When Ves initially came up with the Aspect of Rationality, he never envisioned he would use it for interrogation purposes.
The Aspect of Rationality was originally supposed to provide assistance to professionals such as Ves and other specialists. By stripping their chaotic emotions and leaving them to think logically, the organic statue had the potential to facilitate a lot of breakthroughs in difficult projects.
The point was that Ves always thought of the statue as a tool to help his own people!
Of course, its extreme effects could be harmful if used in the wrong circumstances. That was why he restricted its use and became very selective about who was allowed to experience its unique glow.
Ves never thought about using it on his enemies. Why should he give his opponents a favor by allowing them to sober up and think much more clearly about their own problems?
Only a fool would provide so much assistance to those who wished him ill! The Aspect of Rationality was a unique treasure that could provide substantial benefits to the scientists and engineers under his employ. Ves greatly valued its potential to enhance the R&D activities of his clan!
Therefore, Ves never conceived that the Aspect of Rationality could be used against his enemies. He always thought about the positive sides of the organic statue, but never imagined that he could use its darker side to exploit his prisoners.
He felt a bit ambivalent about this. It was as if he had veered off from the correct path and entered a dark and suspicious alley. A part of him screamed that he wasn’t supposed to make use of his creations in this way.
Of course, Ves quickly shoved this useless part of him aside. There was no room for him to take the high road this time. He urgently required intelligence and if exposing his prisoners to a weird organic statue caused them to spill their secrets in a dispassionate tone, then so be it. He didn’t really intend to spare the prisoners anyhow, so what was the harm in subjecting them to an unethical interrogation process?
He made sure to keep these interrogations a secret, though. The other Larkinsons did not have to know where all of the pertinent information came from. Aside from a few trusted subordinates like Captain Ember, the rest of his clansmen including Venerable Jannzi were left out of the loop.
If any of them grew suspicious, Ves would just say that his men managed to hack the databases and harvested a wealth of data.
Although Ves would have liked to continue to listen for interesting details, he didn’t necessarily need to know all that much. He left Captain Ember to her devices and trusted her to write up a report that summarized all of the most useful details.
The reason why Ves left was because the window of opportunity to make his next move was dwindling. Once he returned to the command center, he took stock of the situation at the conquered underground base. Virtually every local threat had been neutralized and his clansmen were already in the process of plundering any useful assets that the airfleet sorely needed.
“What is the current state of the warehouse complex?” Ves asked Commander Rivington, who was monitoring the situation over there.
“The battle between the Teak Order and the ultralifers ended an hour ago. Both sides were roughly even. The Teak Order possessed fewer mechs, but their training and cohesion is much stronger. Once they got going, they fought hard and forced the ultralifers to bleed for every biomech they managed to fell. That still didn’t stop the frenzied attackers from overrunning the last line of defense. Eventually, the final fifty or so grey biomechs broke ranks and fled the battlefield. A large number of surviving ultralifer biomechs left as well to hunt them down. They haven’t returned at the moment.”
Ves raised his eyebrow. This was very good news! If the pursuit forces of the victorious ultralifers did not return soon, then the defenses of the heavily-damaged warehouse complex had reached a low point!
No matter whether the site remained in the hands of the Teak Order or fell under the sway of the ultralifers, it was impossible for the remaining defenders to be as strong as the original garrison!
Every surviving biomech did not only incur varying degrees of battle damage, but also depleted a significant amount of resources. Though the ultralifers left behind at the warehouse complex were currently helping themselves to the supplies they managed to scavenge from the site, this was a very slow process without the help of large crews of support personnel.
Perhaps at this time, the ultralifer base would have dispatched their personnel to take over the conquered location and fix up their mechs.
Yet all of that had no chance of coming true now that the Larkinsons took over their base.
“This is the right time to launch another assault. Let’s clean the remnants of the ultralifers up and take over the location that they worked so hard to conquer!”
Nothing made him happier than taking advantage of the hard work of others! Usually, he derived this enjoyment by delegating tedious work to his subordinates. Now, he was starting to feel the same kind of rush by ordering his airfleet to pick the fruit that the ultralifers had bled and died to secure.
In the end, there was no suspense. When the airfleet along with the main force of the Larkinson Clan advanced towards the warehouse complex, the ultralifers lacked the strength to resist a fresh force of hundreds of mechs and biomechs.
In order to ensure the ultralifers didn’t flee right away, Ves had authorized Venerable Tusa along with a company of light mechs to circle around and block the most obvious flight direction.
After sandwiching and surrounding the surviving ultralifer biomechs that weren’t on pursuit duty, the last stand only lasted a few minutes.
In fact, the battle could have ended sooner if not for the fact that Ves held back his expert pilots and elite mech pilots.
It was rare for inexperienced mech pilots to get the chance of fighting a weak but desperate opponent. Ves did not feel any qualms about letting the rookies and inexperienced mech pilots get a taste of actual war in a reasonably controlled circumstance. Even if a couple of Larkinson mech pilots lost their mechs due to getting outfought by the desperate ultralifers, it didn’t matter as long as the mech pilots were able to eject in time.
“It’s too easy.” Commander Casella said at the end of this unusually effortless operation.
Though there were still numerous ultralifers mechs at large, they lacked the numbers to dislodge the Larkinson airfleet from the warehouse complex. Unless a third hostile group that was greedy for the site appeared somewhere, Ves finally succeeded in his goal of securing this promising location!
Even though the prior battle had been so intense that pretty much every organic structure had collapsed, Ves didn’t care about all of that. Everything above the ground was completely superfluous in his eyes.
“Alright, let’s begin our search.” He commanded. “Search for any underground spaces or entrances that might lead to something that is unusually advanced or impenetrable. Dig around if you have to. In the meantime, please scour the battlefield and find some surviving Teak Order members. Pass them onto Captain Ember. She will know what to do with these paramilitaries.”
Though a lot of clansmen felt that the coincidences that happened today were very suspicious, Ves had no intention of explaining the full story to them. All they needed to pay attention to was that they successfully took revenge against the ultralifers for their attack against the airfleet.
“I wanted to kill them, but not like this.”
“It doesn’t feel satisfying to swoop in like carrion birds and prey on the weak.”
“Is there anything honorable about this battle?”
The Larkinsons didn’t obtain the satisfaction that they were hoping for. Ves promised something different, but as long as they earned some measure of victory, they didn’t have much to complain about.
Ves no longer paid attention to the morale levels of his clansmen. He didn’t even devote any time to the ongoing interrogations that proceeded with the help of the Aspect of Rationality.
Now that he had taken possession of the coveted warehouse complex, he became so swept by greed and desire that he had personally joined the search for the presumed entrance to the pinnacle lab!
“Where is it?! Where is it?! Aggh! Search harder!”
The initial searches didn’t yield any useful results. In fact, when Captain Ember interrogated the first batch of surviving members of the Teak Order, it turned out that the original occupants of the warehouse complex failed to find the entrance as well!
“What?!” Ves looked incredulous at Captain Ember’s projected form. “Are you telling me that the Teak Order sat on this location for many days without actually pinning down the location of the pinnacle lab?!”
“Yes, sir. While it may be possible that the higher ups of the Teak Order secretly found the entrance and kept the news hidden from the rest of their men, they have behaved rather bewildered and frustrated for the entire time, so it is unlikely they managed to achieved any progress.”
This was both good and bad news.
The good news was that the pinnacle lab was probably completely pristine. All of its wealth and riches should still be in place.
Even if Ves could never physically bring all of the amazing equipment, tools and resources back to his fleet, he would already be content if he could smuggle out some small high-value products such as high-grade life-prolonging serum!
The bad news was that the pinnacle lab was not only hidden, but also retained its full defenses. As one of the most strategically-important facilities of the Life Research Association, Ves feared what kind of defenses he might encounter. As one of the sanctums of the legendary Supreme Sage, the odds were great that the internal defenses were so formidable that they could even crush an expert mech!
“I’ll solve this problem when the time comes.” He muttered. “First, I need to find the darned entrance.”
This was not easy, to put it lightly. The Teak Order already tried and failed, so how could the Larkinsons do any better?
Ves even put his Odineye to use by hooking it up to a power generator and letting it scan in every direction at its highest setting.
“Nothing!”
Though his Odineye managed to discover several hidden caches, none of them led to anything resembling a pinnacle lab.
He frowned as he finally deactivated the Odineye. He already knew that it wasn’t omnipotent. In particular, it couldn’t reach deep into the ground.
“Is the pinnacle lab buried a hundred kilometers below the ground?”
That was quite troublesome if true! Fortunately, the Teak Order had already probed the depths below the warehouse complex. They hadn’t found anything unusual.
This left Ves and his clansmen without any useful clues and hints. In fact, they never even confirmed that a pinnacle lab was even situated in this area to begin with! It could have all been a hoax that happened to have ensnared the ultralifers, the Teak Order and the Larkinson Clan.
“Where is the goddamn entrance?!”
As the hours passed by and the skies darkened, Ves grew increasingly more desperate. He even floated around and blasted his spiritual senses in a wide area around him in order to see if he could catch any abnormalities that others couldn’t detect.
“Nothing!”
It wasn’t until he was about to give up his personal search that he felt something unusual in the pocket of his Unending Regalia.
A strange idea entered his mind.
“Could it be…?”
Ves carefully opened his pocket compartment and retrieved a small pouch. He slowly drew out a large gem that resembled a crystallized organized heart.
The gem that Ves had managed to bring to life softly tugged in a specific direction.
Previously, he always thought that the gem just tried to flee out of his grasp, but what if there was more to it than that? What if Supreme Comprehension tried to reach a specific destination?
“I’ll give you a chance.” He directly told the gem.
Though Ves did not let go of the gem, he continued to observe and feel where it wanted to go. He slowly floated over the organic debris and rubble strewn over the ground and gradually moved away from the center of the warehouse complex.
It wasn’t until he reached a remote corner which used to pile some neglected cargo containers that the gem started to tug downwards.
“Is the pinnacle lab underneath this yard?” He softly asked.
He had to interpret the living gem some more to understand that he was supposed to approach a specific cargo container that had remained oddly intact despite all of the devastation in the immediate surroundings.
When the gem softly collided against the surface of the container, a hidden entrance opened up. Ves cautiously entered and saw that it was largely empty aside from holding an odd stone block.
“Do you want to touch it?” Ves questioned.
He cautiously allowed the living gem to touch the stone block. As soon as the two objects made contact, the massive block spontaneously folded within itself as if it was a high-tech puzzle!
“What the!”
Ves and his escorts quickly drew back and continued to observe the odd transformation. In just half a minute, the materials of the stone block spontaneously reconfigured into what appeared to be a circular portal!
A strange light appeared in the middle of the portal. It quickly expanded in a strange and ethereal light show that looked very familiar to Ves. His eyes widened as he realized what he was facing.
“It’s a teleportation portal!”
