[All units, I need a status report. What is going on out there?] Max demanded.
"Sir, we have returned to our vessels, and the dead are walking among us." One of the Commanders reported.
"Yes, Commander. I was killed in action, but I am most certainly alive now and back aboard my ship. My coffee is empty, though, so we didn't move back in time."
After that, the communications relays were in chaos for the next few minutes, but Sylvie and Felicity were doing a good job of sorting everything out, while Nico took stock of their situation.
"The drones in orbit are still in place, the ones that were on the surface appear to have vanished. The additional armies we created are gone, but the raw materials have been returned to us.
There is a new Great Enemy base, not in the same location as the last one, and this time there are two portals. From what I can tell, the losing team is getting a handicap for the next round. Have you managed to clarify the situation at all with the Myceloids' God?" She asked.
"Not at all. I am getting excitement and amusement off him, but there is no indication of whether this is a best of three or a best of five series. Of course, with him, it is possible that he doesn't intend for the game to end at all." Max replied.
Nico frowned. Being stuck here indefinitely would put a major damper on her development plans, even if she had her entire development team with her. They were trying to focus on what would be best for the battle for their home Galaxy, but they couldn't even get updates on how that was going.
"How is the situation at the Myceloid base?" Max asked.
"Stronger than they were when we first discovered them last time. It looks like they were allowed to keep some of their army to increase their capabilities. Going by the evidence given, it would appear that the Myceloid God is attempting to determine what exactly would constitute a fair fight." Nico noted.
"That's what I was thinking. It loves fights. Fighting just for the sake of fighting, not to win or to accomplish some goal. We steamrolled the Great Enemy last time, so they get two portals to bring reinforcements this time. We out killed the Myceloids last time, so they were given a head start this time.
It is safe to assume that they know where the bases are this time, so let's get right into the planning stage. Are we going to hit the Great Enemy first, or do we need to cut down the growth rate of the Myceloids?
I'm thinking that the Myceloids should be fine, but going two on one against the Greater Energy Beings is going to suck, and I'm the only one who can reliably do it, even with the limited power output here."
Nico smirked back at him. "Not for long. We've been working on a method of extracting and trapping the energy of the Great Enemy. Give us a bit more time, and soon I will have an android army that can take them on and strip away their powers. The problem right now is that we can't stop it from reforming, so if we store it, we just end up with possessed equipment."
Now that was a problem that they didn't need.
"Do we have a way to transfer it yet? If they can scrape the loose energy and send it to me, I can safely process it." Max suggested.
"Not over long distances. If we try to send it more than a few metres, it begins to gain cohesion again. But at the moment, we don't have any more of it to practice with, as it fades quickly when it's not coherent."
"Don't worry too much about it. I will deal with the Greater Energy Beings when they show up, and you can deal with the swarms of Klem that I know will be coming. They have an ingrained racial memory that hates us to the core, so if they remember that we're here, they'll be hunting us already." Max reminded her.
"Finally, some good news. You deal with the mental trauma of a hundred thousand casualties that just returned to life, and I will start deploying the reinforcements to our outlying units.
Wait, where are our outlying units?"
"They're all in the base. We're deploying from scratch based on satellite data. So, have fun with that." Max laughed.
"Well, at least we don't need to find them this time. I'll start the deployments with the Android Army, and then we can send the fast attack units to them as needed. That should give everyone a few minutes to recover from the shock before they're back in battle. Just make sure that they all understand that there might not be another reset, so they shouldn't go doing anything suicidal or heroic when they do deploy."
"No worries, I have some experience with this." Max laughed.
Now that almost all of his memories were intact, he had a lot of experience with traumatic events, and helping his unit through them. He even recalled experiences with time anomalies similar to the reset that the Myceloid God did. Though, this time it didn't actually turn back time, it just remade the bodies and stuck their souls back in them.
How anyone could legitimately think that they could fight against that was beyond Max's comprehension, but from the memories of his past life, he didn't seem to recall the rebel Gods being quite so powerful. Their influence usually had a limited range, but the Myceloid God was pulling the forces from all over the universe, against their will.
The Greater Energy Beings should be tied to one of the other Gods as well, and that should have protected them from being summoned, but that clearly wasn't the case here. Everything he remembered seemed to be distorted, or perhaps it was the Myceloid God that had changed.
