The Mech Touch

Regular cultivation was slow.

In most cases, the most correct and reliable methods of gaining strength and longevity was to remain patient and build up a strong foundation over time.

The problem was that it was too damn slow!

One of the flaws of phase lord cultivation was that it regularly took the aliens thousands if not hundreds of thousands of years to grow their phasewater concentration over time.

Entire civilizations rose and fell in such timeframes, so much so that a phase lord may end up becoming the only surviving member of his race by the time he got anywhere!

Mech pilots and mech designers advanced remarkably faster than that, but they still became accustomed to measuring their progress over decades and centuries.

The higher their ranks, the more time it took to reach the next one. For god pilots, Ves would not be surprised if it took at least half a millennium for them to come close to advancing to the hypothetical rank of god king pilot.

However, there were faster ways to reach a higher cultivation rank.

Why bother doing any honest work when it was faster to just take the resources that a god pilot needed from other life forms?

This was the central premise to Cynthia's argument.

"The secret ingredient is crime." She spoke in a self-assured manner. "The strong prey on the weak. This is a universal concept that forms the basis of many relationships between species. Predation may not be fair, but it is a highly profitable option that is reserved to those who possess the strength to take advantage of it. Irene, if I had your combat power, I would have already started to make proactive use of it to fuel my advancement. Each day you spend without attacking your enemies is an enormous waste from my perspective. The more you kill, the faster you can progress."

Ves wanted to palm his face when he heard that. While his mother was technically correct, how could she not recognize all of the ethical and moral problems surrounding her outrageous arguments?!

Divine Irene Mox was not a murderous brute. She was a centuries-old strong-willed soldier that had fought in multiple upright military branches. The values of restraint, obedience, discipline and control had all been hammered into her psyche until they became a core part of her identity!

Telling her to ignore all of her restraints and let loose contradicted the rules that she had always set for herself!

[I am not a butcher.] Irene responded in a prickly tone. [My reputation and my deeds may paint me as a god pilot with an excessively large kill count, but every action is meticulously planned and approved in advance. It is true that I have destroyed entire populated planets, but they were only necessary to prevent conflicts from escalating any further. The destruction of an entire planet is usually shocking enough to deter hostile parties from engaging in any further attacks. What you are suggesting will do the opposite. The more alien planets I destroy, the more hatred and hostility my actions will breed among the native aliens.]

The Superior Mother remained unfazed. "I never told you that this shortcut is without risk. The demands you have set are too difficult to fulfill through other means. Only by harvesting the aliens as if they are wheat can you accumulate the necessary resources quickly enough to reach the fourth rank within half a century. There is no reason for you to object to this approach. The vast majority of sentient beings in this dwarf galaxy are aliens. You will not have to turn your weapons against your fellow humans."

[It is a matter of principle, Cynthia. I fear what I will turn into if I continue to engage in mass slaughter. After every operation that ends with the destruction of a planet, I am usually obliged to suspend my duties so that I can reflect on my actions and restore my mental equilibrium. I am not a sympathizer of aliens, but I have a strong suspicion that if I start to kill them en masse, I will move closer to becoming a monster that has become addicted to slaughter.]

Irene sounded incredibly serious about this, but Cynthia looked as if she thought that the god pilot was being melodramatic.

Ves knew that this was a legitimate concern. He couldn't help but think back on what little he learned about the Mistress of the Oceans, the ancient user of the original Oceancaller.

That woman was one of the most evil cultivators that he had learned about. The woman continually terrorized entire planets and wantonly triggered mass floods that completely wiped out all of the indigenous lives that resided on the landmasses!

Though the Destroyer of Worlds shared no resemblance to the Mistress of the Oceans, what if that could change?

Cynthia did not necessarily see that as a bad transition.

"Your integrity is not as important as your mission." The Superior Mother plainly retorted. "You must gain a large amount of strength in a miniscule timeframe. There are not many ways to do so. You should understand quite well that mundane efforts and resources are no longer enough to meet your demands. You must absorb the power of faith to progress further as a True God. It is not for nothing that the word 'god' is strongly associated with the third major rank. Only by discarding your mortal rules and sensibilities will you be able to come into your power as a 'god' pilot."

Irene's expression turned frustrated. [I have been cautiously furthering my growth by absorbing the faith produced by the humans of the Red Ocean as well as many humans who still look up to me in the Milky Way. However...]

"It is not enough." Cynthia finished for the god pilot. "The humans of the Red Ocean are not numerous enough to produce the quantities of faith that you need. While they are all collectively growing stronger due to exotic radiation, this cannot make up for all of the difference. The humans of the Milky Way are much more numerous, but they still retain 90 different god pilots, of which multiple still watch over the New Rubarth Empire to this day. People can only produce so much faith in a day. The more gods they worship, the more their tribute becomes diluted. I can imagine that many of your former fans have already started to forget about you and shift their attention to more accessible god pilots."

The Destroyer of Worlds did not need to offer a reply to confirm that all of these arguments were true. Cynthia understood the rules of faith all too well, especially given that she was a True God herself!

[There are other ways for god pilots to fuel their growth. Abstinence from faith will make them purer and less tainted.]

"It is also slow, which does not meet your essential requirements." Cynthia said with a disapproving voice. "It is the privilege and right for True Gods to harness the power of faith. It is the reward that they are owed for undertaking greater responsibilities. The real question that you should ask is how you want to gather the faith that you need to accelerate your growth. There are four distinct strategies that you can pursue."

[Explain.]

"You should already be familiar with them. Two of the approaches are relatively benign. You can pursue quantity by actively organizing a church and directing it to spread your faith in as many zones as possible. If you are daring enough, you may even let your church convert believers among the alien population. This is the only solution that I can think of that can help you succeed in this approach, though your church must sweep across much of the dwarf galaxy in order to reach the minimum scale required."

[Too slow. I also object to accepting the worship of aliens. They are our enemies.]

"Faith is faith. Whether it is produced by your enemies is immaterial. However, if you do not want to accept the worship of aliens, then you can attempt to impress a smaller quantity of high-ranking mech pilots and mech designers. Each of them are far stronger than the mortal masses. The faith they can produce is of such higher quality that they can substitute for the worship of millions if not billions of ordinary mortals. However, the only way for this approach to be effective is to convert enough ace pilots and Master Mech Designers into deep believers. This is an uphill battle as cultivators of the second major rank are hopeful of becoming gods themselves."

This was not an acceptable option for Irene either. She shook her head yet again.

[Forcing faith onto all of these mech pilots and mech designers will backfire. Too many of them will resist. Even if it works, they will lose much of the drive that pushes them to advancing to the third major rank. I refuse to deny them the greater futures that they deserve in order to further my own growth.]

"If your concerns about future threats are justified, then all of the god pilots and other True Gods of our civilization will not be able to make a difference. Only you can resolve the greatest individual threat."

[That does not change my stance. Each of these talents are the heroes of tomorrow. They must be granted every opportunity to grow and develop without interference.]

"Very well." Cynthia grew tired of Irene's obstinance. "That leaves us with the remaining two strategies, which are based around two different forms of predation. Similar to the last two, you can put an emphasis on quantity or quality. Killing enemy sentients can actually produce a large amount of faith energy at once. It is never as great as the faith energy that they can produce over their lifetimes, but if you are short on time, this is an expedient measure to get the most value out of them in an instant. As long as you employ special means and cultivation techniques, you can harvest the faith produced from despair and other negative emotions and process it so that it becomes harmless enough for you to absorb."

Ves grew shocked when he learned of this kind of operation. "You can do that, mother?! How can you possibly harvest the faith of enemy victims? Shouldn't they be praying to their own native gods?"

"Your understanding of faith and gods is too narrow, my son. A god is a god. When an enemy gods comes to your planet and is in the process of blowing it up while you are still trapped on the surface, what will you do? Praying to the god that is on the cusp of shattering an entire globe is a frequent occurrence, especially if the destroyer in question puts on a show. The more time you grant to the aliens, the more time they have to 'pray' to you for mercy. Of course, when you finally launch your destructive attack, those aliens will become so emotionally unstable that they will produce the greatest burst of faith energy during their final moments."

Irene looked disgusted when she listened to this approach. It was so reprehensible that she was beginning to suspect that it had been a mistake to request a meeting with Cynthia!

[What is the last strategy?]

"Instead of committing genocide on a galactic scale, you can opt to hunt down exceptionally powerful enemies and harvest as much faith and other useful resources from them as possible. I think this is a particularly effective means of gathering the high-quality materials that you need to upgrade your god mech. However, I do not recommend you pursue this particular approach."

[Why not? This strategy sounds much more agreeable to me. Challenging enemy phase whales and phase lords is much more honorable than employing my powers to kill alien civilians en masse.]

"That may be the case, but the god pilot known as the Huntsman has already settled on a variation of this strategy as far as I am aware of." Cynthia retorted. "There are only a limited number of strong prey available in a small dwarf galaxy, and many of them are hiding from what I have heard. There may be enough alien domain shapers and True Gods satisfy the appetite of the Huntsman, but if you begin to compete against him for the same prey, then neither of you will be able to hunt enough prey to reach the threshold of becoming a God King."

She was right. The Huntsman already designated the Red Ocean as his own 'exclusive' hunting ground.

There was only enough high-level prey to meet the needs of the Huntsman. He was also the best suited to absorb the energies from his successful hunts. The intervention of other god pilots would only cause his entire master plan to fail. There was no way that the Destroyer of Worlds wanted this to happen!