A blazing skirmish took place above the surface of the Dominion of Man!
Two glowing shapes circled around each other. They frequently exchanged blows that constantly generated explosions of fire and lightning.
The larger shape that glowed with sickly green lightning constantly sought to damage and tarnish the radiance of the smaller shape surrounded by fiery orange flames.
While the larger monster launched more destructive attacks that often inflicted a lot of collateral damage onto the hull of the Dominion of Man, the slightly smaller monster exerted his power in increasingly more inventive ways!
As the two giant and distinctly inhuman shapes circled around for another clash, the one that was actively being propped up by the Spark Reactor of the Dominion of Man formed another blastlance and drove it into the lightning-empowered enemy.
A powerful explosion of fire energy knocked back the gigantic alien form until the clone of a much more powerful being collided against the side of a ruined gun battery!
Despite the humiliating display, the Subjugation King did not express any hint of displeasure.
In fact, the powerful God King displayed more and more satisfaction as Ves and his partners put up an increasingly better fight!
Given that the clone of the Subjugation King allowed so many incoming attacks to land when he definitely possessed the foresight and strength to block or evade them, there was no way this powerful opponent was fighting at his full strength.
This caused Ves to become increasingly more suspicious at the attitude of the Subjugation King.
It seemed more and more likely that the powerful alien was deliberately modulating his combat strength in order to present a difficult but not insurmountable challenge to Ves.
If that was the Subjugation King's play, then it was obviously working.
Ves and his partners constantly felt the pressure to improve and develop better ways to fight. They had grown so rapidly during this high-stakes fight that it was unbelievable to think that they weren't originally meant to fight!
While the rapid growth should have been a cause for joy, Ves did not entirely treated this as a favorable development.
The fact that the Subjugation King never actually lost the upper hand was proof that he still had enough fighting power to spare.
As both Ves and the clone of the God King fought more intensely against each other, the inevitable outcome was greater collateral damage!
For example, the Subjugation King tore out the gun barrel of a nearby broken turret and utilized it as a club to bash against Ves' true body!
The hardened transphasic hyper alloy struck a hard blow against the fire energy armor plating that Ves and Blinky had shaped over the tall true body.
By now, half of the body was covered with glowing orange armor plating. Blinky worked hard to shape and condense a lot of fire energy into a solid armor raiment that would stay in place and keep up with the movements of the body.
Fire energy was not originally suited for defense, so Blinky had to work extra hard to make it behave according to the design supplied by Ves!
The fact that it worked a lot better than it should was because Ves had donated copious amounts of his own lifeblood to reinforce the temporary armor plating!
Ves had discovered that his blood was not only a source of phasewater, but also possessed a much stronger spiritual component than he expected!
He believed that this was partially due to all of the fire energy coursing in his body. His blood must have assimilated some of it, producing unknown effects that allowed him to manipulate it in increasingly more versatile ways.
Though Ves expected his blood to lose this extraordinary charge as soon as the supply of high-quality fire energy was cut off, he was determined to make the most of this temporary advantage!
Ves did not hesitate to spill liters of his own blood to reinforce his summoned weapons and armor.
His powerful true body was easily able to generate replacement blood, so he was not afraid of dying from blood loss.
The more serious problem of his tactic was that it was not so easy to replace the lost phasewater.
As a result, the longer he fought, the more his phasewater concentration dropped!
Ves endured real pain each time he expended his phasewater-infused blood, but he saw no other way to empower his fire energy armaments to a level where they could keep up with the clone of the Subjugation King.
The only reason why he wasn't too worried about spilling out so much phasewater was because the regular countershocks spontaneously replenished his depleted reserves.
He was actually maintaining a careful balance. He constantly needed to control his expenditure of phasewater to ensure it did not exceed the phasewater produced by exposure to tribulation energies.
Ves still grew stronger so long as he maintained a positive balance. He just did so at a slower rate than before.
Even so, it still wasn't enough!
The trio might be able to pressure the clone of the Subjugation King, but they weren't able to hinder the powerful alien from damaging the ship!
Many times, the powerful tribulation manifestation somehow found a window of opportunity to launch a casual strike at the increasingly more damaged hull.
So much of the exterior of this side of the dreadnought had been wrecked by previous attacks that the Subjugation King was able to damage or destroy important systems!
"#$#&."
"YOU MUST DO BETTER IF YOU WISH TO SAVE YOUR PRECIOUS SHIP."
The powerful alien clone allowed the giant transphasic fireblood axe to strike his shoulder and inflict a shallow wound. A powerful jolt of tribulation lighting instantly zapped Ves shortly afterwards.
Though the wound was actually a bit more serious than it looked, the clone of the God King ignored the injury and proceeded to reach out and grabbed Ves' armored form with his limbs.
"$&$#%."
"YOUR FIGHTING SPIRIT IS BARELY ADEQUATE, BUT YOUR RELIANCE ON BORROWED ENERGY WILL BE YOUR DOOM."
The clone exerted a huge amount of strength as he threw Ves' true body right into a large hole on the hull of the dreadnought!
Ves uttered a soundless cry of pain as his body crashed through a damaged bulkhead and collided against an exposed azure energy shield generator!
The shell and the components of the shield generator instantly crumbled upon impact!
If not for the fact that it had already been depowered, the destroyed generator would have produced a painful explosion!
Ves did not dare to take his time to recover from the impact. The longer he remained buried inside the dreadnought, the greater the chance the Subjugation King would come and resume the fight in a much more sensitive location!
Blinky generated a powerful simulated flight system onto the back of the armor raiment. It quickly generated a lot of thrust power, allowing Ves to propel him back outside the ship!
The clone of the Subjugation King quickly greeted his opponent with a powerful ball of tribulation lightning that he had formed with his limbs.
Yet before the powerful alien could launch this destructive attack, Ves raised his arm and waited for Blinky to generate a simplified version of a transphasic ballistic pistol!