The Mech Touch

Was Veronica an agent of harmony or an agent of chaos?

Was she a protector or a destroyer?

Was she a hero or a villain?

Just thinking about these questions generated a lot of headaches in her cybernetic mind. There was no way she could form direct answers to them. No matter which one she chose, she could always think of an argument that contradicted her conclusions!

However, Veronica was not as young, clueless and naive as she was in the past. She had gone through a lot of growth and managed to make a lot more progress in shaping her views about herself.

Her artificial purple eyes glowed brighter as she cut through the confusion and reasserted her identity.

"I refuse to abide by this false dichotomy of yours." Veronica issued her response. "There is no way that people can be allocated to just two diametrically opposing categories. We are way more complicated than that. The way you have framed your words is too misleading, mother."

Cynthia smirked as she looked down at the cybernetic incarnation of her son. "I did?"

"No one is purely good or evil." Veronica eruditely explained her views. "In the same way, I do not think that anyone can be completely selfless or selfish. Most people tend to fall along various points in those spectrums. I am neither an agent of harmony nor an agent of chaos. I am... me. Just me. I make my own decisions. I will not allow any heavenly authority or my irrational hatred towards one to determine how I live my life."

Her mother approved of her views.

"You have a clear head on your shoulders, my child. There will always be people who seek to pin you with a label that falls in line with their interests. If they try to paint you as an agent of harmony, they will try to engage in moral kidnapping to force you to work 'for the greater good' of the human race and other such nonsense."

Veronica grimly nodded. She immediately thought about her interactions with the Survivalist Faction and the rest of the Red Association.

Although she did not necessarily ascribe malice to the way the mechers had treated her so far, she could certainly recognize an element of exploitation in their relationship.

"There will also be people who oppose you or what you represent. They will portray you as an agent of chaos whose presence will only lead to great disaster if left unchecked. It is not pleasant to be turned into a common enemy of an entire society, and the threat of it may deter you from doing whatever it takes to achieve your goals."

Veronica always felt restrained in society. From the need to keep so many secrets to her inability to experiment as much as she liked, she would have been able to make much greater progress if she became unbound by the constraints set by the Red Two and other authorities!

Cynthia stroked Veronica's head. "I do not wish to tell you how you should live your life. You have grown old enough to make your own decisions in this regard. What I want to tell you is that you do not have to entertain so many concerns about the debts and obligations imposed by the various heavenly authorities. They are powerful in many ways, but helpless in other ways as they are notoriously inflexible. Many cultivators in the past and present have succeeded in bamboozling them. A debt is only heavy when you are unable to get rid of it through other means."

Her words helped to reassure Veronica's nerves.

Not every debt had to be repaid.

The problem was that Veronica always abided by the principle of fairness. As a mech designer and an entrepreneur, she often relied on win-win agreements to earn long-term profits.

It was not in her nature to scam her business partners, especially when the latter had always shown enough goodwill.

"I do not want to play fast and loose with karma." Veronica said with a sigh. "If the burden is not too heavy and if the contract is not unreasonably lopsided, I do not mind settling my debts in an honest fashion. You have already confirmed to me that the Milky Way and the Red Ocean are not strong enough to threaten me all that much. That means that they don't have enough leverage to force me to do stuff that I do not want. I am confident in my ability to maintain mutually beneficial relationships with them. The worst that could happen is that I will walk away from them and make do without their support."

Her mother looked approving. "That is a sober approach to managing your relationship with these heavenly authorities. Too many cultivators have revered the heavens so much that they have effectively surrendered their goodwill."

From what Cynthia had described, these heavenly authorities pretty much sounded like the spiritual equivalent of a large super-organization such as the Red Association.

While the mechers were undoubtedly powerful enough that Veronica had to act carefully around them, there was no reason for her to surrender to them and become their slave.

It was still possible to become friends and business partners with the mechers.

Veronica just had to apply this approach to the huge and overarching heavenly authorities that she became involved with. She was willing to work together with them if it was profitable enough.

Of course, Veronica was also willing to disregard the Milky and the Red Ocean if it wasn't worthwhile to cooperate with them any further!

That still left her with one more heavenly authority that loomed especially large over her main self.

"About Messier 87..."

Cynthia smiled in order to reassure her child. "You must respect this heavenly authority, but there is no need to fear it too much. Much like the native alien races of the Red Ocean, the heavenly authority of Messier 87 are entangled in many different parties and affairs. You do not even rank anywhere close to the top as far as priorities go. As long as you keep your head down and avoid antagonizing it at every opportunity, you will be able to proceed without needing to look over your shoulder all of the time."

Veronica's mood improved after she heard that. "What sort of negative consequences will I suffer If I do not do anything to improve my relations with Messier 87?"

"The heavenly authority will not treat you much worse than all of the other red humans that reject its assimilation. This will not produce too many consequences beyond the accumulation of bad karma so long as you remain in the Red Ocean. Even though Messier 87 is attempting to claim the dwarf galaxy as its own, so long as the civilizations who occupy it cling to their own identities, this takeover is bound to get stalled."

That sounded nice, but Veronica was sure that Messier 87 would not let this be. The Red Ocean's strategic value was too great. All of the phasewater produced in this modest dwarf galaxy could further the aggressive ambitions of any heavenly authority!

"What if the native aliens of Messier 87 invade the Red Ocean one day?" Veronica asked with a bit of apprehension in her voice. "The Red Two have reasons to fear that this confrontation will happen in a few decades or so. Now that I know about the struggle for dominance, I can see why they are so concerned. Those invading aliens will likely act as the agents of Messier 87 and seek to establish its heavenly authority in our dwarf galaxy. How can we resist the power of this much larger galaxy?"

Cynthia let out a sigh. "That is a problem that can only be solved by you and the rest of red humanity. Messier 87 may be unprecedentedly huge and powerful, but I can easily deduce that it is occupied by many scattered races and organizations. Only a fraction of them have the capacity to conduct intergalactic travel. The forces that arrive in our galaxy should be relatively small. Their cultivators will also be operating in a much less prosperous environment. The large reduction in E energy radiation levels will directly weaken their ability to leverage its power. Take advantage of that. The god pilots of your civilization are not weak."

In other words, red humanity needed all of the god pilots it could get to confront the foreign True Gods that would definitely be coming!

Qi cultivators and willpower cultivators are two entirely different beasts.

The strength and effectiveness of qi cultivators were far too dependent on the environment. Qi cultivators could easily exert strength far beyond their level in a high-energy environment, but they were awful as long as they entered a region that was barren in terms of E energy radiation.

That was one of the principal reasons why Cynthia never dared to step foot outside of the Nyxian Gap. This hazardous region might not exactly be abundant in spiritual energy, but it was filled with negative energy that provided enough juice for the Lady of the Night to gain a home ground advantage.

Willpower cultivators and the souped-up version known as god pilots were much different in that regard. While they possessed a certain ability to leverage E energy radiation to empower their own moves, they did not excel in this capacity.

Their greatest strengths were their wills. Rather bending or persuading the environment to lend their power to them, willpower cultivators instead preferred to overwrite their surroundings by force, thereby imposing their own version of reality into place!

Operation Night Jazz had given Veronica a good glimpse of how god pilots operated in a medium energy environment.

She saw that the god mechs had already been upgraded with hyper technology, enabling them to increase their performance even more.

Yet no matter how much E energy they leveraged from the environment, the foundation of their strength always centered around the willpower of the god pilots and the technical capabilities of their god mechs!

E energy radiation was just icing on the cake as far as they were concerned.

"I understand." Veronica seriously nodded. "I will do what I can to promote the emergence of as many god pilots as possible. I am already involved in several lines of research that should shelp red humanity produce a lot more high-ranking mech pilots."

Now that she had obtained a lot of information that the Red Two kept for themselves, she couldn't help but agree with the strategies adopted by the mechers and the fleeters.

The conversation between mother and child had finally begun to reach its end.

Veronica had received way too many revelations in a short amount of time. She needed a lot of time to process her own thoughts and formulate new strategies based on the information that she had received.

There was one more matter that she wanted to bring up with her mother.

"Even though my Elemental Lord failed to earn its right to exist, I don't want to give up on the concept." The cyborg cat spoke. "Do you have any advice for me about making sure that my work stands a much better chance of surviving against a punishing lightning tribulation?"

"I was waiting for you to ask such a question." Cynthia responded. "Your original approach was too arrogant and dangerous. You overreached by an enormous extent. How can you build a mech that harnesses the power of the five elements when you have not even mastered any of them yourself? You tried to fly when you still haven't even learned how to walk. The proper approach is to do this step by step."

She had mentioned this before. It sounded as if it was very important to start from the beginning.

"Before you think about merging multiple elements to produce powerful synergies, you should master the fundamentals by thoroughly exploring every classical element in isolation. I can tell that your depth and comprehension of four of them is far too shallow. This is your greatest weakness and shortcoming. As long as you familiarize yourself with the properties and applications of all of these elements, you will naturally be able to fuse them together to produce more dramatic results."