The Mech Touch

After the latest Battle of Cartagena II came to a conclusion, the Terran soldiers reacted with restrained jubilation.

They were quite happy with the results of this battle!

Though they failed to attain a more significant victory, they were already happy that they managed to beat off a determined alien assault.

The fighting also ended at a fairly early stage, thereby sparing them from a lot of grueling fighting.

The only Terrans that reacted with slight dissatisfaction were the battle maniacs among the mech pilots who sought to push themselves beyond their limits when the urgency was greater.

After the Dark Zephyr spent a few hours shadowing the organized withdrawal of the jureg armada in order to make sure the aliens were not trying to pull off a secret ruse, the ace light skirmisher leisurely flew back to the orbit of New Cartagena II.

As the ace light skirmisher made his way back to the flagship of the Brusilov Fleet, Tusa received plenty of praises from the soldiers still in the field.

The pilots of the powerful first-class multipurpose mechs that cost so much money that Tusa could not imagine it a few years ago all expressed their heartfelt gratitude and admiration.

Tusa felt both… gratified and bewildered.

As an ace pilot, he could clearly feel that these Terrans were sincere in their messages. This went beyond politics or national pride. On this day, they had fought side by side as defenders of red humanity, and they managed to inflict a defeat that the juregs would be feeling for quite a while!

Everyone knew that Saint Tusa and his Dark Zephyr played the decisive role in delivering victory this time. The new ace light skirmisher cooperated so well with the Whispering Willow that the latter was able to make much more telling blows than in past battles!

Though Tusa did not entirely feel that he deserved so much praise for essentially imitating a very annoying mosquito tormenting a random person, he somehow felt much more fulfilled than he did in his previous battles during the Red War.

Tusa was not exactly a man who was good with words. He was unable to completely figure out why he felt a lot better about himself.

Perhaps it was just the simple fact that he had piloted a powerful first-class ace mech in battle for the very first time. The difference in performance between the current and previous iteration of the Dark Zephyr was very obvious!

"Madame Gloriana and Master Benedict Cortez have done good work." Tusa said as he felt sincerely grateful to the two mech designers who successfully converted the Dark Zephyr into a powerful first-class ace mech. "It will be hard for them to top this work."

The Dark Zephyr was already so brilliantly powerful that Tusa could not imagine how the mech designers could make his living mech any more powerful.

Of course, he knew that he was most definitely wrong about this. Technology became better all of the time. It was only a matter of time before Ves or another brilliant mech designer introduced a radical new tech that rewrote the rules and set an entirely new standard in the mech community.

After the Dark Zephyr entered a more private hangar bay and set down right next to the Whispering Willow, Saint Tusa shut down his machine and exited the cockpit.

He grew a little disappointed that his mentor was not around, but it was unreasonable to expect such a powerful and important figure to wait in the hangar bay for several hours.

Fortunately, Tusa met with a familiar face.

"You have done well, Saint Tusa." Lieutenant Daria Dostoevskaya greeted him with respect. "Please follow me to the changing room where you can freshen yourself up and wear a dress uniform. We have organized a victory banquet that will start shortly after you arrive."

Tusa raised his eyebrow. It was not unusual for the Larkinsons to organize banquets and parties to celebrate particularly notable victories, but he did not exactly feel that driving away the juregs from New Cartagena II merited such an occasion.

The Dostoevsky's thought differently, though.

"Fine. Will the Messenger of Silence be around?"

"He shall, but he will be seated far away from the rest of the officers invited to the main banquet hall. He can be rather… intense. He does not want to spoil the mood of others, but still wishes to convey his satisfaction, so he is seated at a privileged table. You shall join him as well."

"I see."

Tusa had a feeling that this banquet would be much different from the more cozy and relaxed ones organized by the Larkinsons and he was exactly right.

The banquet hall was far more grand and artistic than the other compartments of an already artistic capital ship.

From carved marble statues of past heroes and rulers, to preserved banners of old military units, the banquet hall celebrated the glory attained by the Dostoevsky Ancient Clan in the past and present.

The wooden tables themselves looked older than many colonies in the old galaxy. They had been exquisitely cared for, but faint imperfections and marks of age revealed the immense amount of years they had been used in this capacity.

It all seemed impressive to Tusa, especially once the young junior officers entered from the side and started to deliver exquisite dishes by hand.

While most of the officers and champions sat on the main floor, the Messenger of Silence and Saint Tusa sat on a raised balcony that was positioned on the far side of the hall. This caused the space to resemble an opera house of sorts.

Saint Tusa was not accustomed to attending formal events. He was born and raised as a slightly notable third-class mech pilot. He may have climbed quickly in the years since, but that left him with very little time on learning how he should behave and comfort himself in a Terran victory banquet!

Fortunately, the Terrans did not pay attention to how out of place he was. Saints had risen above petty human standards. Would anyone dare to criticize a powerful champion with a bright future ahead of him? They might become god pilots one day!

Aside from the completely silent champion of the Brusilov Fleet, the only other person that kept Tusa company was his familiar liaison.

She did most of the talking.

"Do not mischaracterize the outcome of this battle, Saint Tusa. We have won a major victory today. Killing one of the greater phase lords would have made our gains much greater, but it was never our primary goal. The juregs advanced upon New Cartagena II to capture the planet and prevent us from mining any more Copenhagen Copper."

Tusa furrowed his brows. "So that is what it is all about? You just want to delay the aliens long enough to mine every scrap of CopCop left?"

"By repelling their determined assault and forcing them to withdraw in haste due to a remarkably fast collapse in morale, we have managed to bleed the juregs to the extent that they cannot recover and mount another assault for at least two weeks. That buys us precious time where we can mine that much more ore containing CopCop. Perhaps we may even hollow out this planet entirely before the juregs have returned, which means we can abandon whatever is left of this broken globe and concentrate our defenses at New Cartagena VII-F."

From that perspective, the outcome of the battle was indeed heavily in the favor of the Terran defenders.

Although Tusa could understand the logic behind this rationale, he still felt dissatisfied in his bones.

He shook his head in regret. "We really could have inflicted a more permanent blow on the aliens if I fought a little better. The juregs did not know about me and my ace mech, so we were able to catch them by surprise. This was probably our best shot at assassinating the Diffraction Lord and inflicting a permanent blow on enemy morale. Now that both greater phase lords managed to limp back with their lives intact, they will learn their lessons and gather as much intelligence they have on me to guard against my future stealth approaches. The jureg leaders will not be as complacent as before."

The Messenger of Silence decided to respond through his Saint Kingdom.

"..."

Saint Tusa sighed. "Maybe you are right. I am being too ambitious by gunning for the life of a greater phase whale when I am still a fresh ace pilot. I just wish that I was strong enough to keep my mech unscathed against the attacks of the Diffraction Lord and the Biopod Mother. Evasion is my specialty, but I found myself unable to deal with all of their moves. You had to bail me out several times. This gave the Diffraction Lord enough of a break to recover from all of the damage."

"..."

"I guess so. A long campaign consists of more than a single battle. There will be other opportunities next time. I just have to become stronger and develop my skillsets further. Speaking of that, I am grateful to you for teaching me how ace pilots are able to develop such strong techniques. I found it much easier to channel my strength in an image that expresses one of my strong ideals. How many of these images have you created for yourself?"

"..."

"That few? I would have expected for a peak ace pilot like yourself to amass a sizable arsenal."

"..."

"I see. So it is quality that matters, not quantity. The relevance and how much you care about stuff is more important than thoughtlessly creating a lot of abilities that ultimately lead to dead ends because you can't grow them any further."

"..."

Tusa widened his eyes as his mentor wordlessly conveyed a more critical lesson!

The theory claims that ace pilots could make a head-start to developing their god kingdoms by selectively creating strong artistic conceptions that were related to each other.

"That… I did not know that. Thank you for telling me that. Perhaps there are other ways to cross the great divide, but doing it like this sounds more reliable than the alternatives."

The Messenger of Silence just espoused a possible theory on how ace pilots could one day successfully cross the road of no return and advance to the coveted rank of god pilot!

The theory claims that ace pilots could make a head-start to developing their god kingdoms by selectively creating strong artistic conceptions that were related to each other.

To a veteran Terran ace pilot like Saint Dostoevsky, a God Kingdom should be much more complex and multifaceted than a Saint Kingdom.

The former should begin to resemble a kingdom in a more literal sense. It had to consist of several 'territories' comprising multiple different artistic conceptions that were not only relevant to the pilot, but also carried strong emotional attachments.

If successful enough, a peak ace pilot that attempted to transcend to godhood would find that it was much faster and easier to transition their domain fields into fully-fledged God Kingdoms!

This was why the theory shared by the Messenger of Silence was called the God Kingdom Building Theory.

By 'completing their homework' in advance, these peak ace pilots did not have to rely on the Mech Body Merger Process to forcefully fill up all of the gaps and hastily convert their weaker domain fields into much more powerful God kingdoms. The assumption here was that the extra energy and effort that ace pilot had to expend on making up for this shortcoming was a critical reason why so many of them ultimately fell short.

"How common is this theory? Has it been proven to be true?"

"..."

Tusa grew disappointed. There was not enough data to prove that it had any significant effect on the success rate.

The biggest problem was that the sample size was too low. Not all god pilots managed to emerge while following this theory.

The ace pilot that tried to follow the recommendations of the God Kingdom Building Theory still died on an overwhelming basis. The ones that somehow succeeded could have easily survived for many other reasons besides this single factor!

That did not stop Tusa from embracing it, though. He had no way of knowing whether it was correct, but he was convinced by its logic. The fact that an ace pilot as powerful and admirable as the Messenger of Silence made use of it himself was also a convincing reason to give it a try!

Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!