Chapter 7588 The Hostile Temple Complex

The temple complex.

It defied description.

Even looking at it made Ves feel sick to his intangible stomach.

It was made out of crudely carved black stones. The lack of precision and refinement in the construction should have made the temple look primitive and shabby.

While those descriptions definitely applied, the sum of all parts still possessed an unholy majesty that Ves was not able to process.

He felt as if he was looking at a solidified ritual. Each component, each angle and each shape possessed a hidden meaning. They were all pieces that formed a mysterious puzzle that could not be explained.

Ves lacked the understanding, perception and insight to interpret the complete picture.

He was far from the only one who suffered from this affliction. Everyone remained blind to the full meaning of this massive alien planetary complex.

However, just because he couldn't uncover all of its secrets did not mean he failed to understand its importance.

Two very different groups of aliens put up a hefty fight just to prevent the combined fleet from coming close!

Although the phase leaders from the Red Collective lacked the resolve to fight to the death, the fact that they suffered so many casualties just to stall the advance of the Ascended Giants still said much about the importance of this alien stronghold.

Ves had come here to do a job. He refused to leave this star system without completing a major accomplishment.

All of the soldiers who participated in the current campaign would have died in vain otherwise.

Right now, the Riot Mark III presented the best and practically only hope of vindicating his decisions.

While he felt awfully annoyed that Saint Rosa Orfan charged directly forward rather than obey the Saint Commander's arrangement, a part of him felt so tired of all of the fighting that he sympathized with her impulsive decision.

The battle needed to come to an end before more complications arose.

Having circumvented all of the enemies in orbit that could hinder the Riot Mark III's advance, the only opposition left that still had a chance of repelling the ace mech was the temple complex itself.

It would have been naive to believe that the mist-shrouded facilities lacked defenses.

Though it did not appear to be manned by native aliens or other beings for that matter, it possessed plenty of 'automated' defenses.

Ominous green crystals began to glow before launching ragged bolts of soul-searing energy!

Their effectiveness on the Riot Mark III was mixed. Their individual power might not be impressive, but there were so many green crystals that hundreds of them flew towards the incoming ace mech!

The green energy bolts stung the Prophet's Bane who manifested himself through the Saint Kingdom.

However, they quickly dissipated into nothing after striking the exterior of the Riot Mark III's superdimensional armor system.

Other defensive measures proved slightly more effective against material defenses. Arcane gun turrets that worked according to completely different principles from conventional human technology summoned random deathborn before forcibly infusing them into jagged stone projectiles.

These rocks which appeared to be made out of the same material as the temple complex launched forward without any apparent force exertion!

In one moment, they floated in place.

In the next moment, they gained a huge amount of momentum that caused them to rocket forward at speeds that could match weaker gauss rifles!

These deathborn-infused rock projectiles weakened considerably when they passed through the Riot Mark III's Saint Kingdom, but possessed just enough resistance against the reality-defying effects that they still managed to impact the Riot Mark III's armor plating with plenty of force!

Of course, the ace spearman mech was built to take much heavier beating than this. One rock projectile inflicted practically no damage.

There was not just one rock launcher, though. There were hundreds of them. Many of them were spread across a complex that stretched for over a hundred kilometers in every direction!

In fact, given the amount of space the temple complex occupied, the aliens could have built a lot more mysterious weapon emplacements!

When Ves began to look at the alien complex from a different perspective, he could pick up faint clues among all of the bizarre black pyramids and towers.

He felt he was looking at the skeleton of a huge multi-functional spell array. Its core must be the component that converted living sacrifices into useful energies or other resources.

The most important output was fresh deathborn, but that was hardly its only function.

It could do a lot of other stuff as well, such as channeling power into weapons or generating some sort of interference effects that obfuscated many details.

All of this gave Ves the impression that this was only the beginning. The deathborn only managed to erect an initial foothold for the time being. Once their numbers had expanded and once they acquired more resources, he had no doubt that these extra-galactic aliens intended to expand and upgrade the current temple complex!

Ves vaguely observed gaps and low-density areas that looked prime for expansion. He believed that this temple complex was actually semi-modular in nature. It was designed from the ground up to accommodate modular upgrades and additions over time.

This looked like a very practical way to initiate an invasion into a far-flung location!

While the current temple complex was probably built with the intention of repelling a sizable warfleet, the problem was that the only attacker so far consisted of a single ace mech, one that effectively reached the power of a senior ace mech at that!

The Riot Mark III quickly adjusted to all of the intercepting attacks.

It flatly ignored the weakest attacks and interference effects. The Saint Kingdom crushed the weakest effects while the rest bounced off the superdimensional ace mech's armor like they were nothing.

The more serious and exotic attacks might not have the potential to crush the Riot Mark III in an instant, but they could still drain the ace mech's resources on hit.

Saint Orfan had no patience to allow her machine to get hit so much. She began to put greater effort into evasion. Her superhuman skill combined with the augmented thrust power of the D-mech's resonance-empowered flight system allowed her to evade the vast majority of incoming fire!

The hit rate of all of the static defenses dropped by at least 80 percent on average!

Though the Riot Mark III could have evaded even more attacks if it truly wanted to, the stress on the ace mech's internal systems would have been too great. It was not worth the tradeoff.

Still, Saint Orfan grew satisfied with the current results. Her Riot Mark III's nimbleness still could not match that of the Dark Zephyr Mark III, but her machine still managed to perform much better than an

Anyone expected!

In the face of the apparent unstoppability of the Riot Mark III, the temple complex faltered.

Multiple weapon emplacements fell silent, either because their attacks could only tickle the powerful machine or because other structures blocked their line of sight.

There were not enough defenses to repel the descending ace mech.

There was a price to building and operating all of these defenses. The main purpose of the temple complex was not to act as a defensive stronghold. It instead served as a nexus for all of the deathborn operations in this dwarf galaxy.

Ves felt a little more comfortable after coming to this conclusion.

The combined fleet may have paid much to get this far, but they still managed to catch the aliens early enough.

If the humans came any later, then the native aliens and the deathborn would have made it at least ten times more difficult to assault this site!

The Dark Apostle stopped at a certain height above the surface.

Unlike the fearless Riot, the giant leader possessed much more apprehension about flying lower.

That would put him squarely in range of all of those nasty exotic gun emplacements!

An ace mech might have been able to endure all of those attacks, but neither Ves nor the Dark Apostle believed they possessed the same level of resilience, especially in their current state!

There was not much they could do up here. They awkwardly floated in a lower orbit while continually peering down at the temple complex.

While a haze of mist and fuzziness still obscured much of the lower levels of the temple complex, the Riot Mark III ongoing descent began to provide progressively clearer sensor readings!

Ves and the Dark Apostle requested a direct data feed from the D-mech.

The latter surprisingly complied!

This gave the pair a much better view of the actual state of the temple complex.

More details immediately became evident. Among the most unpleasant ones were the pits filled with rotting corpses and the channels that collected and redirected the blood taken from several dozen different species.

All of these terrible facilities did not exist to satisfy the deathborn's hunger for cruelty or desire to inflict suffering.

They all formed important pieces of one or multiple different rituals or rather subrituals.

The presence of increasingly more distinguishable carved symbols and alien decorations massively amplified the ritualistic atmosphere of this unholy complex. Ves could vaguely feel the abundant flows of negative E energies.

"Death… torment… coercion…"

Those who died in this unholy site did not get to enjoy a peaceful transition.

The rituals immediately captured the souls of all of the sacrificed beings and processed them in many different ways depending on the needs of the deathborn race!

Right now, the temple complex had completely ceased the production of new deathborn.

These weak and feeble cannon fodder posed almost zero threat against a D-mech of this caliber!

The problem was that the other defensive measures failed to impede the Riot Mark III in the slightest.

At most, they inflicted some level of attrition on the ace mech, but not enough to exhaust the machine and its vengeful pilot!

The facility could not rely on weak and dispersed measures to repel such a singularly powerful unit.

It had to concentrate all of its available power and unleash a singularly potent strike in order to have a chance of defeating this ace mech!

That was exactly what the temple complex did. A central outcropping of massive battleship-sized stones began to unfold like a flower.

This sluggish maneuver gradually unveiled the largest green crystal that Ves had ever seen!