Humanity's Greatest Mecha Warrior System

The next day, Max focused his energy on trying to determine what the end game was for the species who were fighting through this chaotic region of space. The Arisen weren't going all out on the species they had targeted. They were trying to train them up.

Then there were the Darklings, or Knife Ears, as the locals called them. They were most likely an evil culture by almost any standard, but they also weren't trying to wipe everything out. They were farming various species in the region.

Neither of them had the technology to actually knock out all of the stars that had been destroyed here unless they had lost it over time. So, there was another major player here that Max hadn't seen yet. He might be sensing it, but there weren't any really clear signs of its existence.

There was something about that group that they fought in the other layer of space, though. Something familiar was tugging at Max's memory, but he couldn't seem to pull up the associated memory.

That alone was unusual for Max. Part of his System Ability was to recall things that he had learned in the past from other people's minds or his own past life. He should be able to recall what it was with some focus, but it was missing.

It was almost guaranteed to be related to the energy-based species that he had seen in his past life, and he remembered a lot about them, so not remembering this particular tidbit made no sense.

So, he studied everything that he had learned about the Demons they had faced. That probably wasn't the proper name for the species, but it fit their appearance, so Max was sticking with it for now.

The way that they vanished and coalesced when they were destroyed gave him a clue as to what the Arisen Army was doing with their own casualties. Max didn't think that they were able to do it with the War Walkers, but the power controlling them might be like the Demons, just a raw mass of energy and will.

It would naturally return to a mothership in the other layer if the container was destroyed, and they could make more War Walkers at their leisure to attack over and over.

Since no other species had detected them there, they didn't even have to move, only build more ships to adjust the scale of their attacks. Perhaps they were limited in troop numbers and had to move them around. That seemed to be the logical answer, though if the whole species were energy, then he didn't have enough information to even know how or if they reproduced.

The Arisen vessel that was waiting near this solar system didn't seem to have noticed that Max had detected them even after a full day of investigation, but Max was able to gather a lot of data about their technology. Not so much about the War Walkers, but they knew a lot about them already. What he gathered information on was the Cube itself and how it held itself stationary in the currents.

Their technology was very different from what the humans were familiar with, but the modulation of their energy shields was something that Max could replicate using what they had.

What he really needed was to get closer to a vessel in motion so that he could record the modulation changes as it passed by various currents. That would show him how to do it and tell him if it was generally considered better to ride the current or if there was a way to let it wash over the ship without throwing it around.

But he would settle for what he had here, and it appeared that part of the equation was what the actual hull of the ship was made of. Both Max's new Cutter and the Cube were made of a similar form of monomolecular material, and Max noticed that the currents that pushed through the shielding on the Arisen Cube slid along the surface of the ship and made it bob up and down, but when the research team tried to insert a piece of metallic alloy into the other layer, it proved to be impossible.

The force of the energy flowing inside the layer prevented the material from entering, even though Max could see that the micro portal had been successfully opened as he was looking from the other side. They all thought that their effort to stabilize the opening had failed until Max showed them the data from the probe, which touched off another round of experimentation on what would be immediately ejected from space.

It might not be their primary goal, but if they could force targets out of the other layer of space with a specially designed weapon, it would bring a whole new dynamic to the battle.

He was about to mention the theory to Nico when he felt that strange attention on him again. The first thing that he did was to check the other layer for changes or another being in the region, which seemed to amuse the sensation. He wanted to tell the others to keep the discussion of weapons that worked between the layers silent for now since the attention was attracted to them again, but it was too late. Plus, there was no guarantee that their efforts weren't watched all the time.

After a few minutes, the feeling faded, but Max was beginning to get fed up with not knowing where that sensation was coming from. It didn't feel internal, it was more like something was watching him from outside, but not a single sensor that they had could detect it.

As he was recalibrating the sensors for the forty-third time that day, Max noticed something strange going on in the other layer of space. The Arisen Cube had suddenly vanished, and a cluster of Darkling ships had appeared in the region, suddenly dropping in from somewhere.

They had to be using another layer, and Max had gotten thrown to the wrong one entirely. Their hints might have helped him get home, but he had totally misunderstood the message.