Chapter 5857 Servitude

Chapter 5857 Servitude

From the moment Ves gave birth to the ancestral spirit known as Caramond Perle, he had set off a chain of events that changed the fate of the Dominion of Man forever.

His decision to tie the newly created spiritual product to the Dominion of Man was already bad enough.

What truly caused the powerful dreadnought to irrevocably abandon her prior fate and embark on a completely different future was the decision to tie the Spark Reactor into the process!

No amount of words could describe how reckless and ill-thought Ves had acted when he attempted to replace his tried-and-true Blood Pact with the highly speculative Bloodfire Pact.

The good news was that the basic theory of this much more powerful variation of a regular Blood Pact held up in reality.

Substituting lifeblood for fire energy worked out far better than Ves expected. Pretty much every section of the enormous hull of the Dominion of Man coursed with fire by the time the Spark Reactor generated energies at full capacity!

Yet the side effects were far greater as well. Ves had become so fixated on the state of Caramond and the conditions of the so-called Super Brain that he scarcely wondered what had happened to the Dread Marines assigned to guard the Brain Trust.

Just because the illusionary flames had faded from their tall and imposing Dread Armors did not mean that the refinement process had ended.

During the initial transformation of the Dominion of Man, the entire vessel had been symbolically lit aflame.

Many new and unfamiliar aspects emerged.

Some acted like seeds that still needed a lot of nurturing before they could bloom into flowers.

Others only occurred briefly and faded when the flames had subsided.

More had begun to stick around.

One of the more consequential aspects to the crew was that each of them somehow resonated with the Dominion of Man, especially when the vessel was being refined by the Spark Reactor!

Each of the fleeters who became affected by this mysterious phenomenon had been given a choice by the ship they served for a number of months or years.

The fleeters who resonated particularly well with the Dominion of Man were plentiful.

They generally fell into several categories.

First were the troopers who donned Dread Armors. The famed armors were far greater than mere suits of combat armor. Through a mysterious production process that enabled them to contain a miniscule portion of the living spark's power, each of these empowered pieces of gear had transcended their physical limitations.

The marines who worked hard and earned the qualifications to equip themselves with the most powerful infantry gear in the Red Ocean developed a huge attachment to them without fail.

Despite the absence of neural interfaces that enabled them to develop a mental connection with their powerful equipment, the troopers always developed a close relationship with their individual Dread Armors.

Since the Dread Armors could be regarded as extensions of the Dominion of Man, the marines who played such a crucial role in projecting the strength of the enormous warship all received the offer to become a part of the ship they served with pride.

The ship... recognized them. The Dread Marines felt more valued than ever. Each of them became beset by illusions of possible futures if they chose to make the fateful decision to form a pact with the living vessel. n0ve(l)bi(n.)co/m

They imagined themselves growing stronger by getting refined by the temperate but potentially deadly flames of the Spark Reactor.

They envisioned growing strong enough to punch through bulkheads and release fire from their mouths.

They conjured up glimpses of more distant futures where they had become so in tune with the Dominion of Man that they outlived anyone else due to the fire coursing through their veins.

Over 90 percent of the Dread Marines accepted this offer within seconds after they realized what it entailed.

The remainder took a bit longer, but they accepted anyway as they could not imagine going back to their mundane and forgettable lives after they missed this opportunity.

Only 1 percent of the Combat Marines possessed enough discipline, external attachments and stubbornness to cling to their original oaths.

The fact that so few Dread Marines surrendered to the Dominion of Man was a testament to the latter's ability to convince people to forsake everything in favor of unending service.

Previously, the storm clouds already looked ominous enough to look as if they could pose a real threat against one of the most powerful warships in the Red Ocean.

The activation of the Spark Reactor had somehow agitated the tribulation storm to the point where it grew a lot stronger than before!

The storm clouds occupied so much at this time that they stretched on for thousands of kilometers!

A few of the escort vessels that happened to be patrolling fairly close quickly increased their distance from the Dominion of Man as a precaution.

None of them wanted to tempt fate by attracting the ire from the heavens!

Inside the transformed Brain Trust, Ves tried his best to determine whether the 5 Alpha Plus Brains had truly merged to replicate the capabilities of a mythical Super Brain with an effective genetic aptitude of S.

Ves belatedly realized that he never fully explored what exactly made the Chosen Human special during his early career.

His biography never mentioned anything specific about the initial piloting experiences of the man who advanced to the rank of god pilot at record speed.

Was he able to process ten times as much data as conventional talents?

Did he gain a sense of intuition that was so scarily effective that it bordered on precognition?

Did he break through as easily as breathing air?

Ves did not know any details, and that hindered him from confirming without a shadow of a doubt that he had succeeded in breaking past a limit that had only been done by a single god pilot once before.

"WHAT?!"

Ves retreated from his tunnel vision and turned around to observe the projected feed of one of the exterior visual sensors of the Dominion of Man.

His inability to empirically verify the results of his experiment was frustrating beyond belief!

"Ves! You need to see this! The storm clouds forming about the Dominion of Man... they've changed. A shape has formed that looks like the face of an intelligent alien species!"

"WHAT?!"

Ves retreated from his tunnel vision and turned around to observe the projected feed of one of the exterior visual sensors of the Dominion of Man.

His heart froze as soon as he saw the contours of an alien face.

"This... this is impossible."

Pure power radiated from this face. What was remarkable was that it felt distinctly different from the rest of the tribulation storm!

There was only one possible explanation for this unexpected turn of events.

Somehow, a mysterious but extremely powerful alien entity managed to hijack the tribulation storm from an immense distance!

Given that the shape of this new and completely unfamiliar alien species did not match any of the known alien species from the Red Ocean suggested that the origin of this alien powerhouse was extragalactic!

That begged the question how the powerful figure managed to hijack something as powerful and domineering as a tribulation storm in the first place.

From the moment Ves locked eyes with the projected face's eyes, he instantly felt as if invisible laser beams pinned onto his Spirituality!

He somehow knew what had happened.

He went too far this time. He violated a taboo that he shouldn't have. His act had been so egregious that it somehow created an opening that enabled a powerful alien deity to invite himself over to this tribulation storm!

"We're... we're in big trouble this time."