The Mech Touch novel Chapter 3437

Chapter 3437: The Phase Whale Race

After they were introduced to the puelmer race, the Ingvar siblings continued to learn about several other major alien races.

Each of them were remarkable, dangerous and fascinating in their own right.

Just the novelty of encountering real, sentient aliens was enough to enrich the lives of every visitor of the Chance Bay Museum of Natural History.

Most of humanity never had the chance to get close enough to intelligent organisms like these.

The Age of Mechs was a time of consolidation. It was different from the Age of Stars and the Age of Conquest. Back then, humans regularly made contact with new and different alien races.

Many of them had either been wiped out or driven away from the territories claimed by mankind. After centuries or millennia of human occupation, most if not all traces of the former alien occupants had been deleted from existence.

This has caused many generations of humans to grow up in an environment where they never even had to think about variables related to the presence of aliens.

This was good for most people. Humans in past ages dreamt of providing their descendants with an environment where they never had to live in fear of alien aggression. Countless human soldiers sacrificed themselves in order to create a pure human holy land in the galaxy.

Though these past heroes only completed their job half-way, it was more than enough to allow most humans to live their lives without ever having to do anything with aliens in their lifetimes.

The problem was that this had left too many people without the right mindset to resist alien threats. Human space in the Milky Way was so secure against external invasion that people felt at ease with treating each other as rivals and opponents. This would have never happened to such an extensive degree if there were threats that forced difficult human states and groups to band together in order to survive.

All in all, every pioneer and adventurer that entered the Red Ocean needed to take this additional factor into account.

Space in the Red Ocean contained significantly greater hazards than in the Milky Way. Not only was there a risk of encountering isolated alien warships, there were also entire alien armadas roaming through regions that humanity ordinarily considered safe!

After all, space was mostly a giant void. It was impossible to erect huge, physical walls across thousands of light-years. If the aliens truly wanted to enter dangerous territory, there were too many ways for them to slip past the Big Two's warfleets.

Of the remaining major alien races of the Red Ocean, one of them in particular stood out to the Ingvars.

The biome they visited was the largest and also the most different one in the museum wing. It was essentially a giant aquarium that was filled with water. Different kinds of alien aquatic organisms fluttered through this giant pool, but there was one giant life form that clearly dominated over the other fishes.

"Is that… a whale?" Imon asked.

"I think so. It looks the same."

[The species colloquially known as the phase whales are one of the rare aquatic sentient races that have grown to become a strong power in the Red Ocean. The phase whales physically resemble other whales, both sentient and non-sentient, due to evolving in similar aquatic environments.]

This was convergent evolution in action once again. Different alien species growing up on different planets sometimes came to resemble one another due to evolving under similar conditions.

Water planets tended to produce the highest incidences of convergent evolution as large organisms had to adapt the same set of solutions to increase their chances of survival in large oceans.

What distinguished phase whales from other whale-like exobeasts and astral beasts was that their fins were rather small and their mostly yellow coloration.

[Physically, phase whales are large aquatic organisms that range considerably in size. They are born the size of an aircar and can grow to become the size of a human destroyer. Phase whales never stop growing in size as they age, but it takes an exceptionally long time for them to grow to larger. The current known record of the largest and oldest phase whale ever encountered by humanity has reached an age of 8634 years. This extremely wise and powerful phase whale has reached a length of 1.3 kilometers.]

"Damn, that's as big as a capital ship!" Imon gasped.

Both of the Ingvars took a closer look at the phase whale held captive inside the giant aquarium. It was big in its own right, but it was far from rivaling smaller capital ships in size. It was probably a younger representative of this exotic race.

[Each phase whale possesses a large brain capacity and can grow to become exceptionally intelligent as they mature. They excel at learning and memorizing knowledge. Due to various reasons, phase whales reject conventional metallic technology and have centered their entire tech base around biotechnology. They are masters at bioengineering and apply most of their knowledge on self-augmentation.]

In other words, every phase whale became formidable biotech experts.

[Through developing their biotechnology, the phase whales have become adept at strengthening and evolving their large organic bodies. It is considered a rite of passage for young adolescent phase whales to research and develop their own biological augmentations that allows them to survive in space and traverse the stars.]

"Wow. That's impressive!"

"It takes decades for each phase whale to accomplish this, though."

[One of the most special traits about phase whales is their natural integration of phasewater in their organic bodies. They have originally evolved from an aquatic planet with large deposits of phasewater. By adapting to this exotic, this species is not only able to survive exposure to a substance that is deadly to the overwhelming majority of humans and other organisms, but can also harness its special properties to create substantial advantages.]

The AI tour guide ran footage of different phase whales performing inexplicable feats.

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