The Mech Touch

The essence of a god pilot was to acquire the traits that were typically associated with gods!

How could a god remain completely obscure and unknown?

How could a god gain so much power but never actually make use of it in any major capacity?

How could a god receive so much admiration and worship when he had never actually proven himself deserving of this respect?

According to many mech pilots including those that had bridged the ultimate gap, a pilot who yearned to become a god must go out of his way to perform a godlike deed!

It was easy enough for a god pilot to exert the might of a deity. They had power in spades.

However, it was a different story when it came to ace pilots!

As powerful as Saints could be, their willpower could only grow up to a certain limit. Once they hit a limit, there was nothing that peak ace pilots could do to promote the magnitude of their resonance strength.

They fell short of obtaining the power of an actual god.

This infamous bottleneck had frustrated many heroes and champions in the past.

The General Axelar Streon and the Mace of Retaliation were just two among many who stood on the wrong side of a wide and desolate canyon.

If they attempted to reach the other side by performing an ordinary jump, then they would almost certainly fall short and plunge to their deaths!

How could they possibly reach their destination under the circumstances?

Many different theories had emerged. Humanity still understood too little about this deep and profound issue, but numerous advancements had emerged through a combination of clever deduction as well as trial and error.

"This is how the Mech Merger Body Process originally came to be. It is a systematic recipe that helps ace pilots transform into god pilots one step at a time." Axelar Streon generously revealed a secret that was only shared to a tiny minority of people. "Before the mech community came up with it, god pilot candidates simply stepped on the road to no return and tried to complete the processes of operation union, domain field union, corporeal union and total union in quick succession."

Ves reacted with shock when he heard this. "What?! That... that's dangerous! How could they possibly survive such an insanely demanding course of action?"

Trying to complete all four phases of the infamous Mech Body Merger Process sounded as insane as designing and constructing a complete battleship in the span of a few hours!

General Axelar gazed up in genuine admiration. "This is why all of us look up to the earliest and oldest god pilots. They have all managed to make the jump from ace pilot to god pilot in a single session. The risks they took at the time were astounding, and so was their potential. There is a theory that they all managed to sublimate their willpower and shatter the barriers of reality that held them back because they went all-out in trying to complete deeds that are worthy of legend."

This was a theory that Ves only heard hints of. His lower rank and lack of contact with the upper layers of society had limited his exposure to this kind of stuff.

Now that he had risen far enough that he was now on speaking terms with a genuine god pilot candidate, Ves could finally lift the fog that hid the essence of the mech piloting profession!

The crucial information provided by Axelar filled a lot of holes in his personal understanding of mech pilots. Ves immediately became engrossed by all of the answers and inferences he had derived from this conversation!

"I understand!" Ves spoke. "It is not necessarily the goal that matters, but the process of trying to reach it. By setting a seemingly impossible challenge for yourself, you will attempt to do your utmost to make it happen. The more difficult the challenge, the more potential you attempt to squeeze out of yourself. The high stakes and all of the expectations that other people set on you serves to increase the pressure that you are subjected to. All of this can help you push past a critical point and break through the limit of your power!"

Axelar smiled. "I believe the nature of the deed itself is also important, but you are correct that the process of fulfilling it is indispensable. Think about the ancient myths and timeless historical deeds of the human race. Those that manage to exist to this day all deserve to become an active part of our contemporary civilization because they are still leagues ahead of what ordinary people can do. To become a god is to be an inspiration to people. Mech designers such as yourself usually accomplish this by creating a work that only a god can make. Mech pilots such as myself must exert our martial might to the limit and beyond to do the same."

The general's words briefly reminded Ves of his speculative grand designs.

When Ves had been struck by inspiration and came up with the idea of developing a phase lord god machine, he intuitively thought that a project as massive and ambitious as this would be enough to trigger his advancement to a Star Designer!

That was because he was convinced that the scope, difficulty and results of this grand design could never be completed by a typical Master Mech Designer!

Only an entity comparable to a god was qualified to complete such an awe-inspiring project!

Though Ves didn't entirely feel comfortable about using the terminology of 'god' and such to describe this topic, he wasn't as bothered by it as he used to. There was no explicitly religious component to this discussion. Axelar only yearned to gain the power of a god. He didn't care about all of the other baggage that came with this loaded term.

"I guess it makes sense." Ves spoke. "A lot of god pilots had performed astounding deeds that broke the limit of what ace pilots can accomplish under their own power. The Light of Sol for example accelerated his mech in realspace without relying on warp drives and managed to travel at the speed of light. The Chosen Human simply became a god pilot at the age of 75, thereby setting a record that has never been surpassed. The Fist of Defiance struck down a leader of the Seven Apex Races whose strength was comparable to a god mech with a single punch. The Destroyer of Worlds shattered a heavily defended fortress planet with a single shot from the main cannon of her mech."

Whether the goal was important or not, it made sense that all of the pressure that the candidates subjected themselves to played a major part in motivating them to succeed!

Axelar suddenly grinned in amusement. "Would you like to know another secret, professor?"

How could Ves ever say no to this offer? He nodded his head without any hesitation!

"After the Age of Conquest had come to an end, humanity entered a recovery process that lasted for over four centuries. To be honest, our civilization has already returned to the peak that we managed to attain during the heyday of the Age of Conquest. Yet despite possessing the power to do so, we never took the initiative to resume the great conquest and conquer the other half of the Milky Way Galaxy. There are many reasons why we held ourselves back from finishing the job. For example, the Big Two feared that we would start to turn on ourselves once we have eliminated every alien neighbor that poses a threat to us. However, the reason that matters the most to us is to provide god candidates such as ourselves valid targets to test ourselves against."

Ves widened his eyes!

This was a conspiracy!

"Humanity has been treating the Seven Apex Races as cattle to be farmed? Aren't people afraid that those aliens will secretly build up their strength and make a comeback one day?"

General Axelar shrugged. "Even I am not fully privy to the considerations of the people who rank above my head. I am still a tier 2 galactic citizen. The higher your galactic citizenship tier, the more you will come across these kinds of secrets. To be honest, I shouldn't have told you this information, but I personally believe this point is moot considering that we have become permanently separated from the Milky Way. I shared it with you in order to open your horizons and let you know the efforts we have made to grant a stage for god pilot candidates to perform."

In this regard, the situation in the Milky Way and the Red Ocean were similar.

The biggest difference was that the urgency to beat up the aliens was not so great in the former galaxy.

Setting back the indigenous aliens was a matter of life and death in the Red Ocean! The stakes were so much higher because there weren't hundreds of thousands battleships and a hundred or so god pilots collectively holding back red humanity's external enemies!

Ves began to understand the significance of deeds to pilots that wanted to shed the last vestiges of their mortality.

"How do these deeds play into the Mech Body Merger Process, exactly?" He asked.

"When we step onto the road of no return, we cannot reach our destination by taking a leisurely walk." Axelar patiently explained. "We must sprint from beginning to end and exert the utmost of our potential as we try to make it to our destination before we crash. The Mech Body Merger Process is split up into four phases, which means that we can complete them step by step. The problem is that barring the Chosen Human, few if any other god pilot has managed to complete all four phases by relying on their normal efforts alone. They need a powerful push, and deeds can make this happen. Typically, a god pilot candidate will seek to complete four appropriate challenges in sequence. Every successful deed can provide us with the impetus we need to complete an important phase."

That... was a much more manageable way to complete this life-threatening transformation process. It was quite brilliant in that it enabled the pilot to take his time and reach his goal by making more measured steps.

"What if the ace pilot fails in one of the four challenges?"

"Death is almost certain." Axelar gravely spoke. "This is no joke, Professor Larkinson. Success is the only way forward. A single weakness or mistake can doom our attempt at attaining godhood. This is why every ace pilot like myself must set our affairs in order, have no regrets about anything and maximize all of the conditions that we can control."

That was harsh, but fair. Ves understood that this was the price that any would-be god pilot had to pay.

Their combat power was unprecedented according to Cynthia, but the threshold needed to reach their level was also the highest out of all of the True God variations!

Now that Ves understood the context of deeds, he thought back on the original topic.

"So how does Gaia's suggestion fit in this framework?"

General Axelar couldn't help but grow enthused again.

"Think about it, professor. No ordinary pilot can lead an invasion of an alien home system that is located deep behind enemy lines. No ordinary pilot can destroy the surface of that alien race's home planet. No ordinary pilot can organize a heist on a cosmic scale. No ordinary pilot can lead the effort to terraform the stolen planet into a new homeworld for red humanity. The scope and difficulty of this deed surpasses that of most other accomplishments. This deed is only comparable to the mythical feats accomplished by the earlier generations of god pilots! If my expectations are correct, completing this planetary theft and conversion operation will be enough to blaze through all four phases of the Mech Body Merger Process at once!"

In other words, General Axelar Streon finally saw hope of becoming a god pilot in one fell swoop!