The Mech Touch

While Ketis heard some fantastical claims about the Heavensword Association, she always dismissed them as rumors and exaggerations.

Even though she found a way for her to develop her own superpower, she gradually learned she was the exception rather than the rule.

Every other mech designer in the Design Department had never managed to achieve something comparable to her ability to make every blade sharper. Even if her fellow mech designers found a way to make their design philosophies more useful, the effects were very marginal and virtually indistinguishable from that of a regular trained person.

Therefore, the stories she heard about Heavensworders being able to shoot wind blades or manipulate gravity never sank in. Whenever she saw footage like the one earlier, she attributed the remarkable effects to the construction of the sword.

As a mech designer, she knew quite well that there were lots of unstable exotics in existence that were capable of warping reality in some fashion. Phasewater was just one of the more recent and most impactful exotic to do so. Other substances were capable of reducing gravity, negating kinetic force or amplifying temperatures.

Of course, utilizing those materials was very hard. Most of them were fairly fragile and easy to break. Their effects were also inconsistent and easily disrupted. Material scientists like Master Katzenberg dedicated their lives to invent new alloys and composites that were capable of replicating the effects of raw exotics in a stable and usable package.

However, according to Angelique, it turned out that the Heavensword Assocation eschewed these kinds of weapons!

"Just like how a mech must always remain under the control of its mech pilot, a sword cannot do all of the work on behalf of its wielder. What is the point of becoming a swordsman when any random person on the street can hold a blade that can tear through the fabric of space? Using such blades is considered cheating because it devolves the practice of swordsmanship. The goal of our pursuit is to elevate ourselves, not our weapons. One of the criteria that our state uses to certify a swordmaster is that he must be able to channel his powers with a plain sword made out of a mundane material like iron. Many swordsmen have never gotten close to this point."

Ketis briefly recalled her own experiments on imbuing random fruit knives with her superpower. Did this mean that she was effectively a swordmaster?

"Okay, I think I understand why swordmasters are a big deal here. It's rather amazing that expert pilots are able to pass on a portion of their powers through teaching. However, not everyone is a mech pilot or expert pilot. Is it really possible for a norm to become a swordmaster?"

Angelique proudly nodded. "It is! Our state has poured more research and development in this aspect than many other organizations. While we cannot claim to be the absolute best in swordsmanship, in an age where the pursuit of piloting mechs has trumped every traditional fighting practice, we are one of the few people in human space who still aim to preserve our old ways."

Though Ketis was obsessed with swordsmanship, she was not a fan of tradition. She was very well aware that most people today didn't think there was anything special about it. Most mech pilots were willing to learn how to wield a sword, but they only invested enough time to acquire a repertoire of moves before focusing their training on other mech piloting aspects.

As for norms, the use of swords in personal combat had long ceased to be a fixture in warfare. Outside of duels, ritual combat and special circumstances, swords were completely irrelevant to soldiers!

Rather than waste time on learning how to wield a weapon that was only useful when the enemy was at point-blank range, it was much more efficient to invest all of that practice time in improving marksmanship.

Due to uneven scaling, rifles and other ranged weapons were much more effective at the infantry level. It was only when armor became bigger and more massive that it was able to resist ranged weapons long enough for mechs to get close to other mechs!

In this scenario, a mech that wielded a sword could easily butcher a rifleman mech!

This was why mechs that wielded primitive swords and other melee weapons were not a joke, and why swordsmanship was still a somewhat serious discipline.

Yet to take it as far as the Heavensworders sounded ridiculous even to Ketis.

While she was aware that the Swordmaidens were also obsessive about swordsmanship, this was more of a means to bring sisters closer together while instilling discipline in them. The Swordmaiden approach towards swordsmanship was very practical and devoid of any extraneous philosophies.

Perhaps the style she learned didn't come with any fancy tricks, but it belonged to the Swordmaidens, and that was enough. She could always compensate for what was missing with her own superpower.

"Is it possible for mech designers to become swordmasters?" Ketis curiously asked.

"It has never been done." Her companion replied while sighing in regret. "None of us are resigned to this truth. Nearly every mech designer in our state tries to do their best to polish their swordsmanship while keeping up with their work or studies, but we don't have enough to achieve results in both pursuits. We can only choose to excel in one of them. That is the choice I made as well."

"What do you think about my chances, then? You've seen me fight. I also managed to pass that old man's test."

"Don't get too cocky. You don't understand anything about what it takes to become a genuine swordmaster. It is already a minor miracle that you have attained a degree of swordsmanship that is enough for you to compete in the tournaments, but sooner or later you will have to make a difficult decision. The amount of time and effort that swordsmen need to put into becoming a swordmaster is so great that it consumes their entire lives. How can they spare any time to become a good mech designer?"

Ketis wanted to refute Angelique's scepticism, but she still had some reservations about revealing her superpower. She knew quite well that her design philosophy had more to do with it than her attainments in swordsmanship.

Commander Sendra was much more skilled in swordsmanship than her, but the mech pilot was completely unable to evoke any extraordinary effect!

From this standpoint, it didn't matter how well Commander Sendra performed in the tournament. The true insiders weren't interested in swordsmen and swordswomen who fought according to mortal means.

It was only now that Ketis realized that the tournaments mainly centered around the swordmasters who had stepped onto the path of becoming sword gods.

Whether they were mech pilots or simple norms, their dedication to their respective sword styles had reached such an extreme that they were easily capable of warping reality while wielding average weapons. These amazing individuals fully deserved to be recognized as swordmasters!

By the end of their visit to the Sword Graveyard, Ketis gained a more thorough understanding of the power structure and overall goal of the Heavensword Association.

Whereas the Life Research Association sought to supplant conventional technology with biotechnology, the Heavensword Association primarily existed to elevate swordsmanship to the point of creating sword gods!

She suddenly thought about the people at the top.

"Wait a minute… is the Heavensword Style the strongest of all styles?"

"You can say that." Angelique nodded. "I have heard from some of my teachers that there is a mystique to the Heavensword Style. It's not an ordinary sword style. For one, the Heavensword Saint is always the strongest swordmaster in our state regardless of his or her prior identity. The style is also rumored to come from the mythical Heavensword, which happens to be a mysterious relic in itself."

"Are you saying that the Heavensword predates modern swordsmanship?"

"Who knows. These are all rumors. Even citizens like myself don't know the full story behind the sword that symbolizes our state. All we know is that whoever holds the Heavensword and inherits its accompanying style is undoubtedly the closest to becoming a sword god out of every swordmaster. That is why his or her leadership is always unquestioned!"

These matters flew way over Ketis' head. While she was curious to learn the truth about the Heavensword, she was much more preoccupied with helping the Swordmaidens recruit good swordswomen and getting back to the main fleet in order to get back to designing mechs.

As Ketis and Angelique began touring more sights such as a museum, a luxury shopping center and a meeting place for mech designers, they began to share deeper insights on how swordsmanship intertwined with mechs.

During this tour, Angelique brought up a fascinating theory.

"Do you know that many Heavensworders believe that the progression of high-ranking mech pilots is originally copied from our swordsmanship tradition?"

Ketis looked incredulous at the other woman. "Do you have any proof? This is an incredible claim. If this is true, why haven't any of us outside this state heard about it? Swordsmanship would become a lot more popular throughout the galaxy if this is the case!"

Angelique shrugged. "I don't know why it is more known. Maybe the MTA deliberately suppresses the truth. You have to be aware of the times we are living in right now. Nothing is allowed to supplant the majesty of mechs. Neither warships, weapons of mass destruction or unrestricted genetic modification have been able to break through this blockade. How can our swordsmanship tradition possibly do any better? I think this is also one of the reasons why the founders of our state ventured all the way to the galactic rim. They weren't welcome in the core regions of human space anymore. Only in a backwater like the Majestic Teal Star Sector are we allowed to develop our swordsmanship in peace."

What she described was nothing less than a conspiracy! Ketis grew a bit nervous. If the MTA truly plagiarized the progression of swordmasters and applied it to mech pilots, then this revelation was damaging enough to affect the prestige of high-ranking mech pilots!

The claim basically implied that mechs weren't inherently special!

To many people, the emergence of superhumans called Star Designers and god pilots was one of the strongest reasons why mechs were so dominant in human space. Before mechs arrived on the scene, humans had no way of transcending their mortal existence. Every human was equal more or less. 

Extensive genetic modification did not make humans closer to god. Instead, as the latter half of the Age of Conquest had already proven, recklessly inserting alien genes into the human genome only turned humans into monsters.

If the adoption of mechs didn't provide such a strong and accessible way for certain individuals to become more than human, then it was doubtful that most of human society would abandon the use of destructive warships that quickly!

Despite knowing that this claim was likely related to a taboo, Ketis couldn't help but grow curious about it. As someone who loved both mechs and swords, how could she not be interested in a theory that claimed they were much closer related than she initially thought?

"Do you have any concrete indications that back up what you have just said?"

"Well, just compare how we classify both high-ranking mech pilots and swordmasters. To us, expert candidates are equivalent to sword initiates. Expert pilots are equivalent to swordmasters. Ace pilots are pretty much sword saints. As for god pilots, I don't think it takes much time for you to be able to link them to sword gods. It's a pity that we have never witnessed the birth of the latter. Our state is incomparable to the rest of human civilization. For now, sword gods are purely a theoretical existence. Perhaps some might have existed in the past, but I don't have access to any information that can prove this assertion."

Ketis wasn't aware that so many different ranks of swordmasters existed, but now that she knew, she could obviously see the parallels.

Yet.. she still felt a bit skeptical.

"Did the MTA really copy your homework? What if it's the other way around? What if swordmasters modeled their progression after expert pilots and so on began to emerge?"

"That's impossible, Ketis. The history of the Heavensword Association predates the Age of Mechs. We existed before the arrival of mechs and the MTA. We already had swordmasters back then. We have entire databases of books and footage to prove this. As far as I am concerned, our swordsmanship tradition is the ancestor and original source of modern-day mech piloting tradition!"