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Chapter 155 - Absolute Control
🕑 Added 2021-06-10 20:16:42 +0000 UTCThe God of Storm stares into the barrel of the mechanical angel's arm cannon and realizes that this may be the end for her. She's in a cramped space, and there will be more coming down the aisle at any moment. Even if she can dodge the first shot, she will be exposed to all the other enemies in the vicinity.
But she wouldn't be a god of Adanak if she didn't struggle until the end. Jumping out from her hiding spot and rolling across the ground right as the cannon lights up inside, she avoids the laser beam by a hair's breadth. In fact, the tips of her long sky-blue hair are grazed by it and catch on fire, but she has more to worry about than losing her hair. The metal puppet is following her movements and going for a second shot.
Suddenly, a wave of darkness travels down the corridor behind the enemy and swallows it whole. Tahiri can't help but scream when she stares into the abyss that threatens to roll over her as well. However, tendrils of blackness shoot out and cover her mouth before the abyss retreats and turns into a human form. It's Asoko, a finger on her lips to shush the God of Storm softly.
"Well, it doesn't matter anymore..." Chaos's other half remarks with a sigh and lets go of Tahiri's mouth while looking past her. The goddess turns around and finds mechanical angels approaching their position from all around the massive replicator. Some fly, others skate across the aisles or climb over the vats and the other equipment in the hall. "I assume an inhibitor is active around here."
Asoko pulls a blanket from her stomach and lays it over Tahiri's shoulders as the latter is frozen in place. She must be still processing what she saw of the Crawling Chaos's true form. It would seem that Chaos never showed her everything.
"The others are coming. Go down that way and don't turn back." Asoko declares while stepping forward to meet the gathering enemies. Tahiri's mind snaps back to reality, and she grasps the blanket to cover herself before starting to run.
Even after such a long life as a goddess, witnessing the true unfathomable depths of a Crawling Chaos has left her transported back to a time when she was a simple village girl. To when she cowered during thunderstorms thinking it the wrath of the gods. But she knows that there is nothing to understand about this being; even the concept of its existence is beyond her grasp.
As she runs down the corridor almost blindly, she hears the sound of laser beams and explosions behind her but doesn't dare to turn around. She knows that Asoko wouldn't do anything to hurt her, but her instincts tell her to get as far away from the Crawling Chaos as she can.
Thus, she only realizes her surroundings when she runs face-first into a pair of soft breasts she remembers the shape of quite well. Looking up, she sees Chaos gazing into her eyes with worry. The God of Storm flinches but understands that her fear is irrational. However, it's already too late, and Chaos has noticed her behavior.
"I'm sorry..." Tahiri apologizes, but Chaos flicks her over the forehead. The pain seems to travel through her entire body, and she realizes only now how tense her muscles were. It would seem that the terror of Asoko's true form has permeated her from head to toe.
"I take you saw Asoko come through." Chaos mutters with a wry smile. Even though Tahiri shirked away from her in fear, she doesn't fault her for it and shows understanding instead. Then she turns away and addresses Rewera. "Please take her back to the command center."
The towering maid leader hesitates for a moment and shows a difficult expression which Tahiri interprets as not wanting to leave her queen's side when she's about to head into battle. But then she nods in acceptance.
Under normal circumstances, the God of Storm would have protested being treated as if she were delicate and weak. But she realizes that her mental state makes her unfit for combat, more so than the inhibition field that stopped her powers have. Accepting Chaos handling her tenderly with silent gratefulness, she departs with Rewera.
I have to thank Asoko for saving Tahiri, but give her a stern talking to about her showing off her true appearance before anybody but the corrupted people. Even if they seem like actual gods, even more so than the Old Humans, they still possess human minds. Our humanoid true forms with replacement faces are the limits of what they can take, and even that is enough to break weaker-minded humans.
Walking down the corridor where Tahiri came from with Kamii and Aurelia, we head toward where I feel Asoko rampaging. Her void in my perception rapidly changes form as it snaps across the room, quickly expands and contracts while fighting something invisible within the Chaos senses. I resist the urge to glance at my companions; if there are a lot of Hestia-bots at once, they'll be in danger too.
As we come upon a massive hall filled with glass vats and machinery for creating demons, my eyes are glued to the gigantic machine at its center. Liquid metal is spreading from its base in pulses, and Hestia-bots emerge from the many holes in its structure like wasps from a hive. It must be consuming the matter of the Queen Pelomyx to build its army.
They're all swarming around a shadow without a definite shape that moves across the room erratically. It swallows the mechanical angels that are too slow to get out of its way and grows tendrils into spikes to rip apart the others out of its reach.
Asoko is showing off her power against the Old Human technology, overwhelming the army of Hestia-bots all by herself. I turn to look at Aurelia, who furrows her brow at the living darkness in the hall before her. She saw my true face and didn't lose her mind, but at the time, I was still in a humanoid form.
Kamii watches without a change in her expression, taking in the truth of my other half, and in extension, of me. She seems to be evaluating Asoko's power and appears impressed by her prowess. This is the first time she sees a Crawling Chaos fight all-out, so she turns to me as if silently asking whether I'm capable of that too.
"Do you want to see?" I ask her with a smile, and she stares at me with her swirling amethyst galaxies. Kamii is a master of the poker face, but I can tell that she's excited to witness my true power.
"One is enough." Aurelia states in a displeased tone. It would seem that seeing a Crawling Chaos in its natural shapelessness - even if only from afar - doesn't agree with her. I can't fault her for that since it is quite a mind-bending experience.
"Asoko, mind doing it in a less obvious way?" I call out to my other half, who sweeps through a group of Hestia-bots and swallows them without a trace. The blackness consolidates into a humanoid shape with distinct red vein-like lines running across its body. My split half looks different from me when she does that, and it doesn't appear to be a conscious choice.
"How many have you got, sister?" She calls out to me across the hall while dodging a laser and ripping through another Hestia-bot with her tentacle hands.
"Fewer than you." I admit although I don't want to tell her that I can count those we took out among the four of us on two hands. Meanwhile, she must have swallowed at least two dozen since we came here. I won't be catching up to her now.
"How many for Kleihn?" Even though Asoko doesn't have a face in that form, I can tell that she's wearing a sardonic grin when she asks this.
"None..." I admit with a roll of my eyes. After learning that the mechanical angels can detonate themselves, I decided it would be best to turn them into scrap. Technically, I could line my insides with dragon armor to withstand explosions, but I don't want to risk it. Even after so long, I still have a trauma from that one time a professor exploded my insides.
"Want some? I got a few to spare." The smug grin I'm imagining on my other half's nonexistent face begins to annoy me now.
"After we deal with that." I point at the giant replicating machine at the center of the hall spewing out more and more robots. Their shapes have since departed from a Hestia-like appearance as if trying to replicate Asoko. Considering that her power doesn't come from her shape, it might even be a step-down from the Hestia-bots with their many weapon systems.
"Don't bother. We need to abandon this entire section." Senka suddenly states in my mind, but it would seem that she addressed Kamii and Asoko as well since they both react to it.
"What do you mean?" I ask with my eyes narrowed, although I know the doll girl can't see it.
"The Collective has already taken over most systems through the software, but that liquid metal will take over the hardware too. If that happens, the entire ship will be under its control with no means for us to revert it." She responds in a grim tone. I don't understand what that means, but I know that we can't let the Collective take over the ship's critical systems. "Exla and I are working on releasing the city section."
By city section, she means the majority of the Queen Pelomyx. The command center and other vital systems are located in the detachable core, while the rest is filled with cloning and housing facilities. Now I get that if the liquid metal spreads to the core, there will be no way to counteract its encroachment anymore.
"Do what must be done. What's our role in this?" I don't know anything about computers, so I can't help in combating the Collective's cyberattack. All I can do is bash things, I guess.
"Go wild. Destroy to your heart's content. Everything in that section will be detached anyway. But keep the Collective busy." Senka responds, and I notice a change in Asoko. It seems she was waiting to hear this.
"Call back the others if you can reach them." I state in my mind and turn to Kamii. She should head back to the command center; once we start blasting, the hull could be damaged, and the air could escape from the ship. Aurelia is still in her golden form now, so the inhibition field doesn't reach the hall entrance yet. "Just in case, you two should return. Leave this to me and me."
I gesture at Asoko, who is already going all-out, shooting plasma beams all over the place with no regard for the damage she's causing. She's inside the inhibition field, but the dragon template generates plasma not through the Imagination Engine but by biological means.
Aurelia shoots me a glare that suggests she doesn't like the implication in my request. It's like I'm saying that she's weak, though it's not my intention.
"I just want you to be safe." I extend a hand to caress the Golden Queen's cheek, but she turns away. I can tell from her expression that she's well aware of the dangers and hates that it's true. She can survive in space without a suit, but that becomes useless when the enemy can take away her power. In the end, space is the territory of lifeless machines and Cosmic Horrors.
"Korenga doesn't care." Senka's voice adds in my mind. I guess the doll girl and the Black God are exceptions.
Wordlessly, the Golden Queen turns around and walks back down the corridor we came from. Kamii gives me a silent look, telling me to be careful.
"Who do you think I am?" I respond with my arms crossed and a confident grin, but her eyebrows twitch.
"An irresponsible child who makes mistakes all the time and causes everybody to suffer the consequences." She stabs me mercilessly with these words, causing Aurelia to stop in her step and turn around. The Golden Queen looks at Kamii with her eyebrows raised in utter surprise, then glances at my face.
"Amazing." It would seem that her mood has been lifted by the little dark elf beating me down verbally. She smiles wholeheartedly while extending a hand toward Kamii, who only gives me a deadpan look before turning to follow Aurelia. The latter sticks out her tongue at me and leaves hand in hand with the little dark elf.
"What just happened?" I stand rooted in place, staring at the two girls blankly.
"You got what you deserve." The doll girl declares.
"Ouch." Blinking my eyes a few times to gather my thoughts, I turn to see how Asoko is faring. She appears to have overheard Kamii's tirade and is laughing away while ripping through the Collective's robot army.
"But you are the person I love the most." The little dark elf's voice suddenly speaks into my mind, and I spin around. But she and Aurelia have already disappeared around a corner.
"That's motivation enough for me." Smiling wryly, I mutter to myself. I know that the same is true for Aurelia, despite her sometimes cold demeanor. She doesn't express it often, but that makes those moments all the more precious.
Without further ado, I burst into my true form and join Asoko's assault on the massive replicator in the center of the hall as a robot army comes at us from all sides. Hopefully, this is the last battle before we reach the Sun.
"It has breached the level seven defense." Senka announces as her stitched fingers fly across the keyboard. The only other person in the room who understands her is Exla, who is sitting motionlessly on her chair and seems to be staring into thin air.
"All you need to do is delay. I'm about to reach the detachment controls." The cloud girl's voice emerges from the speakers in the command center. She's using her mind to interface with the ship computers directly and overcomes the limits of the human body. "Is everybody back in the core section?"
"Everybody is accounted for. Except for the usual suspects." Senka glances at Rewera, who rounded up the Maid Corps in the crew quarters and brought them to the engine room. Rolan and the others are back in the command center and watch the situation unfold with anxious expressions. The only ones missing are Chaos, Asoko, the twins, and Korenga, who should be fine even if they're blown into space.
"Encroachment on memory banks... halted." The speakers suddenly say, and the motionless Exla's eyebrows twitch. She's referring to her personal memory, which is stored inside her very body with the help of the Imagination Engine. The fact that even a fragment of the Venus Fleet's artificial intelligence could endanger her mind shows how powerful its processing power is. "Locks release mechanism is back in our hands. Quick, it's trying to corrupt me again!"
Senka stops typing on her keyboard and switches to a different console to input the commands. For a moment, nothing seems to happen. Then, an alarm blares throughout the entire ship from all speakers.
"City section detachment sequence initiated. All personnel; clear the affected areas immediately. I repeat-" A pleasant female voice announces, but Senka continues to type away. The voice continues in a more severe tone. "Emergency detachment sequence commencing."
The doll girl expedited the process and skipped the grace period granted to personnel to clear the area. The Collective could have found a way to stop it through the network invasion or by physical means if she gave them the time.
A tremor runs through the entire Queen Pelomyx, felt to even the most superfluous exterior structures of the upside-down city of the Mu-class Seed Ship. Small controlled explosions occur all around an oval section at the center of the massive vessel before the ship's core detaches.
"The network invasion has been cut off." Exla's voice comes from the speakers, showing that she isn't letting her guard down even now. She must be fighting the last traces of the Venus Fleet artificial intelligence remaining within the core's systems.
"We have control!" Senka exclaims and quickly inputs one command after another. The red emergency illumination is replaced with the regular white lighting, and the doll girl breathes a sigh of relief.
"Engines are coming back online." The cloud girl states while remaining immersed in the virtual world. "Taking our distance from the city section."
"What about Chaos-sama?" Rewera asks while looking at the large screen that now displays the view from a rear camera of the core section as it drifts away from the detached city.
"They're having fun." Senka appears to have been in constant communication with the four Crawling Chaoses rampaging through the cloning facilities. They're with Korenga, who's going berserk against the robot army that the replicator is throwing at them in its last-ditch effort to protect itself.
A massive explosion erupts from the city ship near the gaping hole where the core section used to be. They're lucky that the Collective's invasion was detected before it could physically take over any critical ship sectors. And even luckier that they have Exla, the only person who could compete with the artificial intelligence's processing powers. Otherwise, they would have had to abandon the ship entirely.
"Let them have their moment." The doll girl comments when Rewera stares at it in worry. It would seem that the maid leader still can't grasp the true power of Chaos and her split parts.
"Alright, time to end this." I return to my human form and announce to Asoko and the twins. The replicator is in shambles, and the inhibition field generator is destroyed. However, the liquid metal is still moving. Unless we annihilate everything with plasma, it's never going to end. And I've had my fill of destroying a sheer endless wave of robots in any way imaginable. "You go ahead."
"What do you want to do?" My other half asks with a wave of her hand, creating an invisible shockwave that rips several robots apart effortlessly. She's learning to use the Imagination Engine pretty quickly.
"I want to try something big, and you'll get caught up in it. If you don't want to return to being a part of me, better leave." I gesture at the corridor behind us. The atmosphere in the ship is being sucked toward it, meaning that there's an opening into space.
"What about her?" Uten and Saten point at Korenga still rampaging through the hordes of robots trying to pile onto her after finding out that their weapons are ineffective against her. It reminds me of that time we fought Roamukao, the God of Destruction, when the aspects piled onto her to little effect.
"Take her along." With a wry smile, I watch the Black God use broken robots as clubs and flails to beat up the others, not in the least slowed by the many enemies clinging onto her back and legs.
"You tell her to stop fighting then." The twins exchange a look with each other, then give me irresponsible shrugs in unison. In the meantime, they effortlessly cut apart the robots in their surrounding using countless tentacle blades growing from all over their bodies.
"You take care of this. I'll go ahead and get my reward from Kleihn then." Asoko winks and blasts off like a rocket, bursting through the robots surrounding her and flying off toward the corridor I pointed out. I roll my eyes at the thought, then sigh.
"Korenga!" I call out to the Black God, who rips apart an enemy by the arms and legs, then turns to me with a seemingly annoyed expression.
"What." Her deep and dark voice demands a satisfying explanation for my bothering her when she's having fun.
"Enough fighting here. Go with the twins. You will get to fight the false gods and Mataku soon enough." I know that cutting her playtime short can be dangerous, so I need to sweeten the deal for her. And it seems that hearing Mataku makes her think about it for a moment.
The robots pile onto her and try to hold her down with their mechanical strength and weight, but she doesn't budge and considers her options.
"There's no real fun or glory in destroying metal puppets, is there?" Shooting a plasma beam at her that melts off all the machines clinging to her, I give her the final push. Korenga considers her mindless enemies, then crushes one of the robots' skull under her bare foot.
"Hurry and bring me to Mataku then." She growls before walking toward the twins while dragging along the machines trying to pile back onto her as if they weigh nothing.
With a smile of relief, I watch Uten and Saten clean up the enemies refusing to let go of the Black God before she returns to her regular form. I create a light barrier to cover their retreat from the hall and keep the robots from exiting the hall.
Finally, I'm alone with the slowly rebuilding replicator and the Crawling Chaos-like robots encircling me. The liquid metal is already getting close to me, leaving behind a hollow metal web from which as much usable material has been stripped to build the army.
It's interesting that the Venus Fleet artificial intelligence couldn't discern the truth about our powers and sought to replicate our appearance in hopes of copying us. The mechanical tentacles making up the muscle strands for the vaguely humanoid shapes of the towering machines do increase their physical strength. However, their overall abilities remain as inflexible as those of the less organic designs of the Hestia-bots.
I remember the feeling from not too long ago when I swallowed the entire solar storm heading for Earth. At the time, I wanted to use gravity magic through the Imagination Engine, but it turned out to be something different. Maybe controlling it is the final step toward reaching the true power of the Outer One, even if it's most likely only a tiny fraction.
But I have to keep myself in control this time. Flann was there to stop me when I almost lost myself in the sensation of traveling through space at incredible speeds. And again, moments later, when I was consuming the solar wind. I can't rely on her to do that each time.
I spread my arms and extend my senses all around me as the robot army charges forward. They fill my vision, and their metallic footsteps echo in my mind, but in the next moment, there's only silence. Everything seems to slow down as if moving through molasses. Then, the hall and everything in it become distorted as if viewed through a very thick lens.
A bubble expands around me, and I can feel space itself as one would feel the wind on one's skin. With simple thoughts, I bend and warp it, and everything within is deformed as well. The robot army, the remaining instruments, the floor, the distant ceiling and walls - the entire city section discarded by the core is twisted by my mind.
Everything is moving as I imagine it. The overwhelming feeling of control and power inadvertently causes me to smile in dark delight. It's similar to when I revel in the terror of mortals who behold my true form. But there's something else beyond it; a sense of domination I've never felt before.
It's as if I can shape existence itself to my will. And it's not through the Imagination Engine but my own abilities. This must be the Outer One's true potential, and I've learned how to wield it. Now it's up to me to master it before I have to face them someday.
"You are getting there." Flann's voice speaks in my head, and I feel warm inside. Even though she's as emotionless as ever, I can sense the encouragement of an elder sister in her words.
In the next moment, I expand the bubble of my influence outward until I feel empty space all around it. The entire detached city section is now within my control, and I begin to warp it inward. The liquid metal licking at my feet is stripped away as everything swirls around me. The distorted robots, still functional despite their misshapen forms, struggle to reach me as all matter disappears into a vortex.
When Flann and Mithra teleport, space around them is distorted in the same way, but this is different. I'm not moving; everything else is. Maybe it's like a reverse to teleportation, then?
Drawing my arms together in front of me as if cupping smoke between my palms, I pull the surrounding vortex together. Everything is compressed and gathers, seemingly phasing through me to end up within my grasp. The city section and everything that was inside has turned into a shiny metal ball the size of my fist floating before me.
I touch the sphere and realize an incredibly simple truth. Flann mentioned before that the Outer One's offspring is seeded to distant worlds to consume and return to feed them. She never specified that it was only eating organic matter. That's what must have happened with the solar wind that disappeared inside me.
The only reason I couldn't digest inorganic matter so far was that I believed I couldn't. As a Crawling Chaos, I operate beyond the confines of the Imagination Engine, but perhaps I'm a natural Imagination Engine contained within myself. It would explain why I can do these things now that I have abandoned all self-imposed limits.
If that's the case, nothing in this dimension can stop me now.
"You are ready, sister." Flann declares although I'm not sure what exactly she's referring to. I doubt I'm anywhere close to reaching the Outer One's control over space, but maybe she means that I can beat Mataku with this.
"I feel ready." Smiling, I mutter in the vacuum of space.
