The Mech Touch

"She\'s so strange." Helena said as she had already assigned the divine artifact\'s gender by herself. "Your new cat is so you, but she is also an individual unto herself. That is not the only oddity about her. Despite the fact that half of her body consists of inorganic parts, they are completely melded with her organic core in a way that turns them into true living extensions of her body. All of the metallic components essentially serve as her exclusive versions of hair, teeth and claws."

When Ves studied his cyborg cat with his spiritual vision, he concurred with her assessment. Life flowed through every part of her body. Her exterior shell was not a lifeless collection of materials that she could exchange with another set like changing clothes. They were truly as much a part of her as her miniature Jutland organ.

It upset him quite a bit that his cyborg cat was actually far more powerful and further ahead in her ascension than himself.

He understood why this was the case. Ves himself started off as a human and was still bound to many of the strengths and weaknesses of his race.

The most relevant shortcomings of baseline humans were that they were not spiritually gifted and that they were completely incompatible with phasewater.

Although it was possible for humans to overcome these weaknesses step by step through a combination of physical augmentation and spiritual advancement, Ves still had a long road ahead of him if he wanted to become a post-divinity life form.

His cyborg cat was different. She was designed for this from the beginning. Though Ves hadn\'t been able to spend as much time to refine her design as he liked, the lightning baptism she went through made sure to smooth out all of the kinks and comprehensively upgrade her functionality to a level where he could no longer understand all of her mechanisms.

The point was that her optimized existence allowed her to advance much faster and with far greater ease than Ves himself!

Already, Ves could sense that her phasewater blood concentration was about to break through its current limit and reach a slightly higher level.

It appeared that containing and digesting a part of the unclean whale in her stomach had done her a bit of good.

Helena most certainly noticed and appreciated the cyborg cat\'s prodigious strength. She hugged and cuddled the adorable silver cat as if she was a pet.

"Your new incarnation might not be as strong as myself shortly after I was born, but she can easily become a powerful fighter." Helena spoke as she scratched the cat behind her metallic ears. "Considering the way you operate, I think it is best you focus on empowering the assets that are closest to you for protection against both material and immaterial threats. Your new kitty can help you defend against both."

That made a lot of sense, but Ves had a different idea in mind.

"I\'m not keeping my cyborg cat around." He responded.

"What? Why not? She\'s so powerful!"

"The cyborg cat is my first incarnation that can ignore any range limitation and travel far away from my position. Well, maybe Vulcan fits within this category as well, but he does not have a physical form like my latest cat. What I am saying is that this trait presents me with interesting options."

"What are you talking about, Ves?"

"Are you aware that my divine artifact houses a fraction of my \'Divine Core\'?"

"I... kind of guessed that." Helena admitted. "I still don\'t know how you managed to pull off such a dangerous maneuver. Our mother has told us that this is a highly coveted and incredibly secret ritual that can grant a select few gifted individuals a shortcut to becoming a god. While my mother has never mentioned anything about splitting off your Divine Core into a living cat of all things, it should still be a procedure that is fraught with danger. It is incredibly strange for you to be able to master a variation of this method and pull it off on your own. How did you do it, anyway?"

Her suspicious glance told him that she was incredibly curious at how Ves was able to acquire the secret knowledge to create a divine artifact without killing himself in the process.

He responded with an awkward laugh. "I\'ve had a few adventures. I am not going to spill out my entire life to you, Helena."

"I\'m your sister, Ves. You might not be able to trust most people, but I\'m family!"

"You may be family, but you are also withholding a lot of information from me, just like our mother."

"I already told you that this is for your own protection!" Helena defended her side. "Our mother and I are both powerful. There can be no doubt about that. It is just that the enemies we are fighting against know our methods too well. If we didn\'t enjoy the home ground advantage by taking control over the Nyxian Gap, our enemies would have been able to crush us on an open battlefield."

Last he heard about what was taking place in the Nyxian Gap, his mother was still going strong by leading the Oblivion Empire against the enemies that sought to take her down.

The Five Scrolls Compact had tossed a lot of brainwashed fools into the meat grinder, and didn\'t appear to be stopping at all. The Compact even sent out a number of their powerhouses, who were so strong that only the so-called Oblivion Empress and the Daughter of Death could half them in their tracks.

The odds were incredibly lopsided, but the Compact wasn\'t able to leverage its full strength against the Oblivion Empire.

The Nyxian Gap was situated in a remote corner of the Milky Way Galaxy. The Ruined Temple was located in the galactic center and could not radiate its influence as effectively across the periphery of human space.

The only convenient way for the Compact to transfer large amounts of personnel to the Komodo Star Sector was by borrowing the Milky Way Galactic Gate Network, but that was firmly under the control of the Big Two.

There was no way the MTA and CFA would let the Compact get away with smuggling its own troops through the beyonder gates en masse!

Besides, it was impossible for the Five Scrolls Compact to draw away so much personnel stationed across the old galaxy. Removing them was equivalent to removing their nails across much of human space.

As such, the Compact was stuck with trying to smuggle over its troops in small and unassuming groups while also converting as many gullible locals as possible to get more bodies in the fight.

The indoctrinated mercenaries and crusaders certainly kept the armies of the Oblivion Empire busy, but they perished in such great numbers that their deaths inadvertently accelerated Helena\'s rise to power!

"Let\'s move on since neither of us are eager to expose our secrets." Ves proposed.

"Very well. Back to the topic at hand, what do you intend to do with this lovely kitty if you\'re not willing to keep her by your side?"

"I plan to pass her off to someone else, preferably a rich and powerful individual who is protected at every turn but also appreciates her company." Ves openly revealed.

"That sounds like you want to turn her into a Lucky for someone who does a much better job of staying away from the battlefield."

Ves grinned. "Yup. I think I can earn a good sum of money if I auction her away. Just look at her. She is literally a divine creation. No ordinary craftsman can make a mechanical cat like her. She even has her own glow!"

Her sister couldn\'t help but agree. "Even I would feel tempted to claim your kitty as my own if I had a physical form. She\'s so pretty!"

"In any case, my cyborg cat is my insurance policy. If anything happens to me and my fleet, I can still count on her to give me a second chance of life. However, this will only work if my cat is sufficiently far away from any enemies that are gunning for my life. It is best that there is nothing that can tie my cyborg cat to my original identity."

"Not a lot of humans bother to plan for their own demise. You are smart for thinking ahead." Helena said in an approving tone. "I am afraid you are underestimating how easy it is to revive yourself. Do you think that anyone with a bit of power can cheat death? No one is able to live forever, Ves. If you ever find yourself in a position where your current form dies, you will lose more than you can ever know. Whatever remains behind might be able to pick up the pieces and find a way to regain your old level of strength, but there is no way to regain what is forever lost. The best you can do is to fill up the gaps in yourself with replacement materials."

He understood what she was saying. It sounded similar to his plan to provide Venerable Jannzi with a successor to the Shield of Samar.

The expert space knight had died. Ves couldn\'t bring back the old living mech in its original form, so he decided to go for the second-best option.

The reborn living mech he intended to make after completing the Dullahan Project would probably be different from the original Shield of Samar, but it would still share many commonalities to its predecessor.

The thought of something like this happening to Ves himself was a bit frightening. Would Ves still be \'alive\' if he managed to reconstruct a semblance of himself through his surviving divine artifact?

Given Helena\'s dire warning, Ves might be forced to reevaluate the soundness of this insurance policy.

That was something to consider for later, though.

"Be that as it may, getting at least some part of me back is better than restoring nothing at all. I will figure out a way to minimize the loss."

"You will have better luck if you become stronger. True Gods are notoriously hard to kill off in their entity."

"That is useful to know." He replied.

He already had a feeling this might be the case. His extrapolation of god pilots and his first-hand observations of the Polymath had given him the impression that these powerhouses had become extremely powerful energy-based life forms.

Their overwhelming strength along with their reduced dependence on their material forms allowed them to get away with far more shenanigans than normal organisms.

Helena grew serious again. "Let\'s get back to discussing how you can defend yourself, because you obviously need that protection considering how enticing of a snack you have become. As I have mentioned earlier, our mother has developed her own system, but it is far too anchored off the theories and methods of her greatest enemies. It is crucially important that you do not repeat her mistake, as you don\'t have something as convenient as the Nyxian Gap to constrain the hounds of the Compact."

"You already mentioned a possible direction for me to pursue." Ves told her. "From what I know about our mother, she prefers to fight all of her tough opponents by herself. If she needs backup, she can only count on you and maybe our dad. Every other soldier under her command is too weak to be of any consequence in a battle of this level."

"That is right. What are you getting at, Ves?"

"Well, I\'m obviously different. You are correct that I rely on the protection of others to do the fighting in my stead. It is my nature as a mech designer for me to empower others so that they can gain the strength to defeat my enemies."

Helena nodded. "That may help, but you can\'t rely on your mechs and mech pilots in every possible circumstance. How will you defend yourself if you can\'t count on your strongest work?"

"I already have a couple of ideas." Ves pulled the Hammer of Brilliance from his toolbelt and lifted it up for her to see. "I may not be a trained soldier, but I can still multiply my strength by arming myself with potent gear."