?Chapter 6370 Nanomachines and the Elements - CORRECTED While Lucky remained utterly confused in a chamber full of dull white crystals, the battle outside of the cosmopolitan flagship was intensifying! The cosmopolitan and native aliens fleet had already begun this battle on the backfoot, but now that the largest cosmopolitan sub-capital warship lost her Mentalist Crystal, her performance dropped by a noticeable margin! Her responses became slower, her predictions became less accurate and she was able to provide less good directions to the surviving mechs and escort ships. Although the cosmopolitans were far too radical to give in to despair, they nonetheless fought more urgently than before when they noticed that they were suffering losses at a faster rate than before. "Our lives may be forfeit, but we shall ultimately prevail!" "There is no way a single junior ace mech can defeat the lesser and greater gods of the alien community!" "For a pluralistic society!" If the native alien phase gods heard any of the cries made by the cosmopolitans that died in droves, they exhibited no concern at all. They had more pressing matters to deal with. Not only were they being assailed by warship-grade gun batteries on all sides, they also struggled to deal with the human champions that stubbornly refused to acknowledge their inferiority! The Dark Zephyr should never be able to hold out against a greater phase lord, let alone two, but the cutting-edge first-class ace mech was not only astonishingly fast and agile, but also stuffed with so much advanced technologies that it was frankly ridiculous! Not only that, but Saint Tusa also became more adept with handling the tier 3 Destroyer spear. The Dark Zephyr held the weapon with greater confidence as he fearlessly threatened to disintegrate anything it touched. From the moment the Arena Lord of Ya'gwasa lost his strong but ultimately fallible spatial barrier, the duel began to enter a critical new stage! Tusa grinned at this development! Finally he was able to inflict real damage on this overgrown bastard! "Your protective shell is gone! Will you still have the courage to persist in your attack now that your own body is on the line?!" To his credit, the Arena Lord of Ya'gwasa did not appear to back down in the slightest. The greater phase lord responded with his species version of a grin and smacked the side of his Saint Piercer against the side of his raiment. "$#&#&@#." "YOU AND YOUR MORTAL MINIONS HAVE FOUGHT SO HARD ONLY TO OVERCOME A SINGLE LAYER OF MY DEFENSES. FOR THAT, YOU HAVE EARNED MY RECOGNITION, YOUNG PINK-SKINNED FALSE GOD. HOWEVER, IT IS A MISTAKE TO THINK YOU HAVE DRIVEN ME TO DEFEAT. IT ONLY TAKES ONE DIRECT HIT FOR ME TO END YOUR LIFE. YOU HAVE ALREADY FAILED TO EVADE MY ATTACKS ONCE. IT IS ONLY A MATTER OF TIME BEFORE YOU FAIL AGAIN. AS FOR YOU, YOUR INFERNAL WEAPON IS TOO SMALL TO DEFEAT ME WITH A SINGLE BLOW. MY TOLERANCE FOR PAIN IS FAR BEYOND WHAT YOU CAN IMAGINE." "Keep boasting, you cow!" As the Dark Zephyr began to use his tier 3 Destroyer spear to peel off the greater phase lord's gigantic raiment in cooperation with many elements of the Bluejay Fleet, another confrontation started to heat up as well. The 5 arche phase lords had endured a huge amount of punishment, but still managed to rely on their abnormally tough constitutions to stay in the fight. Yet now that their main adversary had somehow turned into a metallic tiger-like creature surrounded by a cleak of darkness, the lesser phase lords began to feel much more oppressed than before. This was not a coincidence. When Ves recalled the much-expanded hyper nanomachine plagues, he initially planned to mold them into a larger and more massive version of his previous raiment. He had sacrificed 200 Ascension Points to exchange for this fighting method. Yet if he was being honest with himself, he had no particular love or passion for this fighting style. He only exchanged the enlightenment fruit because his freely scalable Oceancaller could moonlight as a staff. It was a choice made out of practical reasons. Though Ves ended up learning a lot of lessons on how he should harness the power of darkness like a martial qi cultivator, he never became fully satisfied with his performance. He had only just discovered his combat system, but did not have the time or practice to realize its potential. While Ves was grateful to the enlightenment fruit for instilling him with the fundamental skills and sensibilities of a warrior, did not feel all that confident in his ability to defeat all 5 phase lords by wielding the Oceancaller as a staff. The high-level artifact was designed to act as a musical instrument, not as a blunt force instrument used to bash in skulls! As a mech designer, he always found it incredibly painful whenever people misused his products. He felt it was disrespectful if he continued to make use of the replica of the Oceancaller as anything but a flute. The problem was that he did not have a lot of good options available. He would have preferred to wield a real staff instead of using this tool like one, but he did not have any large and solid rods on hand that possessed the same degree of physical durability as this seemingly indestructible artifact. The mismatch in attributes made him feel even less good about wielding the Oceancaller. His control and affinity over the water element was too weak to employ it on a battle of this scale. Any water spouts he managed to launch towards his opponents could not leave even a single scratch on the archeshells of the enemy phase lords! Ves never expected that salvation would come in the form of a weapon of mass destruction. By hijacking and expanding the Red Fleet's infamous hyper nanomachine plagues, Ves had not only managed to define a combat system that fit inclinations exceptionally well, but also liberated him from the limitations that hindered him before! Now that the nanomachine plagues had devoured a lot of fallen small craft and starship debris, they had reproduced many times over, causing them to expand to much more usable quantities! As Ves began to welcome the return of the expanded swarm and feel the intimacy of the dark and malevolent spiritualities that gave them a renewed life and purpose, he became so swept by his emotions that he chose to follow his whims. His logic told him to form an oversized mech out of smart metal. With so much more nanomachines at his disposal, he could attract a lot more darkness-attributed E energy, thereby allowing him to execute the extraordinary staff techniques of Dark Apostle Self Defense Manual with greater potency. Yet... his heart was not in it. There was so much more potential to the completely obedient hyper nanomachine plagues than that. The defining advantage of smart metal systems was that they could theoretically assume any shape. There was no reason for them to stick to a generic humanoid shape. There was no reason for Ves to force himself to disrespect the Oceancaller any further just to harness the power of darkness. A Dark Apostle was not a fighter. Not truly. They were heralds of darkness, and gained the knowledge as well as the 'right' to wield its terrible power in order to spread the glory of their ominous dark god! The point was that they did not have to insist on wielding a staff if they had to fight. It was just one of the many options available to them. If a Dark Apostle had no talent in the staff and preferred to approach his battles from a completely different angle, then that was completely okay! This was why Ves did not feel bad for abandoning the humanoid form. From the moment he forced the nanomachine plagues to form a larger and hollow copy of his old Devil Tiger design, everything just clicked. Whether it was because the nanomachine plagues assumed a replica of his earliest. masterwork mech or because the feline form just fascinated him, Ves felt more at home on the battlefield than ever before! The sheer sense of comfort and satisfaction for donning a raiment that assumed the properties of a tiger mech clearly affected the living nanomachine plagues in turn. They became stimulated by his emotions and began to imitate the design schematics transmitted by Ves more accurately at this scale. They even managed to replicate the performance of more sophisticated parts of the later versions of the Devil Tiger. For example, energy claws began to extend from the paws! Infused with darkness energy, the energy claws not only threatened to inflict a lot of material damage, but also gained a corrosive component that made the original Devil Tiger so difficult to fight against! Ves felt as if he was inadvertently following his father's footsteps. The difference was that while his father needed more time to become adept at piloting a tiger mech, Ves already felt at home with this feline form! After all, his companion spirit Blinky assumed the form of a spiritual cat. Ves could rely on that familiarity to instantly become proficient at 'piloting this nanomachine plague cat construct! Ves felt the need to bestow his spontaneous creation with a name. "Let's call you the Devil T-, no, the Devil Cat!" He instantly felt the need to design and produce a proper version of the Devil Cat! Ves found it incredibly frustrating that he would not be allowed to keep all of these nanomachines if he managed to survive and win this battle. The nanomachine plagues possessed a finite lifespan that could not be changed. Even if he managed to get rid of this hard limitation somehow, the mechers and the fleeters would never allow him to retain control over a weapon of mass destruction that could easily wipe out an entire populated planet if he lost control over their unruly existences! Perhaps this was for the better. If Ves wanted to design a proper nanomachine raiment for himself, he could work to gather the high-quality materials that matched his requirements even better and design the nanomachines with many more useful features. Ves even felt tempted to design the Devil Cat as the first smart metal Carmine mech and form a Bloodline Pact with this wonderful creation! His eyes widened as he became inspired by this idea! This setup could definitely form the basis of an elemental Carmine mech based on the metal element! In order to form a Blood Pact with a smart metal mech, Ves came up with the bold idea of letting a portion of the nanomachines circulate throughout his true body! This was not an impossibility as there were numerous cybernetic enhancements that relied on fortifying the blood of the recipients with non-toxic nanomachines in order to function properly. It was a lot more challenging for human bodies to cope with the presence of nanomachines made out of a lot of toxic metals, but this was not an insurmountable problem. What mattered was that the idea had a lot of potential! He quickly tried to come up with a dignified name for this new variation of elemental Carmine mechs. A suggestion popped in his mind. He tentatively decided to refer to it as a Polymetal mech. If this approach of an elemental Carmine mech turned out to be viable, then Ves was definitely motivated to see it into fruition. That was because Ves was determined to become his own first customer! Smart metal systems fit so well in his personal combat system that he could not allow anyone to enjoy the fruits of his labor before himself! In order to design a Polymetal mech that was worthy of his expectations, Ves needed to meet a lot of demanding requirements. It was not that difficult for Ves to design and produce a good smart metal mech these days, but was a lot more challenging to turn it into the strongest and most dependable protective raiment in the Red Ocean. He did not possess a specialization in smart metal, so he needed to gain the cooperation of a specialist that could design the best possible nanomachines for himself. They not only needed to incorporate hyper technology, but also a more advanced form of phasewater technology. The nanomachines had to be able to resist much stronger spatial effects in order to remain functional when working with a phase lord!