The Mech Touch

God pilots possessed an outsized influence in human society.

Each of them possessed so much personal might that it was inevitable for them to become famous to the point where their names and titles became known by over half of every human living in the old galaxy and the new frontier!

God pilots attracted the envy of many people. Mech pilots especially aspired to attain their level of strength and use it to forge their own legends. This was the Age of Mechs!

Despite the fact that warships continued to serve as humanity's principal tools of war, the spotlight shone so much on mechs that most people would rather become a mech pilot than a captain of their own starship!

The lucky visitors, residents and workers in Bridgehead One continued to revel in the honor of witnessing the arrival of Divine Irene Mox in person.

This was a memory that they would definity cherish for the rest of their lives!

"I couldn't even think straight when she finally displayed her might!"

"Now that the most destructive god pilot has entered this dwarf galaxy, those native aliens are about to learn that their temporary resistance is futile in the face of absolute firepower!"

"I really wanted to see the Ragnarök fire a shot. I heard that this god mech only assumes its full form when it is ready to launch its planet-destroying shells."

"What is that giant flaming cat?"

"Oh, that? There are rumors that Divine Mox has a soft spot for cats. With her absolute domain field, it is trivial for her to channel her supreme power and shape it in the form of a cat. God pilots can do way more than that. The Beast King once utilized his God Kingdom to create a life-like illusion of a small planet filled with animals!"

As Bridgehead One struggled to regain its sense of normality, traffic soon began to pick up again.

A lot of pioneering fleets and logistical companies suffered varying degrees of economic penalties due to the delays imposed by the Destroyer of Worlds, but each of them chose to swallow the added costs without issuing a word of complaint.

Some people were just more special than others. God pilots may not have chosen to reign over humanity like the kings and emperors of old, but they were still able to command the loyalty and obedience of every human they came across!

Haifa day after the momentous arrival of Divine Irene Mox, the greater beyonder gate went into service once again.

Each time the gate activated, it disgorged dozens to hundreds of starships at a time.

The vast majority of these starships consisted of capital ships!

Those belonging to varying pioneers tended to come in all shapes and sizes. Many of them had been optimized for combat, exploration or colonization, so they needed to be defensible and flexible enough to withstand the rigors of the frontier.

There was also a completely different set of starships that had been constructed with a completely different set of design principles!

They looked like gigantic cylinders of metal. Each of these elongated cigar-shaped starships were clearly designed to push against the dimensional limits imposed by the Gate Consortium!

This category of ships had only emerged relatively recently.

They could only be found in the two known star systems to host a greater beyonder gate.

There was no cheaper and more efficient way to transfer cargo from one galaxy to another than with the use of these newly emerged gate conveyors!

Compared to more traditional mass conveyors, the gate conveyors were less massive and more fragile because they were not required to travel through any dangerous regions of human space.

In fact, since their main purpose was to pass through the greater beyonder gates all of the time, their owners hadn't even bothered to equip them with FTL drives!

·ƈθm At this time, the greater beyonder gate transmitted a fleet of gate conveyors.

Each of them possessed a uniform appearance. The 12 kilometer-long gate conveyors were all coated with the forest green colors that were characteristic of the Rigel-Ovis Trading Company.

No average company was able to make this intergalactic trade route profitable.

The centuries-old Rigel-Ovis Trading Company happened to possess the right amount of financial resources to commission an entirely new fleet of gate conveyors and have them delivered within a matter of years!

What was even more important was that Rigel-Ovis had also established its brand among the first-rate states of the Milky Way Galaxy for a long time.

Though the company conscientiously did not conduct any direct business transactions with the Terrans or the Rubarthans, the trading ships of the Rigel-Ovis were ubiquitous throughout the territories of the regular first-rate states of the galactic center!

The company utilized its vast network of existing contacts and business partners to immediately put the new gate conveyors to good use.

Vast amounts of trade goods constantly entered their cavernous cargo holds before being transported from one galaxy to another.

Even if most of the trade goods consisted of bulk materials and massive production equipment, these goods were vitally needed to rapidly build up colonies and accelerate their industrial development!

Rigel-Ovis therefore served as one of the important contributors to the rapidly increasing propensity of human colonies in the Red Ocean.

Shortly after they completed their momentous transit to the new frontier, the gate conveyors obeyed the instructions of traffic control and flew to a zone that was especially reserved for massive transport vessels.

A small fleet of destroyers and cruiers hailing from the MTA and the CFA quickly descended on them and activated their powerful scanning equipment.

The gate conveyors had already undergone extremely thorough inspections in the Maryun Ultima System, but the controllers of the greater beyonder gates never slacked off when it came to searching for fugitives, contraband and other illicit material!

The old galaxy was filled with dangers that the Big Two did not want to spread to the new frontier. Even if the expenses were considerable, the inspectors employed by the MTA and CFA performed their duties without any hint of taking it easy.

The warships even sent entire armies of specially-trained and well-equipped inspectors just so that they could observe the trade goods with their own eyes!

At this time, one of many pairs of inspectors flew into a titanic cargo hold and stopped in front of a floating container.

The female inspector transmitted a code that caused the container to open and reveal its contents.

The container carefully stored dozens of ornamental stone statues made out of a particularly hardy material.

Each statue was carefully wrapped by a transparent composite cushioning material that could resist a wide range of physical shocks and damaging radiation.

The male inspector carefully studied the artwork.

The male inspector carefully studied the artwork.

"What a waste of money." The woman remarked. "Can't these colonists make their own sculptures in the new frontier? There is no need to pay so many credits just to import them from the Milky Way."

"This is not a regular batch of goods." The man informed her. "Each of them are carefully sculpted by Master Eric Trilband. His best works can sell for millions of MTA credits."

"I can understand why his best masterworks can command such prices, but these sculptures clearly haven't reached that level of quality."

"Well, master sculptors need to eat as well. The most famous artists aren't always the best at creating art, but they are all excellent businessmen who know how to market their own work."

The two inspectors continued to chat about the realities of the art industry as they completed their routine inspection.

Neither the scans nor their visual inspections revealed anything amiss. Smugglers attempted to defeat the inspectors by hiding contraband deep inside seemingly priceless works of art, but the Big Two had always managed to foil these clever attempts.

What most people didn't realize was that the MTA actually deployed a god pilot at Maryun Ultima and Bridgehead One!

It was just that hardly anyone was aware of their presence.

People thought that Divine Irene Mox was the first god pilot to pass through these star systems in a long time, never knowing that they had been spending time in the presence of two more god pilots!

It wasn't their fault. The hidden god pilots never announced themselves. They quietly exerted their power over the starships that were about to make the intergalactic crossing.

Nothing could escape their awareness within their powerful absolute domain fields!

Although the two Divines never took action when they detected regular contraband and fugitive individuals, they were never silent when they detected any goods and individuals related to the cult that had once controlled human civilization behind the shadows!

The god pilot stationed in Maryun Ultima failed to detect that it was worth notifying the guard patrols.

The god pilot stationed in Bridgehead One made the same judgment.

Once the round of inspections had concluded, the gate conveyors flew to the outer system of the busy trade nexus before they reached a large planet.

There, the gate conveyors began the lengthy process of transferring their cargo to the other trade ships of the Rigel-Ovis Trading Company.

Most of the bulk goods entered the cargo holds of the smaller but far more defensible mass conveyors.

The more high-end and delicate goods were brought to smaller, faster and more luxurious transportation vessels instead.

Soon, these trade vessels formed into different convoys before setting off to various different destinations of the Red Ocean.

Each of them moved to one of several upper zones that fell under the Red Ocean Union.

For a long time, the statues stored in one of those seemingly normal cargo ships remained lifeless and dormant.

Three weeks passed as the convoy traveled increasingly further away from Bridgehead One.

It was only then that one the statues started to exhibit unusual behavior!

Cracks began to form across its smooth and polished surface. These cracks began to web across the entire surface before the upper layer shattered into pieces!

A robed figure that looked much different from the brave warrior depicted by the original statue had emerged!

A bit of stony complexion still covered his skin. The older man struggled hard to complete his transformation and remove every trace of inorganic substance!

The cargo container soon opened up. An unassuming spacer entered the cramped space and bowed in front of the recovered robed figure.

"Welcome to the Red Ocean, esteemed seeker. Our plan appears to have worked. Neither of the two abominations have discovered your presence. It was the right decision to send you here so shortly after the arrival of the Rubarthan abomination."

The Seeker of the Earth Shrine nodded in an imperious manner.

Though his expression looked calm, he understood extremely well that it was never a simple matter to sneak someone as powerful as him through the beyonder gates!

Several of his colleagues had already been caught in the past. Each of them had been forced to end their lives in order to take their secrets to their graves!

The Five Scrolls Compact had never successfully smuggled over a keeper at his strength level!

In fact, Seeker Leorax Remanos only managed to pull it off because he transformed himself into stone several years ago and continuously maintained this state without taking any other actions.

Only this way would he be able to disperse all of his extraordinary traces and camouflage himself as a regular stone statue!

Though the man disliked how much time he lost on this endeavor, the agents that had managed to take root in the Red Ocean had not remained idle!

"List." The Earth Keeper spoke.

The spacer nodded and projected a large and extensive list of names.

"We have performed an exhaustive search for any human or organization that may be involved with the possible arrival of the first immortal god to return to Old Earth. We have tried to whittle down the list as best as we could by conducting our own limited investigations, but we are still left with over 30,000 cults and religious organizations centered around our mother planet."

Seeker Leorax did not look surprised. He expected as much.

"Expand your investigations. Now that I am here, we can accelerate the buildup of our forces in this dwarf galaxy. I shall take part in the investigations myself. The Holy Son of our Earth Shrine expects to see a result, and we must not keep him waiting for long."

The Earth Keeper skimmed through the list and decided to pay a visit to the groups that ranked at the top.

He couldn't be bothered to visit all of the lesser organizations. The name of the Aduc Family briefly appeared on the scrolling list before the projection scrolled past without anyone taking notice.