Chapter 7159: The Corrupting Orb – Mass Release Day 2/5 After studying the Corrupting Orb from a short distance for a few minutes, Ves finally decided to take a chance. He bent down and carefully grasped the orb in his hand. It felt smooth and cold to the touch. Ves felt as if he held an orb of ice in his hands. He could already feel a bit of his body warmth siphoning away from his palms. If he was a regular human, then he risked freezing his hands if he kept hold of the orb long enough. As a human phase lord, the tiny amount of warmth passing from his body was trivial to the point where he could ignore it entirely. “Interesting.” Direct contact with the orb drastically magnified its corrupting influence. Already, he could feel much of the darkness energy and other negative energies pouring straight into Spirituality. It was as if the orb eagerly wanted to punish the individual that was foolish enough to grab hold of its form! “Mrow!” However, much of the negative energies failed to affect Ves in any obvious manner. His darkness affinity meant that he did not feel any repulsion towards the darkness spewed by the Corrupting Orb. Ves could even feel that he could absorb the darkness so long as he was willing to put in the hard work of digesting it and putting his own imprint on the energy. However, he was not completely immune to the other negative energies. Strange impulses of sadness, anger, disgust, irritation and so on began to affect his mood as the Corrupting Orb tried to suppress his positive traits while amplifying his negative traits. It was only due to his strong Spirituality, his high alertness and his excellent mental resilience that he was able to keep most of the detrimental influence at bay. Even then, Ves was disappointed to find out that he was not completely immune to these effects. If they affected him long enough, he would lower his guard sooner or later. “Momentary exposure to this orb should not be dangerous to me.” He concluded. “Other people may behave irrationally when exposed to its contamination, but as long as they are removed quickly enough, the effects shouldn’t be permanent.” “What if the exposure is more prolonged?” Gloriana asked as she still stood in the distance. “Then they may irrevocably become changed or rather corrupted by this orb.” He answered in an ominous tone. “It is difficult to recover from the damage that this artifact can do. Only time, therapy and family can heal such scars.” “And if the orb keeps corrupting its victims? Can it actually kill people after they have become exposed long enough?” She wondered. Ves thought about it. He could roughly estimate how it could affect ordinary folk by measuring how it affected him and Blinky. He could roughly foresee that the mind and spirit would become increasingly more contaminated with darkness and negativity. Everything positive and neutral would get damaged or squeezed away, allowing the Corrupting Orb’s malevolent energies to claim more ground. When the saturation of those evil energies reached 100 percent, no human would be able to remain the same anymore. They had changed in such a fundamental way that they could no longer be called human anymore! Yet that didn’t necessarily mean they died at that point. Ves could very well foresee a scenario where they would still live on… as evil entities as opposed to normal humans. He suddenly became reminded of a type of entity that was entirely comprised of negative energies. “Demons!” Ves gasped as he looked at the Corrupting Orb in a new light. “This can be used to convert living subjects into demons through prolonged exposure! It is like employing the Soul Whip but on an automatic basis!” The Soul Whip Technique that Ves acquired from enlightenment allowed him and his eldest sister to convert captive souls of humans and aliens into demons. However, this was a very tedious process. Helena certainly did not appreciate the need to allocate a significant part of her attention and power to whipping harvested souls into demons that were filled with hatred and other negative thoughts. This was a necessary step to produce the Minor Demons needed to produce more powerful variants with the help of the Demon Mixers. If Ves and Helena began to make use of the Corrupting Orb, then they may be able to automate this process, allowing them to churn out a stable output of Minor Demons which could subsequently be put into the Demon Mixers to undergo ritualistic gu cultivation. So long as Ves created more Demon Mixers, he could scale up the production of higher quality demons, thereby enabling him to produce a greater quantity of D-mechs and D-arms. “This orb is not that powerful.” He said as he eyed it with a critical gaze. “It is clearly made to be used at an infantry scale. It doesn’t look like I can make it larger like the Oceancaller. This means that its potency is limited if I attempt to use it against a phase lord.” “You sound dissatisfied.” Ketis said. “Not at all. I am just pointing out a limitation. I am actually really satisfied with it even if it may not necessarily be useful in our current situation. This Corrupting Orb can greatly facilitate my Demoncasting work. Besides, I can still use it as a weapon if I am willing to take a few risks. For example, I can use it as an extraordinary power source for a larger weapon or mech. There is no rule that forces me to use the orb as a standalone artifact. It actually seems rather underwhelming this way.” Gloriana nodded in agreement. “I have been entertaining the same ideas. The Phobos can become a much more powerful machine if we embed this into the machine. If you can channel its energies into the GEIST System, you can drastically increase the potency and the growth rate of the expert mech’s iconic fiends.” Although the combination sounded attractive, Ves held the orb in a possessive grasp. “No. I do not deny that the two are a good match, but there is only one Corrupting Orb. If I have a spare, then I would not hesitate to figure out how to best integrate it into the Phobos Mark II design, but for now this one is mine. I have too many uses for this orb. Besides, it is not necessarily the case that it will only remain useful at the scale of ordinary humans. If I was able to upgrade and reinvent the Flower Parasol, I should be able to do the same with this orb. The only difficulty is that I am not entirely sure how to do so considering that this is a giant spherical crystal that appears to be made up of a single whole.” It may very well be that the entire artifact comprised of just a single mysterious hard crystal. That made it a lot more difficult for him to tinker with it. Creating an opening or cutting it in pieces risked destroying the artifact entirely. He needed to obtain a lot more information and expertise before he gathered enough confidence to tinker with the Corrupting Orb. For the time being, Ves decided to keep it as a self-contained unit. While he could still slot it into larger constructs, he ruled out any suggestions that threatened the integrity of the spherical crystal. Ves, Ketis and Gloriana began to swap a number of ideas on how to leverage the properties of the Corrupting Orb into other equipment. “I have a feeling that combining the effects of a Corrupting Orb with the effects of a Mentalyst Crystal can produce powerful synergies.” Gloriana said. “I can feel my cranial implant suite reacting more violently to it than Alexandria, and that is from a distance.” That sounded like an interesting idea. “We don’t have a spare Mentalist Crystal, though. Perhaps we can try our luck and see if the Red Association or Red Collective is willing to donate one, but I seriously doubt it. Those Mentalist Crystals tend to get used up quickly before anyone can steal it from their possession.” It was rather ridiculous how extensively it became accepted practice for different groups to steal each other’s Mentalist Crystals. This also fueled a lot of urgency among their owners. They tried their best to use up the Crystals as quickly as possible. They needed to make it so that it became impossible to salvage the precious hyper materials once they became embedded into other products! “I do not think it is a good idea to integrate it into one of your self-exploding spears.” Ketis said. “Since you clearly want to retain possession of it, maybe it is better to embed it into your raiment or another piece of gear such as a physical shield. This way, you can gradually douse the enemy human phase lords with harmful radiation. Even if they are aware of what you are doing, they have no good answers because it isn’t a regular weapon of mass destruction.” Ves could see the merit of this idea. “Even if the Corrupting Orb is a little weak when used against Ascended Giants, it can still influence the latter in increasingly more severe ways. Those phase lords will become more prone to irrational outbursts. Their negative emotions will hold more sway. Their discipline will crumble. The duelists will start to make mistakes, and that will give the Dark Apostle more options to turn a losing battle around!” Although it seemed dishonorable to weaponize the Corrupting Orb in this manner, Ves did not have the luxury to deny a weapon that could potentially deliver him victory. He needed to think on how he could amplify its effects. The current level of passive radiation was nice and all, but if he wanted to corrupt a phase lord to the point of fighting like a mindless berserker, then he clearly needed to amp up its power! Ves already had an idea or two on how he could accomplish this. He needed to consult with Helena and possibly his mother if he was willing to entertain her son. After he completed his initial examination of the orb, he carefully placed it back into its original container. Everyone breathed a little easier now that the orb was safely locked inside its isolating box. Gloriana moved over while maintaining a vigilant expression towards the closed container. “Normally, I would advise you to avoid working with such a dangerous object, but…” “We can’t afford to be picky.” He said as he moved over and wrapped an arm behind her back. “I am confident that I can handle it. I know you have opinions about playing with dangerous energies, but I already have a certain degree of experience with this. I know what I am doing. With Blinky at my disposal, I can easily handle any dangerous discharge of harmful E energies. The orb will not be able to corrupt me in the slightest.” His wife was still skeptical, but she was willing to place her trust in him. “If you say so. Now that you have gained a number of valuable prizes, are you still in the mood to draw the radiant lottery ticket?” Ves had to think hard on this question. The golden lottery tickets had indeed yielded better prizes than expected when they actually spat out more than empty platitudes. However, none of the prizes granted him the skills or the hard power he needed to reliably defeat not 1, but multiple Ascended Giants in the dueling ground! “I still feel that my fighting skills are too rudimentary to measure up against professional soldiers and warriors.” He eventually said. “I do not think I have a choice. None of the golden lottery tickets yielded an appropriate enlightenment fruit, so I can only place all of my hopes into my final ticket. Let’s all hope that I can get what I want this time.” Thank you for reading my work. If you wish to support The Mech Touch, please vote with your golden tickets! Purchase Privilege for The Mech Touch! Read a varying amount of chapters ahead of regular readers while enjoying a 99% discount on unlocking new chapters! Join The Mech Touch’s unofficial Discord server: https://discord.gg/APB5KCU