The Mech Touch (Web Novel)

The fighting methods of the Singularity Lord and the Evolution Witch were too far apart.

The Singularity Lord predominantly fought against two kinds of opponents.

The first kind of opponent were swarms of weaker opponents. The whale developed his wide-area spatial abilities for the express purpose of wiping them out in the fastest and most efficient manner possible. A lone singularity was already enough to catch them in an inescapable net.

The second type of opponent were huge phase lords and phase whales like himself. Though the Singularity Lord rarely had to fight a serious battle against his fellow gods these days, strength remained the basis of his power. He had never ceased to develop his power and improve his fighting methods against similar gigantic opponents.

If his current adversary fell into one of these two categories, the Singularity Lord was convinced he could gain the upper hand.

However, the god mech he fought against was completely different from anything else he fought!

The fearsome biomachine originated in a completely different galaxy where the rules of warfare were not only different, but also much more comprehensive.

What the Singularity Lord found even more perplexing was how the god mech could become so powerful yet maintain such a compact size.

The Geneforger was an incredibly perplexing opponent to fight against! The alien leader would have preferred it if the god mech retained its earlier expanded form. It would have been much easier to attack an opponent that was large and clumsy enough to strike with ease.

The Evolution Witch instead made use of her advantages and stuck to the original size of her god mech.

None of the Singularity Lord's wide-area abilities could inflict any meaningful damage to the small but incredibly resilient machine.

As for the ancient phase whale's stronger and more physical attacks, his own size worked against his efforts!

The downside of having a body that was almost the size of a moon was that it took a huge amount of effort to make any movements. His reaction speed relative to his volume had plunged considerably, making it nearly impossible for him to hit the swift and agile god mech!

In truth, the Geneforger actually encompassed a lot more mass and volume than was apparent on the surface. The machine actually hid an entire pocket space filled with biomass and who knew whatever else.

The Singularity Lord could even sense it. Under any other circumstance, he would have been able to leverage his spatial abilities to block the pocket space or even try to unravel its boundaries, causing it to collapse or spill out all of its contents in realspace!

However, god mechs did not play by the rules. The Evolution Witch's God Kingdom was the most powerful force that the ancient phase whale had ever encountered in his long years of life.

It was difficult for the Singularity Lord to counteract his opponent's God Kingdom!

So far, the leader of the Red Cabal had only managed to wrestle partial control in areas that were further away from the god mech.

The lower the distance from the Geneforger, the harder it became to push back the female god pilot's influence!

This had great implications for the pocket space. Since it was anchored right in the center of the Geneforger, it received the strongest form of willpower reinforcement from the Evolution Witch.

This meant that the pocket space controlled by the god pilot did not play by the rules anymore either!

Ancient phase whales regarded themselves as the masters of space.

They could create pocket spaces with ease so long as they were willing to expend a bit of phasewater. They could collapse them with much less effort, as it was always easier to destroy than to create.

It was galling for the Geneforger to carry around such an ostentatious pocket space!

"YOU ARE AN ILLOGICAL EXISTENCE!"

"THOSE WHO ARE TRULY STRONG DO NOT FOLLOW THE RULES. THEY MAKE THE RULES!"

It was as if the god pilot was constantly reminding the Singularity Lord of his inability to break this seemingly fragile biomass reservoir.

However, the ancient phase whale did not have the time to figure out how to shut down the Geneforger's pocket space anymore.

Ever since the Evolution Witch had sprung her trap, the old ancient leader discovered to his consternation that he had become infected!

For the first time since many ages, the sacred and inviolable temple of his majestic body had become tainted by an outsider!

This was a form of blasphemy that the Singularity Lord could never imagine!

As a master of biotechnology himself, the alien quickly analyzed and identified how the human god pilot could have caused his own body to be slowly eaten and corrupted from within.

The human witch had somehow managed to subvert his own flesh!

She stole his own highly evolved and phasewater-saturated body cells and somehow altered them to work on behalf of her will instead of their original master.

In order to ensure that the stolen body tissue obeyed her will above all else, her Geneforger even inserted a tiny amount of organic matter originating from the mech itself!

Unlike the biomass taken from the ancient phase whale, the flesh belonging to the biomech still remained a core part of itself even after it had been separated from the mech frame.

The result was that the Evolution Witch had somehow converted the stolen body cells into tiny organic drones that she could control to the same degree as her own god mech!

The best part about all of this was that the manner in which she had done so was so ingenious that they looked completely the same on the surface.

After her Geneforger had completed the alterations, the god mech secretly injected the compromised organic cells back into the massive body of the Singularity Lord.

If the massive ancient phase whale knew what was coming, then he would have been able to isolate and eject the compromised body cells as soon as they entered his sacred temple.

However, the amount of cells contained within his moon-sized body was astronomically large. How could the native god possibly scrutinize every single cell on a constant basis? His control over his own body did not reach such an exaggerated state!

Due to the excellent camouflage of the compromised cells, they quietly blinded in with the regular cells slipped into the bloodstream, where they gradually began to infiltrate the ancient phase lord's body.

The blood circulation of the Singularity Lord's titanic body reached practically every part of his body. From the top of his brain down to his deepest phasewater organs, the godblood that was responsible for making him so powerful had also become a contributor to his downfall!

Even though the quantity of compromised body cells shouldn't have been great enough to threaten a body of his size, the Evolution Witch's devious works possessed several key traits that made them exceptionally threatening to the Singularity Lord.

First, the traitor cells may have turned their backs on their original master, but they still retained all of the strength that the old alien leader had invested in them. They were no weaker than his own cells and were not easy to eliminate!

If that was the extent of the problem, then the Singularity Lord could have relied on his huge immune system to strangle all of these rebellious body cells.

Unfortunately, it was the second trait that made them invincible among their peers!

The supreme willpower infused within the traitor cells enabled the Evolution Witch to channel her own god-like strength into them. This happened to amplify all of their properties, turning organic cells that used to be incredibly tough into living matter that was practically invincible among its own kind!

All of this superiority enabled the tainted body cells to run wild within the Singularity Lord's body.

Their most threatening move was to gang up on honest cells and forcefully bring them under the heel of the Evolution Witch!

The greater the quantity of compromised body cells, the faster this subversion effort proceeded!

Before, the tainted cells worked in secret, but now that they became exposed, they started to work openly, sacrificing subtly for speed!

This was why the mutations and deformations on the ancient phase whale's body became so much more obvious this time.

Each greenish tumor-like piece of flesh represented another major loss of control!

Since these empowered traitor cells already infiltrated every major section of his vast internal body, it was no longer feasible for the Singularity Lord to guarantee a part of his body mass and forcefully cut it away.

The only way out was for him to devise a biological solution that could eliminate the tainted body cells and purify the ones that could still be saved!

At the very least, the Singularity Lord needed to develop a stopgap measure that could contain the disease and prevent it from spreading any further!

Parts of the ancient phase whale body that were responsible for maintaining the health of his body became a lot more active than before.

No matter what, the Singularity Lord managed to evolve all the way to his present state by relying on modifying and upgrading his own body! He had done so for so many years that he understood how all of his organs and cells worked.

His depth of knowledge in the field of biotechnology already surpassed any single human biotech expert in the Red Ocean!

As long as he had enough time, he was sure to defeat this nefarious plot!

Unfortunately, the Geneforger would not let the Singularity Lord do as he wished!

"MY POWER IS BEYOND YOUR COMPREHENSION!"

Even though the Evolution Witch had exposed her terrifying ploy, she still fought in a similar fashion as before.

Her Geneforger maintained its wasp-like structure that was fast enough to circle around the titanic alien's body.

Every so often, the Geneforger dove in and buried its stinger as deep into the thick and scarred hide of the ancient phase whale!

Different from last time, the god mech no longer injected any compromised body cells.

Instead, its stinger released a surprisingly large quantity of phasewater-saturated venom that happened to be surprisingly damaging to the ancient phase whale's body cells!

Though the quantity of venom was miniscule, they burned and stimulated the Singularity Lord's nerves so much that the alien became distracted by the pain!

It wasn't so bad when the Geneforger only injected the venom a few times, but as they continued to accumulate with every sting attack, the ancient phase whale felt as if a part of his body was roasting next to a star!

As the native god's body slowly deteriorated over time, the Evolution Witch constantly imposed more and more of her willpower inside the phase whale's body.

Her influence over the alien's body had grown to such an extent that her God Kingdom started to claim its territory inside the Singularity Lord's most sacred temple!

If this pattern persisted long enough, the Evolution Witch could potentially hijack the ancient phase whale's own body!

It was at this time that the Singularity Lord understood his opponent's purpose.

The human god pilot did not seek to defeat the ancient phase whale.

Her goal was much more ambitious than that. She sought to usurp his body and take it over in its entirety!

This could not be allowed to happen!

It was at this time that the powerful leader realized that he could not afford to let this duel persist.

Unlike his strong-willed adversary, the Singularity Lord had no particular taboos about breaking his own promises or violating his own integrity.

His purpose and the cause of the phase whale race trumped every other priority!

The Singularity Lord had already discarded the Tenth Tide Station in his mind. The space station was doomed at this point.

What mattered the most right now was to deprive the hateful human invaders an opportunity to take the one of the strongest and most evolved phase whales prisoner!

"MY TEMPLE IS NOT YOURS TO TAKE!"

A strong spatial pulse rippled from his body!

The Singularity Lord concentrated hard and resisted all of the pain that was dragging his body down!

He forcefully activated an important phasewater organ that was buried so deep inside his body that it had only been slightly infected at this time.

The ancient phase whale did not hold back anything and recklessly burned an immense amount of phasewater in order to boost the power of his next ability as much as possible!

Once the overloaded organ threatened to burst from all of the excess activity, the Singularity Lord performed an emergency displacement ability that was meant to teleport him all the way to one of his secret enclaves that was located in an entirely different star system!

Even though his power passed through his body and affected the space around him, the displacement effect failed to bring him away.

"IMPOSSIBLE!"