The Mech Touch

On this day, the future of the Aduc Family changed forever, and so did the futures of many other people.

Matriarch Erexi Aduc and the crowd of Aduc family members who were fortunate enough to witness this event in person had forever seared the birth of a goddess in their minds.

Despite their secularist background and despite the high proportion of highly-educated scientists among their family, practically every single member completely and utterly submitted to the newborn goddess!

Their knees uniformly weakened as the pressure and presence of this ascended being graced her majesty over her first and most intimate flock of worshipers.

The new goddess didn't even do anything aside from manifesting the form that Ves had designed for her and already her appearance completely conquered the faith of the gathering of exogeologists, exobiologists, exoecologists, and other Aducs.

This was strange as the Aducs had encountered many amazing and impressive products of nature throughout the history of their family.

Their terraforming work occasionally brought them to untamed planets that presented them with dazzling new exofauna and exoflora. Different life-bearing planets produced different living organisms that each adapted to the strange circumstances of their strange environments.

They had come across gigantic lizards whose height approached that of a mountain.

They encountered a hyper-intelligent queen exoinsect whose cognitive capacity matched that of a supercomputer.

They had even stumbled upon one of the rarest wonders of the cosmos, a native life form evolved and that dwelled within the extremely inhospitable body of a red dwarf star!

Any of these creatures were so powerful and such unlikely products of natural evolution that a lot of people would have no problem regarding these supercreatures as gods!

Yet in the face of all of these biological wonders, the Aduc Family firmly rejected this approach and always maintained the stance that no alien or creature was more special than the ordinary organisms of Old Earth.

To the Aduc Family, life was a force that was fully understandable. They studied the mechanisms of DNA, RNA and genetics for many years and understood that almost every living being was based out of the same building blocks of life.

While there were a couple of unusual exceptions in the Milky Way Galaxy such as the sandman race, the existence of energy-based life forms was not unheard of in the scientific community.

However, compared to the weak and utterly negligible sandmen, the appearance of the giant intangible woman whose body appeared to be made out of soil and tree branches completely broke their cognition!

To them, no amount of learning could ever come close to explaining the existence of a deity that was far greater and more exceptional than a giant lizard or an enormous whale that could manipulate phasewater!

Although at first it looked as if this woman was nothing but an Avatar of the Old Lady, the members of the Aduc Family were extremely familiar with the vibe and feel of their living heirloom.

The powerful woman that appeared before them only vaguely possessed a glow that resembled that of the Old Lady.

The difference was that the new entity was far more powerful, far more majestic and far more directly connected to Old Earth than one of its trees!

It was as if they had been graced with the presence of the Old Lady's primordial ancestor, the woman who personified Terra and served as the origin of human life!

Every single person in the Green Sanctum became captivated by dazzling illusions. It was as the grand emergence of a goddess that was close to their hearts completely exploded the faith they had accumulated over the course of their lives.

Most of them saw visions that equated the goddess known as Gaia to Old Earth.

As one of the few people who received the privilege to travel to the Sol System and step foot on humanity's ancestral planet itself, Matriarch Erexi Aduc felt as if she had revisited this life-changing period.

She only experienced the same profound sensations as before, but also felt as if she had developed a greater understanding of the essence of Old Earth!

The matriarch and many Aducs that had always looked up to humanity's home planet all became connected to Gaia in a way that was not an unfamiliar sight to the members of the Golden Skull Alliance!

Ves, who masterminded this extremely significant sequence of events, did not look surprised at the reactions of the Adocs.

Though he detested religion and maintained the opinion that humanity should no longer be swayed by superstition, he recognized the benefits of wielding faith as a controlling force.

He already calculated that the best and most surefire way to obtain the loyalty of the Aduc Family was to bind them to the Larkinson Clan in the form of a new ancestral spirit that took on the guise of a goddess!

It did not matter that Ves had never fully disclosed the exact nature of his new spiritual product. He had obfuscated the fact that the birth of Gaia and her immediate insertion into the lives of the Aducs would have profound and permanent implications to the future of their family.

He did so for the selfish goal of winning over the Aducs and ensuring that this family with a notable heritage would never think about escaping from his clutches!

After all, he was the creator and effectively the controller of Gaia. The newborn design spirit and ancestral spirit may be vastly more powerful than any other entity he created thus far, but that did not change the fact that he was the reason she existed in the first place!

As Gaia slowly became familiar with her new existence, she slowly gained control over her powers.

The energies she released from her manifestation slowly toned down. This caused the atmosphere inside the Green Sanctum to lighten up as Gaia's presence no longer overwhelmed everyone as much as before.

Even so, her birth already marked every single person aboard the Green Dream.

Ves, noted with considerable surprise that the spiritualities of Matriarch Erexi Aduc and her other fellow Earth worshipers had been stimulated to varying degrees!

Each of their spiritualities became more active than before. Some had grown stronger while others evolved their spirits into a direction that allowed them to become more aligned with Gaia.

This was a remarkable reaction and one that directly proved that powerful spiritual entities could 'contaminate' the minds and spirits of weaker individuals.

If Ves was able to understand and reproduce this mechanism under more controlled conditions, he felt he could take advantage of it and gain the capability to mass-produce extraordinary individuals who all possessed uniform spiritualities!

In addition to swaying the Aducs to move their domains closer to that of Gaia, the powerful ancestral spirit also granted every witness of her birth a magnanimous gift!

Her design and creation was inseparable from universal life energy. The key ingredient that allowed aged and dying humans to rejuvenate in mind, spirit and body was a powerful tonic to pretty much any form of life!

For one reason or another, Gaia's saturated form began to leak out traces of universal life energy from her manifestation!

The surrounding organisms eagerly captured and absorbed this precious high-grade energy into their own essence, causing them to rejoice as they grew in ways that could not be explained!

Every tree, every bush and every single stalk of grass grew a tiny bit greener and more lush by the second.

The bees, worms and other small creatures that the Aducs had cultivated in order to maintain the biome each absorbed minute quantities of universal life energy as well, causing them to grow and evolve in ways that modern biotechnology could not explain.

Each of them buzzed and moved as if they were having the time of their lives. Some of them were even smart enough to bow or lower themselves in front of the majestic appearance of the goddess that had given them a grace of her power.

The people gathered in the Green Sanctum were not left out from this party either. Each of their bodies soaked in varying amounts of universal life energy, causing them to undergo a second round of subtle growth and evolution!

Though the effects weren't as great and obvious as the first time, Ves guessed that everyone's lifespans and potential may have grown by another small measure!

Even he benefited from this exposure! His dense body cells and his powerful Spirituality all changed in ways that he couldn't describe but instinctively felt was beneficial for his future growth!

His Spirituality, which had never grown that much after he created his incarnations, started to churn as it absorbed the good fortune that Gaia released into the environment!

One one hand, Ves was happy that one of his most important aspects as a mech designer and a spiritual engineer had grown stronger.

On the other hand, he was incredibly peeved that the universal life energy that Gaia was handing out like candy originally belonged to him! She was giving away precious energy that she should have kept in reserve!

Ves felt a bit helpless but not too distressed. Gaia's domain somehow made it easy for him and many others to directly absorb universal life energy in a safe and efficient way.

He already understood that if he attempted to directly absorb the energy of a high-grade life-prolonging treatment serum in its rawest form, it would never be as easy as it would feed every aspect of his Spirituality, including the junk energy that was related to attributes that were either irrelevant or directly detrimental towards his personality and future development!

There were parts about him that were impulsive, greedy and outright dangerous. If he indiscriminately absorbed universal life energy, those elements would definitely grow stronger, causing him to become increasingly more irrational and less able to control his more destructive urges!

Ves even speculated that this form of indiscriminate growth may have been the root cause of the dark days of the Age of Conquest.

Whatever the case, Ves valued stable and controllable development on his terms over quick fixes that ultimately forced him to pay a far greater price.

"This… is different."

He did not call Gaia the Origin of life without reason. Part of the programming that he had added to his spiritual product was related to mastering and controlling life energy and other related energies.

Ves could clearly see that this part about Gaia's ability had successfully manifested as he felt her gentle but powerful influence subtly guiding the universal life energy to directly feed design seed and therefore his domain!

"This… is amazing!" His eyes lit up!

If Gaia could repeat this process to himself and other people, he could use her to safely accelerate people's spiritual development without generating too much sequelae!

Of course, it remained to be seen whether it was safe and desirable to rely too much on her powers. Ves knew more than others that true growth had to be rounded and comprehensive. It was not enough to strengthen his raw Spirituality. He needed to pay attention to other forms of accumulation as well.

For mech designers, it was impossible for them to advance to Senior and higher without spending a huge amount of time practicing their actual craft!

Ves still had to design a lot more mechs before he could even be eligible to advance to Senior!

Even if he had discovered his growth direction and had a clear path ahead of him, the distance was still so great that he had to go forward by relying on his power!

He knew that no amount of artificial boosting from Gaia could help him get closer to his next destination.

Ves calmed down after he made this realization. Gaia's ability to harness universal life energy to efficiently boost other people's growth may be extremely precious to those who lacked talent in the spiritual arena, but her ability to nurture still possessed limits.

One of them was the fact that she just used up a decent amount of universal life energy, an extremely rare and precious resource that Gaia might or might not be able to renew!