Chapter 7302: Divergent Growth "Impressive." The physical projection of Lord Richard Brownstone uttered now that the Ascended Giants had revealed themselves. "Although we planned for it, I am still amazed to see how a handful of scout vessels managed to transport 30 giants to the vicinity of the Voribug Organic Battle Moon. The ability to change your sizes to such an exaggerated extent is one of your greatest powers. It is truly perplexing that the native aliens disdain to make tactical use of this advantage." Now that the cat was out of the bag, there was no need for the scout vessels to pretend anymore. They utilized their upgraded mobility and control to deftly maneuver away from the intercepting voribug patrols. The ships also no longer remained silent. Even if there was no sign that the mutated voribugs possessed the ability to intercept and interpret communication signals, it was still a good habit for the humans to limit their signal traffic on the battlefield. Now that they were exposed, the Rubarthan scout vessels no longer isolated themselves from the local command net and linked back up with the rest of the defenders. This was how Richard Brownstone was able to communicate with Ves while he remained back at Philester Crestia III. "I don’t know what the native aliens are thinking either." Ves idly commented. "It is indeed impressive to see how far my boys have grown since they have embarked on this new life." Over half of the Faceless Giants exhibited moderate signs of growth beyond their minimum baselines, but it was the Ur-Titans that truly grabbed his attention. As the original phalanx of the Phase Lord Department, the Ur-Titans received a greater allocation of phasewater, phasewater organs and other resources. That clearly showed when they were all able to surpass their designated scale by a noticeable extent. Although they were not accompanied by an established strategos that had a lot of time to accumulate resources, the individual Ur-Titans all showed plenty of ambition as the greatest among them grew as tall as 7 mechs stacked on top of each other! These giants were so much taller than their peers that the size disparity was quite significant. It was also quite easy to distinguish the Ur-Titans and the Faceless Giants from each other. The members of the elite phalanxes simply had more opportunities to further their cultivation. This was because the Phase Lord Department already intended to nurture the Ur-Titans into its first greater phase lords. Even if this was destined to become an expensive and time-consuming affair, the Ur-Titan Phalanx needed to take the first steps if it wanted to go anywhere. In the meantime, the other phalanxes such as the Faceless Giants had to make do with less. This was why none of them were able to match the physical growth of the Ur-Titans aside from the Divine Harpoon. The presence of the latter was the only reason why the Faceless Giants hadn’t been completely outshone by the Ur-Titans. Rank had its privileges, and the strategos received a much greater allocation of resources. Ves or rather the Dark Apostle wished that he was among the giants advancing towards the VOBM. Unfortunately, the risks were too high to justify his deployment. It made little sense for the polemarchos of the Ascended Giants to take part in a risky reconnaissance mission, especially if he needed to do so without his superdimensional raiment. As a tier 2 galactic citizen, Ves was way too important to put himself into such a precarious situation. The most he was able to do was to board one of the scout vessels and stay in reserve in case an accident took place. Many Rubarthans expected for the VOBM to present new challenges to them once it came under serious threat. The approach of 30 Ascended Giants would definitely alarm the Goliath Hive! They were all big and their spatial fluctuations could not be missed. The fact that so many lesser phase lords unveiled themselves at once would intimidate many enemies! "Detecting unusual activity from the VOBM! Its surface temperature has increased by 5 percent. The exterior... is rippling!" Ves found the appearance of the VOBM to be more disturbing than normal. It already looked eerie due to its organic shell. Now, the battle moon evoked even more disgust as pustules and other features started to emerge. The enormous flesh ball behaved like a mutated lab sample that had grown way past its initial size. Under the direction of the Goliath Hive, the flesh ball kept rippling while generating greater emissions. It was definitely becoming more active! "Keep an eye on those organic gun barrels! Have they shown any activity?!" "Most of the organic gun barrels are warming up. Our sensors are struggling to parse more data from them. The activity levels across the entire surface of the battle moon are rising! This is making it more difficult to analyze what the battle moon’s guns are doing." As the sensor operators struggled to make sense of the changing observation data, the giants had already begun to reach their assigned positions. The scout vessels had already come quite close to the VOBM, so the giants only needed to fly for a handful of minutes before they all reached their assigned coordinates. Although each of them became more and more swamped with defending voribug patrols, their weak attack power made it impossible for them to breach the spatial barriers in a short amount of time! At the very least, the Goliath Hive needed to dispatch stronger voribugs or attempt to overwhelm the human phase lords by relying on sheer numbers. Unfortunately, the Rubarthans had already done a decent job of diverting all of the Goliaths away from the battle moons. By deploying a number of expert mechs and ace mechs to the other sectors of the Philaster Crestia System, the local defenders had been able to spread out the core assets of the alien insects and make it less likely for Goliaths to remain by the side of the massive construct. If the Rubarthans showed any determination to attack the VOBM, then the Goliath Hive would have ample warning to withdraw its Goliaths and bring them back. Unfortunately for the Goliaths, the ruse enacted by the Rubarthans and the Ascended Giants prevented the bugs from executing the most crucial step! Even as the nearby Goliaths did not hesitate to abandon their current missions and flew back to the VOBM with great haste, it would still take a while for them to get back! This granted the Ascended Giants ample time to complete their mission without getting blocked by the most powerful bugs in the star system! "This is actually going smoother than I thought." Ves commented. Although the surrounding bug swarms immediately tried to envelop the intruding giants, their approach was not efficient. Instead of concentrating their numbers on a handful of Ascended Giants, the patrols blindly attacked the nearest enemies. The result of this braindead approach was that millions of cannon fodder bugs split up and diluted their formidable numbers. Instead of converging their forces on 5 giants or whatever, they sought to attack all 30 of them at once, which meant that each intruder only had to fend off tens of thousands of bugs at most! Although that still sounded like a huge amount, in practice it was not enough to turn them into buzzing flesh balls. The spatial barriers of the largest giants could easily fend them off for a longer period of time. The only giants that had entered a more precarious state were the Faceless Giants that had not been able to earn much merits up to this point. Their smaller sizes may have made their surface areas smaller, but their spatial barriers were also much weaker than that of their peers. This meant that these giants were most at risk of suffering a collapse! "Hurry up! Get in position and throw your sensor spikes!" "Damn! These bugs keep blocking my vision!" "Keep paying attention to the state of your spatial barrier. If it dips below 50 percent, then toss your sensor spike and leave regardless of other instructions." Though the swarming bugs made it progressively more difficult for the giants to observe their surroundings, their smart metal suits thankfully solved this problem by helping them navigate. None of the giants failed to reach their assigned coordinates. Once they had all assumed equidistant positions around the battle moon, they unflinchingly reared back their arms backwards. "Let loose!" The giants uniformly tossed their sensor spikes straight down to the surface of the VOBM! Though there were a number of bugs in the way, the enemies were too small and weak to pose much of a hindrance. The power behind the throws were simply too great to get bogged down by these minor speed bumps. It did not take much time for the sensor spikes to get past the feeble obstacles and sink their tips into the surface of the battle moon. "All 30 sensor spikes have landed on the VOBM! Multiple sensor spikes have gone off-course by over 7 degrees, but remain within acceptable boundaries." Not all of the giants were expert throwers like the Divine Harpoon. It was normal for their aim to drift. Although the sensor spikes contained small inertialess boosters that could correct their course, their compact sizes limited their power. The cannon fodder bugs that attempted to block their passage also caused them to deviate from their course. It was already a small oracle that all 30 sensor spikes managed to reach their assigned zones without severe deviations. Once the Rubarthan commander confirmed that all of the sensor spikes had reached the battle moon without getting destroyed or knocked off target, he did not hesitate to issue the important command. "Commence sensor pulse!" All 30 sensor spikes fulfilled their primary objectives at the same time. Each of them had already been primed in advance. Once they received the signal from the scout vessels, the devices discharged their power all at once in order to conduct a deep scan of the interior of the battle moon! The surrounding space seemed to condense for a moment as 30 powerful energy pulses rippled into the battle moon’s fleshy interior. The sensor spikes not only generated all of these huge pulses, but also received whatever got bounced back or managed to pass through to the opposite side. Once the spikes received all of these signals, they automatically commenced the next phase. "The data modules are about to eject!" Just as planned, the exposed tops of the sensor spikes blasted away from the surface and desperately tried to climb upwards! Fortunately for the Rubarthans, much of the roving patrols rabidly tried to intercept the intruding Ascended Giants. The threat posed by the latter was so high that very few bugs had been assigned to attack the sensor spikes. This meant that there were very few bugs in position to intercept the data modules. However, their smaller sizes and weaker thrust power meant that every collision slowed them down to a much greater extent. Some of the data modules gained altitude without encountering too many enemies. Others weren’t as lucky and bumped into many more cannon fodder bugs, each of which slowed down the momentum of the small data modules to a greater extent. "6 data modules retrieved. 12 data modules retrieved. 14 data modules retrieved. 17 data modules retrieved." "The remaining 13 data modules have lost almost all of their momentum! They are being bogged down by a greater quantity of bugs!" "Retrieve them as quickly as possible! Their defenses are limited! Pay attention to whether the nearby bugs are attempting to bring them away." "Tell the giants to do their best to retrieve the 13 missing data modules!" This was a risky endeavor. Ves felt mixed about ordering the giants to get closer in order to bring back the remaining devices, but he did not object to this instruction. "Don’t make the same mistake as the bugs and spread out. Work together to bring back at least 6 of them. You have 3 minutes. Once this time is up, cease pursuing the data modules. You need to get out before too many bugs are pressing on your spatial barriers."