The Mech Touch

5894 The 8th Round

The first calamity beast, or whatever the Messier 87 equivalent was called, vaguely resembled a squid with armor and way too many tentacles.

Its mass and volume was enormous. It was more than 10 kilometers in length, and its bulk was so formidable that it could probably cause an extinction event if it decided to crash onto a planet!

The creature's tentacles looked highly disconcerting. They were both flexible but also hooked. Each of these hooks looked sharp enough to bore into the hull plating of the Dominion of Man and make it much more difficult to dislodge the tentacles.

The domain of the powerful creature was even more disconcerting. Ves was only able to sense a hint of it due to Furia and Caramond's attempts to push it back, but he was able to sample enough to get a general impression.

The squid beast was a predator who loved nothing more than to grapple its prey and never let go. Its resilient armor and flesh provided it with enough toughness and regeneration to survive long enough to outlast its enemies.

Perhaps the only flaw of this beast was that it required a lot of time to defeat powerful adversaries.

"We can't afford to let this squid monster get close and entangle the ship with its tentacles." Ves stated the obvious.

"The creature should not be too fast. We should at least be able to prolong interception long enough to break it down."

The Dominion of Man already started to move before the massive squid monster emerged from the portal.

Even though the storm clouds always made sure to follow after the ship when the latter moved too far away, the Dominion of Man was still able to put up more distance between herself and the squid monster.

The monstrous creature grew angry at seeing its intended prey run away. It began to orient itself towards the fleeing dreadnought before waving its tentacles in an alluringly cyclical fashion to propose itself forward in space!

"The creature's acceleration is higher than expected, but our upgraded main thrusters are performing better than before as well. The beast will not be able to intercept us in at least 2 minutes at this rate!"

A time interval of 2 minutes was not much, but it was more than enough to allow the Dominion of Man to heavily bombard the creature with her intact gun batteries!

The primary and secondary turrets opened fire on the creature in an indiscriminate fashion. Large missiles and torpedoes that were expressly produced to take out enemy warships soared towards the squid monster as well!

The creature's organic armor was thick and resilient, but it also slowed the creature down to the point where it turned into a punching bag for the dreadnought.

What was notable was that the transphasic weapon systems produced considerably better results than their non-

transphasic counterparts.

This was valid in many of the previous encounters as well. The squid monster's lack of energy shields did not do the beast any favors either. Transphasic weapons excelled against material defenses!

As the frontal armor of the squid rapidly began to crumble apart, the squid monster became angrier and angrier.

Eventually, the creature proved that it had the ability to retaliate at range when it began to extend multiple smaller tentacles and began to launch fast and penetrating bone lances!

The Dominion of Man's azure energy shields came online to block these penetrating attacks.

The powerful energy shields proved sufficient to block the sustained barrage for the time being, though the bone spikes exploded a fair distance away from the hull of the dreadnought as a consequence.

The ship had previously endured the tests without relying too much on her energy defenses, but given how much her physical condition had deteriorated by now, Dread Captain Argile decided it was prudent to forgo small gains in order to preserve the integrity of his command as best as possible.

In the end, it did not take two minutes for the squid beast to falter. The firepower of the Dominion of Man still proved to be too powerful against the challenges presented by the tribulation storm.

While the squid beast had a chance to close in and wrap its damaged tentacles around the hull of its prey, the dreadnought had delivered the final coup-de-grace in the form of a single powerful explosion that broke the head of the battered head of squid monster from the inside!

"What was that?!" Ves asked as he did not notice the launch of any missiles and torpedoes that could have produced such a dramatic result!

"We made use of the Rubicon Spatial Transfer System to teleport a single antimatter bomb of the appropriate yield inside the mouth cavity of the calamity beast." Dread Captain Argile explained with vicious satisfaction. "There is no reason for us to forgo the advantages of one of our best technological assets. We previously did not employ it in the previous round because many of the cultivator-developed warships are actually quite well-shielded against teleportation attacks."

That surprised Ves. This was an incredibly vicious means of attack, particularly against powerful enemies that did not sufficiently protect themselves against this exotic method!

It was not particularly surprising to learn that Messier 87's cultivators were familiar enough with this tactic to implement sufficient safeguards in their own warships.

However, if the beasts of the supermassive galaxy were similar to the ones on the Red Ocean, then they were overwhelmingly savage, solitary and lacking in sophistication.

Without the backing of an entire civilization, these beasts would never be aware that they could be attacked in this manner, let alone develop specific countermeasures that could save them from getting blown apart from within!

"If you could teleport antimatter bombs directly inside the body of this squid monster, then why wait until it had gotten so close?"

"Powerful organisms such as calamity beasts have a natural resistance towards this attack vector." Volkert Argile patiently explained to Ves. "It is most often due to their powerful natural domain fields. Even the most primitive creatures can resist these attacks as long as they are strong enough. This is why we softened up the squid monster first. Damaging its physical body also weakens its domain field. Range and power are also important. Once the beast has come close enough, we powered the Rubicon in full so that it can forcibly overcome whatever resistance that remains and successfully deposit an antimatter bomb."

This was insightful information. Ves was glad to learn about these considerations because he felt the urge to protect himself against this means of attack.

There was almost no way to defend against such a scary assassination method!

Of course, the Rubicon Spatial Transfer System was arguably the most powerful teleportation system in the Red Ocean.

Perhaps the phase whales developed an even better device, but nobody knew for certain.

What mattered was that Ves did not have to be afraid that his enemies would employ anything as strong as the Rubicon anytime soon.

"Hopefully, the next creatures can be dealt with just as easily." Ves muttered.

The next few waves did not pose too much of a challenge to the Dominion of Man.

A myriad of different monsters emerged from the tribulation storm.

The second wave consisted of a chimera that possessed the limbs of more than a thousand different organisms. Many of these limbs were only effective up close, but there were other appendages that were able to launch rocks, plasma bolts and more exotic attacks.

The third wave consisted of a massive astral insect queen that was able to breed an unending tide of warrior insects. The titanic insect queen effectively acted as a carrier while her rapidly bred warrior insects fought in a similar fashion to suicidal mechs.

The warriors insects were individually weak, but when millions of them attempted to swarm the Dominion of Man at once, the ship could not afford to let any of them get close!

The dreadnought's tertiary gun batteries wiped them out as quickly and efficiently as possible, yet it was not enough.

Yet that did not avail the insect queen herself. As soon as the Dominion of Man demolished the mother insect, all of her 'children' lost all coordination, causing them to be wiped out with ease.

The fourth wave consisted of three massive quadrupeds. They vaguely resembled flaming horses and had a penchant for running around to generate firestorms in their wake. It was too bad that their fire attacks proved to be completely incapable of overpowering Furia at her own game, and could only inflict effective damage by charging at the ship.

The fifth wave initially puzzled the crew of the Dominion of Man. The enemy beasts either possessed stealth capabilities or managed to travel through space through another dimension. The response from the dreadnought was to fire all of her intact tertiary gun batteries in every direction. This measure soon exposed the existence and the coordinates of four astral worms.

The sixth wave eschewed trickery for brute force. A single giant rock monster that was thrice the size of the Dominion of Man emerged from the portal and homed in on the ship right away! Though the 'beast' was not particularly fast, it generated an extremely powerful gravitic field that continually pulled the dreadnought closer.

None of these calamity beasts were weak by any means. They all possessed the capability to defeat one or several human battleships so long as the conditions were not too unfavorable.

However, the Dominion of Man defeated the calamity beasts one after another with almost the same ease as the start of the 8th round.

"The Rubicon is such a cheat…" Ves repeated several times as he watched the spectacle unfold.

The creatures shouldn't have fallen so quickly and so easily. They had all evolved over the course of many battles and struggles for survival. Their exteriors were always extremely tough and resilient. It should have taken many more attacks to punch through their flesh and bone and damage the more vital internal organs.

The Dominion of Man did not play by the rules. So long as the hostile beasts presented an opening, the Carmine dreadnought always took advantage of her Rubicon to deliver antimatter bombs and other nasty superweapons directly to her targets!

The creatures always floundered after they got struck by these inexplicable attacks. Even if their domains blocked the Rubicon from teleporting superweapons directly inside their brains or chests, it was already enough for the ordnance to deposit inside their limbs or just underneath their resilient exteriors.

The battles ultimately started to resemble demolition operations more than anything. Even the giant rock monster of the sixth wave succumbed after getting blasted by over two-dozen strategically placed teleportation attacks!

"Damn." Ves almost became sick at how these powerful foes got felled due to a common vulnerability. "I have the feeling that if the Guns of Armageddon is converted to a Carmine dreadnought one day, she would still find it difficult to overcome these foes as quickly as the Dominion of Man. Being able to teleport explosive ordnance directly past the defenses of an enemy target is way more effective than I thought! I never thought that it would make such a huge difference at this level."

The confidence of the crew rose with every easy victory. Yet the seventh wave quickly tempered their expectations.

That was because the beast that emerged from the storms exuded a much more powerful domain than before!

Ves became startled when he got a good taste of the newly emerged domain!

"That's… that's not a normal beast anymore. If my suspicions are correct, we are dealing with a True God-level beast!"

"A god beast!"

That caused everyone to freeze for a moment.

This was the theoretical evolution of a calamity beast. Once such a creature managed to transcend into a god beast, they became a lot more powerful in both physical and spiritual aspects!

It was safe to say that the true test of the Dominion of Man had begun!

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