The Mech Touch novel Chapter 4033

Chapter 4033 The Earth Shrine

The Ruined Temple was what everyone called it these days. Everyone who knew the truth, at least.

Once a glorious bastion of the servants of the immortal gods, the former Great Temple had clearly seen better days.

The reason for that was because a group of ambitious and daring upstarts not only had the temerity to rebel against the Five Scrolls Compact, but actually succeeded in their attempts to break away!

Ordinarily, the powerful rebel strike forces should have never been able to reach the Great Temple as it was known at the time.

This was because this sanctified domain was located in a pocket space that was nigh-inaccessible to anyone.

The only keyholders who could gain passage were those that had been granted the authority through the Sacred Scrolls.

For a long time, the Compact saw nothing wrong with this arrangement. Its leaders had become increasingly more powerful as humanity expanded during the heydays of the Age of Conquest.

Yet all of that power and success also breed an enormous amount of arrogance.

In their conceit and belief in their mission, the Compact had begun to prepare for a grand ritual that would have a profound effect on the future of the human race.

Not everyone was willing to see this devastating turning point come to pass.

So the opponents of the Compact decided to put an end to the grand ritual.

Upon that fateful day, the Great Temple experienced its first and most destructive intrusion of its history!

"Our greatest enemy turned out to be the deluded fools from within."

Aided by a pair of high-ranked insiders who were one of the few who possessed the keys to the gate, the precursors of the Common Fleet Alliance and the Mech Trade Association barged into the mysterious pocket space with great bombast!

Before the defenders and powerhouses of the Great Temple could regain their composure, the most powerful war weapons of the rebel strike forces had already struck!

Within seconds, the pre-planned volley fire quickly overwhelmed defensive arrays, broke through physical barriers and collapsed entire structures that were old beyond belief!

Fire, energy and projectiles filled the pocket space as the invaders already struck heavy blows against the enemies that still thought of themselves as all-powerful!

Though the counterattack from the Compact powerhouses struck the unwelcome intruders just as heavily, the latter had brought too many combat assets to the fight!

On this day, the Big Two broke the Five Scrolls Compact.

"The greater our pride, the harder our fall. We have yet to recover from the blow to both our headquarters and our hearts."

Though the ancient cult was too big and too powerful for the Big Two to annihilate in its entirety, there was no doubt that the Great Betrayal had broken its spine!

As the victorious rebels successfully took charge of human civilization and heralded the beginning of the Age of Mechs, the deposed rulers retracted much of their tentacles and licked their wounds in the monument to their hubris and utter failure.

Ever since the Compact ceded control of human civilization to those it once considered its subordinates, the Great Temple never regained its former glory.

In their shame and guilt, the survivors of the Great Betrayal vowed to never repair and restore the damage until they had retrieved and returned all five Sacred Scrolls to their rightful places!

Of course, even as they made this vow, the cultists weren't stupid enough to leave their defenses broken and in ruin.

"Arrogance is not an effective defense against cowards."

Having paid a heavy price for their hubris, the humbled survivors had left most of the damaged cosmetic facades alone but heavily rebuilt every defensive measure.

After centuries of diligent work and investment, the Ruined Temple was far more defensible than ever before!

Even if the Big Two managed to circumvent the vastly-improved security measures that prevented another unauthorized intrusion, any massive warfleet would instantly be met with storms of fire and fury!

At this time, the Ruined Temple was in a fairly quiet state. Hardly any cultists flew around and most of the temple terrain was devoid of life and movement.

There was only a little bit more warmth and activity at the center of the fairyland pocket space.

Five grand and not-so-grand shrines dominated the most defensible area of the Ruined Temple. They were all placed along the points of a pentagram and hazy power filled the space in between.

In the glory days of the Five Scrolls Compact, the power and energy circulating through this space used to be much greater and much more impressive than anyone born after the start of the Age of Mechs could imagine!

It was a pity that multiple nodes no longer functioned properly, causing this powerful array to lose nearly its entire effect.

"The power we wielded in the seat of our holy domains was unsurpassed, especially when it was aimed against ourselves."

Due to the vow made by the Compact cultists, only a portion of the shrines still looked intact.

The Wood Shrine suffered the greatest damage by far. Nothing of the original structure was left. Only parts of its foundation became exposed. The rest of the site was dominated by a crater that was so large and all-encompassing that anyone could easily imagine that it had been struck by an explosion of unsurpassed power!

The Metal Shrine at least showed a semblance of its former appearance, but too many of its highly-reinforced walls and fixtures had been shattered due to heavy fighting.

The Fire Shrine was also badly damaged, but the intensity of the fighting that took place in this area was not as great.

In contrast to those places, the Earth Shrine and the Water Shrine still remained intact for the most part. Both maintained all of their structural integrity and only received minor to moderate cosmetic surface damage.

Evidently, the attackers did not have the time, opportunity or willingness to attack these important structures as well.

The result of this outcome was that the Compact still retained much of the heritage and power of two of its five elemental branches!

"The rebels spared us only because of our weakness, not because of our strength."

The Water Shrine wasn't doing so well these days. Sacred Speaker Daphania's infamous attempt to retrieve a trace of the Metal Scroll sparked the biggest defeat that the Compact had suffered since the Great Betrayal!

The loss of a Sacred Daughter and her crown inflicted a heavy blow to the Water Shrine.

In the chaos and anger that ensued, the Water Keepers unanimously decided to lash out, sparking a civilization-wide temper tantrum that became known as the Crown Uprising! _{fɾēewebnσveℓ.com}

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