The Mech Touch

His most recent experience with a member of the phase whale race was when Master Dervidian invited him to view the revived occupant of the 'Royal Tomb' in the Garimel System up close.

Now that was a monstrosity beyond comparison. Though Ves had never figured out whether the super whale that had come to life was the mythical Flesh Conqueror or an evolution of the Cerebral King, there was no doubt that a titanic 12-kilometer long phase whale possessed awesome power!

It was the most powerful physical 'god' that Ves had ever encountered. The enormous bulk of that biotechnological monstrosity contained so much phasewater that he suspected that the super whale could only be matched by a god mech once the all-powerful beast got up to strength.

Ves had lucked out in encountering two different phase whales in their moments of weakness. Both the revived Flesh Conqueror or the resident of the Palace of Shame had been caught when they had just regained their freedom and their autonomy. The strength and powers they displayed was not proportionate to how powerful they ought to be based on their physical characteristics.

As Ves and Director Ranya stood a short distance away from the site where many heavy-duty lifter bots carefully brought in massive freezer containers, they could both feel the remnant power contained within the flesh.

"We haven't even taken a proper look yet, but I can already surmise that genuine phase whale biomatter is of much greater value than fish-whale flesh." Ranya said with an intrigued expression. "Our research teams will most certainly enjoy our new experimental materials. It is rather unfortunate that I specialize in exoplants rather than exobeasts. You need to put more effort into obtaining samples of powerful alien trees and plants. My hairstyle could use an update."

Her protective suit featured a transparent helmet that showed off her leafy green hair. Her living hair swayed in the confines of the helmet as they happily soaked in the surrounding light to fuel their photosynthesis.

Ves used to get weirded out by her plant modifications, but now that he had become a qualified exobiologist and made extensive modifications to his own body, he appreciated the design and ingenuity of her self-augmentations.

Light was ubiquitous and provided a free source of energy in most locations. Even artificial light sources that did not convey much warmth due to their high efficiencies could be absorbed by Ranya's body and ease her need for sustenance in the process.

He could even see that if Ranya ever needed to, she could 'deploy' her hair into something resembling a massive tree canopy. She would be able to absorb a lot of energy which she could use to fuel plenty of unknown biological processes.

Perhaps Ves should look into turning his hair into light-absorbing organs as well. Then he shook his head.

He already had an alternate means to generate energy through unconventional means. His physical transformation not only granted him greater control over his upgraded Jutland organ, but also allowed him to absorb energy and nutrients by ingesting all kinds of materials that normal people wouldn't be able to digest.

Turning his hair into leaves would just be icing on the cake. He could think of much better uses for his hair, such as turning them into ultra-thin tentacles that could be merged into more combat ready organs!

As Ves continued to entertain all sorts of new and interesting ideas on how he should augment his body further, the procession of containers finally ended for the time being.

"Would you like to take a closer look, sir?"

"That goes without saying."

Ves and Ranya continued to chat about matters relating to all of the new research projects they could start after this. They finally reached a nearby lab where the contents of the incoming containers went through careful inspection under quarantine.

No one knew whether the phase whales possessed any supergerms that could devour human bodies in a matter of minutes, so it was necessary to thoroughly inspect the whale matter even if it had already been frozen.

When a square-ish block of phase whale flesh became visible, Ves held in his breath.

He could sense much more information about the dense and phasewater-infused alien biomatter now that he could lay his eyes on its powerful surface.

He could sense that the flesh still contained a strong echo of the unclean whale. From a spiritual perspective, the flesh itself still contained a weak but highly intertwined spiritual imprint.

It gave him the impression that he was truly looking at a piece of flesh harvested by an actual demigod.

"Interesting." Ranya said as she studied the initial scanning data. "The unclean whale is not as advanced in his physical metamorphosis as I thought."

"What do you mean by that?" Ves asked.

"Look at how much phasewater is infused in this block of flesh. If we do our best to squeeze every drop of phasewater from it, we will probably be able to extract half a kilogram at most."

That was quite low considering the immense bulk of this massive tissue sample.

"You think it should be higher?" Ves asked.

"All of the sources tell us that proper mature phase whales have greater concentrations of phasewater in their physical structures." Ranya replied. "It is their badge of strength. The unclean whale that we have felled had grown large and old enough to infuse a lot more phasewater in his body, but strangely enough the concentration is barely better than that of an adolescent phase whale."

Ves did not look too surprised. "Unclean whales are the scumbags and the delinquents of the phase whale race. They skip all of the hard work and resort to shortcuts instead. The creature we encountered today completely matches this description. That whale had neglected his studies in biotechnology so much that he had never been able to improve his phasewater concentration. The only organs that feature higher concentrations of phasewater are the ones that were clearly stolen from other phase whales, right?"

The director of the Larkinson Biotech Institute nodded. "That is correct. Those 'foreign' phasewater organs are much more valuable than the other body parts of the unclean whale because they are all derived from more proper phase whales. It is quite interesting how the unclean whale is able to integrate them to his body without any apparent rejection or incompatibility. It is as if the phase whale race is particularly suited to engage in cannibalism."

"Maybe that is why they are so non confrontational most of the time." Ves rubbed his smooth-shaven chin. "The only way for them to prevent themselves from pulling off an Age Conquest is to impose strong rules and maintain strong discipline over their impulses."

Despite the passage of time, his face hadn't grown a stubble of hair. His control over his own body had skyrocketed so much after his first sublimation that he could essentially tell his hair cells to stop growing.

Ves would never have to command his shaving bot to do its work anymore! He could take care of this problem himself and wake up with a face that was as smooth as a baby's bottom forever!

Of course, he could also do the opposite. He just had to make sure that he was stocked with enough nutrients to command his face to grow a large and bushy beard.

"The density of our tissue samples is good, but far from the best." Ranya said in a disappointed tone.

Ves understood what she was talking about. "Something is better than nothing. No matter the quality, what we have managed to obtain is far superior to the biomatter that we have managed to harvest from the fish-whales and the previous incarnation of Titania. Phase whales have pursued a substantially different evolutionary direction that is arguably superior to everything else in the Red Ocean. Now that we have harvested many tons of phase whale biomatter, we can finally begin to study and experiment on the secrets of the phase whale race and potentially leverage their advantages for ourselves."

"I would caution you to temper your expectations, sir. It will take many decades for an interdisciplinary research project of this scope to yield useful results. You are talking about deciphering and reverse engineering one of the feats that has helped the phase whales become individual powerhouses."

Phase whales were large and massive, but they normally weren't as big as they could have been.

Giant monstrosities such as the revived Flesh Conqueror and the astral beast version of Titania possessed so much bulk that they could form a new mountain range on top of an entire metropolis with all of their flesh and bone.

However, their immense physical dimensions weren't treated as a universal advantage. An enormous body was not only too clumsy and unwieldy, but also made it much more difficult to travel across the stars.

Therefore, most phase whales tended to control the size of their bodies so that they were as large as sub-capital ships rather than capital ships.

Yet despite limiting their physical dimensions, they somehow found ways to increase their mass as if they were twice, thrice or even ten times larger than their actual sizes!

The more clever whales even managed to increase their body density without increasing their mass, allowing them to accelerate and maneuver light starfighters despite the fact that they resembled lumbering warships more!

The secret to all of this was phasewater.

One of the benefits of integrating phasewater into an organism's body was that it enabled the organism to fold the space occupied by his body, thereby increasing the density of organic matter in a weird, space warped fashion!

Few alien races had managed to master this advanced and extremely dangerous method.

It was almost certain that the most powerful phase whales and other god-like organisms of the Red Ocean had managed to squeeze their bodies in a limited amount of space like a closed accordion.

There were many theories about what made this possible. The most prevailing ones claimed that the phase whales essentially transferred a part of their enormous bodies to different dimensions that remained unused.

As long as the blood, flesh and other parts of a phase whale was infused with enough phasewater, it was possible to maintain this effect on a permanent basis!

The strength of this effect wasn't particularly strong with the tissue samples harvested from the unclean whale. There were rumors that the strongest phase whales who had replaced their blood almost entirely with phasewater were able to reach ridiculous ratios!

Some of them might have grown to the size of planets, but because they were able to fold their own bodies to such a degree that they were only as large as a heavy cruiser when looking from the outside.

Anyone who thought they had the firepower to destroy a relatively 'small' phase whale would be in for a rude surprise!

If the Larkinson Clan managed to obtain so much high-quality flesh, Ves could probably leverage this powerful trait to develop a biomech beyond comparison!

Unfortunately, he had to make do with phase whale flesh where the matter folding effect was barely adequate enough to occupy his attention.

If he could crack the secret of the unclean whale's low-level internal spatial folding technique, he might be able to apply it to his own body one day!

As much as his metamorphosis had turned him into a native demigod, he didn't make full use of the fact his body now contained phasewater.

If he could activate his phasewater-infused blood and flesh, he might be able to grow a denser body while maintaining the illusion that he was still as large as a regular human.

In other words, he had the potential to transform his body into the equivalent of a biomech without making it obvious!