The Mech Touch

Chapter 7126: Athena’s Strength

Athena Jameson was a qi cultivator.

She already possessed a strong spirituality by nature, but she actively developed it early on by practising a qi cultivation method that was unfamiliar to Ves.

While he could not glean too many details about the qi cultivation method devised by the Red Fleet, Blinky was perceptive enough to figure out that it had to be centered around a specific application of time.

Yes, time.

This was the first time that Ves had met a proper if somewhat young and immature time cultivator.

That was not all. Athena’s cultivation was very focused. She did not try to bite more than she could chew. She was still young, so her capacity to understand extremely abstruse concepts was far from the best. She already faced an uphill battle in getting started with a cultivation method based on the time attribute.

As far as E energy attributes were concerned, time consistently entered the top 10 in popularity and desirability, even managing to beat out space.

Unfortunately, just as space, ordinary people virtually had no chance of developing any special powers based on time.

It was just too difficult to get started. From what he heard, the few success cases within the Red Collective all relied on powerful external reagents in order to help them get past the insanely high threshold.

Ves believed that the Jameson Spaceborn Clan must have invested a huge amount of capital in order to get Athena started on her exclusive cultivation method. It made no sense if that was not the case. She was too young, and even if her inherent talent gave her a leg up, that was far from enough to wield a fraction of the power of time.

It was not his business to get to the bottom of this matter. No matter how the Jamesons managed to get one of their descendants to become a time cultivator, the important part was that they managed to attain initial success.

Athena managed to overcome one of the most difficult hurdles, but she still had plenty of other challenges ahead of her journey. The difficulty of making further progress was undoubtedly high.

She would definitely have to push herself beyond her limits on a repeated basis in order to overcome her many bottlenecks.

Yet all of it would be worth it. As long as her special cultivation method was powerful enough, she would gain increasing proficiency and control over specific aspects of time.

If Blinky’s examination of Athena’s structured spirituality was correct, then the young naval cadet had chosen to forgo much of the advantages of time in favor of viewing short glimpses of the future.

In other words, Athena had aspirations to become a prophet of sorts, but not the mysterious and confounding kind like Ylvaine.

She only wanted to observe a preview of what might happen a few seconds or a few minutes from the present.

"Clever." Ves said as he directed an appreciative gaze towards Athena. "My experience with prophets and foresight is... mixed. Don’t get me wrong. You can get an early warning and find out a great deal of stuff from a prophecy, but the further you look into the future, the costlier it gets. The consumption and difficulty gets even higher if you try to predict the actions of phase leaders and high-ranking mech pilots over such a lengthy span of time. If you limit your future glimpse to just thirty seconds in the future, then that is an excellent way to minimize your consumption and reduce the reliability of your predictions."

Both Astrid and Athena looked surprised at Ves.

"You have a sound understanding of some of the main variables involved with Athena’s specialization." The female lieutenant-commander said. "We have indeed devised a time-oriented cultivation method for her that seeks to grant her more accurate and reliable insight into what will unfold in the short term. This is all she needs in order to become a more effective naval officer at a station where she is able to make good use of the information she has obtained from her near-future vision. Whether that is at a gunnery station, the bridge or a command station, even a few seconds worth of foresight can mean the difference between victory and loss."

She explained a bit more about the principles and goals of Athena’s special cultivation method.

While she did not recite the specific mantras and cultivation steps, she supplied enough specific information to Ves to get a better idea on what sort of companion spirit would best compliment the young girl.

Ves grew more and more impressed with the layout of the fleeters who had devised this cultivation method from scratch.

They were already scientists with a good grasp on theoretical physics. In order to devise a time-based cultivation methods, they went deep into the Red Fleet and Red Collective’s archives and read every scripture that contained even a hint of prophecy and time manipulation.

Much of that knowledge was obscure, abstruse, incomplete and likely incorrectly translated.

There was so much that could go wrong if they attempted to make use of all of the bizarre and contradictory information.

Yet the scientists ignored all of it. They instead collated everything they learned and cut all of the dubious, dangerous and outright fabricated contents.

That left them with only a fraction of rules and principles that sounded at least somewhat consistent and reliable.

This was what they used as the core building blocks of the time-based cultivation method that Athena successfully practiced.

This explained why her spirituality was so focused and lacking in complexity. The RF cultivation scientists did not dare to mess with powers beyond their comprehension, so they cut everything aside from the bare essentials.

That was already enough. Perhaps the ability to see what would happen 30 seconds from now might not be powerful in absolute terms, but it could absolutely make an enormous difference in many battles!

The ability to time an attack salvo for devastating effect or predict an incoming enemy attack salvo in advance could make an enormous difference for any warfleet!

Being able to predict the movements and actions of powerful enemy phase lords in advance could help warships survive the onslaught and launch much more effective counterattacks than normal.

While Athena was unlikely to develop the power to change the passage of time or travel back to the past, she gained a lot of stability and reliability in the process.

Ves bet that as long as her cultivation had advanced past a certain point, she should even be capable of witnessing the future actions of god pilots!

This was what mattered the most. The ability to reliably foresee the actions of strong opponents was incredibly valuable and could not be replicated with technology.

Prophecies had a tendency to be inaccurate or get a number of important details wrong because they only foresaw a small range of many possible future scenarios.

Athena should not suffer from this problem.

Looking several seconds or a minute ahead at most drastically cut down on the divergent scenarios.

Specializing in near-future predictions also enabled Athena to become extremely good at distinguishing the more accurate scenarios from the inaccurate ones.

All of this meant that Athena already possessed excellent potential without factoring in a companion spirit.

Of course, there was always room for improvement.

This was where Ves could lend a hand.

Rather than rely on the uncontrollable growth process of a companion spirit fruit, the Jamesons wanted Ves to engineer a custom solution for Athena.

He already came up with a proposal.

"From what I can gather from my observations and your explanations, Athena’s ability to glimpse into the future can only be triggered on command. She needs to consciously execute a technique or spell that will enable her to find out what happens a second in the future or whatever, is that correct?"

The young lady nodded. "That is so. Our cultivation scientists may be able to expand upon that in the future, but that is not certain. I may need to develop my own techniques because my comprehension of time will soon be greater than others."

That was one of the downsides of pioneering a new field, specialization or cultivation method.

Athena certainly had her work cut out for her, but perhaps Ves could make her burden a little more bearable.

"I can make a companion spirit that can leverage her power differently." He said. "I am thinking about engineering a solution that enables her companion spirit to gain a sort of danger sense. This will be a passive ability that is constantly active. No matter whether Athena is distracted, preoccupied or asleep, her companion spirit will always maintain a level of alertness towards threats or highly detrimental events that has a high likelihood of taking place in the immediate future."

Astrid looked slightly intrigued. "That sounds useful, but not so much for an RF officer. I would have a different opinion if you imparted this capability to a mech pilot, but the pace of combat is much slower on a warship. Incoming attacks are much less likely to breach the defenses of a vessel even if they come at a surprise. I am not discounting the usefulness of this danger sense ability, but I do not think it is worth dedicating an entire companion spirit towards this outcome."

"Fair enough." Ves shrugged. "Another suggestion would be to give Athena more time to process the information that she has gained from her future vision and issue detailed and well-considered orders to any subordinates. After all, what is the use of an advance warning of a dozen seconds when you hardly have any time to think about how to form the best response?"

That generated a bit more interest from both Jamesons.

"Is it possible for a companion spirit to speed up the passage of time around myself?" Athena asked with hopeful eyes.

Ves raised his palms. "Probably, but trying to make one is likely beyond my means. I do not possess enough comprehension in time manipulation and the time attribute to create such an extravagant companion spirit. At most, I can create a seed that may develop and sprout in the desired direction, but this will take a very long time, and the outcome is not guaranteed. What I have in mind is more modest than literally accelerating the passage of time on a physical level. I think it is much more attainable if we accelerate your thinking instead. It would be like connecting to a supercharged version of the EdNet for a brief moment of time."

That sounded a lot more realistic. Both Astrid and Athena thought about the proposal.

"This ability sounds... useful but underwhelming." Astrid eventually said. "Athena already possesses a high-quality cranial implant. Her qi cultivation method has also expanded and sped up her thinking through different means."

"I know, but the companion spirit can potentially make a huge difference if she is specialized in this task." Ves responded. "While I cannot give you an estimate on how powerful the effect may be, I think it will be possible for her to spend hours on planning while only a handful of seconds in reality. This ability is incredibly useful even if she does not make use of her foresight. A battle between warships may be slower-paced, but there are always moments on the battlefield where sudden changes and occurrences necessitate a rapid change in plans. If those plans are too hastily made, then that could lead to a cascade of mistakes. Athena will never suffer from that problem. She will distinguish herself in command as a powerful thinker and a strategist who can always lead her fleet to victory."

He painted a very optimistic picture about Athena’s potential future as a naval commander.

Battles in space often revolved around information and timing. Athena’s grasp on time enabled her to strengthen her grasp on both, allowing her to outwit and outmaneuver enemy commanders in many different situations!

A companion spirit that could make all of this possible should be worth a fortune!