The Mech Touch

Chapter 7518 Foreign Heritage

Casella Ingvar did not limit her actions to sending out the Dark Zephyr Mark III.

She also made use of the Victrix for the first time since the start of this encounter.

The magnificent mechanical owl proudly launched from the Tortuous Scream and quickly accelerated towards the energy vortex on the opposite side!

"The Dark Zephyr is swift enough to rescue several squads in quick succession, but I have still decided to dispatch my Victrix as a precaution."

"Thank you… Saint Commander." The exhausted Caracalla Shuku expressed his sincere gratitude for this gesture. "You do not have to go so far to risk such a valuable asset. We are all Terran soldiers. We are never afraid of sacrifice."

"It is what you deserve. The sensor data that you have brought back is not nearly enough to give us a complete picture of the surrounding environment, but it contains enough clues for me to narrow down what kind of adversary we are truly dealing with. It is becoming increasingly more clear that the deathborn we are confronted with are not solely beings of low intelligence."

Sending out the Ultimate Module of the Minerva Mark II by herself was a considerable risk.

The large owl construct may be made out of superdimensional matter and possess a limited range of armaments by herself, but she could only fight as well as a decent expert mech at most.

What truly made her special was that she effectively served as a remote relay for Casella's Command Field.

This became obvious as soon as the Victrix blazed her way to the perimeter of the Minerva Mark II's Command Field.

The dark miasma had no choice but to retreat and give way to the sharp and technologically advanced owl.

Neither the Saint Commander nor many other Larkinsons expressed surprise at this magical sight.

The Victrix did not pause or slow down at all and continued to fly further and further away from the combined fleet.

Eventually, the living command fell out of sight as her extended Command Field no longer overlapped with the Minerva Mark II's original domain field.

Soon enough, the remnants of the other squads returned under the escort of the Dark Zephyr Mark III and the Victrix.

The hearts of many Terran soldiers fell when the squads all returned with less than their original numbers.

The Dark Zephyr Mark III initially managed to retrieve just 4 more damaged and depleted Woodsap mechs out of the Second Elf's original squad.

This meant that in total, Caracalla Shuku lost 5 of his subordinates and their precious prototype Woodsap mechs to the enemy.

The Victrix had better luck and returned with 8 Woodsap mechs.

Evidently, internal conflict broke out a little later due to the absence of a prominent elf such as Caracalla.

The Dark Zephyr and the Victrix did not pause once they had made their first retrievals and quickly flew towards the other 2 energy vortices.

The outcome was considerably worse this time.

The Dark Zephyr Mark III happened to be fast enough to retrieve 3 damaged biomechs, of which 1 of them had to be carried by the ace light skirmisher.

It was clear that if Saint Tusa arrived a little later, there might not be enough to bring back even operational Woodsap mech!

As for the Victrix's second excursion, the superdimensional owl remained out of sight for several more minutes until she returned empty-handed.

Whatever mishap had befallen the fourth squad had apparently led to its complete defeat and possible annihilation.

This outcome came as a serious blow to the Terran detachment. They had sent out a company's worth of Woodsap mechs with the confidence that the new biomachines were strong and special enough to endure whatever the deathborn threw in their direction.

Their core assumption turned out to be terribly wrong.

Still, if people such as Ves or the Saint Commander had to be absolutely honest, then they would rather risk the lives of Terran soldiers than anyone actually important.

"At least it is not a total loss." Ves remarked. "The partial retrieval of the Woodsap mechs and the subsequent rescue action have given us enough data on what is going on outside of our Command Field."

While it was regrettable that so few organic machines returned from their reconnaissance mission, the ones that survived this ordeal could at least regenerate back to completion without any complications.

This was what they were made for, basically.

The remaining Terran mech pilots did not get scared after they learned what had happened to their comrades.

They became furious!

Their hatred of the deathborn immediately spiked!

They wanted to be a part of the first wave of counterattacks against this new and unfathomable enemy!

"The deathborn are abominations to all life! We are irreconcilable enemies! There can be no peace between the two of us! We must slay them now before they manage to proliferate across our stars!"

"Kill the deathborn! I do not believe that the dead cannot be slain a second time!"

"Their mind games are deadly, but the Larkinson Clan's Saint Commander is not a joke. As long as we operate within the presence of her Victrix, no hallucination will be able to fool us again!"

As much as Casella admired their fighting spirit and desire for revenge, she did not indulge in their aggression right away.

"So what did you guys figure out on your end?" Ves asked as he parsed through the sensor logs. "I am not sure what caused the Terran pilots to lose their wits to the point they fired their weapons against their own side. Is this also a function of the enemy's qi formation?"

Andrea Vos, their resident authority on this subject, supplied her opinions first.

"I would have preferred it if the mech squads flew closer in order to record the enemy formation anchors in greater detail. The fidelity of the sensor data is not fine-grained enough to fully decipher and possibly reverse engineer the enemy's methods. What I can tell you with greater certainty is that the formation anchors are designed and built in accordance with theories and techniques that are largely unfamiliar to the traditions known to the Red Collective."

"Does that mean they are M87 in origin?"

"That possibility is likely, but not absolute. It cannot be ruled out that we are dealing with a very obscure offshoot of the Five Scrolls Compact, or that the Red Cabal independently developed these formation arts themselves. However, these alternative scenarios are so unlikely that it is enough to keep them at the back of our minds. My general conclusion is that we are confronted by enemies that possess a rich but parallel heritage of formation arts. To be more specific, their ability to harness and direct death energy is so many times more advanced than ours that we are like children in front of adults."

That was to be expected. No one expressed much surprise at this evaluation.

"What else have you learned, Farseer?"

"Much. Just a surface observation has already taught us three little tricks that we can use to implement small upgrades to our defensive spell array. I am absolutely certain that we can learn much more if we manage to retrieve a fully intact alien formation anchor. There are many hints on the surface that suggest the existence of brand-new theories and paradigms that introduce new or much more sophisticated methods of generating extraordinary energy fields."

The formation master's tone did not hide her growing fascination for the deathborn's formation arts.

Humans often advanced their mastery of technology by stealing from aliens.

This was merely the latest instance where humans saw that an alien race managed to do something better, and wanted to master this new power for themselves!

"What else?"

"We are not entirely certain about our next conclusion, but… we also suspect that the deathborn have failed to adapt their qi formation to local circumstances. It is as if we are dealing with a cheap imitation of an original product. I believe this to be true because the apparent effects of the spell array are quite underwhelming from the sophistication of their arts."

She voiced an opinion that happened to align with one of Ves's own conclusions.

"I concur." He said. "The craftsmanship of the formation anchors is… ordinary and uninspired. They were rigidly reproduced according to a static blueprint or a very formulaic set of instructions. The reasons why this product underperformed is because the deathborn have failed to adapt it to the parameters of the Red Ocean. In this medium-energy environment, the availability of hyper materials and other strange materials is paltry compared to what you can find in M87. In addition, exotic radiation is much more diluted this far out from the center of the supermassive galaxy. It is normal to produce substandard results in this situation."

Ves and several other leaders felt more relieved after making this realization.

Their adversary was not omnipotent, or so far above them in power that resistance was futile.

"This is no reason to look down on the deathborn." Casella warned everyone. "From what we have learned, our alien adversaries are sophisticated but severely limited by distance and lack of adaptation. This means we are put in a similar position of native inhabitants that have come into contact with the first wave of expeditionary forces originating from a distant but higher civilization. I should not tell you how frightening it is to fight a war of civilizations from the 'native' side."

She was very much correct on this front!

Many times in the past, human civilization often managed to vanquish their alien rivals by exploiting the differences in intelligence, cunning, efficiency as well as technological mastery.

Yet now that red humans had fallen into orbit of M87's monstrous energy environment, they had unquestionably turned into prey for the much larger and more powerful civilizations from the golden galaxy!