The Mech Touch

The statue was tall but quite narrow. It depicted the Unending One in an upright posture with its maw opening up as if to swallow the heavens. Its numerous tentacles stretched out from across his length and curled up in random directions in a chaotic pattern.

The only exception was the base of the statue. Due to the awkward nature of making a statue of a whale-like creature in a vertical posture, the bottom needed some support.

The solution chosen by its original crafters was to cleverly curl some of the tentacles of the dark god into a somewhat flat base. Enough tentacles pooled downwards to provide sufficient support for the statue in any environment subjected to gravity.

Of course, a more elegant way to keep the dark metal statue upright was to cancel gravity entirely in its presence. In fact, the aliens could have integrated such tech in the statue itself.

There must be a reason why it was built in such a primitive fashion. Though he knew nothing about the alien race who originally spawned this work, Ves was sure that they had access to a considerable amount of tech, enough for them to cross the stars.

Yet despite their suspected mastery of advanced technology, they built a statue dedicated to a dark but incredible spiritual entity using nothing but some unknown alloy.

The exact material quickly attracted his attention. Ves studied the scanning results produced when the Larkinsons came and inspected the shrine. Though there was only so much the scanners could figure out at a distance, he already became impressed by some of its physical properties.

The alloy was very dense but also very hard.

"If these scans are correct, we might be looking at a material that rivals first-class alloys!"

First-class! Ves truly wasn't kidding about the material's remarkable defensive properties. Whatever the statue was made of, it could probably shrug off attacks from the Penitent Sister mechs with ease! Not even the Judgement Lasers made by the Allidus Alliance should be able to cause it to melt unless they fired at it for an extended period of time!

Ves became so fascinated by the exceptional properties of this great material that he approached the fallen statue and touched the surface of one of its tentacles.

"Hey, wait, Ves!" Ketis cried in alarm. "That thing is dangerous! It's the source of everything that went wrong during the battle!"

"It's fine. This statue is completely devoid of energy." He spoke without any hint of concern in his voice. "Whatever energy or entity it used to contain is no longer there. Didn't you describe it releasing a lot of darkness at once? There shouldn't be any trace of the so-called Unending One left."

While Ketis and other people found the statue to be spooky and developed a taboo around it, Ves was different.

With his spiritual senses, he already confirmed that there weren't any traces of darkness or dark gods left inside the statue. Aside from matching the appearance of the giant avatar of the Unending One, there was nothing lurking within its depths anymore.

It was completely inert!

"Hmmm.. since it used to store a lot of energy responsible for producing the artificial anomaly, then…"

He decided to act on a hunch and inserted a small amount of his spiritual energy inside.

It worked!

The energy smoothly entered the statue as if Ves had thrown a drop of water in a bathtub. The fallen statue was not only a repository for spiritual energy, but apparently its capacity is far greater than he had imagined!

"This!" Ves became so shocked that he pressed his hand against the cold and dense metal even harder. "It has the same properties as a P-stone!"

Unlike the varied rocks he collected over a couple of years, the statue of the Unending One was different! It was made out of a single, uniform metallic alloy.

One of the biggest shortcomings of P-stones was that it was just as easy to damage and break as regular rocks. This was why he never thought about incorporating them into any mechs or other gear.

This was different. As long as he could repurpose the material of this alien statue into other shapes, he could build all kinds of powerful machines and devices with it! Breyer alloy was simply trash compared to this Unending alloy!

He completely ignored the taboo of affronting a dark god as he lovingly caressed the disturbingly-cold surface of the dark tentacles of the statue.

To him, this despoiled statue was not a frightening representation of an ancient eldritch horror that lurked in the depths of the Nyxian Gap. Instead, he viewed it as an exceptionally valuable block of materials that he could use to create some of the gear and machines of his dreams!

If he could cut off a few of the dark tentacles and shape them into armor plating, he could build some exceptional suits of combat armor for Nitaa, Ketis and himself. He could even use some of the scraps to build a tougher and more versatile version of the Misfortune Harness for Lucky!

Ves took a few steps back and observed the grand size of the statue. Its size was similar to that of the statue of the Superior Mother. However, due to its aquatic shape, its thickness and overall volume was actually larger.

According to the data derived from the scans, the statue was completely solid from top to bottom. This meant that the whale and all of its tentacles actually provided enough material to build an entire mech as well as plenty of infantry gear to spare!

The utility of all this Unending alloy was two-fold. It resisted a lot of damage, and it was capable of storing an enormous amount of spiritual energy.

If a material possessed just one of these properties, Ves would already be pleased. Yet to stumble upon so much Unending alloy that carried both properties at once was a massive, unexpected windfall to Ves!

Gaining this enormous statue was worth every single loss the Larkinson Clan sustained during the Battle of Ulimo Citadel!

As long as he processed the Unending alloy into powerful new works, the clan had the potential to rise to greater heights with greater ease than before.

"This is the perfect material to build an expert mech with!" He grinned!

What if he used the bulk of the Unending alloy in the expert mech revision of the Shield of Samar? Such a mech would turn into a true defensive bulwark!

Though Ves wasn't quite sure yet how to integrate the spiritual energy storage property with the resonance abilities of expert mechs, he had a hunch that it might be able to amplify Venerable Jannzi's barrier generation abilities.

One of the strengths of Jannzi's abilities that the defensive barriers she could project could cover more than just her mech. During her breakthrough, she already displayed the potential to project a barrier that was large enough to cover the Scarlet Rose and several mech companies!

Yet the downside to covering such a vast area was that the energy expenditure was immense! No matter how potent force of will could be, it was still finite!

If Jannzi piloted a Shield of Samar that incorporated a lot of Unending alloy, then she might be able to store a lot of energy into it. It was similar to how Ves dumped the excess spiritual energy produced by his Grand Dynamo into his P-stones.

An even better possibility would be if Qilanxo could store her spiritual energy into the mech!

Since a mech made out of Unending alloy was basically a giant, damage-resistant P-stone, either Jannzi or Qilanxo or both could slowly insert their energy into it. The longer they deposited their energy savings into the Shield of Samar, the greater the protection it could offer in any battle!

With these formidable capabilities, such an expert mech would definitely rival or exceed the top expert mechs developed by the Masters of the Friday Coalition and the Hexadric Hegemony!

In fact, this was just one of the potential uses that Ves had cooked up in his mind.

Another option that sounded just as compelling was to reserve the Unending alloy to build Joshua's future expert mech!

Though Ves had made no choices at all on the vision and design concept of Joshua's expert mech, the importance of this machine was greater than any other expert mech, the Shield of Samar included.

This was because Joshua's force of will centered around life, and happened to match his own spiritual attributes with perfect compatibility!

Joshua was perhaps the most ideal mech pilot that could ever pilot his mechs. With such exceptional compatibility and synergy between the mech pilot and the mech designer, how could Ves not exploit this favorable condition to the fullest?

Whatever resonance abilities Joshua eventually developed, Ves was pretty sure that he could design and fabricate an expert mech that contained much more life than any of the mechs he designed before. Not even his Devil Tiger, which was arguably his greatest design to date, would be able to equal the machine he eventually intended to pair with his most compatible mech pilot!

Ves heaved more and more as a lot of great and promising design ideas flitted through his mind. The Unending alloy was practically made to realize his expert mech design ambitions!

For a moment, he became exceptionally greedy for more of these ancient statues. How many of them did the Hallowed Abyss Temple excavate from the alien ruins of the Nyxian Gap?

Considering that this exceptionally valuable statue was casually placed in a mere shrine in the inner periphery of the Nyxian Gap, it shouldn't be rare or valuable to the cultists.

What if the Hallowed Abyss Temple possessed hundreds of statues? What if they were spread in numerous other pirate bases?

Ves felt tempted to cancel all of his current plans and keep hitting pirate bases that hosted similar shrines. Even if he lost a couple of hundred more mech pilots, obtaining yet another statue of a dark god was worth the tradeoff!

"I can't!" He suddenly reminded himself.

His logic asserted itself. It was all well and good to make such a tradeoff, but Task Force Predator couldn't sustain so many losses. Their current strength had already dipped below a level he felt comfortable with. Attacking formidable pirate bases such as Frostbite Fortress would likely doom the entire task force entirely, especially when the Grey Watchers stationed at those shrines conducted destructive rituals!

Aside from this risk, Ves had an even greater reason why he couldn't afford to chase after more statues of the dark gods.

He needed to return in time to catch his own wedding!

This reason alone was enough for him to shelve his ambitious plans to collect enough Unending alloy to build a mech company's worth of expert mechs.

"I'm being too greedy." He shook his head.

It pained him quite a bit to let go of this opportunity to obtain more of this fantastic material. With its two vital properties, Unending alloy was perhaps the best and most suitable material for him to build his mechs with. The mech designer within him raged at the enormous opportunity he was missing, but the other parts of him feared how badly Gloriana would react if he casually asked to postpone their wedding for a couple of years.

To Ves, pissing off Gloriana was a far more frightening outcome than pissing off all of the dark gods in the Nyxian Gap!

"Okay, forget about it. I should be happy with what I've gotten."

After he calmed himself down, he ordered the statue to be taken away. Its size and density made it rather difficult to take it away. The extensive problems the transportation crew experienced reminded Ves of a very important detail.

"Wait, if all of this Unending alloy is so resistant to damage, how can I extract it from the statue?"

He doubted that any of the industrial machines in his fleet could process such a hardy material. Perhaps not even the formidable production equipment of his upcoming factory ship was capable of working with such a powerful first-class alloy!

"Do I have to get Lucky to bite the statue into pieces in order to work with the material?"

"Meoww…."