The Mech Touch novel Chapter 1317

A huge headache threatened to engulf Ves. When he planned to go on a tour through the star sector, he never expected to confront one of his latent fears in the first leg of his journey!

What was the chance of meeting an agent of Five Scrolls Compact? Extremely low. Yet Ves inadvertently bumped into one just because he wanted to find a personal guard!

To hear that the secretive and mysterious Order of Fl’xix in the Kinner Tribe was actually another splinter organization of the Five Scrolls Compact shocked him immensely.

It made him wonder how many other assets the Compact inserted into other states. Did the Bright Republic have its own branch of the notorious organization?

A shudder went through his back.

Right now, Ves faced a huge dilemma. On the surface, Fe Nitaa spoke truthfully. She expressed complete willingness to place his own interests over the Order of Fl’xix and the Five Scrolls Compact.

According to her, the will of the Holy Sons and Daughters trumped above all. This instruction had been hammered into her over and over again. They were the figureheads of the Compact and the absolute authorities of the expansive cult.

Evidently, despite the immense size of the organization and its loose, cell-like structure, the leadership at the top was very centralized.

The Holy Sons and Daughters had absolute say.

Yet when Fe Nitaa and the other prospective members of the order swore their Kinner oaths, her teachers made a small oversight.

Her first and most important priority is to revere and obey the instructions of the Holy Sons and Daughters.

Her second priority was to revere and obey the instructions of the brothers and sisters of the Five Scrolls Compact.

Her third priority was to obey the instructions of her superiors in the Order of Fl’xix.

The hierarchy here was crystal clear. The Holy Sons and Daughters held absolute control. Their direct instructions superseded every existing arrangement.

Yet these simple instructions came with a very significant hole. It was a mistake typically made in programming where the programmer in question failed to account for an unlikely but faintly possible scenario.

What if the Holy Son or Holy Daughter did not belong to the Compact? What if they were enemies?

The brothers and sisters of the Compact should have known that some of the Scrolls landed in the hands of others. In particular, the CFA and MTA should have obtained the Fire Scroll when they supposedly rebelled against the secretive organization that used to control humanity behind the scenes.

Ves decided to ask this question directly.

"Fe Nitaa. Your instructions supposedly compel you to obey a Holy Son over the rest of the Compact. I understand that the implication of this instruction is that a Holy Son or Daughter is always a part of the Compact, but what if this is not the case, like now?"

A short silence stretched.

"I.. I do not think the leaders of our order ever contemplated this possibility. We hear very little about the core secrets of the Compact. To be honest, this is the first time I’ve learnt that a Holy Son exists that is not aligned with the Compact!"

After a brief round of questioning, Ves clarified the situation a little.

The Order of Fl’xix may be an influential organization in the Kinner Tribe, but it was a non-entity in the larger scheme of things.

The Kinner Tribe was one of the smaller and weaker third-rate states in the star sector. The Komodo Star Sector itself was one of the most remote and underdeveloped star sectors in human space.

To a behemoth like the Five Scrolls Compact which was likely the third-most powerful trans-galactic organization in human space, how much attention did they really pay to their cat’s paws?

Perhaps not even the regional leaders of the Compact in the star sector knew the order even existed!

From what Ves could surmise from his prior encounters, the Compact operated an extensive network of offshoot organizations.

The Church of Haatumak, the Angel’s Wing Foundation and now the Order of Fl’xix. All of these organizations and more served as the low-cost eyes and ears of the Compact.

Their loose, distant and indirect connection to the Compact turned them into disposable entities that could instantly be cut off whenever they became exposed.

It was also due to their low importance that the Compact never filled them in with all of the core secrets of the cult!

Ves tested this out by asking her whether she knew the whereabouts of the Fire Scroll.

"I don’t know. Such information is never passed to lowly ones like me." Fe Nitaa shook her head. "My fellow trainees and I always presumed they were safely in the hands of the Holy Sons and Daughters hiding in the galactic center. There was no conceivable way we would ever suspect that the most eminent leaders of the Compact would ever stray into the galactic rim!"

So his guess was right! The Order of Fl’xix or at least their trainees never knew that the Compact lost most of its Sacred Scrolls!

While this was a major oversight on the part of the Compact, in practice it was unlikely to bite them in the butt. What were the odds this unimportant order would ever come into contact with the Holy Son of an enemy faction?

It was too ridiculous to contemplate!

A combination of laziness, excessive secrecy and lack of investment meant that the Order of Fl’xix had never been prepared to face an existence like Ves!

Certainly, due to the persecution of the Big Two, the Five Scrolls Compact was forced to adopt a decentralized, cell-like organizational structure throughout the galaxy.

It established numerous regional cells, each of which would not harm the main organization if they ever got uprooted by the relentless hunters of the MTA and CFA.

These cells in turn set up their own cells throughout the star sectors they occupied in the form of offshoot or splinter organizations. The additional layer of disconnect meant that these disguised organizations lacked much of the knowledge that a typical brother and sister of the Compact possessed.

"Has the Compact truly never thought about instructing the order and other offshoot organizations of the existence of enemy Holy Sons?" Ves frowned.

Nitaa shook her head. She stopped supplicating completely, but still remained on her knees. "From what I’ve learned from my basic teachings about the Compact, the Sacred Scrolls are more than scrolls. Their material forms are just containers of an immensely powerful artifact that is capable of thinking for itself! They have always chosen their Holy Sons from among the Compact!"