The Mech Touch

Ves never summoned all of his design spirits at the same time. This was the first time he did something like this. It took a lot of time for Ves to realize that he was not alone when it came to spiritual manipulation.

He always lamented the lack of spiritual adepts at his side who could assist him in his spiritual engineering endeavors, but it turned out that he already had a number of them in his company!

They just didn't come in the form of living, breathing humans!

Now, he was ready to test whether their collective strength was enough to fend off a resurrected dark god!

"Solemn Guardian! Bravo! Qilanxo! Illustrious One! Ylvaine! I call upon all of you to resist this invader and prevent him from doing any more harm!"

Six figurines seemed to glow as the design spirits behind them readily answered his call!

A formidable wave of mixed spiritual energy flooded into the mind that Ves had opened on his own accord and immediately poured into Blinky's spiritual body.

The dark tide was receding, though the devouring vortex absorbed a lot more spiritual energy than before due to the vast increase in input.

Seeing that this was still not enough, Ves did not hesitate to call upon his final two friendly design spirits.

"Lufa! Mother! Help us drive back this invader! Purify the Unending One and eliminate this remnant!"

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A pure and holy glow washed over his body and began to enter Blinky's body. Since parts of Lufa were freshly integrated into the Star Cat, Lufa was directly able to strengthen Blinky's resistance against the dark pollution!

As for the Superior Mother, the moment a giant, translucent hand appeared above Ves, its giant index finger poked into his head and directly touched Blinky's body.

WUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU!

An inhumanly deep spiritual scream echoed through Ves' mind and poured out into the surroundings.

"Ahhh! What is this?!" Dr. Ranya cried out in pain while clutching the side of her head.

The intervention of the Superior Mother finally managed to break the unfavorable status quo. Against the entity that was connected to a spiritual sorcesses who excelled in devouring energy, the Hexer ancestral spirit was a lot better prepared to fight against their current foe than the other design spirits.

When the Superior Mother's finger pressed upon Blinky's semi-possessed body, strong Hexer-flavored spiritual energy poured into the companion spirit.

Under the Superior Mother's exquisite control, the energy she commanded first reinforced the Star Cat's unpossessed portions and formed an impervious wall that completely blocked the dark pollution from advancing further.

Qilanxo also helped with reinforcing this defensive barrier.

Unlike the spiritual energy leveraged by the other design spirits, the Superior Mother's energy was more tenacious and denied the Unending One any chance of converting her strength into his own.

Sure enough, an expert with the same abilities knew how to counter them the best. It was the right choice to call in the Superior Mother!

With the assistance of the other design spirits, the Superior Mother led the counterattack against the resurrected Dark god. The impervious wall she erected began to push forward and capture more and more lost ground.

As a result, more and more parts of Blinky's body turned back to normal. The dark pollution that dimmed the blinking light flashes visibly retreated as time went by. Though the Unending One performed various attacks against the Superior Mother, the difference in their current strength was too vast to make up in a short amount of time!

The remnant of the Unending One that came back to life only leveraged a portion of Blinky's strength along with what he absorbed.

The Superior Mother was not only a design spirit connected to many millions of LMC mechs piloted by brave Hexer mech pilots, but she also served as an object of worship to trillions of Hexer citizens who had put their faith in her as the Komodo War continued to press upon the Hegemony.

With all of this spiritual feedback, the current form of the Superior Mother was more than a match for a dark god that was not only isolated, but only a pale shadow of his former glory.

Blinky's body continued to clear up as the Superior Mother did not yield at all throughout the struggle.

Once she rescued the subcomponents responsible for devouring and converting energy from the Unending One's hands, the outcome was set! Without any viable means to increase his strength, the dark god lost his final chance of gaining enough strength to resist the collective might of so many design spirits.

The pollution kept receding further and further. Soon Blinky's hind body had cleared up. Only his tail remained dark, but at this point in time the remnant of the Unending One had lost so much ground that the Star Cat was finally able to put up a good fight!

In the end, Ves, Blinky and all of the design spirits that had answered the call managed to scour every polluting energy from the companion spirit's body.

Strangely enough, the only portion of Blinky's body that remained dark was the tip of his tail. Ves checked it extensively but found nothing wrong with it. Neither the Superior Mother nor Lufa found anything amiss over there either.

It was evidently a souvenir from the previous struggle. Blinky had yet to grow older than an hour but he had already gained his battle-scar!

"That's the life of a Larkinson." Ves proudly muttered as he relaxed. "We don't shy away from challenges. We fight back as hard as possible!"

Mrow!

Blinky experienced a lot of relief now that he had gained control over his own body again. The Star Cat squinted his glowing eyes and brushed his cheek against the giant finger of the Superior Mother.

As the different design spirits pulled back their presence now that they had done their jobs, the Superior Mother's giant hand patted Ves' prone body a couple of times, causing him to feel like he was being squashed like a pancake, before disappearing entirely.

"Ooof! You've grown stronger since last time!"

The crisis had passed. Though Ves couldn't completely rule out that the Unending One had disappeared entirely from Blinky, he believed in the judgement of the Superior Mother. Since she felt comfortable enough to leave at this junction, the risks shouldn't be too great anymore.

"Are you happy now, Blinky?"

Mrow.

It was strange for Ves to interact with his new companion spirit.

On one hand, he felt as if he was talking to a pet like Lucky.

On the other hand, it was like talking to himself because he possessed an undeniable connection to Blinky.

In fact, as he concentrated on his companion spirit, he even felt as if he shifted a portion of his consciousness over.

For a moment, he became swept up by the illusion that he had become a newborn spiritual entity that was inhabiting a warm and comfortable mind.

Yet at the same time he was experiencing this novel new perspective, Ves still retained awareness of his main body.

This odd situation caused him to think about the relationship between the Superior and his birth mother.

Had Ves inadvertently created an avatar for himself?

Though he was fine with letting Blinky maintain his autonomy over his own existence, if Ves needed to, he might be able to take more direct control in order to act through a different body!

Mrow?

"It's not time yet to test out your abilities. Your spiritual body is still in flux. We have to strike while the iron is hot and finish your initial evolution now that you are still in a flexible state.

After Blinky nodded in understanding, Ves resumed what he had been doing before the Unending One spoiled the show.

He channeled large quantities of universal life energy into his companion spirit.

Mrow!

Blinky cried in pain yet again as his entire spiritual existence rapidly grew in multiple measures. Yet despite his distress, Ves never saw any signs that he was about to break.

Since Blinky was also an aspect of himself, Ves keenly understood how far he could push it. He was confident he would be able to cut the flow before Blinky reached his breaking point.

"Just bear with it. You have already grown a lot stronger than before."

Mrow..

Ves patiently expanded his companion spirit until the very end. At some point, Blinky's entire spiritual body had absorbed so much universal life energy that it simply could not integrate any additional strength!

Blinky had reached saturation!

Seeing that there was nowhere for the remainder of the universal life energy to go, Ves stopped spilling it in vain and left the remainder in its P-stone.

As Blinky slowly adjusted to his greater power level, Ves estimated that his companion spirit had almost but not quite caught up to Sharpie yet. There was still a small gulf that separated the two, but Ves was already satisfied with the eventual outcome.

As long as Blinky finished adjusting to his current state and completely digested all of the energy poured into her body, Ves believed he could gain a lot of use out of his companion spirit!

"...Sir! Sir! Are you okay now? Your life signs have stabilized, but are you feeling well?"

Ves finally paid attention to Dr. Ranya's persistent questions. He smiled wryly and lifted himself to a sitting position. "I'm good now. A complication had taken place during the procedure, but I managed to fix it before it did any significant harm. I already foresaw this problem so I was able to apply a countermeasure that I already prepared beforehand."

"That sounds.. great. Will you agree to another physical examination? I cannot tell whether your experiences have affected the functioning of the rest of your body. It is best to be safe and perform an immediate examination in order to determine whether any of your body functions have changed."

Though Ves wanted nothing more than to return to his workshop and experiment with Blinky, he knew it was a good idea to cooperate with Dr. Ranya.

"Then let us get it over with." He answered.

"Great. You can just lie over there while I put my scanners to work."

As various devices began to hover over Ves in order to identify any anomalous, he began to relax in order to recover from his previous exertion.

He had lost a considerable amount of spiritual energy during the procedure. Some of it was locked inside Blinky, so it wasn't really lost, but he also expended a lot of energy in trying to resist the Unending One's invasion.

Fortunately, he had not lost enough energy to enter into a low mood. He simply felt a bit weary, that was all. He would probably be able to return to his peak a couple of weeks later, but Ves wasn't willing to wait that long.

"You'll help me top off my energy reserves, won't you, Blinky?"

Mrow~

From the way that the Unending One managed to leverage Blinky's energy devouring and digestion capabilities, he was already assured that he had met his most important goal!

Though Blinky's energy production capabilities were doubtlessly not as advanced and sophisticated as that of the Grand Dynamo, Ves didn't care. Blinky was his own creation and not a black box to him. Though the companion spirit's rapid growth meant that the relevant spiritual subcomponents had evolved far beyond what he could understand at the moment, he had all the time in the cosmos to decipher each and every spiritual mechanism.

Just as Ves started to bask in his success, Blinky suddenly grew alarmed when his connection to Ves resulted in a strange reaction.

A part of the companion spirit connected directly with a portion of Ves' body!

"Your heart-rate is spiking and your stress levels are rising!" Dr. Ranya called out in alarm. "Your body is heating up and the scanners are saying that a lot of pressure is building up in your chest at the moment!"

"What?!"

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Ves could feel the heat and pressure emanating from his chest. Had the Unending One left a final surprise or something? Was there something with Blinky that caused his body to exhibit an adverse reaction?

As he tried his best to study his body, he did not perceive any unusual spiritual fluctuations except for one strange phenomenon.

He managed to perceive a strange spiritual connection between Blinky and the high-level energy cycle that had been running through his chest for a long time.

"What the hell…?"

Mrow! Mrow!