The Mech Touch

Compared to the God Kingdom of an actual god pilot, the control of space of a greater phase lord seemed like a joke.

In any other situation, the Darkstar King possessed the power to dominate an entire battle.

If for whatever reason a group of inferior mortal life forms did not surrender to his obvious divinity, then the Darkstar King could punish them by generating many different gravity wells at their locations.

So long as the offenders fell within the range of his control, the renowned and respected orven leader could impose his absolute authority over them, no matter whether they were orvens, nunsers or even the bad-tempered puelmers.

His active management of the Tenth Tide Station was one of several reasons why the puelmers reluctantly worked together with the orvens without coming to blows!

It had been a long time since the Darkstar King suffered a setback. Ever since he submitted himself to the Red Cabal and earned the trust of the Singularity Lord, he became one of the top leaders of the native alien community.

Though his decision caused him to become an outcast among the more traditional and nationalist orven upper caste members, the Darkstar King firmly believed that following the true descendents of the Elder Gods was the best possible decision that he could make!

He learned so much from the most ancient and wisest phase whales. The more he proved himself, the more he became rewarded for his service.

The invasion of the abominable humans from another galaxy actually served him pretty well!

Not only did the Red Cabal step out of the darkness and entered the light, but it had also gained a firm leadership position over a diverse alien community that had never shown such unity in the past!

The Darkstar King thought that his ascension was all but assured due to all of these favorable developments.

The humans may have brought superior and other nasty surprises with them, but now that the Red Cabal had completed the Great Refuge Plan, these extra-galactic invaders should have lost their capital to fight against the true rulers of the Red Ocean Dwarf Galaxy.

He had entered the battlefield with so much confidence that the sudden loss of control over his own body completely came as a shock!

There had never been a time when a foreign god deprived him of his sovereignty over his own body in this matter!

The Darkstar King had heard many claims related to the incidents where the native aliens clashed against the god mechs of humanity.

The stories always sounded so dramatic and completely different from what the native aliens were accustomed to that it was difficult to assume that they were all true.

As far the Darkstar King was concerned, many of these exaggerated claims were merely used to excuse the failures of incompetent leaders.

It was only now that the orven greater phase lord realized that these human god mechs were truly capable of performing so many powerful feats!

It should have been impossible for other creatures or gods to tamper with his divine flesh!

The more his body evolved into that of an actual god, the less it became affected by ordinary ailments.

His flesh grew so strong that disease, aging and ordinary attacks no longer became threats anymore!

It was well-known among the phase leaders of the Red Ocean that as long as they grew strong enough, their bodies gradually evolved into their most sacred temples, able to resist any outside influence no matter what kind of weirdness they encountered.

God mechs seemed to break this rule, at least to an extent.

Even though the Darkstar King tried to exert his strength to reinforce his body and infuse it with the power of space, none of his measures prevented the overwhelmingly hostile God Kingdom from desecrating the outskirts of his sacred temple!

Perhaps the only consolidation was that the human god known was the Evolution Witch failed to push her corrupting influence any further.

This was because the phasewater concentration in his 350-kilometer long body wasn't actually uniform.

His most vital and essential phasewater organs possessed a much higher concentration than average.

His outer body tissue was the opposite in that regard. There was not much point in infusing so much phasewater in his fur and the outer layers of his hide.

It was precisely due to the lower concentration of phasewater in the exterior parts of his body that he was unable to defend them against foreign contamination!

The Darkstar King had to make a move. Even if the hostile God Kingdom was unable to violate his inner body, it was blasphemy to ruin his appearance in front of his own subjects!

The greater phase lord uttered a silent scream that shook the surrounding space!

Though the overpowering God Kingdom suppressed much of its effects, it at least prevented the Evolution Witch from tampering with his own body cells for the time being.

The Darkstar King uttered a silent roar of rage that destabilized the space in front of him just enough for him to envelop the position occupied by the Geneforger with multiple strong gravity wells!

Each of these gravity wells surrounded the god mech in every direction and attempted to tear the biomachine apart!

Even if the Geneforger tried to evade this area attack by moving away, it would just get caught in the closest gravity well, causing it to become trapped.

That did not happen this time!

No matter how many gravitational forces acted upon the Geneforger, the powerful machine remained completely unaffected.

This caused the Darkstar King to become so enraged that he began to summon a much greater fraction of his power and engulf the entire area occupied by the god biomech with the strongest possible singularities that he could summon in his true form!

The darkstars hardly appeared for a single moment before they broke against the unshakeable form of the Geneforger!

If the Evolution Witch did not want her god biomech to come to harm, then that was what happened. Her supreme willpower alone was already strong enough to guarantee this outcome!

As the Darkstar King thoroughly demonstrated how outclassed he was against an actual god mech to the masses, the human god no longer felt the need to act as a stationary target.

The powerful sensors of the Geneforger had already swept across the entire battlefield. The god pilot felt relieved that all of the surviving mechs and warships of the First Armada had already moved away from her Geneforger.

Even the powerful and elusive Throne of Lies had evacuated from this site as quickly as possible with no regard to doing anything else!

Humanity had learned many lessons about fighting alongside their own modern deities.

"When the gods fight, the mortals suffer."

This age-old adage rang true to this day.

Regardless of the debates and arguments about whether god pilots functionally or conceptually met the definition of a god, these entities had grown so immensely powerful that anyone else could easily get killed by the wake of a powerful move!

Seeing that the elements of the Red Association and the Red Fleet had been sensible enough to give the Geneforger enough space, the Evolution Witch no longer constrained herself any longer!

"IT IS MY TURN NOW."

Everyone human observer could hear her voice as if she was shouting on a nearby stage.

It did not matter that her Geneforger hadn't even opened any communication channels with anyone. Her transcendent powers alone were more than capable of conveying her words through the active recording systems.

In fact, not just the humans, but also the aliens on the battlefield heard her words as well!

They might not be able to understand human language, but the words of an ascended being carried so much power that they somehow understood their meaning anyway!

The Geneforger moved.

Now that it had taken action, it did not deal with the greater phase lord with a light touch anymore.

It instantly spawned a pair of odd, alien-looking wings of flesh that glowed with resonance!

Those who were familiar with the Seven Apex Races instantly recognized them as the most powerful form of wings that the members of the Alshyr race could spawn!

Each flap of these alien wings caused the Geneforger to hop through space in mysterious fashion.

This not only enabled the Geneforger to close in on the Darkstar King faster, but also made it difficult for the alien leader figure to aim his subsequent attacks!

In fact, it didn't matter whether he managed to hit the Geneforger with a spatial attack. None of the alien's measures managed to overcome the powerful suppression of the Evolution Witch's God Kingdom!

As soon as the Geneforger came close enough to alarm the senior orven leader, the Darkstar King no longer resorted to any flashy spatial abilities and simply swung at the comparably tiny god mech with his humongous right arm!

Even though the physical attack looked incredibly primitive and stupid, its power was not to be underestimated.

The strongest aspects of a phase lord had always been their bodies!

Space rippled and tore with the passing of this immense limb.

The kinetic force behind this attack was cataclysmic enough to change the landscape and the climate of a life-bearing planet!

Any ordinary machine that was the size of mech had no way of surviving such a powerful blow.

This was especially the case when the Darkstar King reinforced his arm with additional spatial and gravitational forces!

As the Darkstar King completed his immensely momentous swing, the glowing form of the Geneforger disappeared from view.

This confused and alarmed the greater phase lord because he did not feel any sort of feedback that his titanic limb had crushed any metal objects.

It was the God Kingdom that gave the Geneforger's position away. The gigantic phase lord widened his four alien eyes in shock and terror as his elbow unexpectedly exploded, causing enormous quantities of phasewater-infused blood to eject into space!

The Darkstar King uttered a soundless roar of pure pain as he instinctively recoiled away from his right forearm.

The Geneforger emerged from the bloody end of the gigantic limb.

Compared to before, the Geneforger looked entirely different this time!

The Evolution Witch had changed its organic configuration from a humanoid mech into a strange alien insect form.

This odd insect form lacked the flexibility of a humanoid mech, but gained incredibly powerful devouring and digestion capabilities!

While the Darkstar King suffered awful physical torment for the first time in a long time, the Geneforger did not let this opportunity go to waste and rapidly devoured the surrounding biomass!

If the arm still remained attached to the greater phase lord, then it would have been harder for the transformed god machine to eat so much flesh.

However, now that all of its phasewater-infused flesh became orphaned, it was unable to resist the rapacious hunger of a biomech that hungered for biomass!

This sight seemed absurd at first. How could a tiny ant possibly devour a much larger arm before its owner came back to reclaim his missing limb?

The rules didn't apply to god mech.

Each time the insectile form of the Geneforger took a bite, a hundred times more flesh disappeared from the severed arm!

That was already impressive enough, but what caused people to become even more amazed was that the Geneforger biting frequency was simply too fast. It was as if everyone was watching a nature documentary where they observed an insect devouring a much larger organism in fast forward!

Yet this was still not enough to allow the Geneforger to devour the entire arm.

What truly caused every human and alien to lose their minds was the fact that the Geneforger rapidly assimilated and expanded its own biological form as it devoured the alien flesh!

It only took a second for its length to double.

It took a few more seconds for the Geneforger to become ten times larger than before.

By the time the enormous but relatively slow Darkstar King fully recovered from the trauma of losing his limb, he became utterly horrified to see that the Geneforger had taken a completely different form.

His arm was gone!

In its place was a transformed bioabomination that looked like a scaled-down version of the Darkstar King himself!

It was like looking at a distorted mirror of his own body!

A very human-like grin appeared on the false phase lord.

Though the imitated form of the greater phase lord lacked the phasewater organs that enabled it to throw around gravity wells like they were marbles, the vastly inflated form of the Geneforger still retained all of the strengths of a god mech!

"NOT ENOUGH. I WANT MORE. SURRENDER YOUR FLESH TO ME. YOUR BIOMASS SHALL CONTRIBUTE TO MY EVOLUTION."

This time, the Darkstar King's silent scream was marked by terror instead of rage!