?Chapter 6461 A Target On Her Back! The master plan devised by the Evolution Witch and the Oblivion Empress was brilliant, but it was not perfect. A perfect plan did not leave any room for failure. Whatever the two women had in mind, their shameless exploitation of Ves' mech designer accomplishments actually put his living divine artifact in a lot of danger! Here in the Red Ocean, the opposition against Carmine mechs was decisively muted because the war atmosphere suppressed a lot of infighting. Few people wanted to tear down a solution that could potentially give red humans a better chance to survive the ongoing war. Such circumstances did not exist in the old galaxy. The leaders over there were much more comfortable and secure in their positions. Many of them prized stability over disruptive innovation. The policies and ideals of the MTA Preserving Order Faction and the MTA Guidance Faction happened to be very popular among the first-raters who resided in the galactic center! Given their rejection towards radical changes that threatened to upend the status quo, there should be plenty of powerful people and groups that desired to put an end to the spread of Carmine mechs! Destroying the P.P. and killing Veronica was the simplest and most direct way to solve the problem that threatened their interests! In fact, Ves already figured out that the mechers were not his worst enemies. Carmine mechs still offered a lot of benefits to the MTA, the most important of which was to make mechs a lot more dominant in human society and culture than before! The real enemy of Carmine mechs was the Common Fleet Alliance! Unlike the smaller, weaker and much more desperate Red Fleet, the original CFA did not suffer the repeated setbacks and beatdowns that could force them to reevaluate their existing policies. The original fleeters were probably several times more arrogant, and could not tolerate any new challenges to their precious warships! Even if the CFA kept itself apart from the rest of human society, there was no way the original fleeters would want to see warships fade into complete irrelevance due to the rapid proliferation of Carmine mechs! The Oblivion Gate Consortium therefore stood on the verge of provoking a powerful enemy in the Milky Way Galaxy. If the Common Fleet Alliance decided to wipe out the P.P. as well as Veronica, then thousands of CFA battleships would descend upon the Nyxian Gap! Ves did not have confidence that the hazardous environment of the Nyxian Gap would be enough to keep out those powerful warships. The fleeters might not have anything comparable to god pilots, but they mastered a lot of powerful technologies. There was no way that the Evolution Witch could rely on her home ground advantage to keep out one of the two hegemons of the Milky Way! While Ves was willing to believe that the Evolution Witch and his mother had thought about this consequence in advance and planned to gather enough allies to block the CFA somehow, that still did not remove the target on Veronica's back! Losing Veronica might not kill Ves, but he would lose his only physical means of access to the Milky Way. He would no longer be able to keep in touch with his mother, his father and his eldest sister in an intimate fashion. Ves also feared that letting Veronica die might also inflict permanent damage to his Spirituality. She was literally a fragment of his Divine Core, so the connection between the two was stronger and deeper than that of a Blood Pact. Suffice to say, Ves did not like it that the two powerful women had come up with a dangerous scheme and dragged him into it as if his opinion didn't matter. Even if he was willing to accept the risks and volunteer his services to the Oblivion Gate Consortium. it galled him that they did not even bother to ask for his consent! "MOTHER!" Veronica transmitted over a communication channel as soon as her oversized form finally managed to approach the Black Oblivion Gate. Cynthia Larkinson continued to float besides the mysterious construct as if everything in this region of space was under her control. Hovering further away was Master Moira Willix. She barely paid attention to Veronica's approach. No matter how much she wanted to study a phase lord in cat form, her current project was far too important for her to get distracted. The Survivalist floated in front of a large and advanced workstation and processor module. She paid great attention to the diagnostics of not just the Black Oblivion Gate, but also the data produced by the Red Oblivion Gate located more than 50 million light-years away! Since the Superior Mother was anchored in the Red Ocean, it was easy for the design spirit to transmit large amounts of data from the Red Oblivion Gate to the Oblivion Empress, who subsequently passed the data directly to the workstation. This was extremely important for the success of the Oblivion Gate Project. As one of the key developers behind the radical tech of this project, it was vitally important that Master Willix expertly coordinated the settings of the two gates. It was impossible for the Dimensional Architect to operate the Red Oblivion Gate in isolation. The most the Star Designer could do was to ensure the components of the gate functioned properly. The real challenge had always been to connect two wormholes separated by an immense distance from each other. 𝐟𝕣𝕖𝐞𝐰𝕖𝚋𝐧𝗼𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝗰𝐨𝐦 The two gates needed to be perfectly aligned with each other. Their settings had to match each other with the lowest possible margin for error. The difficulty of doing this was as high as trying to align two toothpicks on a single invisible line when they were placed on the opposite sides of a planet! Even the slightest of deviations could completely ruin the alignment of the two Oblivion Gates! In fact, Master Willix had no confidence that she could align and configure the two gates perfectly, but the good news was that she was not alone. There was a significantly greater chance that her experiment would succeed! As long as the two Oblivion Gates successfully completed an exchange of goods across vast distances, Master Willix would finally be assured that she found a definite path to becoming a Star Designer. While there was no guarantee that she could solve all of the subsequent technological problems and successfully break through, having a clear path to her end destination was still far better than working in the darkness like she did in the prior decades! Finding a breakthrough opportunity was the entire reason why the Survivalist decisively abandoned the luxury and prosperity of the galactic center and moved all the way out to the galactic rim. She was not a woman afraid of hardships and challenges. She had rationally deduced long ago that coasting along would only ensure that she would become a respected Master Mech Designer. Star Designers existed on a completely higher level. Those that yearned to promote to this exalted rank needed to make sacrifices in their life and have the courage to take considerable risks. Now that she came close to reaching the beginning of the end, Master Willix had set everything aside, including greeting the cat incarnation of the mech designer she once taught. Veronica understood Master Willix's motivations pretty well, so she did not begrudge the Master's lack of reaction. The Beast of Fear was different. The monstrous god biomech possessed an intimidating God Kingdom. Even if he had reduced its fear factor to a very low level, Veronica still became jolted as soon as she came close enough! The controversial god pilot obviously did not hold any malice towards Veronica, but simply getting stared at by the 17 creepy eyeballs embedded into the monstrously organic grand work raised her hackles! That did not stop her from confronting Cynthia Larkinson! YOU KEEP ME IN THE DARK?! YOUR DECISION TO USE CARMINE MECHS AS A BARGAINING CHIP HAS TURNED ME INTO AN ARCHENEMY OF THE CFA! THE FLEETERS WILL OUT FOR BLOOD ONCE THEY HEAR WHAT HAS HAPPENED!" The Cyborg Cat's tirade did not elicit any reactions at all. The three collaborators paid no attention to Veronica and continued to hover around while fulfilling their own responsibilities. It was only after Veronica was about to give her mother another piece of her mind that the True God finally reacted! "Silence, child." Before Veronica knew it, her true body suddenly lost control of the surrounding space. A firm and irresistible force pressed onto her cybernetic body from all sides, causing it to fold and shrink until Veronica regained her normal cat size! The same omnidirectional force proceeded to shove Veronica over to Cynthia until the cat helplessly fell into her mother's embrace. Veronica became trapped! After trying and failing to squirm, phase or teleport her way out, she eventually gave up her futile struggle and allowed herself to be carried like her mother as if she was a little baby. "Mother." Veronica growled in both indignation and humiliation. "You owe me an explanation. You and the Evolution Witch." "Be patient, my child. This experiment is too important for us. This is not the time for you to hold a temper tantrum. You shall have your answers, but now." A temper tantrum?! Was that how her mother regarded Veronica's completely justified outrage?! Though the Cyborg Cat wanted to lash out so badly, she kept her mother's words in mind and forcibly held in her anger. No matter what, the Oblivion Gate Project had to succeed. Far too much precious resources had been invested in its development and construction. Any failure could have unpredictable and potentially catastrophic consequences. The timing of the activation of the two gates drew close. This became evident as Cynthia began to accumulate power while at the same time commanding the Nyxian Gap to channel energy into the Black Oblivion Gate! The specter of chained souls vaguely became visible as they diverted from the constant rotation in the Nyxian Gap and flew into the gate instead! The specters did not do so willingly. Many of the more lively and cognizant ones tried to divert their course, but the Beast of Fear slightly strengthened his hold on reality and forced the forgotten souls to serve their destiny as fuel! The Beast of Fear was able to exert absolute control over the souls that had little left but fear and other negative energies! As the captive specters burned themselves up by the thousands if not more, the chilling runes carved on the surface of the Black Oblivion Gate started to light up and exert their influence on the immediate environment. Veronica looked horrified. She had the illusion that the Black Oblivion Gate was literally being powered by the eons-old remnant souls that had gotten trapped inside the hazardous region. The entire notion of it freaked her out so much that she did not dare to utter a word about what she was witnessing. Fortunately, the Red Oblivion Gate was nowhere near as perverse. The medium-energy environment of the Red Ocean provided it with a much cleaner source of E energy to power its mystical components. A powerful energy vortex formed with the gate at the center. The high concentration of hyper materials along with the additional assistance of the Evolution Witch's God Kingdom made it so that the many runes of the Red Oblivion Gate began to glow and thrum with power! As the gates on both sides began to charge up in preparation to form wormholes at the same time, the Evolution Witch no longer kept the increasingly more impatient red humans waiting. "I have shared enough information about the Oblivion Gate Project. Now that both gates are fully charged, we shall soon begin our attempt to bridge the divide between our galaxies, if only briefly." The two Oblivion Gates had become charged with multiple forms of energy! Ves was able to gain a much better appreciation of what was happening because Veronica happened to be close to the Black Oblivion Gate! If not for the shielding and protection generated by the Oblivion Empress, Veronica would have become affected by the energetic manifestations! At this time, everyone involved truly could not spare their attention on anything else. They all needed to work in perfect coordination in order to make this attempt succeed! "It's about to begin!" "Please succeed!" "Is it wise for us to make contact with the Milky Way again?" "Let us hope that we do not make more enemies by opening up the Oblivion Gates."