The Mech Touch

The ideas he came up with all sounded promising. Ves could already imagine the balance of odds shifting in his favor.

Whether it was integrating his expert mechs with Lucky's gems, granting a battle network to the Eye of Ylvaine and making a new totem in Ylvaine's honor, each of them promised to convert unused potential into greater strength.

At least that was what he hoped would happen.

"It's not enough, don't you think so, Lucky?"

"Meow." Lucky nodded.

"I feel as if I can still do something to tip the scales further."

Although it was tempting to feel satisfied at this point, he couldn't afford to underestimate the Vulcanites. They might be lacking in many aspects but the intelligence he read on the Ferril Provincial Army made it clear that his upcoming enemies were definitely hiding their own cards!

It was dangerous to assume that the capabilities described in the intelligence reports conformed to reality. What if the dwarven mech force retained another high-tier expert pilot? What if the Ferrils reinforced their attack fleet with a couple of extra mech regiments that they had lying on hand?

Any of these surprises could completely upend his calculus and doom his clan just because he became complacent too soon!

His thoughts rotated faster as he renewed his effort to improve the outcoming of the upcoming battle.

He had so many potentially good ideas in mind. From producing more luminar crystal weapons for his ranged mechs to convincing the Empire of the Lost to send a rescue force to bail him out, each of them would definitely improve his circumstances.

Unfortunately, all of these solutions required too much time!

"If only Calabast discovered the conspiracy targeted against us sooner." He sighed.

He was grateful that the Black Cats managed to uncover the Ferril Province's plot ahead of time. Calabast had probably saved a lot of lives by acting on her suspicions towards the Ferril patrol captain.

It could have been better, though. The Larkinson Clan would have never been so close to meeting its end if Calabast managed to inform him of the threat a week earlier!

"Maybe I'm asking too much from the Black Cats."

If his clan was stronger and fielded more mechs, Ves wouldn't have ended up in this desperate position in the first place. He could have just relied on superior quantity and quality to steamroll his opposition.

"I really need to get my hands on a fleet carrier or two after this is over." He grumbled.

He briefly thought about trying to hijack the dwarven carriers. The idea sounded great at first, but then Ves remembered that the Vulcanites employed an extremely effective 'anti-theft' measure that quickly ended this particular ambition.

"Those damn dwarves build their ships with ceilings that are far too low!"

Almost every compartment and passageway that didn't have to fit anything big was deliberately designed to make it harder for humans to navigate them. The Vulcanites were so eager with this that they baked this measure into all of their starships in a way that made it impossible for tall folk to capture them and crew them in an effective manner!

The only way to convert a dwarven carrier into a more normal vessel was to rip out all of the interior and rebuild the insides from the ground up! For capital ships, that could take years!

This devious dwarven measure also ruled out the possibility of boarding or infiltrating the enemy vessels. The Larkinson Clan's boarding parties and infiltration teams simply couldn't go anywhere without scraping and bumping their helmets against the ceiling!

Just as he was about to give up on this train of thought, his eyes suddenly strayed towards Lucky.

The lazy gem cat was already starting to get bored. His eyes dimmed as he yawned another time.

However, when Lucky sensed that Ves was looking at him with a speculative look, the cat quickly became alert.

Nothing good ever happened when Ves adopted this gaze!

"Meow..?"

"You're shorter than a dwarf, right? In fact, lower ceilings don't bother you at all since you can just phase through solid matter."

"Meow…"

"It's time to make another contribution, Lucky."

"Meow!"

"Don't complain! Would you rather lose your ride and all of your privileges that you currently enjoy in our clan? If not, then get ready to suit up in your Misfortune Harness, because you're going on another infiltration mission!"

That riled Lucky up! The cat jumped into the air as if his feet had just been scalded with hot water!

"Meow meow meow!"

"I'm not taking no for an answer! You'll either do this or you can float in the emptiness of space forever!"

"Meeeeeoooow!"

After dealing with this little matter, Ves gained a bit more confidence, but only by a small amount. Though allowing Lucky to get loose on the enemy's flagship would undoubtedly cause the dwarven mech force to fall into disarray, it would not directly affect the dwarven mechs that have already deployed in space.

Ves needed to find at least one more way to harm or debilitate them in some way.

Soon enough, a particularly radical idea came to mind.

"Could I use their beliefs against them?" He wondered.

He fell silent for a moment. This was not a light matter.

The dwarves were his children in a sense. Though nobody except him knew the truth, he was still the origin of their beliefs and the founder of their faith.

During his last Mastery experience, he invented a fake persona and adopted the guise of Vulcan, the God of Dwarves, Mechs and Craftsmanship to rally the stupid dwarven rebels and make sure they fought hard enough against their human oppressors.

"If it worked once, it can work again."

No one should be better at impersonating Vulcan than himself. He was confident enough in his persuasion abilities to sow doubt in the fanatic dwarven mech pilots!

It would be great if he could not only convince the hostile Ferrils that he was Vulcan or a representative of their god, but also persuade them to give up on their attempt to destroy the human visitors.

Ves wasn't confident he would be able to accomplish the latter. "The Ferrils have embraced the Dwarven God Cult, so they probably won't recognize me as their god."

Fanatics were so committed to their beliefs that they were remarkably good at rejecting any evidence that contradicted their assumptions.

Still, from what Ves learned of the Ferril Province's population as well as the composition of the Molten Hammers, Slug Rangers and Hivar Roarers, not every Vulcanite was a Dwarven God cultist.

The original Vulcan Faith had been entrenched in the empire for decades and should still have a lot of adherents. Perhaps their influence had waned and there might not be a lot of them in the mech divisions hand-picked to launch this attack, but as long as he was able to sway the minds of just 1 percent of the enemy troops, it could easily disrupt the enemy mech force's cohesion!

"The lower their coordination, the easier it is to break the dwarven units apart and defeat them in detail!"

Ves thought about ways he could make his performance more convincing. The best solution was to turn Vulcan from a falsehood into a real design spirit, but he soon rejected this option.

"I don't have the ingredients to create a version of Vulcan that's convincing enough."

It also conflicted with an ambitious plan that he had cooked up as of late.

"I don't need a design spirit. I can just make another totem and instill it with the right impression."

He believed that these steps should be able to make a difference in battle. After all, the dwarves had worshipped Vulcan so long that the prospect of finally meeting their own god should definitely cause disruptions!

This plan fell in line with the Larkinson Clan's psychological warfare doctrine. No matter how dirty it was to play with other people's beliefs, Ves was willing to set aside his disgust for religion in order to take advantage of other people's superstitions!

"As long as it delivers the results I want, I have no problem with pretending to be a god!"

After coming up with this latest ploy, Ves finally felt confident enough that he had done what he could to even the odds. Perhaps he might come up with more viable solutions, but for now he had a good starting point that effectively made use of his advantages.

He immediately began to put his plan in motion. He first created a pair of totems in his workshop with the materials he had on hand.

He spent the most time on creating a large-scale totem that was dedicated to Ylvaine. Ves couldn't afford to stop and think about what he should create so he just went with the first thought that came into mind.

"It will take too long for me to make anything complex, so I should stick to a simple shape. What about a rod?"

Originally, he wanted to make a giant cannon or gun in order to serve as a catalyst for a battle network, but Ves wouldn't be able to design and build anything up to standard in just a couple of hours of time.

A rod was much simpler and easier to make, though he still invested a lot of time to make the giant object as simple and flawless as possible. It had to look good enough to make the Ylvainans believe that it was connected to the Great Prophet.

While he made the rod, he instilled it with as much life as he could. He focused his efforts on two aspects.

First, it had to exude the same glow as Ylvaine in the purest possible form.

Second, it had to work well with the battle network he planned to make.

Since he had yet to create the latter, it was a lot more convenient for Ves to preconfigure the rod for its future purpose. He employed his accumulated spiritual engineering to create a spiritual construct that should provide specific functionality.

Ves even made the spiritual construct alive and fed it with a precious portion of universal life energy to power up the entire artifact.

He winced as he used up this portion. He didn't want to squander his precious high-grade serum in this manner, but this seemed like a bad time to be stingy, so he used up 10 percent of the energy contained in a full vial to accelerate the spiritual development of his totem.

This made a huge difference! The totem's glow and spiritual foundation started off weak but quickly became a lot stronger and more solid after receiving a potent injection!

"This will have to do." Ves reluctantly nodded. "I'll just call you the Rod of Ylvaine."

He was too much in a rush to think up a better name. Besides, he didn't think the Ylvainans would care. If they were stupid enough to worship a discarded nutrient pack wrapper of the Great Prophet, then they should have no problem worshipping a giant metal rod!

Ves quickly moved on to complete his other tasks. From creating a totem that was based on what he remembered of his persona of Vulcan to gathering the Eye of Ylvaine together in order to create a brand-new battle network, he worked quickly to get everything done in time.

Even as the Ylvainans were singing praises to the Bright Martyr for granting them his 'blessing', Ves quickly turned away and headed over to the hangar bay in order to insert Lucky's gems into his expert mechs.

"Well, the choices are obvious."

The Bastet gems seemed tailor-made for specific expert mechs. The First Sword received Bastet's Favor, the Dark Zephyr integrated Bastet's Regard and the Amaranto absorbed Bastet's Affection.

He tried to be as subtle as possible and inserted the gems to the expert mechs inside their cockpits. Hopefully, Gloriana wouldn't find out that he had just used up three potential opportunities to make masterwork mechs too soon.

"She'll definitely find out when the expert mechs finally show off their performance." Ves predicted.

Gloriana knew her work so well that she should immediately be able to detect the discrepancies!

The only Larkinson expert mech that didn't receive a gem was the Riot. Ves felt kind of sad for this expert mech. It was not just a machine but also a living mech. He contemplated whether he should take out another gem and give it a little power-up as well.

He pulled out one more gem from his pouch.

[Unstable Chaos Essence]

A terrible essence of chaos is locked within this gem. The essence is stolen from a great and ancient horror that would dearly wish to regain it. Carry this gem at your own risk.

"Should I…?"

Well, he had already taken a number of reckless chances in order to improve his odds. What was the harm in making another gamble?