The Mech Touch

One of the most important details about Chosen Envoys was that they could only be recruited from the dead.

It was impossible for Ves to invite someone like Venerable Joshua to take up residence within his Chosen Courtyard.

The expert pilot would have to die in order to assume his new position!

This instantly made it a lot more difficult for Ves to fill up his Chosen Courtyard. The requirements for candidates to become viable were already extremely harsh.

If Ves had to wait until they were on the verge of death or already deceased but not entirely gone, then he might have to wait for many years until he could recruit his first Chosen Envoy!

The only way for him to increase the likelihood of recruiting Chosen Envoys was to repeatedly send them into battle and hope that they would perish!

That was a completely unconscionable act!

"Ugh, I guess I won't be able to recruit too many Chosen Envoys if that is the case."

Though Ves was curious to learn how gaining a Chosen Envoy would benefit him and how many Ascension Points he stood to gain, it might take many years for the Chosen Courtyard to become occupied.

This was fine for Ves. He already had plenty of other System functions to busy himself with. He never asked for this in the first place and did not see the need to change any of his plans to accommodate this new function.

Perhaps the Chosen Courtyard might become a powerful weapon in his arsenal over time, but for now it seemed way too premature for him to put any emphasis on it. A lot of powerful people that he cared about had to die in order for Ves to start filling up the place, and that was not acceptable.

Compared to the ephemeral benefits provided by Chosen Envoys, Ves would rather surround himself with living and breathing expert pilots!

"Alright, let's move on. This is probably the least important part of the Sacred Temple."

If the Chosen Courtyard was the periphery, then the temple structures situated in the middle were undoubtedly the center they revolved around!

From the moment Ves neared the first large structure, he became swept by several different sensations that tugged at his Spirituality.

That wasn't all.

He not only experienced an attraction force that targeted him directly, but also became affected by two other attraction forces.

The strange part was that these additional attraction forces did not affect him directly, but still disturbed him to a degree.

It wasn't until he entered a space that was structured in a remarkably similar fashion to the Ascension Gallery of the Cat Nest that he understood the reason for these attraction forces.

Only three large and tall statues were situated in the ornate and spacious hall. Each of the enormous figures exuded both power and sacredness that made Ves feel extremely weird.

"Is that… me?" Ves uttered in a bewildered tone.

All of the statues were different versions of himself!

The first marble-like statue depicted Ves wearing his Unending Alloy with a cape. This was his proudest guise.

While he looked quite dashing in this form, the statue had all of the hallmarks of a religious icon!

What was also special was that Ves felt an immediate connection and bond to it. The statue was like a totem but also more.

Seeing a statue of himself was already weird enough. What was even more unusual was that the temple also hosted a representation of Blinky and Vulcan!

He half-expected Vulcan to show up since it was a formal incarnation that had the potential to become powerful on its own merits.

What irked Ves quite a bit was that the System had chosen to present Vulcan in the guise of a dwarf rather than a standard human!

"At least I look manlier with a stockier build and a bushy dark beard."

Vulcan was anything but a wimp in this form!

The third statue depicted Blinky.

Ves did not expect his companion spirit to earn a separate place in this temple. After all, compared to Vulcan who was much more detached from him, Blinky was literally a different personality in his own mind!

Nonetheless, Blinky's spiritual makeup was different from that of Ves, and that might be the reason why the System treated them separately.

"So what am I looking at this time, System?"

[The Pantheon is the central hall where you can manage the development of the divinities of yourself, your incarnations and subordinate gods. This location is also where your Chosen Envoys can supply you with Ascension Points through earnest worship.]

"Oh."

The Pantheon did not just look like a temple, but also functioned like one! This made this place a lot more important, especially if he managed to gather a few loyal Chosen Envoys.

Ves spent a bit of time exploring the large structure. He found out that he couldn't do much for the moment.

Aside from reviewing the basic properties of himself and his incarnations, his management authority only allowed him to perform a few actions such as cutting off his bond with his incarnations.

The most important function of the Pantheon was that it clarified how Ves was able to add more incarnations to his collection.

[The Pantheon allows you to exchange a varying amount of Ascension Points to receive extensive assistance in creating a new incarnation of yourself. This process is subject to numerous limitations but will not produce any negative consequences. The cost of creating an incarnation with the help of the Pantheon is 1000 Ascension Points, multiplied by 10 for each subsequent incarnation you wish to obtain. In order to successfully form an incarnation, you must be able to understand the essence of a different and distinct element or domain.]

Ves immediately winced when he heard that he would have to pay a whopping 1000 AP at once in order to obtain a new incarnation!

The price was actually quite reasonable considering what he could gain out of it. Though he could attempt to create a new incarnation of himself without relying on the System, he intuitively suspected that this may not be as simple as before!

If the System charged so much Ascension Points to lend its assistance, then it was definitely not a ripoff.

Since Ves was woefully short of Ascension Points right now, he did not put much further thought behind this benefit.

He was not in a hurry to create any additional incarnations for the time being. Vulcan was already useful enough to him and he could rely on other people and design spirits to cover the responsibilities that he could not handle himself.

As Ves continued to poke around in the Pantheon, he discovered that he couldn't do much else with it for the time being. The entire place was one of the grandest and most high-class sites in the System Space, but it still looked awfully hollow to him due to the lack of people and development.

However, he had a hunch that he had yet to approach the true core of the Sacred Temple.

He needed to move even deeper in order to reach the hall that was arguably the most central location of the mountain summit.

As he entered the final destination of his initial exploration, he came face to face with a faint ball of light that was calmly burning in the center.

Ves didn't notice it too much when he was further away, but now that he had entered this sacred hall, he could clearly feel that this ball was of especially great significance to himself!

[The Sacred Hearth is the most important sanctum of the Sacred Temple. It is here where you will be able to prepare and condense your Divine Cores, the powerful essence that defines and shapes your godhood or godhoods.]

Ves looked gobsmacked. "What…? What is a Divine Core? What is a godhood?"

[Your godhood is the form and expression of your divinity. A Divine Core is the most central and critical component of a True God, which is a divinity.]

???

Ves grew even more confused! He had the illusion that he had just barged into the Ruined Temple of the Five Scrolls Compact! He received so much nonsense that he didn't even know how to process all of this dubious information!

"Please slow down for a moment. What is a divinity, and what is a True God?"

[A divinity is a classification of an existence that can be defined as a 'god'. Each divinity is an energy life form that is so far removed from their mortal beginnings that they are no longer constrained by their former species. In your society, the divinities that you are most familiar with are Star Designers, god pilots and sword gods. They are not the only possible divinities that can emerge from humans. More general divinities that are not specialized are defined as True Gods, and their existences are defined by their Divine Cores.]

"I see."

That clarified a lot. In fact, the information conveyed by this answer clarified a lot of uncertainties that Ves had accumulated in his mind.

If the System's description and classification of these so-called 'divinities' were accurate, then people who advanced far enough eventually became so powerful that they started to be treated as gods.

This was strange to him because he did not typically worship Star Designers as literal gods. In fact, this was the prevailing trend within the mech industry.

While it was quite normal for average mech designers to idolize and revere these peak mech designers, no one was ever forced to worship people such as the Polymath as literal gods!

There was probably a lot of weirdness going on that the System had not explained. Seeing as how it was uncharacteristically responsive to his questions, Ves asked another one in order to obtain as much clarification as possible.

"What separates divinities from those that have not reached this standard?"

[True Gods and those that have yet to become gods are divided by the strength and functionality of their Divine Cores. A pre-divinity phase Divine Core is weak and limited and can be divided into early stage, middle stage and late stage. A post-divinity phase Divine Core is much more powerful and has many uses. Such activated Divine Cores can be divided into low tier, middle tier, high tier and further tiers of strength and development.]

This sounded like a brand-new power system to Ves!

He suspected that it was likely the mainstream power system adopted by the Five Scrolls Compact.

He took a closer look at the ball of light. The more he concentrated, the more he was able to glean details from it. Given what he had just learned, he was able to distinguish that the light ball actually consisted of three Divine Cores that were closely mashed together!

This caused them to exist both separately but at the same time support each other.

There was one Divine Core that probably corresponded to himself given that it was actually a virtual copy of his design seed!

There was another Divine Core that apparently corresponded to Blinky.

Then there was a larger Divine Core that was connected to Vulcan.

Ves managed to figure out the stages of his three Divine Cores.

If he was reading this correctly, his own Divine Core as well as that of Blinky were still in the early stage of the pre-divinity phase.

What was notable was that Vulcan's Divine Core had probably reached the middle stage of the pre-divinity phase!

"This matches up to my own impressions."

Vulcan had developed quickly since his birth. Since he was unbound by the constraints that Ves was subject to, the spiritual incarnation was able to grow like a rocket, especially after the Creation Association started to supply him with an increasing amount of spiritual feedback!

If this trend continued, then Vulcan would probably be the first version of himself to reach the post-divinity phase!

Ves decided to ask an important question.

"What is the difference between a pre-divinity humans and a post-divinity True God?"

There had to be a good reason to make such a distinction. Ves deeply wanted to know what set people who were comparable to Star Designers and god pilots apart from their lessers.

[Pre-divinity existences cannot attract and absorb the energy generated by the faith of sentient beings. Post-divinity True Gods are able to do so and develop their Divine Cores further.]

"!!!"