The Mech Touch

5852 Caramond

Two massive changes took place shortly after Ves formed a highly unstable Blood Pact.

One of them was the Red Fleet's inexplicable decision to glorify SuprMarshal Caramond Perle.

This was an incredibly random and unexpected move from one of the powers that made up the Red Two.

The fleeters generally did not do anything without a specific purpose in mind. This was why many leaders across human-

occupied space becsurprised when all of the channels that the Second Main Fleet could leverage had dropped all of their priorities in favor of espousing the heroism of one of humanity's greatest heroes!

It would have been more understandable if all of the media and publicity departments scheduled these events in advance.

However, a lot of people becconfronted by fleeter propaganda without any warning or explanation!

[...The human spirit shall endure! As SuprMarshal Caramond Perle had once led a beleaguered human race to demolish the aliens of the Milky Way, his ideals shall guide us through our struggle once more!...]

[...Let us remember the man who saved human civilization from the treachery of alien lovers and single-handedly started the Age of Conquest! As a simple human, the hero known as Caramond Perle is the principal figure who contributed more than anyone else to ensuring human dominance in the Milky Way…]

[...Red humanity has lost its way! We have beclost and splintered after the Great Severing. Instead of bickering among ourselves, we should unite and fight the aliens together! There is no better example to learn from than Caramond Perle, whose military and political acumen enabled him to forge many different groups of people into a single united empire…]

The Red Fleet's initiative went beyond flooding the galacticwith propaganda broadcasts.

Many fleeters received instructions to read up on Caramond Perle or listen to impromptu history lessons about this historical figure!

Those stationed in highly populated cities and space stations even went out on the streets with instructions to mention the historical hero's nin any way possible!

"Have you heard of our lord and savior Caramond Perle?"

"The Red Fleet will save our race just as SuprMarshal Caramond Perle has saved us in the past!"

"In light of the brave sons and daughters of red humanity who suffered defeat at the hands of the native aliens, our branch has decided to create the Caramond Perle Recovery Fund to subsidize starship acquisition and repair programs for qualified private mech forces."

As the Red Fleet pushed Caramond Perle's nto such an excessive degree, many people began to wonder whether the powerful organization had cunder the control of a madman.

It was not just the mechers who were wondering whether their archrivals had beccompromised, but also the fleeters themselves!

Those who were not aligned with the Second Main Fleet criticized this initiative the most! The actions of Fleet Admiral Stanley Argile and his lackeys were embarrassing their noble institution!

Nonetheless, the growing amount of internal and external pressure did not deter the Second Main Fleet from continuing their coordinated publicity campaign.

Back inside the Dominion of Man, Ves clearly sensed that all of these efforts were working.

"Caramond. Caramond. Caramond."

The crew serving aboard the dreadnought contributed most of all. Ves had not primed them in the preceding days for nothing. Many of the depictions of men in heroic situations had been altered to portray Caramond Perle.

Sure, the SuprMarshal had never fought an infantry battle against phase whales or thousands of other alien species depicted in those exaggerated paintings. The many historical inaccuracies did not matter, though. Intent was far more important than the truth.

With the support of the crew most of all, the ancestral spirit was showing clear signs of recovery.

The spiritual feedback that the entity was somehow gathering from billions if not trillions of people across the Red Ocean had becso much that he was rapidly rising through the first and second major cultivation ranks!

Yet despite all of this amazing progress, the unstable Blood Pact still remained incredibly lopsided!

The Dominion of Man was too immense. Her size and mass far exceeded that of a mech, and her armaments alone were cataclysmically more powerful.

All of this imposed such an enormous load on her new partner that the Blood Pact continued to deteriorate regardless of how quickly Caramond was rising to the occasion!

"The Alpha Plus Brains are beginning to overheat!"

"One of the weapon departments has reported serious glitches."

"One of our data storage units has just been corrupted!"

The dreadnought continued to suffer. Sigrund and the other experts tried their best to keep the brain units as healthy as possible.

Ves continued to keep a close eye on the 5 Alpha Plus Brains. He originally thought that their close neural integration was sufficient to merge them together, but each of the brain units used to belong to strong personalities.

"Blinky! Do your best to merge these remnant personalities with Caramond!"

"Mrow!"

The Star Cat reinforced the tethers that anchored Caramond to the Dominion of Man and tried to integrate the spirit more extensively to the 5 Alpha Brains.

It was already fairly troublesto do so with a single brain, but trying to keep Caramond integrated with 5 separate organic AI cores at once was a different story!

Blinky had to leverage Ves' ingenuity to the fullest in order to figure out and implement inventive solutions.

The measures were working. The Alpha Plus Brains no longer fought against each other, but instead started to work together as had always been the case.

Though Ves did not possess extensive expertise in brains, the readings started to look a little more encouraging.

"How is the Brain Trust, Sigrund?"

"It is getting better, but only marginally! The strain on the Alpha Plus Brains is dropping, but it is still at an unusually high level. We cannot sustain this state for too long!"

Ves nodded in understanding. "Are the Alpha Plus Brains starting to show any signs of synchronization?"

"Yes, but the signs are not strong yet. The 5 brain units are still performing many calculations by themselves. It will likely take tfor their synchronization rate to approach 100 percent, but there is no guarantee this will happen."

The Alpha Plus Brains began to feel more special to Ves, but he knew far too little about what he was doing to determine whether his ambitious gambit would succeed.

He needed more time!

Caramond was growing stronger at a faster rate. So much spiritual feedback was pouring into the newly created entity that he was rapidly starting to becsmarter and more capable of leveraging his rising power!

Much of the spiritual programming that Ves had integrated into the ancestral spirit's template was beginning to produce results.

The powerful entity was made with the Blood Pact in mind. Caramond went into action as soon as he was able to do so and tried his best to strengthen the Blood Pact on his end.

Ves found it impressive that Caramond rose to the occasion without actually breaking all of this time.

This was one of the reasons why it was so critical to form a Blood Pact when he was still new.

Caramond therefore remained in a fairly malleable state which meant that he adapted a lot better to the demands imposed by this powerful spiritual connection.

This was counterintuitive to people as human babies were usually too weak and defenseless to do the same.

However, Ves had created too many spiritual entities for him to apply mortal rules to intangible existences.

"You have done a good job so far, Caramond, but the next challenge is about to come!"

It took a bit of tfor the Dominion of Man to run at full power. The dreadnought not only had to increase the power generation of the Spark Reactor to the limit, but also had to activate a lot of azure shield generators and other ship systems that expended a huge amount of energy!

All of this was necessary to channel as much energies from the Spark Reactor throughout the hull as possible!

As the Spark Reactor started to becmore and more active, an amazing series of changes occurred.

Ves and Blinky experienced a second source of pressure all around as the Spark Reactor supplied far more than huge quantities of electric energies.

The Spark Reactor also produced a lot of fire-attributed E energy!

The living spark stuffed inside the center of this massive construct possessed True God-level characteristics, so its material energies and metaphysical energies were never truly isolated from each other.

Normally, the Spark Reactor did its best to separate these energies but this twas different.

It took a lot of convincing and modifications, but Ves managed to convince the engineers responsible for maintaining the Spark Reactor to let a bit of fire-attributed E energy piggyback off electric energy.

What this essentially meant was that the Spark Reactor's fire energy rapidly began to proliferate throughout the entire hull!

Fire energy spread to everyone, even in sections where it was never meant to go! The potent and extraordinary energy reached places such as cafeterias, command centers, cabins, armies, Dread Armor repair centers, shuttle bays, hydroponics, fire control systems, ammunition stores, life support systems and so much more!

Practically every single powered part and system of the Dominion of Man began to get exposed to the Spark Reactor's fire energy!

This was incredibly significant to Ves. He no longer regarded the Spark Reactor as a source of electric energy.

If the Dominion of Man was like a gigantic organic body, then the Spark Reactor functioned as the heart!

At this time, the Spark Reactor distributed its endless supply of fire-attributed E energy through the 'arteries' of the dreadnought as if it was pumping blood.

The entire interior of the dreadnought grew hotter. The temperature hadn't risen at all, but everyone felt as if they were being exposed to the rays of a star!

Once this effect had grown past a certain threshold, Ves quickly took action!

"The pact must change!"

Mere blood could no longer turn the Dominion of Man into a passable Carmine warship.

The starship was too damn big and strong relative to the circulation of human blood. To be more precise, the Brain Trust was far too pathetic while the blood sacrifice of the crew was even less effective.

Ves suspected that even if all of the crew serving on the Dominion of Man sacrificed their lives at once, they still wouldn't provide enough power to do the job.

Since that was the case, Ves made another bold and daring experiment.

He had made the risky decision to substitute blood with fire energy!

While blood still played an important role in keeping the two Carmine elements together, the introduction of potent fire energy could do a lot to compensate for the fact that the Dominion of Man was never designed to function as a conventional Carmine warship.

At least that was the theory.

Ves and Blinky worked quickly to alter the Blood Pact so that it beccompatible with fire-attributed E energy.

It helped a lot that Ves had accounted for this possibility beforehand. The feature had already been baked into Caramond and the Brain Trust, so all he had to do was flip a lot of intangible switches in order to activate this hidden functionality.

"It's… it's working!"

The Blood Pact was no more.

By tapping into the output of the Spark Reactor, Ves had managed to create the first Bloodfire Pact!

Just as its nsuggested, it was a pact formed by relying on the power of blood and fire-attributed E energy!

Suffice to say, a Bloodfire Pact was far more powerful than any mundane Blood Pact that Ves had established in the past!

Fland heat exploded from all 5 Alpha Plus Brains!

Seconds later, all of the other organic AI cores burst into flames!

This was despite the fact that they were all floating in their own nutrient vats!

"Fire! Activating extinguishers now!"

"Wait!" Ves called out. "They're not actually on fire! Look at the temperature readings. The brains are only metaphysically on fire!"

"What is that supposed to mean?!"

Ves wanted to scratch his head. "I have no idea, but I don't feel that this is a detrimental process. Don't do anything that would interrupt this process!"