Chapter 4003 The Rise and Fall of Gods
Chapter 4003 The Rise and Fall of Gods
The outcome of the Battle of Gods and Heroes had widespread effects on human civilization!
The direct and indirect consequences of what had happened during this miraculous battle actually shifted the course of human history, even though most people didn't notice the changes at this time.
Naturally, the most immediate change was that the trend of the Nyxian War had shifted!
The members of the Oblivion Empire not only gained a huge morale boost out of this consequential victory, but also found it easier to go on the offensive this time!
Before the crucial battle, the Abyssal Empire had been gaining ground. The constant flow of reinforcements along with the advantage of attacking an overextended rival empire made it easy for the Abyssal forces to chip away at their opposition's territory.
However, their strategy could only work as long as their attack fleets enjoyed the protection of the dark gods!
The Abyssal Army was able to provide adequate cover to its fleets most of the time. This forced the Oblivion Empress to make frequent appearances and stretch her endurance in order to defend her territory.
Though the remarkable god-monarch managed to fend off many attacks by driving away the opposing dark gods, this was not a sustainable pattern.
Few people were aware of it, but even gods could get exhausted. The necessity of manifesting on so many battlefields and fighting repeated rounds against god-like opponents who were not that much weaker than her took a toll on her mental wellbeing and energy reserves.
The Oblivion Empress started to fight less vigorously and put more effort into conserving more energy.
Even if her actions led to the loss of a few more battles and the fall of thousands more soldiers, she remained unmoved by the consequences of her change in strategy.
Perhaps the dark gods smelled weakness in their main opponent. Perhaps the Abyssals grew overconfident. Perhaps the controllers of the Abyssal Empire ran out of patience.
Whatever the case, the Abyssal Army gathered a large fleet and drove straight to Shardeen Fortress in order to force a decisive battle!
The mechs and ships didn't really matter. They were only there to force the Oblivion Empire to commit to the battle.
The true purpose was to defeat the Lady of the Night and put an end to this entire farce!
The entire reason why the Abyssal Empire attacked the Oblivion Empire was because the Five Scrolls Compact wanted to get back the relics that it perceived to be its property!
Whether it was the stolen crown or the missing trace of the mythical Metal Scrolls, the stakes of this war were too high for the powerful and secretive cult!
Three of the Compact's powerful and precious envoys showed up for this reason.
Having learned from the mistakes of the Holy Daughter, the envoys were all chosen elites who had distinguished themselves as they climbed the ladder of the Ruined Temple.
All of them possessed plenty of talent, motivation and ruthlessness! Their power and authority far surpassed that of Temple Protector Dista. The oldest among them was even a vice leader of the Ruined Temple!
After entering the Nyxian Gap and taking on the convenient identity of a dark god, the three envoys thought they had gained the measure of the power of their chief opponent.
The Oblivion Empress had definitely become more powerful after defeating Sacred Speaker Daphania and her massive retinue. Her progress in gaining control over the Nyxian Gap had already picked up a bit, making it more difficult for one or even two of the dark gods to prevail on the battlefield.
However, there was no reason for the Abyssals to play fair this time. The dark gods were confident that three of them was more than enough to gain an advantage, and for a time they were proven right!
The Abyssal Empire had already accounted for the appearance of the Oblivion Empire's ace mechs. Their well-hidden spies already learned about the presence of the Dark Saint and even the recently-joined ace pilot of the Hex Army.
Even if these ace pilots were powerful enough to stop the Cold One for a time, there was a reason why they were merely considered halfgods instead of gods in full!
If the calculations of the Abyssal Empire proved accurate, the Oblivion Empire would have collapsed by now. The envoys of the Ruined Temple no longer had to waste any time in this quagmire and could bring back their precious crown and possibly other relics.
None of that came true. The Battle of Gods and Heroes reached a turning point as soon as the Oblivion Empress revealed that she was not alone!
For reasons that were unknown to many people, the Superior Mother not only joined the war at the side of the Oblivion Empire, but actually manifested on the battlefield in her full form!
The cost of doing so was great, but her intervention in the battle proved critical!
The Superior Mother did not hesitate to sacrifice all of her excess death energy that many Hexer soldiers frantically harvested on the battlefields of the Komodo War.
By using this potent death energy as the base of her child, Helena was born!
While the dark gods were caught off-guard, the newborn Daughter of Death immediately debuted in battle by performing a devastating opening move.
The reasons why her sole death attack was so much more powerful than that of her mother were twofold.
First, the Daughter of Death embodied her element to a near-perfect degree! She was literally an incarnation of death in its purest form. The same energy became at least three times more powerful due to her insanely high affinity for its attribute!
Second, the birth process that created the Superior Mother's daughter left plenty of excess death energy unused. The mech pilots of the Valkyrie Redeemer had gone rabid during the later stages of the Komodo War, thereby supplying way more death energy than a newborn spiritual entity could absorb at this time!
Even though Cynthia and the Superior Mother had tried their best to make their daughter start off her life with the strongest footing possible, Helena was nowhere close to matching their strength and development.
The Daughter of Death decisively weaponized all of the remaining excess death energy in an attempt to deal the dark gods a crippling blow!
Her attempt succeeded!
The mass deaths of the soldiers of the Abyssal Army were inconsequential to the gods.
What truly mattered was that the Abyssal Empire had nearly lost all of their dark pillars at the end of this crucial battle!
Though the dark gods all appeared in the form of energy manifestations, they had actually shown up in their true bodies. This was the only way for them to leverage their greatest power against an opponent as formidable as the Oblivion Empress.
Unfortunately for them, Helena's overcharged attack overwhelmed all of their defenses without exception due to the quantity and quality of her potent death energy!
The Massive One's consumption during the previous stages of the battle was the greatest. Not only that, his mobility was the lowest, so he had no other option than to withstand the expanding wave of death energy at close range!
The results were devastating to the Ruined Temple. One of their most powerful envoys had fallen into battle! He had become the Superior Mother's daughter first and most powerful defeated opponent!
Already, Helena attained a legendary status within the Oblivion Empire! She was not only a powerful Hexer goddess that personified the phase of death, but also harvested the life of fellow 'god' within the first minute of her existence!
The prestige of the dark gods in the Nyxian Gap had fallen to the bottom as the survivors of the battle spread this one-sided narrative!
The Patient One and the Cold One both managed to escape from the battlefield with their 'lives' intact, but only barely.
The sequela from getting exposed by the potent death energy harnessed by the Daughter of Death were absolutely great!
The loss of vitality, the decay of energy and the acceleration of aging were just a handful of the consequences of getting exposed to so much concentrated death energy!
No one except the surviving envoys themselves knew how much damage they incurred from the supercharged attack.
It was telling that the Patient One and the Cold One no longer showed up in the subsequent battles and skirmishes of the Nyxian War!
Though the Ruined Temple eventually transferred over additional envoys to prop up the Abyssal Empire, the replacement dark gods no longer fought as bold and daring as before!
It couldn't be helped. The Five Scrolls Compact may have many powerful envoys, but many of them were divided into different factions that competed against each other. The fall or wounding of one of them had profound implications on the fortunes of their respective allies and backers!
In addition, the Ruined Temple was not without its enemies. If it lost too many envoys or diverted them away from the galactic center, the headquarters of the Compact would become awfully vulnerable!
The advances of the Abyssal Army had stalled. Not only were the current generation of dark gods unwilling to take too many risks, they also had to contend against an additional opponent at their level!
While the Superior Mother had never showed up again after participating in the Battle of Gods and Heroes, her daughter had become a frequent presence in the Nyxian Gap!
Helena frequently gave the dark gods headaches even though she wasn't able to launch attacks that were powerful enough to kill them in a single blow.
Just the fact that her element was powerful enough to corrode the energies harnessed by the dark gods was enough to turn her into a dreaded existence within the Abyssal Empire!
The fanatical Hexers spontaneously created idols and other symbols of the Daughter of Death. Those who were fortunately enough to have witnessed her birth and display of power eagerly extolled her power and virtues to their fellow Hexers!
In fact, many Hexers had already become enlightened to her birth and existence.
This was because the Valkyrie Redeemer and her many variants spontaneously changed design spirits after the decisive battle!
The Superior Mother herself had taken the initiative to retreat from the Valkyrie mechs and allow her daughter to take her place!
The consequences of this swap immediately became evident to many Hexers.
Not only did many of their mech pilots come into touch with a much more youthful design spirit, they also found that the performance of their Valkyrie mechs had received substantial upgrades!
The Fridaymen mech pilots who were in the process of conquering the remaining territories of the Hexadric Hegemony began to experience a new form of hell.
Whenever formations of Valkyrie mechs charged their positions, they came under a lot more stress and fear as the attention of a female death goddess paralyzed them in their piloting chairs!
Not only that, but as the more successful Hexer mech pilots continued to harvest more lives with their Valkyrie mechs, their machines started to accumulate greater invisible power.
It was as if the souls of each slain Fridayman directly fed the hungry mechs, causing them to become more terrible and intimidating!
The glows of the 'fed' Valkyrie mechs became more difficult for the enemies of the Hexers to resist. No matter if they were Fridaymen or Abyssals, both of them were unable to endure the oppression of mechs that had effectively turned into the avatars of the death goddess!
"Helena, Helena, Helena!"
The name of the newborn goddess spread through more and more lips.
Not only did she make her mark in two different wars, she also managed to make her presence felt in the Red Ocean!
The Glory Seekers who were not up to date on the events taking place in the Nyxian Gap suddenly found that their Valkyrie mechs had all become stronger for some reason!
The Penitent Sister Mech Legion also made the same discovery when they examined their own stock of Valkyrie Redeemers!
While all of this took place, Ves became utterly bewildered when he heard the news.
"Huh? Who's Helena…?"