The Mech Touch

A disaster occurred!

Ves just wanted to clean up one of the old skeletons in his closet. Who knew that his method of starving this ghost of all of her spiritual sustenance would result in such an illogical outcome?

When a mech no longer received energy from its power reactor, the machine demanding systems inevitably shut down. It didn't matter whether it was a bottom-tier third-class mech or a cutting-edge first-class multipurpose mech. Every single war weapon could only unleash its destructive potential when it was sustained with a sufficient amount of juice.

The same went for starships. It took an incredible amount of energy to propel millions if not billions of tons of metal and composites from one location to another. It also took even more energy to power their artificial gravity, life support systems, energy shielding and potentially warship-grade weapon systems.

Even organic beings sustained their lives by taking in energy from the environment. Whether they derived energy from solar radiation or digesting food, without any input they would assuredly shut down like any exhausted device!

Ves treated Cassandra Breyer the same way. There was no way that reconstructing an entire material form from energy was cheap!

The mass-energy equivalence should apply to any form of energy, including spiritual energy.

Einstein's famous formula, E = mc squared, simply described that it took a huge amount of energy just to convert it into solid matter.

The letter ‘c' in the formula stood for the speed of light, which was a huge number. When this figure was multiplied with itself, that number grew stupendously greater!

As such, many laymen who learned that energy and mass could be exchanged with each other didn't always realize how disproportionate this relationship became due to the effect of multiplying mass with the square of the speed of light.

The entire reason why relatively small nuclear bombs and anti-matter bombs could easily possess the power to destroy entire cities, continents and even planets!

By converting a part or even all of their mass into energy in a small interval of time, a huge amount of energy in the form of heat and radiation blasted out all at once!

Of course, the transformation of mass to energy didn't have to be so violent. A lot of large power reactors relied on a much more gradual process to output a steady and more controllable amount of energy that could be used to power a lot of useful objects such as mechs and starships.

Naturally, if mass could be transformed into energy, the same could be done in reverse.

It was a lot more difficult to pull off in a controlled and deliberate manner. Materialization technology was partially or entirely capable of creating entire objects from nothing.

However, it wasn't always worth it. The cost to materialize a simple coffee cup was probably at least a million times more expensive than just producing it out of basic materials in a simple factory!

A mech was much more massive than a coffee cup, and the cost to materialize an entire war machine could bankrupt entire companies!

Forget about materializing a single mech, but materializing enough of them to equip an entire mech regiment was already insanely expensive!

This was why most materialization applications did not conjure up matter from thin air but instead derived them from existing stockpiles. It was a lot cheaper and more efficient to draw out individual atoms and molecules from a reservoir and individually arrange them together in order to produce a complete mech.

This was why Ves always harbored an incredible vigilance towards Cassandra Breyer.

The fact that she was able to rely on her own sophisticated spiritual techniques to materialize not just her body but also her hefty escape pod out of pure energy was incredibly scary!

Nothing had ever gone missing around Cassandra Breyer. The Breyer alloy that he obtained from melting down the escape pod didn't disappear to recreate the escape pod. Instead, the produced materials permanently remained in existence, which meant that Cassandra materialized her mummified body and escape pod through the most energy-intensive method possible!

Just thinking about the amount of energy it took to pull off this trick once was enough to make Ves sweat. If all of this energy wasn't used to materialize physical matter but instead exploded outwards all at once, then the effect would be no different from detonating an anti-matter bomb!

In other words, each time she materialized her form, she expended enough energy to destroy the entire expeditionary fleet!

This happened not once, not twice, but tens of thousands of times!

If all of that energy was released in the form of explosions, then they would have been enough to wipe out every planet and population center of a powerful second-rate state!

Was it any surprise that Ves feared how much Cassandra Breyer could do if she was unleashed?

The only strange part about this was that Blinky didn't perceive that her intake of spiritual energy was that exaggerated. Either she relied on a much more impressive internal power source to make up for the shortfall, or spiritual energy was much more energetic than other forms of energy.

Ves was initially inclined to believe in the latter. He always felt that spiritual energy was impressive and much higher quality than heat, light and other more conventional forms of energy.

Yet that didn't change the fact that he was in big trouble at the moment!

Although Ves was still certain that Cassandra Breyer's energy reserves had depleted over the course of repeated instances of materializating another copy of her body and escape pod, what just happened completely defied his expectations!

"My assumptions were wrong!"

Cassandra Breyer's state was a lot different than before. Her spiritual barrier that prevented Ves from inspecting her true state was gone. What he sensed instead was an unstable outpouring of violent spiritual energy that possessed a strange mix of attributes!

The spiritual pressure the revived mummified corpse emanated ramped up so quickly that Ves had trouble maintaining his focus.

"Meow!"

"Sir!"

Before Lucky and Nitaa could attack the dangerous corpse, they both dropped onto the deck. They couldn't withstand the increasingly more magnified pressure that Cassandra Breyer unleashed!

"I should have outfitted Lucky with his Misfortune Harness!" Ves lamented as he tried to stay on his feet.

He was able to withstand the pressure with the help of his Unending Regalia. After his experiences with the dark gods, he realized that he needed more defenses against hostile spiritual entities. This was why he designed a new suit of combat armor that protected him against both material as well as spiritual enemies!

Now, this layer of protection was enough to partially shield Ves from the escalating spiritual pressure unleashed by this difficult-to-extinguish woman!

"My B-stone layer is too thin, though!"

A significant amount of unleashed spiritual energy still passed through his suit and impacted his mind. Ves came directly in touch with the spiritual energy of a human who was even more adept at wielding it than himself!

Even as he tried to ready a countermeasure, his exposure to Cassandra's spiritual energy caused him to perceive a lot of new sensations, much of which he didn't understand!

He was able to figure out a couple of points, though.

First, Cassandra Breyer didn't appear to be in control of her current state. A lot of spiritual energy from an unknown source was leaking out into the environment in a turbulent manner that did not look purposeful in the slightest!

Second, despite releasing a huge quantity of spiritual energy from her current form, it wasn't slowing down at all. Instead, it ramped up even further!

Third, the mummified hand that was poking out of the opened escape pod was gathering some of the energy unleashed by Cassandra's form. Ves sensed the hand was forming an increasingly more powerful ball that mixed numerous spiritual attributes together.

He had a really bad feeling about this energy ball. Whatever Cassandra was doing, there was a considerable chance that it was not to his benefit!

There was one more observation that absolutely made him even more afraid of this resurrected ghost.

When Ves parsed the different flavors of the powerful waves of spiritual energy she unleashed, he began to get a vague impression of how they ‘tasted'.

One tasted like tree bark. Another tasted like coppery blood. The third tasted like a mouthful of dirt. The fourth burned his spiritual senses, which was one of the reasons why he had difficulty perceiving what was taking place.

The fifth flavor tasted disturbingly familiar to him. The spiritual attribute it was associated with was highly similar to one of his own spiritual attributes!

"Is she a mech designer?!"

How else could Cassandra Breyer possess a spiritual attribute that was a close match to his own spiritual attribute of mechs?

Only high-ranking mech designers developed domains that were partially related to mechs. For a moment, Ves paled at the thought he had been imprisoning and exploiting an extremely powerful mech designer for several years!

Although Ves didn't know how powerful a Master Mech Designer could be, the power displayed by Cassandra Breyer definitely surpassed that of Master Willix and other comparable figures.

"Is Cassandra… a Star Designer?!"

His mind was completely blanked out at the moment!

The MTA would definitely crucify him if they discovered what he had been doing to one of their most honored and august figures!

If he ignorantly tried to smuggle Cassandra Breyer in her old state through the beyonder gate, then that would have been no different from throwing his body into the local star!

"Wait, my judgment is wrong! The flavor is similar, but the tones are different!"

As a passionate and dedicated mech designer, Ves was most sensitive towards mechs and anything related to them. This was especially the case when his affinity for mechs increased multiple times with each masterwork mech he brought into existence.

One of Cassandra's five powerful spiritual attributes was similar but different from his mech-oriented spiritual attribute. It did not convey an impression of modern engineering, but instead conveyed something more primitive but powerful in a different manner.

"It's… metal!"

Everything about Cassandra's spiritual energy signature fell into place. The woman's background was terrifying and already leaned towards the worst-case scenario!

Ves not only suspected that Cassandra Breyer's existence or heritage preceded the Age of Mechs, but also possessed an extremely close connection to the Five Scrolls Compact!

How else could one woman develop five spiritual attributes corresponding to wood, water, earth, fire and metal at the same time!?

What was even more impressive to Ves was that she managed to contain all of these powerful and disparate elements together without getting troubled by incompatibility!

Her spiritual attribute mixture, her insane power level and her extremely sophisticated techniques caused Ves to conclude that Cassandra Breyer must definitely have been a top figure in the past!

Whether she was one of the leaders of the Five Scrolls Compact or one of its main dissidents, Ves didn't know. He was in no mood to wait until Cassandra woke up so that she could explain her origin.

"Besides, with everything she has gone through, I doubt she is willing to sit down and talk to her tormentor!"

Although Ves wasn't able to sense any emotions such as rage, elation, humiliation or relief from her powerful spirituality, he would be a fool to assume that she would be glad that he unlocked her from her previous state!

"Blinky! Attack!"

Mrow?!

"Just gobble up that energy ball or something! Don't let her work her magic!"

Mrow!

Though Blinky looked reluctant, he moved into action. As a spiritual entity that was highly adept at manipulating spiritual energy, the pressure exerted by Cassandra Breyer did not pose much of a hindrance.

The cat quickly appeared above the open escape pod and tried not to look in the direction of the mummified female corpse. Instead, Blinky nibbled at the accumulating spiritual energy, causing it to weaken and destabilize!

MROOOWW!

As Blinky absorbed a portion of Cassandra's powerful spiritual energy, his digestion system experienced a lot of difficulties in trying to digest the five elements.

Mrow mrow mrow!

Blinky had no choice but to separate them. The wood energy, water energy, earth energy and fire energy exploded out of his form in four different directions, causing the cat to look as if he had become an elemental god!

However, the metal energy was different. Blinky was able to digest it with ease, allowing him to raise his own energy levels and sustain his increasingly more laborious digestion processes!

Ves had no idea what was going on at this point. Whether Blinky's current action was helpful or harmful remained to be seen. All he knew was that he better put an end to this outburst!

"Keep siphoning away all of that energy! Don't let her wield her massive power!"

MROW!

He could see that the different energies that Blinky deconstructed from Cassandra Breyer did not feed back into the woman anymore. Whether it was because she couldn't recycle her own output or because the lack of metal energy left her unable to balance the remaining four elements, Ves didn't care as long as she grew weaker!

"It's working!"