The Mech Touch

The Lake Continent was rich with phasewater!

Ves could feel it in his bones and so did the other mechs that had approached the most central area. A large collection of pools and lakes had formed on the asteroid which held the greatest reserves of phasewater in the phase whale enclave!

He had always wondered how all of this phasewater came about. The Cerebral King never had a clear answer and chalked it all up to Flesh Conqueror's divine abilities.

From what Ves had managed to piece together, phasewater did not appear out of nothing. It had to be formed out of a process just like every other exotic material in the cosmos.

However, there were lots of exotic materials in existence but few of which humanity could reproduce under controlled circumstances. They were just too mysterious and worked on principles that humanity had barely scratched the surface of. Since the rules that governed their appearance were too advanced, most people and organizations had to settle for mining existing deposits.

There were only a few instances where people could obtain a source that was able to produce eoxtics in a sustainable fashion.

The value of Purgatory lay exactly in this! There was no race in the Red Ocean that understood phasewater better than the phase whales, so it was not inconceivable that the creator of this pocket space had also created or transplanted a wellspring that could generate phasewater on a continuous basis.

Ves would love to get his hands on these wellsprings, but he knew without a shadow of a doubt that it was impossible for him to keep his hands on such a precious strategic asset!

The mechers that were constantly looming behind his shoulders were already rubbing their thieving hands.

Even if the Simile Halifax wasn't accompanying the expeditionary fleet, as long as the MTA received any word of such a wellspring, one of its greedy members would inevitably come up with an excuse to liberate this phasewater generator from his hands.

The most he and his forces could get away with was robbing a large stash of phasewater. He would figure out the rest later.

As long as the Larkinson Clan was able to obtain an immense bounty of phasewater, he could convert most of it into all kinds of wealth and other benefits!

"C'mon! Hurry up and harvest that phasewater! Why aren't you guys moving yet?!" Ves urged the special harvesting teams that had accompanied the task force.

Numerous shuttles and mining mechs attempted to approach the lakes. However, no matter what they did, they did not dare to get too close to the biggest and most phasewater-rich lake!

One of the team leaders soon provided an answer.

"We cannot get close enough to these lakes, sir. The spatial fluctuations are too violent. Our vehicles and machinery won't be able to stay intact long enough to extract any quantity of phasewater!"

"What?! I thought we made certain that our harvesting gear is able to resist phasewater disturbances!"

The Golden Skull Alliance had prepared specialized phasewater harvesting gear a long time ago. The invasion of the Red Ocean largely centered around this precious substance, so how could any pioneer not make the appropriate preparations?

If the Larkinson Clan did not make the appropriate preparations, every clansman would probably cry if they found a rich deposit of phasewater but not being able to take it and store it safely aboard a starship!

As the various specialists started to explain the situation, Ves' expression grew grim.

There was nothing wrong with the harvesting equipment prepared by the Larkinson Clan.

The real problem lay with the immense quantities of phasewater that was buried underneath all of these pools!

The expensive harvesting equipment that the Larkinson Clan had invested in were designed to harvest phasewater from more ordinary phasewater deposits.

These deposits were usually small, mostly because the natives of the Red Ocean usually found the bigger ones and sucked them dry in advance.

Therefore, the typical deposits that pioneers encountered in the deep frontier only held up to 500 grams of phasewater or less. The fluctuations generated by such a modest concentration was not that great, which meant that most aliens tended to overlook them. Only those who put a lot of effort into scouring for this strategic resource such as human explorers with specialized phasewater detection equipment were able to sniff out these treasure caches!

This was a completely different situation, though. Ves never thought that the problem that they would suffer was having access to too much phasewater instead of too little!

Ves began to think quickly. He switched the projected feed and looked at the surrounding environment.

Aside from the big lake which served as the Phase King's personal lair, there were many other water pools around it of varying sizes. Many of them were rather small and not that impressive.

"Can you safely approach and harvest the phasewater deposits from the smaller pools of water?"

"We shall try, sir. Please wait a moment."

When a specialized harvesting mech submerged below a small pool at the outskirts of the site, Ves soon received the good news.

"It is working! Although our harvesting machines will incur a certain amount of damage from harvesting the reserves in these pools, we should be able to extract many kilograms of phasewater!"

"That's good! Proceed with emptying those smaller lakes, then. Will there be any problems with storing large quantities of phasewater?"

"No, sir." The team leader happily replied. "Our preparations concerning that should be fine. We have brought enough containers that can adequately suppress the spatial fluctuations of any phasewater put inside. However, we do recommend that we do not put too many of these containers together. They don't work perfectly and putting too many of them together might lead to accidents."

This was not a big problem. If it came down to it, he could order mechs to holster their weapons and carry the crates while staying apart from each other.

What really mattered was finding a way to increase the loot obtained from harvesting all of the phasewater available in this site. It was incredibly frustrating to come so close to thousands of kilograms of phasewater, only to stay away from them because all of their mechs and vehicles would just get torn apart from all of the spatial fluctuations generated by this active and hazardous substance!

However, just because the human forces had trouble with getting their hands on a lot of phasewater did not mean the Evolver fish-whales suffered from the same problem.

Much of their DNA was based from the phase whale race, and if there was one advantage that the powerful aquatic race possessed, it was that they possessed an incredibly high tolerance for phasewater!

The Cerebral King quickly took the lead in showcasing how much the physique of the fish-whales were able to endure the dangers of phasewater.

It had only paused on top of the big lake for a minute. It stared hatefully at the Phase King that was violently resisting against the hordes of Swarmer fish-whales but did not choose to pursue its vendetta against the sovereign of the Phase Kingdom.

Instead, the Cerebral King resolutely dove into the big lake in order to raid the Phase King's treasury of phasewater!

The surface of the lake splashed and grew turbulent as the Cerebral King reached all the way to the bottom before devouring all of the phasewater and lots of regular water!

"Joshua! Tune your sensors below this lake! I need to see what is going on down there!" Ves quickly instructed.

"I'm trying but there is too much going on around here!"

The sensor feeds only provided Ves with a partial view of what the Cerebral King was doing. It turned out that it was madly absorbing as much phasewater as its body could handle!

Although the king fish already integrated a decent amount of phasewater reserves in its body, Ves estimated that it held no more than 20 kilograms or so after many years of accumulation.

This was an impressive amount for any living organism, but the Cerebral King was equivalent to a pauper when compared to the Phase King!

Now, the Cerebral King rapidly made up for this deficiency!

It had already prepared for this raid beforehand as its body contained numerous organs that were designed to hold and make use of phasewater. Although these organs had always been operating at minimal strength due to lack of resources, the phasewater supplied by the big lake was more than enough to meet the Cerebral King's demand!

In the end, the greedy king fish absorbed over half of the phasewater stored in this reserve alone!

The Cerebral King was like a starving dragon that had just gorged upon the biggest feast of its life. Its titanic body shook as all of the phasewater contained within began to trigger a massive transformation.

The king fish's body not only began to thrum with power, but also expanded in size as well as shape!

Ves was shocked by what was happening. Was the Cerebral King about to undergo metamorphosis while they were right in the middle of enemy territory?

It soon became clear that the transformation process was not an instant matter. The Cerebral King was definitely becoming more powerful, but it looked as if it would take hours if not days to complete its evolution.

The Cerebral King soon rose up and emerged from the surface.

Not a single mech dared to come close to the king fish's extremely active body. The big fish wasn't able to control its rapidly-rising phasewater abilities yet as the immediate space around its form was visibly shaking!

GODBLOOD! SUCCESS! BODY IS EVOLVING!

As the Cerebral King celebrated the fact that it had finally obtained the last piece of its puzzle, Ves tried to communicate with the king fish.

"Cerebral King! This is no time to get distracted! There is still a lot of phasewater left in this lake and other water pools! The Phase King and its subordinates have already noticed what we're doing. We need to get out of here quickly but we shouldn't leave all of this phasewater behind for our enemies. Can you and your fellow Evolvers help with bringing out this phasewater?"

The Cerebral King lowered its massive head.

CANNOT. TOO MUCH GODBLOOD. WILL BREAK OUR BODIES. POISON.

"That won't be a major problem for us! We can cooperate! Do you see all of those open containers that we have prepared over there? Help us fill them with phasewater and we can safely bring them away from the Phase Kingdom."

Ves instructed Venerable Joshua to interact with one of the specialized containers. The Everchanger flew over to one of the harvesting teams and picked up a container with its hands before moving it closer to the Cerebral King.

The king fish actively used one of its abilities and took hold of the container. It studied it for a moment.

WILL TRY. WILL BRING MORE GODBLOOD IF ADEQUATE.

The Cerebral King did not do all of the work itself but commanded over a hundred Evolver fish-whales to harvest all of the phasewater from the larger pools.

Although their bodies were not as robust as that of the Cerebral King, their phase whale heritage allowed them to endure a greater degree of phasewater hazards than the harvesting equipment brought by the expeditionary forces!

As humans and fish-whales worked together to take out stash after stash of phasewater, the original owners of all of this liquid wealth finally took action!

The Phase King blasted out with a mighty space shock that tore hundreds of elite Swarmer fish-whales into bloody chunks!

By now, the Phasers had largely depleted the Swarmers! The latter no longer posed as a great of a threat as before as the stream of cannon fodder had dimished.

This left the Phase King with a lot more options than before!

Its eyes had long been overtaken by madness as it had observed its property being stolen. With an invisible roar, it had commanded half of the Phaser fish-whales to stop fighting against the Swarmers and return to their territory in order to stop the thieves from making off with all of that phasewater!

"Alert! Prepare to resist the Phasers! They're about to bring down their wrath!"