The next two days passed in relative silence. Most of the time I spent perfecting my new lifeblood armor form, and integrating it into my battle form. While I can’t claim to be completely indestructible, there shouldn’t be anything at this point in time that can hurt me faster than I can heal. At least, not unless they do soul attacks. I have yet to find a foolproof method of defense against that.

Anyways, I stood alone in the vastness of space, the great ring of metal in front of me making up the warp gate. The fleet and everyone in it had already been moved into my grove, so it was time to begin the operation. Even with these new powers, I wasn’t quite arrogant enough to think that I could take on the entire enemy fleet by myself.

Before going into the grove, Celeste had installed an ‘auto-dial’ feature into the gate, which would cause it to open a path to their main base without an activation signal after a set amount of time. That way, I didn’t have to have someone out here with me in order to start the process. So I stood there, waiting as the blue light gradually filled the ring, steadily forming the portal.

No, I am not just stalling for time. I’m not nervous. This is just the biggest fight of my life, and I am walking into a firing squad composed of ships the size of small countries! Okay, maybe I am a little nervous. It doesn’t help that Malthan seems to have been paying extra attention to me lately.

Hey, you can’t blame me for that. You’re about to take on the enemy! The big bads! The harbinger of the God of War himself! And I brought popcorn!

Not helping! I thought inwardly, before flying into the portal once it was fully formed. There were a number of things I had worried about when it came to this plan. One of which proved to be quite the issue.

As soon as I appeared on the other side of the warp gate, I found myself staring into the barrel of some VERY big guns. There were numerous assault ships, and off the top of my head I counted at least ten, their firing rings all aimed in various directions, as if preparing for an entire fleet. Without hesitation, I flew directly up as soon as I came through, glad to see that there was nothing preventing me from connecting to the elements here.

However, I was not able to fly quickly enough, as all of the assault ships immediately focused their fire on me, bombarding me with lasers that could probably destroy a small moon. And this, folks, is where the problem comes into play.

The hammer of nope is smiting you. -400 Health

No, not the damage. Even with all of them shooting together, it would take a few rounds, or sustained fire to completely get through my armor. The problem was the force that came with the blast, which shunted me back through the portal before I could get out of the way.

No. I muttered to myself in my head. That’s not happening.

Gritting my teeth, I flew back into the portal before they had time to close it, and saw them preparing to fire again. However, this time I decided to take a less direct approach. In front of all of their views, I blinked out of existence, choosing to enter subspace to avoid any more blasts. Yet, even the subspace region was not what I expected… Mostly because it was not empty.

In normal subspace, there would be shades of red, black, and blue making up the emptiness around me. Here, however, I found a planet. Or at least, I thought it was a planet, until it moved. Okay… so I found their FTL guard dog. I shuddered, as two giant eyelids separated. What I thought was a planet seemed to be the largest Abstract I ever knew existed.

Its basic shape was a giant eye, but beneath the lid were countless eyes, mouths, and stretched limbs joined together, all reaching or looking outwards. I’m just gonna go now… No reason to stick around and see what it does to guests, so I flew a bit to the side and popped out of subspace, just far enough to put me outside the range to be blasted back into the portal.

Now that I had a moment to breathe, figuratively speaking, I was able to see the full scope of the area around me. Fifteen assault ships, five shield ships, and six construction satellites surrounded a massive planet. Orbiting the planet were a number of moons, one of which seemed to be covered in plants and water.

However, I couldn’t help but draw my attention towards the construction satellites. Five of them seemed to be slowly working on either an assault ship, or a shield ship. However, the sixth was far bigger. It was actually built around one of the moons, and I could see various devices drilling into the moon, working to convert it into something else. What they were making, I couldn’t say. But, given the amount of resources invested purely in the construction satellite, I knew it had to be important.

And, it was around that time that the ships managed to lock onto me, sending another concentrated blast my way. This one, I was more prepared for. Before the ships had the chance to fire, I had erected a barrier of time in front of me, causing time itself in a fixed area to slow to a halt. Like this, even if the attacks moved at the speed of light, they would not be able to reach me.

This was the first time I had really felt the effects of my increased mana control and regeneration since the birth of my universe grove. Even though the time barrier cost an insane amount of mana to maintain, it was not even making a dent in my mana levels. This gave me plenty of time to get out of the way, while the blasts were being held in stasis.

Well, let’s move on to step 2. I thought, spreading out my mana sense. To my surprise, I was actually not able to cover this solar system with my senses. Not because I was being restricted, but more because it was too big. I could see a giant, bluish white star in the distance, yet my mana could not reach it. It was simply out of range.

Still, I could more than cover this planet and the area around it. And it only took me a moment to lock on to several areas surrounding the New Human Empire fleet. Surprise!

In only a brief moment, energy surged from my body, forming into the Sons of Chaos fleet ships. The Qu’Lopti flights were already in their robot forms, weapons primed. The Deus Ex ships opened fire immediately upon taking shape, while the Ariadne waited for just a moment before doing so.

“Glad to see you brought us to the party after all, John. She was getting worried.” Celeste’s voice appeared in my mind, drawing my attention to the only other person in the fleet that was NOT in a ship.

As it turned out, Sharon had a lot more leeway in her transformations than I did, as hers involved merging her body with a companion, rather than altering her own body. While the rest of the fleet waited, she had sat atop the Ariadne in the form of a void elf. But now that she was here, a grey light surrounded her, and she grew… and grew… and grew.

Her final size was definitely not as big as the original lunar titan, only roughly a tenth of its size, but that was still bigger than any ship in either fleet. I could see a toothy grin on her face as her hands slowly reached down, clasping around one of the shield ships and shattering it in her palms. Originally, I was thinking that I’d have to help out with this fight, taking on one or two of the ships to take the pressure off the fleet. But, now that I saw Sharon getting to work, I realized that was no longer necessary. If anything, I might get in her way, and it’d be hard for her to notice something smaller than a flea by comparison. I could very well find myself squished.

Celeste, find me somewhere that I can make things explode. I knew that the Deus Ex would have a few key targets in mind, but before she could even get to it, a blue screen appeared in front of me.

Oh, oh! Me, I got this!

Got wha-

Quest Issued!

Beyond Infinity

Rank ★★★★★★★★★★★ Extermination

The Champion of War has plagued the Galaxy with his conquests, enslaving primitive races and using them to further his galactic agenda of domination and destruction. Go punch him in the dick! Also, kill the bastard if you get the chance.

Time Limit: The rest of your natural life.

Reward: Beyond your wildest dreams

Failure: Only if you die

And, like the very first divine quest I had received, I had an innate sense of where the leader of the New Human Empire was. Not in any of the ships fighting my fleet, but on the moon I had noted previously to be inhabitable. But really, ELEVEN star difficulty? I thought the scale only went up to ten!

Well, we just kicked it up to eleven!

...Fine, fine. Let’s get this over with. I thought inwardly, choosing not to argue with a god when there were bigger things to worry about. Okay… maybe not bigger, smaller things to worry about. Things small enough for me to actually be capable of worrying about them.

Activating my Toybox portals, I soon appeared atop the moon in question. Judging by the fact that he was sitting at a table, enjoying what appeared to be a cup of tea, he was not too worried about the battle overhead. Stanley Martin was a tall man, a few inches taller than me, and even bigger than I remembered. However, at the same time, he also seemed older. His fading black hair was now mostly white, his face full of wrinkles.

From beneath his tinted glasses, I could catch the sight of yellow eyes with vertical slits, similar to those of a cat or a lizard. “Good evening, John.” He said, without ever looking up from his tea. When he did look up, however, his words abruptly stopped. “So nice of you to-...” He paused as his eyes landed on me. I could see a slight twitch from his eyelids as he looked at me.

“Something wrong?” I asked with a small grin, still in my blood red metallic form.

“That… is lifeblood, correct?” He responded, seeing me nod. I could hear a small growl coming from the base of his throat as he set down his tea, finally standing up. “Okay. We do this the hard way. I beat you to within an inch of your life, and then I don’t stop.”

Martin was wearing black, baggy clothes, making it difficult to see his skin underneath. However, from the sheer size of him, he should be in better shape than anyone of his apparent age. Still… he shouldn’t really be a match for me, right? Yet, even though he knows about the lifeblood armor, he still seemed quite confident that he could kill me.

“Oh, and by the way.” He said as he began slowly walking towards me. “This entire moon has a mana-redistribution field covering it. So, don’t count on your manipulation abilities saving you.” Okay.. that’s just not fair.

And, as I thought that, I took just a brief moment to confirm, attempting to feel the mana around me. And, in that brief moment where I realized he was telling the truth, he vanished from my view. I felt a strong impact in my sides, and found myself lifted up off my feet, thrown by the force of the strike to fly away.

Outta the park! -500 Health

I saw the message appearing in front of me, amazed that one punch did more damage than over a dozen ships worth of laser blasts. Orienting my body, I landed down on my feet, my legs digging long trenches at least a dozen meters long before I finally stopped. Looking up, I found what should have been Stanley Martin, human general.

Instead, the skin of his hand shattered, revealing sickly green flesh and bone beneath it. His body hunched over unnaturally, spikes seeming to poke through the back of his baggy shirt. “Oh, crap.” I muttered, realizing that this quest actually deserved its rating.