Chapter 7474  Growth and Sacrifice

Although Casella Ingvar wanted to give the Apocalypse Wardens as much space as they needed to overcome this challenge, she could not indulge in their ego without limit.

Gloriana's demands were not entirely unreasonable. The so-called archeshell mech possessed inestimable research value to red humanity. Capturing it and preserving as much of its unique structure as possible remained a high priority.

This was why the Saint Commander set a time limit. The longer this went on, the greater the chance that something could go wrong.

The announcement did not cause the Apocalypse Wardens to change their approach.

They already instinctively figured out that time was against their side. Too much could go wrong if the fight dragged out. This was especially the case when confronting a completely new and unfamiliar opponent that possessed an abundance of technological depth.

The archeshell mech continued to become more proficient with its own strength abilities with every passing minute.

Its two-limbed and four-limbed gait visibly improved. Not only was the archeshell captain able to accelerate faster, but he also became increasingly more agile and limber with his maneuvers.

He frequently caught the Apocalypse Wardens off-guard by making strange movements that people never expected to see from a turtle-like alien construct. The archeshell mech rolled his body around and even leapt a few times!

Each of these maneuvers severely tested the elite human soldiers. The ongoing duel matched the worst virtual training scenarios, the ones where defeat became an expected outcome.

All of the remaining active Apocalypse Wardens knew that if they wanted to come out on top, they had to grow as well!

They continued to analyze their adversary and developed numerous responses against known problems.

Though the archeshell mech made increasingly more bizarre movements with the help of its powerful limbs and its growing mastery of spatial manipulation, the alien mind in control of the construct did not exhibit complex thinking.

He was clearly not a professional groundpounder by profession.

The arche captain likely hailed from his own race's version of the highborn caste.

These privileged arche might not have enjoyed as much luxuries as human scions, but they benefited from a diet of quality exotics that elevated the strength and beauty of their archeshells far above the mundane citizens of their race.

Such arche were destined to become senior officers and scientists. They never had to do any dirty work in their lives. The uglier arche with worse archeshells naturally assumed such duties.

Though red humanity did not know whether highborn arche engaged in duels on a regular basis, the former archeship captain clearly did not possess a lot of actual combat experience.

He may have been intelligent enough to learn the new capabilities of his partially divine body relatively quickly, but judgment stayed on the level of an amateur!

"This alien guy telegraphs most of his big attacks."

"He doesn't know the importance of performing feints."

"His actions are constrained by his momentum. His turning radius is fast, but not fast enough."

"His mentality is impaired. He is either in pain, exhausted or engaged in excessive multitasking. He responds poorly to unexpected situations."

The Apocalypse Wardens fought more vigorously as knowledge was power. The more they learned what their enemy was capable of, the greater their chance to stay one step ahead!

The elite cultivator soldiers demonstrated this brilliantly by baiting the archeshell mech into another charge attack.

Though the alien leader tried to be clever and roll to the side in order to rush down a soldier that was previously positioned out of the way, the soldier in question had already anticipated the possibility and activated his boosters at full power in advance!

This not only caused the archeshell mech to waste its chance, but also collide against the side of the hall!

The powerful impact created a significant dent in the thickened and reinforced bulkhead.

Before the alien construct could recover from the collision and turn around, the closest team of Apocalypse Wardens dove in and repeatedly struck their superdimensional hammers against the rear of the enemy's archeshell!

Each and every powerful impact shattered the crystalline components and completely destabilized the phasewater that reinforced the organic composite materials.

Cracks continued to spread across the knobbed surface as individual archeshells crumbled into pieces.

In certain cases, the underlying layers of archemetal became exposed, along with the alien blood that connected them all together!

The archeshell mech roared in pain, signifying that it was more of a new body rather than a mech for the archecruiser captain!

"#&$@&$!"

The alien responded in a furious fashion by jumping and landing backwards, hoping to crush the annoying human soldiers between his damaged archeshell and the deck of the large chamber!

Of course, the Apocalypse Wardens anticipated this move and jumped away just as the alien bent its limbs.

The entire compartment seemed to shake as the powerful alien landed hard with its belly up!

This offered the humans a priceless opportunity to attack the softest side of the alien!

Half-a-dozen Apocalypse Wardens dove in and struck with their superdimensional hammers.

This time, the thinner layers of individual archeshells offered considerably less resistance. More blood spilled from the wounds while lots of crystal fragments flew into the air!

Suddenly, the space around the damaged archeshell mech seemed to freeze.

Though it did not significantly affect the movements of the nearby human soldiers, they grew so alarmed that they preemptively jumped away.

They barely managed to get clear before an enormous clap of light and sound erupted from the large construct's position!

"It blinked!"

The giant archeshell mech appeared in the same upside-down position right above the most distant Apocalypse Warden!

Though the soldier responded quickly enough by trying to boost away, the completely unexpected nature of this new ability meant that he failed to reach safety in time!

CRUNCH!

Superdimensional armor or not, getting dropped by a large and remarkably dense archeshell mech exceeded the defensive properties of the relatively thin armor layers!

The Apocalypse Wardens suffered another loss.

 Not that they became discouraged by this event.

"Avenge the fallen!"

"Death before ruination!"

As the clock continued to tick down, the Apocalypse Wardens doubled down on their offensive and took greater risks!

They attacked the archeshell mech relentlessly even as it tried to swat the superdimensional flies with its large but clumsy frame.

It utilized its short-ranged teleportation capability several times, and managed to clip a couple more human soldiers.

Even if the surprise attacks did not manage to kill them, they most certainly had been taken out of the fight!

This increased the pressure on the remaining combat-capable cultivator soldiers. If not for the fact that they had attacked their opponent frequently enough to cause its proud archeshell to become riddled with cracks and holes, they would have given up hope for victory by this time.

As it was, both sides knew that they were competing to inflict as much attritional damage as possible.

The surviving Apocalypse Wardens simultaneously gritted their teeth. The deadline loomed increasingly more over their heads. They could no longer guarantee absolute success, but that did not mean their sacrifices lost their meaning.

Even if they had to withdraw before they could properly defeat their opponent, they at least managed to soften it up for the next wave of reinforcements!

Still, they all hoped to win this duel by themselves. They wanted to prove through their valiance and competence that not every challenge had to be fought with mechs!

The Apocalypse Wardens made a bold feint by attracting the alien leader's attention at the front. They barely managed to evade a flurry of forelimb strikes when the other Apocalypse Wardens jumped on the damaged top surface and began to strike their hammers with abandon!

They did not attack random sections of the archeshell, but focused most of their hammer blows to the rear, which was not only more difficult for the enemy to guard, but also incurred the most damage already.

Soon enough, the archeshell mech cried out in pain once more as the superdimensional hammers brutally penetrated the hardest upper layers and began to inflict material damage to the softer archemetal matter beneath the surface!

Not every part of the archeshell mech was made out of the highest-quality archeshells 'donated' from the arche officers.

The archecruiser did not have so many highborn officers on hand. The internals of the alien construct largely consisted of softer, duller and more fragile archeshells taken from the middle and lower ranks of the alien ship.

The superdimensional hammers inflicted much greater damage on these components!

While the same extraordinary spatial field that reinforced the surface layers also acted on the internal archeshells, the latter clearly did not receive as much of a boost due to their lower base values.

There was only so much the spatial field could do to reinforce a crappy defense!

If the archeshell mech worked much closer to a conventional mech, then the heavy hammer blows would have caused the construct to suffer increasingly more severe performance hits.

It was not impossible for the machine to get outright crippled due to the loss of a crystal part or system!

Yet what made archetech so remarkable was its much higher rate of redundancy and compartimentalization.

Despite the substantial internal damage, enough of the overall structure of the archeshell mech remained intact that it still retained the ability to move and fight!

At most, its overall strength and speed had only dipped by 10 to 20 percent.

While this made a considerable difference, the Apocalypse Wardens were no longer fighting in their peak condition either!

The intensive battle and the mounting losses had made it increasingly harder for the surviving soldiers to stay on top of the situation.

The battle took yet another turn when the archeshell mech did not mount an immediate counterattack.

After completing another costly and exhausting blink, the alien construct stood still for a moment.

The alien leader was probably concentrating in order to perform a new ability.

Seconds passed in silence while the Apocalypse Wardens raised their guard.

Yet instead of being met with a new form of attack, the archeshell mech instead bent down its alien head and began to devour the deck and the archemetal structure underneath!

The alien construct eagerly gobbled up the seemingly random bites of archemetal, only for its entire structure to exhibit signs of transformation.

Loose pieces of archemetal coursed throughout its entire body and began to fill in the holes left by all of the hammer blows.

Though the substitute archemetal clearly looked inferior and out-of-place among the proper archeshells, their commonalities happened to be numerous enough to maintain a certain degree of compatibility!

"The archeshell mech is conducting improvised repairs on itself by consuming archemetal!"

"Interrupt it immediately!"

The Apocalypse Wardens did not want to see most of their efforts undone, so they resumed the attacks in the hopes of denying their enemy the opportunity to repair much of its wounds.

Unfortunately, this was exactly what the archecruiser captain wanted.

Just as a handful of Apocalypse Wardens came close, the alien leader made a surprising move.

The archeshell mech opened its maw and shot out chunks of undigested archemetal!

The alien construct had not used them up to perform emergency repairs, but deviously kept them in reserve for this very moment.

Though half of the chunks missed their mark, three Apocalypse Wardens got struck head-on by dense pieces of archemetal that were at least twice as big as their combat armor!

Even if the actual mass between them and the large projectiles were not equivalent, the notable amount of force behind the attacks still caused the Apocalypse Wardens to crash!

The human soldiers that managed to evade the projectile attacks frantically attacked the giant archeshell, shattering much of the more fragile parts that just got repaired.

Yet that did not stop the alien construct from lumbering forward in order to crush the prone soldiers that could not maneuver away in time!

The Apocalypse Wardens suffered several more losses.

Multiple observers winced in pain or turned their heads away.

The elites from the Red Collective had lost just over half of their numbers at this time.

The remaining Apocalypse Wardens still retained their fighting spirit, but they could not deny that the probability of achieving their objectives had dropped to the lowest point.

"We…"

Before another round of fighting could commence, the entire archecruiser seemed to vibrate for a few seconds before a powerful ace superdimensional mech breached the main gate.

The First Sword Mark Mark III had cut her way straight through the side of the precious archeship and into the center of the hull!

Though the living mech did not bring along her sword fey, the appearance of her mech frame along with the presence of her Saint Kingdom was enough to freeze every action!

"YOU HAVE FOUGHT VALIANTLY, APOCALYPSE WARDENS, BUT THERE IS NO NEED TO PROVE YOUR COURAGE ANY FURTHER."

The formidable ace mech pointed her deadly greatsword at the surviving Apocalypse Wardens, who all seemed weak and tiny compared to the cold steel machine.

"YOUR CHALLENGE HAS COME TO AN END."

The ace mech then proceeded to turn towards the damaged and shabby-looking archeshell mech.

"YOUR EXECUTION HAS BEGUN."

Saint Dise's declarations conveyed the finality of her will.

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