Chapter 3887: Spatial Struggle
The centerpiece of the unfolding battle was the duel between the Phase King and the Cerebral King.
Even though they were fighting in the middle of a busy battlefield, it was quite apt to call their fight a duel.
The two beings were on another level compared to the other combatants on the battlefield. Both of their bodies shone with ancient power as they kept exerting their considerable organs in dizzying attacks against each other.
After the initial exchange of attacks, it soon became evident that neither of them possessed an overwhelming advantage against each other.
The Phase King integrated so much phasewater in its body that each of its phasewater abilities had the power to overcome a huge amount of resistance, especially at closer ranges!
Not only did the Phase King possess an abundant amount of power, it had also exercised them for so many years that it had reached an extreme level proficiency in its ability to manipulate the fabric of space!
From warping its body to speed up its movements to bending space so that any energy attack inevitably curved aside, the sovereign of the Phase Kingdom almost fully showcased the limit to how extensively the fish-whale race could employ phasewater to its advantage!
THIEF. WEAKLING. UNDESERVING.
The Cerebral King encountered one hindrance after another at first. Although it had recently made up for its enormous deficiency in Phasewater, it could never compete against the Phase King in terms of spatial manipulation!
This was why the Cerebral King quickly stopped competing against the Phase King in this manner. It solely focused on stabilizing the space around it while resorting to its more traditional abilities to inflict harm.
In one moment, it opened its maw and released a gigantic energy beam that burst through the toughest spatial barrier and raked the powerful body of the Phase King!
If not for the latter's powerful physique and its attempt to divert the incoming beam by bending the space in front of it, the Phase King would have suffered greater injury!
NOT ENOUGH. WEAK AS BEFORE. INCOMPETENT. WILL SHOW TRUE POWER OF GODBLOOD!
The Phase King decided to change its approach and concentrated deeply before channeling all of its power in a line that went all the way to its target!
A few seconds passed as the space along this line began to shake and crack. Any particles in the way inevitably splintered as an ominous black crack emerged in front of the Phase King and quickly lengthened towards the other king fish!
The Cerebral King felt an incredible threat from this space tear and channeled its phasewater-enriched organs to strengthen the space in front of it in an attempt to block the expanding crack.
It wasn't working! At best, the Cerebral King slowed down the Phase King's efforts, but how could one of the measures the latter had prepared against its fellow rivals be so easy to defeat?
FUTILE. NO SKILL. NO DEFENSE.
The Cerebral King launched numerous different attacks towards its opponents, but each of them collided against the Phase King's strong spatial barrier.
The burden on the latter was enormous, but it was so determined to inflict a heavy injury on the Cerebral King that it went all-out right from the beginning!
If not for its long and unrelenting efforts to master the ability to manipulate phasewater, the burden of channeling phasewater in two different but powerful manifestations would have caused a backlash!
As it was, the Phase King was so driven by the need to fight and kill one of its powerful rivals that it did not hesitate to perform at its peak!
Seeing as its initial attacks failed to interrupt the expanding space tear, the Cerebral King tried to evade it by moving to the side. Its huge, lumbering body moved to the side, though without the distinctive warp travel capabilities that many Phasers seemed to master.
The Cerebral King actually had this ability as well, but it was forced to focus all of its effort into stabilizing the surrounding space lest the Phase King gained an even greater advantage!
FUTILE. CANNOT STOP. WILL GORGE ON YOUR FLESH.
The space tear might look as if it could only go straight forward, but under the powerful and skillful manipulation of the Phase King, it turned in its trajectory and kept chasing after the Cerebral King!
It was only after it reached the last few hundred meters that the progress of the space tear slowed down. The Cerebral King focused all of its effort into holding the space in front of it together, but the Phase King's might was still too overwhelming.
The alien master of phasewater even took the initiative to move closer so that it was better able to push its spear tear past all of the resistance!
The Cerebral King's eyes shook as it kept backing away, only for the space tear to keep creeping closer.
HOW CAN YOU BE SO STRONG?
SECRET OF GODBLOOD. BODY TRANSFORMATION. HEAD START. TRUE HEIR OF GOD.
UNTRUE! HERESY! POWER OF MIND GREATER THAN YOURS!
USELESS. GODBLOOD IS ULTIMATE POWER. BODY IS ULTIMATE CARRIER OF POWER. THIS IS TRUTH!
Whether the Phase King was accurate or not, its words caused the Cerebral King to waver as it questioned its own beliefs and assumptions.
This only exacerbated its crisis as the space tear more easily crept forward.
Just as it was about to split a portion of the gigantic body of the Cerebral King, a mech suddenly crashed the party!
A powerful salvo of resonance-empowered positron beam attacks struck the spatial barrier protecting its rear!
Although the barrier was still fully intact, the power of this combined strike was significantly greater than the attacks of other mechs and fish-whales.
An aggressive expert mech that glowed red like a volcano thundered forward while unleashing another salvo of positron beams!
This time, the spatial barrier rippled a bit more as it experienced substantial difficulties in mitigating the attacks amplified by an unknown quality that the Phase King had never encountered before!
NEW THREAT. UNKNOWN FORM. METAL SURROUNDING FLESH. OUTSIDER?
Although the Phase King tried to quiz Patriarch Reginald through a form of mental communication, the high-tier expert pilot grimaced in annoyance before using his willpower to close his mind from external influences.
"I don't understand your stupid whale language, you stupid fish! All I need from you is to baptize my new saber with the blood of an alien king!"
Despite the danger and despite the immense disparity in power, Patriarch Reginald Cross never let his fear overtake his courage.
The Bolvos Rage kept firing with as much power that Reginald and his familiar expert mech could channel in their attacks.
At the same time, the expert mech continued to advance forward until it had almost reached the spatial barrier.
Just as the expert mech was about to collide with the barrier, it had raised its Whale-Cutting Saber.
The recently-forged weapon glowed with crimson resonance as Patriarch Reginald prepared to execute a special technique.
At the same time, the leader of the Cross Clan summoned all of his desire to break through the obstacles in front of him and make the intimidating king fish bleed!
"SHATTER BEFORE MY MIGHT!"
To the astonishment of both king fishes, the glowing saber flashed brightly before it struck the spatial barrier that was strong enough to withstand the attacks of hundreds if not thousands of mechs!
The barrier actually exhibited a tear!
Even though the Bolvos Rage ultimately failed to get past this powerful blockade, Patriarch Reginald did not get discouraged.
He may be battle hungry but he wasn't stupid. An opponent as powerful as the Phase King clearly couldn't be stripped of its defenses with just a handful of attacks.
"If I can't break down this barrier with a single strike, then I will launch two strikes! If two strikes aren't enough, then I will launch four strikes! One way or another, I shall strip you of your protection!"
The Bolvos Rage almost went all-out at this time!
Aside from its missile launcher and its shotgun, the expert hybrid mech utilized its formidable arsenal to overwhelm the spatial barrier as much as possible.
Resonance-empowered positron beams struck the barrier once every few seconds while Whale-Cutting Saber kept battering at the invisible but resilient spatial blockade.
Attacked from two different directions, the Phase King did not feel an immediate crisis, yet the persistent attacks from the rear forced it to keep diverting more focus and power away from its main attack.
The spatial tear inevitably grew weaker, granting the Cerebral King a much-needed reprieve.
NOT ALONE. FRIENDS. ALLIES.
USELESS! TOO WEAK! OUTSIDERS. TRAITOR.
YOU ARE TRAITOR! NOT DESERVING OF GODBLOOD! WILL STRIP IT FROM YOUR BODY MYSELF!
The Cerebral King no longer resisted as passively as before. It understood that it needed to do more to undermine the greatest strength of its opponent.
The king fish carefully attempted to study how the Phase King employed its spatial manipulation while doing its best to familiarize itself with its newly-strengthened phasewater organs.
Normally, the highly-intelligent alien creature would have taken weeks, months if not years to figure out how to harness the vast quantities of phasewater it had absorbed into its body.
However, with a ready-made example before its eyes and other senses, the Cerebral King put its powerful cognitive functions to good use and derived numerous lessons and insights from its lethal foe.
After a minute of struggle, the Cerebral King changed the way it exerted its phasewater organs and began to impose its power onto the spatial tear that kept threatening to split its body apart!
Slowly but surely, the wound in the fabric of space began to heal and recede from the body of the Cerebral King.
As the king fish saw the results of its efforts, it gained more confidence and channeled more of its improved abilities towards the spatial tear.
An invisible tug-of-war occurred between the two king fishes as both of them tried to impose their power onto the space between them. Although the Phase King still possessed an overwhelming advantage in this aspect, the Cerebral King's tenacious resistance caused the attack to stall in its progress.
While this struggle continued, the Bolvos Rage kept pounding at the Phase King's spatial barrier without any pause!
Despite the rapid drain on its energy reserves and despite the complete lack of apparent progress, Patriarch Reginald's aggression never faded in the slightest!
Instead of seeing the power of the Phase King as an insurmountable obstacle, he took it as a challenge that he had to overcome in order to take another step forward in his progress towards attaining greater power!
"No defense is impervious!"
"No weapon is ineffective!"
"No space wizardry will deny me from spilling the blood of a king!"
As the Bolvos Rage began to accumulate a lot of heat due to its repeated high-intensity attacks, Patriarch Reginald spontaneously figured out a way to leverage its saber technique in a more effective manner.
Ketis may have set him up and pointed him in the right direction, but it was up to the expert pilot to develop his strength further.
His eyes shone as his will manifested even deeper into his expert mech's weapon. The degree of true resonance amplifying the Bolvos Rage slightly broke through its previous record as Reginald reached an unprecedented peak!
"METEOR CHOP!"
The flaming Whale-Cutting Saber seemingly turned into a soaring meteor as it struck the spatial barrier with unnatural force!
Although the new technique did not exhibit the extreme cutting power of Ketis' saber style, the latest attack fully aligned with Reginald's strengths, allowing him to use the Whale-Cutting Saber as a vessel for desire to overcome the greatest barriers by force!
The explosion of power, light and heat that resulted from this blow was so violent that the two king fishes briefly shifted their attention to the expert mech.
Much to their surprise, the Bolvos Rage succeeded in breaking open a gap in the spatial barrier!
Even though the Phase King tried its best to close this gap, the Bolvos Rage quickly took advantage of the opening and plunged through the entrance without fear!
"HAHAHA! TAKE THAT! I TOLD YOU THAT I WILL SPILL YOUR BLOOD!"
However, just as the Bolvos Rage neared the gigantic body, the Phase King directed its full attention towards the approaching expert mech.
Just a second after the Phase King locked onto the Bolvos Rage, the entire machine became enveloped in a localized spatial storm!
"ARGGHH!"