The Mech Touch

Chapter 7143: Giant Ambition

The Farseer was one of the most competent scryers of the Red Collective.

She was not able to observe the entire headquarters due to complications deeper within the planetary base, but she was still able to catch plenty of glimpses elsewhere.

They did so with the help of formation anchors that had been secretly planted underneath the surface of Jotunheim.

The Ascended Giants did not have perfect control over their icy planet. The collies successfully snuck formation anchors and listening devices all across the planet, though they did not dare to bring anything too big and powerful for fear of detection.

The compromised personnel still retained their skills and knowledge even if their views had changed.

In any case, Andrea Vos along with other scryers would continue to monitor the Ascended Giants as they prepared to participate or witness the ritualistic challenge.

Not everyone was easy to read as the Fiery Axe. The scryers failed to observe the Oscillating Fist and only caught fleeting glimpses of the Unshakeable King.

The latter was a key figure. He was the leader that most strongly fell for the illusion that phase lords were gods.

This led him to believing that he could only realize his ambition of being treated as a god if he defected to the Red Cabal!

Suffice to say, if Ves could accomplish just one goal during the leadership challenge, it was to find a way to not only defeat the Unshakeable King, but kill him before he could spread his poison any further among his fellow Ascended Giants.

Ves felt quite troubled by this task.

As the Tarrasque temporarily withdrew from Jotunheim’s orbit and flew to a different location in order to solve a necessary problem, the scryers and the other collies that in place managed to gather a crucial piece of intelligence.

"The Unshakeable King seeks to claim your head as well." Zariel-775 quietly reported to Ves. "We do not have absolute certainty that this is true, but we deem that it is over 85 percent likely that

Ves didn’t know how to feel about this. "That makes 2 out of 4. What is his motivation behind his desire to kill me? Does he have similar sentiments to the Fiery Axe?"

"Not quite." Zariel-775 responded. "His ambitions are stronger than his pride. The Unshakeable King is convinced that human phase lords deserve to be treated as gods, and he prefers to be the greatest god among his kind. According to the intelligence we have gathered, he is not that hopeful that he will be able to defeat the Oscillating Fist. This is why he is aiming at your head. He is motivated by the bounty on your head. He knows that if he is able to kill you and present himself before the Red Cabal, the phase whales will welcome him with open fins. The native aliens will regard the Unshakeable King as a hero and treat him much more favorably than the other Ascended Giants. He may even be appointed as their leader."

Ves raised his eyebrows. He quickly recognized the political brilliance of this scheme.

"The leader of the Ur-Titan Phalanx must be really lacking in confidence in his ability to compete fairly against the Oscillating Fist. Since the Unshakable King can’t become the most powerful god through martial might, then it is pretty clever for him to maneuver his way to the top through political scheming. It isn’t as honorable, but the native aliens don’t care so long as he is able to present my head to them. The phase whales have no choice but to honor their earlier commitment and help the Unshakeable King promote to a greater phase lord."

As long as the Unshakeable King became the first greater phase lord among the Ascended Giants, all of his gigantic brothers and sisters had no choice but to acknowledge him as their absolute leader!

Not even the Oscillating Fist would be able to rely on his exquisite boxing skills to overcome the enormous gap between lesser phase lords and greater phase lords!

"The good news is that none of the other leaders are motivated by the bounty... for the time being." The secret keeper said. "Most of the Ascended Giants still respect you and look up to you for enabling their own physical transformations. Do not underestimate this sentiment. For various reasons, all of the members of the Phase Lord Department have undergone a radical culture change. They may still harbor diverse opinions in private, but when it comes to official matters, they have a tendency to form a united front and obey their superiors without question. The human phase lords as well as their mortal servants have become much more hierarchical than in the past. We are uncertain why this is the case."

That sounded odd to Ves as well. "I have been thinking about this unusual phenomenon as well. Do you think that a third party has intervened in secret?"

"We are increasingly suspicious that this is the case." Secret Keeper Zariel-775 responded in a morose tone. "One of the reasons why we are monitoring the headquarters so closely is because we want to find proof of third-party intervention. We currently suspect that the Cosmopolitan Movement has secretly fanned the flames by providing them with covert assistance."

That sounded entirely plausible. The cosmopolitans were probably salivating to introduce the Ascended Giants to the Red Cabal!

In a sense, the Ascended Giants represent the ideal that the cosmopolitans were working towards.

The crazy ideologues wanted humans to assimilate into alien society. What better way to do that than to elevate a ’human’ version of the kind of ruling class that the native aliens were accustomed with? The Ascended Giants would be able to fit right into alien society!

With the Cosmopolitan Movement acting as lubricant, the probability that this would happen was much greater!

"I am not about to present my head to the Unshakeable King so that he could turn it into his trophy and present it to the Red Cabal." Ves said with growing determination. "That said, beating him or just avoiding death is a tall order. The Unshakeable King is regarded as the second-strongest Ascended Giant after the Oscillating Fist, correct?"

The secret keeper nodded. "That is what the Ascended Giants believe. Whether that is true or not remains to be seen. The Oscillating Fist has never lost a challenge and has deterred his strategoi from mounting one in the foreseeable future. We do not have a good overview of how much progress the Unshakeable King has made as he remains unchallenged within his own unit. We can only rely on less reliable and outdated sources to build up a model of his fighting style."

"So what should I expect if I duel against the head of the Ur-Titan Phalanx?"

"The Ur-Titans enjoy some of the best equipment issued to human phase lords, and their strategos only more so. The Ur-Titans excel in defense and always wear the heaviest possible raiments that they can get away with. Their defenses are formidable. This is their focus as they were partially meant to serve escort and bodyguard duties. Their speed is obviously not a strong focus, but the rules of the leadership challenge discourages avoidance, so do not think you can win by running circles around the Unshakeable King. You will have to confront him head-on if you want to earn the respect of the Ascended Giants, but this is where the danger lies."

In other words, Ves needed to strengthen his offensive power and make sure he wielded a highly penetrating weapon in order to overcome the Unshakeable King’s formidable defenses.

If he failed to meet this requirement, then there was no hope of winning the duel!

"I understand." He said. "I think it is best if I wield a spear. The extra reach will allow me to maintain my distance from this powerful but relatively slow monster. It is also easier to punch through armor with a spear than with most other weapons. I think it might be possible to attain better results with a war pick, but I don’t think I can wield this armament with any level of proficiency in a short amount of time."

He was most familiar with wielding the staff and by extension other polearms. He had no real skill at unarmed combat and other weapons were pretty much foreign to him. The only way to remedy this was to swallow an enlightenment fruit that just happened to impart the right skills.

"A simple strategy will not suffice against an opponent of this caliber, councilor. The Unshakeable King is regarded as the second-strongest Ascended Giant for good reasons. Even if he has not demonstrated his strength all that often, you should understand that his high rank and prestige grants him greater access to phasewater, custom gear and phasewater organs. He understands his strengths and weaknesses very well. He should have prepared countermeasures against an opponent that is reluctant to get close. We are trying our best to uncover his secrets, but he is considerably more disciplined in how much information he reveals than others."

that

The lack of intelligence made Ves wary of this opponent. He did not like uncertainty. The less he knew, the more ways the Unshakeable King could surprise him in the dueling field.

Given that death was a very real possibility in these duels, any mistake could prove fatal!

Ves continued to peruse the intelligence supplied by the secret keeper.

Not all pieces of information were reliable or relevant to him. Despite the best efforts of the Secret Department, they could not confirm everything, so Ves still needed to employ his own judgment and consider whether the Ascended Giants were playing a high-level deception campaign against their observers.

The Tarrasque finally reached one of the many asteroid bases that had been built across the Yernstall Central Star Node.

The abundance of stars and planets had a powerful regulating effect on asteroid belts and the likes. Yernstall hosted many more asteroid belts and asteroid fields than usual. These were good places to hide different ships and bases as it was unreasonable for anyone to deep scan every single section of every collection of asteroids.

Ves teleported over to one such secret base with his RC entourage in tow.

He proceeded to go through a fairly extensive physical examination before being led to a ritual chamber prepared by the Red Collective.

Ritualists and other strange figures were still at work with painting symbols on the walls and carving runes into the deck.

At the same time, engineers were installing a range of protective and restraining equipment, all tailor-made to suppress a phase lord.

Ves noticed with a bit of wariness that the collies had forged a sizable collection of chains and shackles out of mid-grade superdimensional matter. Each of them had already been carved with runes and embedded with a variety of hyper materials that provided different enhancements.

This was a crude but effective way to suppress a phase lord. He wondered what all of the other ritualistic characteristics were for. They seemed almost redundant.

"These rituals perform a variety of different functions." Andrea Vos explained to Ves. "They will attempt to calm your alter ego and reduce his hostility. The rituals will also help with keeping you conscious and aware by empowering and anchoring your companion spirit. We do not have to address you one one at a time. We can speak to both of you at the same time. Additionally, we can give you the opportunity to speak with your other personality directly. One way or another, the two of you need to reconcile and make peace with each other’s existence."

Ves did not like the sound of that at all. "Is there an alternative? I do not believe that this is the only option you guys have prepared. You should have contingencies in place."

"We do, but the results are not as promising." The Farseer replied. "We have conducted more studies on the phenomenon that you are bothered with. Some of our... bolder analysts have proposed a compelling theory."

"What does this theory entail?"

"Sev is not a foreign personality that has been planted into you by a powerful third party. He is actually an aspect of yourself that you suppress so deeply that you have never acknowledged its existence. There is a part of you that actually delights in the views espoused by your other self. You secretly love power and like nothing more than to be treated and worshiped like a god."

"...That is a crap theory. I will not even deign to entertain it with a response."

The formation master gave him an unreadable look. "It is true that we still lack too much empirical data to verify this theory and other theories. The upcoming process shall hopefully yield us enough data to prove or disprove our assumptions about your... condition."

Ves’ mood darkened. There was no way he believed in this outrageous theory! It was easy for people to look on the outside and come up with all sorts of easy explanations, but proving them is another matter.

Hopefully, Ves would be able to find out just how extensively Sev mirrored himself.

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