Chapter 5895: The Mirror Beast
5895 The Mirror Beast
From the moment the 7th wave began, everyone aboard the Dominion of Man understood that they wouldn't be able to breeze through this opponent as easily as before.
The calamity beasts of the previous waves all possessed their own strengths which they relied upon to grow powerful during their lifetimes.
Ordinary human warfleets would have struggled enormously to defeat these monstrous opponents. Each of them had evolved tough and resilient defenses that would have taken a lot of firepower to breach.
Yet their common vulnerability towards the absurdly effective teleport attacks unique to the Dominion of Man had caused all of these creatures to fall without inflicting too much damage in return.
The dreadnought's condition had actually improved throughout the waves as the engineers and bots gained valuable time to patch up holes and repair damaged systems.
The lighting baptisms resulting from the defeat of so many powerful calamity beasts also strengthened the overall parameters of the ship to a remarkable degree.
The rewards of the 8th round were so much greater than the previous ones that the ship was probably capable of defeating the other dreadnoughts without suffering serious damage in return!
Yet despite all of these incredible gains, Ves and the others still felt a hint of apprehension as the tribulation storm produced the first proper god beast.
"I guess... we can begin to find out whether a dreadnought is a match against a god mech." Ves commented. "God mechs are probably a lot stronger than these evolved creatures in every way, but the gap should be a bit narrower than we would like."
As the first god beast forged out of tribulation lightning slowly came into view, the observers became surprised yet again.
The shape of this 'creature' was unlike any other that came before! Not even the giant rock was as bizarre as this monster!
"Is that... a beast or a humanoid?!"
The reason why a lot of people became puzzled for a moment was because the god beast looked like a giant intelligent alien being.
It shared disturbing similarities to a human. The proportions were a bit off, but the so-called god beast possessed a pair of legs, an upright torso and three pairs of arms instead of a single one.
While the arms made the True God-level creature look a lot more inhuman, it was the head that truly increased its intimidation factor.
It was a flat mirror-like surface. There were no eyes, ears or mouth in sight. It literally looked as if a mad scientist had grafted a giant mirror onto the neck of the humanoid creature!
"This is either an artificial creation or a beast that has tried to transform its body into that of a native alien race." Ves guessed.
"There are ancient treatises that describe how beasts are capable of becoming increasingly more human if they wish."
"That is interesting... and troubling."
As the god beast settled into its temporary existence, its domain continued to spread from its body.
The entire space underneath the storm clouds became filled with hazy mists. The sensor systems of the Dominion of Man already began to experience difficulties as they struggled to detect objects through this hazy domain as easily as before.
It was clear that the battle between the Dominion of Man and this mirror beast had already begun!
"Launch probes! Make sure they can form stable data links with each other!"
Thousands of tiny and disposable probes launched from the hull. There were so many of them that they could practically form an army unto themselves. While they quickly lost contact with the dreadnought if they ventured too deep into the hazy mist, keeping them close to other probes ensured that they transmitted their sensor readings to the ship.
Whatever joviality and overconfidence that the crew possessed had disappeared. Each and every spacer became utterly serious as they knew that they had a much bigger fight on their hands than before.
Dread Captain Argile turned to Ves. "What is your judgment, Professor Larkinson?"
Ves frowned as he tried to puzzle out the god beast's domain. He leaned heavily on Blinky to try and glean the opposing True God's power.
"It is difficult to know for certain, but my best guess is that the mirror beast is mainly good at illusions, reflection and deception. It mainly relies on subterfuge rather than direct confrontation in order to win its battles. There is no telling how tricky it is, so be on guard against anything."
"Sensor contact! We have discovered the mirror beast's location! It is trying to circle around to strike at the most heavily damaged side of our ship!"
"Be careful! Fire a probing shot!"
Only a single cannon from a single primary positron cannon turret opened fire at the apparent target.
Surprisingly enough, the energy beam did not strike flesh nor pass through the six-armed beast.
Instead, the energy beam reflected directly back to the Dominion of Man!
The dreadnough's azure energy shields proved to be more than capable of defending against an attack of her own primary weapons, so no harm was done.
The result of this probe still had unsettling implications.
"This god beast is not an opponent that your ship can defeat by relying on overwhelming firepower." Ves spoke. "There is no telling where it is lurking."
"That likely means that its ability to fight us directly should not be too good." Dread Captain Argile countered. "We only need to ascertain where its true body is hiding before we can overwhelm it in short order."
"Contact!"
The giant body of the mirror beast appeared beyond the haze once again.
The dreadnought once again launched another probing attack. This time, it launched a pure kinetic round, only for the projectile to bounce backwards with just as much force as before!
Again, the Dominion of Man caught the return attack with her azure energy shields.
This was an interesting result to Ves.
"So the reflection aspect of its domain is not purely bound to physical constraints. The mirror beast is also capable of reflecting attacks that normally shouldn't be possible at these angles."
The mirror beast clearly played the long game. Its body continued to appear here and there, and the dreadnought launched a probing attack without committing to inflicting serious damage.
The constant teasing started to grate on Ves, but the professional spacers of the Red Fleet exhibited far more patience than him. Each of them had already worked hard to fight past the previous rounds, but none of them showed any signs of exhaustion. They all remained highly passionate and motivated. There was never a thought in their mind that truly gave them reason to think that the mirror beast would vanquish over their powerful ship.
"Contact!"
The image of the mirror beast appeared again.
Yet when the dreadnought launched another tentative probing attack, the kinetic round bounced back with more than ten times the force than before!
"One of our azure energy shield generators has suffered damage!"
"The mirror beast is approaching!"
"Maybe this is his real body."
"Launch other probing attacks on a sequential basis!"
Fearful for another amplified reflection attack, the crew tried their best to restrain themselves. It was frustrating beyond belief to avoid opening fire, but they could not afford to get struck by a barrage of reflected attacks.
They quickly made a number of interesting discoveries. They found out that more direct attacks bounced back without fail, but the mirror beast struggled to do the same for more indirect strikes.
"Cease fire with all kinetic and directed energy weapons! Focus on bombarding the mirror beast with gravitic attacks and missile volleys! Make sure to program the missiles to strike at the mirror beast from the flanks."
Explosions and gravity field attacks began to damage the massive body of the mirror beast.
Unlike before, the creature failed to figure out a way to bounce back these area attacks. The Dominion of Man remained unscathed during this interval as the mirror beast continually got pummeled without launching any effective counterattacks.
Suddenly, the various missiles suddenly started to blow the mirror beast into giant chunks of alien flesh and bone!
"The mirror beast has been felled!"
"That is not a real body. The mirror beast swapped out its body with an illusion!"
"Where has it gone?!"
The hazy mist thickened. Many probes suddenly fell out of contact as it became even more difficult to maintain a solid connection!
Just as everyone wondered where the mirror beast would show up next, Ves suddenly became surprised as he spotted an identical copy of Dread Captain Argile hovering next to the one sitting on the command seat.
What was remarkable was that the identical copy looked and felt exactly the same as the real version!
The copy not only replicated the Dread Armor perfectly, but also imitated the spiritual activity down to producing a highly convincing duplicate of the Bloodfire Pact!
The only real difference was that the copy of Volkert Argile had raised its arm and was about to open fire at the actual dread captain with a wrist-mounted armament!
"Intruders! We've been infiltrated!" Ves shouted just as alarms rang throughout the entire ship!
Since Ves is in no condition to brawl like a phase lord at this time, he summoned his Unending Regalia from the Vault of Eternity and fired a full-powered laser beam at the target!
The laser beam bounced right back at Ves, but with thrice the power as before!
His recently gifted azure energy shield generator instantly came to life and blocked the reflected attack!
"Damn! This is no ordinary illusion!" Ves cursed as he made a very ominous guess. "If my suspicions are correct, the mirror beast may have infiltrated this ship!"
Ves did not even know how this was possible when Furia's fiery domain should have protected the Dominion of Man against this esoteric form of infiltration.
Chaos erupted throughout the ship as more duplicates of familiar fleeters appeared in everyone's midst. They opened fire at everyone with their copied weapons, and proved impervious against people's attacks as their shrunken bodies reflected everything aside from explosions!
"We are suffering casualties throughout the ship! The mirror beasts have copied all of the armaments of our personnel, which includes our Dread Marines!"
Much of the initial casualties resulted from spacers firing their weapons at the suspicious copies only to get struck by their own attacks after it had gone through a round of amplification!
Yet despite all of the initial confusion, the Dominion of Man actually prepared a huge set of solutions in case it had ever been boarded by hostile parties.
The Brain Trust employed many of these solutions after just a few seconds of performing a massive amount of calculations!
Azure energy shields as well as more physical barriers appeared in order to separate different people from each other.
Hundreds of tests were being conducted on each suspicious individual to ascertain whether they were manifestations of the mirror beasts.
After a lot of rapid trial and error, the Brain Trust finally figured out a set of foolproof solutions that could accurately distinguish real from fake!
The Brain Trust took full advantage of this by keeping the fakes isolated while multiplying the local gravity acting on their positions by at least two orders of magnitude!
This meant that any person who previously weighed 60 kilograms aboard the ship suddenly 6,000 kilograms or more!
There were very few organisms that could resist such heavy punishment.
Whatever the mirror beast had done to split up her manifestations had not invested too much power into their transient existences.
This meant that a lot of fakes got crushed by the local gravity of the dreadnought!
While there were still many fake humans who successfully evaded this crush for various reasons, they failed to escape the ship's other internal defensive measures.
That did not stop the mirror beast from continuing to mess with the crew.
Even as all of the eliminated fakes disappeared from view, brand-new copies emerged right next to their originals!
Their favorable positions allowed all of them to attack their targets without any immediate obstruction!
If not for the fact that the Brain Trust responded quickly to put a lot of new azure energy shields into place, a lot of lightly armored fleeters would have fallen at this time!
"We can't keep doing this! We need to find the source and take it down!"