The Mech Touch - Chapter 7435: The Wooden Grail
Chapter 7435: The Wooden Grail
Chapter 7435
>
The air grew thicker with Solus Gas and other substances.
A gradual tide of life and wood energy accompanied the green smell of fresh leaves and herbs.
Much of the stage remained in shadow.
Only the dozen test pilots that had just presented themselves to the public received illumination.
This was a daring choice, as the individuals who volunteered to bond with the prototype Woodsap mechs still looked imperfect in a hundred different ways.
This did not make sense on the surface.
Master Laila Rebecca Devos herself had told Ves more than once that the Terrans could not tolerate such flaws.
The Woodsap mech pilots needed to become the new face of the nascent and ambitious Terran Alliance.
They clearly could not fulfill this task if they looked as if they had suffered serious injuries in the past and received treatment that was only partially effective!
Sure, the test pilots did not look scarred or ugly, but they did not look completely alright either. The extreme augmentations needed to gain compatibility with the powerful fluid that gave Woodsap mechs their name had never been designed to accommodate humans.
The only way to make this all work was to bridge the gap between the human physique and the construction of a special biomech.
That was easier said than done. Ves actually felt quite impressed at how much progress the Terrans had made in a relatively short amount of time. The test pilots must have been cherry-picked from a larger batch of candidates. They were probably the least deformed out of the entire group.
Yet that still did not change the fact that they looked flawed even from the perspective of an ordinary person.
As Ves continued to guess at the motives of the Terrans, the male hooded figure that remained in shadow began to speak again.
“We are about to commence a sacred ritual. In order to realize the dream of achieving greater unity with the biomechs that we have entrusted with our lives, we must excise our weaknesses and fill the gap with superior alternatives. What you are about to witness with your own eyes is a privilege that is reserved for all Terrans.”
The female hooded figure stepped forward and approached one of the test pilots. She slowly raised her arms, causing her hands and the object held in between to finally become illuminated.
The woman held a grail.
It was a wooden grail that had been carved with symbols and objects that were difficult to spot throughout the disruptive mist.
While the Solus Gas in the air did a good job of hindering his observation, Ves could still tell that the material and the nature of the grail possessed extraordinary traits.
This was not a simple wooden bowl.
It was an object of power as well as a symbol of the new Terran dream.
As a container, the grail was not empty.
It had been filled with a liquid that shimmered and sparkled in the light. Not even the interference produced by all of the Solus Gas could hide the fact that the odd water possessed special qualities.
The woman whispered her next words, though everyone was able to hear her as clear as day.
“Sip the lifeblood of the Mother of Earth and be reborn under her gaze. Abandon your old self and embrace the power granted by our goddess. So long as you accept her power, you will forever be her servant and protector. Sip, and pledge your life to the Terran Alliance and its patron deity.”
The man who received the privilege to take the first sip did so with solemn grace.
His asymmetric face remained stoic as he slowly bent his neck and took a careful sip of the shimmering and abundant liquid.
The sound made by his sip was loud enough to be heard by every human in the banquet hall.
The hooded woman calmly retracted the wooden grail as soon as the first test pilot had ingested a modest amount of special liquid.
A few seconds of silence passed before the test pilot’s body abruptly began to shake!
Although the special piloting suit made it difficult to observe everything, most people could still see how the man’s proportions were beginning to morph!
His body grew taller, though not quite matching the height of the hooded figures.
He also grew thinner and more lithe.
All of the changes did not diminish the test pilot’s control over his own body. In fact, the opposite occurred. The transformed test pilot seemed intrinsically more competent than before.
While all of these changes sounded interesting, they could not match the greater and more profound changes to the test pilot’s body.
His entire form under his organic piloting suit began to shift and morph in ways that nobody could explain!
Arms grew shorter or longer depending on the existing imbalances. Eye sockets grew rounder while noses straightened up. Even the ears got a complete makeover of their own.
All of these shifts undid the negative side effects that turned the test pilot into a flawed human.
They also happened to do more than that, because the ears of the test pilot strangely lengthened into a pair of sharp cones!
A wave of uncertainty and shock rippled across the silent audience as they beheld the end result of the supernatural transformation.
The spotlights shining from above kept the individual who sipped from the grail under ample illumination.
The lights shining on the other 11 pilots also made it easy to make comparisons.
The differences were staggering.
All of the outwardly visible imperfections had gone away. It was as if an unknowable intelligence became affronted by the flawed visage and personally intervened to remove every discordant element!
These changes were not subtle at all. Everyone could see how the man’s previous face and body contained loads of suboptimal physical parameters. All of that had been swept away.
“Beautiful.” Gloriana couldn’t help but utter as she was probably the attendee who felt most impressed by the changes! “He looks so perfect…”
The man looked as handsome as the most popular drama actors. The dimensions of his facial features attained a balance that was so perfect that Ves literally could not come up with any form of improvement.
The only distinctive feature that stood out was the ears.
For whatever reason, taking a sip from the grail also introduced a new side effect. The physical transformation massively lengthened the tip of the ears until they tapered off into a sharp and lengthy cone!
This caused the test pilot to resemble a figure out of myth and stories.
Andraste excitedly whispered the obvious. “He looks… he looks like an elf! He looks just like all of the elves in the fantasy dramas!”
The association could not be denied. The unnatural beauty. The grace in his post-transformation movements. The pointed and tapered ears.
All of these set the man apart from other humans.
As the implications began to set in, more and more people looked enthusiastic or disturbed.
There were those that looked as if they wanted to storm up and take a sip from the wooden grail right away!
They had completely fallen in love with the transformation. Even if they had to abandon their original human forms, they willingly embraced this mystery because there was something compelling about turning into elves!
Others looked aghast or deeply concerned. The few people in attendance were not stupid. There were plenty of farsighted leaders among them that anticipated a huge amount of upheaval from this turning point.
If this particular case was not unique, then the Terran Alliance had apparently introduced a means for humans to abandon their race and turn into a species that everyone previously dismissed as fantasy!
As the test pilot’s miraculous metamorphosis had run its course, the reborn elf smiled with impossible grace. “Thank you. I shall forever hold Gaia dear to my heart. The Terran Alliance shall rise and dominate the Age of Dawn.”
The female cupbearer silently nodded before moving to the next test pilot.
In the span of several minutes, 11 more test pilots willingly took a sip of the mysterious liquid and triggered nearly identical transformations.
Each case produced similar results. All of the Woodsap mech pilots had shed their malformed human-like forms and grew into tall and lithe elves.
What impressed Ves quite a bit was that the mystical transformations were not only consistent, but did not produce a single failure case during this event!
He took note of this because the radical transformation changed so much that it should have been difficult to attain such a high success rate.
How did the Terrans manage to devise a ritual with such an obscenely high success rate?!
They could have possibly spent so much time on researching and optimizing the process.
Ves quickly narrowed his eyes.
It had to be the grail, or more precisely, the supernatural liquid contained within.
Gaia definitely had to be involved.
Though Ves was unable to ascertain the depth of her intervention, the rogue ancestral spirit definitely played a deep hand in this scheme!
He felt uncomfortable at the thought of one of his creations going behind his back to work together with the Terrans.
It showed that Gaia had embraced her independence from him and embarked on plans that were unrelated to his own interests.
A part of him wanted to confront the Mother of Earth and demand an explanation from her why she thought it was a good idea to turn humans into elves of all possibilities!
Another part of him felt inordinately proud that one of his creations had grown so powerful that she was capable of performing such a feat!
It was not fair for Ves to demand that Gaia subject herself to him. She was much more powerful than him at this time. Ves still remained a Senior Mech Designer while the ancestral spirit had already become a True God-level entity.
Even if she was nothing impressive compared to other True Gods, her power was still great enough that she possessed the right to disregard the orders of her progenitor.
Of course, even if the gap in power was not so great, Ves still did not wish to subjugate Gaia to his rule.
His respect towards life and especially his own creations did not demand unconditional servitude.
The only exceptions towards this rule were demons and other malevolent entities. They needed to be firmly controlled in order to avoid spreading harm and misery to people who did not deserve to be terrorized.
Outside of those conditions, Ves fundamentally believed that his ‘children’ deserved the right to grow up and deviate from the expectations set by their creator.
Even if they had been born to fulfill a specific purpose, every living mech or creature possessed the right to seek out their own life goal!
More chapters in Telegram: t.me/+z7ieNjQSLFMzMmY6
OR Discord server “Buyers Club for Webnovels” https://discord.gg/VuYnZcXyrC
