Published at 3rd of July 2024 7:46 am

Chapter 6096 The Return of Gavin

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The notion that it might be possible for living mechs to achieve success in willpower cultivators and break through may sound crazy, but it was not an entirely baseless guess.

Ves was already convinced that his third order living mechs did not differ too much from humans in terms of ego, intelligence, learning ability and emotions.

The main reason why living mechs still possessed clear differences was because their 'bodies' were far too different from that of a flesh-and-blood human.

Even then, regular interfacing with their human mech pilots allowed every living mech to gain a more human perspective. The longer the two parties interfaced with each other, the more they started to resemble each other.

Ves even theorized that if mech pilots paired up with their living mechs for over several decades, they would eventually converge to the point where they could naturally attain a state of operation union!

This was like attaining most of the benefits of a Blood Pact without actually committing to a permanent life-changing contract!

He briefly winced.

It was incredibly regrettable that he was only able to turn the Ouroboros into a defective first order living mech at the time.

If the Ouroboros came into life as a proper second order or third order living mech at the time, then Ves would have been able to confirm his latest theory without needing to endure any delays!

Alas, Ves could only wait until his oldest surviving mechs aged for a few decades longer in order to verify whether this theory was correct.

He couldn't wait that long.

It appeared that there was no chance for him to create a fourth order living mech anytime soon.

Since that was the case, Ves set aside his thoughts on this subject and focused on more immediate matters.

As Ves continued to probe the Elegant Rage and work on his other projects in the following days, an important development occurred that compelled him to put down his work for a time.

The reason why he interrupted his work schedule was because a familiar assistant had finally returned!

"You're finally back!"

"I've returned, boss."

Gavin Neumann stepped out of the shuttle that had touched down in Diandi Base and presented himself before his employer before making a formal bow.

"You look… different."

"The Streon Ancient Clan has been generous enough to adequately prepare me for my duties ahead." Gavin said in a slightly stiffer and more formal tone than before. "The custom augmentation suite has digitized my brain to over 60 percent, allowing me to learn and process data much more efficiently than before. The inclusion of a rare and powerful Mentalist Crystal has produced numerous new effects that has not only improved my mental performance even further, but has also mitigated the personality loss effect that is common to heavily digitized minds."

When Ves took a closer look at Gavin, he was able to sense a familiar vibe from his assistant's head. There was a fairly powerful and concentrated hyper material that possessed the very rare mind attribute.

The effect of combining a Mentalist Crystal with a brain augment produced strong synergies that could not be attained by cranial implants developed in the previous age!

Ves had already witnessed Gloriana turning into a genius who became more terrifying than a typical first-class mech designer.

He had good reasons to suspect that Gavin would doubtlessly become immensely more competent as well!

At the very least, Ves no longer had any concerns that the former native of Cloudy Curtain would no longer be able to keep up with and be relegated to a lesser position.

It became increasingly more difficult for Ves to hang onto his old friends and family. People with poor and inadequate backgrounds such as Commander Melkor Larkinson were becoming increasingly more irrelevant because they could only do so much to uplift themselves.

Everyone had a limit. Without a fantastic or outrageously expensive opportunity such as Ednet training or the Streon Ancient Clan's offer to upgrade Gavin, it was difficult to imagine other third-raters and second-raters becoming first-raters.

Ves smiled. "I am glad to see that you have come back healthy and without any obvious personality defects. Tell me about what you are capable of now that you have upgraded your brain and stuff."

"I won't elaborate too much on the hardware upgrades as I they are mainly technical." Gavin said. "What is more important is that the Streon Ancient Clan not only dumped a large amount of information packages in my cybernetic brain, but also spent a few months giving me crash courses on many different subjects. These lesson packages range from the etiquette of every first-rate colonial state to the extremely lengthy history of human civilization starting from the Age of Stars. I should be able to communicate with other first-class parties much better than before. I can even help you establish relations with powerful groups that are usually difficult to approach."

The returning personal assistant continued to explain much of what he gained and learned over the course of his stay at the Streon Ancient Clan.

The two strode through Diandi Base and passed numerous first-class multipurpose mechs until they entered a structure.

Once inside, they moved to an upper office where Gavin would be working from now that he was ready to resume his duties again.

If Gavin had not agreed to augment himself to such an extreme extent, then one of the recent hires would have probably been able to secure a promotion to Ves' chief secretary.

Now that the original personal assistant returned, it probably wasn't necessary to consider this measure anymore.

Gavin briefly reintroduced himself to Ves' secretariat, which had recently undergone an expansion in order to handle the Premier Branch's growing relations with first-class institutions.

If Gavin had not agreed to augment himself to such an extreme extent, then one of the recent hires would have probably been able to secure a promotion to Ves' chief secretary.

Now that the original personal assistant returned, it probably wasn't necessary to consider this measure anymore.

Ves prized loyalty and friendship.

While it was important to have competent and capable subordinates by his side, Ves could not ignore the value of trust and familiarity.

Even if Gavin performed worse than the native first-raters, Ves would still stick with his old assistant because they understood each other the best!

After Gavin reestablished himself in the Premier Branch, he joined Ves to another office where he began to speak more about his experiences as a guest of the Streon Ancient Clan.

"The Streon Ancient Clan's foundation in the Red Ocean is much stronger than that of the Devos Ancient Clan." Gavin described. "The differences in size, strength and wealth are not so exaggerated back in the Greater Terran United Confederation back in the Milky Way, but the Streons have been much more aggressive in establishing colonies in the Red Ocean. The primary driver for that is the Renewer of Terra."

"General Axelar Streon."

"From what I have seen, the Terran ace pilot truly deserves his title. He is driven by the need to reform the stagnant Terran culture and traditions. There are many advantages to possessing a long and storied history, but the Terrans have also become extremely stagnant in many aspects. The Renewer of Terra is hardly the only Terran to diagnose and acknowledge this problem, but he is one of the few who possesses the courage to wage a public reform campaign."

"It is a pity that most Terrans aren't receptive to overthrowing millenia's worth of accumulated wisdom and traditions." Ves scoffed.

00:09

"That was true in the previous age, but the Renewer of Terra is gaining more and more traction. The Terrans that dared to relocate to the Red Ocean are much younger and less vested in the old power structures. The radical changes wrought by the Great Severing has produced an additional impetus for change. Even the stodgiest Terrans are forced to recognize that their reality has changed. The Red War is draining their resources quickly."

"Oh? Are they doing that badly?"

"Don't believe in the news. They always try to put the most positive spin on events." Gavin spoke. "Since I have received the privilege of accompanying the Senechal on some of his work days, I have gained an insider look of how the war is being waged from the Terran perspective. From what I am able to surmise, most battles end up in their favor, but there are always losses."

"How bad is it, Gavin?"

"The attrition is not that high, but that is mostly because many Terran forces are relying on the assets and resources they originally imported from the old galaxy. What is concerning is that their replenishment rate is not that high. Once the aliens inflict a large amount of losses onto Terran forces, it becomes much harder to replenish the frontline units with mechs and mech pilots of the same quality."

Ves frowned. He understood what Gavin was describing. He already suspected that this would be the case, but perhaps he underestimated how badly the Terrans would be able to endure the losses.

"I get that the Terrans and the other major forces are unable to replenish their losses over time due to the limited manpower and resources available in human-occupied space. However, there should be enough troops to buy time for us to change the status quo in our favor. There are only a couple more years to go before the Deep Strike Plan can truly kick off. That should dramatically improve our circumstances."

"The native aliens won't give us that time. Have you forgotten about the rumors about an upcoming alien offensive? The Streons are taking it very seriously. They have reasonable suspicions that the Red Cabal will make a serious commitment to break through the border zones. The aliens are done with waiting and accumulating. They want to initiate a strong push to strangle us before we can continue to improve our tech and engage in tricky gambits such as deep strike expeditions. The Sreons already managed to collect intelligence that many phase lords and phase whales have gathered on the alien side of the border. Once they go in all at once, there is a strong suspicion that they will attempt to overwhelm our god pilots."

"It's impossible to truly defeat our god pilots." Ves retorted. "Our greatest protectors and champions completely thrashed the ancient phase whales during Operation Night Jazz. I hardly think they can do any better, especially when they are no longer fighting on their home ground anymore."

"Much of the reason why those ancient phase whales turned into giant carcasses is because they were too complacent. They did not respect the threat posed by our god mechs as they should. Now that they know better, they have definitely come more prepared this time. The Red Cabal is prepared to make a sacrifice in order to break our defenses and raid all of our vulnerable colonies and settlements. The native aliens know that as long as thousands of alien fleets invade our star systems at once, there is no possible way that 8 god pilots and 8 dreadnoughts can hunt them all down fast enough."

That was the right strategy to adopt against red humanity. From what it sounded like, the aliens completely gave up on trying to match the humans in quality, and instead went all-out in quantity in order to overwhelm the numerically inferior defenders.

So what if god pilots were invincible in combat? They could never show up on hundreds of different battlefields at once!

"So this is why the Red Two and all of the other major powers are constantly encouraging smaller players such as us to participate in the war effort." Ves realized. "In order to prevent the alien's shotgun strategy from working, we must try to keep up in quantity as well. However, we won't be able to beat the native aliens in this aspect."

"It is not as bad as it sounds, boss. The native aliens have many more forces than us, but they cannot justify the decision to relocate all of their warships and phasefighters to the front. They still have to defend their core star systems and so on. Still, the native alien races are so much more numerous than the human race that even a fraction of their total military forces are already able to crush us in terms of numbers!"

"If that is the case, how can we possibly keep this offensive at bay?"

"By relying on fortifications, for one."

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