The Mech Touch

Ves and many other humans thought that the battle had already ended when the Phase King ceased any form of resistance.

Though the Phase Kingdom still possessed a decent amount of strength, the fish-whales over there were not as strong and coordinated as their elites. They also expended a lot of strength to resist the Swarmers and needed time to restore their combat effectiveness.

By the time these Phasers arrived to save their king fish, Task Force Fisherman should have already left the battlefield!

Ves had already moved on from worrying about this battle to handling the aftermath. How could he ensure that his clan would be able to retain the maximum possible amount of phasewater? How could he persuade the MTA to get its grubby hands off his plunder?

He was already beginning to consider different arguments that could persuade the mechers to make a few exceptions for him and his clan and allow him to retain his rich bounty.

"If the MTA really insists on confiscating most of my phasewater, then I should at least push for a lot of concessions."

As Ves kept daydreaming about the rich rewards that he could obtain from this successful campaign, the Cerebral King suddenly interrupted all of his considerations!

It turned out that the powerful king fish gorged upon the body of the Phase King in order to trigger its final evolutionary step!

So many years had passed since the Cerebral King had slowly evolved and augmented its body into a powerful state.

It was only now that it had finally made up for all of the shortcomings that had prevented it from completing its master plan.

With the energy derived from the starship-grade power reactor and the abundant amount of phasewater stolen from the Lake Continent, the Cerebral King had cleared away almost all of the obstacles that prevented it from realizing its ambitions!

After supplementing its body by digesting the rich flesh from the Phase King, the Cerebral King did not delay any further and straightforwardly moved on to enacting its ultimate goal!

The Cerebral King's body rippled as its flesh began to get more excited than ever! All of its cells were eagerly absorbing as much energy and phasewater as they could as they morphed into a higher state that apparently possessed much more amazing properties than the cells of ordinary fish-whales!

Even though the Cerebral King was in the process of changing its very essence, it still managed to retain enough awareness and self-control to channel its vastly-expanded phasewater abilities into a feat previously considered impossible by the fish-whale race.

Up until now, Purgatory functioned as both a paradise and a prison. More than a million years had passed without any apparent sign that the pocket space opened up a connection to the outside cosmos.

Few fish-whales ever thought about this because their knowledge was limited to begin with. Only a few ancient individuals were aware of the fact that the phase whale enclave was just a tiny slice of space that had been separated from a much larger reality.

All of the king fishes happened to know this secret!

From the moment that the Cerebral King learned that there was not just an entire galaxy outside of Purgatory but that it was also the home to the race that produced its god, the king fish yearned to reach this wonderful space.

Of course, that was not its only goal.

Having survived all the way up until now, the Cerebral King diligently worked on continuing and perfecting the work of its god and creator.

Still, the Cerebral King originally did not have much confidence that it could attain its goal at first. The other fish-whale subspecies were much stronger than its own. It seemed impossible for the Evolution Kingdom to defeat both the Phase Kingdom and the Hot Kingdom.

It was only when the unwitting outsiders had come and proposed several agreements that the ambitious king fish saw a way to succeed!

These greedy humans thought that they could use the strength of the Cerebral King and its subjects to break open the Lake Kingdom.

What these short-sighted aliens with their metal 'mechs' failed to realize was that the Cerebral King took advantage of their gifts and means to fulfill its ultimate goal!

So what if the Evolvers all suffered heavy casualties when fighting against the elite Phaser fish-whales?

Although the Evolvers all considered the Cerebral King to be their father, the king fish never really cared about its subjects in the first place!

They were all disposable experimental material in its eyes! The Evolver fish-whales served no other purpose than to test-drive its latest organ designs and serve as cannon fodder whenever the other fish-whale kingdoms launched an attack on Cerebral King's territory!

Now that the Cerebral King was on the cusp of completing its greatest ambition, it had no use for its test subjects anymore! The king fish resolutely abandoned the remaining the Evolvers and never threw them a second look.

After all, why should the Cerebral King care about their feelings when he was about to advance its own interests?

MY ASCENSION BEGINS NOW!

Shortly after the transforming Cerebral King used its expanded phasewater abilities to punch a hole through the barrier that isolated Purgatory from other spaces, it immediately entered an immense tomb where the bones that it was finally able to come in touch with the bones it had always dreamt about!

The Cerebral King's massive eyes grew tender and misty as the squirming king fish lowered its body and rubbed its belly on one of the massive rib bones of the gigantic skeleton.

A shudder ran through the massive fish-whale's body.

GOD… WE MEET AGAIN…

While the Cerebral King cast its mind back to the past while rubbing its morphing body against the powerful bones of the deceased phase whale, the humans and Evolvers watching what was going on through the fractured hole in space were completely frozen due to shock!

The Evolver fish-whales couldn't make sense of all of the changes. This was way too far beyond their experiences that their alien brains essentially became stuck.

The humans were a little better. Many of them were veterans of multiple battles and other crises. In addition to that, their perspectives were much broader. They were all aware that many wondrous and powerful means existed in the cosmos.

Still, now that they came face-to-face in one such event, few mech pilots were able to maintain their composure in front of all of these rapid changes.

The entire battlefield became turbulent as the fabric of space suffered from the damage inflicted by the Cerebral King!

While the hole in space was slowly healing, the disruption caused by this phenomenon produced spatial shocks that inflicted similar damage to the spatial attacks launched by the Phaser fish-whales!

"RETREAT! GET OUT OF THERE! DON'T STAY CLOSE!"

Many mech pilots and Evolver fish-whales quickly woke up and distanced themselves from the hole.

While Commander Casella, Patriarch Reginald and several other mech officers hastily organized the disarrayed surviving mech units, the Everchanger had yet to move.

Although the mech became exposed to the spatial turbulence produced by the fractured hole in space, Venerable Joshua had already switched the Everchanger's design spirit to Qilanxo.

Once he resonated with both his expert mech and its current design spirit, an augmented resonance shield surrounded the Everchanger that fully shielded it against the spatial ripples, at least for the time being.

This was not a permanent solution, though.

"Sir! We need to go! We can't endure this pressure for too long!"

During the previous battle, Venerable Joshua and the Everchanger managed to conserve their resources, so they still had a lot of fight left. They did this in case they needed to respond against unexpected developments on the battlefield.

To Ves, the current incident definitely qualified as an 'unexpected development'!

The problem was that the scope and magnitude of this drastic turn of events exceeded his wildest expectations!

How could the Everchanger ever confront the Cerebral King when the latter had grown so powerful!?

Although Ves wasn't sure what the Cerebral King aimed to do by forcefully entering the Royal Tomb, he was sure that it was not good for him and humanity as a whole if this ancient fish-whale gained access to the giant phase whale skeleton!

"Damnit, did we get used by the Cerebral King?!"

Ves felt incredibly sour at the realization that the supposed ignorant indigenous alien beast was not as naive and stupid as he thought.

By now, it became abundantly clear that the Cerebral King had led Ves and the other humans by the nose!

"There's no point blaming myself." He depreciating muttered.

Besides, the deal they struck was meant to be a win-win arrangement. Both sides agreed to cooperate together in order to fulfill their own goals.

The Cerebral King managed to complete its evolution and somehow gained access to the Royal Tomb.

The expeditionary forces not only got a bunch of research data and valuable Evolver fish-whale organs, but also managed to plunder over 2 metric tons of phasewater as well as dozens of salvaged Phaser fish-whale organs!

Aside from that, they also gained a massive bonus by obtaining 22 new expert candidates and 5 new expert pilots!

In this regard, the Larkinson Clan and its allies did not suffer any major losses!

Sure, the previous battle against the Phasers resulted in the deaths of hundreds of mech pilots, but this did not affect the strength of the Golden Skull Alliance.

Mech pilots were easy to recruit!

While the good ones were hard to obtain, the Larkinson Clan and other organizations just had to invest a few years into getting the new recruits up to standard.

In any case, Ves had no reason to feel he had led his men astray by choosing to ally with the Cerebral King!

"It's clear that our cooperation has ended, though."

The Cerebral King did not even bother to give an explanation to its human allies before running off to the Royal Tomb.

Whatever it was planning to do next clearly didn't require the intervention of others!

Ves grew a bit conflicted now that events had spiraled into this fashion.

"Your orders, sir?!" Venerable Joshua urgently pressed as he tried his best to keep the Everchanger stable while it was hovering so close to the space hole. "I can only keep this up for one minute before we start incurring damage. Please make up your mind, sir!"

Despite the expert pilot's nagging, Ves forcefully tried to calm himself down so that he did not make any rash or impulsive decisions.

If he had to make a snap decision, then he would probably order Joshua to take the Everchanger into the Royal Tomb and stop whatever dastardly plan the Cerebral King had been plotting all of this time.

"That sounds incredibly stupid."

There were three reasons why he thought this way.

First, the Cerebral King was too strong! Its recent victory not only restored it from its exhausted state, but also pushed its overall might to the next level.

To be able to punch through the barrier of space that isolated Purgatory for so long required a huge amount of phasewater, energy and ability!

If the Phase King was able to accomplish this feat by itself, it would have done so a long time ago!

Second, the Royal Tomb did not have any obvious entrances or exits. If the Everchanger rashly barged inside, how would Ves and Joshua possibly be able to leave if the space hole disappeared?

There was no guarantee that the MTA would be able to bail out the stranded Everchanger and its occupants!

Third, what did the Cerebral King's plans have to do with Ves? The king fish might not be the friend and ally that he desired, but it was not an outright enemy to him either.

The two had just been using each other without any hard feelings. There was no reason to think that the Cerebral King developed a grudge against Ves and his clan, so what did it matter that the evolving fish-whale was about to enact a plan that was in the making for more than a million years?

"This is someone else's problem!" Ves righteously concluded. "If the mechers are so eager to get their hands on Purgatory, then let them clean up this mess! Joshua, let's get out of here! Our task force must return to the Gate Continent right away! It's time to say goodbye to Purgatory!"

Venerable Joshua sighed in relief. "Finally!"