The Mech Touch
/ The Mech Touch Chapter 7091– The Children of Fire
Chapter 7091: The Children of Fire
The representative of the Cybernetic Empire kicked off this meeting with a big gesture by gifting Ves an object that he had sought out for a long time.
Sure, he never really specified whether it should come in this specific form, but he had been eager to look for a powerful source of fire energy.
The artificial fire heart crafted by the Cybers most definitely satisfied this condition.
Ves had only glimpsed at it for a minute, but he could already tell that it checked all of his boxes.
It was small, self-contained, stable, easily integrated and easy to hide.
As Ves touched the uncoated metallic contraption from multiple sides, he could feel a bit better how much raw power it held back through ingenious and expensive mechanisms.
There was a small but powerful source of fire energy buried in the center of the artificial heart. That was the true source of heat and fire-attributed E energy. The exotic and hyper alloy components around it solely served to control and regulate its output.
"Many people outside Bridgehead One have developed the mistaken impression that the Cybernetic Empire has been lagging behind in the development of hyper technology, E-technology and cultivation science." Hugo Fournier softly spoke. "That is not entirely correct, but it is not entirely false either. During the Time of Isolation, we had access to at least one powerful source of E energy radiation."
"Furia." Ves mentioned the name of the mysterious Fire Elemental that served as the power source of the Spark Reactor that granted the Dominion of Man so much power.
In order to convert the dreadnought into a living warship, Ves hatched an insane plan to convert the Fire Elemental into a human deity. Her power served as an essential source of fire energy that was needed to substitute the role of human blood to establish the first variation of a Blood Pact.
Even after the Dominion of Man received a lot of upgrades from the Polymath and the Cybers, the venerable living dreadnought still relied on the same power source to maintain her activity levels.
Given that there was no need for the godship to exert her potent firepower and teleportation capabilities inside a closed star system, Furia had a lot of spare energy left.
Rather than allow it all to go to waste, Ves could easily imagine that the Cybers found ways to capture her spare fire energy and find ways to utilize it for their own purposes.
Ves briefly worried about Furia's condition. Getting cut off from the wider universe meant that her growth must have slowed down to an extent. She must have sustained herself entirely from the faith of the Cybers trapped in Bridgehead One over the years.
That was good. Due to certain complications, Furia's transformation had never been entirely complete.
Just like Ves, Furia's form hid a completely hostile alter ego. Her new human-friendly personality was a late addition.
If she failed to maintain the upper hand by absorbing the faith of enough red humans, her original Fire Elemental self would regain control and instantly try to break out of the Spark Reactor!
The Dominion of Man would break apart and explode if that happened!
"How is Furia doing? Have you guys encountered any problems with managing her condition?"
Hugo responded with an apologetic smile. "I am sorry, but I am a mech designer. I am not involved in the maintenance of our sole living dreadnought. I have spoken with those that have worked on the Dominion of Man, and they have noted that Furia has done her best to stay dormant and hibernate during the Time of Isolation. The more she sleeps, the less dangerous she becomes. There have only been a handful of incidents over the years where the crew of the living dreadnought has encountered difficulties in preserving the Spark Reactor. While she remains under this condition, her energy output is also reduced to a fraction of her potential. We never had enough fire energy to spare."
"But enough to conduct research, cultivate fire hyper materials and develop specialized applications." Ves threw out a guess. "I see. This must be one of the reasons why the Energy Weapon Tower is the most powerful and prominent among the Thirteen Towers. This is because Bridgehead One's limited access to fire energy is most easily adapted to power sources and energy weapons. The Gamma Scorchers held back a lot more than everyone thought. They never showcased any notable hyper technology during their public debut on the battlefield!"
Hyper technology could make a substantial difference in warfare!
Sure the use of hyper materials and hyper tech alone did not directly produce insane performance boosts, but they could enhance other tech and strengthen them by one of two mech generations.
What was even more important was that hyper technology and E-technology created a whole range of new possibilities. Ves' living mechs was only one application among many. There were many other wondrous uses for fire energy.
Ves would not be surprised if the Cybernetic Empire secretly founded a cabal of qi cultivators that excelled at wielding the fire element!
"Wait." He suddenly said. "Why reveal this secret to me? Don't you Cybers want to maintain this secret longer?"
"We never expected to be able to preserve this secret for long." Hugo admitted. "We do not mind letting this information spread to the public. We initially held it back because we do not want to overwhelm and frighten the masses outside of Bridgehead One. Now that they are starting to accept our presence in human space, we gradually intend to expose different aspects of our society. By releasing information through word of mouth and other low-key channels, red humanity will gradually gain a better understanding of our strength without generating too much controversy or concern."
This was a sound strategy. The Cybernetic Empire had evolved in a weird direction and built up a lot of mechs and warships. People may easily fall victim to scaremongering if the Cybers presented far too strong of an image.
Of course, plenty of people at the top knew better than to believe in the sanitized image that the Cybernetic Empire presented on the surface.
Ves may have failed to anticipate that the Cybers had been working with fire-attributed E energy for over half a century, but he vaguely guessed that they had held back a lot of goodies.
Even now, he still did not think that the Cybers had exposed more than the tip of the iceberg.
For example, Hugo did not mention anything about the First Flame, who had long been known as the oldest and the most powerful god pilot in the Red Ocean until recently.
Although most people believed the Fist of Defiance could beat the First Flame into pulp after the former's god mech received a full superdimensional makeover, Ves did not dare to discount the latter so easily.
The First Flame may not be a powerful Fire Elemental that constantly produced a lot of fire energy merely by existing, but the god pilot's willpower was completely attuned to the fire element.
He should definitely be capable of producing a constant output of fire energy, especially when he had purportedly gone into hibernation in the center of one of Bridgehead One's 12 stars!
The more Ves thought about it, the more it seemed obvious that the Cybernetic Empire possessed a strong connection to the fire element.
Its name, its sophisticated metal war machines and the Polymath's background as a mech designer gave out the mistaken impression that they were the manifestations of an empire of steel.
Yet the real truth was that its abundant stars and its potent fire energy sources granted the Cybers a powerful advantage when it came to exploiting heat, energy and fire!
"We are the Children of Fire." Hugo proudly stated, making it clear that he had not just made it up. "We are the masters of the stars and the keepers of the final flame. Our energy weapons can burn entire planets and evaporate the phasewater from the body of an entire ancient phase whale. This artificial fire heart that we have gifted to you is one of the countless applications that we have devised in our attempts to harness the power of the fire element."
Ves looked down at the dormant heart. It did not look as if it had much association with the much grander and more destruction vision espoused by Hugo. The contraption looked small and delicate in its dormant state.
"How common are these artificial fire hearts?" He asked. "I can clearly tell that this is an artisanal product. It is not a masterwork and it is not alive, but I can feel a small ember of life buried deep within."
The Cyber Journeyman looked mildly impressed. "That is perceptive of you, Ves. The heart is actually modeled after the Spark Reactor, which you may have already surmised. Instead of trying to contain and harness the energies produced by a complete being of fire such as Furia, this heart instead attempts to do so with a small seed that she has freely given to us. These fire seeds are special and Furia is unwilling to produce too many of them given her condition at the time. It is therefore not necessary to produce a device as large and all-encompassing as the entire Spark Reactor. It still took decades for us to be able to miniaturize the heart to this extent."
How impressive. This head-sized device should have been at least half as large as the power reactor of a mech, but instead took on this much diminished form due to Cyber science and ingenuity.
Ves would have loved to disassemble it and study its internal structure in detail, but he feared that the spiritual fragment of Furia might go out of control once it was freed from its restraints.
After studying it for another minute, Ves carefully closed the floating container and set it aside.
"Meow."
Lucky curiously flew closer and began to sniff the container from various angles. The gem cat had taken an interest in the artificial fire heart. It remained a mystery what exactly attracted his attention.
Ves had already moved on. He could drool over the artificial fire heart later. Right now, he needed to put on his political thinking hat.
"Thank you for this gift. I accept it in the spirit with which it was offered."
"It is the least that we owe you for introducing the concept of living mechs to the mech community and for doing what we previously thought impossible by bestowing life to the Dominion of Man. If not for you, we would never have been able to harness the power of the fire energy to our current extent."
Ves smiled, but inwardly he thought how much the Cybers intended to rip him off by withholding the compensation that he deserved.
There was no way the Cybernetic Empire would pay him back in full! The sum was too astronomical to behold!
The Cybers would probably treat this case like they did when they appropriated everything else in Bridgehead One.
They brazenly stole the property of others and relied on their immense power and mystique to deter the victims from demanding full repayment!
The best that creditors like Ves could hope for was to obtain a few cents on the MTA credit. It all depended on the generosity of the Cybernetic Empress and her subject.
Now that the gift-giving ceremony had passed, the representative of the Cybernetic Empire soon turned to actual business.
"Thank you for coming here so that we can speak in person, Ves. We invited you in order to discuss further trades and potential cooperation opportunities. We are already on our way of developing an understanding with your Larkinson Clan, especially when it comes to the harvesting and distribution of superdimensional matter, but you and your services merit special attention."
"What do you want?" Ves straightforwardly asked.
Hugo reciprocated this directness. "We want your Bloodfire mechs."
If you find any errors ( Ads popup, ads redirect, broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report > so we can fix it as soon as possible.Chapter end
|
Report
|
|
Donate
Oh o, this user has not set a donation button.
|
