The Mech Touch

What was resonance?

What made resonance between expert pilots and expert mechs special?

What allowed expert mechs to exert greater power when they resonated?

Ves couldn't answer these questions right now. As a Journeyman, he invested most of his energies into becoming better at designing standard mechs, particularly medium humanoid mechs. His expertise in other areas of mech design was sorely lacking.

It would have been great if someone actually explained the working principles of an expert mech. Sadly, neither the prim and proper Master Willix or the former desperado known as the Skull Architect was willing to share any details.

Only Senior Mech Designers and higher were qualified to learn the secrets behind expert mechs. There was no exception to this rule as far as the mech industry was concerned.

Perhaps a mech designer had to reach a minimum level of spiritual development in order to bear the burden of designing an expert mech. The higher the requirements, the more Ves hungered for the relevant knowledge. It had to be an amazing secret if every high-ranking mech designer treated it so seriously!

Yet the more he wanted it, the more the mech industry kept it out of his reach. Ves became more and more frustrated when he continually hit wall after wall. The only legitimate way for him to know the secret was to advance to Senior and pay a visit to the MTA.

That took way too long! While Ves had made brisk progress since he became a Journeyman, his design seed hardly became stronger than before. It was far from reaching any sort of fundamental transformation.

This meant it would take at least several decades for him to become a Senior.

He didn't believe that he needed to reach that point in order to design an expert mech. He possessed greater insights into willpower and spirituality than any other mech designer. As long as the secret encompassed these aspects, he was confident he could exploit his knowledge in a way to circumvent some of the requirements!

The Mech Designer System happened to offer him support. It charged 1 million Design Points to enable him to design expert mechs. This alone proved that Journeymen were capable of designing expert mechs somehow.

Why did it cost so much? One reason must certainly be supply and demand. Aside from the MTA, the System was the only other readily-available supplier. Since Ves wanted it badly, the System could easily jack up the price.

However, it would have been too ludicrous if profiteering was the sole reason. Ves also suspected that he might need some sort of rare resource or undergo some sort of profound transformation in order to design an expert mech. Providing him with the right qualifications must be a very costly procedure, so it should not be a surprise that both the MTA and the System charged onerous prices.

No matter whether Ves was willing to wait or not, the reality was that he wouldn't be able to gain the necessary knowledge and capabilities anytime soon. Since several Larkinson expert pilots were waiting to obtain their expert mechs, this was very bad, because it meant he would have to rely too much on a stronger mech designer's work in order to fulfill this need.

It was irresponsible to entrust the most crucial elements of an expert mech design to an external mech designer. Whether it was Master Moira Willix or Professor Benedict Cortez, they both pursued their own agendas. Who knew whether their goals conflicted with his own? What if they incorporated some hidden backdoor or vulnerability in a Larkinson expert mech design?

Ves had to take matters into his own hands!

While he did not believe he could single-handedly deduce all of the principles that made expert mechs work, knowing something was better than remaining completely ignorant. He wanted to perform some studies of his own in order to uncover at least a couple of insights.

The Valkyrie Prime was his first exploration in this direction. He combined his accumulation of expert pilots, spiritual foundation enhancement, spiritually-reactive materials and design spirits to come up with an experiment that hopefully produced a result related to resonance.

His main ambition was to develop a mech that was capable of generating true resonance.

As the Valkyrie Prime glowed in space, the readings that Ves observed from his workstation indicated that he had failed to reach this goal.

The state that Venerable Joshua and the Valkyrie Prime had managed to achieve was short of true resonance. It was actually similar to fake resonance in that there was hardly any substance behind the resonance.

The bright glow surrounding the Valkyrie Prime was incomparable to an actual resonance shield. While it offered extra protection like any barrier, it was not impressive enough to make it nigh-impervious against lots of regular attacks. Its ability to defend against attacks empowered by true resonance was also questionable.

According to theory, fake resonance was generated by the mech itself. Certain rare exotics possessed the capability to resonate with itself. Whether this was an accurate description or not, these peculiar materials basically provided regular mech pilots with a preview of what it was like to pilot an expert mech.

Fake was fake though. Because the self-resonating exotics lacked the support of a formidable demigod, their strength alone was not enough to elevate mechs with fake resonance to a different height.

At most, custom mechs such as Lord Javier Eneqqin's Loquacious Raphael gained an edge against standard mechs but did not come close to threatening actual expert mechs.

As Ves continued to observe the Valkyrie Prime's telemetry, his experiment produced a similar result.

The only consolation was that the phenomenon he created appeared to be a little stronger than ordinary fake resonance.

"It has to be." He whispered to himself as he flicked through the charts. "I'm using an actual expert pilot, after all. Even without the use of self-resonating exotics, I still managed to invent a new and unknown form of resonance!"

At the very least, the characteristics of resonance his instruments were capturing did not conform to any known patterns. Perhaps some other mech designer managed to produce this result before but withheld it from the public, but Ves had a hunch that he was the first to perform this kind of experiment!

If that was true, the significance of this experiment was very great, especially if he was willing to submit it to the MTA in order to earn a lot of merits.

Of course, Ves did not intend to do something so stupid and short-sighted. His experiment involved too many trade secrets, some of which he hadn't even revealed to Master Willix!

He didn't care about the historical significance of his experiment. What Ves truly wanted to accomplish was to develop a quick and convenient method to strengthen his defenses.

He had five expert pilots, six if he included Venerable Davia Stark. All of them were lacking expert mechs right now, so each of them were being heavily under-utilized.

If he managed to develop some sort of quasi-expert mech that allowed his expert pilots to exert at least a portion of their capabilities, then his expeditionary fleet would be much better prepared to fight against powerful opponents!

"I'm not there yet, though."

The disappointing results gave Ves a bit of a headache. While failure was something that every researcher encountered, he still felt crushed. He was so hopeful about pumping 6300 in a mech that he couldn't conceive why the actual outcome was so weak.

Ves spoke into the communication channel. "Okay, this session is over now. Please halt your attempts to resonate with the Valkyrie Prime and bring it back to the hangar bay."

"What? Now?" Venerable Joshua replied. "It's too soon! I can do better! Let me try something different!"

"We can do something different next time. It's too dangerous to perform tests on the fly. You need to get back and give me time to study the Valkyrie Prime and the data I've gathered. Once I've made some conclusions and developed some new hypotheses, we can perform targeted experiments that are backed by existing data. Now get back to the Bentheim before you try something dangerous!"

"Awww.."

No matter how much Venerable Joshua wanted to continue the session, Ves had the power to pull the plug of his mech. The expert pilot had no choice but to do what he was told.

Ves smirked as he collected and archived all of the data. This was why he preferred to work with Venerable Joshua. Every other expert pilot was temperamental and demanding. They possessed strong egos and were very willful.

In fact, Venerable Joshua could be just as assertive as his peers. It was just that his obsession for LMC mechs made him unusually deferential to Ves. His domain also made him a bit more approachable.

"He's the perfect test subject for me." Ves concluded.

While his guinea pig brought back the Valkyrie Prime, Ves attempted to contextualize his results.

Though the session only lasted for a short amount of time, the new form of resonance showed some distinct properties.

As long as he replicated the phenomenon a few times, Ves was confident enough to claim he discovered a new form of resonance.

"What should I call it?" He idly wondered. "Since it sits between fake resonance and true resonance, should it be called half-true resonance?"

That was an awful name. Ves immediately threw it away.

He tried to come up with alternatives.

"Half resonance. Demi resonance. Partial resonance. Incomplete resonance."

None of those suggestions satisfied him. Each of them signalled that the new form of resonance was stunted or crippled. He needed to come up with a more positive descriptor.

"Larkinson resonance. Emotional resonance. P-resonance."

None of them sounded appropriate for this form of resonance. They didn't encapsulate what he had managed to achieve.

There were two conditions to forming this new form of resonance.

First, it needed a high-ranking mech pilot. Anyone below expert pilot was unlikely to achieve what Venerable Joshua had accomplished earlier.

Second, it required a new form of mech that Ves needed to classify. The mech in question was no different from a standard mech aside from incorporating spiritual storage materials that was filled with spiritual energy.

"What should I call this mech?"

He needed to come up with a name that he could use in public but did not reveal any secrets.

"P-mech?"

This was the clearest option to him considering that P-mechs could also function as P-stones. Both of them were capable of storing spiritual energy.

However, as Ves looked at the projection of the Valkyrie Prime, he came up with a better name.

"Prime mech."

The name sounded a lot more elegant. It was simple, clean and totally undescriptive unless someone knew the truth. Ves had no qualms spreading this designation to the public considering that he intended to make prime mechs exclusive to the Larkinson Clan.

It was still too risky to allow others to get their hands on this new kind of mech!

"If prime mechs possessed a lot of untapped potential, which he suspected might be the case, then it was vital to explore its characteristic form of resonance further."

"Then the new form of resonance produced by this mech shall be called prime resonance!"

Whether prime resonance would live up to its name remained to be seen. All Ves knew right now was that he had opened up a brand new research direction that could yield several possible innovations!

As Ves fantasized about prime resonance, someone suddenly stormed in the hangar bay and flew straight towards his workstation!

"VES!" Gloriana angrily yelled. "What is the meaning of this?! Why did you keep me in the dark about this new Valkyrie variant?! And what have you done to create this odd version of fake resonance? TELL ME EVERYTHING!"

"Miaow!"

Her cat sprinted after her owner as well!

A sinking feeling overcame Ves. The reckoning had come. Hell hath no fury like a woman left out of an interesting experiment!