New Game+

On the battlefield of the Covenant, Dara kept on fighting the enemy together with Roselyn.

Dara kept attacking whenever Roselyn's ice defense fell short.

The massive fist of the large robot was repelled by Dara's fist. The attack surprised Lanterk that such bodily transformation was possible on someone who didn't display high radiation levels.

Two battles occurred there—one in the three dimensions and another in the Void Realm.

The battle started with the team fighting against a massive robot in both dimensions. Titan and John could see the form, but then the robot merged and became the room itself! Its form became harder to search in the Void. The Universe's energy also began to gather and was increasing in power.

The two groups were shocked to see how Lanterk was investing more in this battle.

"He's pumping more energy! It's because of me!" Danny cursed.

"No! It's not you! If he wanted to kill you, he would have pumped it all at once! But look!" Dara pointed out how the battle didn't reach the same massive intensity of controlling a horizon of metals to transform and move. It was still limited to a robot and was only growing slowly.

Even Dara could tell what the enemy was doing. It was constantly increasing the amount of Universe energy to push the team to the very limits. But when that limit was reached, the energy that covered that room rose again by a bit. Instead of creating massive robots, the room was now moving and creating metal arms and legs that attacked them from all directions. The entire room was trying to crush them.

"He's experimenting on us!" Dara cursed and fought back.

The group continued to be defensive, hoping that Titan and John would deliver. If not for the team's actions moving into Void Realm, Dara, Roselyn, and Danny would have long died.

But such hopes of deliverance and salvation were misplaced.

Titan, John, and the Void Assassins were facing a terrifying warping in that zone in the Void Realm. The Void Realm was no longer as it used to be as more energies and strange powers were moving and attacking the team.

Some form of being that had the shape of a human was also moving within the realm and was attacking the group.

Titan and John saw the strange form of the Universe Energy that commanded the metals to move. But as the complexity of the commands and power were far weaker than the thick energy that Seeker, Lynd, and the rest faced, the pair decided that this would be the weakness that they would exploit.

The pair led the Void Assassins to attack what they believed were foundational elements that kept the power of Lanterk from freely commanding the movement of the metals.

It was as if they were able to attack the very 'codes' that dictated the movements.

At first, Titan and John were able to succeed. But the pumping of Universe energy startled them as well.

Their enemy was still a weakened incarnate of a Principal. Unlike the other rooms where Lanterk assigned a pilot, he was directly controlling this room itself. Each battlefield was intended to draw out the science of the foes and dissect the technology. In the case of the Covenant, they fell right into the planned experiments that Lanterk designed for them. Lanterk was experimenting on how the Void Realm works and was using the battle to understand the dimension that was being used to perform these space jumps.

The zone called the Void Realms was now being revealed, and Lanterk was finally able to accomplish what his Principal Incarnations had failed for a century. He had found a new dimension. To be more precise, he found that it could exist between two dimensions.

Dara saw how Lanterk was experimenting on them, and naturally, Titan deduced it. However, now Titan could tell, the pumping of energy was being sent in to kill them!

"Damn it! He's using us as a reference! He is finding the baseline of how much Universe Energy he needs to kill us and use that as data for future battles!" Titan raged.

John was helpless and only fought and shot to keep himself and his allies alive.

Lanterk's progress was frightening as the team was so close to dying and had no chance of ever inflicting permanent damage to defeat the evolving room and the massive robot inside it.

"So this is how I die? I haven't didn't get a chance to play around..." Roselyn sighed. She was utterly drained from her ice.

Dara was overpowered and wounded. Her suit was damaged, and the magnetic powers were getting affected.

"That damned Universe Energy is hacking my real..." Dara uttered in defeat.

"Don't give up! Keep pushing and keep fighting! That's the first step to overcoming!" Danny shouted as he took the place of Dara and took the role of the Tank.

The fist of the enemy shot down, and Danny faced it head-on.

While his courageous words sparked hope, he himself felt hopeless and believed that he would die at the punch. He slashed out his weapons with all his might forcing the cells to transform and become much more than what it was.

The werewolf cells of Amir, which Danny injected, had finally been merged perfectly, and Danny managed to command it at that last moment. As a result, Danny's physical strength grew two folds. But the increase paled in comparison to the power behind the giant robots punch.

But at that moment, a strange fluctuation erupted.

The Universe Energy was distorted, and the control of Lanterk was cut for a brief moment.

Many things occurred in that split moment.

Titan and John managed to land powerful blows that altered the flow of the Void Realm, and it rippled out, creating magnetic inconsistencies in the direction and power of all attacks.

BOOM!

Danny was shocked. He was thrown back, but he did not die just as he thought. Instead, the moving fist was repelled back. But then, he noticed that the entire room was distorting.

A Void Assassin emerged and fell to the ground.

Dara rushed to pick him up as the entire room had halted in attacking them.

"Our Generals... They succeeded. The Universe Energy is weakening! We just have to hold on!" The Void assassin reported what Titan deduced.

The room began to move again, but the movements were slower and weaker. Yet, the Covenant and the rest were already way past their limits that they began to drag their body and used whatever strength they had to keep evading.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

The warping room had no order in its attacks as Lanterk made the room crush itself and implode as he lost precise control of it.

"We failed. We didn't overcome." Dara uttered in defeat as the rooms fell on them.

Titan and those in the Void Realm were thrown out as they saw the collapsing rooms.

All had lost hope and waited for their deaths to come.

BOOM!

But death did not arrive.

As Roselyn opened her eyes, her heart leaped in joy. A figure was in front of them.

"Basilisk, Form of the Coiling Snake!" Cliff ordered the sounds to create several layers of Walls of Jericho as the serpent coiled up.

"Don't be so down that you failed," Cliff spoke.

"Never forget, our leader, Seeker Carlean, had to live a lifetime of defeat and ultimately met his death and never saw the fruits in Overcoming. Each battle where you fail to overcome, yet when you managed to survive, draws you closer to how Seeker overcame. Rejoice! All of you! You fought and survived, and while you were supposed to die, you held out as long as you could until help arrived. Overcome in the next battle and learn from this! You should first overcome the inevitable defeat of fighting those stronger than you! You will keep failing. But until then, keep surviving as you lose!" Cliff declared.

Dara saw it, and her heart spurred.

"I... I love you..." She uttered.

"Hand's off, freak! Cliff's mine!" Roselyn shouted.

"General Cliff...! Thank you..." Danny laughed and immediately fainted.

Cliff kept the sound wall up but noticed that the Universe energy in the entire room vanished, and the metals that were crushing down on them lost their power, and it began to break as the sea tore through it.

"So, the loss of power causes all stability to weaken just like it did in the room I fought. Everyone! The mission is a success. We've inflicted such damage on Lanterk and his throne that he lost control of the ship. Thankfully, our intel from our fight with Shakstress helped us out. Now we know the weakness of this ship."

"It has a weakness?"

"It wasn't a weakness. The weakness of any Presider-level ship is that it is connected to the main Throne where the Presider lies. But of course, the Presider will hide his ship deep inside the core of this ship. In fact, Lanterk was doing his best to keep us from getting to him. The battle in Egypt revealed how Shakstress moved out of the ship. But Lanterk was more cautious. So we never dared to attack him."

"Until Jake!" Titan understood.

"Exactly. With Jake, we finally have a way of exploiting this weakness."

BOOM!

A powerful golden beam shot out of the distance in the other room.

Cliff saw it and frowned.

"It looks like Meryl had it easy. I just hope she allowed the Gryphon Squadron to fight before going all out." Cliff could not help but feel envious of Meryl for having the easiest fight. But at that moment, he felt a strange frost, and he could not move.

"What's next, my love? What is our next mission?" Roselyn appeared and hugged Cliff.

Dara was convulsing. She had no strength even to move, and her anger for Roselyn erupted, forcing her cells to mutate.

"Roselyn, I presume! Let go! I already have a girlfriend!"

"It's alright. I'm not the jealous type." Roselyn winked.

BANG!

Cliff broke out of Roselyn's arm and hurled her towards the metal.

"Get ready to teleport! Void Assassins! Your master should be completing the gathering of equipment that is powering this ship. Prepare to send us out!" Cliff ordered as she threw out several pills to the Void Assassins to heal them.