Now that they were flying instead of slowly ascending while destroying OrgoCorp ships, it barely took Apex a few seconds to reach the hull of the mothership and pierce through it with ease. Immediately, they were ambushed by multiple infantry units—organics with mechanical enhancements—of which they made short work and quickly approached the bridge, finally encountering the commander of this fleet, the Harbinger.
The defensive infantry forces seemed to keep coming endlessly as Apex finally reached the bridge, with tentacles emerging from their back and stabbing any biomechanical creature that dared to get close or attack them.
It was at this point that their consciousnesses separated.
[Mind taking care of the rabble?] Alex asked Gwen. [I want to talk to this guy.]
[Letting me do the fun stuff, while you do the boring talks? Count me in!]
Apex suddenly split into two different entities, with the slender feminine figure leaping up and throwing a roundhouse kick that smashed through multiple infantry units, while the remaining figure became shorter, closer to six feet from the previous eight, and gained a humanoid figure, turning into a man with black hair and emerald green eyes wearing a formal suit.
Even the Octopus seemed taken aback by the sudden change, expressing its thoughts by shaking its bulbous head.
"Harbinger," Alex smiled. "You've been causing quite a bit of trouble for me the past few days."
"Who are you?" An emotionless, mechanical voice came from a speaker placed under the bulbous head, at what was supposed to be the neck connecting its body and head.
"Apex," he said with a polite smile. "I'm here for information."
The creature took a few minutes to respond. "We have no information related to you."
"Oh, you'll come to realize that your information is going to be invaluable for me," he said. "Tell me, have you seen any clones of your big boss? I'm talking about the High Evolutionary."
"What?"
"I don't have the patience for this." Alex shook his head and waved his hand, shooting a mass of black at the octopus. As a command-type creature, its agility could only allow it to barely raise one of its free arms in defense, only to see it getting wrapped up within a black material that quickly started spreading along its body. A panicked screech was emitted from the speaker before Alex directly devoured the creature, obtaining all of its memories.
A faint frown crept up on his face as he processed the memories.
'Not a single trace of another variant of him… Are they hiding? Such a varied army wouldn't make sense otherwise. There are too many inconsistencies in what Ayesha and the Sovereign know about him… Maybe this whole High Evolutionary plot was part of another Guardians movie, or even a standalone show.'
Getting the memories of the High Commander of this fleet, who was commanding the entire planet's battle, gave Alex a clear picture of everything, including where the forces had been deployed and what hidden plans they were going to execute to strike a blow on the Sovereign's defense line.
'No information regarding any Infinity Stones on him either… This High Sovereign is a cautious one.'
While he was mildly disappointed, Alex didn't let that get to him and turned to look at the carnage that Gwen had left behind as she went deeper into the ship. Half of the bridge was left with large gashes from her claws and holes made from the tentacles that came out of her back, with bodies of the biomechanical infantry units littering the floor.
'Note to self, rein in the bloodthirst when in the True Merge state with hosts. It clearly has aftereffects. I believe that the nervous system bond is also partly responsible for this particular issue.'
Alex quickly made his way through the trail of bodies left behind by Gwen and caught up with her.
"Hey, come on, we have things to do."
"A bit longer," she said, punching one of her opponents with a discharge of her bioelectricity that made it fly back and explode with lightning, taking five of its brethren with it. "I've barely warmed up."
"You'll have enough to do later," Alex said, immediately approaching her and wrapping his arm around her waist, and pulling her back.
"Come on!" She shouted, waving her arms and legs at him as he ripped her out of her monstrous, suited form, revealing her actual self, which was almost a foot shorter than him. She was dressed in the black-themed Ghost Spider outfit, without the hood, such that her childish expression was clearly visible to both Alex and the enemies alike.
The infantry units were taken aback for a moment at the scene as a man came up and ripped out someone who seemed like a petulant child from the large monster that was slaughtering them all moments ago.
"I have four similar ships to take care of," Alex said, ignoring Gwen's protests. "And we have an entire planet-wide battlefield to clean up within the span of the next hour."
With that, Alex merged with Gwen, directly entering the True Merge state to calm her down.
"As for you guys…" Apex looked at the infantry units that had started shooting at them, not even tickling the Cosmic Physique that was powerful enough to punch through planets with their bullets.
Shaking their head, Apex brought both hands together as a blue glow appeared between them. For once, calling upon the true potential of ‹Lightning Divinity› that went beyond just relying on the clouds and focused inwardly to produce lightning.
"This consumes a lot more stamina and energy than it's worth, but we are on a time crunch."
The demonic-sounding voice, along with the gathering of the threatening arcs of lightning compressed between the monstrous creature's palms, clearly made their opponents panic as they tried every single means to interrupt or stop Apex, but it was useless. Within a few seconds, the compressed orb of lightning had grown to a blinding level of brightness. Suddenly, the white light transformed into searing crimson and exploded, rapidly spreading through the entire ship and further ahead.
In the distance, the commander of the Sovereign's defense line on Zephyros was enjoying a rare moment of respite as the offensive of the OrgoCorp ships suddenly weakened when the monstrous entity called Apex—as told to him by their Leader—entered the command mothership. At this moment, a flash of red at the edge of his screen caught his attention, and he changed the remote vision to focus on the source. An audible gasp left his mouth as he looked at the scene with wide eyes.
"How long has it been since he entered the ship?" He mumbled.
"Five minutes and twenty-seven seconds," a mechanical voice responded from his terminal.
The red flash of light had come from the very mothership that Apex had entered. At the moment, bright arcs of crimson lightning were exploding out of its hull, destroying everything in its vicinity and leaving massive holes all over. From the surface, the scene looked like something directly out of purgatory, with the crimson lightning exploding out of that ship and spreading out, directly vaporizing most of the ships that appeared in its path. Even the specialized weapons like the orbs that Apex had previously destroyed were unable to handle the explosive discharge and malfunctioned due to an overload.
Within a minute, the thrusters of the thousands-of-miles-long mothership failed as it started descending toward the surface in pieces, threatening to destroy everything around it.
"START EVACUATION PROCEDURES! NOW!" The man suddenly screamed, his voice causing the cockpit to rumble and disturb the ones directly adjacent to him. The commanders inhabiting those virtual cockpits were just as flabbergasted at the situation as he was. Despite their real selves being in the augmented reality chambers on another planet entirely, such a scene was enough to shake anyone.
That wasn't all, however. They were still tracking Apex, and they realized that it didn't seem to have been finished after destroying the main command ship and was seen flying toward one of the three secondary defense lines. Within an hour, the news about the three secondary defense lines, commanded by the three direct subordinate commanders of the Harbinger, was all brought under control as similar explosions of crimson lightning destroyed the command ships, killing the commanders.
"To think…" The commander felt a sense of disbelief when he saw the feed of the final ship being destroyed. "This was the first time one of the High Commanders took action. If not today, then within the week, we would have lost Zephyros entirely. Where did the High Priestess find someone like this?"
Still, the disbelief lasted barely a few seconds before the commander quickly started barking orders to his subordinates. Without the command ships, the deployed battalions and fighters were like headless flies, but they still needed to be taken care of in a methodical manner. Even with the commanders dead, the Sovereign's side was at a significant numerical disadvantage due to their forces being stretched thin across four different planets. While the attack on Zephyros was the most intense one, the three other battlefields were still occupying three-quarters of the Sovereign's fleets.
***
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