The Mech Touch (Web Novel)

5902 Finer Power Expression

If the 7th wave of the 8th round was all about Caramond, then the 8th wave was about Furia.

The transformed Fire Elemental was a contradictory existence.

The entity's original incarnation started out as a defective clone of the mythical creator of the Fire Scroll.

The shenanigans pulled off by Ves caused her to assume a fresh new identity, but only partially.

It was more apt to consider Furia to be a split personality of the Fire Elemental that just so happened to gain dominance.

So long as Caramond continued to divert a portion of his faith energy to Furia, Ves remained confident that the now-

feminine True God continued to remain loyal to red humanity.

He just found it a bit regretful that the indoctrination process started way too soon after the Fire Elemental initially woke up from its original state.

If Caramond waited for a few minutes before he started to overwhelm the rapidly recovering consciousness of the creator of the Fire Scroll, Furia would have gained access to a much greater wealth of theory, comprehension and technique!

However, Ves had made a judgment call back then. His plan called for Caramond to take action as soon as possible in order to take advantage of the Fire Elemental when it was at its weakest.

The threat posed by this being rose exponentially with each second that passed. The more the immortal traces of the creator of the Fire Scroll came back from the dead, the more difficult it became to defeat the remnant of such an eminent deity!

Though Ves liked to take a gamble every now and then, he did not dare to underestimate the original creator's strength and resourcefulness.

The fact that Furia still couldn't get rid of the remnant of the original creator in her spirituality was proof that Ves had made the right decision.

He still found it uncomfortable to realize that he could have single-handedly doomed red humanity to subjugation or extinction if he made the wrong decision at the time!

Even now, Furia was still at risk of losing control at any time. She was a Sword of Damocles that Ves had personally hung over red humanity.

There was a considerable chance that the sword would swing down on red humanity's neck sooner or later.

Ves just hoped that they would be able to buy enough time to grow stronger and gain the ability to deal with the breakout of the original creator of the Fire Scroll.

In any case, Furia in her current incarnation fought like a descendant who was just starting to come to grips with her enormous inheritance.

Ves had given her a nudge in the right direction by sharing his basic cultivation knowledge and giving her a bit of inspiration.

The transformed Fire Elemental absorbed his lessons and ran with them. She applied her powerful fire domain in ways that went beyond the basic spells that Ves had learned from an enlightenment fruit!

Everyone serving on the Dominion of Man could see the changes in real-time.

Furia's powerful domain integrated into the dreadnought a bit more precisely than before. The True God channeled more fire energy in the places where it was needed. There was no need for her to waste her efforts into augmenting less important functions such as life support.

What impressed the fleeters the most was how Furia was able to induce drastic changes to the damage profile of the armaments of their ship!

None of the primary cannons of the dreadnought had been designed with spreading flames in mind. They were mostly developed to penetrate transphasic energy shields and hull plating with as much power as possible. That meant that they needed to unleash a lot of destructive energies at once.

At most, the Dominion of Man was able to launch incendiary missiles and bombs at her targets if she really wanted to start wildfires.

This was not enough against an opponent like the two-headed beast. The creature's defenses were so strong that it took the power of a True God in order to light the massive creature's body on fire.

If Furia truly started out as a True God with a blank slate, then there was no way in hell that she could overcome the tribulation manifestation's much more mature domain and body.

However, as Furia continued to 'recall' memories relating to the finer applications of her central element, she began to display more and more hints of power far in excess of what a relatively new True God should possess!

Although Ves did not possess a complete understanding of cultivation at the True God level, he possessed enough common sense to know that the flames generated by Furia shouldn't be able to roast the body of the two-headed beast with such ease!

From a spiritual perspective, Ves vaguely determined that Furia had taken his words to heart.

The transformed Fire Elemental did not focus all of her efforts on burning the fur, hide and flesh of the hostile god beast, but also tried to attack the creature's domain.

At first, Furia's flames clearly had trouble with making her flames burn the two-headed beast's basis of power.

The creature's body as well as domain were nowhere near as weak and fragile as that of the mirror beast. The current god beast clearly managed to evolve into a god beast by preying on a lot of different entities. There was no way that such a scrappy and aggressive monster was vulnerable to a bit of flame.

Yet as Furia continued to empower the main guns of the Dominion of Man with her power and techniques, she eventually made a breakthrough that caused her fire energies to eat away at her enemy!

The transition happened quietly.

In one moment, the flames generated by the dreadnought's attacks only deposited flames that burned for a half a minute before gradually subsiding.

In another moment, the attacks not only generated much more flames upon impact, but they actively spread over the course of several minutes!

It was only when the unceasing attacks of the Dominion of Man had managed to engulf the entire creature in flames that Ves realized that Furia had improved far beyond her initial point.

This was not the kind of power that a newborn or ignorant True God should be capable of wielding!

Ves already figured out that Furia had somehow managed to tap into the hidden knowledge of her other 'progenitor'.

The question that bugged him was what she managed to master.

Somehow, he did not think that Furia had managed to get her hands on the equivalent of the intermediate and advanced editions of the spells manual.

In order to investigate this matter further, Ves called up a projection that displayed an exterior view of one of the Dominion of Man's primary positron cannon turrets.

Many of the turrets featured three massive cannon barrels, and this one was no exception. The crew had opted to fire them sequentially in order to maintain a high and consistent rate of fire.

As the powerful transphasic hyper positron cannons continued to fire concentrated beams of positrons at the god beast in a distance, Ves and Blinky were able to get a decent impression on how Furia's fire energy channeled into the weapon hardpoint and piggybacked off every energy beam.

The concentration of fire energy was so high that the entire turret became engulfed by illusionary flames!

While Ves was already familiar with this visual phenomenon, what was new was that these flames began to display a lot of different runes!

Yes, runes!

Ves immediately zoomed in on the feed in order to make sure he did not make any mistakes.

The more he looked at it, the more the illusionary flames occasionally formed into strings of runes before disappearing.

Furthermore, runes also showed up on the surface of the positron cannon turret. These runes turned out to be a lot more persistent, which showed that Furia deliberately generated them and kept them in place!

Ves switched the active feed so that he could take a look at the other active gun turrets. Each of them showed the same phenomena. They only varied depending on the nature of the weapon systems that Furia augmented.

He could even see the runes being changed. Strings of runes switched into other ones. This tweaked the way that Furia's fire energy interacted with the gun turrets and slightly altered their damage profiles.

Ves couldn't hold in his curiosity any longer.

"Furia. Can I ask you a question? Where… where did you learn how to apply these runes? I distinctly remember that they are not part of my knowledge package."

The temperature rose slightly as Furia directed a tiny bit more attention in his direction.

"<nullb>YOU ALREADY KNOW THE ANSWER TO YOUR QUESTION."

Ves pressed his lips. "I just wanted to obtain confirmation, but oh well. Do you understand the fundamental theories behind these runes, or are you just applying them based on instinct or muscle memory?"

"<nullb>I UNDERSTAND THEM." Furia readily responded to her progenitor. "<nullb>I WOULD NOT BE ABLE TO APPLY THEM TO THE WEAPONS OF THIS SHIP IF I DO NOT UNDERSTAND THE PURPOSE AND MEANING OF EACH RUNE. I HAVE ONLY RECENTLY GAINED AWARENESS OF A SMALL COLLECTION OF FIRE RUNES FOR THE TIME BEING. I HAVE REASONS TO BELIEVE THAT THERE ARE MANY MORE FIRE RUNES THAT ARE CURRENTLY OUT OF MY REACH."

This was interesting. Furia not only confirmed Ves' suspicions, but also hinted at more. She was still far from reaching her full potential as a True God.

Given that the situation was going well enough, Ves decided to satisfy his curiosity by requesting clarification.

"What are runes, according to your understanding?"

"<nullb>THAT… IS A HEAVY TOPIC TO EXPLAIN. RUNES ARE… RELATED THE FUNDAMENTAL BUILDING BLOCKS OF REALITY. IF I HAVE TO DESCRIBE IT IN THE FRAMEWORK OF HUMAN SCIENCE, RUNES CAN BE TREATED AS THE PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE OF OUR FABRIC OF REALITY. THEY ARE FAR MORE THAN THAT, BUT THIS IS HOW THEY ARE OFTEN USED."

"I see. How are they used?"

"<nullb>THERE ARE MANY POSSIBILITIES, MOST OF WHICH I DO NOT KNOW MYSELF. RUNES CAN BE USED TO STRENGTHEN OBJECTS, WHICH I AM CURRENTLY DOING ON A TEMPORARY BASIS. RUNES CAN ALSO BE USED TO STRENGTHEN AND SHAPE YOUR OWN CULTIVATION OR THE CULTIVATION OF OTHERS."

"Elaborate on the latter please."

"<nullb>FROM WHAT I HAVE LEARNED, RUNES ARE VERY ESSENTIAL FOR TRUE GODS. THOSE THAT MASTER THEM TO A MORE COMPREHENSIVE DEGREE ARE ALWAYS ABLE TO DEFEAT THOSE THAT DO NOT UNDERSTAND THEM AS WELL. I HAVE ALSO DISCOVERED THAT WHEN ANYONE BECOMES A TRUE GOD, THEY EMBED A PERMANENT PIECE OF THEMSELVES INTO REALITY BY FORMING A PERSONAL RUNE. THIS RUNE REPRESENTS THEIR UNIQUE DOMAIN AND IS ADDED TO THE LEXICON OF RUNES THAT ALREADY EXIST."

What?!

Furia presented a lot of new information to Ves, much of which had massive implications for his future!

His mother had never told him about personal runes and other stuff. This was understandable as this was only relevant to more advanced cultivators, but Ves would have liked to know about this anyway!

Learning that every True God developed their own personal rune, and that other people may be able to employ it in their own works or cultivation was mind-boggling!

How many True Gods came into existence? How many of them contributed their personal runes to reality?

The number had to be huge! Far more runes came into existence than Ves could ever learn and master!

"Are you using your own personal rune at the moment?"

<nullb>"NO. I HAVE ONE, BUT IT IS NOT TRULY 'MINE'. I DO NOT FULLY COMPREHEND IT, AND I DARE NOT USE IT IN MY CURRENT WORKINGS. I WILL HAVE TO BE CAUTIOUS IN EXPLORING IT, AS I DO NOT WANT TO CAUSE ANY UNDUE HARM TO HUMANS."

That sounded rather ominous.

From what Ves managed to figure out, Furia would never be able to become as strong as a proper True God so long as she maintained her distance from her personal rune.

This was disappointing news, and would definitely set her back in the long run.

However, she was doing quite well by employing a set of basic fire runes for the time being. The lightning tribulation may have gotten rather ridiculous by forcing the Dominion of Man to fight against a god beast, but at least the ascended creature had made little progress in mastering runes itself!

This was why the Furia ultimately gained the upper hand. The difference in comprehension and mastery of runes became the decisive factor in this bout!