The Mech Touch

A different sort of silence ensued after the momentous ritual finally came to an end.

In the field where a giant hexagon had been built, thousands of people knelt on the ground with awe.

Each of the people invited to take part in the ceremony all gazed at the statue of the Superior Mother as if it had descended from the heavens!

Ves couldn't blame them. The theatrical show he conducted along with the unexpected complications like all of the lightning bolts raining down on the statue had caused everyone to lose their cool.

The strong, maternal glow emanating from the statue only reinforced the notion of a holy descent!

Thousands of local Sentinel men who filled up the zone corresponding to the phase of life were all in awe at the explosive series of events.

As a whole, the Sentinel Kingdom was a secularist state. Though it wasn't as ardently opposed to religion as the Bright Republic, there was a general sentiment that belief in something greater was not as important as respecting nobles!

However, right now, the huge crowd of men all turned into awestruck rabbits. The superiority imposed by the remarkable statue caused them all to develop a thought that not even the king of their state exuded as much majesty as this goddess!

Out of all of the men, one of them in particular was particularly awed by the whole event.

"Amazing!" Vincent Ricklin-Larkinson cried out as he gazed at the statue of the Superior Mother with an appreciative expression. "So this is the Superior Mother? What a MILF!"

The men weren't the only people in the hexagon who had become affected by the dramatic ritual.

The 666 'damned' Penitent Sisters all looked slack jawed as they stared at the statue. They couldn't believe that a reproduction of the statue of the Superior Mother had become the vessel of something unimaginable! Many of their beliefs had started cracking. How could a boy like Ves possibly summon a Hexer goddess?

Even though the skeptical Penitent Sisters tried their best to refute this rationale, at this moment they simply couldn't. With all of the exiled Hexers standing in such close proximity to the statue, they experienced the Superior Mother's glow at full strength.

The glow felt almost exactly they imagined the Superior Mother to be! Hardly anyone of them dared to suggest that she was fake. Their steel hearts and their sincere beliefs in hexism all rang in harmony with the glow exuded by the godly statue.

As for the 66 Swordmaidens, each of them felt both awe and disappointment. They were awed at the power exuded by the Superior Mother, but felt lacking when faced with her maternal vibe.

The Swordmaidens mostly consisted of single women. Marrying someone, settling down and raising children had never been a priority to them! Each of the Swordmaidens dedicated their entire lives to combat and swordsmanship that they never thought they could fit anything in their short and dangerous lives!

Back when they were still pirates, hardly any Swordmaiden believed they would live to old age. The frontier was a brutal place where the old and weak rarely survived for long. The Swordmaidens as a whole only existed for a few decades, so they never had any members who grew old enough to think about retirement.

Each of them used to believe that only strength mattered. Women started off at a disadvantage in the frontier compared to men, so the Swordmaidens always tried to overcompensate as much as possible in order to survive.

Yet now the Swordmaidens began to doubt whether they followed the right conviction!

Perhaps.. training their swordsmanship was not the only way to become strong.

Only Commander Dise managed to retain her composure. After becoming Qilanxo's chosen and advancing to expert candidate, her will and determination had already risen to an incredible height.

However, even she began to look thoughtful. After so many months of remaining stuck in her bottleneck, she felt as if she was taking a step forward again.

Floating in the air, Ves and Gloriana slowly recovered after the Superior Mother subsided.

Ves looked around suspiciously and tried to see whether there was any of his mother. The newborn design spirit no longer became as animated, which meant that Cynthia Larkinson's consciousness must have left.

After confirming that his mother had truly left, he relaxed his shoulders and sighed. "That did NOT go according to plan!"

Summoning his mother was the last thing he wanted to do! The less he saw her, the better! Getting scolded by her was one of the worst experiences in his life! It was bad enough that his mother admonished him. It was even worse when she did it with Gloriana hanging on to their every word!

Now that was another disaster. Ves hid many of the more sensitive portions of his life from his girlfriend for good reason. He did not wish to drag her into matters that were none of her business. The less she knew, the better!

Unfortunately, the pandora's box had been opened, and it was him who inadvertently opened the lid. He reluctantly turned his head to see how Gloriana took in all of the remarkable events.

Her eyes lit up like stars. Her smile grew as wide as the horizon. Her entire face exhibited pure pure worship and admiration towards the statue of the Superior Mother!

"Ves.. I.. I.. I'm so blessed to have witnessed this miracle! Why didn't you tell me your mother was a goddess?!"

"Uh, what?" Ves looked taken aback. "No! My mother is dead! She's just.. a bit special. Besides, she's not a goddess!"

His mother, a goddess? As if! She was nothing more than an undead ghost who only managed to retain her existence by sucking his energy on an intermittent basis!

Unfortunately, Gloriana didn't think so. She shook her head at him. "You don't have to hide it anymore. Now I know why you're so special and why your design philosophy is so remarkable. All along, you're the son of a goddess! It's no wonder you're able to create proto-gods! Divinity runs in the family!"

Ves began to feel sick. "You're misunderstanding again! My mom is not a goddess! Gods and goddesses don't exist! Besides, don't Hexers like you think that you are superior to gods?"

"That's usually in the case of male gods, silly, hihi!" Gloriana giggled. "Your mother is completely different! So far, it seems that your mother has not only cycled through the phases of existence multiple times, but she has also managed to transcend them! Don't you understand what that means? Your mother is a Supreme!"

"What the hell is a 'Supreme'?!"

"The most powerful and revered Hexers in existence! In fact, some already believe the Superior Mother is a Supreme. It turns out that they're right! Your mother is the Superior Mother!"

"The Superior Mother is just a spiritual product!" Ves protested. "I just created her just now."

She smiled at Ves. "I listened in on everything, remember? Your divine mother even blessed our relationship, hihi! Even if she wasn't the Superior Mother, she certainly is now! Don't you know what this means?"

"No?" He looked puzzled.

"The Superior Mother is a Hexer, hence your mother is also a Hexer!"

"Nonsense! She's a Brighter!"

"That isn't all. If your mother is a Hexer, then you're a Hexer as well!"

"I'm a Larkinson! Don't spout any nonsense!"

No matter how much Ves tried to persuade her otherwise, Gloriana insisted on clinging onto her warped logic and beliefs!

Ves eventually gave up. When Gloriana became caught up in superstition, she was extremely stubborn about clinging on to them. Nothing could make her change her mind!

In any case, her outrageous babbling wouldn't lead to anything. Regardless of anything, Ves officially maintained Brighter citizenship so far. Even if his home state absolutely hated his guts, that did not change the fact that his official record stated that he was a Brighter instead of a Hexer!

Since the MTA managed his most important records, there was no way his girlfriend could magically turn him into a Hexer!

"Let's wrap this all up." He coughed.

The show was over. No matter how much the people in the hexagon wanted to remain and bask in the glow of the Superior Mother further, Ves commanded the Avatars and Sentinels to lead them all away.

Soon enough, a bunch of workers and bots dismantled the giant hexagon and all of the props. A transport vessel arrived to load up the statue of the Superior Mother and send it back to the base.

As Ves and Gloriana boarded a shuttle along with their cats and enjoyed a quiet ride back.

While Ves pressed his fingers against his forehead, Gloriana continued to smile in a giddy manner as if she had truly witnessed the emergence of a Supreme!

"Our next mech.. is going to be fantastic!" She exulted. "With your mother blessing our mech, there is no way the Hex Army will reject our work!"

At least Ves was inclined to agree on that. Leaving out the shenanigans related to his mother, his latest spiritual product truly seemed impressive!

As long as he concentrated his mind and thought about the Superior Mother, he could sense the power of the dormant spiritual entity.

With the help of the life-attributed energy, she started a lot stronger than any newborn spiritual product. Not only that, but Ves suspected that he managed to hit all of his goals in her creation.

The Superior Mother was not just a design spirit. As his ambitions grew, Ves designed her to be more than an aid to mechs and mech pilots.

He did not lie to his mother when he told her that the Superior Mother was supposed to function as the ancestral spirit of the Hegemony.

He did not impart the Superior Mother with a spiritual network, even though he could have. The spiritual network was a powerful trump card that he exclusively reserved for himself and his clan.

However, in order to make the Superior Mother more appealing to the Hexers, he did impart the ancestral spirit with some of the properties of a spiritual network.

Just like the Larkinson Clan and the Golden Cat, the Superior Mother was designed to act as a guardian to every Hexer!

As long as there were Hexers who believed in the Superior Mother, the ancestral spirit grew stronger!

This also came with a downside. If the Hexers stopped respecting or believing in the Superior Mother, then she grew weaker.

The stronger the Superior Mother became, the more her glow increased in potency. The Superior Mother might also develop more abilities or empower her existing ones.

There was one other point where the Superior Mother differed from his first ancestral spirit.

When Ves designed and created the Golden Cat, he intended her to reflect the growth and evolution of the Larkinson Clan. Though he imposed some limits to this adaptation, Goldie would always change in accordance with the clan!

This was not the case with the Superior Mother.

Unlike the Golden Cat, the Superior Mother rigidly held onto its starting values and principles! It's glow was designed to be as solid and unchanging as possible!

No matter what kind of awful beliefs and biases the Hexer attempted to impose on the Superior Mother, the strict ancestral spirit would always continue to hold onto the properties bestowed by her creator!

This was a very significant detail. Secretly, Ves intended the Superior Mother to serve as a trojan horse that would enter Hexer society and slowly change it from within!

As long as the Superior Mother took the Hegemony by storm, the people who respected or worshipped the ancestral spirit would hopefully adopt some of her values.

Ves did not harbor any ambitions to spark a revolution that completely put an end to their biases against the male gender. That would only lead to a backlash.

What he actually wanted to accomplish was to subvert some of the beliefs held by the Hexers in order to improve the standing of men in their societies!

If Gloriana knew what he was really up to, she would probably look aghast at him. Ves wanted nothing less than to corrupt her people and lead them astray!

Even if some unexpected complications occurred, his plan was still intact!