The Mech Touch

A spiritual cat materialized into view and flew onto Ves' lap. Goldie was actually quite a powerful spiritual entity these days. She not only possessed more spiritual energy, but she had also learned or developed more methods to harness her growing powers.

Of course, Ves hadn't witnessed any of her new abilities. He just knew that she had become more versatile.

Despite her increase in powers, she still possessed a young and playful demeanor. It didn't seem to matter that she was mentally connected to the minds of tens of thousands of Larkinsons, many of whom were adults who possessed complex and profound thoughts.

Her overflowing cuteness was too much for Ves. He broke out into a smile and petted her back.

Nyaaa~ nyaaa~ nyaaa~

"Hehehe. I'd love to play with you further, but I still have work to do. Now, daddy Ves needs to know what you can do these days. Have you developed any remarkable powers that you can bestow to my mechs?"

Goldie looked confused. She tilted her head.

Nyaaa?

"Just demonstrate your powers, please."

Nyaaa.

Goldie reluctantly distanced herself from Ves and turned to face an empty bulkhead. She briefly inhaled before unleashing a small and sharp spiritual beam that didn't deal any material damage.

While the beam penetrated through the bulkhead without encountering any hindrance, Ves saw that it wouldn't do much damage to anyone even if it hit someone.

Obviously, she could have unleashed a stronger attack, but saw no need to expend too much energy and put someone at risk.

"How strong can you scale up this attack?" He asked.

Goldie spread out her forepaws until they became twice as wide as her head.

Nyaaaa nyaaa nyaaa!

Ves didn't know how strong that was supposed to be. This was one of the instances where he could really make use of a solid measurement of spiritual power or damage potential.

"Can you knock out a person with this beam attack?"

Nyaaa..?

"You don't even know?!"

Nyaa nyaaa nyaaa!

"Oh, I see. You lack test subjects." Ves understood. "It's good that you've restrained yourself. I don't want our clansmen to get hurt due to reckless experimentation. Anyway, even if your beam attack is able to threaten someone, I don't think it's very useful to pass it on to a mech design."

Even though Ves was still in the dark about the actual effect of her beam attack, he already figured out some shortcomings.

First, the attack was very simple. It directly discharged spiritual energy in the rawest possible form. This was an extremely wasteful method of utilizing its potential.

"It's as if a rifleman mech picks up a rifle only to throw it at the enemy."

While such an act might inflict a bit of damage to an enemy mech, it was a horrible way to utilize the rifle.

Ves felt that Goldie might be able to compress the energy or use some kind of other technique to increase the lethality and efficiency of her attack. However, this was not the time to explore these options.

He wasn't really interested in passing on this capability to his Bright Warriors. The range of mech combat in space potentially stretched across many kilometers. From what Ves had witnessed, Goldie's attack lost cohesion fairly quickly, which meant it didn't appear to be practical unless the enemy was right in front.

He already had more effective and efficient solutions at his disposal which could attack the mentality of enemy mech pilots. The death phase battle formation was the best example.

"What else can you do?"

Nyaaa.

Goldie subsequently formed a bubble around her glowing body. The golden barrier didn't look very substantial, but when Ves experimentally tried to pass a spiritual projection through it, he failed to pass the spiritual shield.

"This looks useful." Ves became a bit impressed. "Qilanxo must have taught you how to form a shield, right?"

The cat nodded her cute head.

Nyaaa!

"Can it block any material attacks?"

Nyaaa…

Ves decided to test it out. He picked up a data pad from his desk and threw it towards the glowing cat.

NYA!

The physical object passed right through her shield and impacted her body, causing it to pop!

Fortunately, Goldie didn't actually get hurt. She rematerialized her body and hissed at Ves.

Nyaaaaa!

"Oh, sorry about that, Goldie. I thought that if it failed, the data pad would go right through your body."

Nyaaaa~

She quickly forgave him as she rubbed her head against his hand.

Unlike Qilanxo, Goldie didn't appear to be capable of forming a barrier that could defend against material attacks. While it appeared to be somewhat effective against spiritual attacks, it wasn't as if they were about to square off against entities comparable to the dark gods anytime soon.

Goldie didn't specialize in defense, so her spiritual shield was fairly weak. The only noteworthy aspect about it was that it was fairly efficient, no doubt because of her excellent teacher.

"What else can you do?"

She began to show a bunch of other parlor tricks. She amplified her glow, demonstrated her multi-tasking ability, became almost unnoticeable and even managed to showcase her ability to extend her senses at a distance.

"Except for multi-tasking, I can already do these tricks myself." Ves crossed his arms. "You have to show me more if you want to impress me. I haven't seen anything that works great with my upcoming Bright Warrior design."

Seeing that he didn't take note of the abilities she displayed before, Goldie decided to become serious.

She looked at Ves with a determined expression that only made her look cuter.

As Ves wondered what she was trying to do, he sensed that the Larkinson Network was actually becoming more active.

Through his spiritual senses, he perceived that his bond received more input all of a sudden.

'Where is my underwear?'

'I hate this hoverchair! Why is it taking so long to regrow my legs?'

'This sword needs to be sharper!'

The surface thoughts of hundreds of different Larkinsons poured into his mind!

"Ahh!" Ves held his head in pain as he hastily put up a spiritual block. "Warn me before you do that!"

Nyaaaa…?

Goldie didn't understand why he couldn't handle all of the incoming thoughts.

"I can't multitask to the extent that you can. You can really knock someone out by flooding them with so many distracting and disparate thoughts!"

It was too bad that this unintentional 'attack method' only worked for those who were connected to the Larkinson Network to begin with. It couldn't be employed against an enemy.

Nyaa… 

Goldie looked downcast as she lowered her tail.

"It's okay. Just be more mindful next time. Hmmm… can you connect the minds of multiple people together like this? For example, can you connect the minds of a squad of mech pilots together?"

Nyaaaa.

She didn't sound too certain, but she thought it was theoretically possible.

This brought a lot of interesting possibilities to Ves. Wasn't this just the spiritual version of the most basic application of a symmetrical neural network?

If he was able to develop this method even further, he may be able to develop a mech unit within the LMC that could fight like the Bloody Herons!

Ves quickly dampened his enthusiasm. "It's too dangerous!"

He was not ignorant of all the risks involved. Even Master Huron had to work long and hard before he developed a viable framework that would allow mech pilots to link with each other without going crazy or incurring brain damage.

The possibility still tantalized him, though. He planned to revisit the idea once he gained a better understanding of spirituality and how it interacted with the human mind. At his current level, he didn't feel confident enough to attempt something like this without sufficient knowledge.

"It would have been handy if I managed to obtain Master Huron's research data." He briefly lamented.

He turned his attention back to Goldie. Under his encouragement, she began to display some other abilities.

He already knew about her ability to facilitate communication between Larkinsons through the network she maintained. She had become more efficient at this, but there still appeared to be a range limit.

Nyaaaa.

"So if I understand you correctly, you can pretty much allow me to communicate with any clansman as long as the Larkinson Mandate is in the same star system."

This was actually quite a useful feature. While the bandwidth of this connection wasn't high, it was a lot more secure.

Of course, it wasn't perfect. Anyone who was sensitive to spirituality such as Ves may be able to intercept the spiritual signals and figure out their meaning.

Goldie actually copied the core function of his upcoming Cherub mech design. The Hexer communication mech was designed to facilitate secure short-ranged and long-ranged communications through a sub-network of the Superior Mother.

The spiritual cat was able to do this without relying on a purpose-built mech as long as it was limited to Larkinsons. This was a considerable advantage, but Ves was reluctant to implement it because it was related to a lot of secrets that he didn't want to spread.

Still, it might come handy in an emergency.

"Look, I'm impressed at what you can do, but none of them fit the Bright Warrior design. I need you to showcase an ability that can truly fit the mech. It has to turn into a unique and iconic ability for the Larkinson Clan."

Nyaaa…

She thought for a moment while swaying her tail. While she developed a lot of new techniques, many of them were derivatives of her existing abilities or imitations of the abilities of other design spirits.

This was not what Ves was looking for. Just like the Bright Warrior design, Goldie appeared to be lacking an advantage that was distinct and unique enough to define her. She needed to develop a signature move that could become as iconic as Qilanxo's space barrier or the Illustrious One's synergy with luminar crystals.

The two brainstormed for a time. Both Ves and the spiritual cat swapped various ideas.

Despite all of the information that Goldie had access to, she didn't possess a lot of imagination. Part of that was due to her youth but another reason was because she was a very different kind of existence.

Ves was much better in this aspect than her. He considered the capabilities that she already showed and tried to generate ideas that Goldie was capable of implementing.

After half an hour of experimenting and delving into Goldie's powers, he gained a much deeper impression of her capabilities.

Her versatility was remarkable. This was a true strength as she was able to respond to many different situations.

Aside from that, Goldie only truly distinguished herself from other design spirits when she leveraged the Larkinson Network. Ves believed that this was the key to imbuing the Bright Warrior design with an iconic ability.

Ves somehow went back to his original idea.

For some reason, Ancestral Possession sounded perfect for this situation!

"It doesn't work, though!"

He found it ironic that his search to find a replacement for this failed implementation eventually brought him back to his starting point.

It was absurd!

"Maybe I need to revisit it and try and see if I can make it work." He muttered to himself.

If he wanted to make a serious effort, then he needed to perform an experiment. Yet that entailed using his Larkinsons as test subjects. Again.

"We're not in a crisis anymore. Is there really a need to put my own people at risk?"

Ah, who was he kidding? If he set his mind on an experiment, then he would definitely find a way to perform his studies!

Ves rubbed his smooth-shaven chin. "I'll need to do it fast and discrete. The completion of the Bright Warrior Project can't be delayed, so I only need a couple of successful test results to prove that my implementation works."

"Who shall become my test subjects?"