The Mech Touch

If anyone dared to go by such a grand and domineering moniker, then he or she better have the strength and reputation to avoid ridicule!

No one dared to make fun of a god pilot in human society.

It was only fitting for such a powerful god in human form to assume the title of Destroyer of Worlds!

Though Ves did not have a clear idea of what god pilots were capable of, the rumors and sources that he had come in touch with were all over the place.

The more extreme ones claimed that god pilots held so much power that it was not out of the realm of possibility for them to be able to break entire planets!

Ves personally believed that these claims were exaggerations. Perhaps it may be possible for most god mechs to wipe out entire cities or land regions at once, he could scarcely imagine how much energy it took to negatively affect a whole planet.

However, it was not that difficult to imagine that certain mechs and mech types could unleash more firepower than others.

Of all of the god mechs that were known to exist during his presence of time, pretty much no one doubted which one possessed the record of possessing the greatest capacity for destruction!

"The Ragnarok."

Few details about the Ragnarok were known to the public. From what Ves recalled of the biography that he had read when he was just a student, The Destroyer of Worlds only acquired this firepower-heavy machine late in her career.

It may very well be the exceptional ace mech that helped Irene Mox complete the Mech Body Merger Process!

The Ragnarok was the main reason why Divine Irene Mox managed to become known as the Destroyer of Worlds.

As one of the top guardians of human civilization, she was regularly assigned to guard the most contentious borders between human space and the surviving alien empires of the Milky Way Galaxy.

When an alien race tried to test humanity\'s defenses and commit raids across the border, humanity issued an immediate response.

Divine Irene Mox intruded into alien space and visited seven strategic star systems in succession!

Each time her Ragnarok deployed into action, its incredible formidable artillery cannons unleashed incredibly destructive rounds that cracked entire landmasses and progressively destabilized the tectonic activity of an entire globe!

Seven planets turned from densely populated strongholds into ruinous volcanic planets where nothing on its surface was left intact!

Ever since she inflicted so much retribution that the neighboring aliens completely cowered from the might displayed by one of humanity\'s strongest champions, Irene Mox became known as the Destroyer of Worlds from that day onwards.

In fact, it happened to be an evolution of her previous title.

Her previous moniker was Destroyer of Cities, but it sounded a little too inadequate ever since she exposed her capacity to scour every life on a planet!

No god pilot was a normal individual. Their strength and capacity for killing was unmatched by anything. This included the CFA\'s largest battleships!

There was no way that Ves could remain calm at the possibility that he had become so \'lucky\' that he actually landed in the mind of a future god pilot!

Nothing good would come if he was ever discovered by such a powerful warrior. Even if it looked as if he had gone far enough back in time that Irine Mox was \'only\' an expert pilot at this point, Ves did not want to take any chances!

"My first priority is to keep my presence hidden. There is no telling what might happen if Irene discovers that she is hosting a spiritual parasite in her mind!"

So far, it did not seem as if the expert pilot had a clue what had happened. She attended a mission briefing while remaining quiet and thoughtful. Her attention was completely focused on the current predicament of the mech army that she was attached to. Her unit apparently landed on a hostile planet and encountered heavy resistance from the local garrison.

Seeing that Irene Mox was more preoccupied with thinking on how she could best leverage her firepower to support advancing friendly troops, Ves slightly relaxed and assumed that he had yet to disturb the powerful expert pilot.

His next priority was to figure out if he had visited the mind of THE Irene Mox.

Ves mentally frowned. "Irene is a common name for females. Mox is not as common, but since it only consists of three letters, there should still be a lot of people who go by this name."

The best way to confirm this dreadful suspicion was to see whether the details he recalled from the Destroyer of Worlds\' biography matched the current circumstances.

He needed to jog his memories as it had been around 2 decades since he last read the biographies of every god pilot and Star Designer known to exist.

That easily amounted to 200 books in total!

There was no way that Ves could read so many biographies in his youth with an earnest learning attitude.

It was fairly common for people to buy the most popular versions of the life stories of these legendary figures.

Since these books were targeted towards the general public, they happened to be light on the details and heavy on the action. The biographies also tended to be fairly short and were known to skip a lot of sensitive and inconvenient information.

In any case, there was no need for typical space peasants to know so many messy secrets. They just had to gain a rough idea on every human hero!

"I should really go out of my way and read the complete versions of those biographies." He mentally grumbled to himself.

Of all of the god pilots he became familiar with due to his interest in mech design, he barely paid any attention to Divine Irene Mox. She didn\'t excite him as much as other god pilots.

"Let me see… Divine Irene Mox is over 230 years old in my present time. This expert pilot looks to be around 30 years old, so the current date should be 2 centuries in the past."

The location could also provide an obvious clue.

The legendary Irene Mox happened to be a rare god pilot who used to be a second-class mech pilot. She eventually received an invitation to join the New Rubarth Empire after she advanced to ace pilot, but that happened a lot later in her life.

No one had any inkling that Irene Mox was god pilot material back when she was in her thirties. Even the woman herself could not imagine she could make one breakthrough after another as she grew older!

"If I recall correctly, Divine Irene Mox should be fighting in the so-called Terrace War." Ves recalled. "The main sides are the Bontue Republic and the Quillim Principality."

The Terrace War was special for several reasons.

The first reason was that it was actually a proxy war. Bontue and Quillim were both situated in the Treading Drum Star Sector, which happened to be close to the galactic center.

Ves didn\'t know why the Terrans and the Rubarthans started to meddle in this star sector, but they eventually started to back their favorite states and push them into a war!

It was not wise for the Terrans and the Rubarthans to directly come to blows against each other, so they instead abided by a secret agreement and left the actual fighting in the Treading Drum Star Sector to the local second-rate states.

The Terrans backed the Bontue Republic while the Rubarthans supported the Quillim Principality.

Since Irine Mox eventually acquired Rubarthan citizenship, she should clearly be a citizen of the latter at this time!

Now that he knew what he needed to look for, Ves cautiously extended his awareness. He did not want to go too far in exploring the mind of a strong and sensitive expert pilot, so he borrowed her senses instead and tried to listen to the officers who talked during the briefing session.

"The Bontues have fortified this city…"

"Reinforcements from the Quillim Mech Army…"

"Terran technology is suspected to…"

"We have received no word whether our Rubarthan friends are ready to ship the next batch of high-quality munitions…"

The more Ves listened to the discussion, the more he became certain that he had ended up in the mind of the only Irene Mox that managed to become one of the most powerful human transcendent in his present time!

This was absurd!

The identity of his current host far exceeded his expectations!

The more confirmation he received, the more dread he experienced.

There was no way he wanted to get in trouble with an actual god pilot!

It did not matter whether Irene Mox was far from reaching that level of strength. He knew for certain that she was already doomed to become a peerless mech pilot.

If she managed to detect his presence and gather enough clues about his true identity, then she could leverage her immense power to track him down and force him to account for his actions!

In fact, Ves hesitated whether he should do anything in his current state. He even thought about aborting this Mastery experience right on the spot because he did not want to arbitrarily mess with the history of a god pilot.

The MTA along with the rest of humanity would definitely crucify him if he somehow prevented Irene Mox from reaching her full potential!

"Then again… I\'m not sure if I need to be so reticent."

From the way the System\'s time travel shenanigans worked, all of his actions during these time jaunts had already been reflected in the reality of his present environment!

Even if he made a mistake, then that had already become a part of established history.

"Ugh. I should just set aside these considerations and go back to enjoying the show."

His original purpose for using the Time Gate was to gain a better understanding of how mech pilots handled their heavy artillery mechs.

Though Ves found it rather inconvenient that he had landed in the head of an expert pilot as opposed to a standard pilot, he could still harvest a lot of insights. He just needed to make sure to differentiate between operations that were universal and operations that could only be performed by demigods.

"This planet shall be ours!"

The commanding officer of the mech unit dismissed the soldiers in the briefing room.

As everyone prepared to take part in an upcoming offensive, numerous Quillim mech pilots addressed Venerable Irene Mox with great respect.

"I hope that my men and I will be able to count on your fire support if we are cornered."

"Please keep an eye on my mech company."

"This war has gone long enough."

"The Bontues will break in time."

Though Irene Mox possessed a quiet and subdued demeanor, she nodded and acknowledged everyone who spoke to her. Her popularity among the Quillim soldiers was high.

This caused Ves to gain a stronger interest in her upcoming performance. The biography he read about the god pilot was especially sparse on the details of her early life.

Soon enough, Venerable Irene Mox entered a secure hangar bay where several expert mechs had just completed their maintenance cycles.

"The Iron Hedgehog…"

The expert heavy artillery mech that Irene Mox piloted at this time did not actually resemble a literal hedgehog.

Nonetheless, the expert mech featured an abundance of cannons. Since each of them stuck out of the quadruped frame at various angles by default, it sort of looked like a hedgehog with a lower quantity of oversized quills.

Venerable Irene started to become more excited as she closed in on her expert heavy artillery mech.

Though her expression still remained stoic, her force of will had already begun to rouse to a more active state!