The Mech Touch

Once the fleet actually crossed into the Bardo Star Cluster, the Larkinsons realized that it wasn't as special as they thought.

Space was space. Bardo was also occupied by states, the organizations and average citizens. While they might hold different names and possess different cultures, the dynamic in the new star cluster was not that exciting.

Once the magic died down, everyone shoved aside their wonder and sentimental feelings and went back to work.

Ves also proceeded to do his work. While he hadn't been able to secure the new starships that Gloriana needed, he instructed his fleet to lend a bit more processing power to the Design Department.

At the cost of reducing the effectiveness of other research activities, his wife gained the processing power she wanted. This ensured that the drop in productivity by giving the assistant mech designers a lighter workload did not slow down progress too much.

The Disruptor Project was quickly becoming more refined, but Ves and Gloriana knew that this was just the beginning.

"Our initial simulations exposed a fair number of problems." Gloriana explained as she petted Clixie. "While I expected to encounter these issues, solving them isn't as straightforward. Some issues relate to the operation of high tech components. We need to obtain the assistance of their original developers in order to resolve any problems related to these powerful mech parts."

The Design Department largely made use of Hexer component licenses, so the mech designers had to knock on the doors of a very specific group of component developers.

"Are you able to get us the support we need?" Ves carefully asked.

His wife sighed and leaned against his arm. "You know how it is back home. Hegemony space has become increasingly more depressed and everyone in the state is scrambling to do something. The developers aren't responding to my inquiries as quickly as I hoped. In some cases, the original development teams of the components in question have already been disbanded. It is a lot harder for us to get hold of an engineer who can speak about the components with confidence."

The dependence on third-party support meant that the Disruptor Project wouldn't be finished anytime soon. They may have to extend the optimization time by a couple of weeks in order to account for the various delays.

"What other issues are we dealing with? I doubt this is the only source of delay."

"It is difficult to simulate the performance of an expert mech." She flatly stated. "Leaving aside the difficulty of modeling a mech that incorporates resonating exotics, we can't predict what will happen when an expert pilot resonates with the machine. Our depth in this field is too shallow. Only Master Willix is able to address any concerns related to the expert pilot and resonance aspects, but reaching her has become a lot more difficult than before. She is preoccupied with other matters and talking to her directly is out of the question. The most I can do is to compile all of the problems and send the documents and related information to her mailing account. She will eventually get to my message and compose quick replies that won't always deliver clear conclusions, but will at least point me in the right direction."

Gloriana exhibited a decent amount of frustration at the setbacks. Her dream of finishing the project quickly was quickly being dashd.

"If we have any idle mech designers, we can put them back to work on the other projects." Ves stated. "We haven't been making much progress in the other expert mech designs. This is a good opportunity to ramp them up. We don't need as much processing power to complete their first iterations."

He had a good point. "I will adjust the schedule if necessary. I don't want to pull too many people away from the Disruptor Project, though. Finishing Venerable Tusa's expert mech quickly provides us with a lot of benefits. The fact that we will be able to test and verify our respective innovations in a real expert mech is the one I am eying the most!"

They both looked at the current version of the Disruptor Project. Compared to the initial iteration, Ves already spotted a few minute differences. While the overall design did not look much different, these tiny changes granted the expert mech crucial performance increases. Whether they eliminated problematic flaws or found more efficient implementations, Ves estimated that the performance of the expert mech had already risen by 1.3 percent.

Though that didn't sound like much, there was a lot more room for optimization. The current results already proved that the Disruptor Project was far from reaching its final state.

"Miaow~"

Clixie playfully batted her tail onto Ves' lap. He reached out to nuzzle her head.

As long as he kept his wife happy, her cat was happy as well!

Once they split up and proceeded to work on their individual assignments, Ves decided to ready the design spirits for the Disruptor Project.

Though the spiritual design of the expert mechs was already strong in its own right, he had always designed the mech with its design spirits into consideration.

The easier task was to prep Arnold for his future role. When Ves dropped by Calabast's office, the eight-legged exobeast was rubbing his face against his owner's boot.

"Squeak. Squeak."

"Oh yeah, Ves. Why have you come? Do you want an update on the security situation of the Bardo Star Cluster, or are you here to inquire about our progress in securing a deal for the new ships?"

"Neither." He waved his hand. "I'm not here for you this time. I'm here for my test subject."

Calabast instantly drew her eyes below her desk. Arnold was blissfully rubbing his mammalian face on the smooth texture of her boots.

"Arnold, get out and present yourself."

"Squeak!"

Much to Ves' surprise, the exobeast fully immediately dropped his current activity and crawled out like an obedient little schoolboy.

"Squeak?"

Calabast looked at Ves. "Here he is. Do whatever you need to do with him. Just give him back to me alive, please."

"Hey, what do you take me for? I am not planning to do anything drastic to him. Let me take a look at him first."

Ves bent down and carefully touched Arnold's head. Seeing that the critter knew better than to bite his hand, he leveraged the physical connection to perform a deep spiritual scan on Arnold.

Nothing was out of his expectation. Compared to his last inspection, Arnold had grown a lot stronger than before. His spiritual development had accelerated ever since Ves employed him as the design spirit of the Devious model.

With at least hundreds of thousands of Devious mechs performing sabotage missions along the frontlines of the Komodo War, Arnold received a rich amount of spiritual feedback.

Still, the exobeast was far from matching other design spirits. Ves could even say that Arnold's spiritual development was slower than it should when it received so much spiritual feedback from different people.

Ves had a suspicion that design spirits that were still alive in a physical sense might have more difficulty in growing their spiritual prowess. Their physical bodies not only served as their anchors, but also their shackles. There were much less barriers to growth if the spirits weren't bound by the limitations of their physical shells.

He briefly contemplated whether he should 'free' Arnold from his mortal coil. Surely the exobeast could do without licking boots, right?

"Squeak!" Arnold's eight legs quickly scurried back.

Though the arganid clisenta species was not known for their fighting prowess, the alien creatures were quite sensitive towards danger. Ves was impressed by Arnold's ability to recognize a possible threat.

"Don't screw around with Arnold, Ves."

"I'm not screwing around! I'm merely assessing his current state."

"That hungry look of yours makes me think you were entertaining very different thoughts. I doubt Arnold tastes good if you put him on a barbecue rack."

"Squeak squeak squeak!"

Arnold was so afraid that he was on the verge of employing his extraordinary ability to escape. It was too bad that it was impossible for him to get away. The Spirit of Bentheim was fully in Ves' grasp, and nothing was beyond her hull except vacuum!

After Ves had his fill of tormenting Arnold, he quickly completed his inspection and turned him into the Disruptor Project's design spirit.

In addition, he borrowed a small spiritual fragment from the growing design spirit, though Arnold suffered so much pain that he crawled behind Calabast's boots while looking aggrieved.

"Squeak squeak squeak…"

"Awww. It's okay, Arnold. It's over now. Ves won't do anything bad to you anymore, isn't that right?"

"I'm done." He said as he temporarily stored Arnold's freshly harvested spiritual fragment in his mind. Blinky was already taking good care of it. "Your pet will probably act a bit listlessly for the next few weeks. He'll slowly recover over time."

It wasn't necessary for him to harvest any design spirits to empower a mech design. Ves merely had to instruct entities to occupy the conceptual space of the mech designs.

The true reason why he wanted to borrow a spiritual fragment was to empower the prime mech aspects of the Disruptor Project. As classification of mechs invented by himself, Ves had to leverage his own distinctive methods in order to turn Venerable Tusa's future combat machine into his latest prime mech.

When Ves returned to his personal workshop, he stored the fragment into a P-stone and proceeded to turn to his next task.

When Ves held the P-stone containing the spiritual remains of the Inexorable One, he briefly cast his mind back to the Battle against the Abyss.

The dark gods that had arrayed against his task force were immensely impressive despite the fact that they had lost in the end. In fact, the Larkinsons hadn't strictly beaten them at all. Ves instead called his mother in desperation who subsequently smacked the ancient entities so hard that only spiritual fragments were left of them at the end!

Of the three amigos, the Unending One was the most powerful and most useful to Ves. The Blinding One stood out due to his luminar identity and his intelligent, humanoid roots.

As for the Inexorable One…

"She's just a big bird. A big, dead bird."

His impression of the Inexorable One was the vaguest of the three. He hadn't paid much attention to the avian dark god while she dueled against Tusa while he benefited from his recent breakthrough.

The only details that stood out was that the dark god was probably a mutated exobeast of the avian variety and that she was apparently a female one at that. Her speed was a notable strength of hers but what impressed him even more was her sorcery. For some reason, she was able to summon strange tornado manifestations in space that was able to disrupt the performance of mechs.

Ves wanted to preserve both of these traits in his new design spirit, but he wasn't sure if he was able to preserve the Inexorable One's powerful spiritual abilities. They not only required a lot of strength to perform, but also depended deeply on the dark god's unique knowledge accumulation and development path. Much of that would probably get fragmented or lost if Ves processed the Inexorable One's remains.

He let out a sigh. "The dead must pass on. It's not a good idea to preserve too much of a dark god anyway."

He did not want to bring the Inexorable One back alive. Dark gods were ancient beyond imagination and they were incredibly wily even if they had reached their lowest point.

The process of Blinky's creation had taught him a profound lesson on the capabilities of these evolved spiritual entities.

Ves smirked. "I'm not making the same mistake twice, isn't that right, Blinky?"

Mrow.

He had a couple of new options at his disposal after he acquired Blinky. The companion spirit possessed a great sensitivity towards spiritual energy. It was his food, after all!