The Mech Touch (Web Novel)

5905 Failure in Design

The final fight definitely lived up to people's expectations and more.

A powerful phoenix spawned from the clouds and went on to besiege the Dominion of Man.

Though the bird only settled on circling around the large dreadnought for the time being, the heat and licks of flame emanating from its burning shape already started to exert a lot of pressure on the fleeters.

"Our azure energy shields are straining. The generators responsible for generating them are experiencing numerous malfunctions. The phoenix is somehow destroying or repelling the water energy that is responsible for augmenting our energy defenses!"

"Ambient temperature throughout the ship has risen by at least 2 degrees and rising. The fire energy generated and distributed by Furia is no longer being channeled as efficiently as before. The hostile fire energy generated by the phoenix is disrupting the operation of hyper technology throughout the ship!"

It became clear to Ves that the fight between the phoenix beast and the Dominion of Man had started out as a contest between domains.

Though it was not obvious to most people, Ves and Blinky clearly sensed the immense taking place in a different realm!

Furia had long functioned as the power source of the Dominion of Man. Even in her previous incarnation, the Fire Elemental had long claimed the dreadnought as her territory.

Due to the consistent exposure of fire energy, every part of the Dominion of Man had undergone a long process of adaptation and acclimatization. Furia's awakening along with all of the lightning baptisms had supercharged this process and caused the ship to become strongly imprinted to her energies.

In other words, Furia had gradually reshaped the Dominion of Man into her personal stronghold and seat of power. Her influence could be felt from every part of the ship, and it should have been a lot harder for hostile beings to intrude into her territory.

While friendly True Gods such as Caramond remained welcome on the ship, the phoenix should have been blocked from intruding.

Unfortunately, Furia was still too underdeveloped as a True God. While she had made a lot of progress in mastering the use of many different lesser runes, the current confrontation brutally told her that her efforts amounted to little in the greater scheme of things!

Without proper understanding and mastery of greater runes, Furia had no choice but to cede ground as the phoenix continually encroached on her territory!

This conflict played out as a collision between two invisible domains.

While the mirror beast was able to take advantage of the many shortcomings of Furia's domain by sneaking past her guard, the phoenix clearly favored open confrontation.

The domain of the firebird pressed upon the Dominion of Man like a flaming sun. Its heat was much more hostile and oppressive.

The creature possessed plenty of fury and heat, but completely lacked Furia's warmth and sympathy towards humans.

The phoenix's domain posed a very real threat to the physical structure of the Dominion of Man. The creature made no efforts to moderate its influence or ensure that its fire energy did not inflict harm on any delicate components.

Damage reports continued to arrive at an increasing rate.

"...Sensor arrays have melted…"

"...Two of our missile launchers have been destroyed after several missiles detonated in their tubes…"

"...30 percent of our energy cannon batteries are unable to fire further as they have exceeded their heat capacity…"

"...The consumption rate of coolants has risen by 600 percent! This is an unsustainable rate! If we do not remedy this issue, our most heat-susceptible systems will begin to overheat in 20 minutes..."

"...The damaged exterior sections that have yet to be repaired are beginning to melt and collapse due to excessive exposure to heat…"

The Dominion of Man was under siege by a mythical bird. The entire creature behaved like a miniature sun as its constant release of thermal energy and fire-attributed E energy steadily cooked the dreadnought as if it was gigantic sausage!

What frustrated the fleeters the most was that there was very little they could do to fight back against the powerful creature.

While the Brain Trust and the weapons specialists had made a lot of adjustments to the targeting systems of the gun batteries to enable them to land more hits on the circling monster, many of the attacks failed to inflict any actual harm on the creature.

"Our tertiary and secondary gun batteries are completely ineffective against the phoenix beast! Their hit rates are higher, but they lack the power to penetrate or overwhelm the god beast's fire shield."

"What of our primary armaments?!"

"Our primary gun batteries and our largest missiles and torpedoes are able to destabilize the fire shield, but they are unable to break through this protective barrier, especially when the hit rates are low. Our weapons are also unable to concentrate their firepower on a single part of the phoenix due to its swift and inconsistent movements."

"Our superweapons?"

"The phoenix is producing too much interference at close range for our Rubicon Spatial Transfer System to work, sir. We can only deploy our antimatter warheads by housing them in our most heat-resistant missiles before launching them. Even then, there is a small risk that the god beast will cause the warheads to prematurely lose containment, resulting in an early detonation."

The blasted monster had already demonstrated the capability to detonate warheads before they had even launched. If the phoenix was able to pull off this trick on the Dominion of Man's antimatter ordnance, then the ship would definitely suffer a heavy or outright crippling blow!

This shouldn't be happening. Though Furia and Caramond were hardly the strongest True Gods to emerge, they should at least be able to protect the Dominion of Man from outside interference.

Unfortunately, the phoenix displayed so much superiority that her domain easily pressed back the combined domains of Furia and Caramond!

It turned out that having a homeground advantage along with access to lots of faith energy was not enough for them to hold their ground against a 'proper' god beast, especially one with such an impeccable pedigree!

The difference in comprehension, mastery, experience and age were simply too great at this time!

Ves could scarcely comprehend why the tribulation storm sent out such an excessively powerful god beast when this wasn't originally supposed to be part of the final round.

If the Subjugation King hadn't intervened, the Dominion of Man should have endured at least 9 more challenges, each of which pressured the dreadnought to a much greater degree than this firebird!

Though Ves felt even more relieved that this was not the case anymore, it hardly made a difference if the phoenix ended up destroying the Dominion of Man anyway!

Ves and many other people tried their best to figure out ways for the ship to take the initiative and gain the upper hand, but none of their ideas sounded viable.

"Furia, the reason why you're losing ground is because you haven't been able to employ any greater runes. Can you do something about this? I suggest you study how the phoenix utilizes its own greater runes if you can. It is clear that the gap between you and the phoenix is the overarching reason why we are doing so poorly at the moment. There are good reasons why the tribulation storm sent out a powerful god beast that is aspected towards the fire element. The storm is challenging you to beat the phoenix and its own game."

Ves became increasingly more convinced of this theory. The Dominion of Man lacked the means to defeat the god beast by herself. None of her weapon systems proved to be effective against the creature so far. This was a rather serious design failure on the part of the fleeters as dreadnoughts were originally designed to fight against god mechs.

Granted, the Dominion of Man was also designed to deploy her Dread Marines in order to capture enemy starships, fortifications and so on, but it was still disappointing for Ves to learn that she lacked the means to fight against an extraordinary threat like the phoenix.

The current predicament proved that the dreadnought still had a long way to go before she could realize the ultimate dream of the fleeters.

For all of the strength demonstrated by the phoenix, Ves was pretty sure that god mechs were even stronger!

The latter were much smaller but also much faster. They struck harder, possessed more resilient defenses and their God Kingdom was the most combat effective domain that Ves had ever witnessed.

While it was true that the Dominion of Man along with her partner True Gods still had a lot of room for growth, this did not avail them in the current situation.

The tribulation storm had come to test the Carmine dreadnought's starting qualifications. Even if the intense hostility of Messier 87 towards human civilization had amped up the difficulty of the challenges, the Dominion of Man should have performed better under the circumstances!

Alas, the inability of the dreadnought to cope against this type of opponent meant that all of the pressure rested on the friendly True Gods.

Caramond had no chance of beating the phoenix by himself. Ves had kept his goals modest when he created the ancestral spirit. He refrained from adding any strange ingredients into the mix in order to preserve the purity of the end product as much as possible. The result was a spiritual product who aligned perfectly with red humanity, but was only able to provide support during combat.

Only Furia could carry this fight. Ves did not wish for this to be the case, but he saw no other alternative.

He could sense Furia's turmoil. Before the start of this wave, the transformed Fire Elemental had grown enormously during the preceding waves.

She had steadily developed greater control over her power. She gained more comprehension over her fire domain and learned how to exercise her fire energy in increasingly more effective ways.

If the final wave of this lightning tribulation presented any other god beast, then Furia would have been able to maintain a strong mentality even as she struggled to overcome the enemy creature's defenses.

Unfortunately, the tribulation storm directly targeted Furia's confidence by spitting out a phoenix that was able to wield the power of fire a lot more proficiently!

As their domains continually collided against each other, Furia was forced to acknowledge the brutal reality that she was still a neophyte of a True God when it came to wielding her flames!

Again and again, the phoenix humiliated the transformed Fire Elemental by demonstrating many of the same tricks, but better!

More conventional True Gods were normally much older and more experienced. They had received enough tempering to maintain a stable mindset and address their problems with a rational mindset.

Furia… was different. Her new personality was not only less than a day old, but the irrational impulses generated by the remnant of her original self constantly urged her to go berserk!

"<nullb>I… CANNOT TOLERATE… THIS INSULT. IT IS TOO DIFFICULT TO LEARN THE PHOENIX'S TRICKS BY SEEING IT IN ACTION, BUT I HAVE A BETTER IDEA. IF… IF I OPEN MYSELF UP TO THE KNOWLEDGE THAT IS HIDDEN WITHIN THE DARKEST DEPTHS OF MY BEING, I CAN MASTER ALL OF THE GREATER RUNES I NEED TO TEACH THIS OVERGROWN BIRD A LESSON!"

While that certainly sounded like a viable plan, both Ves and Dread Captain Argile grew alarmed!

"No!" Ves shouted! "Don't even think about it! The risks are too great! We cannot allow any further remnant of the original creator of the Fire Scroll to contaminate your current personality. He has already proven that he only needs a single opening in order to take control and engineer the revival of his old self!"

"<nullb>THERE IS NO OTHER WAY, PROGENITOR."

"I refuse to believe that! You managed to learn how to wield a lot of lesser runes by recalling them somehow. I think you can do the same in terms of your greater runes!"

"<nullb>DO YOU HAVE ANY SUGGESTIONS ON HOW TO START?"

"Yes. Let us start with exploring the greater rune that has always been in your reach. The first step to mastering your greater power is to figure out your personal rune!"