The Mech Touch (Web Novel)

The lightning tribulation did not remain tame forever.

The alien starships of the 7th round became increasingly larger and more formidable. Their defenses became tougher to crack and their weapons started to hit increasingly harder as their distinctive Messier 87-style materials and technological applications became increasingly more advanced.

Although the warships originating from a high-energy environment never came close to matching the sheer sophistication of humanity's high technologies, the aliens who labored hard to develop their impressive vessels possessed their competences.

Their native blend of hyper technology and E-technology blew anything developed by red humanity out of the water. They were so many generations ahead that it would probably take thousands if not millions of years for the Red Two to catch up on an independent basis.

Already, the most powerful among the observers of this tribulation event harvested an enormous amount of inspiration. Their grasp on hyper technology and E-technology may be vastly inferior to that of the natives of Messier 87, but they only needed a few clues and an awareness of what was possible in order to figure out entire new directions of research!

Even if the Dominion of Man ultimately succumbed to the fury of the storm, the high-tiered galactic citizens would not feel too upset. The lessons they learned and the perspective they gained were already invaluable enough! Many of these leading figures possessed the capacity to convert their present gains into massive technological developments down the line.

The next mech generation was bound to revolutionize human society yet again!

Still, these were considerations for the distant future. Right now, red humanity desperately needed to gain more power in the short term. It was crucial for the Dominion of Man to survive and secure her evolutionary gains from the ongoing tribulation.

The good times did not last forever. By the time the Dominion of Man managed to vanquish over the last wave of the 7th round, the starship had already incurred a bit more scarring and surface damage due to the unexpected high firepower of the last alien battleship.

The vessel forged out of tribulation lightning had been a pain to fight against. The 'ship' turned out to be a jagged and completely unrefined asteroid that consisted of the toughest metallic ore imaginable.

Somehow, a powerful force of sword cultivators had carved tunnels into the asteroid's interior and steadily converted it into a mobile starbase of sorts.

While the exotic starbase's defenses did not last particularly long against the formidable arsenal of the Dominion of Man, its armaments were another story!

Swords created from tribulation lightning and metal energy surged out of the starbase in an unending stream.

Each sword leveraged the power of heaven to enhance their sharpness, toughness and penetration power to such a high degree that they never failed to punch shallow holes through the hull of the Dominion of Man!

Even if an individual sword was not able to penetrate too far, the starbase spat out so many of them that the dreadnought was forced to rotate her hull in order to disperse the damage.

What was even worse was that some of the starbase's gun ports launched formations of swords.

Ves became uncomfortably reminded by battle networks as he saw hundreds if not thousands of swords assume highly precise formations that resonated with the power of heaven.

When the Dominion of Man got struck by these large sword formations, entire chunks of her hull disintegrated to pieces!

Fortunately, the dreadnought adapted quickly to this massive threat. Dozens of secondary gun batteries worked to intercept and break apart the sword formations before they could land their devastating attacks. Breaking them up was enough to reduce their threat level by a large degree.

Furia also worked to concentrate more fire energy across the exposed hull sections in order to protect them against continuous blows.

Ultimately, for all of their sharpness, the sword cultivators who built the base never invested nearly as much in their defense as opposed to offense.

The Brain Trust had analyzed the structural characteristics of the asteroid base in extreme detail and calculated highly optimal firing solutions that systematically dismantled the strange runes that formed key nodes in the enemy fortification's defensive network.

The Dominion of Man mainly leaned on her kinetic and explosive armaments to quickly break the vulnerable asteroid base apart piece by piece.

The 7th round came to an end at that point.

As the storm clouds gathered up more energy to initiate the 8th round, the analysts who had been studying their properties and behavior made a crucial discovery!

After they double-checked their results and shared their findings with off-site experts, they felt confident enough to present their conclusion to their captain and his guest!

"Sir! According to our detailed analysis, the tribulation storm has entered its final round. We already predicted that this would be the case much sooner, but we have gathered enough data to reach a 85 percent confidence interval in our conclusion. The most important implication is… there is no 9th round. This tribulation storm will only last up to 72 waves in total."

What?!

Both Ves and Dread Captain Argile became shocked by this analysis!

Even though there was a 15 percent chance that the analysts had misjudged the situation, it was safe to say that the Dominion of Man only had to endure 9 more tests before the heavens begrudgingly allowed the Carmine dreadnought to continue to exist.

Ves had a strong guess why the tribulation storm skipped out on the 9th round. He had little doubt the dreadnought definitely deserved one due to all of the craziness surrounding her upgrades.

"The storm had weakened by a significant margin shortly after the Subjugation King showed up and exercised his power." He mentioned. "That's the reason why there isn't enough energy left to power the 9th round, correct?"

The bridge officer nodded. "That is our leading hypothesis, professor. Our analysts are still continuing to investigate this matter further, but we do not think our conclusion is likely to change. The loss in power was noticeable, and the storm clouds have never recovered from the alien's interference."

Both Ves and Dread Captain Argile exchanged glances with each other. They both felt ambivalent towards this development.

On the one hand, the Dominion of Man had been spared the most difficult and destructive of tests. She would not have to test her mettle against the most powerful and threatening of tribulation challenges. Each wave of the 9th round was sure to stretch her limits and beyond regardless of the aid provided by Furia!

Given that the last wave of the 7th round already dressed the dreadnought's defenses, the probability that the vessel might succumb in the last waves was uncomfortably high!

On the other hand, the Dominion of Man also lost out on 9 of the most powerful and beneficial waves of strengthening. The rewards for overcoming each subsequent tribulation challenge had grown stronger on an exponential basis.

Ves already became convinced that the Dominion of Man was bound to evolve into the first masterwork dreadnought after getting refined by so much tribulation energies.

Yet the most dramatic waves of strengthening had been left towards the end. The 9th round was by far the most destructive but also rewarding of tribulation encounters.

The most ambitious of mech pilots regarded this ultimate round as the final crucible that had the capacity to turn the most deserving of them into the ultimate martial gods.

Star Designers regarded the final round of a tribulation storm with even greater fondness. They shaped the heavens into a divine forge that could transform their most inspired mechs into legendary grand works!

The presence or absence of a 9th round therefore had massive implications for everyone.

Ves actually felt relieved that the Dominion of Man had been spared a ticket to destruction. To be honest, he did not have the confidence that the dreadnought would be able to grow fast enough to keep up with the tribulation storm's ruthless power scaling.

On the other hand, he felt a small but incredibly persistent amount of regret that the Dominion of Man had effectively waved her chance to become a grand work goodbye.

Whether she was even qualified to fight for this ascension opportunity was another question.

What mattered was that the Subjugation King deprived the living warship of the choice due to his meddling.

That was what made Ves and everyone else who became aware of this dynamic so ambivalent about this development.

The Subjugation King had effectively boosted the survival chances of the Dominion of Man at the cost of discarding her evolution into a full grand work!

Ves did not know nearly enough about the third rung of Senfovon's Craftsmanship Ladder to know whether there was any way for the dreadnought to make up for this lost opportunity.

Even if there was a way for the Dominion of Man to bridge the huge threshold that separated masterworks from grand works, it would probably take a huge amount of time and effort to substitute all of the progress from enduring the 9th round of the tribulation storm.

The captain of the ship adjusted to this reality faster than Ves.

"This is good news. We have embarked on an unprecedented journey. We have blazed a new trail in what we thought was possible in starship development. Instead of aiming for the grandest prize and invalidating all of our sacrifices in the process, we should appreciate the progress that we have already secured. The Dominion of Man has already surpassed her sister ships to become the most powerful dreadnought in an absolute sense. We should focus on securing our gains and taking stock of what has changed."

The captain's words successfully brought Ves back down to Earth. It became a lot easier for him to set aside his regrets for missing out on the 9th round.

"You are correct." He said with a sigh. "I have a habit of being too greedy for my good at times. Simply transforming the Dominion of Man into a full masterwork vessel is more than enough to make me feel fulfilled."

Warships generally did not turn into masterworks unless they were designed and built by Star Designers. The Red Fleet practically did not have any of them because their warships were all developed by mortals from beginning to end.

The successful transformation of the Dominion of Man had the potential to change this pattern and introduce a brand new era of ship development.

While all of this was contingent on the survival of the Carmine dreadnought in question, the Subjugation King had 'accidentally' made this outcome a lot more probable!

In the end, the Red Fleet should ultimately thank the alien God King for granting red humanity a massive boon.

Ves just wished it did not come at the cost of planting a stubborn soul mark into his Spirituality.

It did not escape his attention that if the soul mark was formed out of all the tribulation energies that comprised the 9th round, its properties should be far more powerful than anything Ves had dealt with in the past!

He had even less hope of wiping it out than before. Ves even believed that it would be futile for him to get rid of it unless he or an ally managed to advance to the rank of God King.

Even then, it was still questionable whether that was enough to wipe out a soul mark that had become so deeply rooted inside Ves!

"The first wave of the 8th round is starting!"

The storm clouds churned with more power than ever!

As lightning crackled with increasing intensity, a huge and distinctly organic shape appeared from the storm!

"It's… it's an astral beast!"

"No, it's not an astral beast. It's a highly developed calamity beast!"

Ves and many others grew worried. The enormous beasts that grew up in a high-energy environment were bound to be a lot more powerful and adept with manipulating the power of heaven than the homegrown beasts of the Red Ocean.

Even if the beasts lacked a lot of sophistication, they more than made up for this shortcoming with their enormous physical power and the talent originating from their bloodlines!