The Mech Touch (Web Novel)

5901 Remedial Lessons

It took a bit of time for Furia to act on Ves' advice.

As powerful as she may be, she possessed no intrinsic understanding of the advanced technologies that made up the Dominion of Man.

Simply flooding a weapon system or propulsion system with an excessive amount of fire energy was not safe!

It was far too easy to cause components to overheat and melt.

It was also easy to waste a lot of fire energy because they failed to do anything useful.

The transformed Fire Elemental had to take her time to explore the tolerances of every weapon and thruster. She had to make gradual adjustments and work together with the Brain Trust and Caramond to make sure her contributions made a positive difference.

Fortunately, True Gods were not constrained by mortal limitations. They were able to think a lot faster and multitask to an insane degree.

The dreadnought gradually began to speed up as her sub-light propulsion system generated increasingly more thrust force.

While the Dominion of Man was still way too massive to win a race against a courier vessel, it was quite impressive how a more effective utilization of fire energy enabled the dreadnought to boost her acceleration without resorting to any technical improvements.

Her weapon systems began to inflict more damage as well. The increase in firepower was particularly noticeable with any energy and thermal-based weaponry such as plasma cannons and energy beam cannons.

Simply making it so that the attacks launched by these massive cannons carried more fire energy was enough to make them inflict greater harm!

The crew cheered several times when the massive energy weapons managed to inflict moderately greater wounds than before. The two-headed beast's flesh even regenerated a bit slower as it took time for its physique to clean up the burns and lingering fire energies.

Dread Captain Argile did not look too happy, though.

"This is a good first step, but it has not tipped the scales in our favor. The two-headed beast's acceleration has increased in order to maintain its speed advantage over our ship. I appreciate Furia's efforts to improve her contribution to the fight, but it has not closed the gap. The god beast's flesh is still able to regenerate its wounds faster than we can make them. The most we have accomplished so far is to delay our demise."

The captain made a good point. While Furia was constantly working to tweak her ability to improve the firepower of the ship's main cannons, there was a limit to how much fire energy they could tolerate.

At the very least, the transformed Fire Elemental learned the concept of distributing her power in a more rational fashion. She gained the very useful ability to strengthen the performance of specific aspects of the Dominion of Man by sacrificing performance elsewhere.

"I have another suggestion for Furia." Ves spoke up again. "This goes a little deeper. I suspect that your… original self may have already mastered these techniques, but they failed to transfer to your current incarnation."

Ves felt an obvious surge of interest from the True God.

"<nullb>I AM LISTENING."

He waved at the display that depicted the attacks that landed on the enormous body of the two-headed beast.

"The previous wave has taught me that any fight against a True God is more than just a physical confrontation. It is also a contest between will, technique and domain. From this perspective, the reason why our ship has failed to gain the upper hand so far is because your domain and power expression is holding us back."

That did not sit well with Furia! The temperature in the command center rose even further as she felt affronted by the words spoken by her progenitor!

Ves quickly raised his palms. "Whoa, whoa! Before you get all angry at me, let me finish my argument! Just think about it. When anyone transcends to the level of a True God, the differences between matter and energy begins to blur. The Dominion of Man is strictly speaking not a True God, but it is starting to fight like one. Her impressive tech makes up the material aspect while you make up much of the spiritual aspect. While our current adversary has very developed strengths in both aspects, the same cannot be said for us, and that is mostly because you are lacking centuries if not millenia's worth of accumulation."

Though Furia clearly remained indignant at Ves, she was not irrational enough to deny his description.

"<nullb>WHAT IS YOUR SOLUTION?"

"I think the best way to address this problem is to give you a crash course on how to wield your fire energy more effectively. You have a lot of raw power, but lack the techniques to get the most out of them. You will need to remedy that in order for the attacks blessed by your power to inflict actual harm on our adversary's domain. So long as the two-headed beast's domain remains in good condition, it is impossible to fell the creature."

Ves decided to enact the knowledge transfer through an unconventional method.

"Mrow."

Blinky emerged from his head and began to spit out a ball of E energy.

"Absorb this. It contains systematic knowledge of basic theories and spells on the fire element that I managed to learn from… somewhere. The knowledge is very basic, but it is fairly comprehensive and covers a lot of different ways to shape your fire. Most of the spells were never designed to be channeled through modern human weapon systems, but I am sure you can figure out how to adapt the techniques to modern times. I also threw in a lot of scientific understanding of fire as an exothermic reaction."

The ball of energy disappeared in an instant. Blinky clearly sensed that Furia had extended her power and absorbed it in totality.

The Star Cat could clearly sense that Furia was no longer angry at Ves anymore.

The temperature did not subside, but that was because she began to grow excited.

Already, Furia started to apply the brand-new theories she had learned by tweaking the expression of her fire energy!

The sensor systems of the Dominion of Man began to record numerous deviations from the established patterns.

Missiles generated hotter explosions. Plasma bolts seared more flesh. Energy beams became hotter.

The Beginner Five Elements Spells Manual proved its value once again as Furia readily applied her teachings.

As much as Ves enjoyed the spectacle, there was little direction or planning involved in all of this exploration.

Furia was like a child who just discovered that she had the ability to mold fire to her will.

Her approach might lead to comprehensive improvements in the future, but there was not enough time for her to make the gains she needed to turn the tide of this battle!

"Furia! Focus, please! Defeating the two-headed beast comes first! You can explore all of the different aspects of the fire element later. First, you need to figure out how to make your empowered flames stick onto the body of our enemy. Let me give you a few examples of what I mean by that. It just so happens that I designed an expert mech a few years ago that is tailored to a mech pilot who has a penchant for burning her enemies to death."

Ves quickly began to project pieces of archival footage that showed short clips of the Promethea in action.

The Promethea was nowhere close to reaching the power of the Dominion of Man, but the living expert mech clearly possessed a key advantage.

It was piloted by Venerable Isobel Kotin, an expert pilot who knew how to play with fire!

The beautiful black-and-purpose expert mech with flame accents danced through space as fiery energy beams spat from her Ignitron luminar crystal rifle.

The beams generally produced two different reactions on impact.

In some cases, the beams exploded upon impact, causing them to unleash all of their accumulated energies in a single instant. This was particularly useful in depleting energy shields.

In other cases, the Promethea unleashed fire beams that caused her targets to catch fire… and keep burning long after the initial attack!

The purple flames powered by Isobel's willpower and companion spirit seemed to gain a life of their own. They were remarkably effective at burning the hulls of enemy warships.

Even the smallest of sparks could start a wildfire that could engulf an entire battleship when given enough time!

The display was mesmerizing for a True God who only truly came to life a short time ago. The conflagrations spread by the Promethea over the course of numerous engagements against alien raiding fleets had never failed to inflict outsized damage.

There was hardly any mech in the expeditionary fleet that could cripple and destroy large warships with greater efficiency!

The only reason why the Promethea did not receive license to burn down all of the exposed warships of enemy fleets was because her purple flames usually destroyed much of the value of enemy hulls.

"<nullb>REMARKABLE. I UNDERSTAND YOUR INTENTIONS. THE SIGHT OF THIS PROMETHEA… IS MAKING ME RECALL MEMORIES THAT ARE NOT MINE."

Ves grew a bit concerned when he heard that. What sort of memories did she regain, and how much did they impact her mentality?

Furia took action right away. The footage of the Promethea in action served as a catalyst and a key that rapidly caused the True God to gain comprehension on how to flex her metaphorical muscles in order to produce specific outcomes!

The changes happened quickly. Ves previously expected that it would take minutes worth of trial and error before Furia was able to make her flames stick.

What actually happened was that the attacks launched by the Dominion of Man already started to light bits of fur on fire after only half a minute!

"We are detecting dozens of flames on the surface of the two-

headed beast's body! They are mostly burning the fur for the time being, but the fires are already beginning to spread to the hide."

"You can still do better, Furia. Your fires haven't spread beyond their impact sites." Ves said. "I think you are encountering resistance from our enemy's domain. You need to launch your flames with the intention of burning and pushing back the monster's domain."

Ves provided additional guidance based on his general understanding of how these battles were fought.

It seemed to help as Furia applied her power in increasingly more effective ways. While she was still far from matching the likes of Cynthia Larkinson when it came to executing powerful techniques, the transformed Fire Elemental at least mastered the basics!

It was not fair to hold Furia to the same standards as an authentic True God. Ves was sure that Furia would rapidly be able to increase her mastery over the fire element by relying on her amazing affinity and the foundation of knowledge gifted by Ves.

In any case, the assistance provided by Ves finally increased Furia's lethality to the point where she was inflicting actual damage onto the god beast!

The two-headed beast's powerful physique and domain worked hard to douse the flames that regularly appeared across its body.

While the powerful god beast was able to snuff out a couple of flames in a short amount of time, the problem was that the Dominion of Man possessed so many primary gun batteries that she was able to ignite dozens of fires with every salvo!

More and more of the god beast's fur caught on fire. Parts of the creature's hide also began to burn as well.

The two-headed beast had to expend a lot of power to prevent the flames from penetrating through its hide, but it was starting to lose this battle because more fires just kept coming!

Even though there were still a lot of differences between the tribulation manifestation and Furia, the former's savage nature finally proved to be a detriment.

If the two-headed beast possessed greater intelligence and rationality, then it would have been able to figure out a more efficient way to put out all of the flames.

Unfortunately, the two-headed beast was so inflexible that it continued to stick to its tried-and-true approach, as if it knew how to do nothing else!

By the time the god beast's entire exterior had been lit on fire, its domain had weakened to the point where the Dominion of Man's conventional attacks started to inflict more serious damage than before!

Ves relaxed a bit after seeing this. "If the two-headed beast isn't hiding any further surprises, then this battle is ours."