The Mech Touch

To the Cerebral King, this massive underground laboratory was literally the workshop of god in its eyes!

This was where the big fish initially came to life and spent its childhood years. The days when the Cerebral King and its powerful siblings grew up in this laboratory had turned into cherished memories that still affected the king fish after all of this time.

The importance of this enormous lab machine to the Cerebral King was immense!

For the creature to bring Ves and the Everchanger all the way to this large machine said much about the alien leader's sincerity.

There were numerous signs that the Cerebral King spent a lot of time here. The markings of time and the passage of lots of fish-whales showed that this location was the heart of the Evolution Kingdom!

A solemn atmosphere descended in the dark and cool chamber. The Cerebral King looked as if its mind was more on the past than the present.

Eventually, the king fish resumed his speech.

ORGAN FORGE. INSTRUMENT OF GOD. NEGLECTED BY TRAITORS. FOOLS.

"So this 'Organ Forge' is the machine you use to augment yourself and your fellow fish-whales into stronger and different organisms?"

CORRECT. ORGAN FORGE IS LEGACY OF GOD. CAN ONLY BE OPERATED BY LEARNING SECRET KNOWLEDGE.

"What secret knowledge?"

THE SECRET OF OUR FLESH.

"...I see. Can you explain this secret?"

SECRET KNOWLEDGE BELONGS TO GOD AND CHILDREN. HUMANS NOT RELATED TO GOD. CANNOT SHARE. CANNOT EXCHANGE.

Ves grimaced. This was the first time the Cerebral King directly said no to his request for information.

He stepped too far this time, it seemed. While the big whale was willing to share plenty of information, it was clear that knowledge concerning its core heritage was off-limits.

To be fair, Ves would have done the same if he was in the king fish's shoes. The ability to research, grow and apply targeted biological augmentations must be an extremely powerful advantage in Purgatory!

"I am not asking you to pass on your secret knowledge to me. I only want to understand the power of this Organ Forge and how strong you are for your ability to operate such a powerful device. You were created in this lab. How were you able to master the usage of its surviving tools?"

INHERITANCE. LEARNED FROM INHERITANCE. OUT OF ALL KIN, I RECEIVED GIFT OF LEARNING. ONLY I CAN MASTER INHERITANCE OF GOD. TRAITORS IGNORE LEGACY OF GOD. ONLY I EMBRACE THE LESSONS LEFT BEHIND.

Ves constructed a narrative from the Cerebral King's halting and unreliable narration.

According to his guess, when its 'traitorous' brothers broke out from this lab, they couldn't wait to get as far away from it as possible. This lab might have been the site of their creation, but they must have been trapped in this place for so long that they had developed a lot of resentment towards their prison.

If the Flesh Conqueror had indeed gone missing, then the lab may have fallen into neglect. If the fish-whale kings remained stuck in their places without having any ability to leave, they would definitely yearn to leave this cursed place as soon as possible!

The only anomaly was the Cerebral King. Whether it was due to its heightened intelligence or its abnormally high reverence towards the Flesh Conqueror, but the king fish had clearly remained behind and spent a huge amount of time harvesting whatever intact gains were left.

Whether this 'inheritance' the Cerebral King was referring to was actually meant to educate the fish-whales or not, Ves had the sense that the test subject had caught up to the experimenter.

After all of these years, the Cerebral King's diligent studies along with its increasing mastery of the Organ Forge had pretty much turned the king fish into the closest thing to a successor of the Flesh Conqueror!

Ves listened carefully as the Cerebral King described its augmentation cycle.

OUR BODIES ARE FLAWED. FULL OF FLAWS. MUST IMPROVE. ORGAN FLESH CAN MAKE US CLOSER TO GOD. HAVE MADE MANY KIN STRONGER, BUT FAR TOO WEAK. TOO DIFFICULT TO IMPROVE. INHERITANCE INCOMPLETE. DESTROYED BY TRAITORS. TRAITORS MUST DIE.

"Lessons from others can only make you better up to a point." Ves said. "Eventually, you must step beyond your inheritance and make your own accomplishments. Did you start with performing your own research by augmenting your fish-whale subordinates?"

The Cerebral King stared down at the Everchanger as if it was trying to understand how the human understood it so well.

YES. LESSER KIN ARE TOO WEAK. TOO MANY FLAWS, MORE THAN I. MUST BE IMPROVED, BUT TOO DIFFICULT. MANY SUCCESSES BUT MORE FAILURES. THE WEAK DIE AND THE STRONG SURVIVE. NOW ONLY STRONG HAVE SURVIVED, BUT CANNOT IMPROVE FURTHER. MY BODY CANNOT IMPROVE FURTHER.

Ves frowned. "Why can't you improve yourselves further? Is your knowledge and experimental data too limited?"

RESOURCES. CANNOT IMPROVE WITHOUT RESOURCES. CURRENT RESOURCES NOT ENOUGH.

"Ah. I understand."

It was the same as with humans. Access to resources was the root to the power of a state. A resource-rich state could easily build up a formidable infrastructure and strong military force. A state with fewer access to resources had it much more difficult!

In the old days, the Bright Republic always fell behind the Vesia Kingdom because the latter was larger and held more resource-rich star systems.

The Hexadric Hegemony occupied the best territories in the Komodo Star Sector and was nominally stronger than the Friday Coalition.

These were just a few of the examples that emphasized the relationship between resources of and power. The latter could not be sustained without the former, and the former could not be secured without the latter.

Of course, resources weren't everything. The Friday Coalition understood pretty early on that it could never beat the Hexadric Hegemony in a straight fight.

This was why the Fridaymen put a lot more effort into fostering greater trade with other second-rate states and annexing the high-level strength of as many third-rate states as possible.

By borrowing the help of others, the Fridaymen effectively managed to overcome one of their biggest disadvantages!

It was the same story for the Evolution Kingdom. The Cerebral King used its smarts to further enhance and optimize the combat potential of its body and its subordinates. It was actually quite amazing to witness how much of a difference this had made.

To Ves, the Cerebral King truly had a lot in common with mech designers! Although their tech and applications were completely different, there were still a lot of parallels to their work.

Ves wanted to know more about the specific style of the Cerebral King. What sort of 'design philosophy' had he developed after so many years of utilizing the same methods?

"I admire the work you have accomplished with your Organ Forge. Out of all of the fish-whales in this pocket space, only yours give me the impression that they have exceeded the limitations of their initial bodies. In what direction are you trying to improve their combat strength?"

The Cerebral King lifted its massive body as if to show off his enormous bulk!

GOD AND CREATOR IS IDEAL FORM. OUR BODIES MUST BE LARGE. OUR FLESH MUST BE SATURATED WITH GODBLOOD. OUR HEARTS MUST BE FILLED WITH ENERGY.

The king fish slowly deflated as a sense of failure and frustration radiated from its spirituality.

DISAPPOINTMENT. FAILURE TO COMPLETE IMPROVEMENT PLAN. LACKING IN RESOURCES. NOT ENOUGH RESOURCES. MY BODY IS HALF-COMPLETE.

"I see…"

Out of the more than 20 large asteroids in Purgatory, the Evolution Kingdom held only two of them. While they provided a decent amount of resources, they were incomparable to the continents that generated a huge amount of specific resources such as phasewater!

It made sense to Ves. The creator of the phase whale enclave did not take into account that its creation would devolve into a primitive battleground between different tribal kingdoms.

If the Flesh Conqueror truly anticipated for this to happen, then it wouldn't have clustered the landmasses that produced large amounts of single resources to this degree!

In a normal environment, this setup was more efficient than mixing everything across the different continents on an equal basis.

It was a pity that this was no longer a normal environment.

As Ves processed what the Cerebral King said about its barriers, he quickly recognized several opportunities to forge a cooperative agreement!

He smiled. "I understand your difficulties. You are stuck with two continents but do not have the strength and number to expand further. It is too difficult to gain access to additional resources without taking over additional continents. Even if you are able to gather a strong enough army to conquer the continent of one of the other kingdoms, you will lose so many high-quality soldiers that your enemies will easily be able to beat you back. The fundamental weakness is lack of resources, is that right?"

The king fish directed more attention towards the Everchanger and the human that was conveying these words.

YOUR PURPOSE?

"What if I can tell you that we can provide the resources you lack?" Ves responded as he accessed a control interface. "We have several different goods that we can trade to you. As long as you absorb them, I can guarantee you will be able to use them to move closer to your strongest state!"

The Everchanger began to project several large images in front of its chest that showed a few examples of the resources in question.

They ranged from large batches of valuable exotics to complete technological products!

The latter happened to attract the king fish's attention. It had never seen anything like the parts that Ves had selected for trade!

INCOMPREHENSION. UNKNOWN TRADING OBJECTS. EXPLAIN.

Instead of answering directly, Ves decided to make a demonstration.

"Venerable Joshua, I need you to raise the energy consumption and emissions of your expert mech to their maximum levels."

"Uhm, pardon, sir?"

"I need the Everchanger to show off its might." Ves explained. "We can't launch an attack in this important lab, so the best way to demonstrate how much energy our mechs can harness is to make you expend as much of it as possible. Try and turn on as many systems as possible as long as they don't put too much strain on the frame."

Joshua looked enlightened. "I think I understand what you want to do. Do you want me to show off true resonance as well?"

Ves nodded. "Do it. We need to make the biggest possible impact on the Cerebral King. We cannot show this king fish that we are weak and incapable!"

"Roger that!"

The Everchanger no longer remained in a low state. Its power reactor became more active and began to channel much of its juice to one of the most hungry systems in its design, its compact energy shield generator!

Although the Everchanger's shield generator was not comparable to the larger one integrated in the Shield of Samar, it was still capable of blocking strong attacks as long as it received enough power!

Unfortunately, the shield generator model was not known for its efficiency. In order to block a powerful strike, it had to consume way too much energy. It was not sustainable for the Everchanger to rely on it as its main form of defense.

This was a different situation, though. The properties of the shield generator just happened to make its performance more dazzling to the Cerebral King!

In just a minute, the Everchanger turned from a quiet presence to a radiant expert hero mech that exuded an abundance of power!

Its frame heated up as its power reactor struggled to supply enough energy to its fully activated shield generator.

Two different shields appeared around the Everchanger, causing it to reach its most defensive state!

Venerable Joshua tried his best to fulfill his superior's demands. With both an energy shield and a resonance shield, the mech that the Cerebral King considered tiny actually radiated power that should have belonged to a fish-whale with a much larger body!