The Mech Touch

Ves leaned back on his chair as he held the P-stone containing the spiritual fragment of the Blinding One in his hands.

Lucky lifted his head from the desk and observed the rock. A disgusted expression appeared on his face.

"Meow."

"Yeah, I can imagine that alien essence tastes awful. It's especially bad considering how luminars look closer to humans than exobeasts. I can never bring myself to eat sentient, bipedal beings."

His cat purposefully moved forward and leaned over the edge of the desk. He skilfully opened one of the drawers with his paws.

"Meow!"

"What are you talking about? I'm not a hypocrite!" Ves defended himself. He quickly leaned forward to slam the desk drawer shut. "And don't touch my precious nutrient packs!"

He ignored his cat and went back to studying the P-stone. Now that it housed the remnant of the Blinding One, it acquired a special character.

"It's like I'm holding a crystal instead of a rock."

The illusion was weak and easy to dispel, but Ves found it interesting nonetheless. The more he looked at it without fully concentrating his mind, the more he got the sense that it was a crystal that radiated light. Some of the rays were so blindingly powerful that he felt tempted to look away.

Only spiritual fragments derived from powerful entities could make him feel this way. Their quality was so high that their attributes somehow bled over to the material realm without doing anything.

"Now what am I going to do with you?" He idly wondered.

Considering that he was close to finishing the Crystal Lord Mark II Project, he thought about spicing it up by adding the Blinding One to the mix.

After all, the Crystal Lord was a design based around his initial exposure to the luminar race and its technology.

"I intended to reform its current design spirit anyway, so this is a good opportunity to do so. With such a powerful ingredient in my possession, it's a waste to leave it alone!"

Before he did so, he first wanted to see if he could derive other benefits from the fragment.

He was particularly interested in whatever knowledge it possessed about the history, technology and culture of the luminar race.

While Ves possessed a small amount of insight on this diminutive alien race's technology by making a deal with Master Willix, he only scratched the surface of what it was capable of. Just recalling the power of the ruins left by the crystal builders left him with a deep impression.

"It's not related to my design philosophy, but who cares. Everyone has hobbies."

He began to concentrate his mind further in order to delve into the spiritual fragment. He cautiously prodded the fragment and tried to elicit some sort of reaction.

Aside from a few instinctual responses, the fragment did nothing.

Ves grimaced. "It's not in a good state."

He touched it deeper and began to run his senses through the fragment. He hardly encountered any resistance because there wasn't much that could stop him. The only reason why he stopped delving deeper was because he could not cope with the density of high-quality energy.

After exploring the spiritual fragment from different angles, Ves became surer about his verdict.

"It's dead."

Of course, death was not entirely absolute when it came to spiritual entities. The more powerful beings tended to be quite tenacious.

Yet Ves did not feel as if the Blinding One possessed the same chance of coming back to life. The fragment's outer structure was heavily compromised as the Unending One managed to digest it for quite some time before his mother scooped it out and stopped most of the decay.

It was too late.

Ves did not feel any active consciousness from it. If he pulled the fragment out of the P-stone, it would have resumed decaying until there was nothing left.

"Damn."

Perhaps only the spiritual fragment of the Unending One might be alive. The rest had fallen victim to the tentacled whale's formidable digestion capabilities.

Without an active personality, Ves couldn't do much with the fragment. There was no way to bargain with something that was unresponsive to communication.

That invalidated some of his methods.

As Ves continued to wrangle with the remnant, he eventually gave up. There was no way for him to extract any information out of it. The spiritual makeup of the fragment was indecipherable to him and it was missing a lot of parts because it had ended up in the Unending One's stomach.

He crossed out more and more options until he was only left with a couple.

"Aside from some nebulous future applications, I'm better off using it as an ingredient."

He thought back on his mostly-complete Crystal Lord Mark II design. Gloriana and her erudites had made good work on it. He just needed to round out its spiritual design by addressing something he had neglected for a long time.

"The design spirit of the original Crystal Lord is too weak."

The crystal golem represented his foray into creating powerful design spirits. It was rough, incomplete and did not possess enough growth potential.

"What a flawed product." He muttered as he briefly came into touch with the weak spirit.

The ingredients were bad and his methods were too rough. He possessed very little insight on spiritual products back then. It was a true first-generation product that had failed to keep up with the times.

"That's okay. I can always remedy this shortcoming."

He had to make an important choice on how to proceed.

Ves mentally and spiritually weighed the crystal golem and the Blinding One and tried to decide which one he should preserve.

"I have three choices. First, I can feed the crystal golem to the Blinding One. Second, I can do the opposite. Third, I can break them both and mash them together in order to produce a brand-new design spirit that takes after the two."

None of the choices sounded appealing to him. He had to give up something no matter what he chose.

The first one was the most promising but also the most heartless option. From a utilitarian point of view, it made a lot of sense. He essentially sacrificed a defective but loyal design spirit in order to return the Blinding One back to life, if only partially.

While the Blinding One also happened to be a dangerous and evil entity, Ves believed he could derive a lot of benefits from the revived entity!

Aside from trying to barter with the Blinding One, he also saw a lot of promise in installing it as a better design spirit of the Crystal Lord designs.

As long as the Blinding One retained a portion of its powers and techniques, he could probably elevate the performance of the Crystal Lord designs in many interesting ways!

Though all of these potential benefits sounded worthwhile to Ves, he struggled to commit with it. Whenever he looked at the pitiful crystal golem, he could not bring himself to betray one of his earliest actual design spirits.

"That's not who I am, I think." He sighed. "It's not who I want to be. I need to stick to my principles for once."

He always tried to be generous to those who trusted or helped him. Screwing over the crystal golem was a deeply dishonorable act.

In comparison to the first option, he felt much less hesitance about the second option. He felt no guilt over purifying and breaking apart the fragment of the Blinding One before subsequently trying to merge the pieces with the crystal golem.

There were two problems with this course of action. Feeding the remnants of a powerful entity to a weaker entity was very inefficient. The crystal golem probably wouldn't be able to handle most of the power.

"There's going to be a lot of waste." Ves frowned.

The other problem was that Ves had never done anything like this before. He would have to develop a new method of integrating the dead pieces of one fragment with a living entity without putting the latter at risk.

This was why the third option was the most practical one. If he disregarded the identities of both fragments and just broke them apart, he could merge the shards back together to form a fresh new spiritual product without any of the baggage that plagued the two fragments. The new luminar-based design spirit would probably lack the ignorance of the crystal golem and the grudges of the Blinding One.

Yet this elegant solution also entailed screwing over the crystal golem.

Though Ves deeply wanted to step up to something better, he couldn't treat his own child like a worn pair of shoes.

Perhaps certain conceited men would not hesitate to upgrade from their current wives to better ones when they became more successful in life.

Ves could never accept such horrid behavior.

He felt no qualms about discarding regular products if they no longer fulfilled the job. He could not do so to his own design spirits. His design philosophy strongly opposed it, and that was enough for Ves to make up his mind.

"I guess I only had one option from the start." He sighed.

The temptation of reviving or making better use of the spiritual fragment of the Blinding One no longer twisted his thoughts.

The potential gains were considerable, but it was not worth the price of betraying one of the principles he really believed in. He deeply despised unwarranted treachery. Trust was something precious to him. How would he be able to maintain a friendly relationship with his other design spirits when they found out that Ves butchered one of their peers?

"Well, I shouldn't delay any further. The Crystal Lord Mark II has waited too long for this upgrade."

He felt much better now that he decided to keep the crystal golem alive. Without noticing it, he entered into a peculiar state of mind that was filled with optimism.

Of the plethora of spiritual techniques he developed, none of them revolved around upgrading an existing spiritual entity by sacrificing another one. The only times he merged different ingredients together was when he shattered them first.

Yet despite having to consider doing something new and unprecedented, Ves did not shy away from the challenge.

He had at least some reasons to feel optimistic. For example, the two ingredients both shared the same root.

"It's just that the Blinding One is much more complex than the crystal golem. I should take care of that."

Ves began to concentrate his mind to the point where he was able to form a strong and sharp spiritual blade.

He proceeded to separate all of the energy with undesirable attributes. He removed everything that felt evil or irrelevant from the main fragment.

Normally, he would throw away the trash, but this time he made sure to preserve it. No matter how much the attributes repelled him, energy was energy.

Since Ves had plenty of practice with this procedure, he skillfully purified the fragment of the Blinding One until it sparkled.

"That's better." He smiled as he evaluated his work.

Compared to before, the dead fragment lost a lot of energy. It no longer matched his impression of a dark god.

Aside from preserving its strong light and crystal attributes, he also retained most of its alien characteristics. This was a conscious choice on his part as the Crystal Lord designs were distinctly luminar in appearance and character.

"Now, I need to fuse this purified fragment into the crystal golem. Let's pull it up to the same level as my other design spirits!"

Acting on a hunch, Ves straightforwardly shattered the purified fragment of the Blinded One!

As Ves gained a lot of shards, Ves wrapped them up with some of his spiritual energy before pressing them onto the crystal golem!

"Come on! Fuse!"

What he was doing didn't make sense. It was like taking a steak and pressing it against his skin!