The Mech Touch

5862 Opening Gaps

The successive victories did much to buoy the confidence of the crew.

Though the elite fleeters serving on the dreadnoughts possessed so much discipline that they would never crumble in battle, they were still affected by morale.

Right now, the Dominion of Man proved through her amazing performance how she was utterly able to dominate the battlefield.

While it was rather annoying that her best and most distinctive advantages could not be employed in this space battle, her ordinary warship armaments were still far superior than that of any battleship.

The more lightning waves the Dominion of Man crushed, the more the crew increased their faith in their starship.

This had several important consequences.

More and more crew members began to resonate with the dreadnought. Their confidence and belief in the Dominion of Man increased so much that the living spark quietly presented them with the offer to form a permanent pact.

Not all fleeters who received this offer fully understood the implications of this pact.

A few of them found it difficult to take it seriously at all. Despite the huge number of Dread Marines and other spacers receiving this offer, none of them had reported what had happened.

Those who formed a permanent bond with the Dominion of Man did not need to communicate with each other in order to sense their own kin.

It was not necessary for them to share what happened to their unenlightened colleagues.

This was why thousands of crew members reacted with surprise when the living starship asked them to make a life-

changing decision.

Those who refused the offer may regret the decision they made later on. Unfortunately, the Dominion of Man refused to give the same offer twice.

The ship demanded utter devotion and obedience from her Bloodfire servants.

A good proportion of crew members steadily joined up with the living dreadnought. Each human that chose to become a part of the mighty vessel advanced her evolution just a bit further.

The fire energy generated by the Spark Reactor advanced its grip onto the hull of the immense warship and continued to refine the structure and many of her systems at a lower intensity.

It would have been great if the Dominion of Man could let this process happen for a few days or weeks, but the lightning tribulation refused to give the offending warship any chance to increase her performance any further!

As Ves briefly shifted his attention away from his immediate concerns and took a quick look at the fleeters who were doing their best to keep the Brain Trust in optimal condition, he began to notice a few issues.

The Dominion of Man had undergone a large amount of changes, but that did not mean that every problem magically got fixed by the fire refinement process.

The new and improved Brain Trust managed to form an unprecedented powerful Super Brain, and seemed to be so much better at targeting hostile elements that the fleeters serving on the other dreadnoughts would probably grow jealous that their own AI systems failed to match the Dominion of Man's performance!

Yet… Ves expected more from the Super Brain. Minds driven by A-grade genetic aptitudes were already amazing enough. S-grade genetic aptitude should have been capable of doing a lot more, or else the Chosen Human wouldn't have been able to become one of the foremost god pilots in record time!

"There is a missing link. What am I overlooking?"

Ves soon noticed that the ancestral spirit that he had just created was not merging well enough with the living starship.

The two elements possessed many differences and that hindered them from fusing any further.

As Caramond continued to absorb a huge amount of spiritual feedback from countless different sources, the newly created entity was rapidly approaching the threshold of True God.

The problem was that gathering spiritual feedback from so many different groups of people led to a lot of mixed opinions!

Caramond was becoming more bloated with complex and irrelevant meanings. This weakened his core domain and made it difficult for him to concentrate on his core purpose.

While Ves accounted for this possibility, he did not expect the problem to be so bad. He had hoped that his attachment to the Dominion of Man would narrow his focus.

"There is a missing link."

He suddenly widened his eyes. "Damn! The ship isn't being strengthened by lightning!"

When he looked back at the projected feed, he saw that the secondary armaments of the Dominion of Man eliminated yet another set of lightning birds before they ever came close to touching the dreadnought.

While it was clearly nice to prevent the ship from incurring any damage, a lightning tribulation encompassed far more than trying to grind down a powerful new creation.

"Dread captain!" Ves called as he reopened his communication channel with the master of the ship. "This is important! I am not sure whether headquarters have already clued you in, but it is not wise to keep repelling the incoming attacks with energy barriers. You need to let in at least a portion of the lighting attacks in order to finalize the transformation of the Dominion of Man. A lightning tribulation is a punishment as well as a reward. As long as our vessel can withstand the power of destruction, the power of creation will come to strengthen whatever manages to survive. This is essential to allowing the Dominion of Man to survive the final and most devastating strikes!"

"The advice we have received from numerous sources… corroborate your message. We are reluctant to expose our hull to the lightning storm, especially since it appears to be directed by an intelligent alien adversary. We fear that the lightning tribulation will try to create breaches that we cannot close, or attempt to strike at our azure energy shield generators and power reactors directly. We cannot afford to lose more than a handful of those generators, because any localized weakness will create an opening that can mean the downfall of the Dominion of Man."

"We cannot be timid at this time!" Ves shouted! "I have performed the mental calculations on the escalating power of this lightning storm. It will only take a couple more rounds for the storm to be able to penetrate through the azure energy shields by relying on brute force. Isn't the hull of a dreadnought among the toughest of any warship? You need to put your faith in them, because that is the only way that we will get rewarded in return. Make the right call, dread captain. Don't act too late."

Dread Captain Argile eventually made the right choice. Though he would have never made this decision if his dreadnought confronted the native aliens and so on, tribulation storms were different.

They were crucibles that tested cultivators or their creations, and rewarded them with greater strength as long as they proved their worth.

While Ves would have thought that transphasic energy shields shouldn't block the creation energies that were spilling everywhere after the lightning manifestations had burst apart, it appeared that they were a little too good at their jobs.

It was handy to confirm that transphasic energy shields, especially ones empowered by water-attributed E energy, were effective against tribulation lightning.

Yet it was exactly because of this reason that they needed to be removed.

Fortunately, only twenty seconds passed before the dread captain finally made the risky decision to drop a part of the azure energy shields.

The ship did not remove all of her energy barriers at once. Instead, the crew intelligently opened a few gaps that made it a lot easier to direct incoming attacks. Every other section remained covered by multiple layers of segmented energy shields.

Four lightning birds emerged from the storm clouds and dove forward at the same time!

Each of them happened to target one of the gaps, ensuring that they would not converge on a single point.

Meanwhile, the secondary energy cannon batteries fired at the lightning birds in an attempt to reduce their damage potential.

All four lightning birds lost roughly half of their power before they collided along the length of the hull at once!

The ship did not even shake as four explosions rocked the thick surface layers.

When the light show had passed, the live feed revealed that the hull had received nothing more than scorch marks and a few shallow pits!

The hull of the Dominion of Man was too tough!

Ves expected this result, but it was still nice to see that her physical defenses were more than adequate enough to endure this impact.

"Please check to see whether the portions struck by the lightning birds have strengthened in any way."

"That will take time to verify."

Ves only asked because he wanted to be certain of what happened. While it was difficult to determine whether the boost granted by the release of creation energy had managed to affect the entire hull, he at least expected the affected hull plating to turn a bit tougher than before!

The only serious consequence to this attack wave was that a number of surface modules incurred a bit more damage, but the fleeters already had a response for that. A large number of bots emerged from different hatches and rapidly began to repair or replace broken sensor arrays and such.

In the meantime, the Dominion of Man spun her enormous hull at a 90 degree angle in order to present an undamaged side towards the lightning tribulation.

More lightning birds struck the hull of the dreadnought. This time, the secondary gun batteries inflicted less overall damage to the lightning birds as the fleeters were confident they lacked the power to inflict serious damage to the warship.

Soon enough, the Dominion of Man survived the 4th round without suffering any apparent permanent damage.

"That is 36 strikes in total." Ves summed up. "The fifth round is beginning soon. Get ready to face the unexpected. I don't like the look of that alien."

While the Subjugation King did not exactly possess a humanoid face, Ves believed he was able to perceive a bit of interest as well as challenge.

Soon enough, the lighting tribulation started the 5th round by presenting a completely different threat than before!

A tarnished green lightning bolt threaded through one of the gaps in the energy shield envelope and struck the exposed hull of the Dominion of Man!

Instead of inflicting damage on the surface, the lightning bolt actually broke apart into an army of lightning soldiers.

Yes, soldiers!

Thousands of them appeared at once. Each of them appeared to be larger than a Medium Dread Marine, and all of them radiated a decent amount of power!

Tertiary gun turrets instantly swiveled around and began to cut down the lightning soldiers.

The soldiers blocked the attacks!

Each of them conjured thick shields made of condensed lightning bolts, if that was even possible.

Though the shields wouldn't last forever, they bought enough time for the soldiers to hide behind cover and begin to breach the hull.

Most of their attempts failed to scratch the extremely thick and resilient transphasic hyper armor plating, but there were a number of special soldiers that displayed a unique capability.

They began to drop seeds that grew into plants.

These plants grew at a rapid rate as they drained all of the E energy from the environment as well as the hyper materials used to strengthen the hull plating!

"These lightning plants are weakening the hull! What is worse is that they are starting to spread at an accelerated rate! We need to stop them before it is too late!"

The tertiary gun turrets weren't cutting it anymore. There was only one proper response to this invasion.

Several flashes appeared on the side.

An entire division of Dread Marines had teleported on the exterior of the hull!

The soldiers had been spoiling for a fight, and now they finally got their wish!

Their opening salvo blasted away over a hundred lightning soldiers!

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