The essence of a god pilot was to acquire the traits that were typically associated with gods!


    How could a god remainpletely obscure and unknown?


    How could a god gain so much power but never actually make use of it in any major capacity?


    How could a god receive so much admiration and worship when he had never actually proven himself deserving of this respect?


    ording to many mech pilots including those that had bridged the ultimate gap, a pilot who yearned to be a god must go out of his way to perform a godlike deed!


    It was easy enough for a god pilot to exert the might of a deity. They had power in spades.


    However, it was a different story when it came to ace pilots!


    As powerful as Saints could be, their willpower could only grow up to a certain limit. Once they hit a limit, there was nothing that peak ace pilots could do to promote the magnitude of their resonance strength.


    They fell short of obtaining the power of an actual god.


    This infamous bottleneck had frustrated many heroes and champions in the past.


    The General Axr Streon and the Mace of Retaliation were just two among many who stood on the wrong side of a wide and deste canyon.


    If they attempted to reach the other side by performing an ordinary jump, then they would almost certainly fall short and plunge to their deaths!


    How could they possibly reach their destination under the circumstances?


    Many different theories had emerged. Humanity still understood too little about this deep and profound issue, but numerous advancements had emerged through abination of clever deduction as well as trial and error.


    "This is how the Mech Merger Body Process originally came to be. It is a systematic recipe that helps ace pilots transform into god pilots one step at a time." Axr Streon generously revealed a secret that was only shared to a tiny minority of people. "Before the mechmunity came up with it, god pilot candidates simply stepped on the road to no return and tried toplete the processes of operation union, domain field union, corporeal union and total union in quick session."


    Ves reacted with shock when he heard this. "What?! That... that''s dangerous! How could they possibly survive such an insanely demanding course of action?"


    Trying toplete all four phases of the infamous Mech Body Merger Process sounded as insane as designing and constructing aplete battleship in the span of a few hours!


    General Axr gazed up in genuine admiration. "This is why all of us look up to the earliest and oldest god pilots. They have all managed to make the jump from ace pilot to god pilot in a single session. The risks they took at the time were astounding, and so was their potential. There is a theory that they all managed to sublimate their willpower and shatter the barriers of reality that held them back because they went all-out in trying toplete deeds that are worthy of legend."


    This was a theory that Ves only heard hints of. His lower rank andck of contact with the upperyers of society had limited his exposure to this kind of stuff.


    Now that he had risen far enough that he was now on speaking terms with a genuine god pilot candidate, Ves could finally lift the fog that hid the essence of the mech piloting profession!


    The crucial information provided by Axr filled a lot of holes in his personal understanding of mech pilots. Ves immediately became engrossed by all of the answers and inferences he had derived from this conversation!


    "I understand!" Ves spoke. "It is not necessarily the goal that matters, but the process of trying to reach it. By setting a seemingly impossible challenge for yourself, you will attempt to do your utmost to make it happen. The more difficult the challenge, the more potential you attempt to squeeze out of yourself. The high stakes and all of the expectations that other people set on you serves to increase the pressure that you are subjected to. All of this can help you push past a critical point and break through the limit of your power!"


    Axr smiled. "I believe the nature of the deed itself is also important, but you are correct that the process of fulfilling it is indispensable. Think about the ancient myths and timeless historical deeds of the human race. Those that manage to exist to this day all deserve to be an active part of our contemporary civilization because they are still leagues ahead of what ordinary people can do. To be a god is to be an inspiration to people. Mech designers such as yourself usually aplish this by creating a work that only a god can make. Mech pilots such as myself must exert our martial might to the limit and beyond to do the same."


    The general''s words briefly reminded Ves of his spective grand designs.


    When Ves had been struck by inspiration and came up with the idea of developing a phase lord god machine, he intuitively thought that a project as massive and ambitious as this would be enough to trigger his advancement to a Star Designer!


    That was because he was convinced that the scope, difficulty and results of this grand design could never bepleted by a typical Master Mech Designer!


    Only an entityparable to a god was qualified toplete such an awe-inspiring project!


    Though Ves didn''t entirely feelfortable about using the terminology of ''god'' and such to describe this topic, he wasn''t as bothered by it as he used to. There was no explicitly religiousponent to this discussion. Axr only yearned to gain the power of a god. He didn''t care about all of the other baggage that came with this loaded term.


    "I guess it makes sense." Ves spoke. "A lot of god pilots had performed astounding deeds that broke the limit of what ace pilots can aplish under their own power. The Light of Sol for example elerated his mech in realspace without relying on warp drives and managed to travel at the speed of light. The Chosen Human simply became a god pilot at the age of 75, thereby setting a record that has never been surpassed. The Fist of Defiance struck down a leader of the Seven Apex Races whose strength wasparable to a god mech with a single punch. The Destroyer of Worlds shattered a heavily defended fortress with a single shot from the main cannon of her mech."


    Whether the goal was important or not, it made sense that all of the pressure that the candidates subjected themselves to yed a major part in motivating them to seed!


    Axr suddenly grinned in amusement. "Would you like to know another secret, professor?"


    How could Ves ever say no to this offer? He nodded his head without any hesitation!


    "After the Age of Conquest hade to an end, humanity entered a recovery process thatsted for over four centuries. To be honest, our civilization has already returned to the peak that we managed to attain during the heyday of the Age of Conquest. Yet despite possessing the power to do so, we never took the initiative to resume the great conquest and conquer the other half of the Milky Way Gxy. There are many reasons why we held ourselves back from finishing the job. For example, the Big Two feared that we would start to turn on ourselves once we have eliminated every alien neighbor that poses a threat to us. However, the reason that matters the most to us is to provide god candidates such as ourselves valid targets to test ourselves against."


    Ves widened his eyes!


    This was a conspiracy!


    "Humanity has been treating the Seven Apex Races as cattle to be farmed? Aren''t people afraid that those aliens will secretly build up their strength and make aeback one day?"


    General Axr shrugged. "Even I am not fully privy to the considerations of the people who rank above my head. I am still a tier 2 gctic citizen. The higher your gctic citizenship tier, the more you wille across these kinds of secrets. To be honest, I shouldn''t have told you this information, but I personally believe this point is moot considering that we have be permanently separated from the Milky Way. I shared it with you in order to open your horizons and let you know the efforts we have made to grant a stage for god pilot candidates to perform."


    In this regard, the situation in the Milky Way and the Red Ocean were simr.


    The biggest difference was that the urgency to beat up the aliens was not so great in the former gxy.


    Setting back the indigenous aliens was a matter of life and death in the Red Ocean! The stakes were so much higher because there weren''t hundreds of thousands battleships and a hundred or so god pilots collectively holding back red humanity''s external enemies!


    Ves began to understand the significance of deeds to pilots that wanted to shed thest vestiges of their mortality.


    "How do these deeds y into the Mech Body Merger Process, exactly?" He asked.


    "When we step onto the road of no return, we cannot reach our destination by taking a leisurely walk." Axr patiently exined. "We must sprint from beginning to end and exert the utmost of our potential as we try to make it to our destination before we crash. The Mech Body Merger Process is split up into four phases, which means that we canplete them step by step. The problem is that barring the Chosen Human, few if any other god pilot has managed toplete all four phases by relying on their normal efforts alone. They need a powerful push, and deeds can make this happen. Typically, a god pilot candidate will seek toplete four appropriate challenges in sequence. Every sessful deed can provide us with the impetus we need toplete an important phase."


    That... was a much more manageable way toplete this life-threatening transformation process. It was quite brilliant in that it enabled the pilot to take his time and reach his goal by making more measured steps.


    "What if the ace pilot fails in one of the four challenges?"


    "Death is almost certain." Axr gravely spoke. "This is no joke, Professor Larkinson. Sess is the only way forward. A single weakness or mistake can doom our attempt at attaining godhood. This is why every ace pilot like myself must set our affairs in order, have no regrets about anything and maximize all of the conditions that we can control."


    That was harsh, but fair. Ves understood that this was the price that any would-be god pilot had to pay.


    Theirbat power was unprecedented ording to Cynthia, but the threshold needed to reach their level was also the highest out of all of the True God variations!


    Now that Ves understood the context of deeds, he thought back on the original topic.


    "So how does Gaia''s suggestion fit in this framework?"


    General Axr couldn''t help but grow enthused again.


    "Think about it, professor. No ordinary pilot can lead an invasion of an alien home system that is located deep behind enemy lines. No ordinary pilot can destroy the surface of that alien race''s home. No ordinary pilot can organize a heist on a cosmic scale. No ordinary pilot can lead the effort to terraform the stolen into a new homeworld for red humanity. The scope and difficulty of this deed surpasses that of most other aplishments. This deed is onlyparable to the mythical feats aplished by the earlier generations of god pilots! If my expectations are correct,pleting thisary theft and conversion operation will be enough to ze through all four phases of the Mech Body Merger Process at once!"


    In other words, General Axr Streon finally saw hope of bing a god pilot in one fell swoop!