The Mech Touch novel Chapter 755

Even though Ves activated his spiritual vision to watch out for uninvited guests, he hadn’t been mentally prepared to respond!

As his arm was about to come down while materializing the Amastendira, his left eye detected a swirl of energy shooting from the acolyte’s palm! Ves only noted that it looked weaker than the previous energy waves he witnessed before he got hit!

Both of them paused for a bit. Ves waited for the pain to hit home, while the acolyte likely waited for him to crumble.

Yet.. it was as if his nerves got hit by a pillow! The strange energy that passed through his body barely tickled him as it traveled onwards!

Three seconds passed until Ves opened his mouth. "Was that supposed to hurt?"

Before he waited for an answer, the Ves finished aiming the recently-materialized Amastendira and shot a laser beam straight into the gaping mouth of the acolyte!

Unfortunately, the laser beam continued to bore out hole through the shuttle hull! The entire interior threw into chaos as all of the air sucked out into space. Fortunately, his combat armor’s helmet folded up to protect him from the lack of air.

Just as he dematerialized the Amastendira and tried to figure out a way to explain the mess, the hatch to the cockpit shifted open. The shuttle pilot scanned the passenger room with a pistol in hand, staring bewilderingly at the hole burned straight through the hull and the partially headless corpse of the fugitive acolyte.

Strangely enough, the vacsuit the dead acolyte wore automatically folded out a thin helmet to cover up the destroyed head as best it could, thereby unintentionally preserving the body.

If not for the airtight seal, bubbling blood would have literally spurted from the blasted head due to the extreme change in pressure!

A comm channel automatically switched online.

"What happened here, Mr. Larkinson?"

"This invisible bastard popped up behind my back and I shot him before he could attack me. I’m lucky to be alive, honestly. If he got his attack off, I’d either be dead or in a coma."

Of course, this story leaked like a sieve. Ves was pretty sure that the shuttle’s monitoring system captured everything, but right now he didn’t wish to be dragged into a time-consuming investigation.

"Protocol says we need to land at the closest ship with a functional shuttle bay. We’ve just departed from the Shield of Hispania, so we’ll be back in a jiffy." The pilot stated.

"No! Continue to the Gorgon’s Gaze."

"I’m sorry, Mr. Larkinson, but the shuttle is still unsafe. We need to return as fast as possible."

"Let me call Major Verle."

Ves ignored the shuttle pilot’s bleating and called Major Verle right away.

One minute later, the shuttle pilot received new orders directly from the big man himself. It basically reaffirmed his old orders.

Grumbling about protocol before he shut off the channel, the pilot reentered the cockpit and resumed the journey, this time with an extra hole in the passenger compartment.

After a short amount of time, the pilot evidently activated a damage control module, because a bot emerged from a hidden slot and flew towards the hole. It sprayed some white slime-like substance that quickly hardened into a hard, dry seal.

Reserve air started pumping back in, causing the interior of the shuttle to regain standard pressure.

"That’s convenient." Ves spoke as his helmet folded back into itself again.

Ves contemplated sitting down somewhere far away from the body, which started reeking, but changed his mind when he stared at it. He never received permission to investigate the corpses of the acolytes caught in the previous ambush.

He should take advantage of this unique opportunity. After all, it took the shuttle at least fifteen to cross the void that separated the starships.

Even after vaporizing the upper head, the most crucial area when it came to spirituality, Ves could still poke around the corpse. He always wondered how the acolytes looked like beneath their obscuring robes.

While the Vandals would probably be annoyed at him for messing around with a corpse, it wasn’t as if they already had enough dead acolytes stored in the morgue. With that excuse in hand, he bent down and started to unceremoniously strip the body of the robe.

Due to his armor, he handled the body rougher than he was supposed to. The robe tore under his hamfisted attempt to get it off.

"Oops."

He inspected the black fabric and found it to be nothing but cheap synthetic woven into a thick faux-woolen cloth.

After throwing it aside, Ves inspected the body proper.

"So it turns out they do engage in extreme genetic modification.

The bulky robes hid the dead acolyte’s extreme divergences from a baseline human.

First, the acolyte actually possessed a misshapen third arm right underneath the left arm. The creepy limb appeared to be fully functional by all accounts and resembled a small alien’s limb more than a human one.

Second, when Ves cut into the vacsuit material with a small multitool he kept in his toolbelt, the acolyte’s skin looked completely unlike a human. The rough, grey skin resembled the texture of sandpaper.

More small anomalies popped up. Ves couldn’t even count how many alien species his genetic modifications encompassed, but it must have been more than six because of all of the strange stuff he detected.

The acolyte’s arms featured vestigial fins.