Harem In The Intergalactic Apocalypse

Chapter 176 The Gideons

The door slid open to a massive room that was over three hundred feet square, but the place still felt cramped to Beta. The Mechs that they trained in reached up to one hundred and twenty feet tall, but not all were that big.

Beta's golden jewelry and piercing clinked softly as he walked out into the sounds of training. Photon blades humming, mech gears whining and grinding, and the smash of metal on metal.

The group that Alpha was looking for was in the middle of a sparring match, and the group of fifty War Mephisto's were ringed in the center around two. They were using practice photon blades that wouldn't damage the armor and shields.

The Mephisto was a sixty-five-foot mech built for speed, but they normally used their horn blades to fight. The mechs were black-plated versions of himself that had glowing red lines running between the segments. They looked like every other Gideon.

All Gideons were clones of the Supreme leader. All females were killed over seven million years ago when one of them was visited by the Star Child and uttered the mysterious Astrals God's name. That had sparked a massive genocide of all Gideons that were not clones. That was everyone that wasn't part of the military or government.

Beta had been a part of this, and he had taken care of the task with pleasure. There was no room in the universe for those that did not have complete faith. The only ones that could do that were the clones, and now they made up the entirety of the Gideon empire.

The ranks of Gideons depended on how many chromosomes you were given at birth or had earned. All clones started off as deform creatures with rigid and rough gray skin. Starting life was hard for everyone, but it was easy to move us if a clone wanted to, and they all did. The harder one worked, the more chromosomes you could earn. This also extended their life each upgrade, which was why all clones worked to get better.

Gideons were a demonic-looking race with horns and ridged skin, but not much different than humans originally. They would reproduce and live lives slightly longer than humans, but they had families. Then Alpha started to mess around with cloning and genetic manipulation while looking for a way to extend life. That was twenty-six billion years ago, in the third age, but Alpha was able to keep his knowledge when he was reborn in the fourth and current age.

This had been a problem when Alpha was reborn, and he had become more vicious and enslaved his own people. This was before the Star Child had visited, and the Gideons that weren't cloned lived thirteen billion years like this. Their fate, in the end, was only to be killed by the person that was supposed to lead them into a world without pain.

Beta sometimes wondered if killing everyone was the right answer, but he also wondered why other races created waste. Questions like that had no purpose. His purpose was to continue forward.

Unlike most other clones, Beta had been reborn countless times and would continue to be. This was the right of an Imperfect, and his smooth, bright yellow skin and six head horns were a mark of this.

Those three things were the mark of rank among all Gideons. The skin color ranged from gray to bright yellow but having yellow skin didn't mean a high rank. The horns were the true mark of division. Depending on the number, shape, and placement of the horns was how each level was divided.

The prefects had curved massive horns that could be removed from their heads and used as photon blades. The same was for the smaller ones on the forehead that could be used as daggers. The third set was set on the sides of his jaw. These would regrow instantly and were used as thrown weapons.

Beta could remove his own horns and do the same, but he hardly ever did. Most of the fighting was done in the mechs, so there was no reason for him to use them.

The mutainium allowed him to use his entire body as a weapon and to connect with the mechs. He alone could control one of the Mephisto Mechs, but it took six elites to do the same.

That was the gap in power between Beta and everyone else on this ship. Tor was also bright yellow like Beta, but he had not earned his proper large horns yet. His skin was not rough but covered in veins. Tor was a large and more muscled version of Beta, making him look stronger at a glance.

Unlike Beta, Tor still required two helpers to even start a Mephisto. There were smaller mechs, Azmodan's, Belial's, Andariel's, Duriel's, and much larger like the Baal and Diablo's. There was no Diablo's onboard and only one Baal, Beta's mech, Hellfire.

"Beta! You have come to join us for practice?" Tor called down from his Mephisto, Xenokiller.

"I suppose I could entertain you for a bit, but I have come here to send you on a mission from our supreme leader. Praise be Alpha," Beta explained, and those gathered repeated the blessing for their leader.

"You are sending us out?! A chance for action?!" Tor exclaimed, and Beta nodded and then bent his knees.

Beta jumped nearly sixty feet up to one of the Mephisto's shoulders, and a section of the chest opened up. Six elites with light yellow skin jumped up without order, landing on the ground and running off to take their places to watch from the sidelines.

This was a big occasion for the elites since Beta was almost solely trained by Alpha, like all other imperfects. There was another rank above him, but there were only three that had reached the rank of Nephilim.

These three were the only individuals in the Gideon empire, and each was named after the mechs. Mephisto, Baal, and Diablo. Each of these Gideons had been turned into great monstrous beasts capable of destroying a planet on their own.

Beta was trying to reach that rank and become the fourth, Azmodan. There hadn't been a Nephilim named in nearly fifty million years, but time meant nothing if you never worried about dying.

Dropping down, Beta landed on the plate that had opened in the chest of the Mephisto and stepped inside the single room. There were six gel bays, but Beta walked into the one in the center.

The cool blue gel pressed against his smooth skin as he entered. Sections of his body opened, and golden veins of mutainium spread out and connected to silver hexagons that covered the inside of the gel bay.

[Connection Complete!]

Beta opened his eyes, and his view was filled with system messages and reading from different parts of the mech. Everything was in good order, and Beta made a couple movements to test the Mephisto.

Then Beta ripped out one of his horns as a humming blade came for his face. Beta smashed the strike back without much effort, and Tor's Xenokiller was knocked back in a spray of sparks.

"The legends are true! You Imperfects are just as strong as they say!" Tor laughed over his spoke, and Beta nodded.

"I am what you should aspire to be. If you can complete this mission, there is a possibility that you could make it here in no more than five million years," Beta said and then dashed at Tor, bringing the humming horn blade down in a slash.

Tor spun, deflecting the strike with his shield, dropped his horn that disengaged, and flew back to his head. As Tor spun, he grabbed a dagger horn in a reverse grip, bringing it around to stab Beta's left side.

Beta blocked the strike with his left forearm and then punched Xenokiller in the face, smashing the entire side of the face-off. The mech hit the ground lifelessly, and Beta growled. He had used too much force, and now this Mephisto would not be making the trip.

"Get up. If you can't take that, then I will pick someone else to take your place. It seems that I spoke too soon if this is all you have," Beta said condescendingly as the Mephisto, Xenokiller, got back up, but the face was rebuilding itself. That was a new feature that Beta had not seen.

"Going to take a lot more than that to take me down!" Tor roared, dropping his shield and dagger to rush Beta with an over-the-head punch.

Beta slapped it back, but Tor followed up with a cross strike that Beta was forced to block. Then Tor kicked him in the chest with so much force that Beta was knocked into the air, but time slowed for the Imperfect.

Tor jumped up to him with lightning speed, trying to punch him back into the ground. Beta caught the fist, spun in the air, and tossed the mech to the ground. In the same motion, Beta pulled out his horn blade and brought it down on the neck of Xenokiller, severing the heart.

"You still have a long road to go. Head to the editing bay after this. The supreme leader, Alpha, praising his name, has decided to give you his blessing before the trip," Beta said as he pulled his photon horn blade back and watched the head of Xenokiller reattach itself.

This would be useful in the fight against the Hero, but Beta had doubts that they would be enough. This Hero was unlike anything that they had ever faced, but this was just another stepping block for Beta in his quest to become a Nephilim.