CHAPTER 364: CHAPTER 7: THE EXTRAORDINARY PATH OF MECHANICAL ASCENSION

It’s easy to join the Mechanical Divine Sect, but becoming a Mechanical Priest is very difficult.

The former only requires sincere faith, even if it’s not very devout. As long as you can output enough Power of Faith, it’s fine because being a common believer is a widespread phenomenon. The latter, however, requires passing various assessments and meeting certain talent requirements, especially intelligence and perception, which have strict standards.

The Insight Sect that Tassia mentioned has higher intelligence requirements; if one’s intelligence is insufficient, mechanical modification is needed, directly implanting a brain-machine chip and data interface to forcibly raise the intelligence limit.

However, this kind of modification is costly, and if you’re not a noble from the Upper Nest District, you might as well not even think about it.

The computing power that the human brain can provide is limited, unless the brain is extraordinarily developed. But in this sect, ultimately, a brain replacement is needed.

In many Mechanical Sects, without a natural intelligence advantage, basic Spell Sequences cannot be learned. If you were to face other Mechanical Priests, you might be overwhelmed by the garbage data packets thrown by the enemies in an instant.

This type of data virus-like attack is very effective against highly mechanized Mechanical Priests.

Tassia had previously mentioned joining the Insight Sect, so this woman’s intelligence is even higher than imagined.

Of course, there are exceptions in these sects that don’t emphasize intelligence.

For example, Duncan’s F46 region, which is the territory of the Steel Cast faction, emphasizes perception, that is, perception of one’s inner self. Though there’s an intelligence requirement, they usually aren’t afraid of the interference of garbage data; lack of computing power is not a problem, just simply block the signals.

Using a simple analogy, the Mechanical Cultivators of the Insight Sect are like radar biological computers, constantly sending and receiving signals. When attacked by data viruses, they need to rely on computing power to solve issues and construct a spiritual firewall.

On the other hand, the Mechanical Cultivators of the Steel Cast faction are like an old Nokia phone, directly switching to airplane mode, cutting from network and signal, relying on physical strength to smash you directly!

And they still have human brains, so they can actively block signals and act relying on perception and intuition at critical moments.

Of course.

The spellcasting ability of Mechanical Cultivators from the Steel Cast faction is much weaker due to insufficient computing power; they cannot control the Mechanical Servant army or interfere with a large number of mechanical devices leveraging their personal computing power matrix.

They mostly engrave Steel Runes on themselves; perhaps a powerful being at the Bishop level can control a portion of the Mechanical Servants, but their computing power is still much lower than other sects’.

Druids have spells to summon animals.

Whereas the spellcasters of the Mechanical Divine Sect create Mechanical Servants themselves and rely on computing power to control them; if computing power is not strong enough, their performance upper limit will be greatly reduced.

The only exception here is the Shepherd Leader of the Steel Cast faction, whose computing power is said to be terrifying.

In some secret rumors, the leader of the Steel Cast faction holds a mysterious piece of wreckage fragment, so he isn’t daunted facing other Mechanical Sect leaders. Furthermore, the Nest Cities under the control of the Steel Cast faction are maintained by him providing basic computing power. He can directly command any Archbishop of regional sects, connecting the global signal points with a single thought.

Duncan naturally doesn’t know about these things yet.

However, from his perspective, undoubtedly, the Steel Cast faction is the most suited Extraordinary Path for him. Firstly, he has Dragon Bloodline and Giant Bloodline engraved on his body, making his physical qualities inherently far superior to ordinary people, and the Dragon Bloodline actually has a little connection with metallic mechanics, after all, giant dragons often ingest various metal ores.

If Duncan were to undergo mechanical modification, he would forego his inherent physical advantage, but if he could advance to the Steel Cast path, his physical qualities might become incredibly exaggerated!

This is the upgrade path of humanoid Gundams.

The Steel Cast faction also has mechanical implants, but far fewer compared to other sects.

Flesh is weak, mechanical ascent!

Other sects achieve modifications by replacing flesh and blood, while the Steel Cast faction focuses more on refining oneself into a ’Mechanical Body’.

The factions of the Mechanical Divine Sect each have their advantages.

However, in the contempt chain among numerous sects, the Steel Cast faction has always been at the bottom because they’re all crude warriors. Sometimes they even wield cold weapons in battle, like power hammers, power axes, force field swords, etc., used mostly by Steel Cast faction members, and they are not proficient in technology.

But who cares about that!

If it works to fight, that’s enough.

Duncan still routinely goes to the prayer room today; this time he again successfully simulated sincere faith, but undoubtedly, the Mechanical Prayer he recited upon leaving still had no reaction.

However, this time there seemed to be one exception: a man in his forties, appearing with low social status, dressed in ragged clothes and having a hunched figure, suddenly surprised him through the trial because the prayer he recited triggered a reaction from the Steel Rune.

At this moment, a Mechanical Priest glanced at him, frowning, and said, "He’s a bit old."

"Can he pass the initial fusion ceremony?"

Generally speaking, they tend to select people under thirty. As humans age, strength, constitution, and agility decrease, but perception and intelligence improve.

However, with the body experiencing declining vitality, this poses no problem to other sects, which usually involves spending money to replace mechanical parts.

But for the Steel Cast faction, this problem is significant because a body with declining vitality may not keep up with the consumption, possibly failing even to pass the initial fusion ceremony.

A Mechanical Priest nearby took a look and said slowly, "Indeed, a bit old."

"Send him to the Defender Army."

"He can start from a Technical Cultivator and learn to engrave Steel Cast Prayers."

"If he achieves something, he can be transferred back."

Unsurprisingly, Duncan was eliminated for a second time.

However, the Mechanical Priests present were secretly observing him, and someone had even recorded his file, the reason being simple: Duncan was the youngest among them.

The minds of young people are restless; it’s hard to say whether they have sincere faith in the Divine Spirit, and their minds are not yet fully matured, leaving room for future growth.

In a Dungeons and Dragons-like worldview, humans need to be over eighteen to establish stability; if one is to advance to a Priest, most are above twenty years old because, at this stage, perception and other inner attributes finally catch up.

Outside the Steel Angels’ plaza.

Duncan was also frowning tightly at this moment, thinking to himself: "How was I eliminated again?"

"What could be the reason?"

Undoubtedly, the initial hidden assessment by the Mechanical Divine Sect is definitely faith; one must be a devout believer to become a Mechanical Priest.

Duncan should have simulated passing this.

And the second threshold is likely perception or intelligence. Duncan thought his intelligence should pass since the Steel Divine Sect is different from other Mechanical Sects; they don’t require particularly high intelligence levels.

"Could it be a lack of perception?"

"That can’t be right either!"

"I think my intuitive perception is quite sharp?"

There must be a hidden assessment standard unknown to Duncan, but with so many people in the prayer room, he couldn’t check carefully, and he dared not try to mobilize mana, lest he alarm the stationed Mechanical Priests.

Dimension Space.

Duncan checked the current Legendary Level he possessed.

——Legendary Level: 21/85.

He pondered for a moment and simply invested twenty Legendary Levels into Soul Enhancement because the Human Form serves as a vessel. Upon descending, he relies on the Human Form to gain external attributes such as strength, agility, and constitution, whereas the internal mental attributes depend more on the Soul Strength of the main body.

Soul Enhancement should also make his perception sharper.

In an instant!

With the massive investment of Legendary Levels, Duncan felt a substantial change in his soul, and some special prompts appeared on the projection page.

——"Extensive Knowledge and Strong Memory: Significantly enhances your memory ability, allowing you to temporarily possess the ability to remember everything you see, storing the recorded knowledge in your consciousness for a period of time to recall. However, you cannot permanently remember, as it will slowly be forgotten over time."

(Human Form 3 enhances additional calculation power, other Human Forms enhance slightly in inner charm, intelligence, and perception.)

(In Special Worlds, enhance the intuition of Human Forms.)

No wonder Human Form 1 has such a long Mana Bar, and the efficiency of learning spells can’t match others.

The sentiment is that the internal attributes are no match for Merlin and others!

As for Human Form 2, the talent of a Giant Dragon cannot be measured by common sense. The growth of internal attributes in humans is relatively slow, and it easily stabilizes, but a Giant Dragon is different. They enhance both internal and external attributes together as they age.

It’s just that the enhancement in strength and constitution is more astonishing, so other aspects don’t seem to have much change.

Human Form 1 has cut down too many people.

It can be said that it has maximized strength and constitution, reaching the limits of a mortal, yet rarely sits down for years to study spell knowledge consistently.

"Intuition?"

"What kind of world would require intuition?"

"This seems like an Eastern concept, right? Intuition feels like it includes parts of intelligence and perception."

Intuition is the ability to understand and analyze things.

High intelligence can work, and so can high perception.

The first thing Duncan thought of was the Martial Arts or Immortal Worlds, because only in such places would they talk about intuition. In novels, martial arts prodigies with high intuition can learn by seeing once, master the trick by watching twice, or even stealthily learn others’ martial arts moves through sparring.

As for the root bones and such, the root bones of Human Form 1 must be perfect.

Try again tomorrow.

When Duncan returned, he had nothing better to do, so he gave the gang thugs in the neighboring residential area a good beating as well.

He was an indiscriminate striker!

Whenever he came across them, he would casually hammer them until they knelt and begged for mercy.

This kindhearted deed directly led to a rapid decrease in gang members in the residential area. Subsequently, when the union started recruiting, they all flocked to the industrial zone to obediently screw bolts.

Three hits shattered social dreams, while I, the Godfather, am just a working man.

In just two days’ time, Duncan made an indelible contribution to the security issues of the entire F46 District. The gang members were reduced from hundreds to just dozens, and they became much more honest in their actions. Although they still collected protection fees and divided territories, they basically stopped extorting the lower-tier residents.

Even underworld dealings require a sense of style.

Dealing drugs and smuggling is more respectable than extorting the bare minimum food allowance from the underprivileged.

The next day.

As soon as Duncan stepped out the door, he saw a crowd of people standing outside the building, all of them other district gang members with bruised faces. Upon seeing him, the Wolf Gang thugs at the front immediately bowed and said, "Boss."

"We’ve brought what you wanted."

Not far away, Tassia habitually came over to gain favor with Duncan; she might want to continue probing to uncover Duncan’s background. Duncan’s demeanor made her feel that he wasn’t a commoner from the lower Nest City but possibly an illegitimate son of an upper district noble.

Currently, she was very surprised, hiding in the shadows and observing silently.

Anyone else might have thought it was some secret underworld transaction.

In fact, they were here to turn in low-cost support to Duncan. The F46 District had only just taken off, with little profit opportunities yet. The local industry hadn’t developed, and even smuggling was out of the question, so they cobbled together a bit of profit to offer.

These guys are tough ones, now behaving, but once military control lifts, they’ll be back to their antics.

Some bold ones might even get a gun and want to take Duncan’s place.

But that’s also fine.

Once the military control ends and the Defender Army of the Mechanical Divine Sect withdraws, he can start killing.

Killing now would undoubtedly be committing a crime in broad daylight.

.........