The Mech Touch novel Chapter 7369

Chapter 7369: The Importance of Influence

Although it sounded insane, both Ves and Casella knew that as long as the incentives grew strong enough, people would make it happen somehow.

Stolen resonance technology could only proliferate if red humanity managed to fulfill one core condition.

Not even the heavily limited supply of Mentalist Crystals posed a hindrance to this cutting-edge technology.

It merely limited the amount of compact applications of this tech.

The Red Fleet already planned to incorporate the bigger version of stolen resonance generators into plenty of cruisers and battleships which should have plenty of space to spare for a new module.

No, the real imitation of stolen resonance technology was the availability of ’acceptable’ willpower sources.

If everyone abided by the contemporary rules and customs of the Red Association, then no acceptable willpower source existed at this time.

The repurposing of dead expert pilots or ace pilots for the sole purpose of activating stolen willpower generators was a horrendous violation of their rights!

Perhaps people might argue that the use of alternative willpower sources such as swordmasters may be more acceptable, but they were still humans, and deserved to be treated better than commodities!

This presented a persistent problem to red humanity.

All of the major players had enthusiastically embraced the possibilities promised by stolen resonance technology, but awkwardly tried to ignore the horrendous cost of proliferation.

The creation of any stolen resonance generator inevitably demanded the sacrilege of at least one high-ranking mech pilot or swordmaster.

Was it worthwhile to create a super warship if it demanded the sacrifice of a hero of the human race?

There was almost no way that the big shots could reconcile this agonizing contradiction!

Therefore, if red humanity wanted to create a more ’acceptable’ source of extraordinary willpower, the idea of granting this power to the native aliens inevitably rose up in people’s minds.

It was a thoroughly forbidden idea, yet its allure could not be denied.

If the goal was to create as many stolen resonance generators as possible, then it made complete sense to ’teach’ the native aliens how to nurture willpower cultivators among their own population!

However, such a suggestion was thoroughly taboo.

Even if the aliens could not pilot their own mechs for various reasons, allowing them to raise their own ’high-ranking phasefighter pilots’ or whatever would still do much to strengthen their warmaking potential against red humanity!

The native aliens would master a new path to godhood that was much more accessible to the common alien than becoming phase lords.

The consequences would be severe. The population of aliens was much greater than that of humans in the new frontier.

Thousands or maybe millions of willpower cultivators might emerge in the span of a few years!

Even if they were all relatively weak at the start, they were still a lot more powerful than their peers.

If they all got organized and sent to invade the territories of red humanity, then they would be able to win a lot more battles!

Would the rise of a new extraordinary soldier class among the native aliens do more damage to red humanity than all of the stolen resonance generators that could be made from their defeated remains?

Ves could not possibly answer this question.

One important complication to this scenario was the simple fact that the native aliens may very well decide to keep their willpower cultivators away from the Red War.

If they did not fight against red humanity, then their enemies would not be able to harvest them and use them to make more stolen resonance generators!

Therefore, anyone who secretly wanted to seed willpower cultivation among the native aliens had to consider many thorny issues.

A thoughtless implementation could easily spark disaster!

Yet was that enough for desperados to stay their hand?

Ves did not think so. He knew what humans were like. Greed could not be separated from them. Even if there were plenty of people who stubbornly clung to notions of honor and righteousness, there were always enough individuals who possessed very little scruples.

This applied to every level of society, including the top!

Ves did not believe that all of the tier 1 galactic citizens unanimously supported the ’correct’ viewpoint.

It only took a single deviant with ulterior motives to teach the native aliens how to cultivate their willpower.

In his opinion, the most likely culprit would be the Polymath.

Due to special reasons, the Cybernetic Empire possessed the weakest mech piloting tradition by far. It also possessed an abundance of warships as well as humongous war planets, each of which could derive a huge amount of benefits from stolen resonance generators!

Despite her roots as a mech designer, the Polymath was well-known for her extreme rationality and utilitarianism. It was highly likely that she harbored little to no respect towards mech pilots.

She probably regarded them as tools in human form. They were useful, but they did not deserve special treatment unless they had attained godhood.

The Saint Commander gradually realized the implications for themselves.

"Your imprint." She almost gasped. "Your strength as a mech designer and a phase lord may not be particularly high, but your influence is disproportionately immense. All of your achievements propelled you to a level of fame and notoriety that is impossible to match by the other members of your generation. The fact that you have been promoted to a tier 2 galactic citizen is an official recognition of your influence over our society. With everything that you have done since the Great Severing, the imprint or imprints that you have left behind has already reshaped a significant part of our universe. As long as you remain prominent, you should be able to do the same."

This may be the true meaning behind the galactic citizenship system.

One of the core criteria that determined an individual’s galactic citizenship may be their ability to create an impact on the imaginary realm.

Those with no galactic citizenship of any kind possessed so little influence that they literally did not matter in this discussion.

Whether they lived or died had no noticeable effect on the imaginary realm.

Those with low-tier galactic citizenships became strong and influential enough to nudge it slightly. They might not amount to anything by themselves, but had the potential to exert a measurable influence if they acted in a large enough collective.

As for high-tier galactic citizens, their influence had reached such a height that they could single-handedly create or alter imprints in the imaginary realm!

This applied to both god pilots with extremely high individual combat power as well as fleet admirals who may be individually weak but possessed enough authority to move around thousands of warships across different battlefields!

It also applied to noncombatants such as Star Designers whose inventions could easily change the balance of power in the Red Ocean.

In this ’ethereal battlefield’, Ves clearly recognized that he already ranked among the top, just below the tier 1 galactic citizens!

Ves understood a bit better now why the bigshots valued him so much and encouraged him to innovate.

Now that he became aware of these hidden dynamics, he believed that he had a lot more room to play.

There was a big difference between staying ignorant and becoming aware of the power of myths and imprints.

A grin slowly appeared on his face as he thought of the many possibilities.

As long as the Myth Reproduction Theory truly worked according to the rules as he understood it, then he had a lot of room for manipulation.

This was of great importance. It could not only change the future of the Ascended Giants, but also power up his upcoming mech designs, particularly his highly anticipated elemental Carmine mech designs!

It became even more important for him to return to the Terran Alliance in order to supervise the final development of his Woodsap mechs.

This collaborative mech design project will definitely offer an excellent stage for him to blend myths into mechs!