The Mech Touch novel Chapter 1974

Chapter 1974 Hollow Conviction

What were the Hexers fighting for, exactly?

"Hexers fight for victory. Hexers fight for glory. Hexers fight to win the war that was robbed from their predecessors."

What about the Fridaymen?

"Fridaymen fight for survival. Fridaymen fight to preserve their way of life. Fridaymen have prepared for centuries to defend themselves and their loved ones against the tyranny of their greatest rival."

The mentality difference was stark.

It reminded Ves of the centuries-old dynamic between the Bright Republic and the Vesia Kingdom.

The latter always wanted to rob Bentheim from the former. The Vesians, used to being in the superior position, had developed a superiority complex of sorts.

Each generation, the nobles at the top of their society constantly pumped the commoners up and hyped up all of the glory and rewards they could earn if they fought against the supposedly weak and cowardly Brighters.

It worked to an extent. The opening moves of the Vesians always put the Bright Republic on the backfoot. Their incredibly high morale and boundless optimism always overpowered the Brighters in the initial stages of a war.

However, the Bright Republic wasn't weak. It knew to an extent that its rival was swelling with a lot of confidence. So much so that it always seemed to warp their follow-up strategies as the Vesian nobles grew greedy for more achievements!

The more the Vesians penetrated the Bright Republic, the greater the resistance.

The patriotic Brighters fighting in the frontlines knew from the start that they had a very difficult fight on their hands. The Bright Republic was particularly good in educating its soldiers and citizens what was at stake should the Vesians have their way.

Not only would losing Bentheim mean losing their state's prosperity, but the fall of their main economic lifeline would certainly lead to the fall of the rest of the Republic!

What would happen after that? The Brighters would all turn into Vesian commoners, and spend the rest of their lives working themselves to death for their noble overlords!

This should never happen!

To preserve the torch that lit up the darkness, the Brighters all steeled themselves for a bitter struggle and employed any kind of delaying tactics as they could as they sought to preserve their fighting strength.

Victory may be out of reach in some battles, but the war had to go on! There were times when they had to stand their ground and there were times where accepting defeat was the only realistic choice!

As the latter stages of every Bright-Vesia War attested, this stubborn mindset eventually held out better over the long term.

When the Vesian invaders inevitably ran out of steam and started to accumulate progressively more casualties, both their commoners and their noble leaders started to balk.

In most cases, the Vesians eventually lost the heart to push forward and throw themselves at the incredibly resolute Brighter defenders!

This was in effect a deliberate strategy on the part of the Bright Republic. Its goal in every war had never been to pursue a quick victory. The Brighters always aimed to hang on survive as much as possible.

In contrast, the Vesians drove themselves entirely on victory. That was fine in the earlier stages, but as the attrition and increasingly more arduous struggles began to grind their confidence down, the illusion of inevitable victory evaporated.

What was left once the Vesians no longer gained any easy wins?

They lost their primary driving factor for waging war!

This was why their noble leaders quit at that point. The lower morale and diminishing returns meant that the few intact forces they possessed would begin to bleed more than they could ever possibly gain. Why continue a war that only led to greater losses?

A key difference between the Bright-Vesia Wars and the Komodo Wars was the stakes.

Neither side set out to fight a war for profit or a couple of star systems. The Fridaymen and Hexers went all in on this war!

Unlike the Bright Republic and the Vesia Kingdom, the Friday Coalition and the Hexadric Hegemony never fought a major war after their founding.

All this time allowed both second-rate states to accumulate an incredible amount of reserves. Neither states would run out of funds and resources anytime soon!

Yet what was even more pivotal was the incredible amount of fortifications they constructed. Whether in space or beneath the ground, the defensive works may not be enough to repel an invasion force, but they were definitely able to stall and bleed any attacking force!

Right now, Ves wasn't sure which side was doing most of the attacking, but he figured the Hexers might be a little bit more eager than the Fridaymen. Their overconfidence likely translated to excessive aggression, causing them to underestimate the resolve of their opponents!

Therefore, even if Ves lacked a complete picture on the state of the Komodo War, from the few clues he managed to deduce, his confidence in the Hexers started to sink.

"Their mindset is too frail. It's only good in fair-weather conditions. The moment they encounter a storm, their baseless confidence will fade like the wind!"

It was a bit of a stretch for Ves to believe the Komodo War would swing against the Hexers due to this reasoning.

However, Ves had a hunch that the oh so wise Hexer matriarchs weren't aware of this looming issue.

Though conventionally the older Hexers ought to be the wisest of their people, Ves wasn't so sure about that. In the context of their society, the matriarchs were indeed wise.

Yet outside of their highly-distorted cultural bubble, Ves believed they weren't as smart and wise as they were cracked out to be! This was because Ves guessed that the matriarchs were in fact the most committed believers of Hexer superiority!

"It's the nature of their promotion. Biases against the Fridaymen are constantly encouraged while more honest assessments of the true strength of their adversaries will likely be dismissed as defeatism!"

What happened when one Hexer woman expressed confidence in the war against the Hexers and another Hexer woman tried to tell others that the Fridaymen were actually very formidable?

Their people would probably elevate the former to matriarch and relentlessly ostracize the latter!

"If I can think about it, the Fridaymen can surely do so as well!"

If Ves wanted to accomplish his revenge on the state, he had to find a way to assist the Hexers in increasing their chances of gaining an advantage in this war. _{fгee𝑤ebɳoveɭ.cøm}

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