The Mech Touch

Ves had generated plenty of radical ideas in his life, but this one was definitely one of his more extreme ones!

If anyone heard that Ves wanted to spread a human religion among aliens, they would think he was bonkers!

"It is indeed a crazy idea!"

This was an especially mad endeavor when pretty much every alien hated the human race.

Humanity had brought nothing good to their lives.

During the Age of Conquest, humans learned to treat aliens as their prey. That mindset hadn't changed all that much during the Age of Mechs.

Perhaps many humans born long after the glory days of the Age of Conquest had softened up their stance towards aliens, but all of that had started to make way for a renewed sense of conquest since the opening of the Red Ocean!

At least the aliens in the Milky Way had millenia in order to reconcile themselves with humanity's dominance.

The aliens in the Red Ocean were quite different! They were experiencing the full brunt and brutality of humanity's hunger for expansion!

The pakklatons, the puelmers, the nunsers and even the space whales were experiencing the calamity of their era!

Death and extinction loomed over their heads, and it was the humans that were responsible for destroying everything they held dear.

Perhaps the only alien race that actually benefited from humanity's entry into the Red Ocean was the voribugs!

The damn space bugs were so tenacious that they were bound to arrive and proliferate in the Milky Way sooner or later!

"It's too bad the voribugs aren't intelligent and rational enough to thank humans for giving them access to a much larger hunting ground!"

If the bugs were actually intelligent enough to hold a conversation with, Ves would not hesitate to convert them to the Ylvainan Faith!

In any case, the rise of human civilization led to a direct drop in the quality of life of every alien that got in its way.

The pakklaton race already lost all of their territories by now. All of their major planets had been scoured from life through massed orbital bombardment and sweeping mechs.

The refugees that had eventually ended up in the hands of the Larkinson Clan had every reason to hate their captors. The mercy that Ves had provided to them was probably unappreciated by these resentful bird aliens.

Therefore, pushing a human religion onto them was indeed a crazy idea!

From what Ves understood about the pakklatons, they were all aliens who were clever and sophisticated enough to stand by their principles.

They were just like humans in that sense. Though there were undoubtedly idiots among them that could be fooled, far too many of the aliens hated humans to the core.

"Can I even convert them all to the Ylvainan Faith?"

The important distinction here was that the aliens sincerely needed to believe in the Great Prophet and the content of his scriptures. Just forcing them to read the translated texts that Ylvaine had left behind was not enough. They needed to believe in the prophet and what he stood for with their heart and soul!

"This is going to be difficult!"

Ves might be the Devil Tongue, but he had never attempted such a ludicrous challenge. Perhaps he would have to pull out all of the stops.

From using glows to starving the captives until they started to study the scriptures were just a few of the measures that he could think of. He was sure that a professional such as Calabast could come up with many more ways to 'convert' the pakklatons into Ylvainan believers!

"What then?"

Just believing in Ylvaine was not enough. The spiritual feedback provided by ordinary humans was miniscule, and Ves did not expect that to change for the pakklaton race.

There were only two possible ways to raise the amount of spiritual feedback they could provide to Ylvaine.

First, he could attempt to put them into mechs and hoped that the aliens succeeded in interfacing with the machines.

This was obviously an impossible idea. Bird brains worked differently from human brains! At the very least, Ves needed to get his hands on a neural interface that worked specifically for the pakklaton race, but what kind of neural interface specialist would be so bored to develop such a component for an alien race that would soon go extinct?

Second, he could try and turn them into strong believers before helping them break through. Ves had already taken the first tentative step towards doing so by implanting two different pakklaton individuals with a budget version of his companion spirits.

"This will take a long time to bear fruit, though."

How else could derive more spiritual feedback from the aliens?

"Maybe… I could get them to worship Ylvainan totems?"

Ves thought for a moment. The word 'totem' originally stood for a sacred object that was used for worship purposes.

Though he hadn't specifically studied whether humans could provide a greater amount of spiritual feedback to design spirits if they worshiped in front of totems, Ves had a hunch that this might be correct. It was easy to form a connection to the right spiritual entity if the totem pointed out the exact direction!

"I should look into this once I get back to the fleet." Ves promised.

Solving Ylvaine's chronic lack of spiritual feedback was a long-term problem that could not be remedied in an instant.

What Ves was actually concerned about was finding the source of the resonating exotics cluster!

The lack of results did not diminish his confidence that there had to be a hidden surprise on this moon.

"It is just harder to find, that's all."

The problem was that the Larkinson Clan would have to stay for months if not years in order to comb through the entire moon. Even if it was smaller than a normal terrestrial planet, searching through Iron Crusher's entire surface and interior required far too much work!

There was no realistic way for the Larkinsons to find the needle in the haystack if the only search method was to pull out each individual strand of hay at a time.

"I need to come up with a better search method!"

There had to be more effective and efficient ways to find the source of the weirdness that his clan had discovered.

For now, Ves was inclined to let the digging continue for a few more days, but he feared that the chance of finding anything odd had already vanished.

Part of that had to do with the uncertainty of whether they were digging in the right direction. The longer the distance, the more that tiny deviations in the angle of descent caused the mining team to miss the mark!

The Larkinsons had no time to dig apart half the moon. Ves planned to return to Davute in a couple of months at most so he could start a few new endeavors and facilitate the next round of mech designs.

"It's not even necessary for me to find this supposed source." Ves shook his head.

The continued lack of results had tempered his eagerness a bit. Now that he was able to think calmly about this situation, he realized that he had become unusually fixed on discovering a novelty.

His adventurous urges were acting up again. Rationally speaking, there was no reason why he should value this opportunity. It was not necessary for the Larkinsons to seek out this weirdness. Ves would be completely okay if he just focused on fulfilling more attainable goals such as filling up the cargo holds with valuable exotics.

"I don't want to give up so soon, though."

His intuition hinted to him that his suspicions might have merit. As good as they were, it was a pity that they weren't developed enough to give him an accurate direction of where he needed to go. He wasn't Ylvaine, after all!

Intuition couldn't accomplish much if Ves didn't possess enough information to string a few clues together.

"Can I rely on my other design spirits?"

Ves soon dismissed this question. None of his other design spirits were expelled in finding treasures or other unknown curiosities. Ylvaine was his best bet.

"Damn. I need to think about this more."

After seeing that the deep tunneling operation was unlikely to make any discoveries for the time being, Ves ordered his armored shuttle to ascend and return to the initial cluster where all of the resonating exotics were buried.

At this time, a lot more Worker Bees were working in this area. They were digging through soil and harvesting every piece of resonating exotic in their bodies!

Ves had ordered the clan to hurry up with mining all of these valuable substances. This was because he didn't know whether there was a strong threat buried underneath this moon.

If the Larkinsons inadvertently woke up a monstrous beast, everyone would have to evacuate Iron Crusher as soon as possible. It would be an enormous regret if the mining teams had to leave all of their valuable gains behind!

At this time, the Larkinsons had already brought much of the recovered materials to the Spirit of Bentheim.

"Even if we have to cut and run right away, we'll still be able to leave this star system while earning a profit."

That said, Ves wasn't satisfied with winning a small prize. He wanted the jackpot and did not want to rest until he solved Iron Crusher's biggest secret!

Seeing that searching and scanning the surrounding terrain did not yield any good results, Ves turned his attention to the valuable materials themselves.

"Please bring over all of the samples of all of the resonating exotics that you have found." Ves requested the mining director.

"We have stored the containers with the samples elsewhere. It will take a moment to bring them up to you, sir."

"I can wait." Ves simply replied and closed his eyes.

He quietly brainstormed and tried to understand the situation of the moon a bit better. He only stopped once a series of floating boxes had entered the interior of the shuttle.

Ves picked up the first type of resonating exotic that he had come into contact with in this star system.

"Hulivaster. The stealth resonating exotic."

Its effects were fairly clear and its potency was within the boundaries of a second-class material.

"How did the MTA manage to find out its properties?" Ves wondered.

There had to be a way to understand resonating exotics on a deeper level and determine where they came from. Resonating exotics were distinctly different from regular exotics but were far more difficult to decipher.

"Can I resonate with this rock?"

He tried his best but did not spark any reactions, as it should. He had attempted to resonate with different materials in the past and always failed.

Ves questioned whether there was more behind the resonating exotics. Could he get in touch with the source of these special qualities through a different method?

"Blinky!"

Mrow!

"You try and see if you can make anything happen. Try your best to elicit a reaction from this rock!"

Mrow?

Blinky tilted his purple head as if he was wondering whether Ves had gotten the wrong cat. Lucky was the undisputed mineral connaisseur in the clan!"

"Lucky is a different kind of cat from you." Ves argued against his own companion spirit. "Lucky is better suited to solve material issues while you are more capable of handling spiritual matters."

In other words, Ves was getting desperate and just thought about letting his companion spirit inspect the samples of ores that the Larkinson had collected.

After a bit of preparation, the Star Cat slowly approached the chunk of Hulivaster and tried to touch it, only for the rock to go through Blinky's body.

Mrow mrow mrow!

"You didn't find anything noteworthy for me to know? This isn't enough! There has to be a better way to manipulate these rocks!"

Ves didn't know what to do aside from fooling around with the samples of the excavated resonating exotics.

From their spread pattern, it looked as if they were originally together but blasted apart after an unknown source had crashed through this moon.

He suddenly froze.

"Wait a minute…"

When he looked towards the local map where all of the different resonating exotics were originally found, he tried to imagine that these materials had flung in each direction due to a destructive explosion.

"Maybe… an explosion that is big enough to shatter an alien starship!"

What did that make these quantities of resonating exotics? They might be the remains of an alien relic from the distant past!

"What… if I stick them all together again?"