The Mech Touch

Ves remained thoughtful as he boarded his shuttle and returned to the Spirit of Bentheim. The sight of his factory ship with the massive cat-shaped prow usually brought a smile to his face, but not this time.

His clan had grown a lot stronger and more numerous in a short amount of time, but that just introduced a lot more problems than before. His clan had already surpassed the size of a town and became the equivalent of a small city in terms of population.

Of course, the sovereign nature of the Larkinson Clan meant that their fleet was effectively a mobile city state. This introduced a lot of additional complexity that could keep anyone busy for years.

Ves had always dreamt about leading such a huge organization, but he didn't expect it to come so soon. He was psychologically unprepared to preside over 120,000 clansmen, of which at least half of them weren't clansmen just a couple of months ago!

That didn't mean he was willing to leave his throne and hand over his mantle to someone else. Only by grasping the highest authority for himself would he be able to ensure that his clan continued to assist him in his endeavors!

"What am I complaining about? Other people would kill to be in my place!" He muttered to himself.

If he hadn't delegated enough work, then he should just delegate even more. The clan had already grown and matured to the point where it possessed a robust hierarchy of leaders and problem solvers. The only reason why Ves wanted to address so many issues in person was because he was reluctant to trust others. It took a lot of effort from him to relinquish control.

As his shuttle returned to the Spirit of Bentheim, Ves stepped and slowly made his way to his personal workshop.

He had already addressed the most acute priorities on his agenda by now. The remaining issues could wait as it hardly mattered if Ves paid attention to them today or a few weeks later.

At this time, he had already lost his patience. He wanted to shove aside all of these tedious governance problems in favor of doing what he was truly passionate about, which was creating something new and unprecedented!

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"I can finally start my development on my future companion spirit!"

He had already thought a lot about this ambitious project during his spare moments of time. He developed numerous new ideas that he wanted to explore in order to see if it could make his companion spirit better.

When Ves called up his internal notes on the planning and design of the seed of his companion spirit, he reviewed his overall goals and plan.

"My main purpose is to implant a spiritual energy generator in my mind. If that is not possible, then I should at least obtain an energy converter."

Energy was the fuel of civilization and the currency that could be exchanged for all kinds of powers and benefits.

His limited spiritual energy always constrained how often he could create new spiritual products. Each of them required him to donate a part of himself in order to make them come alive.

This was not a problem when Ves only created a design spirit every year or so, but with more and more innovations, his demand for spiritual products had risen.

It was frustrating for him to refrain himself from making something new because he lacked the resources to go through with his intentions!

Though many of his products used up more ingredients than just his spiritual energy, he could solve the supply of other sources of spirituality over time. Yet the limited production of his own spiritual energy would still remain as a persistent bottleneck if he did not intervene in some way!

"Unless I can gain another Grand Dynamo Elixir, the only way to overcome this problem is to make my own energy-generation solution!"

Ves vastly preferred to do the latter. As long as he mastered the right method, he could continue to make a new one if he happened to blow up his old one. In fact, the principal reason why he was so desperate to embark on this project was because he blew up his Grand Dynamo in desperation!

"I guess that any energy generator can function as a concentrated spiritual bomb if I'm cornered or something." He snorted.

This would always be an option of last resort, though. Though he felt incredibly pained to sacrifice his Grand Dynamo, it was still acceptable to him because it was still a lifeless spiritual machine.

What he intended to do was something different. Instead of following the approach of others, he intended to create a living, thinking companion spirit!

Would someone like Ketis be willing to give up Sharpie and command her companion to explode?

Absolutely not! Sharpie was more than just the vessel of her sword will. It was a part of her, and possessed a life of its own.

Though it was still somewhat acceptable for Ves to sacrifice his mechs because they were designed and built with combat in mind, it would be different for something as close and intimate as his own companion spirit.

"Besides, if it has experienced a lot of growth, then it becomes too valuable for me to discard. It is too difficult to catch up to a highly-developed product when I have to start over from scratch." Ves determined.

He turned his attention back to his plan.

For now, he already decided on incorporating three core ingredients.

Of the two, his own spiritual energy and the universal life-attributed spiritual energy from the high-grade serum were no-risk ones. Both of them were very compatible with other ingredients and did not introduce any risks.

He labeled one core ingredient as high risk, though. There was no way around it. The spiritual fragment of the Unending One that his mother had gifted him at the end of the Battle of Reckoning was one of the most powerful and prominent spiritual assets in his possession.

"It is a pity it comes from an extremely dangerous dark god."

Ves had deep impressions of the tentacled whale. The powerful dark god not only managed to threaten his entire task force at the time, but also backstabbed his fellow dark gods before subsequently absorbing all of their spiritual energy at an astounding pace.

This was an incredibly ancient, cunning, cruel and resourceful spiritual entity. Ves had only lived a fraction of the years the giant whale had experienced, so how could he be confident that his spiritual prowess and techniques could ever match up against an alien that literally had eons to refine his powers?

The only reasons why he didn't shy away from using this high-risk ingredient was because the main consciousness was dead and because the reward was far too great for him to ignore.

"This is the key ingredient! I can't abandon it when it is my only hope of solving my chronic energy shortage!"

Throughout his professional career, Ves had become accustomed to chasing after rewards even if there were lots of risks associated with his decision.

This was nothing different.

"I can still try my best to lower the risks and mitigate the dangers as best as possible." He consoled himself. "I have plenty of time to make my preparations. I'm not in a hurry like last time. I have plenty of opportunities to develop different solutions."

Technically speaking, he could start with processing and combining his core ingredients into a brand-new spiritual companion right away if he wanted.

Yet rushing to do so without making any precautions or adding extra useful ingredients was folly!

The entire point of asking Gloriana to give him three weeks to himself was to spend all of that time on minimizing the dangers of his risky experiment. He wanted to build up a thorough model for his new seed and add as much structure while imposing as much control to as many dangerous variables as possible.

Of course, the fickle nature of life meant that it was impossible for him to control everything, but at the very least he had to make the starting point as smooth as possible.

He had some hopes that it would work out, though. The merger of the crystal golem and the spiritual fragment of the Blinding One did not result in the resurrection of a dark god. Instead, his old design spirit attained a qualitative and quantitative upgrade that was so drastic that Ves started to call it the Illustrious One!

The process of transforming dead ingredients into a new form of life seemed to have wiped away all of the associations of the former. Every newborn spiritual entity started off with a clean slate. Only the attributes and abilities bestowed by the ingredients they were made of remained as lingering connections to their 'predecessors'.

If his upcoming companion spirit was born the same way, then most of his fears would be unfounded.

"I can't bet everything on this assumption, though. I should have some insurance in place just to be sure."

Aside from planning how to protect himself from any dangers that might arise from the procedure, Ves also wanted to spend his time on finding ways to integrate other ingredients in his companion spirit.

The problem was that their inclusion had to make sense. Each extra ingredient increased the number of variables that could go wrong and also reduced the purity of his spiritual product. He only planned to add up to one or two extra ingredients in order to give his spiritual companion some extra oomph.

He quickly listed all of the potential choices he could make.

"Well, every design spirit in my collection is a viable option."

The two most prominent ones were the Golden Cat and the Superior Mother.

They both stood out because they were more than regular design spirits. He called them ancestral spirits because they oversaw different populations of people. As long as they received enough respect or worship from their subjects, they derived quite a bit of spiritual energy!

The practical reason why Ves considered including them was because he theorized that he might be able to divert some of that spiritual tribute to himself.

"Wouldn't this be a great way to supply an unending amount of fuel to my energy converter?"

The Grand Dynamo supposedly derived its energy from the rotation of the galaxy. There was no way that Ves could replicate such a complex, high-level feature with his shallow understanding of spirituality.

He had to resort to a simpler and more primitive solution, and one of them was deriving spiritual energy directly from one of the most readily available sources: other humans!

He suddenly came up with an interesting idea.

"Why stop with just Larkinsons and Hexers? No matter how large these groups of people become, they are still too small and specific. If something happens that causes them to almost go extinct, then the output of my companion spirit will collapse!"

The Komodo War wasn't going so well lately, so there was a considerable chance that the Superior Mother would not be doing so well in the near future. Ves was not desperate enough to compete with his birth mother for a much more limited source of spiritual energy.

"Besides, I don't think that blending any Hexer influence in my own companion spirit will do me any good." He depreciatingly said.

Instead of trying to harvest spiritual energy from some humans, why not try to harvest tribute from all of them? The amount of humans alive today was so many times greater than the population of the Hexadric Hegemony that Ves would probably drown in spiritual energy if he managed to convince at least 1 percent of them to provide him with their tribute!

"Hahahaha! This is much more effective!" Ves excitedly exclaimed.

The difficulty was persuading a significant group of people to donate their spiritual tribute to his companion spirit.

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This was quite difficult, to say the least. While Ves was somewhat confident that he could persuade his own Larkinsons to do so, the feedback they could provide would barely be enough to keep his companion spirit busy for more than a couple of seconds.

He frowned. "I need a more compelling attraction that can appeal to a greater number of people. I also need to start with the right target audience that is receptive to my methods."

He already had a readily available target audience in mind. Sales of his mechs had been going well. So many customers enjoyed the experience of piloting his mechs that they had become his life-long fans. It would probably be easy for him to hoodwink his loyal customers into diverting some of their tribute to a spiritual vessel that eventually passed on the influx of spiritual energy to his companion spirit!

"Yet what kind of spiritual vessel is suitable enough for the purpose and has widespread appeal?"

His eyes inadvertently strayed towards the four Aspects of Lufa that he had left behind in his personal workshop.