The Mech Touch (Web Novel)

5886 Lighting the Spark

Ves shouldn't have been surprised that the living spark turned out to be a clone of the maker of the Fire Scroll.

He was a bit amazed at how the fleeters did not destroy this insanely dangerous threat, but instead kept it dormant while using it as a power source for their experimental dreadnoughts.

This sounded as stupid as Ves capturing an old enemy like the Saint Jeremiah Gauge, putting him in a coma before stuffing him in the power reactor of the First Sword!

Sure, Ves might be able to make the expert swordsman mech extremely powerful as a result, but a stunt like this was just begging to trigger a calamity as soon as a dreadnought suffered an unfortunate accident!

The fleeters must have been really desperate to develop a direct counter to god mechs. There was no other justification for them to override their own rules and principles and toy with the legacy of one of the most dangerous cultivators that humanity had indirectly fought against.

Still, it was exactly because the fleeters had been crazy enough to employ a dormant Fire Elemental as a power source that Ves saw a viable pathway towards victory!

The building blocks of his plan became more concrete as he learned a number of vital secrets from the dread captain.

Ves was pretty sure that not even the captain of a dreadnought was never supposed to know this much. He figured that Volkert Argile remained in contact with high command and learned a lot of secrets from his father.

In any case, Ves gained enough relevant information to make his plan actionable. His confidence level had risen now that he knew he was working with! The living spark was no longer a complete unknown to him anymore.

"Let me execute my new plan." He urged the captain. "I know it sounds dangerous, but times have changed. We have entered a new galaxy and a new age. The threats of the past have lost much of their relevance. Besides, if my plan works out according to my expectations, the Fire Elemental won't go rogue as long as the right conditions are met."

Dread Captain Argile clearly struggled to make his decision. The fire energy coursing through his body strongly urged him to agree, but he was too much of a professional to let that dictate his verdict.

The command center shook. A power generator had just blown up despite all of the hasty measures employed by the engineers to limit the damage.

That prompted the fleeter to make a decision that had the potential to change the history of the Dominion of Man and human civilization in the Red Ocean!

"Despite all of the factors that we have failed to account for, you have proven yourself to be credible, loyal and knowledgeable enough to earn our trust once more. Since there is still a chance for the Dominion of Man to rise to greatness, we are willing to give you access to the interior of the Spark Reactor to do what is necessary. Do not make me regret my decision."

Ves grinned in response. "Thank you! Let's get into action!"

The Rubicon soon teleported him to the entrance of the chamber that held the massive Spark Reactor. The teleportation system wasn't able to bring him any close as the entire space was specifically shielded against hostile intrusions.

The guards and engineers assigned to the Spark Reactor clearly received orders to let him through. The gate opened right away, allowing Ves to speedily get closer.

The fire energy radiating from the Spark Reactor was monstrous!

Even though the Spark Reactor made sure to channel much of the output in a controlled fashion, it still wasn't easy for Ves to get so close to the Fire Elemental.

There was still hundreds of meters separating him from this dormant and mindless entity!

Fortunately, the engineers who had been privy to some of the more obscure secrets of the Spark Reactor had prepared a stopgap solution to this problem.

"Please change to this specialized isolation suit, professor. It will prevent your body from spontaneously combusting as you enter the shell of the Spark Reactor."

Ves changed out of his damaged Unending Regalia and into the thick isolation suit right away. He looked almost identical to all of the other engineers, but he didn't care because he felt a lot more relief!

The suit actually worked!

"How long will it last once I get close to the Fire Elemental?" Ves straightforwardly asked.

"5 minutes or less. This is only a theoretical calculation as no man has ever attempted to approach the subject while wearing an isolation suit. We have only ever manipulated the subject by remote."

"Five minutes should be enough. I don't want to give that alien bastard enough time to shine his destructive light deeper into the hull of this ship." Ves said. "Is there anything else that I should know before I get inside?"

"You are responsible for your own safety, Professor Larkinson. None of us are able to accompany you. If you exceed your safety limitations and immolate yourself, then do not expect us to rescue you. If there are enough indications that the Fire Elemental has gone rogue, then we will eject the Spark Reactor from this vessel and saturate it with as many antimatter bombs and other highly destructive weapons."

"Understood."

Ves did not really feel very nervous despite learning that the crew of the Dominion of Man was ready to abandon the Spark Reactor wholesale if anything seriously went wrong.

If he wanted to survive, he just had to pull off his plan without fumbling along the way.

Entering the Spark Reactor was a big deal. The dark metal alloys used to house the subject were insanely tough and resistant to heat. It took time to slowly open the gates that led to the central compartment.

Once Ves managed to pass through the final entrance, he entered a hollow chamber that contained many details that he would love to study in great depth if he had the luxury of time.

Unfortunately, the rampaging clone of the Subjugation King forced him to set aside these impulses and behold the source of all of the fire energy!

The isolation suit had to work overtime to prevent much of the heat and fire energy from cooking Ves alive!

Knowing that he was working on a time limit, Ves pushed himself forward and came into close proximity to a transparent 'egg' that acted like a container to the supposed Fire Elemental.

The darkened visor of his isolation suit gave Ves a clear enough view of the entity in question.

It was difficult to believe that a being so powerful lacked any sort of consciousness. It was a contradictory existence.

At this time, Ves wanted to bring the Fire Elemental to life.

"Blinky. I know it is dangerous, but I need you to approach this fellow and inject him with my life energy. It will be dangerous, but you should be able to tolerate exposure long enough to complete your mission."

"Mrow…"

"Caramond, I need you to control the fire energy and commune with the Fire Elemental as it gains an actual consciousness. This entire gambit hinges on your ability to keep this entity under control and preferably under your heel.

"<nullb>According to the dread captain, the CFA has limited experience with Fire Elementals that somehow gained a wisp of consciousness. What happened was that a semblance of the tyrannical personality of the original creator of the Fire Scroll always emerged. The Fire Elementals then proceeded to do whatever it took to revive the original creator in full."

This doomsday scenario frightened the Big Two out of their wits!

Ves was lucky that attitudes towards the Five Scrolls Compact and everything related to it had mellowed out in the Red Ocean.

He had no doubt that there were fleeters who secretly hoped to revive the progenitor of the Fire Scrolls in the hope that he would be human enough to protect red humanity against their alien opponents.

That did not sit well with Ves. The return of an ancient power would negate all of the progress that modern humanity had attained over so many millenia.

Besides, Ves never believed that red humanity needed to surrender to any god in order to save itself.

Humans needed to become strong enough to save them from their own problems!

This was the entire point of his design philosophy. Ves wanted to make ordinary humans strong enough to harness the power of gods for themselves!

Hopefully, his latest gambit would facilitate his noble goal.

"Go." Ves said before pressing a button on a nearby control panel.

"Mrow!"

The combined form of Blinky and Caramond dashed out of Ves' head and passed through the gap that appeared on the transparent shell.

The heat had become a lot more overbearing at this distance! They had come so close to center of the Fire Elemental's domain that they would have gotten burned if not for Caramond's active Bloodfire Pact!

Even so, Blinky was literally roasting due to the intense exposure to so much concentrated fire energy!

The companion spirit had attempted to shield himself by conjuring up multiple layers of protective barriers, but they burned up so quickly that they only bought him a fraction of a second in total!

Fortunately, he moved quickly enough to get close, disgorge a concentrated spray of life energy, and dart back to Ves right afterwards!

"Mrowwww!"

While Blinky sheltered inside Ves' head, Caramond had separated from the companion spirit and floated before the Fire Elemental as the mysterious entity started to show signs of life.

In truth, much of the life energy released by Blinky had burned up before it reached the powerful spark.

Only a minute amount of Ves' life energy managed to reach the Fire Elemental in the end, and it was questionable whether it had any opportunity to take effect.

What Ves did not expect was for the Fire Elemental to open his burning eyes right away.

Ves recoiled and quickly beat a retreat as he felt as if his entire mind and Spirituality had been seared by powerful lasers!

There was no reason for him to stick around anymore. Ves quickly passed through the exit and tried to make his way out of the Spark Reactor as soon as possible.

He maintained just enough awareness to pay attention to what was happening inside the central chamber.

The Spark Reactor suddenly shook! The temperature behind the fleeing Ves had spiked, so much so that he felt as if his back had just gotten a nasty sunburn!

It turned out that the Fire Elemental had not only woken up, but also shattered the transparent cage before releasing a destructive spray of fire inside the central chamber!

Meanwhile, the revived entity rapidly started to gain an actual consciousness, one that did not feel anything like a fresh and newborn entity, but one that possessed such an enormous precipitation of time that he must have lived for eons!

"Damn, so it is true!"

Ves kept running away as fast as possible as the Fire Elemental began to alter the expression of his domain. More and more of the Spark Reactor heated up to the point where actual flames started to appear where they shouldn't!

Aside from that, a mixture of overwhelming emotions overtook the entity that had been hijacked by the splinter consciousness of an ancient cultivator of supreme power!

The entity must definitely feel pissed that none of his plans for the Fire Scrolls worked out and that the CFA actually had the temerity to exploit one of his diminished clones as a power source of all things!

"C'mon! Make this work!"

The power generated by the Fire Elemental escalated so rapidly that it seemed that the revived god was on the verge of blasting the center of the Dominion of Man with a fireblast of untold magnitude!

Yet despite all of this danger, the manifestation of Caramond strangely remained unharmed… for the most part.

"<nullb>Calm yourself. We did not bring you to life only for you to burn this beautiful vessel. There is an alien upstairs that has been trying to kill and enslave us all. We must join hands to repel this threat and preserve the future of the human race. Will you join me in this sacred mission?"

The evolved Fire Elemental grew even angrier! It was clear that the entity had no intention of joining hands with Caramond!

Fortunately, Ves already took this into account. There was one more card that Caramond could play.

"<nullb>If you do not agree to serve humanity on a voluntary basis, then I have no choice but to force you to serve us by force!"

The Fire Elemental had actually become intelligent enough to express incredulity at Caramond.

The gap in power between the two was so massive that there was no way Caramond could force the Fire Elemental into obedience!

At least that was the case on the surface.

Caramond slowly smirked as he stimulated the powerful spiritual bond that formed the basis of his Bloodfire Pact.

"<nullb>We are connected, you and I. Do you understand what this means? It means that I can transfer the faith that red humanity has invested in me to you! You may have gained the power of a god, but if there is one weakness your kind possesses, it is that you are susceptible to the beliefs of the masses!"

The Fire Elemental widened his powerful eyes. He wanted to blast Caramond right away, but the ancestral spirit had already begun to channel a huge chunk of the faith energy derived from the worship of trillions upon trillions of humans across the new frontier!

The huge influx of faith in human supremacy and the ideals of Supreme Marshal Caramond Perle slammed into the Fire Elemental like a rocket!

If the revived entity was at a more mature and developed state, then he would have been able to resist the influx of so much 'unwanted' faith.

Unfortunately, the Fire Elemental had just woken up a short time ago. The consciousness of the original creator of the Fire Scroll hardly had any time to build up a complete personality, so the entity was hardly able to protect himself from all of the earnest faith and wishes of a human civilization that was much different from the one that existed during his own era!

A silent scream erupted from the Spark Reactor!

It was so shocking and disruptive that even the clone of the Subjugation King had paused in his attempt to tear through the dreadnought!

"<nullb>#$&$?"

"<nullb>WHAT… HAVE YOU DONE?"