As the training sessions started to pick up steam, the Vandals and the Swordmaidens also made good progress in repairing their damaged mechs. Overall, it would take another week or two to undo most of the damage from the orbital bombardment. Unfortunately, the ancient city of Samar hadn’t made much progress in recovering from the damage. Many inhabitants died due to their injuries, and the entire population split up over what the rain of meteorites from the skies actually represented. Was it a punishment from some kind of supreme god that outranked the sacred gods? Was it an attack from the foreigners? Was it a sign that the world might be falling apart soon? The Vandals finally developed a robust spying drone the size of a sparrow that could continue to stay in touch with nearby scouting mechs as long as they didn’t fly too close to one of the sacred gods. This allowed them to monitor the periphery of the city. Hysteria and division ran rife. These arguments even extended towards the sacred gods who ruled over Samar. Unlike Mulak that was under the control of an overwhelmingly strong leader, control for Samar was split between two different alphas. They were in fact a pair of brothers who suddenly inherited the reign over the city from their father beast known as Paraixis, the Great Father and the Oldest Ancestor. Paraixis used to be the dominant sacred god who was rumored to have been more than seven-hundred years old. More importantly than his age, all the stories about him pointed out that he embedded up to twenty-four god crystals in his hide! The power of this great father expressed itself in control over metals. His ability to lift up sharpened spikes the length of a building and fling them to his opponents became its characteristic attack. Another favored way Paraixis displayed his power was to lift up a heavy block of metal that used to come from a broken metallic structure and pound it against an opponent! This powerful ability made Paraixis into the undisputed king of Samar and its surrounding territory. The abundant technological remnants gave the beast plenty of shiny toys to throw or pound at his opponents. The creature’s love for shiny metallic objects likely fostered a worship of these objects among the blessed people that lived in the city. Everything was fine and dandy in Samar until the Great Father died. 𝙧𝙚𝙚𝔀𝒆𝓫𝓷𝙤𝓿𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝙤𝓶 The Great Father mated with many sacred gods and even wild gods whenever he found them in the wild. Many of his godling offspring amounted to nothing, but the Great Father saw promise in two of them for some reason and brought them under his wing, embedding with as much god crystals their young bodies could bear. The oldest son Pailanon inherited the Great Father’s telekinesis power over metal and his greenish-purple coloring. If the sacred gods of Samar had a crown prince, then Pailanon was certainly the favored candidate. As the leader of the conservative faction, Pailanon adopted many of the traits of his father. He concerned himself with breeding capable offspring, and ignored many of the other responsibilities related to ruling over a pantheon and city. Pairixan, the younger brother, failed to inherit his Great Father’s powers. Instead, his own power mutated into manipulating the earth. He was able to effect mass destruction by summoning earthquakes, conjuring up walls of earth, lifting up heavy boulders and throwing them towards his opponents with far greater force and speed. Though Pairixan’s earth manipulation worked a lot slower than Pailanon’s metal telekinesis, it was capable of devastating the entire ancient city. Since his powers was so destructive, Pairixan believed he deserved to inherit the Great Father’s mantle as the king of the gods and become the new Eldest Ancestor of Samar. While Pailanon only embedded twenty-one god crystals in his hide, Pairixan had surpassed his older brother and managed to embed twenty-two god crystals! This alone gave him the confidence to claim the throne! His strong and irresistible powers also inflated Pairixan’s ambitions. He wasn’t content with ruling over a single ancient city. He wanted to expand his territory by conquering the neighboring cities in order to become the greatest sacred god the people have ever known! For over fifty years, the sacred gods and the blessed people of Samar split up between the Western Samar Pantheon and the Eastern Samar Pantheon. Those who lived on the west side of the city worshipped Pailanon, the eldest son and the so-called legitimate heir to the Great Father. Those who lived on the east side of the city worshipped Pairixan, the younger son and the strongest sacred god in Samar. The schism between the pantheons led to a cold war between the brothers that persisted for half a century. Despite their belief that they should be crowned as the Greatest Ancestor, neither Pailanon or Pairixan wanted to come to blows. Pailanon feared that any duel between the two brothers would turn the ancient city and the entire surroundings into ruins. Due to his dependence on metal, he was at his strongest when he fought in the vicinity of the city. The older brother held too little confidence to win against his ambitious sibling in the wild where he could only bring a limited amount of metal as his weapons. As for the younger brother Pairixan, his powers lent much more to siege warfare and large-scale combat. His earth manipulation powers possessed an amazing reach and a considerable amount of might, but they weren’t ideal for duels because they worked too slow! Pailanon would have been able to fling more than a dozen giant alloy spears at the earth god before he finished summoning an earth wall to block the projectiles! This led to an inexplicable stalemate where both sons claimed the throne but neither dared to enforce their claims. This led to a strange development in Samar’s long history where two pantheons ruled the city side-by-side without any open conflict. The apocalypse that happened more than a week ago exacerbated their differences. Each side ascribed different meanings to the disaster! Pailanon believed that the orbital bombardment was a sign of the Great Father’s disaffection. The natives believed that sacred gods couldn’t die. They would just abandon their mortal shells and return to the vault of the gods and watch over the mortals scurrying about from the surface. So when artificial meteorites dropped from the vault of the gods, pretty much everyone believed it was a sign from a greater authority. Of course, the Eastern Samar Pantheon led by the younger son advocated that the orbital bombardment was an attack from supreme god worshipped by the foreigners and the cities that backed them. Against these outsiders, the sacred gods of Samar shouldn’t be complacent. Instead, they should attack! When Ves heard about all of the political complexities surrounding the divided city of Samar, he found it to be extraordinarily silly. "If Pairixan is such a warmonger, why doesn’t he conquer another city and rule from there?" "Any sacred god that leaves their city won’t be able to bring along their worshippers." Chief Dakkon replied as he watched over an experiment involving their only god crystal in one of the labs. "That’s at least hundred-thousand blessed people you’re talking about. Without an antigrav field that’s large enough to shield them all, they wouldn’t be able to make it out of the city limits without getting crushed. All of the blessed people except for their beast riders never think about leaving their cities since they were born, because they believe they’ll die from a curse." Ves grimaced. More superstition was at work. "Do the sacred gods even need the worship?" "I don’t know. None of us think the sacred gods derive any benefit from the worship except for stroking their egos. I think it’s part of their animal instinct that drives them to be alphas. They can’t stand being ignored." "What does Dr. Tillman say about the god species?" "Without a sacred god in our possession, she can only extrapolate from the studies of the wild god corpse. She doesn’t really know if they start off sentient or not, or if it is something acquired from their beast riders. It may be that the sacred gods inherit the same thoughts and dreams as their beast riders." That would be an interesting interaction. The if the beast rider of Pairixan was a megalomaniac who held wild ambitions, he may have contaminated Pairixan’s desires, causing the beast to be so aggressive! "So what did our spies find out about their deliberations." "It’s the same as always. The two brothers and their beast riders are both trying to convince the other of their viewpoint for a while now. The problem for us is that we’d rather prefer to get out of here before the argument boils over, but we can’t due to our damaged mechs." Ves knew more than anyone else how troublesome it was to repair the mechs. The ground forces really didn’t have the transportation capacity to spare to carry away their damaged and immobilized mechs. While it was possible for mechs to lift up other mechs and carry them elsewhere during an emergency, it always made things worse even during standard gravity. Some of the Vandals didn’t think it would be a bad idea to stand their ground, though. Defeating the sacred gods allowed them to plunder their god crystals and other goods without any scruples. Killing or capturing one of them would enable the exobiologists to study their mystical bodies, learning more about these beasts and pinpoint their weaknesses. When Ves thought about the frightening lightning powers of Hokaz, he considered it foolish to force a confrontation with the sacred gods. Nonetheless, the Vandals and the Swordmaidens started to gear up for war. Ever since they collected some intelligence on the powers of the sacred gods, the Vandals started cooking up some preparations. Whether they faced Pairixan alone or with his older brother in tow, it was clear that the Flagrant Swordmaidens needed to take out the earth manipulator instantly! As long as he came close enough, he’d be able to wreck the entire camp with earthquakes, demolishing and anything in the affected area! "I’ve even heard of talk of trying to assassinate Pairixan’s beast rider." Dakkon mentioned after he tweaked the ongoing experiment. "They think that the big beast won’t be as powerful without a human intelligence guiding its actions." "It won’t work." Ves shook his head. "Didn’t we already figure out that most of the power that comes from the man-beast connection is from the beast? As an exobeast with a power that is likely as destructive as that of an ace mech, it has always possessed this might. The beast rider is much less important and doesn’t even need to be the equivalent of an expert pilot." This was the advantage of a living beast. It possessed its own intelligence and could call upon its powers by themselves. The wild gods already proved they could summon their powers without a rider, so why would a sacred god be any different? That said, the blessed people all believed that pairing the sacred gods with their chosen enabled them to wield their powers in greater and more sophisticated ways. "I think right now that some of us are planning to pin the death of Pairixan’s beast rider to the other faction. We don’t know if the inhabitants of Samar will buy into it, though. If they have at least some brains, then they’ll know that an internal division will only benefit us instead of them. We also don’t know how Pairixan will lash out. He might vent his anger on the entire city. If something like that happened, the estimated 200,000 inhabitants of Samar would all be devastated due to the actions of a third party. Worse yet, Pairixan might turn his anger on the Flagrant Swordmaidens next! Ves snorted. "Yeah, I don’t think that’s a good idea." "I agree. We’re strong enough to beat the sacred gods in a straight battle."