Chapter 7587 Beginning of the End

The Riot Mark III did not just defeat the deathborn lord.

It demolished the enemy that formerly incapacitated the unstable machine.

On a physical level, the ace spearman mech's potent weapon continually eroded the phase lord carcass from within.

All manner of phasewater-reinforced tissue broke down and disintegrated at a rapid pace.

On an ethereal level, the Prophet's Bane directly caught the deathborn lord's manifestation and proceeded to devour his prize on the spot!

The latter truly mattered. As an intangible life form, the alien leader figure could always hop into another body if he had lost his previous one. The only way to eliminate this kind enemy on a more permanent basis was to target them directly.

The sight of this devouring process horrified Gloriana and many other observers.

It looked as if the triumphant demon had fished out a soul and decided to eat his prize raw on the spot!

The deathborn lord tried everything he could in order to escape, but the Middle Demon's hold was too strong, especially now that he was able to leverage the full power of the Riot Mark III's Saint Kingdom!

The fabric of reality itself warped around them in order to ensure that the prey could not escape!

Though the deathborn lord did not display or express any strong emotions such as shock, fear or indignation, the entity most definitely suffered from his current treatment!

The ghostly figure leaked deadly energies that splashed completely harmlessly in open space.

If the entire site was surrounded by Dark Miasma, then perhaps he might have been able to call upon backup or at least an abundant reservoir of power.

Though enough time had passed for the glut of positive energies to dwindle, much of the battlefield still remained miasma-free, if only for the time being.

The effective suppression and lack of immediate urgency prompted the demon to take his time.

He savoured his 'meal'. This was one of his first major feeding sessions since he had assumed this particular state of existence. He spontaneously conducted an improvised ritual that sped up his devouring rate and increased the effectiveness of his assimilation attempt.

It was not enough for him to kill this powerful enemy. He wanted to harvest all of the traits, essence, memories and techniques of this foreign invader!

That was easier said than done. Despite holding the upper hand, the Prophet's Bane could only gnaw and devour the most superficial parts of his adversary's powerful soul.

He was merely devouring concentrated death energy. What enabled it to function as the avatar of an entirely different galaxy involved laws and mechanics that fell well outside the scope of anyone in this star system!

Suffice to say, the Prophet's Bane grew frustrated and resentful that all he got to devour was the ethereal realm's equivalent to a puppet!

The demon's mounting anger caused his devouring process to speed up! However, his eating manners had been thrown out of the window. The demon no longer maintained any restraint and brutally sought to devour or dissipate the energy matrix that made up the current manifestation!

By the time he was done, the distant deathborn lord had lost his only anchor to the Red Ocean.

The demon meanwhile digested whatever energies he could handle at this current time.

As a being that belonged to the negative energy side of reality, death energy did not pose a fatal threat to his existence.

That did not mean he enjoyed his meal. Demons may be familiar with the phenomenon of death, but they did not embody it to the same level as the deathborn race.

Therefore, the Prophet's Bane not only wasted much of this energy's potential, but also felt reluctant to assimilate too much of this nefarious influence.

Devouring too much death energy without any thought or structure would only cause him to deviate from his nature as a demon and transform into another deathborn. Maybe.

That must never happen!

For this reason, the Prophet's Bane deliberately restrained his absorption and only sought to strengthen himself to the point where he could better understand and resist future deathborn opponents.

The real prize was the knowledge and techniques mastered by the peculiar alien mind manipulator.

Although the intangible puppet was not the 'main body' of the deathborn lord, the latter's activities still left behind numerous remnants and imprints.

All of this was valuable to the Prophet's Bane. As long as he spent enough time to analyze the clues and deduce their logic, he may be able to replicate some of the deathborn lord's spells one day!

The thought of mastering a technique that could effectively confuse his stubborn ace pilot's mind filled the demon with glee!

The Prophet's Bane let out a soundless cackle even as his manifestation returned to the Riot Mark III like an obedient servant.

Saint Orfan's unbreakable bond with the demonic entity had given her a pretty good idea of what her 'partner' had done.

She was not pleased. Anything that strengthened the Middle Demon always came at the expense of herself.

Saint Orfan even had the displeasure of witnessing the foul demon directly strike a bargain with Ves!

A part of her felt betrayed by the mech designer who developed the Riot in the first place. She was already struggling to contain the Demon, and now he effectively agreed to feed human lives to this evil being!

Whatever the Prophet's Bane intentions, any persistent feeding would definitely increase his growth rate, making it much more likely for him to completely overpower her soul in the future!

As Rosa Orfan's anger towards Ves continued to rise towards a boiling point, she mentally gritted her teeth and chose to focus on her actual missions instead.

This was not the time to punish Ves for his apparent betrayal!

Rosa wanted to do nothing more than to beat him up and prove to him that he was utterly wrong to give up on her so soon!

Yet the demon treated Ves as a business partner rather than enemy at this time, which meant that if she insisted on taking revenge, her own D-mech would fight against her will again!

Nobody could afford to waste so much time! The combined fleet and its many disparate elements still needed rescuing.

The Saint Commander already transmitted a basic route to the Riot Mark III that showed how she could best intervene on the battlefield.

The Riot had to follow a winding course in order to relieve the Amaranto Mark III and potentially the Dark Zephyr Mark III if the distance was not too far.

Once the D-mech successfully killed or repelled the other powerful deathborn leaders, the Riot and any liberated ace mech must descend to a lower orbit in order to wreck the remaining operational strongholds of the orbital defense network.

This would free up the remnants of the combined fleet, which included the mostly-intact Tortuous Scream and other notable warships.

Their primary and secondary gun batteries could play a vital role in softening up or breaching the planetary defenses that the aliens had built on the surface of Hypeh-Tekas II!

Only then would the Riot Mark III and other available ace mechs be able to approach the mysterious deathborn temple that likely housed the center of the monstrous spell array responsible for converting lots of corpses into deathborn!

"...WASTE OF TIME."

Saint Orfan managed to regain enough rationality and clarity to understand the logic behind this methodical plan.

That did not stop her from discarding the file and forgetting about following any of the Saint Commander's instructions.

Her permanent tormentor happened to be of the same mind on this issue.

"NO MORE DELAYS. NO MORE PROCRASTINATING. LET US END THIS ONCE AND FOR ALL!"

The Riot Mark III turned away from the broken and eroded remains of a long-dead lesser phase lord and flew directly down towards the black and ominous planetary temple complex!

"Rosa! Stop! You are being too reckless! We still do not know what awaits us down on the surface!"

The maddened ace pilot completely ignored Casella's useless pleas.

She wanted to enjoy the remainder of this temporary moment of peace and tranquility by doing what she did best: charging forward and wrecking stuff!

Her current truce with the Prophet's Bane was bound to end sooner or later. She at least wanted this to happen on a pleasant note, and nothing excited her more than to wield all of her liberated power against a large and formidable target!

"Rosa! Slow down! Be careful!"

Against the Dark Apostle's better wishes, Ves insisted on shadowing the Riot Mark III. Who knew whether the dangerous machine suffered from its own hubris and needed rescue.

Even if the giant leader had lost a considerable proportion of his strength, he was still large enough to be able to drag an ace mech out of trouble.

"I am not sure whether I can drag an ace mech as heavy as the Riot Mark III out of the gravity well of a planet." The polemarchos said. "This machine is supposed to be a lot denser than other machines, right? It is both an archemech and a superdimensional mech."

Blinky slowly nodded. "It is true that those factors may complicate any possible rescue attempts, but my expectations are not high. If necessary, we can leave behind most of the mech frame and make it out with the cockpit and the tier 3 Destroyer spear. We absolutely cannot afford to lose either. The rest… is dispensible."

It hurt a lot to make this concession. The Riot Mark III's mech frame contained plenty of armor-grade superdimensional alloys! This was the good stuff and could not be replenished quickly.

If Ves was forced to rebuild the Riot Mark III after the loss of most of its superdimensional parts, then he could only resort to repurposing alien-grade superdimensional matter extracted from all of the salvaged Saint Piercers and Saint Armors.

That would ultimately put the Riot Mark III on a weaker footing than before.

This was why Ves still hoped that Saint Orfan would be able to succeed!

As time passed by, the Riot Mark III hardly encountered any resistance. The powerful machine attracted plenty of attention, but much if not all of the other remaining alien combatants were already entangled with other human units.

This moment of peace did not last.

When the Riot Mark III truly approached the surface of the corrupted planet, the temple complex seemingly came to life.

Dark energies directly extracted from the slaughter of millions of human and other sentient beings began to power up strange defenses that possessed a distinctly alien character!