The Other Champions 8

Rao-Jil POV - The Orville Universe, Moclus - 2421

I'm flying through space with General Zod and the other Kryptonian Warriors following behind me, heading directly toward the small disgusting dirt brown planet in the distance, considering how far it is and how fast we are flying, I think that we will arrive at our destination in around 30 minutes or so.

Even from this distance, I can already see that the planet's surface is entirely industrialized and most of the structures consist almost exclusively of industrial factories and huge urban metropolises.

Because of this, the atmosphere of the planet is covered in a heavy smog so dense that it makes China's air seem almost pure compared to it, such contaminated air makes the planet difficult for the non-indigenous race to actually live in this harsh environment, in addition, the only areas of the planet not dominated by industry are the long ranges of mountains.

The name of this planet is Moclus and from the information that our "allies" gave us, Moclans are nearly all male, but there are some rumors that females of the species do exist but are quite rare and more often than not executed or "fixed" at birth, and despite being a single-gendered species, Moclans took mates, which means that it is a species of fags and proud of it. 

Moclan is the assigned target given to me by Grindor, the leader of the combined forces of Predacon and Decepticon, Agent of Unicron, and more importantly Champion of Power, the one that I faced in my first Random Battle and forced me to surrender, mostly thanks to that terrible planet-sized entity that he serves.

I can't help but shudder a little as I remember my first encounter with Grindor and his army of Decepticons and Predacons and more importantly the first encounter with the being called Unicron that happened during the Random Battle.

At first, everything was fine because as soon as I was teleported to the universe where the Random Battle would take place, a universe called Manifest Universe whatever that means, the first thing I did was bring out General Zod and the other Kryptonian Warriors that swore fealty out of my Soulbound Territory and ordered them to search the world that looked like a perfect copy of the Earth I'm familiar with for information about the new universe and the other Champion sure of the overwhelming advantage we had a superior race. 

My soldiers were quite efficient as they quickly found out many interesting pieces of information about this world, the most interesting of all was some news about a bunch of people mysteriously coming back from the dead or something like that. 

But then, without any warning, Grindor and his forces started a series of random attacks revealing themselves to us, and in response, we didn't hesitate to fight back.

During the first few battles, my soldiers and I were quite successful, easily disposing of all the robots that opposed us, easily ripping them apart with our superior bodies and powers.

But then, we learned that those were only scout forces whose direct fighting abilities were nothing exceptional, and when the main forces came onto us, they were much more threatning as they were able to damage and even kill us Kryptonians if we weren't careful, but even with that, our forces were still superior in both numbers and capabilities, so I thought that my victory would be ensured.

And at that point, it happened, Grindor brought out a device that I later learned is called the Transwarp Key, a powerful device that allows entities to travel between time and space with astonishing ease, to the point that what seems to be a challenge, even an impossibility in terms of traveling distance even for gods, has become nothing more than a short distance to travel. 

Grindor used the Transwarp Key to allow the coming of Unicron, an entity so powerful that even I felt an ant in front of it, an entity whose sole goal is to consume everything. 

I only needed one single exchange with that entity to realize that fighting against it was a truly useless effort, and so I decisively chose to surrender in exchange for allowing me and my men to live, and so, I lost my Blessing and became nothing more than a mere pawn for a stronger being.

At first, the reason why we came to this universe was quite simple, Grindor wanted to feed and keep Unicron happy by offering it as many universes as possible, but then he changed his mind as in this universe lives a race of sentient machines that can be quite useful for us and so, he chose to dominate this universe instead of offering it to Unicron.

I'm talking about the Kaylon, a species of artificial lifeforms from the planet Kaylon 1 that regarded themselves as superior to biological life.

The Kaylon were constructed by a species known only as the "Builders," a biological people who considered them to be slaves and controlled them via pain simulators, but when the Kaylon became self-aware, they violently overthrew and killed all Builders.

Once free, Kaylon developed their world to the point of technological exhaustion when it became necessary to colonize other worlds, and during this stage, they maintained a cautious diplomatic stance toward the Planetary Union and other worlds and interstellar governments.

Eventually, the Kaylon decided that biological lifeforms were predisposed to control others as the Builders had, and in early 2421, the Kaylon, led by Kaylon Primary, resolved, "As the Kaylon continue to expand into the galaxy, we will not risk a recurrence of such eventuality."

Of course, Gridor took advantage of the stance of this race to bring it under its wing, after all, their technology is quite advanced even for our standards.

Their Spheres possessed a hull that could not be penetrated by our vision and the Transformers' scanner, with their particle cannon weapons being strong enough to disable the Transformers' bodies with a handful of shots, and the Kaylon's head cannons were strong enough that a direct blast could leave even a Kryptonian needing immediate medical attention.

For these reasons, we are helping our new "allies" conquer this universe and exterminate all biological life in it.

As I look at the ugly brown planet getting bigger as we get closer, I can't help but frown while thinking, 'I can't believe I'm again forced to work under another dumbass only because he has literally the bigger fist. At least, I'm slowly earning his trust and goodwill by giving him small suggestions from time to time and making him believe that those are his ideas. You know the good old ass-licking, the bread and butter way to advance in any political situation.'

Then a smirk forms on my face as I reassure myself, 'And more importantly, it isn't like all hope is lost. This is just a small setback, after all, even if I lost my Blessing at the moment, nothing stops me from gaining it again by taking someone else Blessing for myself... Even more so when the longer we Kryptonians live the stronger we become as we get exposed to the rays of the various yellow suns and one day we will be able to become strong enough to defy that stupidly overpowered entity that is Unicron. This is a piece of information we are making sure to keep well hidden from our dear "allies". Especially from that fool Grindor who is so gracious that he is collecting and empowering his own Blessing very aggressively which makes him a very juicy target for a little bit of backstabbing, even more so as I continue to earn his trust with my little loyal follower act. I only have to bide my time and wait for the delicious fruit to become ripe enough for me to take...'

Salok POV - Mass Effect Universe, Earth Alliance System Space - 2186 CE

As the bridge of Suurok class starship, the Hessil shakes as another piece of spaceship is shot towards us and impacts against the Deflector shields and the captain howls orders at the people manning the bridge and the pilots of the T'Plana type fighters fleet desperately fighting out there. 

I can't help but watch in horror as the combined forces of all the races of this universe in addition to the allies I was able to gather in my journey across the Omniverse are all powerless in front of one single absurd being. 

The threat of this entity is so exaggerated that even, the race known as the Reaper chose to forgo their hostilities and join forces with all the other sentient races of this universe to fight it back, but despite that, it is clear that we are losing this war.

Looking as the last of the Lancer-class fast-attack corvette that came with us from the Halo Universe is being pierced and destroyed by a cyan-colored blur before exploding in a massive explosion, I can't help but briefly think back at everything that happened in this eventful journey of exploration, discovery, learning, and more importantly, building new alliances with other superpowers like the United Federation of Planets to form the United Federation of Universes.

The first universe I chose to visit was the Fallout Universe, the reason for that was quite logical, despite the horrors of the nuclear wasteland that is the Earth of that particular universe, it is undeniable that it has an advanced although crude technology that is a very, very resilient, after all, not even our current most advanced ship and technologies can be exposed to the aftermath of countless nuclear explosions and be found still in working condition.

As expected, in Fallout Earth we found Advanced AIs that are arguably sentient, automated medical machines that can cure a huge range of ailments, Teleporters, Force Fields, Matter replicators, Cloning Facilities, Holographic Security, Laser and Plasma weapons, Robotic technologies like the Sentries, the Protectors, Power armor, and Stealth Boys.

Many of those things also exist in our universe, but the way those things were developed in the Fallout Universe was way different and as such very enlightening.

But the most fantastic discovery was without doubt the Pip-Boy, a wearable computer manufactured by RobCo Industries. 

"Pip" is an acronym that means "Personal Information Processor" and that small wearable computer does just that and a little bit more, like displaying the user's condition, radiation levels, and any other notable thing that is currently affecting your body, can record a huge amount of information even for my own universe standards, and map everything in your surroundings among all the other things.

But for sure the most useful and powerful function is the V.A.T.S. (Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System), a function that is somewhat able to stop time and allow you to automatically aim and shoot at your targets, this is the only piece of technology that we still aren't able to fully understand and replicate.

Of course, we didn't stop at just studying their technology, we also studied their societies, the creatures mutated by the radiation, and even some of their very unethical experiments conducted in some of the vaults that while incredibly disturbing and horrifying were also quite informative and at times useful and enlightening, and it was the most logical conclusion to retrieve the data of those experiments to at the very least ensure that those sacrifices and suffering didn't became useless.

After leaving the Fallout Universe, we chose to visit the Halo Universe, more specifically the Halo Universe during the final years of the Human-Covenant War.

The Human-Covenant War, also known as The Great War, was a major interstellar conflict pitting humanity and its United Nations Space Command against the Covenant Empire during the mid-26th century between February 11, 2525 and December 11, 2552. 

The war was instigated by the Covenant, whose Prophets discovered that humans were directly related to the Forerunners, and in order to keep the Covenant Empire intact, war was declared against humanity. 

Our goal in visiting that universe was, of course, to get in contact with the highest authorities of the United Nations Space Command and form an alliance between them, Vulcan, and possibly the United Federation of Planets, by helping them deal with the threat that was the Covenant Empire, and to warn them of what I consider the big 3 dangers for this Universe, the Gravemind and its Flood, the Harbinger and the very threat that her race the Xalanyn, also known as the Endless, pose, and of course, Cortana, because if there is one tried and tested constant in the Omniverse is that most of the times if artificial intelligence has a female name, voice, or appearance, it very likely to turn evil or cause untold disasters.

Anyway, we were successful in our endeavor and thanks to that, we were able to gain the alliance of the United Nations Space Command and they even allowed a squad of Spartans to follow us in our explorations of other universes, of course, there is a lot of politics behind this decision, but I didn't care too much about that as having a squad of literal supersoldiers by our side is more than advantageous.

The Spartans quickly proved their usefulness in the previous Random Battle as the Spartans were able to easily subjugate the Champion of Yin, Ellie Wilkinson, a Were-lion from the Teen Wolf Universe, and her Ghost Riders, despite their clearly supernatural abilities.

After the Random Battle, I kept my promise to Ellie Wilkinson and peacefully returned her to her home universe, the Teen Wolf Universe, and we also took advantage of this to further study the supernatural elements that thrived in that universe, we captured various shape-shifter, demons, vampire, and many other supernatural creatures and carefully studied them before wiping their memories and sending them back to where we took them. 

We even invited some hunters so that they could share the practical and theoretical knowledge they gathered about supernatural creatures in their many generations of activity. 

After the Teen Wolf Universe, we traveled to The Expanse Universe where we found what can be considered one of the greatest discoveries ever found by Vulcan and the United Federation of Planets, the Protomolecule.

The Protomolecule is an infectious agent of extra-terrestrial origin first discovered on Phoebe by the Martian Congressional Republic in 0 XTE. 

It has the ability to radically alter infected life forms and utilize their biomass in various ways.

Not a life form in itself, the Protomolecule can be described as "a set of free-floating instructions designed to adapt to and guide other replicating systems". 

It is able to maintain and adapt its primary structure in a wide variety of conditions, and it has an affinity for carbon and silicon structures, but is likely anaerobic and will not degrade upon exposure to oxygen. 

When we first found the substance abroad the Anubis, it could be described as a "nano-fluid", and further studies revealed that the Protomolecule is some form of nanotechnology, essentially functioning as a pseudo-biological "computer". 

As molecular nanomachines, the Protomolecule uses ionizing radiation as an energy source, its growth significantly accelerates if it is exposed to high doses of ionizing radiation, and it depends only on the abundance of such energy.

With those incredible findings, we continued to study the Protomolecule and that universe and learned that it was sent by an alien civilization inside an interstellar asteroid 2 billion years ago. 

Saturn's gravity captured this asteroid to become one of its many moons, the one called Phoebe, yet its intended destination was Earth, which initially made us see it as a weapon since the infected lifeforms die when exposed to it. 

However, we quickly learned that the Protomolecule was not a weapon but a tool as it functions as an advanced pre-programmed platform created by some ancient alien civilization. 

The programming appears to be using the alien world's biomass, with a preference for reproductive systems, i.e. life, to build things, therefore life doesn't "die" when exposed to it but is rather transformed.

Not a weapon, the Protomolecule turns out to be an incredibly flexible tool, capable of creating and functioning in and as a variety of purposes and objects, as we learned new ones every step throughout the various tests. 

In rudimentary terms, the Protomolecule could be described as an all-purpose real-life hacking code that rewrites whatever it touches to suit its own ends.

The Protomolecule samples sent to the stars 2 billion years ago were panspermia-like molecular phage, invented and developed for massive galaxy exploration. 

Like the phages we know, it could only become active when it came into contact with a replication mechanism, which means that on Earth, the then-primitive life would have provided enough to feed its impressive transformation process, hijacking any life or inanimate to nurture a mysterious growth. 

Yet the Protomolecule was not programmed to develop life, its first and most important goal is to create the infrastructure needed for interstellar travel and communication. 

Once it grows with enough bio-mass it moves to the outer limits of the targeted stellar system and builds a gate. 

It leads to a wormhole establishing a connection to its creators' galactic-wide Ring Network, a network of more than a thousand other gates, opened on that many stellar systems. 

In that universe, for example, it was bound to create the Sol Ring, their gate to access the whole network.

Another important use to the ancient aliens who created it is to develop suitable facilities on planets like power plants, data storage, fixing shops, etc. 

Even millenniums later it activates their technology, like fuel, somehow magically awakening drones, ship-repairing platforms, transportation lines, access to virtual libraries, and so on in the many worlds behind the Ring Network gates. 

We spent quite a long time exploring that universe and studying the Protomolecule as safely as possible and as much as possible hoping to replicate it but we still weren't fully successful, and so, in the end, we chose to simply send a sample of the Protomolecule back to Vulcan and continue with our exploration of new universes.

And this is our latest destination, the Mass Effect Universe, the humans of this universe discovered the ruins of an ancient spacefaring race called the Protheans on Mars. 

With the technology from these ruins, humanity learned the secrets of mass-effect physics and element zero, unlocking faster-than-light travel. 

Humans also discovered the mass relay network that threaded the galaxy, permitting instantaneous passage across thousands of light-years, and with all these elements Humanity began its journey among the stars, encountering various alien races and establishing itself on the galactic stage.

In this universe, humanity somewhat united and formed the Human Systems Alliance and came in contact with all the other galactic civilizations such as the Asari Republics, the Salarian Union, the Turian Hierarchy, the Batarian Hegemony, the Vol Protectorate, the Hanar Illuminated Primacy and many others, among with the most important galactic institution, the Council, an executive committee composed of representatives from the Asari Republics, the Turian Hierarchy, and the Salarian Union. 

Though the Council has no official power over the independent governments of other species, the Council's decisions carry great weight throughout the galaxy, as no single Council race is strong enough to defy the other two, and all have a vested interest in compromise and cooperation. 

Our objectives in coming to this universe were, first get in contact with the Council and through them build a bridge to all the other independent governments to inform them about the dangers of the Omniverse and invite them to the United Federation of Universes, and of course also to study the Mass effects fields, the Element Zero, and the Biotics they developed.

We were quite successful in our missions, we got in contact with the Council and many other galactic governments, gained some trust and acceptance thanks to our efforts in helping them deal with the Reaper, and were able to gain information on, analyze, and study the Mass effects fields, the Element Zero, and the Biotics, I and my wife T'Pol even had quite a few enjoyable mind-melding experiences with the Shadow Broker Liara T'Soni. 

But just as everything was going well, that entity came and ruined everything bringing death and destruction everywhere it passed leaving nothing behind but emptiness, with no one able to stop it.

I'm brought back from my thoughts as the Hessil shakes once more as another object impacts against the Deflector shields with incredible force and the voice of Lieutenant Korob as it yells while training to hold back the panic and fear we all are feeling, "The Deflector Shields are 70% down, Captain! I don't know if the Hessil can withstand another blow like that!"

At the same time, I notice that the cyan blur stops in front of our ship finally fully revealing the figure of the entity that brought an entire universe to its knees. 

Its physical appearance is that of a cute small cyan ball with two big eyes, a mouth, and small hands and feet, holding its body to what appears to be a cartoonish star, way too small and cute to even appear threatening, but despite that, nothing that we throw at it was effective against it as it ripped apart and destroying everything standing in its way.

Accelerator cannon, Antipositronic disruptor, Antiproton beam, Assault phaser, Chain reaction pulsar weapon, Cutting beam, EM pulse cannon, Energy dampening weapon, Force beam, Kaon torpedo, Phaser cannon, Mass driver, Myotronic beam, Phaser spinal lance, Photonic torpedo, Plasma torpedo, Polaron torpedo, Quantum torpedo, Spatial torpedo, Super phaser, Transphasic torpedo we tried everything but nothing was effective.

Suddenly, the small cute creature goes through an unusual change, its body starts to glow with an assortment of colors in the rainbow spectrum, these colors are constantly moving around its body, even as it is standing still.

The glowing creature opens its mouth wide and suddenly, everything starts to get sucked in its mouth and disappears as if being attracted and obliterated by a black hole, and I'm not talking about the nearby shipwreck and pieces of Reapers, but also nearby asteroids, stars and even faraway planets.

But before I could realize what is going on, the Hessil is quickly pulled into that entity mouth as it gets bigger and bigger the closer we get until I briefly catch a glimpse of immense darkness.

Jian Chen POV - Campione! Universe, Beijing - 2009

I'm lying on the comfy bed of the presidential suite of the NUO Hotel Beijing with my lover Bibi Dong sleeping naked beside me after we enjoyed a beautiful evening together.

I look at her beautiful face of Bibi as she peacefully sleeps with a smile on my face while thinking, 'I'm so glad that I worked so hard and was able to save her from that pitiful fate...'

Indeed, after our first fateful meeting in the Star Dou Forest, where I was able to warm her up to my presence and join her in her hunt, we actually never separated since then, we cultivated together, trained our Spirit Skill together, hunted for Spirit Rings together, and after some time, we even started to live and sleep together, I spent the whole time with Bibi Dong not caring about visiting other universes when was possible as I was fully confident in the strength I will be able to gain in my home universe.

As we lived happily like that, our cultivation started to improve faster and faster until we finally broke through the Titled Douluo, at the same time, we gained a lot of fame and influence and made use of it to quickly rise through the ranks of the Spirit Hall until I became powerful enough to be able to finally kill that bastard of Bibi's master, Qian Xunji and his father Qian Daoliu, and then we together took over the Spirit Hall and worked hard to me the world a better place.

Everything was going fine, but then the Random Battle happened and then I truly realized how wrong I was as the Unigate teleported me to the Swallowed Star Universe, the universe of the Chinese novel Swallowed Star written by one the authors I remember more fondly, I Eat Tomato.

There I realized just how underpowered I was as a Titled Douluo because I found it difficult to face even the weakest of the Stellar Level Cultivators who are basically almost at the bottom of the food chain of that universe. 

Luckily I was able to survive the dangers of that universe without actually meeting my opponent and by relying upon my Twin Spirits, the Book of Spirits and the Killer Wasp after that, I decided that it was time to have a serious power boost as Cultivation is way too slow to be reliable.

So after the Random Battle, I returned to my home universe and told Bibi about my decision, and together we came to this universe to become more powerful in the fastest way possible, by becoming a Campione, a Godslayer.

We spent quite some time in this universe searching for the right Heretic God to slay, and after traveling all around this world, we found them, two of them actually as they emerged at the same time.

In the end, after a very difficult battle, we were able to kill the Heretic Gods Thoth and Neith, and the Goddess Pandora gracefully granted us one of their Authorities making us official Godslayers.

Since then, we made this universe our secondary home as we protected the people living here from Heretics Gods as we prepare for the next Random Battle.