The Mech Touch

Ves did not believe in the existence of heaven. It was a staple of many religions, but he was taught to disregard their claims and descriptions of what the afterlife was supposed to be like.

Did this mean that Ves denied the existence of an afterlife? That was not necessarily the case.

It was still possible for a secularist like himself to believe that there may be a form of life after the physical death of the body.

Ves had witnessed too many cases of entities coming back from the dead.

However, the afterlife might not look anywhere close to what people imagined it to be. Mortals were just too confined by their limited perspectives to describe the greatness of reality and all of its facets.

Yet if a place like heaven could ever be real, then he imagined that the enormous living galaxies might be such a place.

In any case, people could understand his theories a lot better if Ves claimed that he was communicating with 'the heavens' rather than a pair of 'living galaxies'!

"It's just that this is how I am able to interpret them based on my understanding and life."

Ves was most sensitive to life and built up his entire views around this central concept.

If Gloriana ever went through a similar experience, then she might perceive the galaxies as intricate machines that were far closer to perfection than anything smaller!

In any case, an indeterminate amount of time passed by. Ves did not have the awareness to count the passage of minutes or hours. It was all fuzzy to him, but even if he could track the passage of time, it was pointless.

A part of him understood that his dialogue with the living galaxies proceeded at its own pace.

He recognized that his ability to maintain this wordless exchange depended on a large part on his own psyche, mentality, spirit and other mental factors.

"Maybe that was what those previous challenges were all about." He guessed. "They serve to test me and prime me for this pivotal contact."

If a lesser individual went through the same process, then their weak and messy minds would not be able to bear the burden of communicating with such vast and elevated living existences!

It took a strong mind to bear the enormous pressure and process the influx of information.

To be honest, Ves barely understood a fraction of what he was getting from the living galaxies! Over 99 percent of what he received from them was functionally useless to him given that he could not make heads or tails of what they conveyed.

He could barely interpret whatever was left, but that gave him enough food for thought.

The Milky Way came across as something akin to a wounded emperor that had been driven out of its palace and was reduced to begging on the streets.

While the Milky Way was likely one of the largest and most powerful beggars in the cosmos, this did not change the fact that the living galaxy needed help!

The source of help didn't matter. Regardless of how much smaller and weaker Ves may be, as long as he had the potential to grow and transcend his own mortality, he might attain a level of strength one day where he could provide material aid to an entire galaxy.

Of course, even if he fell far short of that goal, it was enough for him to get by with what he could understand.

"Even living galaxies have needs."

The best way that Ves could interpret his relationship with them was that he was one of the many bacteria that had been born inside their bodies.

Every human had benevolent bacteria in their bodies. They played a small part in keeping the human body healthy and functional. A single bacterium might not be able to do anything meaningful to a body that was countless times greater, but a large group of them could still make a significant difference!

What was significant about his current state was that he was a bacterium who had mutated from the rest of his ilk. He became more powerful and was increasingly able to affect the state of the enormous human body where he resided.

Mutations weren't always good.

Cancer usually occurred when body cells malfunctioned and started to replicate uncontrollably.

Ves was also transcending his original role as just one tiny cog in an immense machine!

Perhaps this was what his current experience was all about. He was enduring one final test to see whether his mutation allowed him to be able to keep his identity as a benign influence or whether he became harmful all of a sudden!

Ves had the vague idea that this test was supposed to be far more difficult than it should.

As much as Ves was happy about his mental state, he did not have any illusions about its development. He should have been far from qualified to receive so much pressure and converse with entities that were far too massive for him to behold.

"It doesn't make any sense."

The belief that he wasn't ordinarily qualified to handle so much power became stronger.

For some reason, the living galaxies were giving him preferential treatment. They could have exerted a tiny fraction more pressure on him, and that would have strained his mind to the point of breaking!

Instead, these vast and powerful existences meticulously controlled the expression of their endless might to a level where Ves could endure their power.

Ves tried to figure out the reason why he was having it so easy.

"Is it because I employed some of the theories and methods imparted by the Orven Ritual Sacrifice Altar enlightenment fruit?"

He shook his head. That couldn't be it. The enlightenment fruit did contain knowledge that referenced a bond to the Red Ocean as a whole or something, but much of that was dressed up in superstitious language.

"Maybe not all of those crazy statements were nonsense."

Yet even then, the orvens all talked about how terrible it was to harmonize with the dwarf galaxy that they were a part of. Many of the ones that survived the experience but received too many injuries in the process claimed that they had fallen short at this junction!

"Ah. Maybe it's the System again."

That made the most sense. The specter of Carlos Shaw already mentioned that the System had actively intervened to make this entire trip less dangerous.

It also fit with the Spiritual Ascension upgrade track that Ves had recently chosen. These were exactly the kinds of situations where the System had to fulfill its purpose!

"Maybe this is one of the most important factors why I can bear the pressure of two living galaxies at once. I'm not just enduring the pressure of the Red Ocean at the moment. I'm also communicating with the Milky Way!"

That was odd. Why was he 'talking' to two living galaxies at the same time? Shouldn't a single one suffice?

Ves vaguely recalled that he interacted with the Milky Way Galaxy when he advanced to Journeyman.

This caused him to develop a connection with the Milky Way though Ves wasn't clear about the nature and the properties of this bond.

The reason why the Red Ocean had joined the party was because he had traveled to it. Since he was undergoing an unknown ascension process in its territory, it was logical for the living dwarf galaxy to get involved!

"This is anything but normal, though."

As Ves continued to receive a continuous influx of information, the nature of his exchange with the living galaxies slowly started to shift.

It took a while for him to figure out the nature of this change.

"I'm starting to get energy instead of information."

Ves felt as if his body, his mind and his Spirituality were starting to get hot and stuffed with lots of energy that was far too potent for him to bear!

He started to get worried. He was pretty sure that he would blow up if more and more energy started to fill up his entire being!

Yet before he could come up with a way to cut this extraordinary process short, he felt as if the vast majority of all of this excess power was being shunted to an entirely different location!

Ves silently sighed in relief and tried to figure out where all of those energies were going.

He soon figured out a possible answer based on what he had learned.

"Wait… is all of that extraordinary galactic juice going to my divine artifact?!"

There was a reason why they were called that way. Divine artifacts were so powerful and special that they defied normality to a ridiculous degree.

Now, Ves came up with a potential answer why that was the case. The cyborg cat that Ves had empowered with a small piece of his divine core was a fundamentally different existence.

With the knowledge that he now possessed, he guessed that the cyborg cat was made to be a tailor-made container for this exceedingly high-grade energy!

"I see now! So this is why the orvens are able to ascend to 'godhood' so easily despite being individually weak. They cheat by crafting themselves a purpose-built tool that can naturally contain all of these 'galactic energies' in their stead!"

He was tempted to call the energy bestowed by the living galaxies by other names such as 'divine energy' or 'heavenly energy'.

However, that would impose an unnecessary superstitious bias to this phenomenon, so he settled for a more neutral-sounding term instead.

Ves could feel the changes taking place outside of this mysterious illusionary space.

His cyborg cat was undergoing an immense transformation!

The mundane was about to become divine.

Though Ves himself was not receiving much of the benefits right now, this was okay since his divine artifact acted as an intermediary of sorts.

Ves could slowly absorb the powerful galactic energies or whatever when he became strong enough to absorb all of that might.

The channeling of energies slowed down. Ves could feel that his divine artifact was nearing saturation. There was little point in pumping his relatively small cyborg cat with more galactic energies than it was equipped to handle!

He momentarily felt a lot of regret for one of his past choices.

"A larger divine artifact could have absorbed a lot more of this galactic energy. I doubt there will be many opportunities to obtain so much of this high-grade energy!"

He had already made his choice, though. He was unwilling to make a major sacrifice or carry around a large and unwieldy divine artifact.

He chose to limit the volume of his cyborg cat and that meant it became full long before Ves was satisfied with what he received!

"Wait, that's not all. Not only am I absorbing a tiny amount of juice, some of it is also going elsewhere!"

Ves soon figured out that he and Blinky both became baptized by the galactic energies, but only to a tiny degree.

Both of them were not qualified yet to handle such powerful energies,  Blinky also became baptized with a minute amount of galactic energy.

It hardly amounted to much, but that was all they could take at this moment!

This meant that until they matured and grew strong enough, they wouldn't notice much of a difference.

"For now, much of the power is concentrated in my divine artifact. That will be the medium for me to harness this new power!"

As Ves and Blinky both absorbed a fraction of those powerful energies, they could develop vague guesses of what they received.

From the Milky Way, Ves received the impression that its galactic energy was related to spirituality and spiritual energy. He could already feel his Spirituality and his design seed singing joyously as they became baptized by the gift of his home galaxy, as if that made any sense!

From the Red Ocean, Ves could guess that it was related to phasewater in a way. The galactic energy from the dwarf galaxy coursed through his body, fortifying it and changing it in subtle ways that made him think that augmenting his blood with phasewater might be a realistic possibility in the future!

All of these changes made him want to scratch his head.

"What the hell is going on? What is the point of receiving all of these galactic energies?"