around him had turned into a pool of mud.
The space suppressors weakened the warping effect that the Singularity Lord relied upon to quickly move across stellar and interstellar distances!
This not only prevented the ancient phase whale from escaping the battlefield in another way, but also prevented him from repositioning himself across shorter distances!
The infected alien leader was trapped!
"YOU DARE GO AGAINST YOUR WORD? THIS DUEL WILL NOT END UNTIL ONE OF DIES! YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO ESCAPE!"
Though his situation had grown a lot direr than before, the Singularity Lord did not lose hope.
He reared his enormous body and lifted up his body in a specific manner.
This was a signal for help!
Another spatial pulse originated from the inner defensive sphere.
Soon enough, the true body of another ancient phase whale appeared!
Though his body measured at only 3200 kilometers, it already generated so much gravity that the surrounding alien warships and defensive installations already started to go off-course.
The Space Tearer did not linger around and immediately moved in to rescue his fellow ancient!
Perhaps one ancient phase whale might not be able to overcome the suppression field, but two of them could easily combine their forces together to regain control over space!
The Space Tearer initially moved quickly as the space suppression effect was weaker at his side.
He put extra power into the warp field surrounding his body to ensure that he reached the side of his afflicted comrade faster.
Yet before the second ancient phase whale could make any further progress, a powerful flash of light pierced through his spatial barrier and struck his gigantic head!
"NOT SO FAST."
In response to the Space Tearer's appearance, the humans sent out the other god mech assigned to the First Armada!
As soon as the new machine became visible, all of the citizens of the Terran Alliance became ecstatic!
"It's the Light of Sol!"
"Our hero has arrived!"
Compared to the Geneforger, the new god mech resembled a classical mech a lot more closely.
Clad in incredibly tough but lightweight armor, the slimmer and smaller grand work known as the Radiant was undoubtedly a light mech in concept and in design!
The Radiant was a legendary creation in its own right. An earlier iteration of the machine was responsible for helping Thibault Clement complete his legendary deed of traveling as fast as the speed of light in realspace!
The two managed to accomplish this feat without relying on warp drives or any other tech that would invalidate this result!
Only pure Terran high technology combined with a powerful pilot's relentless pursuit of an impossible dream had enabled them to succeed in leaving their names in the history books!
Nowadays, the Radiant arguably became the fastest mech in existence.
There were other god mechs that fiercely contended for this record, but no one accused the Radiant for being slow!
The presence of the Radiant was entirely different from that of the Geneforger.
The metallic god mech may be smaller, but its presence was considerably stronger. Its surface glowed with light that happened to match the rays of Sol, the star that first brought light to the human race.
What made this small machine even more formidable was its God Kingdom.
It was stronger and manifested over a greater range than the God Kingdom of the Evolution Witch!
Even though they were both god pilots, the Light of Sol was considerably older than the female leader of the Transhumanist Faction.
The Terran god pilot accumulated his strength as a god pilot over a considerably longer time.
Whether he was capable of defeating the Evolution Witch in a duel was uncertain, but the comparably tiny god mech did not display any inferiority towards the gigantic body of the Space Tearer!
The healthy ancient phase whale did not want to get entangled by this annoying human mech.
The powerful alien exerted his power to a strong extent and generated a grid of spatial tears around the Radiant!
Even if his control over space had been suppressed, the Space Tearer simply expended a lot more power in response, allowing him to pull off his abilities at close range!
Unfortunately, by the time the Space Tearer had generated these spatial tears at high cost, the Radiant had already left the danger zone!
"TOO SLOW. YOU SHALL NEVER CATCH ME WITH THIS SPEED."
Another flash of light drilled straight through the Space Tearer's apparently useless spatial barrier and struck his flank!
This time, the Radiant built up so much momentum that his light mech turned into a relativistic projectile!
The impact force was so strong this time that the Space Tearer uttered a silent roar in pain as a crater formed on the surface of his massive body!
Lots of phasewater-saturated blood spilled out into space as the strong flesh rapidly tried to stem the blood.
The whale wanted to crush or smack aside the Radiant, but rescuing the Singularity Lord was more important.
The Space Tearer endured the pain as best he could and continued to move forward under a reduced warp effect.
Unfortunately, the smaller ancient phase whale was not as old or strong as the Singularity Lord.
Combined with the fact that the Light of Sol's God Kingdom was stronger than that of the Evolution Witch, the space suppression effect had actually become the strongest around his body.
The Space Tearer suddenly realized that he had become the slowest of the four gods that were present on the battlefield!
The dichotomy became obvious to everyone. As the Space Tearer moved with the grace of a gigantic malfunctioning torpedo, the Radiant zipped around and charged straight into the Space Tearer's body as if it was a suicidal lancer mech!
The incredible resilience of the god mech gave the Light of Sol more than enough confidence that his machine could endure the powerful collisions.
"MY SPEED IS UNMATCHED."
The huge fleshy body of the Space Tearer even acted like a buffer that cushioned the impact force to an extent!
The Space Tearer became more panicked and tried to get rid of the Radiant in various ways.
None of his characteristic spatial tears ever came close to hitting the blazingly fast god mech, and none of his wide-area spatial abilities were strong enough to hinder the machine in any significant way.
The Space Tearer couldn't even bend the space around him to divert the charge of the Radiant.
The space suppression field generated by the Terran god mech was too strong!
Not only that, but the Radiant moved so fast that it was impossible for the Space Tearer to anticipate the direction of its next attack!
This forced the Space Tearer to expend vast amounts of effort into defending himself against an attack that could come from any angle.
The result of all of this effort was that the ancient phase whale not only burned through his massive reserves at a highly accelerated rate, but his defenses were also being stretched too thin!
Another powerful ray of light struck the Space Tearer's rear!
The god mech had punched deep into the flesh near his tail, making it seem as if it could be severed as long as the Light of Sol continued to attack this section!
The more the Radiant struck the Space Tearer, the faster it commenced its next attack!
"MY LIGHT SHALL ILLUMINATE THE RED OCEAN."
