The Mech Touch

Though Ves sympathized with Lucky, that did not stop him from exploiting his own cat.

After a bit more haranguing, the gem cat reluctantly got to work. Lucky phased through the disgusting flesh of the Titania and began his long search for phasewater.

Of course, if Lucky was fortunate enough to bump into a different valuable exotic substance, no one would mind if he took a bite or two. That was how Ves was able to persuade his cat to dowse for phasewater.

Once Ves sent out his cat, he did nothing except watch and supervise his men scouring through the body of the dead astral beast.

It was quite inspiring to see so many underlings working under his direction. From the mech pilots growing bored as they kept guard over the site to the biotech researchers making exciting new discoveries that would likely not make any impact on the subsequent work, each of them played a part in strengthening the clan and by extension Ves.

"Oh. That reminds me. I need to get to work as well."

He did not leave the safety of his flagship just to go on a tourist trip. The Titania may be a grand and powerful sight, but it was also disgusting agglomeration of alien flesh. Those with more sensitive sensibilities would probably react a lot worse than Lucky when they entered this cavity!

Fortunately, Ves already got rid of most of his squeakiness after spending a bit of time in the Life Research Association. He had encountered weirder and more disgusting biological horrors on the surface of Prosperous Hill VI.

The encounter with the biojuggernaut known as Uranus alone had done much to desensitize him to the sight of other massive organisms.

"Uranus isn't as big as heavy as the Titania, though." He observed. "This astral beast is on another level!"

The Uranus was large enough to gorge on mechs, but the Titania was large enough to make the Spirit of Bentheim feel like a dwarf!

Before sentimentality hit Ves once again, he shook his head and tried to stay focused on his task.

"Joshua mentioned that he felt echoes inside this carcass. Let's see what is up with that."

Ves floated away from the shuttle and approached what constituted the surface of the massive inner cavity. The flock of bodyguards followed suit and made sure there wasn't anything dangerous in the way.

Mindful of the dangers of the walls of flesh, he did not dare to set down his feet directly onto the gray biomass. Instead, he maintained a certain amount of distance and closed his eyes in order to attune his spiritual senses.

"I… can feel it. It's quite obvious, actually."

It was fascinating to Ves. The Titania was once a powerful creature, but not just because of its enormous body and its resilient vitality.

What Ves had managed to discover was that the astral beast used to possess a lot of spiritual strength!

The imprint this massive presence left behind inside the corpse was so obvious that Ves did not need to make any further guesses. The Titania was not just powerful astral beast that had slowly grown to this size. It possessed other advantages that likely gave it crucial advantage in its journey to survive and grow in this hostile and dangerous galaxy!

"Well, this has become a lot more interesting!"

He should have thought about it before. Although astral beasts always tended to be on the large size, one that was as big as a moderate CFA battleship did not come around that often!

Another clue that should have pointed him in this direction was the ascertain that big creatures that grew under harsh environments likely tended to possess special powers. Galenta whales and presumably phase whales were both famed for their more exotic powers rather than their raw physical might.

"The only confusing part of all of this is the lack of intelligent behavior from the Titania."

Spirituality was always linked with sentience as far as Ves had discovered. A creature could not become a spiritual powerhouse if it was not capable of thinking beyond its instincts.

If the Titania was intelligent, why did it show little of it during its attack?

"Maybe it was already in bad shape."

This was the predominant theory among those who believed the Titania could have launched more devastating attacks if it was in its peak condition. There was no way that launching flesh torpedoes at an enemy was the extent of its attack capabilities!

Ves was inclined to believe the Titania was already close to death and that the Golden Skull Alliance merely tipped it over. This theory conformed with everything he witnessed.

Still, that didn't bring him any close to the astral beast's spirituality. Had it already departed for the spiritual realm? Ves hoped this wasn't the case. He did not want to lose out on a potential harvest!

To that end, Ves flew around in the giant internal cavity. Since it was as large as a city, Ves would have to spend a long time in order to complete a carpet search, and that only applied to this specific space. There was a much larger shell of alien biomass around it that Ves might have to search as well in order to find what he wanted!

"I really hope I don't need to dig through all of that awful flesh like Lucky."

Dirty jobs were supposed to be performed by his minions! What was the point of being the boss if he had to wade through all of the muck in person?

"Besides, the more time passes by, the greater the likelihood that what I'm looking for will have already disappeared."

He needed to move quickly and cover as much ground as possible in order to find his prize.

Half an hour passed as Ves performed a carpet search. His Unending Regalia's float modules received a lot of exercise as he flew back and forth.

Although he hadn't found anything immediately, he vaguely gained a greater understanding of the life that used to occupy this body.

The echoes of this once-enormous entity left behind acted like currents that vaguely guided Ves to a certain location that was close to the center of the cavity.

The density of organs here was larger than anywhere else. Not only that, but the complexity and concentration of higher grades of exotics was noticeably higher in this portion.

When Ves approached a nearby research team, he asked a question to one of the exobiologists.

"Is this where the Titania's brain is located?" He asked.

"Brains."

"Pardon?"

"We have learned enough about ‘the Titania' that we can conclusively state that this astral beast is not a conventional organism." The middle-aged woman garbed in a hazard suit stated to the patriarch. "Look at these nodes. Individually, they are too small and low-capacity to regulate all of the biological functions of the Titania. Together, that is another story. When we examined these brain nodes in detail, we have found that they are all interconnected yet discrete in a way that we have found in few other species. Those species operate in ways that are different from organisms like you and I. Instead of being run by a single mind, they are run by multiple minds. It might not be obvious at first glance, but the Titania is actually a variation of a superorganism!"

A superorganism!

Ves did not know much about biology, but he knew enough to know that hives of bees and ants were classified as superorganisms.

Perhaps an individual ant was a rather weak and pathetic creature that likely wouldn't be able to survive the wild alone, but when they worked alongside thousands of other ants, they formed a collective that was much more powerful than the sum of its parts!

Superorganisms consisted of many individual organisms that all performed specialized roles in order to make the overall hive prosper.

A superorganism was basically a large collective rather than a single uniform life form. This also caused Ves to grow confused.

Had just a single guiding intelligence in the Titania become spiritually powerful or did the whole collective transcend their biological limitations at once?

His earlier assumptions leaned towards the latter, but the more he thought about it, the more he favored the former possibility.

Even when it was injured and almost dead, the Titania's reaction against the Golden Skull Alliance was just too weak. Ves had not sensed any strong spiritual activity from the astral beast at that time, though that might be due to distance.

In any case, Ves became more convinced that only a part of the Titania might have been more spiritually active. It may have even functioned as the ‘queen bee' of this alien collective!

The biggest question now was whether this creature was still alive. Ves looked hungrily at the ugly flesh nodes, but quickly saw that more than half of them were burned or scorched away!

"Damnit, couldn't you have been more gentle, Patriarch Reginald?!"

The Bolvos Rage was capable of inflicting so much mass damage that much of the area that previously held the brain nodes had turned into an apocalyptic flesh ruin. Though the Lifer exobiologists still found plenty of intact ones that possessed lot of research value, Ves was afraid that the key organ he was looking for may have already passed away!

He quickly rushed through the ruined flesh forest and tuned his spiritual senses as much as possible in order to search for any signs of spiritual life.

"C'mon."

He suddenly stopped and turned his orientation. During his search, he sensed a faint sign of life that was distinct from all of the background noise generated by nearby glows and true resonance from expert mechs.

He quickly approached a ruined brain node that had almost completely charred and faded from existence.

The spiritual echoes were strongest at this site. Ves knew beyond any doubt that this was where the spiritual king of this little flesh empire once reigned!

Ves didn't need to rerun the footage of the battle inside this cavity to figure out that the Titania likely died when the Bolvos Rage coincidentally destroyed this key brain node.

"The question is whether there is anything left."

He failed to sense anything valuable. Though the echoes here were strong, they were like footsteps in the dirt. Just because there were far more footsteps here than in the other parts of the Titania didn't mean they were valuable!

Ves frowned deeper as he tried to make sense of all of the echoes. They hardly told him anything useful.

"Wait…"

When Ves focused on the most recent echo, he found that it actually left a trail that led to another direction.

He curiously followed this trail. He only flew around 5OO meters ahead before he came to another ruined section of flesh.

This time, he came across a lot of gray biomatter that had been cut to pieces. Blood and other disgusting biomatter littered this site as Ves tried his best not to throw up his lunch.

When the trail ended at a small pile of cut and discarded flesh, Ves came close and reached out with his spiritual senses.

He sensed life.

"What?"

The life that he discovered within this ruined flesh was weak.

Not only that, it was suffering.

When Ves commanded a mech to come close and carefully lift up the heavy cuts of flesh that resembled giant pieces of ham, he finally spotted a small brain node that had been cut from its stem due to one of Venerable Dise's destructive swings.

Ves vaguely figured out what had happened. When the Bolvos Rage was just about to kill the main brain, the alien spirituality must have moved to this backup brain. Yet before it could do anything meaningful, Venerable Dise cut off the backup brain from the rest of the body, thereby removing any chance for the alien intelligence to control the rest of the Titania!

He suddenly released a chuckle. "It turned out that the First Sword managed to decapitate the Titania after all!"

While that was funny, Ves knew that time was of the essence. From what he could observe, the alien spirituality was in an awful condition due to suffering from multiple attacks that each weakened its integrity.

"I need to move quickly!"