The Mech Touch

The battle was over!

Wreckage and ruin spread throughout the battlefield. The final explosion that caused the realms to overlap and the portal to collapse had caused a fair amount of nearby mechs and ships to drift away.

The overlap did not last long after that instance. Cynthia Larkinson immediately stopped channeling the spiritual engine that she and Ves had built.

Without any further support, the unstable region affected by the explosion of the faith-infused Grand Dynamo rapidly stabilized, thereby no longer posing a hazard to the surrounding space.

As Ves recovered from the shock of getting slammed away, he quickly tried to regain his bearings. He manipulated his Unending Regalia's customized operating system to connect to the nearby ships and gain a quick overview of the surrounding space.

Practically every ship and mech showed no activity. The emergence of extremely powerful spiritual entities continuously subjected their fragile minds and spirits to heavy suppression.

Even if most of the spiritually-weak individuals were mostly able to avoid the brunt of the pressure, what little of it that managed to leak through was too much for the ordinary mech pilots to bear.

Ves was horrified at how effective these powerful entities could disable entire mech armies with their presence alone! Only those who were more spiritually active such as Ves possessed the capital to fight against them. Every other human stood no chance in combating these creatures!

What actually astounded him even more was the difference in power between the decrepit, half-rotten dark gods of the Nyxian Gap and a single dignitary from the galactic center.

He had no choice but to revise the threat level of the Five Scrolls Compact upwards after seeing how his recently-empowered mother did not even believe she stood a chance against this so-called Temple Protector!

In fact, given how powerful and capable he truly was, Ves couldn't quite believe how quickly his parents and him managed to eliminate such a great threat. Shouldn't someone more versed in spiritual sorcery be more careful about traveling through a space tunnel?

His mother did not seem to show any concern. She already directed her attention elsewhere.

Her monstrous energy projection had dimmed and shrunk a bit. She just expended a lot of energy to feed the spiritual engine that initially caused the two realms to converge. In order to recoup her losses, she proceeded to deconstruct the spiritual engine in order to salvage its energy.

His mother evidently never let an opportunity to salvage some spiritual energy to waste!

"There is no need for you to put up your guard anymore, Ves." She reassuringly said. "The Temple Protector is gone. While I can't say he is dead, he is most certainly gone. Many dimensions are inherently lethal to life. The remainder are so harsh that it will take his utmost to preserve his vitality. If he happens to fall in between the dimensions, then he will never be going back."

"Are you really sure about that? This fellow is one of the most powerful of his kind in the Compact. How can he open himself up to such an obvious vulnerability?"

His mother smirked as she finished absorbing the remnants of the spiritual energy. "The Temple Protector was careless, Ves. Lord Dista is incredibly old and powerful, but he is far from his powerbase. He came alone in order to remain incognito and to keep his rivals from the Ruined Temple in the dark about the treasure you possess. On top of that, he had just arrived at the Nyxian Gap and likely doesn't understand all of the perils of this region. With his arrogance, he thought that none of us could ever harm the portal."

In other words, the Temple Protector failed to follow the basic rules of warfare that Ves and the Larkinson Clan had intimately internalized during this eventful campaign.

Understanding the terrain, hiding your own strength, studying the enemy, forming contingency plans and accounting for failure were all principles that any power needed to master. Only by doing so enabled his forces to defeat more powerful foes that should have been able to win in straightforward battles.

Ves found it difficult that someone who was alive before the arrival of the Age of Mechs could be so stupid. All of the other old monsters he encountered were always calm, calculative and exceedingly careful. They only made huge gambits after setting up elaborate schemes. Senator Tovar was pretty much his model of what a multi-century fossil should be like.

..Then again, he had never met a sane member of the Five Scrolls Compact either. He could easily imagine that the higher-ranking members of the Compact were even crazier than the rank-and-file!

It was too much to expect these unhinged super-fanatics to abide by common sense.

"Okay. If you think the danger has passed, then I'll take your word for it." He swept his gaze around the chaotic battlefield. "The battle is over, but my men are still in danger. There are people in danger but unable to get any help because everyone is knocked unconscious. There are also a lot of intact pirate mechs and warships that can go active at any time to resume the fight."

A lot of work needed to be done to secure the battlefield and stem the damage.

"He's right." Ryncol Larkinson spoke. As the commander of the Oblivion Hand, he knew exactly how crucial it was to take steps right away. "We need to wake our son's subordinates to perform search and rescue and to disarm the surviving pirates."

Ves brought up a concern. "We need to keep matters secret as well. I don't want to reveal you to too many people. Right now, you're already exposed to some of my men, but as long as the numbers remain low, I'm confident that I can control the spread of information."

His mother nodded in agreement. "I have already employed some precautions, but it is best to be thorough."

He briefly discussed the problem with her. Ves was fairly confident he could wipe the data logged by various ships and mechs, but he couldn't do much to the memories of his clansmen. Some of them possessed implants as well that made it tricky to wipe their memories.

"I am not proficient in tampering the minds of people." Cynthia said. "However, it is within my capabilities to scramble their short-term memory, especially since their psyches have already been impacted from the moment the dark gods have come in their true forms. The people I affect won't forget anything, but their memories will lose a lot of detail, similar to trying to recall something that has happened years ago. This is the best I can do without damaging their essence."

"Good. Please do so. For secrecy's sake, they can't know too much."

There were some people in the fleet who possessed implants, but their numbers were small enough for Ves to make other arrangements for them. As for the expert pilots who were most likely still awake, he trusted them all to an extent.

Besides, all of his communications with his parents took place on a spiritual level.

As his giant mother proceeded to fly towards his unconscious men and began to scramble their short-term memories, Ves turned to the Devil Tiger.

He couldn't help but study how much his initial work had changed over the course of a couple of years. He felt a bit regretful that he wasn't the one responsible for converting it into an expert mech.

Still, he felt reassured the mech was in good hands. He could already see that the mech designer who upgraded and took care of the Devil Tiger was very attentive. The person who worked on it was at least a Senior, and a proper one at that.

"Father. Can you bring your mech to my ship so I can tweak it?" He asked.

"Why?"

"I made it, you know. I long wanted to tweak it and update it, but I never got the opportunity to do so. I programmed an auto update routine in its operating system, but it never activated."

"I had our resident head designer remove it." His father said. "I appreciate your efforts, but it's a security risk."

"I understand. Can you at least allow me to check on the mech and see whether I can improve it? If this plan of ours succeeds, you'll be leaving me again, right?"

"That's correct. We are marked. Neither of us can accompany you for fear of leading our enemy towards you. As long as we remain apart, the enemy won't have reason to believe you are involved with us. You need to leave the Nyxian Gap and this entire star cluster when this is over."

"Believe me, that is exactly what I want. Now, can you enter my vessel's hangar bay? There should be enough space to accommodate the Devil Tiger."

"Will do, son."

His father's mech took hold of his armored form and flew to the Scarlet Rose. The large and imposing Devil Tiger smoothly entered the hangar bay and landed on the deck.

Its large wings had to fold into its tightest form possible in order to prevent them from scratching the ceiling!

"We don't have much time, so I'll only apply some quick improvements."

Ves didn't feel safe with the pirates able to wake up at any time. Though he knew his mother would never allow the scum to do any harm, it was best for his own men to take over the battlefield as quickly as possible.

Since the Devil Tiger was already in good hands, Ves didn't feel the need to apply any major changes. Though he didn't quite agree with all of the changes made by its current caretaker, he could live with them, and that was enough.

Ves used his suit to fly up to mech in order to enter the cockpit. He retracted his helmet and grinned as he hugged his father's suited form.

"I missed you so much!"

"Me too, son. You have grown so much." His father smiled back as removed his helmet and disguise. "I'm sorry that I left so abruptly. There is much I wanted to say to you over the years."

"We can talk about it while I work. This won't take too long."

Ves proceeded to dive into the operating system of his mech and began to perform various inspections. He also proceeded to update or modify the settings whenever possible. He had improved considerably ever since he made the masterwork mech, and he wanted to impart as much as he could before he separated from his parents.

One factor that allowed him to wield greater influence of the Devil Tiger was the fact that it was based on ASMAS. While Ves deliberately made it difficult for anyone to alter the programming of pure ASMAS, he was still able to implement some small modifications with the help of his control over the mech's design spirit.

Overall, he improved its autonomous upgrade trajectory and opened it up for suggestions from other mech designers. Ves embedded a set of instructions in the mech so that his father's mech designer would learn about these changes.

This ensured the Devil Tiger would fully be able to embrace more drastic changes that allowed it to reach the level of a second-class expert mech and maybe even first-class expert mech in the future!

While he was at it, he improved the integration of Zeigra into the Devil Tiger so that it became even more difficult to hack the mech.

Of course, he couldn't forget about upgrading the spiritual traits of one of his greatest works.

As an expert mech piloted by someone who had integrated well with it, the Devil Tiger had already developed a strong character.

In fact, not even the Shield of Samar was as strong as the Devil Tiger in this aspect!

Ves sensed the traces of his mother in some areas. This allowed him to skip some procedures. The only significant change he made to the spiritual makeup of the mech was to impart it with a couple of triggered abilities.

He discussed them with his father.

"The Devil Tiger is able to induce corrosion."

"I know." His father grinned. "I have taken advantage of it many times in battle. My opponents never expect that my mech is capable of eating them up from the inside."

"I can improve this and grant you more control over it. Does that sound good to you, dad?"

"You're the mech designer here, Ves. I trust in your ability."

There was something very satisfying about working on a mech piloted by his father. Ves had longed for this moment for so long that it felt surreal to him that he was finally able to access the Devil Tiger again. He missed this mech!