In Space above the Earth, Verlin hovered with his legs crossed, his entire being encased in a suit of armor that was predominantly a sleek, glossy black covering the majority of his body in exception of his head. The armour itself had the mass of a mountain but with his strength he had little to no difficulty moving it around. Not to mention he had implemented some of the alien technology into it , and was able to transmit energy from the MicroStellar reactor directly into the armor. Alongside with his personal anti-gravity technology.

He and Desna had been prepared for the anticipated attack for a long time. He had even found the borederline wavelength to locate the enemy ship. All he had been doing for the rest of the time was keeping an eye on the Solar System. He had stayed in space and waited as time passed by, hours bled into days and days into weeks.

As he hovered in the silent expanse of space, his mind was anything but idle. He kept simulating in his mind the possiblities of how the battle would pan out. In the past two weeks he must have gone through millions of possible outcomes, each one different, some going according to plan, some fall short but all the simulations all have something in common, they all ended with him winning. Maybe it was wishful thinking but he really couldn't see it ending any other way.

During his time keeping watch in space he had noticed that Chloe had gone back to helping with the war. He knew she was feeling bummed about not being able to help, but he really didn't know what to tell her at the time. It was releiving to see her doing much better now. And seeing her work even harder to help civilians evacuate and stalling entire armies to buy time for citizens to escape, he couldn't help but think how her actions were so small in the grand scheme of things. To the point it almost seemed pointless.

1.2 million dead, much more injured and displaced from their homes, so many that the amount of death just becomes a number and the screaming becomes background noise. Verlin shook the thought of his head as his mind drifted to the enhanced humans, it seemed they had already made a decision and are in the middle of transforming their entire base into a makeshift spaceship. He doesn't blame them, he had seen the fire power even the copy-cat miniature alien ship was capable of. A concentrated blast could level a mountain, if it was brought up to scale with the real thing, it could at the very least turn the moon into a donut.

As Verlin was in thought he heard someone call his name as his gazed was drawn to the Arctic, " Verlin, have you spotted anything out of the ordianry?"

Verlin focused, drawing his attention down toward his base in the Arctic. "Not yet, Desna," he replied, his voice transmitted by his suit's communication systems

"It's been two weeks since you returned, one would think with their technology they would have since launched an attack." Desna replied.

" I'm not sure whats taking them so long, but they are quite calculative and cunning. Im sure they'll attack soon, I'll make sure they won't catch me off guard."

"That's fine but how long do you plan on staying up there?"

Verlin considered Desna's question, his gaze momentarily drifting away from the Earth below to the vastness of space that enveloped him. "As long as it takes,"

As his words past through the communicator, just past the orbit of Jupiter, Verlin noticed four distinct borderline wavelengths leaking through folded space, in the exact same way the miniature replica did. There were moving at 40% the speed of light through the folded space heading towards Earth.

"Desna, they're here," Verlin said, urgency sharpening his voice as he observed the enemy's rapid approach.

Desna swiftly responded, "How many ship's are there?"

"Suprisingly, I count only four."

Desna paused for a moment, processing the information. "Only four? That's alot fewer than what we anticipated. They might be using these ships as a vanguard, just go with the plan, I'll keep watch for any additional enemy forces."

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Verlin nodded to himself, already calculating the best course of action. "Alright. I'll engage them directly."

Without wasting another second, Verlin accelerated towards the incoming enemy ships an in llittle to no time he had made his way to the asteroid belt, but afterwards slowed down to about 90% the speed of light, he made sure to stay under lightspeed because as impressive as the alien technology is, it still had limitations. For example it couldn't detect objects moving faster than lightspeed.

And for the reason why he doesn't take advantage of this? It was because of another limitation of the alien technology. The ship couldn't hide in the fold of space and attack simultaneously. If they know he knows their location, they will be forced to leave the folded space to attack him. Plus he wasn't sure if he could make his gamma vision wide enough to cover the entire ship.

For the off chance that they don't leave the folded space, he would have to try using intense radiation from his eyes to force them out.

P.O.V Coratian Commander

Inside one of the enemy ships, the commander's gaze was fixed intently on a screen, which displayed the details of the main creature they were here to capture. It was small in stature, and looked very similar to the god seeds, but its power was on another level. Almost comparable to that of gods, not that he himself had seen any gods, no coratian that attemped to invade worlds that had gods lived. All they have are records of the last seconds before destrucion.

It was the same reason he didn't understand why they would try capturing something so powerful. But even with his conflicting thoughts he would never go against orders. Escpecially when the one leading the charge is Admiral Varyx, a coratian that had served the empire for nearly 350 years, and has conquered hundreds of star systems for the empire.

As he was deep in thought a crew member called out, "Commander, an unidentified object is headed straight to our location at near light speed."

The screen in front of the commander changed from the creature to a real-time visualization of space, showing everything in a 300 million km radius of their location, highlighting the trajectory of the incoming object that in due time would intercept with them.

"Analysis, now!" the commander barked, his voice cutting through the tense silence that had enveloped the room.

A technician quickly keyed in commands, trying to gather as much data as possible on the unidentified object. "It's difficult to get a precise reading due to its speed, but it appears to be a small, highly maneuverable but not a missile. Its energy signature is... it's off the charts. The energy pattern matches with the information of the creature."

The commander's thoughts raced. He didnt truly believe the creature was able to locate them, Even if the ship he commanded wasn't the best at cloaking, its technology of the Coratian empire that had been honed for thousands of years, able to block out most of the known detection across the electromagnetic spectrum, even the ships gravitational influence had been subsided.

"Start immediate evasive action," the commander instructed, his voice firm, betraying none of his internal certainty.

The ship's pilot nodded, inputs commands rapidly into the control panel, adjusting the ships course to avoid the creature, it seemed the other ships had taken a similar course of action spreading out in a tactical formation to confirm whether the creature could truly locate them, and just as he had feared the object also changed its trajectory to match the new course of the Coratian ships, showcasing an uncanny ability to track them regardless of their maneuvers.

"Prepare to exit the folded space, maximize shield capacity, and prepare to deploy battalions." the commander ordered, accepting the inevitability of confrontation. Admiral Varyx original plan was for the vanguard to catch the creature off guard and to tire it out while he captured all the god seeds before rejoining them in battle, but now that they've lost the element of surprise, it would have to be a head on battle to stall the creature until Admiral Varyx was done capturing the god seeds.

Now that it was confirmed no real god exists on the native planet, there was no need to fear direct confrontation. Although the god seeds were powerful, there won't be much resistance against their massive technological arsenal. Only the creature would really be a challenge but it had been confirmed that it wasn't a god or a god seed.

The ship, along with its companions, ceased their attempts at evasion and began to transition out of the folded space, making themselves fully visible to Verlin. The energy signatures of their ships flared brightly against the backdrop of space, a clear signal of their presence.

Each ship twenty kilometers in width and twelve kilometers in height all having the same shape of a skull, but each have a slight variation to them.

P.O.V Verlin

Verlin, observing the Coratian ships emerging fully into normal space, took a moment to assess the situation. A smile couldn't help but form on his face, in the next instant, his speed increased exponentially, disapperaing entirely from any form of detection of the Coratians. Moving as fast as he could, In less than 2 seconds he had crossed the distance of more than 100 million kilometers and rammed directly into the first Coration ship.

Whatever shield they had tried to put up didn't last a microsecond and was shattered like glass against the formidable force of Verlin's impact. As the Verlin moved through the ship, the particles of the ship's material, upon coming into contact with Verlin, were subject to forces that dwarfed conventional destruction. The energy released in the collision dwarfed that of a nuclear bomb many fold, illuminating the space around it with a brilliant, albeit destructive light.

Verlin's passage through the ship left a trail of elementary particles and radiation, a testament to the raw power of his attack. The ship broke apart, its pieces hurtling away into space, glowing with the residual energy of the collision. Before the light of the explosion could reach the other ships he had already continued his attack on the other Coratian ships.

And before the Coratians could understand or react, they had already met their end. Verlin watched as the light from the explosion slowly faded, the silence of space enveloped Verlin leaving him alone in his thoughts. Although he had won, one thing he found strange was among the numerous aliens on the ships, the one that threatened to capture him wasn't one of them.

He couldn't help but think, 'Perhaps he didn't join the attack? Did they underestimate him or did he overestimate the lengths they were willing to go to capture him?'

Turning his head from the remnants of the explosion back to earth, He could see a subtle distortion in the fabric of space, and in the next second a ship that dwarfed the previous one's in size appeared. Its sheer size aside, he could tell it was different as the ship was able to block the detection of the borderline wavelength he had discovered.

His eye's widened and he couldn't help thinking 'goddamn it'.