Ever since the age of firearms began, physical armor had gradually been rendered obsolete.
Whether conventional guns and explosives or more advanced energy weapons, both could penetrate defenses a whole class above their own.
During World War II, the Yamato, hailed as the world's greatest battleship with armor up to 650 mm thick, was ultimately sunk by aerial bombs and torpedoes. Her sinking marked the end of the big-gun battleship era and signaled a complete imbalance between offensive and defensive technology.
From then on, nations developed their heavy weapons toward a single goal: "hide deeper, move faster, strike more accurately."
After entering the interstellar age, the Gemini Civilization developed Force Field Shield technology, finally reversing the sorry state of defensive technology. Yet even as their Space Battleships grew ever larger, the Twin Stars had never considered improving their ships' defenses by thickening their armor.
Without a breakthrough in materials technology, thicker armor offered negligible improvements in defense, with returns utterly disproportionate to the investment.
For the Long-Lived One, however, its enormous body and powerful regenerative abilities naturally made it a super tank with sky-high defense and health.
Its dense, overlapping branches and leaves alone formed a layer two to three kilometers thick. Their protection rivaled an equally thick layer of ultra-high-strength armor, creating a natural barrier.
After surviving the "fire tribulation," the Water of Life had fully stimulated the Long-Lived One's evolutionary potential. Its newly optimized leaves were even tougher, with greater resistance to high temperatures. They had also evolved the rudimentary ability of "photosynthesis" into something almost as miraculous as "basic energy absorption," achieving a tremendous leap in their ability to absorb and convert microwaves and high-energy photons!
Although energy rays inflicted some damage, the Long-Lived One also absorbed part of their energy, weakening the attacks while using that