Chapter 7241: Transhumanist Miracle

At this point, Ves no longer cared too much about letting the mechers crawl all over his new D-mech.

While he still refused to provide any answers related to Demoncasting, the experts of the Red Association were not stupid. They could fill in a lot of the blanks without requiring any verbal explanations.

Ves could only sigh and accept this consequence as the price of a partially botched breakthrough event.

He continued to ponder about what exactly went wrong.

This anomalous outcome shouldn’t have happened. Saint Rosa Orfan should have broken through directly, broken through late or died without ever fulfilling her dream.

From what Ves could gather from all of the clues, Saint Rosa triggered her second apotheosis awfully late.

In fact, the most likely theory that could explain why she botched her breakthrough was that she had triggered it when she was on the verge of losing herself forever.

She had lost much of herself to the Prophet’s Bane. The two had become so entangled with each other that it became difficult to treat them as separate entities.

If that was the case, then much of the anomalies that occurred during the abnormal breakthrough event could be explained.

Ves awaited the feedback from the members of the Transhumanist Faction.

Out of all of the factions of the RA, the Transhumanists should be the most accepting of what has happened.

Their expertise also happened to be highly relevant to the current case.

After several hours of examinations and consulting with research groups over highly encrypted communication channels, Professor Vector Loban finally returned to Ves and Gloriana in order to disclose their preliminary findings.

Despite their exhaustion and desire to recharge their mental faculties, the Miracle Couple could not bring themselves to call it a day when they had produced an unprecedented accident.

They needed answers. Ves and Gloriana needed to know that despite what had occurred, they had not condemned the new ace pilot to a life of suffering, mutilation and isolation.

Seeing the optimistic expression on Vector’s face already provided a lot of reassurance.

The Transhumanist liaison wouldn’t smile if the worst case scenario had occurred.

“First of all, congratulations for earning your latest masterwork certificates.” Vector announced to the pair. “The issuance of the certificates will be much delayed this time. Our faction will try to rush it as quickly as possible, but the sheer amount of anomalies that we have ascertained during our initial examination will make that difficult. I do not expect that these objections will hold out for long given our strong support and the fact that you are a tier 2 galactic citizen. Despite everything that happened, the Riot Mark III is still a masterwork mech. What others consider imperfections, we prefer to view it as a noble experiment to promote the evolution of the human race. We cannot condemn a sincere attempt to break the status quo.”

His words fit the goals and ideology of the Transhumanist Faction. Ves grew a little more reassured when he heard that the Transhumanists were willing to expend political capital in order to back him up and sweep any potential problems under the rug.

“Will there be any follow-up investigations?” Gloriana cautiously asked.

“That cannot be avoided.” Vector admitted. “The Riot Mark III is an unprecedented fusion of man and machine, mech design and cultivation science, superdimensionality and spirituality. Your machine intersects so many advanced technologies and theories together that it is a crime against humanity to leave it unstudied. We have already applied to assign a permanent multi-disciplinary research team to monitor its condition and track its changes over time. We will also include medical professionals who are primarily tasked with keeping your new saint’s mental and physical state as healthy as possible.”

That was the price for receiving the backing of the Transhumanist Faction. Ves did not even bother to argue this arrangement. He knew that he and his clan simply did not possess the tech or expertise to take proper care of Saint Orfan.

His wife did not have a problem with this deal either. She was grateful that the mechers finally stepped in and accepted the responsibility of taking care of the ace pilot.

At this point, Gloriana cared little about the Riot. Ves had twisted it so much that her sense of ownership in the expert mech had plunged. The D-mech carried so much of his fingerprints that they had almost entirely overlapped her own touch.

“About Saint Orfan…”

“Her condition is complex, but relatively stable as far as we can ascertain.” Vector responded to Gloriana. “We do not expect that her life is in danger in the short term. We are not so certain whether that will remain the case in the medium and long term. We have already determined that we cannot separate her body from the piloting chair that she has partially fused with. Doing so will lead to grave consequences for both the physical and metaphysical health of the pilot.”

Vector activated a projection that showed a highly detailed wireframe model of the cockpit.

He highlighted the piloting chair that still contained Rosa Orfan’s body.

The results of the latest deep scans provided an inside look of what was happening beneath the exterior.

Both Ves and Gloriana’s expressions grew grave when they observed how intricate the fusion between flesh and machine had become.

The piloting chair might look like a chair, but it was actually a highly sophisticated machine that contained part of both the neural interface and the Carmine System.

It also contained a lot of systems designed to cushion the pilot’s body against extreme forces and protect it against shrapnel and other hazards.

“As you can see, there is no neat and simple line that separates the body of Rosa Orfan from the structure of her piloting chair.” Vector patiently explained. “The components that serve many different functions such as projecting an azure energy shield, inertial dampening, wireless neural interfacing and conducting the blood exchange function for the Carmine System have melded into her body. Each of these components have undergone strange mutations that have not only made them compatible to Saint Orfan’s human body, but also integrated it into the mech to the point where it is no longer a discrete existence anymore.”

“That means…?”

“From a purely functional perspective, Rosa Orfan’s body has turned into an extension of the mech. It has become as deeply integrated as the Carmine System itself. To sever the body from the mech is like removing an essential system from the Riot. A mech will no longer work if we remove the power reactor or the engine from the machine. We believe that a similar circumstance is at work here. It may not seem obvious, but we calculate that there is a 85 percent probability that the Riot Mark III will become completely inoperable and Saint Orfan will likely perish upon trying to sever the two by force.”

Gloriana took this news especially hard. She considered the current situation to be a huge failure on her part. A mech was meant to serve the pilot. It was not designed to devour its user!

“How do you know?” She skeptically asked. “Why is your confidence level so high? You only studied our machine for a handful of hours.”

The Transhumanist mech designer grinned in response. “That is because we have conducted many experiments over the centuries that have produced… similar results. Ah, do not misunderstand us. The similarities are not strong. We have never conducted an experiment involving novel elements such as superdimensional alloys, archetech and the Carmine System, but the combination of all of them has produced an outcome that has provided us with a vast amount of data and inspiration. By comparing new results with old results, we can deduce many insights and increase our understanding of what it takes to further the evolution of humans through mechs.”

Ves had spoken with Transhumanists enough times to become aware that they conducted a large amount of taboo experiments. The more radical members of their faction was perhaps the most eager to overthrow all of the overly restrictive rules that restricted their research.

The Great Severing had conveniently cut the RA Transhumanist Faction off from the oppressive Chosen Human.

Now that they had embraced the leadership of the much more tolerant and forward-minded Evolution Witch, they became much more open about conducting experiments that previously would have brought them to trial!

The Transhumanists were so obsessed about their grand ambitions that they did not even bother to hide their past transgressions anymore. Ves could only imagine what kind of sick experiments they conducted in the past that resulted in humans becoming permanently stuck to their mechs.

“In the instances that have resulted in an undesirable and suboptimal integration between man and machine, forcibly severing the corpus of the mech pilot from the physical structure of the mech has resulted in death or functional death 100 percent of the time.” Vector seriously said.

That revelation caused alarm to both Ves and Gloriana.

If the figure was accurate, then there was not a single success case!

“Do you know why?” She asked.

“Yes, but only loosely. Our theories are not yet fully able to stand up to scrutiny, but we hope that our examinations of your Riot Mark III will change that. In short, the fusion goes beyond the material. The metaphysical components of the mech and mech pilots have fused as well. If you separate one but not the other, then a terrible consequence will occur. The ‘soul’ of the mech pilot will not only remain behind in the machine, but the absence of the old human body will trigger a catastrophic consequence.”

“What happens?”

“Mech pilots below the rank of god pilots are still human, at least in part.” Vector seriously said. “What happens is similar to what happens if we completely digitize the brain of a human. He will lose his humanity and turn into a rigid machine. More egregiously than that, we have broken the anchor of a human soul to such a severe extent that it has become… broken. A broken vessel cannot adequately accommodate a human existence. The precise outcomes are different depending on the specific cases, but none of them are good. The most merciful outcome is that the disembodied human simply dies in an instant or disappears in silence. The less merciful ones are those where the pilots suffer great pain as their souls slowly crumble apart or steadily become subsumed by the machines that they have fused with. There are other unpleasant outcomes as well.”

In short, bad stuff happens if Ves and Gloriana rashly attempted to remove Saint Orfan’s body from the Riot Mark III.

Even though her body was in a weird and awful state, it still served as a vital anchor for Saint Orfan’s continued existence as a living human being.

“Do not feel too bad about it.” Vector tried to reassure the pair. “This experiment of yours is still a relative success in our opinion. Your attempt could have easily produced much worse outcomes. Saint Rosa Orfan can still regain her human body while she is at least somewhat alive and functional. We may not be able to do so through surgery or other methods, but she herself possesses the power to move past this transformation and gain control over her own form. Do you understand what I am referring to, professors?”

Gloriana failed to connect the dots, but the same could not be said for Ves.

“You are talking about the road to no return, the ultimate steps that every ace pilot needs to complete in order to complete the ultimate breakthrough.” Ves steadily answered. “From a more charitable perspective, you can say that Saint Rosa Orfan has already completed several steps of the Mech Body Merger Process in advance. This unconventional transformation combined with the formation of the Blood Pact means that our new ace pilot has potentially completed the first step, the second step and the third step. Potentially.”

“…Doesn’t that mean that Saint Orfan only needs to complete one more step before she can make the ultimate breakthrough?”

“There is… a small possibility that you are correct so long as her resonance strength has reached the limit of her current rank.”

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