The Mech Touch

5900 The Two-headed Beast

Combat resumed shortly after the giant god beast emerged from the storm clouds.

Nobody became startled by the creature's bulk and shape.

The latest lightning manifestation might not be able to match the length of a dreadnought, but it was still a lot larger and bulkier than any of the other enemies that came before.

It also looked distinctly alien. While it initially looked like a brown-furred mammalian quadruped, the god beast soon began to display many unusual traits like the fact that it had two heads!

The beast did not possess any eyes, but its undersized heads did appear to possess cavities that might constitute its nose or ears.

Whatever the case, the giant creature did not appear to possess a mouth, making people wonder how the creature ate its meals.

Its domain was relatively simple compared to that of the mirror beast. The brown-furred monster apparently clung to its savage origins a lot more. Its domain was savage and unrefined. The creature was all about brute force and never felt any desire to change its wild nature.

This was the polar opposite of the mirror beast, who did its best to imitate more civilized beings.

Many fleeters relaxed despite the fact that the two-headed beast was stronger in an absolute sense.

At least the beast seemed less likely to play mind tricks on the crew!

"Maintain our distance from the furred beast! Please investigate whether the new enemy is fast enough to intercept us if we are accelerating at full capacity. If not, give me your recommendations on how we can remedy this problem."

It was too much to hope that the two-headed beast was slower than the Dominion of Man.

Even when the latter activated the warp drive functions of her monstrously large and powerful superdrives, a True God could not be shaken off so easily, especially when the enormous creature sacrificed a lot of superfluous powers in exchange for strengthening his fundamental properties.

The more data the dreadnought gathered from the two-

headed beast, the more it became clear of how much of a monster it was in a physical sense.

Its body might not possess any phasewater, but it was made out of a multitude of exceedingly high-grade hyper materials that formed lattices that systematically reinforced every part of the body with huge amounts of E energy.

The creature's domain did not possess any offensive component as far as Ves could tell. Instead, it had evolved to support the creature's insanely tough and resilient physique!

"We are likely dealing with a pure body cultivator here." Ves finally spoke. "That doesn't mean we can rule out the possibility that the two-headed beast can mess with our minds, but the chances of that happening is low. I am much more confident that the creature is a pure physical powerhouse. Do not let it get close enough to use its enormous bulk and muscle against the hull of your ship."

"That will pose a challenge to us because its acceleration is remarkably high for its mass and bulk."

The two-headed beast possessed a strong predatory mindset and regarded the Dominion of Man as its prey. This created an effect where the power of heaven blessed its pursuit.

Ves could see that the creature naturally resonated with the power of heaven and used the support from the environment to speed up its interception.

The two-headed beast's domain was flexible enough to borrow as much E energy from the environment as needed to out-accelerate its prey!

What a cheat!

If the beast was by itself, then its heavy bulk wouldn't have allowed it to move so quickly through space.

"Damn." Ves quickly concluded. "The creature is already strong by itself, but it is remarkably good at leveraging E energy radiation to empower its actions. There is no end to the supply of E energy from the environment, so there is no chance this beast will get exhausted."

Dread Captain Argile did not look too upset. "The 8th wave was bound to present its own challenges. We will have to eliminate the two-headed beast before it can use its superior acceleration to fully catch up to our ship."

The Dominion of Man had already begun to open fire at the creature.

Although it was a little awkward for the dreadnought to turn all of her gun turrets backwards and fire at an enemy pursuing from behind, her cigar-like hull shape more or less made it possible.

The dreadnought was never really designed for this mode of combat. She was a flagship, a prestige project and a possible solution against god mechs.

It looked unnatural for her to adopt a kiting strategy, but nobody who possessed a brain advocated an aggressive approach.

The brown-furred creature possessed a lot of strong and obvious muscles!

It was much safer for the dreadnought to fly away from the god beast as best as possible while relying on her formidable ranged armament to whittle down the creature's defenses.

The problem with that plan was that the firepower of the Dominion of Man failed to make any substantial progress.

The dread captain started to frown. "Our secondary gun batteries are unable to penetrate the god beast's unnaturally thick and resilient fur. Most of our primary gun batteries are able to do at least that, but they have failed to penetrate the creature's hide, even when they are concentrating their fire."

The largest and most formidable cannons mounted on the dreadnought were able to wound the creature, but the problem was that the damage was too shallow relative to the bulk of the two-headed beast!

That was not a problem by itself. The Dominion of Man had enormous reserves and could fire her guns on a continuous basis for at least several hours before requiring resupply.

Even then, her energy cannons were able to persist a lot longer until the weapon systems finally started to break down from all of the abuse.

However, the two-furred beast regenerated its wounds so quickly that there was hardly any mark left when the dreadnought unleashed her second salvo.

"Its regeneration is largely fueled by E energy radiation." Ves noted. "Perhaps the god beast's physique has to use up its fat reserves or other resources in order to repair its wounds, but I don't think that this will speed up its exhaustion. It can play this game a lot better than us. Perhaps this is the strategy that the god beast has relied upon to evolve into a True God in its lifetime."

The lack of complexity was a boon rather than a bane. The creature possessed few apparent vulnerabilities that the fleeters could exploit.

"Detecting energy spike from the two-headed beast! Its fur is beginning to absorb more E energy. Incoming attack!"

The azure energy shields of the dreadnought flared to life as they resisted hundreds of thousands of hair follicles that had been transformed into giant needle-like projectiles!

While the power behind each individual hair follicle was rather weak, the quantity was so enormous that they could strain any energy shield!

Fortunately, the projectiles were so dispersed that a large chunk of them not only missed their targets, but also dispersed across multiple segmented energy shields!

"Our shields have held! Our most strained aft shield has lost 60 percent of its integrity. It cannot block an identical salvo of weaponized fur."

The dread captain issued a series of orders to adjust the ship and prepare her for another strike.

The two-headed beast may have launched a lot of its own fur, but its enormous body had already regenerated the missing follicles!

When the two-headed beast launched a second salvo of hair spikes, the crew of the Dominion of Man was much better prepared this time.

The dreadnought altered her heading to make it more difficult for the hair spikes to hit her weakened aft shields.

The maneuver largely worked as a lot of hair spikes ended up striking the segmented shields that previously did not incur any significant damage.

While the ship managed to resolve these attacks without suffering any permanent damage, the two-headed beast looked as if it could keep this up forever.

It had already regenerated its missing fur in preparation for launching yet another strike!

"We cannot allow this situation to persist." Dread Captain Argile remarked. "We have yet to deploy our superweapons, but according to our calculations, the most they can accomplish is inflict slightly deeper wounds. Our firepower is not strong enough to overcome the god beast's absurdly strong constitution."

The god beast possessed the right combination of toughness and regeneration ability to frustrate most enemies!

Ves guessed that if the Guns of Armageddon was in the same position as the Dominion of Man, the former dreadnought's vaunted kinetic cannons still wouldn't be able to slay the beast!

There had to be a way to overcome this problem. Ves frowned as he continued to observe the god beast's performance and tried to figure out potential vulnerabilities.

There were no obvious vulnerabilities.

Teleport attacks were impossible when the god beast's body and domain remained in peak condition.

The only way to inflict actual damage to the creature was by relying on the dreadnought's conventional arsenal, but that brought Ves back to the initial problem, which was lack of firepower.

"Wait a minute."

Ves used his temporary access to the ship's system to access information on the performance of the dreadnought's primary gun batteries.

The large and powerful plasma cannons, gauss cannons, positron cannons and so on were performing better than ever. As long as they hadn't suffered any serious damage in the previous waves, the dreadnought-grade arsenal launched attack salvos with so much power that they should easily be able to obliterate any alien battleship!

Yet for all of their impressive technical performance, their metaphysical performance was awfully simple and crude.

When compared to other warships fielded by the Red Fleet, the Dominion of Man incorporated some of the most luxurious and sophisticated applications of hyper technology.

However, humanity's grasp of hyper technology was like that of a child when compared to the workings of the natives of Messier 87!

While it was impossible to upgrade the hyper technology that augmented the firepower of all of those primary gun batteries in a short amount of time, Ves identified another aspect which could be upgraded with remarkable speed!

"Furia!" Ves shouted! "Can I have your attention?!"

The temperature in the command center rose as Ves felt the gaze of a powerful being on his person!

"<nullb>SPEAK."

"You should already know that the Dominion of Man lacks the firepower to slay this two-headed beast. The best way to remedy this is by improving your interaction with the primary armaments of the dreadnought. Forget about strengthening the hull or other redundant components. Try to concentrate as much of your fire energy to the main thrusters and the primary gun batteries of the ship. The former will hopefully keep the god beast at bay a little longer, while the latter will hopefully make it harder for our opponent to shrug off our attacks."

"<nullb>YOUR INPUT IS APPRECIATED."

For all of Furia's raw power and potency, her current incarnation was still fresh and new. She may have inherited bits and pieces of the memory of the creator of the Fire Scroll, but he doubted that she inherited a lot of systematic knowledge on the cultivation of her fire abilities.

In other words, Furia was essentially a natural cultivator as opposed to a qi cultivator. She had gained all of the power through no effort of her own. Her current consciousness had been 'gifted' with all of her strength and domain.

To put it in other words, Furia possessed the raw strength but not the mastery of a True God!

This was the fundamental flaw arising from her highly controversial birth and transformation.

Ves did not regret making her this way, because the alternatives were all worse!

Unfortunately, it also left Ves and the Dominion of Man with a power source that barely knew how to wield her own powers beyond relying on instinct!

The fact that it took this long for Ves to make this realization was a pretty big oversight.

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