The Mech Touch

The main hall of the dark shrine inside the Gravada Knarlax looked like someone launched a terrorist attack in the middle of a demonic ritual.

While Ves had seen a lot of shocking sights, he still felt awfully disturbed at the scale of the ritual circle.

The floor didn't offer enough space! This forced the Nyxian cultists to extend the ritual circle onto the walls and ceilings. All of this blood made it so that the entire space looked like the insides of a bloody stomach!

It was a good thing the blood had dried out by now. The Watchers who presided over this immense ritual had already died in order to summon the main bodies of their dark gods

No matter how strange the ritual circle made him feel, it did not distract him for long. He couldn't keep his eyes off all of the Unending alloy pieces that were laying on the ground. To Ves, they were simply begging to be picked up!

"All of this metal will definitely go into my strategic materials reserve!"

The strategic materials reserve was his new inventory dedicated to exotics and other valuable materials. Ves only intended to draw out the materials stored inside the reserve when he needed to make exceptional products such as expert mechs.

Ves took in all of the broken pieces of Unending alloy and estimated how many mechs he could make from all of it. "I can make at least four mechs out of this material!"

And that was if he used it on a mech that incorporated Unending alloy liberally. If he held himself back and made greater use of substitute materials, he could easily stretch it out to double the amount of mechs.

He already decided to make extensive use of this bounty in the expert mechs of his first batch of expert pilots!

With expert mechs that were structurally made out of Unending alloy, his expert pilots would gain a decisive advantage against other expert mechs. Ves seriously doubted that many second-class expert mechs incorporated so much first-class material.

Seeing that Ves had gone mad at the sight of so much precious materials, Calabast quietly shook her head.

"Boys and their toys."

Ves did not care about what others thought. Nobody in the clan except him understood the full value of Unending alloy. While he still needed to inspect the custom mechs he had built for his expert pilots, he already knew that the Unending gear he crafted for them had performed admirably.

What impressed him the most about the new equipment was that the expert pilots were able to take advantage of the spiritually-reactive properties of the material. This had massive implications for the future and only stoked his greed for Unending alloy even further!

"Those blasted Watchers don't deserve to make use of this material!"

As far as he was concerned, the Hallowed Abyss Temple solely existed to donate precious quantities of Unending alloy to him. If not for the growing discontent in his clan and the need to distance himself from his parents, he would have loved to plunder more Unending alloy for a few years.

He lovingly approached a couple of the bigger chunks. Each of them were no larger than a cow, and most were actually smaller.

Despite their irregular shapes and sizes, Ves scanned each of them with his Vulcaneye and confirmed they were all uniform in their physical makeup. Whoever made these statues did not cut any corners. He silently thanked whatever alien was in charge of their production.

The Larkinson personnel who entered the shrine had already scanned the broken pieces. By piecing them together in a virtual program, they ended up with a simulation of three statues that all bore a disturbing resemblance to the dark gods.

Seeing the complete forms of the Unending One, the Blinding One and the Inexorable One brought up a lot of awful memories to Ves. Suppressing them took quite a lot of effort, but the realization that he had made it through in the end was enough for him to find some peace in his mind.

"Heh. All of these powerful dark gods have become history now. Serves you right for targeting the Larkinson Clan!"

After he had his fill of inspecting the Unending alloy, he commanded his men to carefully collect each and every piece and bring them away.

While the Larkinsons already intended to bring the Gravada Knarlax with them, none of his people were sure they would be able to do so. Although her propulsion systems were still reasonably intact, the damage sustained by the heavy cruiser severely affected her structural integrity.

His men needed to perform a lot of repairs on the move in order to have any hopes of bringing the huge warship back to civilized space!

"We're lucky the Allidus Alliance hasn't skimped on FTL drives."

This was the most pleasant surprise of all. While the Allidus Alliance never showed any indications of wanting to bring their warships out of the Nyxian Gap, they were obviously thinking about it. The Gravada Knarlax actually boasted two large FTL drives that were seemingly tailored to the heavy cruiser.

The destroyers and frigates that accompanied the flagship also boasted FTL drives of their own. All of them were well-maintained and in good condition.

Of course, that did not mean that Ves and the Larkinsons were willing to trust them. One of the upsides to losing a lot of ships was that the Larkinson Clan were currently coping with an excess of evacuated ship crews. Many of them would soon move into the captured pirate ships to crew them and to inspect every critical system.

Even if Ves intended to sell or scrap most of them shortly after his task force returned to civilized space, they still needed to make sure the ship would even make it all the way there. Pirates always liked to bury various boobytraps and other nasty surprises in their own vessels.

Ves and Calabast visited some other important sections of the ship.

They stopped by the vast server rooms and data banks. The Black Cats were already having a great time extracting all of the useful data.

They visited several vaults. All of them contained valuable materials and other trinkets. Ves did not care so much for the latter, but the former would definitely go into his strategic materials reserve.

To his pleasant surprise, Ves found a large stash of B-stone in one of the vaults. When Ves scanned the entire collection, his eyes almost popped out of his sockets!

"There's enough B-stone here to build a shuttle out of it!" He celebrated. "I don't even know what to do with all of this material yet. This is definitely the second-best loot after all of that Unending alloy!"

As a mech designer and a maker of products, he benefited immensely from obtaining rare and valuable materials. He stood to make a lot of progress in his development as long as he made good use of their properties!

"It will be like the Devil Tiger, but grander." His eyes glinted with glee.

The gains he harvested from designing and making the Devil Tiger were incredible. Ever since then, his subsequent mechs never quite reached its level.

With materials as remarkable as Unending alloy and B-stone, Ves could once again produce miracles with them. Whether it was Unending weapons or his fantastic Unending Regalia, each product he could make with these exceptional materials would certainly be good enough to turn into heirlooms!

He was so preoccupied with thinking about how to put all of these valuable materials to good use that he hardly paid attention to the rest of the stops that Calabast brought him to. Not even Lord Hivex's stateroom with all of its trophies and trinkets impressed him much.

"The Gravada Knarlax is interesting, don't get me wrong, but I would rather appreciate my own work." He said as he was ready to depart the warship. "Besides, there is no way the Big Two will allow us to keep hold of any of the warships. Just strip of as many valuables as we can get away with before we inevitably have to hand the prohibited vessels over to the authorities."

"Understood. We won't waste this opportunity."

Calabast still had to remain behind in order to supervise some of the ongoing salvage and recovery operations aboard the ship. Ves returned to the Scarlet Rose alone.

Upon arrival, he returned to his own space and proceeded to work on his approach towards the MTA. A reckoning was about to come, and Ves needed to employ all of his wits in order to avoid an undesirable outcome.

Several hours later, he received an incredibly important notification. His men had retrieved the Darkbreak module and had just returned it to its old spot inside the Scarlet Rose.

He sighed. "I've been keeping the MTA waiting for too long."

The news about the pirate armada's shocking defeat had already spread throughout the Nyxian Gap. Even if the participants of the Battle against the Abyss weren't able to transmit any news yet, distant onlookers observed just enough to realize the Allidus Alliance was about to become history.

While the powerful pirate organization still retained a lot of assets in its territory, the loss of its flagship and several powerful escorts meant that Allidus no longer possessed enough power to defend its expansive territory!

The subsequent pirate movements would definitely lend credence to the rumors that Lord Hivex and his punitive fleet had met their end! Ves knew that not only the MTA, but also Gloriana and many other people wanted to get in touch with the victors.

When Ves reached the isolated chamber where the Darkbreak module had just been put back into place, he felt tempted to call Gloriana first.

The MTA wouldn't mind, right? They were eavesdropping on every conversation that took place in its private network anyway so it was not as if Ves snubbed them from his conversation.

Unfortunately, he did not have the choice. Apparently, the Darkbreak module was already active by the time he entered the compartment. As soon as he took a few steps closer, the physical projection of Master Willix immediately came into view.

She wore a stylish white lab coat, which meant that she had immediately interrupted her work in order to meet with Ves. Impatience radiated from her entire form.

"Hello, Master Willix. Are you here to congratulate us for our grand victory?"

She tapped her heels against the deck. "You have made a great contribution to society. You deserve all of the credit for removing a cancerous growth from this region. That said, you didn't need to remove the Darkbreak module from your ship before you entered into battle against the pirates. The MTA could have provided you with some helpful advice and technical support if kept it within reach."

Ves tried hard not to wince. "We will do better next time. I don't think we'll be confronting pirates again anytime soon, though. We thrashed the Allidus Alliance so hard and showed so much strength that I doubt anyone wants to tussle with us. Despite our losses, we have made immense gains."

"Please report on the battle you fought from the beginning. Do note that your words will be logged and included in our archives."

The interrogation had already begun. Ves expected some other MTA Masters or dignitaries to show up, but they never did. Perhaps they thought that he would be more candid if he spoke to a familiar and friendly face like Master Willix.

Keep dreaming.

He proudly presented a vague and hyperbolic story of the battle. He also transmitted a pile of doctored logs and reports that the Black Cats had prepared beforehand.

By all accounts, the first half of the battle was mostly true, yet the second half began to border on fiction.

Master Willix quickly began to frown as she went over the footage that was practically filled with noise. Reading the reports hardly provided her with any clarity. All of the references to gods and heroes quickly strained her tolerance.

"ENOUGH, Mr. Larkinson. What in humanity happened after Mr. Joshua Larkinson broke through and attacked the Gravada Knarlax?!"