If the initial version of the Ixith Goliath functioned like a giant siege engine that was most suitable to smash fortifications apart, then the transford version was clearly a lot more optimized to massacre enemy champions!
The loss of so much bulk did not diminish its lethality in the slightest.
Instead, it had beco a much more threatening opponent against the remaining human combatants due to how much faster and more nimbler it had beco!
The other Goliath strains had never exhibited any transformations where they drastically altered their biological configurations.
This had caused red humanity to develop an assumption that no Goliaths were capable of transforming into different forms on the battlefield.
Unfortunately, they were wrong.
The Goliath Hive never showed off this capability in the past because it was simply not worth it to include such a costly and complex ability to large versions of cannon fodder.
The Ixith Goliath was special. The value of the Incubator spawn vastly exceeded that of its lesser kind.
The timing was excellent. The defenders had used up a significant amount of resources to damage its original form.
The Level 8 Goliath had also utilized its massive form to smash enough orbital fortresses to deplete the current quadrant.
While it was still possible for the remaining fortified space stations to relocate and fill up the gaps in the orbital defense network, this was a very slow and cumberso process, and could not be relied upon for the remainder of this battle.
Not that it mattered this ti.
The transford Ixith Goliath beca a much smaller target, so large guns would find it a nightmare to land a single hit at longer ranges.
Combined with the gavoribug's vastly improved mobility, many long-ranged armants had lost their effectiveness when employed against this enemy!
"Our hit rate has dropped to single digits! Its flight is too fast and unpredictable!"
"Be careful not to hit our allies! Friendly fire will only make everything worse."
"Where are our gravitic energy generators? We need to slow it down at all costs! It is tearing apart the giants!"
The Ixith Goliath prioritized easier targets over tougher ones.
While the Rubarthan ace chs did their best to block and fight back against the transford Goliath, the transford alien creature exhibited a great amount of cunning.
It flexibly utilized its sinuous alien form to circle around the ace chs so that it could strike at more vulnerable targets.
Currently, those targets consisted of the Ascended Giants.
The Ur-Titans had beco a high priority to the voribugs!
Their superdinsional arms tore gaps into its exoskeleton, but they had also suffered damage in return.
All of the Ur-Titans fought with damaged raints at this ti. Prior claw strikes had damaged their superdinsional armor plating, making it easier for the lethal Goliath to pounce on them and tear their remaining protection apart!
The Ascended Giants beca alard, but they did not panic.
They grouped up and tried to leverage their numbers against the Ixith Goliath, yet the gavoribug still took advantage of its significantly greater bulk and size and accepted all of the incoming attacks in order to grap hold of another Ur-Titan!
The elite soldier turned human phase lord roared and counterattacked with his superdinsional halberd, but just like his predecessor, the many-limbed Goliath forcibly took hold of the shaft and utilized its superior strength to wrench the weapon from the giant's gauntlets!
"No! My weapon!"
The Ixith Goliath did not hesitate to turn the weapon around and plunge its razor-sharp tip straight through the chest plating!
Seconds passed as the Level 8 Goliath violently utilized its stolen implent to savage and tear apart the human phase lord's true body!
The remaining Ascended Giants beca horrified. The changes happened too quickly.
In one mont, the Ixith Goliath presented itself as a massive but fairly clumsy insect.
In the next mont, it had beco a leaner, aner and far more lethal killing machine!
It was clear that the Ixith Goliath's second form was far more suitable in dueling against enemy champions.
Perhaps it was trying to work its way up to defeating the Rubarthan ace chs that had done an adequate job of harassing it, because the Ixith Goliath went out of its way to collect the precious dium-grade superdinsional halberds!
Ves and the other soldiers grew especially alard when the Goliath's body grew malleable enough to the point where it could integrate the shafts of both stolen halberds into its forelimbs!
The halberd blades had essentially taken over the role of its claws!
"It… it is stealing our weapons!"
"It is worse… the Goliath is assimilating them. We are in for a much more dangerous fight." Ves grimly concluded.
"Sir! I am ordering our giants to withdraw!" The Divine Harpoon urgently transmitted to his superior. "We are not equipped to fight against this Goliath! The scope of this battle has vastly exceeded our mission paraters. Its threat level has skyrocketed now that it has acquired its latest set of weapons. I insist that you accompany us as well."
The Dark Apostle frowned. He did not want to retreat, especially after seeing two of his subordinates getting carved apart in front of his eyes. What kind of warrior would he be if he allowed himself to lose his courage after witnessing such an insulting display?
Yet warriors that foolishly charged towards an opponent while being heavily outmatched never tended to live very long.
The main reason why he hesitated about this decision was because his situation was a lot better than the others.
He was the only giant that possessed a set of full high-grade superdinsional gear.
The defensive properties of his raint was vastly superior, and the sharpness of his Withering Sting exceeded that of the stolen weapons.
As the leader of the Phase Lord Departnt, the Dark Apostle felt a strong sense of responsibility for his subordinates, both living and dead.
He could not allow himself to back off when he still had a chance to exact revenge on this monster!
Still, just because he maintained the resolve to fight did not an he had lost all of his rationality.
"Ves. Do you think we have a chance?"
"Difficult to say, really. Our gear is superior, but our overall strength and scale is subpar. The transford Goliath is still very large and strong. If your skills and intuition are not up to par, the enemy will wrench the Withering Sting from your grasp before you know it. Even if we set aside this possibility, those superdinsional halberds pose a credible threat against your life. Sure, they are only made out of hull-grade superdinsional alloys, but the gavoribug is already amplifying their performance with its stolen resonance."
An important question ca to mind.
What was stronger, regular armor-grade superdinsional alloy or resonance-empowered hull-grade superdinsional alloy?
Ves did not possess the answer!
His best guess was that the forr was still superior, but that the gap between the two had beco a lot smaller due to the reality-defying effects of extraordinary willpower.
Even at just 30 laveres, that was enough to make the superdinsional halberds exceed their original paraters.
It was very much possible for those weapons to perform as if they were a quality grade higher than before!
If this was the case, then the only piece of equipnt that wouldn't easily get cut apart by those weapons was the Withering Sting.
Made out of the most scarce and precious weapon-grade superdinsional alloy, this was an artifact that was designed to cut or pierce through most other superdinsional equipnt!
"I am going in." The Dark Apostle finally decided.
He couldn't fully explain his decision. He simply felt he needed to go forth and test his might against this powerful adversary.
Strangely enough, Ves did not object to this reckless decision.
"Go. I will assist as much as I can."
Strange energies began to course through the Withering Sting.
Even though the Ixith Goliath managed to purge all of its afflicted biomass, Ves did not think it had developed an immunity against the withering curse.
Vitality remained essential to this creature. The less life force it possessed, the weaker it beca!
As the Dark Apostle charged forward, he understood this truth as well. He did not stick to a straight trajectory, but instead began to curve around in the hopes of catching the enem from an oblique angle.
Unfortunately, the Ixith Goliath was not stupid. It paid visible attention to the leader of the giants, whose larger size and better-quality equipnt caused him to stand out from his subordinates.
When the Ixith Goliath began to swing both of its halberd-tipped limbs, the Dark Apostle felt himself co alive like never before!
He relied on his skill and intuition to deflect one of the halberds while moving his body to the side just so that the other halberd glanced off the side of his raint.
"Tch."
More claws struck his raint, but the Dark Apostle managed to block half of them, transferring pulses of withering and darkness energy through the limbs.
Since the Ixith Goliath's ordinary claws were unable to inflict any effective damage against the high-grade superdinsional armor, the alien creature simply didn't bother to use them anymore.
Instead, it concentrated on wielding its two integrated superdinsional weapons that it had just nicked from the Ascended Giants.
To see their own weapons used against them pissed off Ves and the Dark Apostle to no end.
These were rare and highly coveted weapons of great value!
To have them fall into the hands of the enemy was a massive failure and one that should never be repeated.
The Ascended Giants needed to figure out how to prevent scenarios like this from occurring in the future, because they really couldn't afford to give enemy aliens access to more superdinsional arms.
"Be careful, sir!"
The Ixith Goliath rapidly took the asure of its opponent.
At the sa ti, it beca increasingly more proficient in the use of the integrated halberds.
Its skills and judgnt improved with every passing second. The Dark Apostle quickly found himself overwheld as he struggled to fend off two weapons striking at him at the sa ti.
It was already a struggle for him to block one of the superdinsional halberds. He did not possess the speed, strength or limbs to block the other weapon at the sa ti!
All of this fighting started to take a toll on his equipnt.
While the Withering Sting only received a few very minor scratches and grooves, his superdinsional regalia was faring a lot worse!
The armor-grade superdinsional alloy should have been able to block the hull-grade superdinsional halberds with a reasonable amount of confidence.
However, because of the Ixith Goliath's stolen resonance, it was able to inflict significantly more effective damage than when the Ur-Titans wielded the halberds!
This was absurd!
The entire identity and basis of strength of the Ixith Goliath was based on stolen property!
Though the Dark Apostle felt indignant about it, his raint was rapidly accumulating more and more marks of damage.
The thickness of his raint granted him a decent buffer, but that ant nothing if he failed to turn this situation around.
The Dark Apostle steadily beca overwheld by the unceasing attacks.
His spearmanship did not grant him any solutions on how to gain the upper hand. His foundation as a warrior was too shallow.
He possessed excellent equipnt but lacked the extensive skillset, combat experience and beastly intuition that expert pilots and ace pilots naturally accrued during their heroic journeys.
It was situations like these where one's shallow foundations beca exposed.
Though Ves and Blinky did their best to help by cursing the Ixith Goliath, their efforts proved far too marginal due to the sa obstruction they encountered the last ti.
"The Ixith Goliath has beco a lot more resistant to the withering curse." Ves found out! "It has shrunken its body and concentrated its remaining life force across a much smaller body. It is much harder for the withering curse to take root under such hostile conditions. The enemy's willpower has also beco much more adept at countering the power of darkness. This… this is an opponent that learns and improves at a rapid rate! Its growth… outpaces ours!"
This was the first ti that Ves encountered such a difficult adversary!
As a ch designer obsessed with Mutual Growth in Adversity, he actually found it deeply uncomfortable to be dominated by an insectile alien race that exemplified design philosophy better than himself!
In other words, he was being schooled by the mutated voribugs!
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