The Mech Touch

As Matriarch Erexi Aduc briefly told the tale of how her ancestors obtained the Annals of Terra Vita.

Ves had plenty of questions about the origin and the history of this supposedly 'small' and 'obscure' Earth cult that was about to pass on a relic of this magnitude.

He was already convinced that this unknown Earth cult was related to the Five Scrolls Compact in some way. There were just too many coincidences and indirect relations to make it unlikely that the two had nothing to do with each other.

The Annals of Terra Vita most definitely had a relationship with the Earth Scroll. If not, then Ves was a mech pilot!

"The scroll itself is not that special." Matriarch Erexi admitted in a soft tone. "It is made out of relatively valuable but ultimately ordinary paper that has become increasingly more fragile over the years. We do not dare to touch it with our own hands anymore for fear of breaking it. We have tried our best to employ measures to protect and preserve the scroll, but we do not want to take any chances."

"I understand."

A real Sacred Scroll should never be so brittle! While it was true that the Metal Scroll had likely fractured into pieces during the Big Two's great rebellion against the Five Scrolls Compact, this was a conflict that likely involved god mechs, warships and a lot of powerful Compact sorcerers!

It was not impossible to imagine that a relic that was great enough that a mere fragment of it could spawn the Mech Designer System could break from all of the unleashed firepower!

Compared to such a powerful object, this sad excuse of a scroll that the Aducs had kept hidden for centuries was so much weaker that it would have instantly burned apart as soon as a laser beam got anywhere close!

Matriarch Erexi continued her explanation.

"What is special about this scroll is its contents, not its material. We call it the Annals of Terra Vita because as far as we can tell, its text describes the evolution of a planet that may have turned into Old Earth, or an idealized version of it. We cannot be too sure."

Ves raised a curious eyebrow. "You aren't sure? You studied it for centuries!"

"The contents of the scroll are much more special than you think, patriarch. Its text comes in no human language that we know of. They are similar to hieroglyphs but not entirely the same. We have encountered many problems in our attempts to translate and interpret the meaning of this mysterious language. Our progress has been slow because we cannot utilize any form of electronics, computers and even biocomputers to record and analyze its contents."

"That… sounds strange. Can't you just take a picture with it using your implant or something?"

Matriarch Erexi grimaced. "The content of the Annals of Terra Vita is protected by security measures that we cannot even begin to understand. Our implants… malfunction and get scrambled whenever we make the attempt. Not even our attempts to reproduce the strange text has yielded any results. You will understand when you try to read its contents yourself. I advise you to put your implant on a lower setting to minimize the disruption or temporarily turn it dormant entirely in order to avoid a crushing headache."

This sounded more and more mysterious. Ves had never heard of such a remarkable system of copy protection.

"I believe it is better to show you rather than talk about it further." The woman finally said. "Brace yourself. First exposure to the Annals of Terra Vita will induce a substantial shock to your mind and body. Some of our weaker members have even been knocked unconscious because of their inability to handle the remarkable power contained within."

All of this made Ves more vigilant. He did not take her warnings lightly and already raised his mental and spiritual defenses.

Blinky had also gone on alert in his mind. His companion spirit was not only an energy converter, but also the most powerful guardian of his mind!

"Please proceed, matriarch. I am ready."

Erexi Aduc did not open the transparent cage to roll out the paper scroll with her hands. That was far too crude and could damage the aged relic.

Instead, she pressed her fingers against the surface of the pedestal and manipulated it in a special way so that an invisible forcefield gently rolled out the scroll so that it exposed its front side to Matriarch Erexi and Patriarch Ves.

The former did not exhibit any strong reactions when she gazed upon the mysterious text of the Annals of Terra Vita. Her spirit only briefly fluctuated before she was able to get a handle on herself.

Ves on the other hand felt as if a giant metal fist had just punched his mind!

He could not properly describe the outpouring of power that slammed into his system, only that it was weighty and a completely new experience to him. He fully understood why the matriarch spoke with such caution about what might happen!

Fortunately, the initial shock did not last too long. The pressure from the scroll had dropped to the point where Ves could slowly regain his wits. He shook his head and did his best to regain clarity, but the buzz in his brain made it difficult for him to recover as fast as he wished.

"It helps for you to recover if you don't stare directly into the scroll. I suggest you spend a few minutes staring right next to it so that you can recover and acclimate to the power of the Annals. Also, don't forget to turn off your cranial implant or else your headache will only grow worse."

He did as she suggested and found that this was indeed a good way to get a handle on himself.

Switching off his Archimedes Rubal made the biggest difference to him. As soon as he temporarily turned his cranial implant offline, it was as if his head was doused with refreshingly cool water.

Ves did not find his current state to be too pleasant, though. He had grown so accustomed to the benefits of possessing a partially digitized mind that he felt his thinking had degraded after losing access to his implant's many convenient functions.

He wondered how a simple paper scroll could achieve this effect. He was incredibly curious to start reading the scroll, but he felt he still needed time to adjust before he properly gazed at its contents.

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Keeping Matriarch Erexi Aduc's words in mind, Ves kept the scroll in his peripheral vision for now. He found that while the Annals of Terra Vita still exerted a strange pressure on him, it was not as strong and violent as it could be. He had the feeling that keeping the relic in his vision in this manner only partially put him in the same phase of its contents.

After three minutes had passed, Ves felt his mind had recovered sufficiently to observe the scroll properly. When he shifted his eyes, he became dazzled by strange words and a potent amount of energy locked within.

The unknown black 'letters', if he could even call it that, were seemingly painted by a calligraphy brush of sorts. Ves could feel the flow of every brush stroke as the unknown letters densely packed into the surface of the scroll as if it was trying to cram as much information onto the surface as possible!

There was no distinct formatting or structure to the contents of the Annals. It just appeared as a giant wall of text that was made up of hand-painted letters whose meaning escaped him. They were completely unlike any human or alien letters that he had come across in his life. He fully believed the Aduc Matriarch when she claimed that they had failed to decipher it even after studying it for centuries.

Although the shape and meaning of the letters completely passed him by, there was more to them than was apparent on the surface.

The letters on the scroll were charged with spiritual energy.

Pure, concentrated spiritual energy was locked within each letter and stroke. Whether it was due to the use of a special ink or through a wondrous feat of spiritual engineering, whoever made this scroll managed to infuse every letter with rich and powerful earth-attributed spiritual energy!

As Ves ignored the letters on the surface and used his spiritual senses to examine the locked spiritual energy more directly, he briefly gained a faint impression of Old Earth in the various stages of its evolution.

This hallucination only lasted for a short time. As Ves tried his best to understand the meaning of the text, he found that he was unable to get a handle on it. Whoever made this scroll possessed such exquisite control and technique that each letter was practically an advanced product of spiritual engineering!

It was as if each letter contained a complete book or comprehensive software program!

With thousands of letters on this single page alone, that meant that this paper scroll might contain an entire library's worth of data or instructions!

Unfortunately, none of his attempts to interpret the scroll succeeded. His perceptive abilities allowed him to observe the surface of these dense spiritual letters, but that didn't mean he could understand their actual meaning or significance.

It was just like looking at the interior of an FTL drive! Even if he knew what the most basic parts could do, that was hardly enough for him to understand the full working principles of this complicated device!

The same went for this instance. His foundation in spiritual engineering was way too shallow for him to appreciate what this scroll portrayed.

"There is another hindrance."

Whenever Ves tried to push his perception past the surface of the tiny spiritual constructs, he encountered a lot of resistance and rejection.

Even though the spiritual letters weren't alive, he felt that they were autonomous enough to repel those who were not authorized to read and understand their meaning.

Ves frowned. When he briefly turned his gaze to Matriarch Erexi, he noticed that she faced a lot less hindrances in her own attempts to interpret the letters.

Her eyes almost glowed as she ritually read the letters in her head.

What was amazing about this was that the letters actually responded to her reading! Ves could track her progress by the way her spirituality became more activate and how each letter briefly spiked their energies in sequence!

"This…"

Ves grew dismayed. Even though he only came into contact with the Annals of Terra Vita for a brief amount of time, he figured out that it was impossible for him to take a single image capture of it and read its contents back home in leisure.

First, any device that attempted to make a copy of its contents would fail.

Second, even if he somehow managed to obtain a copy of its letters and ink strokes, it was completely useless if the reproduction did not copy the spiritual letters as well!

Third, if by any chance he obtained the scroll or a faithful reproduction of it, the security measures of the letters were so advanced that Ves wouldn't be able to decipher them without breaking them entirely!

He did not think it was a challenge for him to break upon the spiritual letters by force. He could use his own energy or one of his allied spirits to exert their own power onto the mysterious scroll.

He could also send out Blinky to directly drain and devour the energy that kept these spiritual constructs alive.

Yet if he did so, he would most definitely lose what made them special! The losses would far outweigh the gains as he could already turn to the Old Lady if he wanted to obtain a dose of earth-attributed spiritual energy.

"Why can't I read or interpret this scroll?" Ves asked the matriarch directly. "Why are you able to harmonize with its contents?"

"Only the members of our bloodline have earned the right to read Annals of Terra Vita." She answered as if she was already prepared for it. "We have cautiously invited others to read the scroll in the past, but we have found that no matter how similar they are to us, being married into our family is not enough. The cult who has gifted us this precious scroll has made sure that it is of no use to anyone else."

This explained why the MTA likely left the Annals of Terra Vita in the possession of the Aduc Family.

Ves would have been tempted to snatch it as well if this security measure wasn't in place!