The Mech Touch

[Unstable Chaos Essence]

A terrible essence of chaos is locked within this gem. The essence is stolen from a great and ancient horror that would dearly wish to regain it. Carry this gem at your own risk.

Anyone who read this description might shy away from using this gem. Yet where others saw trouble, Ves spotted opportunity.

Lucky had produced them while he was in the Nyxian Gap. Something about the environment caused the gem cat to form these abnormal gems.

If Ves took the description seriously, then these gems might contain either spiritual energy or some other vital energy related to the indigenous 'dark gods'.

Having encountered the dark gods up close, Ves was quite impressed by their power. While each of them were different, he noted that they all possessed the same origin.

They were entities rooted in chaos.

The Unending One, the Inexorable One, the Blinding One and even Nyxie were distinct from other spiritual entities such as Qilanxo.

Ves considered the former exobeast to be a more classical spiritual lifeform. While she was quite powerful in her own right, she mainly existed beyond the material realm. That meant it was difficult for her to affect reality.

The dark gods were different. Something about them caused them to be able to channel their powers in the material realm more easily. Of course, the unique environment may have something to do with it, but that did not detract too much from this powerful advantage.

Ves wondered whether he could borrow this trait.

While exposing himself to some of this so-called chaos might have negative repercussions, a part of him was excited at the prospect.

"There has to be a use for these gems!"

Otherwise, why would Lucky make them? None of his gems lacked a purpose. Ves just had to find the correct application for each of them. Since each of the gems revolved around containing energy, he needed to find some way of accessing it. That was difficult as the gems were very hardy shells.

"Still, these gems can be broken if enough force is applied!"

The Highly Unstable Chaos Essence gems exploded and unleashed a lot of energy during the Battle against the Abyss. While the damage of the explosion failed to deal as much damage to the Gravada Knarlax as he wished, he was still impressed by the eruption of chaotic energy.

Ves guessed that exciting this chaos energy might be a way of closing the gap between the imaginary realm and the material realm.

The way the realms were separated represented a kind of order. Chaos was something that could cause them to loosen their strict boundaries. It would explain why the realms were considerably closer to each other in the Nyxian Gap.

"Hmmm, this is pure speculation, though. I don't have enough proof to back up my assertions."

Ves didn't care, though. His intuition didn't send him any warning signals and he had a feeling that he might be on the right track. Even if his aim was off, at least he was looking in the right direction.

What mattered was that he was convinced that the Unstable Chaos Essence gems would be very helpful in some way. That was his judgement as someone who dabbled more than once with forces outside of his control.

In the next few hours, Ves designed a simple but elegant pair of wedding rings that incorporated the gems in various ways.

He wasn't sure whether it was possible to split the gems up without breaking their effect. Depending on the outcome, he could either incorporate a whole gem in the ring or split them up into smaller pieces and spread them out. This might also help with making the energy inside more accessible.

Once he completed the design, he stored it in his implant.

Before he went ahead and translated the design into reality, he needed to figure out the properties of the Unstable Chaos Essence gem.

"It's a good thing I have several of them. I can afford to break a few."

He carried five grey gems and one purple gem. He reserved the latter for Gloriana's ring and intended to use a grey one for his own one. This meant that he could play with four grey gems at most.

As Ves studied the grey gems, he grew a little suspicious. When the three dark gods showed up, their energies came in different colors.

The Unending One released black energy. The Blinding One radiated white energy. The Inexorable One released grey energy.

"Is this gem related to the Inexorable One?"

Ves didn't know. While he possessed her spiritual remnant, he wasn't sure whether they came from the same source.

"Well, it shouldn't matter too much. The Inexorable One excels in speed and manipulation."

He didn't care about the first trait, but he was quite interested about the second one. Out of all of the three dark gods that his mother beat up, Ves was most impressed by the Inexorable One's ability to conjure up area attacks. This signified that the big bird was quite good at manipulating her own energy.

Ves visited the vault to take out the P-stone holding the Inexorable One's spiritual remnant. He moved to the lab compartment and entered an enclosed testing chamber in order to keep out the curious Braves.

He took out one of the grey gems and placed it on a table.

"Now how should I go about this experiment?"

He decided to split it up in half. He needed to know whether damaging the gem would cause the energy to release and how violently this reaction took place.

However, just as he was about to take out a cutting tool, he froze.

"Wait a minute. Am I taking all of the risks into account?"

It might not be the best idea to conduct this experiment on his own ship travelling through FTL. The eruption of an uncontrolled amount of energy might very well interfere with the operation of the FTL drives.

If this disruption caused the Scarlet Rose to go astray, enter into dangerous and unknown dimensions or outright blow her to pieces, then Ves would certainly meet a good end!

Properly speaking, he should wait until the Scarlet Rose transitioned out of FTL travel. Once the fleet emerged into realspace, Ves could easily transfer to a less important and conduct his experiment here. He didn't even need to be aboard the same vessel, so if the gem inadvertently blew up with the force of a nuclear bomb, he wouldn't lose anything important!

"Damn. I could have potentially killed myself, and for the stupidest reason imaginable!"

His ability to assess risks could use some work. Everytime he became excited for one reason or another, he tended to go overboard.

"Ugh. Let's leave this for later."

He took back the gem and put away the tools. He took back the occupied P-stone and moved back to the vault in order to stow it away.

Before he did so, he briefly pulled out the P-stones containing the remnants of the Unending One.

Each of them were very valuable. Ves already used the remnant of the Blinding One to upgrade one of his existing design spirits into the Illustrious One.

The new design spirit for the Crystal Lord line was settling in well. His power and intelligence was fully up to standard. Ves expected a lot of growth out of the entity that possessed a portion of the power of a dark god.

"How should I use the two of you? Should I use you to upgrade one of my other design spirits?"

Ves didn't see the value in that. The Blinding One stood out because he belonged to the same race as the crystal golem. Merging them together made a lot of sense.

That didn't apply to the remaining two dark gods. Certainly, an argument could be made to fuse the Black Phoenix, the design spirit of the Blackbeak, with the Inexorable One, but Ves considered that to be a waste.

"The Blackbeak is a landbound offensive knight mech. Even if I design a successor with aerial or space maneuvering capabilities, it's not a mech that excels at speed."

The concept of the Blackbeak merely demanded that the mech was fast enough to take part in offensive maneuvers. It was similar to the Blessed Squire in that regard.

What truly made sense was to use the Inexorable One to create a speed-oriented spiritual product. By creating a new entity that took full advantage of the dark god's excellence in speed, Ves would finally obtain a design spirit that was perfectly suited for the light mechs he intended to design.

"Venerable Tusa will be happy, I'm sure!"

He overlooked the fact that Tusa bitterly struggled against the Inexorable One and almost died as the avian dark god completely smashed his mech apart.

As for the Blackbeak design… Ves didn't feel very passionate about updating it. Its concept was exceedingly simple and it didn't really possess any special properties.

Also, without spending resources to upgrade the Black Phoenix, the product line would always pale in comparison to his more modern mechs.

"I think.. it's not worth it to design a Blackbeak Mark II."

The Blackbeak's core concept was too limited in his eyes. He would rather design a new landbound knight mech from scratch with a more unique vision and concept.

Having decided to end one of his product lines permanently, Ves turned to the most powerful spiritual remnant.

He could sense the hunger of the Unending One's spiritual remnant. While definitely intended to use it up to create another spiritual product, he had something greater in store than obtaining just another design spirit.

His eyes sharpened as he studied its current state. "These devouring and digesting attributes are special."

In order to prove that, he created a small spiritual projection and pushed it towards the remnant.

As expected, the remnant automatically swallowed the projection!

A tiny amount of energy entered into its depths. Ves lost contact with his projection. He watched keenly as he observed the remnant of the Unending One trying to digest his own energy.

Apparently, his energy was quite nutritious, as the Unending One quickly completed the digestion process within a single minute!

Though Ves didn't sense an obvious increase in strength, he felt it was slightly more content.

"I see!"

Even though the Unending One was 'dead', the spiritual fragment that his mother managed to preserve from his dead existence still possessed some of his abilities.

His eyes lit up! This was exactly what he sought!

"I can use it as a universal energy recycler!"

No matter what kind of spiritual energy he fed it, as long as the Unending One was able to digest it, it was quickly able to break down and transform the energy into its own strength!

In the simplest terms, this meant that Ves might be able to use it as a renewable source of spiritual fragments.

He could just feed it with any undesirable or unusual spiritual energy he came across, thereby causing it to grow. Once it grew big enough, Ves could carve out fragments which he could use in many other applications!

"Not only that, but I might be able to leverage its energy absorption properties more directly!"

It sounded like a great base for a possible spiritual energy converter that could replace his Grand Dynamo!

If he was able to induce a change which caused the digestion process to generate spiritual energy that matched his spiritual makeup instead of that of the Unending One, he might be able to solve his energy problems!

Before Ves obtained a remnant of the Unending One, he always thought that he wouldn't be able to convert one form of spiritual energy to another form of spiritual energy.

It was different now. While Ves didn't understand how the Unending One was able to accomplish this feat, he felt confident in his ability to take advantage of it somehow!

"Using the dead remains of my enemies to make new applications, how wonderful!"