The Mech Touch

Ruination spread across a wide area of space!

Several enormous clouds of debris spread in every direction and collided against each other.

Broken wrecks of both mechs and starships floated lifelessly through space. Whether they still contained living beings was still a question, but even if the vessels still contained sparks of life, the titanic clash that had just taken place had knocked everyone unconscious!

The only ones who remained alive and conscious were those with the strongest spirits. Aside from Ves and some of the expert pilots, no one else was in a condition to fight.

Even the pirates had all fallen silent! The crippled and bleeding Gravada Knarlax floated listlessly in space.

This should have been a moment of celebration for the Larkinson Clan. Though Ves could already tell that the material and manpower losses had been tremendous, the gains more than made up for the sacrifices.

The clan welcomed four new expert pilots!

The Larkinsons also gained at least double the amount of expert candidates!

Ves could personally claim the astronomical bounties on his enemies!

The warships of the Allidus Alliance definitely contained a lot of useful salvage!

As for all of the trouble and complications that ensued from this costly battle, Ves didn't think too much about them. Any outcome was better than dying or getting captured by the vengeful pirates of the Allidus Alliance, or worse, the crazy cultists of the Hallowed Abyss Temple!

Yet just as his mother sucked the Unending One dry until she couldn't squeeze any more juice from the once-terrible dark god, an even greater enemy approached!

Though Ves felt that his mother had reached an entirely new height of power that he had never witnessed up until now, her monstrous mutated expression only exhibited pure terror.

The enemy that had hijacked the portal must be far more frightening than he could ever imagine!

Already, the portal began to transform before his eyes. Its diameter grew and various alien runes and patterns appeared around it. As long as Ves probed it a little with his spiritual senses, he experienced an immediate and acute threat of death!

Every fiber in his body, mind and spirit warned him that he would die 100 percent if he probed the hijacked portal any further! Whatever influence that managed to hijack it was so powerful that just a casual spiritual sneeze from such a giant was enough to snuff out his soul!

"Who is coming, mother?" Ves asked through his spiritual connection with the giant energy projection.

"He.. is the enemy that your father and I fear the most." His mother answered in a hollow tone. "He is older than the Age of Mechs. He has witnessed the fall of the Age of Conquest but has managed to outlast most of his peers. His strength is so overwhelming that he can kill every human on a planet if he so chooses. You have no idea how terrible he truly is! Now that he has caught our trail, there is no escape!"

"What?!" Ves widened his eyes. "How can any human be so powerful?! Only warships have this power! Is he.. a god?"

"No. He's worse. He's immortal."

"...Immortal?" Ves shook.

There was something special about this word!

"Gods such as the Unending One are but ants in his presence." His mother solemnly said. "To be immortal is not just about possessing power. It's about mastering it. This is why he is able to take over this portal and change it to suit his needs. He is already moving towards us. As soon as the portal is powerful enough to accommodate passage, our fates are sealed!"

"Isn't there anything we can do?! This guy isn't here yet! We can still collapse the tunnel and block his way forward!"

His mother raised her sentient sword and unleashed a powerful energy wave!

Ves sensed the lethality behind the attack. He was sure it could split the Scarlet Rose in half if his mother wanted it to. He was amazed that she was able to unleash such an attack without relying on mechs or ships.

Yet as soon as the deadly energy wave crashed against the portal, it dissipated. What happened was not much different from a drop of water splattering against a solid wall. The strength disparity was too big!

His mother looked sad. "Someone this powerful can't be stopped, my son. I am as helpless before him as the Unending One was to me. Coming here was a mistake to both you and me. If you didn't come to the Nyxian Gap and entered into a feud against the pirates, your father and I wouldn't have been forced to leave the core regions. We were safe there, Ves. The unique environment there allowed us to cover up our traces. I thought it would be fine for us to leave for a short time, but I underestimated his alertness. It only took a short time for him to catch our trail!"

Though his mother didn't explicitly admonish him, Ves felt incredibly guilty! He ruined his mother's arrangements by screwing up. If he controlled his greed well enough to leave Ulimo Citadel alone, he wouldn't have turned the Hallowed Abyss Temple into an enemy!

Regret filled his mind. What about the merits? What about the B-stone? None of these gains were worth it if he, his parents and all of the surviving Larkinsons of this battle were about to die at the hands of this so-called immortal!

He clenched his teeth. A growing sense of anger and unwillingness flared up from his heart. He did not want to die like this! He did not want to drag his parents down with him either!

He narrowed his eyes as he gazed at the projection of the changing portal. This powerful person hadn't arrived yet. So long as the enemy hadn't actually emerged through the portal, they should still have a chance of making it out alive!

"Who is this immortal, exactly? You've been talking about him in circles. Just tell me who he is so we can figure out how to stop him. There is no way this fellow is inevitable!"

"He's the enemy we tried to shield from you for so long." His mother emotionally whispered. "Everything we did was to prevent him from going after you after your father has given you our legacy. In the end, our efforts were in vain."

"Don't give up yet, mother! We are better than this! Tell me the identity of this foe. Who is he and what powers does he have? Is he coming by himself or is he bringing an army?"

"He's alone. He doesn't need any help. That should tell you enough of what kind of existence is hunting us down."

His mother became so caught up by their impending doom that Ves did not sense any will to resist from her! He turned his attention to his father instead. As a trueblood Larkinson and a former military mech pilot, Ves bet that his dad should be more receptive to his intentions.

"Father, can you answer my questions? At this point, it's useless to keep secrets. I'm already involved in your troubles so you might as well give me the piece of mind of knowing what has led to this situation."

His father sighed. "Do you remember the gift that I have passed to you? It belonged to your mother. When she died.. I didn't know what to do with it. I knew it was the reason behind her early death."

"It doesn't belong to me. I merely carried it. You can't imagine how far my brothers and sisters and I fled to keep it away from the hands of our pursuers." Cynthia said. "We vowed to never let it fall into their hands again. Now, I am the only one left, and it seems I am about to fail in my most important mission."

Ves tired of all of this circling around. "Are you talking about the Compact? I know what the System really is. It's the Metal Scroll, right? It's one of the precious Sacred Scrolls that this powerful organization has used to dominate humanity, right?"

"HOW DO YOU KNOW THIS?!"

"I have my sources. Am I right?"

His mother looked shocked! "This is deadly knowledge! Don't ever mention those words again!"

"It's too late for that." Ryncol Larkinson said. "Ves already knows. Since he is aware of some of the true nature of what we've given to him, then he might as well know more."

After a bit of hesitation, Cynthia reluctantly nodded.

"The immortal that is chasing us is one of the highest leaders of the Compact. He has been watching for our trails for a long time, and when he finally grasped one, he followed us all the way to the galactic rim."

This sounded rather familiar. Ves glanced at the frozen form of Nitaa. Her heavy combat armor kept her upright, but he knew that she was already unconscious.

"Does this leader come from the Ruined Temple?"

"You!"

That pretty much confirmed his suspicion. It turned out that the great envoy from the Compact's mythical temple had arrived sooner than he thought!

The entire reason why Ves came up with the plan to leave the star cluster and travel all the way to the Red Ocean was because he wanted this powerful dignitary!

Ves grew confused. "From what I heard, shouldn't this fellow arrive at least a decade or so later?"

"Where did you hear that?"

"That's not important. Can you just answer my question?"

"Temple Protector Aramid Dista has haunted our nightmares for decades." His father revealed. "He stands close to the top of a galactic organization that still stretches its influence throughout human space to this day. You can imagine how powerful he must be in order to reach his exalted status."

Ves finally obtained the name and title of this great foe. Though the answers barely revealed anything, at least his parents were more willing to talk!

"How come he arrived here so soon and with so little fanfare?"

He was pretty confused by this. Ves and Nitaa had already made some arrangements that could warn them should this envoy from the Ruined Temple ever reach this star cluster.

"He only just arrived, actually. As for how he arrived so quickly, well…" His mother pointed at the transforming portal. "Hasn't the Big Two been building their own gate network recently?"

Ves wanted to slap himself silly. Of course!

Before the introduction of the beyonder gates, humanity relied on slower and much more time-consuming methods to traverse the stars. It took decades for the fastest and most advanced starships to travel from the center of the galaxy to the outer borders of human space.

Even the powerful figures of the Ruined Temple were no different!

However, space travel in the galaxy was already changing drastically after the formation of the Milky Way Galactic Gate Network. The newly-formed Gate Consortium was rapidly cobbling up beyonder gates. Thousands of light-years became more accessible than ever as the portals brought many different locations together.

The gates ushered forth a revolution in trans-galactic transportation! Not just the Milky Way, but other galaxies came within reach!

Of course, the biggest downside to the portals was the prohibitive cost of activation. Regular tourists wouldn't be able to afford passage through these new-fangled portals.

Yet what Ves did not take into account was that this trivial barrier would never be able to stop one of the highest-ranking dignitaries of the Five Scrolls Compact!

As long as the Temple Protector disguised himself well enough to fool the Gate Consortium, he could conveniently reach his destination in an instant rather than a decade!

He truly comprehended at this moment why his parents behaved so morosely. Even he felt despair when he thought about confronting one of the higher ups of the Five Scrolls Compact.

As time passed, the portal looked increasingly more impressive. Strange glowing markings of demons, humans and aliens kneeling and in pain appeared around it. All of these tortured figures seemed to be stretching out their hands towards a certain undefinable figure portrayed at the top of the portal. The slaves were begging for mercy!