The Mech Touch

5644 Forbidden Glimpses

As the masterwork transformation slowly came to an end, a familiar voice sounded from behind.

"Each time we make a plan, you always find a way to break it. You have outdone yourself, Ves. The Association recently decided to reduce the MTA merits awarded to you for each successfully completed masterwork mech. After all, we have already obtained enough observations of their common properties, so your subsequent masterworks are unlikely to hold much empirical value. This… this is different."

Ves and Gloriana turned around to face Jovy, who had quietly teleported inside the private mech workshop from the Tarrasque up in orbit.

Neither of the two Larkinson mech designers showed any surprise at his arrival. He was bound to come after the successful formation of any masterwork mech, let alone a machine that looked as unusual as the upgraded Zeal!

While the living mech basked in his powerful upgrade and his newest mission, the three mech designers struggled to figure out what had happened.

As Ves, Gloriana and Jovy took a deeper look at the Zeal, they clearly expressed more interest towards the prophetic visions on the surface than the technical merits of the mechs!

It couldn't be helped! Even though the Transcendent Punisher Mark III was absolutely a potent transphasic hyper mech, the many vague and bizarre illustrations that Ves had spontaneously painted by obeying Ylvaine's instructions might hold even greater meaning!

Gloriana frowned a bit as she tried to make sense of the prophetic visions that clearly overshadowed her latest masterwork mech.

She understood why Ves and Jovy developed a fascination towards the illustrations. Through the mysterious ritual conducted by Ves and his design spirit, the prophetic visions seemed to gain extraordinary weight. The E energies gradually pouring into them seemed to validate the events depicted by the images and protected them to an extent.

It conveyed the impression that the prophecies foretold by all of the spontaneous artworks somehow managed to resonate with a far greater power than the likes of Ylvaine!

Perhaps a normal mechers might dismiss all of these manifestations as tricks or superstitious stagecraft, but Jovy was different.

He knew Ves well and was open-minded enough to consider the theory that much if not all of these strange visions may come to pass one day!

The biggest reason why Jovy was willing to take this possibility into account was because he happened to possess a certain degree of comprehension towards future probabilities.

His companion spirit dove out of head and stared at the freshly upgraded masterwork mech with a mixture of awe and dread.

The Eye of Providence sensed that the mech had touched upon so many different destinies that the translucent floating eyeball shuddered in fear the more it looked at the painted illustrations!

"Zssss!"

The ability to see more than ordinary people was both a blessing and a curse. Right now, Jovy's companion spirit apparently started to see stuff that it could not bear at its current level of strength.

The large eyeball flew back as if it had suffered a nasty physical blow! The Eye of Providence quickly turned around and dove back into the sanctity of Jovy's mind!

"Ves…" The RA Senior Mech Designer spoke up with wide eyes. "This heavy artillery mech… contains images that depict beings of immense power. I do not know everything about divination, but even I can deduce that such an act cannot be done without suffering the consequences. Frankly speaking, I do not know why you and your design spirit managed to get away with this all without suffering an enormous backlash along the way."

What 'dynamic duo' had done had been extraordinarily dangerous in hindsight!

The Great Prophet freely cast his sight in the future without any direction or constraints!

The Bright Martyr dared to record all of these dangerous visions in a permanent form across his metal canvas!

In short, both of them had violate so many taboos that they should have already gotten struck down by at least several of the powerful beings that they had unknowingly offended!

Yet… nothing happened.

Ves received constant updates from the control center of Diandi Base.

No alien invaders had magically teleported on site in order to flatten the entire place.

No lightning storm had spontaneously formed in the skies in order to annihilate everything with the power of ultimate destruction.

No majestic True God afflicted Ves and Ylvaine with an unstoppable curse that caused them to suffer an agonizing death.

Nothing.

It was as if Ves and Ylvaine had just teamed up to produce a lot of childish scribbles that shouldn't be tied to anything of significance.

Yet the sense of ritual and the subtle resonance evoked by the end results were no illusions.

They were very real, so everyone in the workshop had to account for the possibility that the prophetic visions had a basis in reality!

Of course, Ves still remained skeptical. Even if he was one of the chief culprits behind these images, he did not believe that they could all become true.

This was too absurd of a possibility!

"Before we take a closer look at what Ylvaine and I have actually made, I would like to caution you all to not read too much into them." He warned. "According to my own theories, Ylvaine does not foresee a single future timeline that will definitely come to pass. Instead, I think he is able to glimpse a range of many different possibilities. At most, he may be able to divine a couple of the more probable future outcomes based on present developments. That does not not rule out that lower probability events may occur that can completely derail a future outcome."

Jovy concurred with Ves. "I do not have access to any proof that can back up or dismiss your theories, but Prophecies may also be subject to the observer's paradox."

Gloriana furrowed her brows. "You may be correct on that, but that does not invalidate the reference value of prophecies. For example, one of them can foretell a possible ambush of a god pilot that will lead to his or her death. Even if it is implausible for a god pilot to be fooled into a trap, we can still make a lot of useful observations from the assets brought out by the aliens. Maybe they have developed a devastating new weapon to serve as their trump card, or maybe they have secretly cooperated with the cosmopolitans to augment ancient phase whales with human technology."

She made a good point. The actual outcomes may or may not be reliable, but every painted image could convey a lot of useful clues that did not seem valuable at first!

Of course, the premise to this was that the prophetic visions were reasonably accurate. If there was a large possibility that Ves had misinterpreted the guidance from Ylvaine, then that would make the illustrations a lot less reliable!

With these thoughts in mind, the three mech designers hovered into the air and faced the rear of the heavy artillery mech.

As a six-legged machine that was designed to bear weapons as large as the Devora Cannon, the surface area of a Transcendent Punisher Mark III was enormous.

Even if much of the surface was broken up by a lot of curves and sharp angles, the large mech still featured more than enough space for Ves to paint a lot of coherent images on reasonably flat or gently curved surfaces.

All three mech designers immediately froze when they beheld the first prophetic vision.

It depicted a grand ceremonial hall that was clearly of alien make. Two groups of beings dressed in their most formal and resplendent wear stood on opposite sides of each other.

Numerous representatives of each side had moved forward and were on the cusp of shaking their hands.

The sight reminded Ves of his most recent treaty signing. Though the occasion was a lot smaller and not as formal, the air of ceremony and the joining of two distinctly different groups were remarkably familiar!

"This is a formal treaty signing of the highest specifications of our civilization." Jovy sharply said. "This painting is too broad and wide for me to determine the identities of human leaders, but I can roughly guess who they may be based on various clues. At the very least, all four major human groups are represented. The Red Association, the Red Fleet, the Terran Alliance and the Rubarthan Pact have all sent their respective figureheads to sign the treaty in person on behalf of our collective civilization."

Though Ves was unable to recall many of the messy and jumbled thoughts and emotions transmitted by Ylvaine at the time, he still retained vague echoes of what he tried to make.

He intuitively felt that Jovy was right.

Gloriana on the other hand focused on the other side of this treaty signing ceremony!

"Are those… aliens?"

"Yup." Ves confirmed. "Even if they only look like painted sticks or blobs from this perspective, it is still easy enough to infer their races. One of them is clearly a nunser. The other is an orven. The one to the side is an arche, and that final blob makes me feel that it is a zzamayel."

"A zzamayel? We have yet to encounter a single member of their race as far as I recall." Gloriana frowned.

"We'll probably encounter them soon enough. Their core territories are located a bit further away from this corner of the dwarf galaxy, so they are a bit late in coming. Once they show up, a lot of human forces will get introduced to this slime race."

The zzamayel race basically consisted of sentient slimes. Red humanity might not have encountered this bizarre race themselves, but the other alien races possessed detailed records about their kind.

Apparently, the zzamayels employed both conventional technology and biotechnology. They were not known for being innovators, and their technological development was not as strong as that of the puelmers.

However, the zzamayels had become particularly good at making the most out of the tech and resources they had. They were efficient and were known to defeat more powerful forces with less resources at their disposal. This indicated that the slime race possessed a level of cunning and thoughtfulness that the humans did not want to face.

What mattered now was that the first prophetic image painted by Ves and Ylvaine somehow depicted a possible future where red humanity and a bunch of native aliens got together!

Gloriana began to puzzle over another question.

"Are humans signing a peace treaty or an alliance treaty?"

There was an important distinction between the two!

One simply mandated both sides to stop fighting.

The other compelled the two sides to join forces!

"I don't know." Ves shrugged. "I have a vague sense of the title of this artwork. I have a feeling that it should be called the 'The Meeting of Races', but that doesn't say what the different races plan to do once they meet. I guess that either possibility may happen."

"I am leaning towards an alliance treaty." Jovy thoughtfully said. "In an event as important as this, you would expect that the aliens would send one representative of every race. Yet now that both sides are on the cusp of signing the treaty, the majority of the thirteen major alien races are absent. Of course, you can't expect the voribugs to be present, but where are the puelmers? Where are the phase whales? You would at least expect them to be present if the treaty is meant to bring an end to the Red War, but since they are absent, it is highly likely that they object to the agreement."

That did not completely discount the possibility that this event was centered around the signing of a peace treaty, but Jovy still made a good point!

"Have the cosmopolitans succeeded?" Gloriana wondered.

That was a distressing thought. The Meeting of Races was a prophetic vision that would probably make any cosmopolitan pleased to the point of ecstasy!

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