Chapter 7336: Distributed Willpower

During the exchange of blows so far, Ves grew more familiar with what he was dealing with. The enemy was no longer as unfathomable as before.

Direct contact granted him a greater level of insight and understanding of his opponent than when he observed the powerful Goliath at a distance.

He quickly became intimately familiar with the structure, character and concentration of the Ixith Goliath’s mysterious stolen resonance.

It felt substantially different from the many manifestations of true resonance that he had sampled many times throughout his career.

Ves not only confirmed that the source of all of the stolen resonance came from the Mentalist Crystal, but that the enormous scale of the Ixith Goliath most definitely tied into its power.

While he did not have proof of this, he began to guess that the greater the biomass, the stronger the resonance strength!

This was a very weird conclusion and one that never applied to human expert pilots and ace pilots in the past.

Yet Ves dared to make this guess because of what he perceived.

The more he came into contact with this alien megavoribug, the more he began to understand its essence as a life form.

As an expert in living entities, Ves had observed many fascinating creatures throughout his lifetime, but the so-called Ixith Goliath most definitely occupied its own category!

“This Goliath… lacks a singular brain or personality.”

“What?” The Dark Apostle questioned even as he continued to assault the Level 8 Goliath with his Withering Sting.

“I think I understand a bit better why this Goliath is able to generate willpower in abundance.” Ves made a bold claim. “It is a superorganism masquerading as a giant insect. To you, it looks like a big bug, but to me, it is a collection of trillions upon trillions of voribugs that just happened to be permanently fused together. I admire what the Goliath Hive managed to bring to life. It is no wonder that it required an Incubator to be born. This fellow is a masterful realization of an organic distributed intelligence. I don’t understand the details of how they are able to maintain individuality amidst their collective, but the Ixith Goliath somehow manages to obtain the advantages of both worlds.”

In other words, the new Goliath was a singular massive entity when it counted, and a large collection of individual cooperating insects when that happened to be more convenient!

“So how exactly is it able to harness the power of stolen resonance?” The Dark Apostle asked.

Blinky narrowed his glowing eyes. “I can’t fully explain that. My best guess is that every ‘sentient organic component’ is an entity that is intelligent enough to generate its own thoughts and emotions. These also happen to be the building blocks of willpower. As for how they are able to develop extraordinary willpower, I don’t think that they have managed to generate it by themselves. Instead, I think they stole it from the expert pilots that they have managed to assimilate. Stolen resonance is not a wrong description. They are not generating anything new. Instead, they are repurposing what used to belong to others.”

The Dark Apostle frowned beneath his helmet. He felt that the job of defeating the Ixith Goliath had just become a lot more complicated. How the hell was he supposed to defeat a ‘distributed intelligence’?

“So this is what you mean that it doesn’t have a single brain. Every part of its body can do the thinking for it. We can cut away 99 percent of its body, but the remaining 1 percent won’t grow any stupider! Wait, what is the role of the Mentalist Crystal?”

“Good question. I can only speculate, but I believe that the Mentalist Crystal plays a vital role in bringing it all together. It is too much to ask for all of these sentient organic components to cooperate perfectly with each other without a strong sense of hierarchy or direction. Don’t think that brains are useless. They are the primary regulating organs for complex bodies. The Ixith Goliath simply cannot behave normally if he lacks a crystal. Only with this precious object is it able to get every organic component to work in total sync with each other. It is not a brain, but it is still an essential regulating organ.”

“So in the end, it all comes back to the beginning. The only ways to defeat it is to eliminate the Mentalist Crystal or break down its entire body.”

It was too much. The Dark Apostle and the Ascended Giants who answered to him were too weak in all respects.

Their kind currently lacked the ability to storm their opponent head-on and expect to win!

“For now, just keep attacking. Your contributions are not useless. As long as you keep destroying its flesh, it will have less sentient organic components at its disposal. Even if it can regenerate lost biomass, the newborn organic components probably won’t be able to generate willpower as effectively. Still, the only way to kill this enemy for good is to destroy or remove the Mentalist Crystal. It is the creature’s central hub and the only thing that keeps this gigantic monstrosity in perfect coordination.”

The Dark Apostle huffed. “So nothing changes in effect.”

“That is not true.” Ves responded to his other self. “Ignorance is our greatest threat. Only by understanding the enemy can we figure out how to defeat it in the most effective manner. The insights that I have gained just now tells me that physical attacks alone are highly inefficient so long as they fall below a steep threshold. In order to defeat this big guy, we need to exploit the flaws of its distributed intelligence.”

The Dark Apostle almost paused in his maneuvers. “How? I haven’t figured out anything!”

Blinky smirked. “That is why I am the brains and you are the brawn. Distributed intelligence is not a new phenomenon. It has numerous advantages as well as disadvantages. The most efficient way to defeat it is to hack individual units and turn them against the collective. So long as the latter doesn’t have an immediate countermeasure, it is easy to turn the entire group against itself.”

“Can you do that?”

“No.” Ves flatly said. “I don’t have any plagues on hand that can be employed against this opponent. I have no time to prepare. We can only resort to a lesser method. The first step is to sever a limb or a decent chunk of biomass from the creature.”

“Wait, what?! Didn’t you tell me earlier that I should focus on attacking its main body?”

“You should still do that, Dark Apostle.” He said. “This is the best way to spread our withering curse. While it is not doing all that much due to the stiff resistance of stolen resonance, it is still forcing the enemy to allocate its willpower to countering our actions. This means that it is not able to focus as much attention and resources to defending its resources to defending its limb.”

“What happens next if we succeed?”

“Once we have severed a limb from the main body, it will temporarily lose its link to the Mentalist Crystal. You must get close to it once this happens. If my suspicions are correct, it won’t be protected by stolen resonance anymore, which means that I should be able to ‘hack’ it. Once I am done, we have to encourage the Ixith Goliath to reclaim its lost limb. The fun starts there. I can’t predict with total certainty what will happen, but I bet the Goliath is bound to feel uncomfortable. Hopefully, an opening will appear that will allow us to land the killing blow.”

The plan formulated by Ves did not instill his other self with much confidence. It depended on a large number of assumptions and conditions.

However, there was nothing better available. They barely understood anything about their latest adversary and all of their usual solutions proved less than effective.

After the Dark Apostle assented to this dubious plan, Ves rapidly composed a series of messages before transmitting them to the Ascended Giants, the Bluejay Fleet and the local Rubarthan commanders.

From that point onwards, the fight steadily shifted.

While the Level 8 Goliath still prioritized the destruction of the orbital fortresses, the human defenders around it fought with greater determination than before.

The shift was subtle, but those who understood warfare could clearly observe the difference.

The soldiers no longer fought as blindly as before. The insights shared by Ves enlightened the people and enabled them to lift a part of the veil that made the Ixith Goliath so intimidating.

Now that they had a better idea of what they were dealing with, they could formulate more targeted solutions against this adversary.

Ves’ plan was not the only one that the Rubarthan commanders wanted to enact, but they were at least willing to give it a try.

The ace mechs that circled around the Ixith Goliath attracted most of the attention from the enemy.

Their powerful Saint Kingdoms allowed them to inflict effective damage while also neutralizing their enemy’s stolen resonance.

Letting them get close would put the Ixith Goliath at a significant disadvantage, so the voribug monster always tried to fend them off with its attacks and maneuvers.

This gave the Ascended Giants an opportunity to slip in and wear down the joints that connected the forelimbs to the main body.

The Ur-Titans bravely flew forward and tried their best to keep up with the fast-moving Goliath.

One wrong move could easily cause them to get smacked by a claw or rammed by its main body.

Yet despite these dangers, the Ur-Titans withstood every blow with the help of their superdimensional raiments and tried their best to hack at the enemy’s joints with their superdimensional halberds.

Compared to the Ur-Titans, the Faceless Giants were less ostentatious. They did not dare to get close, so they could only remain at a distance and use their ranged armaments to compound the damage done to the joints.

Though the intentions of the giants were very clear, the Ixith Goliath still did not pay much attention to them due to the fact that most of its other enemies focused on the other parts of its massive body.

Even the Dark Apostle went out of his way to focus his attacks on the head and upper body.

The effectiveness of the Withering Sting exceeded that of every other weapon on this battlefield.

In the hands of a proficient wielder like the Dark Apostle, its ominous blade continually cuts through the toughest layers of exoskeleton like a hot knife through butter!

The spear strikes not only caused substantial material damage to the Ixith Goliath, but also allowed the withering curse to spread and require more resources to suppress.

It was too bad that willpower cultivation’s restraint against qi cultivation was too strong.

If not for the protection of stolen resonance, the withering curse should have debilitated the Goliath a lot more by this time!

Although Ves was able to come up with a few tricks to make his curse take root a little better, it made little difference.

“Now I understand why others hate fighting against high-ranking mechs so much. Resonance is too good at resisting damage!”

It was all-encompassing. Anything that was even remotely hostile against the target faced instant suppression.

Ves hated it, but he could do little else in his current state. He really wanted to research a more effective counter against willpower manifestations, but that was not a project that he could complete in an instant.

He shoved these thoughts aside. Rather than fantasizing about a solution that could not be attained in a hurry, it was better to focus on his existing means.

His focus shifted towards the Ixith Goliath’s forelimbs. The joints had already taken severe damage. One of the limbs would definitely get severed sooner or later.

Once that happened, it would be time for him to implement his nefarious plan.

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