Chapter 614 Not Easy Prey
Absomet had been bleeding soldiers faster than she could produce new ones, and this situation was not helped when her fabrication and cloning facilities were reduced to functioning barely above 25%.
The Rune Ship still fought hard with what she had available. Each soldier was armored with a metallic armor that resembled silver mirrors, these were the latest iteration of armor produced by the Rune Ship after she discovered how ineffective her previous armor was to the power of the Abominations.
At the first clash, Absomet had with Lamia, the Abomination Champion alongside its troops had torn through a hundred thousand soldiers like a hot knife through butter, as her previous armor had no way to restrict the Abomination from infecting and absorbing her soldiers, in fact, the core of the Reapers, Lamia foremost shock troops came from these batch of Absomet soldiers.
The Rune Ship was a potent weapon of war and that meant it could innovate better than most, even in the midst of battle, the latest armor she made had reduced the infection rate to less than half, which was amazing progress seeing she had minimal resources to work with.
Although Absomet had focused mostly on innovating her ships and battle cruisers as those were the true weapons against Abominations, weapons of flesh like her soldiers were just feeding power one way or another to Lamia.
The Abomination was not slowed down and had begun to harvest Biomass on countless worlds, to slow down her speed of gathering strength, the Rune Ship had razed dozens of worlds to dust, and the greatest battle was on a Minor World that was destroyed three months ago.
This was the change that sparked Absomet's fury, a Minor World could not be compared to the hundreds of worlds that had been previously slaughtered, because a Minor World was a potent focus of Aether, and Absomet was sure that Lamia had been able to create a second Champion using the energy she consumed from that planet.
Why were the gods watching this madness? She could understand disregarding the hundreds of worlds that parishes under the Abomination madness, but claiming a Minor World was a direct slap against the Dominion of Trion.
With all the ongoing chaos and destruction presently taking place, the true battle was between the Rune Ship and the three Leviathans using their main weaponry.
The Rune Ship was using a Vorpal–Rune Cannon more than thirty miles long that could be rotated in every direction and could fire a beam of pure Aether that was Aspected towards the flame, frost, lightning, and other elemental essences.
At full power, this weapon could punch through a dozen Minor Worlds but currently, it was running at its lowest settings, not because this was what the Rune Ship wanted but because her powers were being throttled.
Yet even with this reduced power, she still stood against the three leviathans, which she had learned were called Akhurils.
The Akhuril shot out thick streams of red flames from their mouths that resembled laser beams, Rowan would have recognized these flames as Flesh Light, but enhanced to such a degree that they could consume an entire world.
The Rune Ship could not attack as her cannons were busy deflecting and blocking the strikes from the three Akhurils, she had to make sure every single beam of flashlight was thoroughly destroyed, or else it would create crystals that would drain the vitality in the battlefield and transform into mines which could detonate with the force of a small thermonuclear bomb.
Absomet was not content with sparring against three of these creatures for it revealed how far Lamia had grown, as she was only using a small portion of her vast armies to battle against her directly. This realization stung her pride, as she could see the gigantic figure of Lamia in the distance not paying attention to the battle but being busy with feeding herself.
The war for this Abomination was just a gigantic feeding ground.
She resembled a female humanoid standing more than twelve miles tall, and her head and upper body were pressed against one of Absomet's largest battleships and she was dining on the inhabitants.
Lamia was grabbing the ship with one hand while she pushed her tongue into a gap she created in the hull.
The tongue separated into hundreds of strands of muscle that went through the battleship tearing apart soldiers and devouring them with relish, her moans of pleasure could be heard throughout the battlefield.
Her hair was filled with eyes that were roving throughout the battlefield and the lust and depravity inside them had driven thousands of soldiers to madness, and as the battle continued that number continued to increase.
Behind her were twelve Akhurils, who stood at the ready, safe in their knowledge that only three of their number was enough to drag the Rune Ship to ruin.
Below all that were numerous bio-mechanical sweepers from both sides who were roaming the battlefield and dragging the dead and still dying to the processing plants where screaming men and Abominations with various degrees of injuries were grounded into a paste and their bodies harvested for parts.
Her orders were to drag Lamia toward the heart of the Empire by all means necessary, but Absomet soon realized that she did not need to do so, Lamia was coming to the Empire one way or another, and the orders that she was following were only serving to make the Abomination stronger.
This was the present situation the three gods witnessed as they stepped onto the battlefield.
Their presence was like a loud siren in the silent period when the day was about to break. The entire battlefield suddenly went silent, only the sound of the footsteps of the gods could be heard as they walked to the tip of the Rune Ship.
The entire battlefield went silent not because the combatants stopped fighting, but instead, they were all frozen in place, like flies caught in Amber.
This bitter war where tens of thousands were dying every moment, where great feats of heroics and terrible acts of cruelty were taking place suddenly felt meaningless.
The presence of the three Gods of Trion made everything else lack meaning and substance.
Lamia was the only one moving and she did not seem to be in a hurry as she withdrew her tongue from the battleship and tossed them aside.
Speaking in old Medan the Abomination crooned like a satisfied cat, "So you are finally here, my kin. You will not find me easy prey like before."