The Mech Touch (Web Novel)
chapter-6434

The Apocalypse Wardens made an explosive first impression.

The black-clad soldiers proceeded to part in half before taking up positions on both sides of the central avenue.

They stood just before the giant feet of the Ur-Titans.

The Apocalypse Wardens looked tiny in comparison to the Ur-Titans, which caused them to look a lot weaker.

However, their quantity was much greater, which immediately conveyed multiple different meanings.

It was clear that it took a huge amount of resources to cultivate just 60 human phase lords.

Sure, the investment was far greater this time because red humanity was going in blind. Now that they successfully explored a viable pathway to turn humans into bonafide phase lords, the department responsible for raising them could train subsequent batches a lot more efficiently.

Even so, the demand for phasewater would always remain. The body mass of just a single human phase lord already encompassed the body mass of lots of Apocalypse Wardens!

Multiply that by 60, then the absolute amount of phasewater required to produce all of these human phase lords was astronomical!

What was even more troublesome was that the Ur-Titans were all at the low end of the lesser phase lord stage at the moment. Their body cultivation had made relatively little progress. None of them had reached the size of more combat capable alien phase lords such as the Trampler of Stars or the arche lesser phase lords.

The cost to increase the cultivation of the Ur-Titans by a noticeable degree would probably take 3 to 10 as much phasewater!

While the Ur-Titans may be able to reach the size of Ves or even more, the benefits of doing so were questionable!

Right now, it was clear that the Phase Lord Department saw more merit in making human phase lords as large as mechs before equipping them with mech-like gear.

This was the poor man's approach towards weaponizing phase lords, but Ves did not blame the Phase Lord Department.

Phasewater was still a scarce resource, and the major players were extremely reluctant to donate tons of this exotic substance just to pursue an incredibly resource-heavy method of body cultivation.

Even if it was not cost effective to raise human phase lords for the purpose of raising special combat units that could make a difference in the ongoing war, the Red Collective still had to engage in this research, if only to understand their enemies better.

Compared to the giant soldiers, the much smaller Apocalypse Warden troopers appeared much more reasonable.

The fact that the Cultivation Method Department managed to train 1000 soldiers in a consistent manner and have them develop the exact same traits and abilities was a testament to the universality of their solutions!

It showed that the difficulty and resource intensity of raising a battalion of fire-attributed qi cultivators was likely not as expensive!

In fact, even if the Apocalypse Wardens were equipped with excellent first-class combat equipment made out of expensive exotics and hypers, the small scale of every soldier meant that the total resource usage was quite low, especially compared to mechs!

The unveiling of the Apocalypse Wardens therefore highlighted the advantages of fielding militarized qi cultivators. They derived a lot of strength from absorbing E energy radiation that was always freely available. They were much less reliant on high-grade resources that red humanity was short of at the moment.

Of course, not every sect or organization could raise a troop as luxurious as the Apocalypse Wardens.

The Red Collective had much greater access to phasewater and other high-quality resources.

The RC had also taken over the management of companion spirit fruit trees, so it could easily supply a lot of soldiers with companion spirits.

Other forces would have a much harder time to raise troops as strong as the Apocalypse Wardens.

However, there was no need to reach their level of strength. It was already good to raise lots of soldiers that possessed half or even a quarter of the combat power as the Apocalypse Wardens!

As long as the price of raising them was much lower as well, this could still turn into a profitable exchange!

Of course, the bigger question was where all of these powerful qi cultivation soldiers should fight.

They could not fight in open space, and they were not that useful in planetary battles unless they fought in urban regions.

Ves personally figured that there were three good uses to these enhanced infantry soldiers.

First, they could serve as excellent guards and defenders of urban settlements.

Second, they should be able to board and take over enemy warships a lot more effectively.

Third, they could raid enemy cities and sneak into deep and well-protected facilities without inflicting excessive collateral damage.

Finally, they could be used for infiltration. Nobody would be on guard against ordinary humans.

Even without any combat gear, the Apocalypse Wardens should still be able to inflict a lot of damage by themselves!

Perhaps there may be other uses for qi cultivation soldiers, but this was what he could think of at the moment.

The parade continued onwards, though the subsequent formations of cultivations did not make impressions as shocking as that of the Ur-Titans and the Apocalypse Wardens.

Perhaps that was all the Red Collective had been able to produce in a short amount of time.

It could also be that the RC still wanted to keep its trump cards hidden and avoid showing off too much strategically valuable information to the native aliens.

Whatever the case, the next groups of cultivators showcased different strengths and possibilities.

For example, there was a troop of robed women who elegantly danced and spun across the air without the use of technology. Each time they swung their fans, they released gusts of winds that could blast people away.

There was a group of humans who wore ordinary clothes, yet made themselves completely invisible and unnoticeable. They managed to do this without wearing any devices on their person!

There was another group of people who were able to generate force fields, allowing them to act as hidden bodyguards so long as they did not expose their true identities.

The power of these qi cultivators was not high, but their lack of dependence on technology made them very suitable in situations where heavy hardware could not be relied upon.

They also became even more effective if they did make use of modern equipment. Their cultivation-derived abilities could easily synergize with a lot of useful technological solutions!

After the Red Collective was done with showing off some of its muscles, the parade began to change in tone.

Instead of presenting soldiers, the Red Collective began to unveil a variety of non-combatants.

The first group of non-combatants consisted of people that gave off a familiar impression to Ves.

These were green-robed figures who all brought small-sized trees and plants with them. Their plants were transported by floating bots of various sizes.

Once the wood cultivators reached the center of the Shrine of Light, they briefly showcased their abilities.

"Grow."

A sapling rapidly absorbed the energies of multiple cultivators and frantically drew on the nutrients locked inside the soil. It grew taller at such an astounding speed that many people would have called this demonstration fake!

However, Ves could clearly sense that the sapling was truly alive, and that the huge influx of structured wood energy forcefully promoted its growth!

The wood cultivators apparently mastered a technique that could forcefully grow and age a plant without causing it to burst apart, lose its vitality or suffer severe defects!

The only downside was that the wood cultivators were too weak to sustain their effort. The sapling eventually grew into a tree that was only twice as tall as a human.

This was an amazing result considering that only a handful of humans managed to produce such a result without resorting to high technology.

Once their cultivation improved, these wood cultivators may be able to revive an entire planet's worth of forests!

The wood cultivators demonstrated a few other abilities.

"Wither."

A remarkably familiar withering curse caused another tree to age and dry up before it finally cracked and fell apart.

"Ripen."

Ves sat up a little straighter. He already noticed that one of the trees the wood cultivators had brought was actually a companion spirit fruit tree!

Even though its biological composition was closer to an exobeast rather than a real tree, the wood cultivators still managed to promote the ripening of a dozen or so fruits!

The immature companion spirits seemed to fast-forward their development by more than a week!

Though the efficiency of the cultivation technique was ultimately a lot lower due to the special and abnormal properties of the companion spirit fruit tree, the wood cultivators succeeded in harvesting a batch of precious fruits ahead of time!

Amazing!

These wood cultivators could play a critical role in the care of companion spirit fruit trees and the production of their bounty.

They were the perfect caretakers of these highly valuable trees!

Although the wood cultivators ultimately did not demonstrate any combat techniques, it was completely unnecessary as far as Ves was concerned.

He understood the purpose of this display.

Who said that cultivation had to be all about fighting?

Only a minority of red humans were suited for combat.

There were many other people who did not have the guts or other reasons to fight on an actual battlefield.

In that sense, the Red Collective offered pathways towards extraordinary power that did not involve violence.

This was one of the RC's strongest advantages.

Currently, the Red Association and the Red Fleet overwhelmingly oriented itself towards combat and warfare.

The Red Association held an additional advantage in that it offered a path for mech designers to ascend to greatness, but not everyone was willing and able to study and devote their life to mech design.

The Red Collective on the other hand could turn almost every peaceful professional into a cultivator that excelled at his respective craft!

This message became increasingly clearer to everyone as other groups of non-combatants emerged and showcased their talents.

There were baseline human scientists and engineers who demonstrated vastly superior memory, calculation and other mental processing capabilities.

Their raw performance rivaled the likes of first-raters that could only reach this level of performance by investing thousands of MTA credits in augmentations!

The performance of these baseline humans would constantly improve so long as they kept making progress in their cultivation.

They could definitely speed up their improvement by making use of cultivation resources, but they should also be able to make progress without spending any further money!

The next group of non-combatants consisted of singers.

Everyone in the Shrine of Light felt more relaxed as they listened to the ethereal voices of the singers as they elegantly glided towards the center of the grand chamber.

If people still bore a lot of stress and concerns even after they became subjected to the special circumstances of the Shrine of Light, then this time they completely managed to shake off their burdens!

It was hard to imagine that the singers could make all of this happen without looking as if they exerted themselves.

Their voices were all empowered by E energy. These sirens not only knew how to manipulate their audience's emotions and perception, but also managed to amplify the cleansing and purifying effect of the Shrine of Light!

These singers could easily serve as the extraordinary choir of this sacred shrine!

More extraordinary professionals appeared. That meant that more and more people found that they could vastly improve their performance at work as long as they practiced a cultivation method that was tailored for their jobs!

The individual message of this parade was that cultivation was too valuable for civilians to pass up. If they could not become Carmine mech pilots, then why not practice a basic cultivation method that could directly improve their work performance?

The overall message of these demonstrations went a lot deeper. The Red Collective basically suggested that as long as civilians practiced basic cultivation methods on a wide scale, red humanity's productivity would skyrocket!

Everyone would be able to get so much more stuff done that human civilization should partially be able to reduce the disadvantages of being outnumbered by the native aliens!

On this aspect alone, the Red Collective had already proven its worth to society!