The Mech Touch

LMC mechs played a vital role in the defense of the Larkinson Clan.

Compared to other second-class mechs, Ves could do more with them than others.

If he had enough time to rework the Larkinson Clan's entire mech roster, then he would have been able to rely on more than Valkyries and Transcendent Punishers!

Unfortunately, the timing wasn't right and the enemy had come sooner than he anticipated. He had no choice but to pile up as many 'blessings' as he could conceivably think of in order to maximize the potential of the LMC mechs at his disposal!

After the initial mass blessing, the Glory Seeker and Penitent Sister mech pilots were curious at what Ves would do next.

They already felt stronger than before! The Glory Seekers especially became caught up in the illusions brought by the abrupt strengthening of their mechs!

However, Ves knew that the actual difference was not all that much. The mechs hadn't actually grown stronger on a technical level. The blessing only made their mechs a lot more alive, which would hopefully improve the performance of the mech pilots and give them a greater chance of breaking through.

While the latter was already a benefit that other mech pilots would kill for, the odds of this happening was too low. There were only a bunch of mech pilots with spiritual potential, so the chance of any breakthroughs was slim due to the low quantity of eligible individuals.

What Ves was really banking on was something else. He spread his arms and pushed them aside as if he was making a swimming motion.

"Alright, for the next blessings, I need the two of you to move aside."

Once the Glory Seeker machines flew away from the Penitent Sister mechs, Ves first turned to the latter group.

The Valkyrie Prime happened to be a part of this group as well.

"Hold still while the Superior Mother blesses your mechs once more." Ves commanded. "Please keep in mind that we are trying something new and unprecedented here. If you experience any discomfort, shut down your mechs. Do not take any risks. Not everyone is capable of bearing the burden of greater power."

He knew this was a useless warning. There was no way the Penitent Sisters would miss out on another 'blessing'!

He originally didn't plan to perform this experiment so soon. He still wanted to gather more data and perform more analyses before taking this step.

"Crises have a way of accelerating my experimental schedule." Ves sighed to himself.

The reason why he was reluctant to perform his next experiment was because it represented a pretty major shift in how he viewed and made use of mechs.

Up until now, the core principle of his design philosophy was largely invisible and unnoticeable. Hardly anyone really paid much mind to it. Even Ves unconsciously adopted the mentality of a normal mech designer sometimes.

That was going to be a lot harder to do once he made this move. Ves instinctively felt as if he could never turn back once he stepped on this path.

He gritted his teeth. "I don't have any choice! I can't hold back any longer when the enemy is almost at my doorstep!"

After firming up his resolve, he concentrated his mind yet again and began to perform a different procedure. He called upon the Superior Mother and beseeched her to open up her battle network.

Her crown shone. The ancestral spirit's battle network began to form 200 new connections at once!

Once the open-ended connections had formed, Ves carefully guided them forward and caused them to reach into the Valkyrie Prime and the Valkyrie Redeemers piloted by the Penitent Sisters.

One by one, Ves meticulously attached the newly-forged bonds to the spiritual foundations of every respective mech.

He only established a single connection at the start. The Valkyrie Redeemer in question seemed to undergo some fluctuations that made its mech pilot uncomfortable, but the activity soon subsided.

"It worked.. I think."

He felt half-relieved.

While the Superior Mother was already connected to the mech by virtue of her position as the design spirit of the Valkyrie Redeemer design, this was not as impressive as it sounded.

What Ves was attempting to do was to form a stronger bond between the two. The Superior Mother's crown was a spiritual network that was especially designed to provide assistance in battle. It was his spin on Master Huron's neural network and originally sought to bind Larkinson mech pilots together.

When he created his battle networks, he worked on the premise that they were solely meant to unify humans in battle.

Yet… why limit his selection to mech pilots? Why not pull in their mechs as well?

This sounded absurd at first. Ves very much doubted that Master Huron extended his neural networks to mechs as well! The Fridayman Master probably treated the mechs that support neural networks as vehicles for his inventions.

Ves adopted a different perspective. He believed that mechs were alive. If that was the case, it should be possible to add them to the same battle network their pilots were connected to! Even though the mechs were completely different entities from their mech pilots, Ves theorized that the man-machine connection should have smoothed over these differences.

When a mech pilot interfaced with a mech, the person essentially became the mech and vice versa!

Another way of describing this situation was that his battle networks were currently being underutilized. He only connected half of the entities who were supposed to fight.

It was like fielding a bunch of calvarymen without horses! How could these mounted warriors ever put their training and battle prowess to good use when they were deprived of their steeds?

Ves faintly suspected that adding the mechs to the same battle network would result in a comprehensive increase in power of battle formations!

It was too bad that this was not the time to see the results. It was very costly to activate a battle network. Ves could not afford to tire out his mech pilots when they needed to perform at their best a couple of hours later.

Since the first bond took shape without any head explosions or other unfortunate accidents, Ves quickly bonded the rest of the mechs. When he connected the final spiritual bond to the Valkyrie Prime, Ves took stock of the machines.

From now on, the Valkyrie Prime and the 200 Valkyrie Redeemers were truly blessed! In fact, in theory, the mechs should be able to form a battle formation even if their mech pilots weren't connected to the network.

Ves didn't dare to try it out, though. There were way too many uncertainties.

"Alright, you're dismissed." He conveyed to Venerable Joshua and the Penitent Sisters. "Please return to standby and make sure your mechs are in peak condition at the start of the battle."

Once the mechs flew away, Ves flew over to the Glory Seeker side.

The Glory Seekers acquired more Valkyrie mechs than the Penitent Sisters due to their greater numbers. They fielded around 500 of Valkyrie Interceptors and Hurricanes, which was quite a big commitment.

Naturally, it was unrealistic to expect the Glory Seekers to abandon their other mech models. They still needed knight mechs, rifleman mechs, light skirmishers and other mech types to perform different roles.

"Hexers." He addressed the Glory Seeker mech pilots. "What I am about to do is extend two different 'blessings' to you. To be more precise, the Superior Mother and I will be blessing both you and your Valkyrie mechs. Please be aware that up until now, we have never extended this much generosity outside of the Larkinson Clan. We grant you this power in the hopes that you will use it to defend me and my clan. As long as you succeed, you and your mechs may keep these blessings. If you fail… well, there is no need for us to take them back."

While he couldn't see the faces of the Glory Seeker mech pilots, Ves believed they all looked solemn.

He didn't quibble over the fact that he sounded like a cult leader right now. He needed to ensure maximum cooperation from the Hexers. If he had to package his spiritual techniques as 'blessings' in order to get his point across, then so be it! He would even call himself a god if that was what it took to beat his hateful cousin Ghanso!

His approach was wildly successful, of course. The Glory Seekers had already invested their faith into the Superior Mother, the mech pilots of the Valkyries most of all. The sudden enhancement of their mechs only reinforced their beliefs even more!

Under their cooperation, Ves calmly coordinated with the Superior Mother to forge a thousand bonds at once.

For a moment, he worried whether the Superior Mother's crown could endure the strain of sustaining so many new connections.

It turned out his worries were unfounded. He might be justified in his concerns if the Superior Mother was weaker, but that was not the case. With so many Hexers presenting their spiritual tribute to her, the ancestral spirit had grown incredibly powerful. As a spiritual construct, her crown grew as well, allowing it to sustain many more active connections at once.

The process was tedious and exhausting more than anything else. Ves had to be fairly precise in directing the ends of the spiritual bonds to the right destination.

Once all 500 mechs Valkyrie mechs and mech pilots gained a connection to the Superior Mother's battle network, Ves floated back a bit. The Glory Seeker mechs hardly looked different than before, but he knew that every Glory Seeker possessed a more intimate connection to the Superior Mother.

"The power that you have gained will enable you to borrow the Superior Mother's strength in battle." Ves kept his explanation vague. "Be aware that there is a price to calling upon her power. I will not tell you how to activate this new ability beyond telling you that you must all clear your mind of distracting thoughts as much as possible and pray to the Superior Mother while battling the enemy. If you and your fellow mech pilots are devout enough, then you may be fortunate enough to unleash her wrath on our enemies!"

"We will not let the Superior Mother down!"

He dismissed the Glory Seekers and flew back to his shuttle. Once he and the precious statue of the Superior Mother returned to the Spirit of Bentheim, he exited his vehicle.

Instead of leaving the hangar bay, he moved to the side where all of his current prime mechs had been gathered.

The Valkyrie Prime just lined up next to the Bright Sword Prime, Bright Spear Prime, Bright Sword Prime, Piranha Prime and the Shield of Samar.

The expert pilots waited right in front of their respective machines. Each of them wondered why Ves had gathered them here. Shouldn't they be preparing for the upcoming battle in their own way?

As Ves approached the prime mechs, he silently lamented his lack of expert mechs.

Properly speaking, his expert pilots deserved to pilot true expert mechs. It was only due to lack of time and resources they ended up with prime mechs instead.

He did not dare to field the prime mechs against the expert mechs of the enemy. The strength disparity was too great! The shiny Larkinson mechs would just be obvious targets that Venerable Ghanso would probably be able to snipe with ease.

Instead of putting his expert pilots and his prime mechs in a disadvantageous situation, Ves thought it was better to deploy them against the regular elites of the enemy strike force.

"What did you call us here for, sir?" Venerable Orfan impatiently asked.

"I'm doing you all a favor by making your mechs more powerful. This won't take much time, but I need to perform a secret procedure in person. Just stay here while I visit the cockpits of your mechs one by one."

Ves did not waste any further time on satisfying their curiosity. He proceeded to activate the antigrav function of his Unending Regalia and floated inside the cockpit of the Valkyrie Prime.

Lucky had followed suit. His black-clad head curiously looked around the cockpit and the decorative reliefs that had been carved on the walls and ceiling.

Each relief inside an LMC mech told a fantastical story that was meant to put the mech pilots into a more compatible mood with their mechs.

"Well, let's get this over with." He muttered.

He first closed the cockpit before activating the jammer built into his Unending Regalia.

After making sure that the Valkyrie Prime was completely offline, he opened a secret storage compartment inside his personal armor.

His armored fingers carefully fished out a very familiar-looking pouch.

"Meow?"

"You guessed it right. I wanted to save them up, but…"

It was foolish to keep Lucky's gems in reserve because he wanted to save them for a future opportunity. If Ves didn't use them now, he might not have a future anymore!

"Now which gem should I use first?"