The lightning baptism continued. Ves and his incarnations continued to grow stronger in ways that made him fearful of how much of his original self would be left at his end. Although he had already made peace with the fact that he had sacrificed his humanity, the depth and scope of the transformations went way beyond anything he could have anticipated from the start! He did not believe the scope and magnitude of punishment by lightning was normal by any means. The reason why it was so much bigger and more destructive was because Ves had lived a more eventful life than most entities despite his relative youth. "It also doesn't help that I never received any proper warning!" Nothing in his knowledge base taught him how to defend, mitigate or avoid the punishment from 'the heavens'. Unlike his prior interactions with the Milky Way Galaxy and the Red Ocean Galaxy, the System was no longer able to provide him with any further VIP treatment. This suggested that the lightning storm was sent out by a different and potentially greater authority! Ves truly couldn't imagine what sort of living existence could exceed the power and authority of an entire galaxy. Was it a galaxy group? A supercluster? Perhaps the force that was responsible for forming this lightning storm might be standing for the entire universe! That sent a bolt of fright through his mind. Ves could never possibly challenge a living entity of that magnitude! He recalled his earlier words and would have sweated if his sweat glands hadn't been dried out by the continuous electrical shocks. Why did he taunt such a powerful existence? He could never withstand the power of a great existence once it directed more of its attention in his direction! While Ves did not renounce any of his principles and beliefs, he was not as stubborn and inflexible as a high-ranking mech pilot. He knew when to bend and keep his head down when he was confronted by an overwhelming party. He had done so towards the Bright Republic, the Friday Coalition, the Hexadric Hegemony up to the Mech Trade Association. Ves merely bided his time during the moments where he bent the knee. He had already surpassed a couple of those parties by this time, and he had no doubt he would surpass the rest as long as he experienced enough growth. No matter who was responsible for sending out this unjust and illegal punishment mechanism, Ves would eventually ascend high enough to be in a position to punch the culprit in the face in person! Of course, that was a matter for the far future. He needed to solve his immediate problem first! Employing Blinky was just a temporary solution. While his companion spirit was visibly growing stronger and more capable, the same problem existed as before. He and his cats couldn't keep up with the growth in power of the incoming lightning bolts! Ves performed a lot of mental calculations that compared the growth of his ability to resist the incoming destruction energy to the growth in power of the incoming lightning bolts. Since the lightning storm appeared to be increasing the power of consecutive lightning strikes on a linear scale, it was quite easy for him to calculate how long it would take before his defenses might get overwhelmed. "I have 7 minutes and 33 seconds to come up with a solution!" Ves grew nervous again. Although the recent changes enabled him to tolerate the lightning strikes a lot better than before, it wouldn't take long before his flesh would start to get increasingly more fried. A huge amount of pressure piled onto his shoulders. His thoughts were racing as he tried his best to figure out a means to strengthen his defenses further. "It's as if I am thrown back into a design tournament again." The circumstances were familiar to him. He was put into a position where he had way too little time to come up with a proper solution to the current problem. There was no way that Ves could come up with a way to cobble together a proper means to resist the escalating power of the lightning strikes. Material objects didn't seem to make a difference and his inability to leave the Sacred Hearth prevented him from buying an emergency solution from the Divine Bazaar. Ves could only work with what he had at the moment, which wasn't much. A normal person would have despaired and given up on the spot. A competent mech designer was different, though! This wasn't his first rodeo. He already understood the attitude he needed to assume to dig his way out of this hole. "If I don't have the time to come up with a proper solution, then I'll just have to resort to a quick and dirty one instead!" Ves needed to think outside the box and make use of any or every resource at his disposal. He first examined his body. There was hardly anything that was originally human about his half-alien body. His genes and biology had been altered to the point where he was like a beast in human form, but even that was not enough to resist the power of high-level destruction. Only his Jutland organ was able to fare well under the circumstances, but that only compromised a small part of his body composition. He then glanced at his Unending Regalia and noted how little it contributed to his defense. Neither its Unending alloy nor its B-stone components played any role in blocking the incoming strikes. The only contribution it made to his defense was futilely trying to ease his overburdened body by regulating the internal temperature and injecting his body with useless medicinal substances. He glanced at his two cats. Both of his feline incarnations were doing much better at resisting the incoming energies. There wasn't much he could do to improve Blinky's efficiency. The poor Star Cat was already working as hard as he could. Ves had no way to improve his companion spirit's alien-derived digestion system because he did not understand any of its working principles. It might as well be a black box as far as he was concerned! "I need to remedy that in the future." His cyborg cat presented a much more optimistic sight. He had personally designed and fabricated it not too long ago. The living divine artifact which was growing increasingly more conscious and aware of its own existence might be undergoing a massive qualitative transformation, but its fundamental concept should still be the same! "Upgrading my cyborg cat's capabilities is the key to surviving this lightning storm!" Ves concluded. So far, his cyborg cat was doing an excellent job absorbing the bulk of the lightning strikes and using all of the incoming power to grow stronger. As more and more of the Milky Way and the Red Ocean's galactic energies integrated into the cyborg cat, it began to develop new and stronger traits that helped in different ways. The boost provided by the Milky Way largely increased his cyborg cat's spiritual foundation. It became dramatically more powerful and resilient, allowing it to resist the escalating lightning strikes for a long time. The boost provided by the Red Ocean partially strengthened the spiritual foundation as well, but also induced many spontaneous upgrades to the organic and mechanical halves of the cyborg cat. Many points that Ves previously considered to be rough and crude were gradually becoming smoother and more refined. As Ves paid closer attention to how the changes were not only improving the existing parts of his cyborg cat, but also spawning new components in a spontaneous manner, he suddenly came up with a radical idea! "I got it! It will be risky and crazy, but as long as it works, who cares?!" Ves transmitted the command to disengage his body from his Unending Regalia. Once he hopped out and tried to maintain his balance on one foot by leaning onto his hollow armor, he waited until he got struck by another lightning bolt to confirm that he wasn't incurring more damage. Now that he confirmed that his situation hadn't changed all that much, he proceeded with the next steps. He first retrieved a backup knife from one of the hidden weapon holsters of his Unending Regalia. Now that he had a sharp blade in his hand, he carefully dropped his body to the temple floor and lay in a prone position. He activated a command to his smart uniform that caused it to part in the middle and expose his torso. At this time, he transmitted a silent command to his Unending Regalia that prompted it to activate a projection of the current state of his body. This was no ordinary mirror image, though. It was a wireframe model that showed exceptional detail of all of his internal organs. Tiny information panels showed various essential pieces of data. Ves studied the wireframe model and the data carefully. The enormous upgrades that he had already received massively increased his analytical capabilities, so it hardly took any time for him to perform the necessary calculations and formulate his plan to excruciating detail. Though he would have wanted to spend more time setting up this operation, time was ticking. He lifted his backup knife and pointed the tip on his chest at a predetermined angle. "Here goes nothing!" He plunged the knife into his thick flesh, trusting his sharp blade to cut through his reinforced and augmented flesh. "AAAHHHH!" The pain of stabbing his own chest was greater than enduring the lightning strikes, but he could not afford to get overwhelmed by the pain. He gritted his teeth and continued to observe the projection of the state of his body. He coordinated his movements as best as possible to use his knife to widen the initial incision and continue to dig deeper into his chest. Soon, he could see that the tip of his knife was closing in on the Jutland organ that occupied the place where his heart should have been. This was where he needed to be more careful. Even as a copious amount of blood leaked from the awful-looking wound in his chest, he did not rush his next move but minutely adjusted the angle of his backup knife until he was satisfied. "Now!" He plunged his knife deeper, causing it to tear into his Jutland organ! The spike of pain that surged from his chest was so great that he almost lost consciousness right then and there! It took a lot of willpower and determination for him to maintain his wits under these circumstances. The Jutland organ was too important to his current body. Damaging it in any way had major repercussions and might actually cause it to stop functioning entirely! The only reason why he built up the courage to operate on himself like this was because his body received a regular influx of creation energy. Even now, the remnant power of the lightning strikes were working hard to stem the bleeding and close up the wounds that he had just made. Of course, the severity of his current wounds meant that his injuries couldn't be solved right away, and that gave Ves enough time to complete this operation. Ves made another painful stab and finally managed to slice off a small but significant slice of his own Jutland organ! He wheezed a lot harder. His body weakened considerably after sustaining such major wounds, but Ves was confident it would be able to pull through under these exceptional circumstances. He had to wiggle his knife at different angles in order to pull out the slice of his own Jutland organ out of his own body. As soon as he pulled out his blade with a part of his own organ resting on the blade, he raised it up as if he was presenting a plate. "Bon appetit!" His cyborg cat dove down and ate the Jutland organ piece in a single bite! Ves had designed his cat so that anything it ate would enter his biological belly, where it could break down any organic matter and either use the nutrients to upgrade its biological components or void it all out of its backside. Fortunately, his cyborg cat did not consider his own flesh to be a waste product. Soon after eating its first meal, the living divine product began to glow brighter as his heart underwent a substantial transformation. 𝑓𝘳𝑒𝑒𝓌𝘦𝘣𝘯ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝑚 With the help of the massive amounts of creation energy that it was receiving from the lightning storm, the cyborg cat was rapidly able to grow its own Jutland organ that was completely adapted to its own biology! Meanwhile, Ves continued to wheeze as his wounds were being mended at an accelerated pace due to the energies he received. As his flesh began to mend, he could even see that they were changing into another form that made his body a lot more compatible with phasewater. The galactic energy originating from the Red Ocean was beginning to make its mark on his being, causing him to resemble the indigenous alien races to a much greater degree than before! Ves had mixed feelings about these changes. Though he could definitely sense that his body had grown a lot stronger and capable of surviving grievous wounds like the one he had just inflicted upon himself, he also feared what might happen if others found out about his radical physiological mutations! "I've gone native!" He complained!