Although Casella Ingvar wanted to give the Apocalypse Wardens as much space as they needed to overco this challenge, she could not indulge in their ego without limit.
Gloriana's demands were not entirely unreasonable. The so-called archeshell ch 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 ti limit. The longer this went on, the greater the chance that sothing could go wrong.
The announcent did not cause the Apocalypse Wardens to change their approach.
They already instinctively figured out that ti 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 ch continued to beco 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 beca increasingly more agile and limber with his maneuvers.
He frequently caught the Apocalypse Wardens off-guard by making strange movents that people never expected to see from a turtle-like alien construct. The archeshell ch rolled his body around and even leapt a few tis!
Each of these maneuvers severely tested the elite human soldiers. The ongoing duel matched the worst virtual training scenarios, the ones where defeat beca an expected outco.
All of the remaining active Apocalypse Wardens knew that if they wanted to co out on top, they had to grow as well!
They continued to analyze their adversary and developed nurous responses against known problems.
Though the archeshell ch made increasingly more bizarre movents 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 beco senior officers and scientists. They never had to do any dirty work in their lives. The uglier arche with worse archeshells naturally assud such duties.
Though red humanity did not know whether highborn arche engaged in duels on a regular basis, the forr 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 judgnt 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 montum. His turning radius is fast, but not fast enough."
"His ntality 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 ch 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 ch 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 superdinsional hamrs 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 archetal beca exposed, along with the alien blood that connected them all together!
The archeshell ch roared in pain, signifying that it was more of a new body rather than a ch 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 compartnt seed 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 superdinsional hamrs.
This ti, the thinner layers of individual archeshells offered considerably less resistance. More blood spilled from the wounds while lots of crystal fragnts flew into the air!
Suddenly, the space around the damaged archeshell ch seed to freeze.
Though it did not significantly affect the movents of the nearby human soldiers, they grew so alard 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 ch appeared in the sa 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 ant that he failed to reach safety in ti!
CRUNCH!
Superdinsional armor or not, getting dropped by a large and remarkably dense archeshell ch exceeded the defensive properties of the relatively thin armor layers!
The Apocalypse Wardens suffered another loss.
Not that they beca 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 ch relentlessly even as it tried to swat the superdinsional flies with its large but clumsy fra.
It utilized its short-ranged teleportation capability several tis, 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 beco riddled with cracks and holes, they would have given up hope for victory by this ti.
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 lood increasingly more over their heads. They could no longer guarantee absolute success, but that did not an their sacrifices lost their aning.
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 reinforcents!
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 chs!
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 hamrs with abandon!
They did not attack random sections of the archeshell, but focused most of their hamr 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 ch cried out in pain once more as the superdinsional hamrs brutally penetrated the hardest upper layers and began to inflict material damage to the softer archetal matter beneath the surface!
Not every part of the archeshell ch 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 superdinsional hamrs inflicted much greater damage on these components!
While the sa 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 ch worked much closer to a conventional ch, then the heavy hamr 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 compartintalization.
Despite the substantial internal damage, enough of the overall structure of the archeshell ch 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 ch did not mount an imdiate counterattack.
After completing another costly and exhausting blink, the alien construct stood still for a mont.
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 t with a new form of attack, the archeshell ch instead bent down its alien head and began to devour the deck and the archetal structure underneath!
The alien construct eagerly gobbled up the seemingly random bites of archetal, only for its entire structure to exhibit signs of transformation.
Loose pieces of archetal coursed throughout its entire body and began to fill in the holes left by all of the hamr blows.
Though the substitute archetal clearly looked inferior and out-of-place among the proper archeshells, their commonalities happened to be nurous enough to maintain a certain degree of compatibility!
"The archeshell ch is conducting improvised repairs on itself by consuming archetal!"
"Interrupt it imdiately!"
The Apocalypse Wardens did not want to see most of their efforts undone, so they resud 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 ca close, the alien leader made a surprising move.
The archeshell ch opened its maw and shot out chunks of undigested archetal!
The alien construct had not used them up to perform ergency repairs, but deviously kept them in reserve for this very mont.
Though half of the chunks missed their mark, three Apocalypse Wardens got struck head-on by dense pieces of archetal 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 ti!
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 ti.
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 comnce, the entire archecruiser seed to vibrate for a few seconds before a powerful ace superdinsional ch 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 ch did not bring along her sword fey, the appearance of her ch fra 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 ch pointed her deadly greatsword at the surviving Apocalypse Wardens, who all seed weak and tiny compared to the cold steel machine.
"YOUR CHALLENGE HAS CO TO AN END."
The ace ch then proceeded to turn towards the damaged and shabby-looking archeshell ch.
"YOUR EXECUTION HAS BEGUN."
Saint Dise's declarations conveyed the finality of her will.
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