Chapter 466: Ch
The bottleneck wasn’t a lack of capability to re-engineer the tech or replicate the ships they had blueprints for. The real problem lay in the fundamental rules of this universe and galaxy. The laws of physics and mysticism here were completely different from what they had experienced before, severely and ruthlessly limiting the capabilities of their technology.
The primary culprit was mana itself. The energy interfered with almost every single piece of advanced technology they produced. It constantly disrupted the power outputs of their reactors, or worse, outright caused chaos within the structural systems by triggering massive internal surges that fried delicate circuitry.
Countless problems popped up with every configuration they tested. Despite thousands of attempts, they consistently failed to make any meaningful progress.
Tyler, the head of the R&D department, was truly left helpless in this matter. The stress had him pulling his hair out so hard that half of it was literally gone. If not for the timely intervention of high-grade cultivation potions, he might have genuinely become a mad, completely bald R&D expert for the empire—a tragic yet hilarious sight to behold.
Because of these fundamental universal friction points, their progress had been forced into a grinding, frustratingly slow crawl.
In recreating a technological level of which they already possessed full mastery, a solid foundation, and complete blueprints, they had been left utterly helpless and unable to mass-produce it.
But everything changed after they discovered those Tier 4 and above hyper-materials. These unique elements possessed special properties that allowed the R&D department to fundamentally shift how they generated power to fuel their superpower weapon systems.
By expanding their theories and moving toward truly utilizing mana as the core of all their technologies—with the absolute baseline being this hyper-class of materials—the engineering teams finally began to make serious, explosive progress in their research.
Yet, after Kallus laid his hands on the ancient inheritance in the deeper layers of the universal domain, he realized the bitter truth. It was the equivalent of looking for a mountain of gold, celebrating the security of finding it, and failing to realize it was merely a mountain of bronze. It was not the true golden mountain they should have been searching for all along.
It was a heavy slap to his pride, but also a massive wake-up call. It made him realize that he had truly been moving blindly in this matter, depending far too much on the system shop to purchase ready-made items that seemed incredibly valuable on the surface, but were never part of the true path that would lead them to the absolute pinnacle he hoped to reach in the far future.
"So, I was the clown all along," was the only thought Kallus could muster.
After all, he was the one majorly responsible for forcing them to focus on that specific field of research—a dead-end path of pure technological re-engineering that was ultimately completely unsuitable for the deeper laws of this universe.
He let out a long, heavy sigh. "But still, it’s not too late for me to wake up and make things right. Fortunately, I was grinding hard in the universal domain and wasn’t just laying around. If not..."
Kallus couldn’t help but look toward the future, shuddering at the mere thought of his people encountering the true powers of the universe—cosmic empires that had mastered this evolutionary synergy between man and machine.
Just the raw level of enhancement the Evolution System provided was more than enough to completely shatter the artificial gap he thought he had created between his empire and the few local Tier 3 powers in the Milky Way. Those minor factions were never the true benchmark to begin with.
He had been far too narrow-minded, too heavily dependent on the things handed down to him by that mysterious benefactor, and he had fundamentally failed to achieve self-developed advancement in every field other than raw, individual combat.
But anyway, this discovery was fundamentally crucial, and Kallus had stopped at nothing, going through thick and thin to ensure he could carve out a path for his already existing fleets to successfully start cultivating this new method of evolution.
What they had achieved so far was already incredibly powerful and hovering on the very brink of absolute success. The only piece that hadn’t truly achieved a flawless breakthrough yet was the law comprehension of the living beings.
They were still struggling to perfectly combine a practitioner’s insight into the cosmic laws with their True Ships to unlock an even greater level of power output, alongside the unique destructive and recovery attributes granted by the specific laws they had comprehended and integrated.
This was the final piece of the puzzle that still gave Kallus a massive headache, and it deeply plagued Tyler and his team of mad scientists—no, they weren’t mere scientists anymore, but true Evolutionists who could now showcase the staggering depth of knowledge they had gained.
These Evolutionists were the living embodiment of everything they had learned and mastered throughout their lives, and that vast reserve of knowledge and complete mastery made them fundamentally different compared to their past selves.
Everything they understood was truly at their fingertips. With the right materials at hand, they no longer needed to go through tortuous, complex manufacturing processes; they could practically manifest and evolve components right then and there, acting much like gods of machinery.
And even though the fundamental, technical way they did things had evolved, it still remained pure, refined technology at its core—unlike in the past, where they had desperately delved into mystical runes and magical arrays just to artificially increase the strength of their hulls.
Now, through this true evolution process, the mechanical sublimation achieved at each major realm, combined with the nine minor quality leaps within every single rank, was more than enough to completely eclipse the old systems. It didn’t just make up for the enhancements those external arrays and runes used to provide; it took them literal leaps and bounds ahead of anything they had ever built before.
That didn’t mean the utility of arrays and runes was completely gone. No, that wasn’t true either; after all, both arrays and runes were principles operating at the same fundamental level of technological evolution, still possessing major advantages that could be utilized. But with the merger of the two core evolutionary principles, they simply weren’t as deeply significant as they used to be. The Evolutionists and Star Grand Warriors perfectly made up for all the shortcomings they had previously suffered individually within their own separate systems.
But anyway, the seamless merger of cosmic laws and universal rules at the higher realms could naturally be achieved as everyone took further leaps in evolving both their ships and themselves. At the Integration Realm, the ultimate limit was never meant to be just a Super Star Destroyer, but a level far beyond it—the Celestial Destroyer class, the exact tier Kallus’s flagship currently occupied.
Yet, achieving that peak was something that couldn’t be done just yet, as it required a Tier 6 Master Evolutionist to complete the job—a rank no one in the empire had accomplished at this moment. After all, it was no joke for someone to reach such a legendary level so easily and in such a short amount of time. If it were that simple, the universe would not be suffering constant setbacks, again and again, at the hands of....
This was a level still far away even for Kallus who, not to forget, possessed the unique skill called God of Machinery. After all, even he needed to understand exactly how a thing was made and the fundamental principles behind it to replicate or create it through his skill. He still needed to personally reach that steep learning curve of the Tier 6 level.
Even Tyler, who possessed a unique class focused entirely on technological development and mechanical evolution, was still stuck. Though Tyler was far superior to Kallus in this field—being capable of completely developing a ship with a quality higher than Red Perfect with a one hundred percent success rate—it was an achievement that remained far, far away for Kallus.
But still, the level of enhancement given to these three grand fleets out of the total ten was vast and immense. At this point, Kallus could confidently say that any single one of them could easily take on about three fleets of the original grand fleet composition, and win by a massive margin.
It was a staggering difference in capability that Mav Lark had to admit the moment he stepped aboard his True Ship and felt the raw power resting in his hands. It was something he could easily control with his mind, enhancing the already powerful, evolved systems with his own mana to a completely different level.
Clenching his fist, Mav felt that even his physical body had achieved a significant increase in strength compared to before. The fact that his physical body grew alongside every single evolution and qualitative leap his ship had taken to reach this level was something he still found hard to believe.