For one brief, beautiful moment, Mary considered that they might have dealt a severe blow to the Great Enemy's military capability. So many ships had been destroyed in seconds, and tens of millions of lives were lost in the failed attack, that it had to be a setback for their plans.
She couldn't have been more wrong.
The crushing defeat only solidified the enemy's resolve that the humans were the real problem, and within minutes every battlefield was suffering from an influx of Cathedral Ships to reinforce the enemies that they were already facing. Unless they had come from the Alliance battles, these were all new vessels that they hadn't been tracking, and Mary had no idea how many more could be coming their way.
There weren't enough vessels to go around, and Mary was beginning to despair about the number of worlds that they were going to lose before they had enough forces to hold what they had left.
She was about to begin the orders to retreat from the worst afflicted worlds when new messages changed the tone of the battles.
The Arisen Fleet was here. Not just here, but here in force. Thousands of them were at every battlefield in the Galaxy, and the Great Enemy was being crushed faster than they could open portals to escape.
[Arisen Fleet, this is Mary Tarith of Reaver Command. We thank you for your timely intervention. Might we ask, how did you get here in time? We didn't detect any activity at the Anomaly.] Mary asked their saviours.
[There is a new anomaly opened on the far side of the Galaxy. The rebel Gods just tore it open an hour ago. From the information we have gathered, it appears that your Terminus Trading Company has managed to kill two Greater Energy Beings lately, and wounded another in the battle on the planet that the Myceloid God has created for war.
This attack was retribution for their losses, and they will attack again very soon. If your sensors can penetrate the distortion, you will see that the Great Enemy has been betrayed by the green tide, and crushed by the Alliance of Humans.]
Mary resisted the urge to laugh in joy at the news. Now she knew for sure that Nico was alright, and that they were winning the battle on the planet.
[Is there a way for us to close the new Anomaly to prevent future invasions?] She asked instead of taking time to celebrate.
[No. It took immense power to open a new anomaly here, and none of us have the ability to counteract it. But we will remain here to defend your worlds while the Collectors, or the Darklings as your people call them, fight on the other side of the Galaxy in an attempt to obtain samples of the rare species that exist in that region.
There are no sentient ones now that the Narsians have sided with the Great Enemy, but that matters little to them.] The Arisen Commander replied.
[Well, regardless of their priorities, we are happy to have them here.] Mary replied, relieved that they finally had the help of reliable allies.
The Arisen Commander linked the Reavers command data with their own so that they could send troops anywhere that they might have missed, but Mary couldn't help but notice that it heavily focused only on this Galaxy.
The battles in the rest of the Alliance territories seemed to be winding down, and the Great Enemy fighting there hadn't gotten any reinforcements all day. Perhaps they really had put everything that they could get through the portal on short notice into their attacks here. The number of forces they had amassed was astronomical, when calculated across the Galaxy, and for the second time that day, Mary started to get her hopes up.
If Max had been able to see what was going on in the rest of the universe, he might have actually panicked about their chances of survival, but at the moment, he was far too busy trying to marshal the Android Mecha away from the encirclement of the Myceloids as the battle against the Cathedral Ships wound down.
They weren't having any luck finding the tunnel exits yet, and Max was beginning to wonder if they had greatly miscalculated the rate at which the Klem could have been digging. If they had gotten outside the search zone, the army could be facing quite a few of them only hours after they hatched the next batch of warriors.
Everything slowed to a creep as the last of the Cathedral Ship fleet was rounded up and accounted for, but still without any sign of the entrance to the tunnels. In the worst-case scenario, it might have been sheltered by one of the larger ships, and was now completely obliterated, with no remaining signs of the former entrance.
The Myceloids paused as the battle came to an end, waiting for something. For him, Max realized before he opened a portal to join the battlefield next to their largest Commander, a giant of a creature over five metres tall.
"Big Boss, how does the battle look by your count?" Max asked.
The giant Myceloid gestured behind him, and a smaller green creature with a clipboard came forward. He looked at the notes and frowned, then nodded.
"We score it 451 Kills and 3 ships in your favour." He declared.
"That score works for me." Max agreed.
There was a short pause, and Max wondered what the next step was going to be. It might be a full showdown between the two armies, or perhaps they would hunt down the rest of the Great Enemy's force. The portal was already closed, thought Max hadn't noticed when it had, so there wouldn't be any more troops coming for them.
He could sense the disappointment of the Myceloid God as he realized that his side had indeed lost to Max, but at least he wasn't angry, Max thought.
"Hmph. Round one goes to the Humans then." The Myceloid Commander announced, and the world went dark for a moment, before Max found himself standing next to Nico in the cargo bay of Creeping Darkness, exactly where they had started the battle.
"What the Feth?"
