The Mech Touch

It did not take long for the test results to come back.

Across several different battlefields, a handful of units received secretive 'upgrades' to their Blessed Squires.

Nothing much had changed aside from some sort of software date and the addition of a new dial in their cockpits.

The male Hexer mech pilots who had the privilege of piloting these blessed mechs received some very basic instructions on how to use the latest addition to their mechs.

"The Miracle Couple has come up with something that will help us thwart the Glow Crushers. Pay attention to this dial and the corresponding neural command. By default, the glow of your mech is unrestrained. If any of the counters to your mech comes close, you need to retract it as close to your mech as possible. To do that, just turn this dial anti-clockwise or issue a more precise command to your mech through your neural interface."

"Uhm, what is the purpose of doing so, ma'am?" The boy clad in a tight piloting suit asked the tall female engineer.

"Simply put, a Glow Crusher breaks the glow of your mech by throwing motion energy at it. What you need to do is to retract this glow so that the Glow Crusher misses its attack. As long as its motion energy doesn't come close to your retracted glow, it will not do anything aside from making the air feel heavy for a time."

With this small addition, the upgraded Blessed Squires completely gained the upper hand again!

With the ability to control the range of the glows, the rate of glows getting crushed dropped by 80 percent after a few days!

The Hexers had long sought a solution to the counters deployed by the Friday Coalition. Being able to retract the glows when they were vulnerable was an incredibly helpful ability.

Even if the glow no longer blessed the surrounding mechs, it at least remained intact. Once the Glow Crusher mechs completed their charge and released all of their motion energy, the threat against their glows should have passed.

Nothing stopped the Blessed Squires from restoring their glows to their original splendor!

The incredible utility of this little function was so great that demand for it skyrocketed. Other Hex Army units heard about the upgrade as well and began to ask for it as well!

Gloriana quickly called Ves once again in order to discuss this abrupt development.

"I don't know how you managed to implement it, but your fix worked!" She grinned. "According to the feedback from the mech pilots, the new retraction function you've added to the Blessed Squire is a great blessing. In fact, you should have implemented a long time ago. Why did it take so long for you to add it in? Were you saving it up or something?"

Ves sent her a reproachful glare. "I only came up with it recently. You should know that we never really had to worry about the range of the glows of our mechs. Only the Doom Guard posed a serious concern, but even then that wasn't enough for me to intervene."

It was different now that the Friday Coalition had deliberately taken advantage of this vulnerability. For many reasons, Ves needed his Hexers mechs to succeed. He needed to crush anything that threatened their superiority in battle!

The two quickly discussed the performance of the new retraction function. After studying the data and verifying that it hadn't glitched or anything, they decided to recommend that the Hex Army to to embrace the upgrade.

"I'll take care of it." Gloriana promised. "High command will be inordinately pleased with our quick response. The value of the Glow Crushers will certainly drop after the Blessed Squires have incorporated this upgrade."

In truth, the physical and software changes were mostly smoke and mirrors. Due to some obscure spiritual rules that Ves didn't fully understand, every copy of the Blessed Squire was connected to the design.

While the former was still able to grow and develop a unique character, its fundamental identity was still tied to its origin. This meant that any change to the design inevitably affected the existing copies.

In truth, Ves frequently scratched his head over this relationship. A mech design was imaginary while a physical mech was material. For the former to affect the latter in this fashion sounded like magic or very profound metaphysics.

Whatever. There was no reason to look at a gift horse in the mouth. This profound interaction allowed him to push any spiritual changes to all of his mechs without needing to go through their current owners.

The only reason why he bothered to add a dial was to fool the Hexers into thinking that they needed to apply the upgrade to the mech first before they gained access to the retraction function.

Ves would definitely attract way too much scrutiny if the mech community found out that he could alter existing mechs without accessing them! The security implications were considerable. No one wanted someone to have constant access to the core functions of an actual mech.

Once the pair completed their discussion about the upgrade, Gloriana was already looking to the future.

"This is only the beginning, Ves." She warned. "While I expect that this retraction function will shift the advantage back to our Blessed Squires, our opponents will likely find another loophole. Master Olson and Master Katzenberg succeeded first, but I have no doubt that other Masters are readying other mechs that can interfere with the glows of our mechs. It will only be a matter of time before a competitor develops a solution that can cripple a glow from a distance."

That was one of his greatest fears as well. While the retraction function enabled his mechs to concentrate their glow, thereby thickening it and increasing their resistance, it came with a very significant downside.

A Blessed Squire that continually retracted its glow was a mech that did not perform its main role!

What Ves truly wanted was to implement a solution that allowed his mechs to strengthen their existing glows.

He might have to alter his design spirits in order to achieve this goal. The glows of his mechs did not originate from the mechs or mech designs themselves. The spiritual entities that presided over them were the actual source of glows.

He could not mess with them lightly. Each of them were living, powerful entities whose existences directly depended on their spiritual composition. Any change, no matter how modest, directly altered their behavior in some fashion!

"Look, Gloriana, before Master Olson and Master Katzenberg introduced the Glow Crusher, I didn't even know that our mechs were vulnerable to their unique mode of attack. Now that we know, we can account for them. The same will happen again if they come up with another trick."

She sighed. "I know. I can already tell that you look forward to sparring against our opponents. It's just that I'm worried about the brave women and boys who are depending on our work. The Hex Army has already suffered numerous setbacks due to the vulnerability exposed by the Fridaymen. Next time, how many more Hexers will die because we failed to account for the methods of our enemies?"

"What do you want us to do? I have worked to develop my design philosophy up until this point, but I can only do so much on my own. I don't want the Fridaymen to regain the upper hand either, but it's difficult for me to anticipate how they will attack my work."

He knew that Gloriana felt very frustrated by her inability to help. She had waited for Ves to come up with a solution for a month, but because he was preoccupied with defeating pirates, he never implemented this little fix until now! This delay signified that she had a long way to go before she was able to design the perfect vessel.

Before Gloriana ended the call, she brought up one more important matter.

"Are you truly sure you want to upgrade our existing mech models with the same function?"

"We might as well. Let's start by implementing it onto our existing mechs. I'll go over our current designs and revise them a bit. Once I'm done, just let the mech technicians modify the machines we have."

"What about the mechs we sold?"

"I'm not sure. I think it's best if we just make the retraction function standard. Do you agree?"

"Our customers have consistently demanded more control over the glows of their mechs. We should do it, Ves. Adding it to all of our mechs will bring them a little closer to perfection. I expect the value of our mechs to grow as a result."

After agreeing on this point, Gloriana addressed one final issue.

"It's been more than a week since the Doom Guard irrevocably changed. While we have managed to stem the outrage due to our quick action, it's still a problematic mech. Do you want to keep it that way or try and change it back?"

Ves furrowed his brows. "I don't know. The mech has already changed. Doing it again will lead to greater disruption."

"There are many owners who want to regain the old Doom Guards. They're much more effective in buying time and keeping the enemy at a distance. Overall, the battle performance of the Doom Guard has worsened after it gained its new alternating glow."

Ves already predicted this outcome. Sales of the Doom Guard still declined. No matter whether their owners obtained compensation, the new Doom Guard clearly performed worse in battle. Their owners had to adopt more strenuous measures in order to take advantage of its new effect.

"I think it's best to leave it alone. Ideally, I'd like to restore the old Doom Guard, but the current incarnation is pretty interesting as well. Both are useful under the right circumstances. Ideally, I'd like to retain both of them. While there is a bit of overlap between the two versions, as long as we keep working on them, they'll eventually become two very different mech designs."

"That's.. acceptable. It's not the solution I would have settled for, but it will please the fans of both versions."

What Ves didn't mention to Gloriana was that Ves didn't have any suitable ingredients that could take the place that Nyxie once occupied.

Wait. Didn't his mother…

He recalled something very important. He hastily ended the call, much to Gloriana's chagrin, and raced to the vault.

After going through a security check, he stepped into the heavily-fortified chamber.

Ves began to pull out every P-stone. Just as he expected, three of them were significantly different than before!

"I was right!"

A grin plastered on his face as he realized what his mother had left him. Even though she called them trash, Ves did not care about her opinions.

What mattered was that he obtained three additional spiritual fragments!

Ves carefully probed the spiritual fragments and gained a sense of their principal attributes.

The most powerful fragment contained some very potent devouring attributes.

"The Unending One."

A weaker fragment exhibited some flighty attributes.

"The Inexorable One."

Another weak fragment seemed to be filled with light.

"The Blinding One!"

Ves didn't know how his mother managed to preserve these fragments, but they were extremely helpful to his current circumstances!

Of course, in their current forms, the remnants of the dark gods were polluted with a lot of undesirable attributes. Ves had no use for their evil and alien natures and wanted to get rid of them as soon as possible.

In fact, Ves believed it was best to use them as ingredients in the creation of fresh new design spirits. He did not want to make the same mistake he made with Ylvaine's spiritual fragment and revive someone from the dead!

"The Unending One and the Inexorable One should definitely remain buried. The Blinding One on the other hand…"

Ves grew a little intrigued about the last dark god. Even though the Blinding One was just as evil and hostile as the previous two entities, he was different.

The Blinding One was a humanoid alien, and a member of the luminar race to boot.

Ves always wanted to figure out the mysteries of the luminar race. What if he could tap into the Blinding One's knowledge and figure out the principles behind his race's wondrous crystal and light-based technology?