The Mech Touch novel Chapter 1174

Religion formed one of the great divisions of human civilization. Belief in a transcendent existence or an unfathomable structure holding reality aloft provided a framework for humans to find meaning in their lives.

In fact, many of the other alien races that humanity contacted also exhibited beliefs.

The argument between believers and non-believers raged throughout the ages without any sign of consensus.

Fortunately, humanity’s expansion in space lessened the pressure of conflict between the two sides. The galaxy was so big that everyone had a place to call their own. Older religions who could trace their origins from Old Earth ruled entire star sectors while newer religions traveled to the outskirts of human space and occupied an unclaimed star system.

In this way, secular states and religious states largely learned to live alongside each other. The rate of conflict between the two types of states wasn’t any higher than usual.

If they did go to war, then the impetus for the conflict rarely revolved around clashing ideologies.

Since the founding of Bright Republic and the Ylvaine Protectorate, the two states never found any cause to go to war. The Bright Republic already had their hands full with the Vesia Kingdom, so they tried their best to placate their religious neighbor.

The Ylvainans isolated themselves after a traumatic flight from the galactic heartland. It took several centuries for them to process their crisis of faith and the loss of both their prophet and his entire dynasty.

By the time they were ready to look outwards again, tensions quickly rose with their neighboring Star Faith Collective.

Both of them were religious states, but both of them centered around radically different beliefs!

The Ylvainans possessed transcendent beliefs based around many scattered predictions spoken by Prophet Ylvaine.

The Star Worshippers literally worshipped stars as living, thinking deities. The larger, more energetic and more luminous the star, the more powerful the stellar god!

The conflict between them began to flare in recent times because the Star Worshippers began to eye some of the star systems claimed by the Protectorate. Those star systems possessed powerful singular, binary or even trinary stars!

It didn’t help that their beliefs weren’t compatible with each other. While the Ylvainans were rather vague and obtuse about the existence of higher powers, one of their core beliefs fundamentally clashed with the central belief of the Star Worshippers.

Prophet Ylvaine once stated that a time would come where every form of life would eventually transcend into immortal godlike beings!

Whether it was a human, alien, exobeast, plant or a virus, a time of ending would come one day where each living being ascended to godhood!

This pivotal prediction sparked a lot of tension between the Ylvainans and nearly everyone else, whether they were secular or religious!

The secularists vehemently disagreed with the Ylvainan inclination to encourage peace between humans and aliens. To an Ylvainan, the aliens were fellow brothers and sisters.

While they accepted the war would always take place between humans and aliens, it was no different from the wars that humanity already waged against themselves. In the larger scheme of things, the Ylvainans dreamed of a time where humans and aliens lived alongside each other in a single galactic community!

Their friendly stance on aliens did not endear the Ylvainan Faith to many states, particularly the secular ones. Their overarching belief that all forms of life would ascend to godhood did not sit well with many other religions that believed in the supremacy of their own gods!

Ves didn’t know whether the Star Worshippers aggressively pushed the Ylvainans because of a faith or plain greed. What mattered was the Ylvaine Protectorate faced a continuous escalation of conflict that could erupt into outright war at any time!

Having kept to themselves for all this time, the Ylvainans found to their horror that their war readiness was not up to par compared to the more geopolitically-active Star Faith Collective.

No matter how much fervor the Protectors of the Faith possessed, a strong and sincere belief was not enough to win a battle on its own! _{freewebnovel.cσ๓}

Strong mechs, blooded mech pilots, war-tested martial traditions and robust supply lines mattered more, and the Ylvainans came up short in each of these areas!

Ves and his staff already figured out some of these dynamics through their own research, but the data chip that Calabast threw at him at the end of their meeting painted a dire picture!

As Ves allowed Ketis, Gavin and Leland to study its contents, each of them seem amazed.

"Madame Cecily favors you very much if she is willing to pass on these unvarnished truths to us." Leland noted while looking sharply at Ves. "By chance, did you seduce her or something?"

"Pfff! Don’t joke around, please." Ves replied. Even if Calabast looked gorgeous, she was still a spy! "We just found we had more things in common than we thought. As long as we fulfill her expectations, Madame Cecily is willing to elevate the LMC’s presence in the Protectorate in order to whip the domestic mech industry back into shape. Each of us are using each other in more ways than one."

None of his staff understood the hidden meaning behind his words. Perhaps Leland might have caught something, but even he shouldn’t be aware of Madame Cecily’s true identity.

"You know, the predicament the Protectorate has fallen under is an excellent opportunity for us!" Gavin said with shining eyes. "The LMC is a mech company based in Brighter traditions, which counts for a lot since our customers can count on our mechs to perform well in heated conflicts."