Rowan might have lacked the blue Aura of Ascendancy but what he did not lack was vitality and therefore essence. All the bodies of the fallen and the smaller Shiiks consumed by the mutated Shiik had granted him so much vitality that if he wanted he could have made this mortal body at least fifty feet tall.

However, that would be a limited use of this amount of power, he already had a meat shield and another one was useless, he would rather be the tactician in the next series of incoming conflicts.

Rowan was a mortal but he was hardly helpless. The Shiik might be powerful and was his primary weapon, but he was far more deadly because of his mind.

The ship that attacked a wrong position was not a coincidence, Rowan made his presence nearly impossible to detect, and when the Shiik folded its body, any sign of life was gone.

The Shiiks were originally weak Calamity creatures but their ability to eat death gave them certain unique properties, and any sign of life they had was nearly undetectable if they were not in motion, and in the shadow of the green smoke, it appeared like a building. To deceive this first batch of enemies, what Rowan did was that he had created hundreds of bodies and given them all the characteristics of life, leaving them clustered in certain positions, and this was all to be a diversion. He was used to performing many tasks at once as a Hive mind and when he had been spending hours deciphering the secrets of the prism of teleportation, the other part of his mind had been creating this diversion, and other parts had been focused on other tasks necessary for the battle ahead.

Another explosion rang out as the ship targeted the second cluster of life he had placed in another random area. The smoke that had been shattered by the presence of the ship began to cover the open spaces once again, and as it did, the massive shape of the Shiik hidden within followed closely, hunting the ship overhead.

Rowan recognized this ship from the memories of the Explorers. The natives of Doom Star had developed their warships and transportation capabilities to a rather high level, and they could stand shoulder-to-shoulder with some of the best warships Rowan had ever come across in Reality outside this realm.

The prevalence of the strange nature of Aura in this realm had given birth to special treasures and resources that could be used to create powerful weapons and vehicles.

This warship was a Falcon Class Frigate, capable of holding between ten to a hundred crew members. The ship was triangular in shape and sleek like the blade of a spear. Although it was a pretty common ship, its functionality was still among the best, and its features had barely changed since it was introduced nearly half a million years ago.

Usually, the sort of Explorers who used these ships were not very powerful, the highest reaching the Legendary Rank, who would typically be the captain of the frigate. To traverse the nearly infinite number of continents in this realm, this ship was the least that could be utilized.

Rowan had left seven distractions around, and from the emanations of power they gave out, the most powerful was at the Heroic Rank, and for the ship to stay above and blast Heroic Ranked powers meant it found them somewhat of a threat, or they might be holding back assessing for traps, but whatever reason they had, Rowan had already given the order for the Shiik to attack.

The warship was barely a thousand feet from the bow to the stern, hovering a mere fourteen thousand feet away from the ground, a supposedly safe distance against whatever threat below, knowing the only Explorers who could effortlessly fly were at the Deific state then they were most likely safe, the Shiik leaped towards the ship, its body a blur in the fog, but something with its size and mass moving that quickly could not be hidden.

Launching itself from the ground, the sound was like an earthquake, and indeed the earth had shattered for hundreds of feet. The Large cannons in the frigate turned towards the massive body hurtling towards them and hurriedly released their payloads.

A series of sporadic shots like lightning bolts slammed against the Shiik as the ship began to attempt evasive maneuvers, but the shot splashed harmlessly against the armor of the Calamity, energy-based weapons seemed to have little or no effect on the Calamity, and even as the ship pulled out, they had not accounted for how far the limbs of the Shiik could stretch.

The Shiik had leaped and folded its limbs, turning itself into a ball of armor and when it appeared as if the ship had been successful in dodging the 40,000 tonnes missile, the limbs of the Shiik exploded outwards, and a dozen of them caught the side of the ship, tearing red long lines through its infrastructure.

Two of its limbsamaged to cut into the engine and something exploded within, the warship engine emitted a loud shriek like a dying crow as it listed to the side spewing out smoke and electrical sparks, it somersaulting severally in the air before smashing into the ground and bounced, leaving shattered parts of itself in the ground, and its momentum dragged it for hundreds of feet before it finally came to a rest.

The Shiik turned around in midair after its successful ambush, and although it was unable to fly, it began waving its limbs around as if it was galloping in mid-air, and the moment it hit the ground it did not spend a single moment paused before its body broke out into motion, covering the few thousand feet that separated it from the fallen ship in barely a second.

Even when it reached the ship its motion did not cease and it tucked in its head and using its armored back slammed into the ship, crushing a side of the ship flat like a tin can under an anvil, before dozens of legs holding glowing red claws began tearing through the ship.

Before long screams began to emerge from the internals of the ship when the claws of the Shiik caught the unlucky Explorers within. The figure of the Shiik was still hidden in thick green smoke and for those within the ship, they could only see massive red glowing claws slicing apart their ship and instantly killing any unlucky Explorer it touched.

The limbs of the Shiik were extremely dexterous, and it held one aside like a pole while the others dragged bodies and impaled them on that single limb, and in a few seconds, there were more than thirty explorers who had been impaled on the limb, some of the tougher ones lived for a few seconds before the acid crammed with the energy of death shattered every single speck of life in their bodies.

The Shiik had entirely cleared out a section of the ship and was about to dig deeper when a large silver bolt more than a hundred feet long bypassed its questing claws and unerringly pierced in the direction of its forehead.

Dozens of the Shiik gigantic limbs slammed against the silver bolt and diverted it so it pierced through the thick armor in its back, but was stopped after penetrating a few feet.

Three figures wearing bright glowing armor and holding Halberds gelling with a vivid orange glow emerged from the battered ship and they looked at the massive form of the Shiik hidden in the gloom, and they silently charged.