"I can't!" His mother cried! "I can't.. go any further than this!"
They were still missing too much power! Even though the spiritual engine looked as if it was working at full gear, the two realms still weren't close enough! To make just a tiny bit of progress, they had to input vastly more power!
"Damnit!"
Ves rapidly tried to figure out where he could source more energy. His design spirits? They were too weak. Himself? He possessed even less energy!
"Wait, maybe this will work!"
A vague idea came to mind. Though Ves didn't feel sure about it at all, he couldn't come up with anything better. He took control of the shuttle and piloted it closer towards his mother, the portal and the active spiritual engine.
His mother didn't want him to come closer. "What are you doing, Ves!? It's dangerous here! I can take care of this problem myself!"
Though the increased pressure put him under greater strain, Ves could still bear it! "I won't lose you again, mother!"
He rose from his piloting chair and opened the hatch. He launched into space and allowed the maneuvering systems of his Unending Regalia to move him past his mother and towards the portal and the overlapping realms.
"VES! GET BACK HERE NOW!"
"No! I can do this, mom!"
The strain on his mind, body and spirit rose tremendously. If not for the B-stone layer of his armor, he would have popped by now. Even then, he couldn't get much closer.
"Seems this will have to do." He murmured.
He then proceeded to do something that caused both of his parents to be startled.
He summoned his System comm.
As the slim comm materialized onto his suit gauntlets, he stared at it for a few seconds before issuing a request.
"System… can you help us repel his threat?"
It didn't answer.
"The relic originally belongs to the Temple, Ves." His mother softly said. "It can't help you in this fight."
"Can't, or won't?"
His mother didn't answer, but Ves already knew that it was too much to hope that the System would bail him out. He felt a bit melancholic as he looked at the comm.
"Are you thinking about throwing it inside the portal?" Cynthia distressingly asked. "That won't help us at all! You're just giving what the Temple Protector wants ahead of time. He will still come and hunt us down!"
"I know. I thought about it, but I don't want to earn the System's ire."
He was sure that the System had a million different ways to kill him if he did something as brazen as that. If it was so easy to get rid of it, Ves would have already tossed it through the portal!
No, he did not think about sacrificing it. Instead, he wanted to make use of it in a different fashion.
"Faith, huh? Maybe.. faith isn't so useless after. Maybe.. I need to stop denying who I am."
He closed his eyes and concentrated his mind. He clasped the System comm between his palms.
Ves then proceeded to do something he swore he would never do in his life.
He prayed.
He opened himself up to the System comm. He roused his entire spirit and tried to embrace it in a way he had never done before.
"I may be just a mech designer, but… I am also the Holy Son. The moment I made use of the Mech Designer System, I have accepted this heavy mantle."
It didn't matter if he did so unknowingly. It didn't matter if he spent years bouncing around with the System without knowing its profound nature.
As the holder of a relic that was very likely the Metal Scroll, Ves had become a figure that was in some ways central to the Five Scrolls Compact!
Shouldn't.. the Metal Scroll be revered by every member of the Compact in and outside human space?
Shouldn't a Holy Son like him be regarded as an absolute transcendent authority within the cult?
From what he learned from various sources, only the higher ups were aware of the details of the Great Betrayal.
The lower and middle ranks were ignorant of the fact that the Metal Scroll had been lost a long time ago! As far as they were concerned, the Compact was still led by five Holy Sons who each bore the responsibility of bearing all five Sacred Scrolls!
"And many of these cultists are probably spirituality active…" He boldly guessed.
As Ves communed deeper with the System comm, he began to sense an inkling of what he sought. His extraordinary high perception of spirituality and exceptional sensitivity towards life allowed him to notice something he had never sensed before from the System.
He managed to open his eyes to a miniscule portion of the immense worship directed towards Metal Scroll!
The power of this collective worship was frighteningly powerful, but also completely inaccessible to him under ordinary circumstances. He had to move as close as possible to the space where the two realms were overlapping to even capture a trace of his immensely powerful phenomenon!
"What are you doing, Ves.. no! Don't! Only gods are able to harness this power!"
His mother had a point. The power he touched was too immense. He knew for certain that he would get crushed if he attempted to touch it. Just getting close to it was enough for him to feel as if his spirit would evaporate.
Even so, he did not lose confidence!
Ves smirked even as he maintained his concentration.
"I don't believe in gods, mother. I believe in machines!"
He proceeded to do something that he never thought about. He really didn't want to do this, but he couldn't figure out any other way to accomplish his goal.
He grasped the Grand Dynamo in his mind, ripped it out, and threw it towards the channel where an immense amount of faith was being directed towards the Metal Scroll!
The Grand Dynamo held out remarkably well, but the power of faith was too strong. It flooded the powerful construct, causing it to swell with far too much energy that it was never designed to take.
It ruptured!
Ves hastily flew backwards, and the Devil Tiger had rapidly swooped close in order to grasp him and bring him away as far as possible.
Even then, the immense explosion that happened behind them practically flung the mech out!
In the meantime, the close overlap between the two realms had abruptly become total due to the immense spiritual explosion!
Cynthia Larkinson looked on with amazement as the vortex had fully entered the same plane as the portal. Immense corrosive spiritual winds and other dangerous forces instantly buffeted the portal.
The initial explosion triggered by his son had also inflicted considerable damage, thereby opening up crevices that the corrosive winds eagerly expanded!
Rage and emotion pulsed from the energy supporting the portal as it increasingly dimmed. Even if only a small portion of the vortex was crashing against it, the corrosive nature of the imaginary realm's winds happened to be incredibly dangerous to the portal's integrity!
A soundless explosion took place as the portal collapsed! Cynthia became shocked as she perceived the rage and fear of the enemy that was falling into the cracks between dimensions!
The danger had passed!