The Mech Touch

The key to the evolution process of his daughter's upcoming companion spirit was to provide her with several different options.

They had to be diverse enough to be relevant for different professions.

To put it in simpler terms, the options represented the specializations that the companion spirit and by extension his daughter would obtain.

"Let's try and stuff six of them into my companion spirit."

Six different ability seeds offered plenty of choice to his daughter. It was not too little and not too many. It granted his daughter enough variety without diluting the ability seeds too much.

"Six is a good number." He decided.

The source of these specialties came from the ability seeds, which Ves had to derive from different spiritual entities.

For example, one of them was himself. He already intended to give his daughter the possibility to gain his empathy and sensitivity towards life. Whether she chose to embrace it or not, Ves did not want to deny her the benefits that he had frequently relied upon to achieve success.

Ves decided to use himself as the first ingredient.

For the other ability seeds, he had to look outward and derive them from other spiritual sources.

He went over his design spirits.

The first decision he made was to rule out any hostile or dangerous choices.

"Zeigra is out. He's far too aggressive to my liking."

"Trisk is too young at this point. She's still a baby bird despite the spiritual feedback provided by Venerable Tusa."

"Arnold has grown stronger, but his ability is a bad fit for my daughter."

"Ylvaine… hell no. I will not allow any of my children to become a religious nut!"

After contemplating several different options, he made a tentative selection that would hopefully offer sufficient variety but would not lead his daughter astray.

"I'll pick Goldie for family, Lufa for purification, Qilanxo for protection, the Illustrious One for light and the Solemn Guardian for duty."

These were all safe and positive influences that could provide a lot of power and utility in many different professions.

Since he had to reduce all of the ingredients derived from the design spirits into seeds, Ves was not able to determine how these abilities worked. That was what the growth process was for. Depending on how his daughter grew up, the ability seeds would organically develop in directions that best matched her needs.

This was why Ves wanted to do his best to keep the ability seeds as open-ended as possible. He could have programmed more precise instructions right away, but that would go against the principles of his design philosophy.

He smiled as his design for his first two-stage evolvable companion spirit took shape.

"This is an unprecedentedly efficient spiritual design!"

The companion spirit seed was so small and weak that Ves only required a miniscule amount of ingredients to make it. Of course, the challenging part was to make it on the spot. The scale was so small and the energy levels were so low that he had to employ utmost precision in order to create a working seed.

Companion spirits were not actually self-contained but actually spiritual constructs that he brought to life. This meant he had to operate on his daughter's tiny and fragile spirituality in order to impart her with a companion spirit that possessed great potential.

When Ves checked his spiritual design, he tried to uncover any flaws while looking for any opportunities to improve it further.

"Should I add another evolution stage?" He briefly wondered.

He quickly shook his head. The companion spirit seed already possessed a large presence relative to the embryo inside Gloriana's womb. There was no room for any additional functionality.

Besides, the rationale to add a second evolution stage was not there. The companion spirit did not require any further specialization once it had already decided its major direction.

It would not stop growing once it had reached maturity. Its growth process would just follow a more normal and organic trajectory, similar to that of Sharpie and Blinky.

"There's no need for me to fix what isn't broken." He muttered.

Once he made his final tweaks and completed the design, Ves felt as if he had made a huge accomplishment.

Though it would take years if not decades for the full value of this design to bear fruit, Ves already had a vague image in his mind about a strong and capable woman undergoing a meteoric rise!

This was one of several gifts that he intended to impart to his future daughter. The fact that he was driven by pure love and affection caused the companion spirit design to hold a lot of significance to him. Though it was lacking in terms of instant power, Ves made sure to maximize its potential!

"This will be my version of the System to my children!"

Unless any of his children chose to become a mech designer, Ves could not give them access to one of his greatest tools. Providing them with a companion spirit that they gained from birth and grew up with them was his way of making up for that. He was certain that no other parent was able to provide their children with such an extravagant gift!

Working on this project caused him to gain a greater understanding of the perspectives of his parents. It was only when he was faced with the prospect of becoming an actual father and having to worry about the safety and happiness of his first child that he fully appreciated the sacrifices that his mother and father had made.

Even now, they were still holed up in the Nyxian Gap so that they could take shelter in the natural geography of the anomalous region. Both of them did not hesitate to give up their original ambitions and forsake every other cause just so that their son could enjoy a fruitful life without too many burdens.

"Will I have to make the same decision one day?" He wondered.

If he had to make a choice between sacrificing ambitions and sacrificing his child, he genuinely didn't know which one he was willing to drop.

This was an agonizing dilemma that every working parent had to face!

Mech design was such an integral part of his life that he could never completely give up on it. He could not turn his back on his children either.

Raising a child was one of the greatest joys of life. Ves did not want to miss out on it and neither did Gloriana.

Both of them had to do their best to juggle their priorities and make sure not to neglect either of them. Considering how long they could live, Ves did not find it unacceptable to slow down his mech design career in order to allocate sufficient time for his children.

"Well, I can consider that later when Gloriana's pregnancy is over."

A few days passed by as Ves waited for the right opportunity to form a companion spirit seed for his daughter.

At this point, his unborn child was way too young and fragile to bear any spiritual load. Ves expected that it would take at least a couple of months. In fact, there was a considerable chance that she might never reach the minimum level of strength before she was born!

If that was the case, then he needed to slim down the spiritual design, which was bad because it would definitely impair the companion spirit's strength and versatility.

"I need to strengthen her as best I can!"

He found out that the most optimal way to do that was to regularly pump a small portion of his spiritual energy into the embryo.

Even though his growing child was extremely weak in spiritual terms, when Ves took a stroll in Dorum on the 8th deck of the Spirit of Bentheim, he paid close attention to other women who were in their early pregnancies.

The happy spouses who gathered together in parks and cafes were completely oblivious that Ves swept their bellies with his spiritual senses.

Anytime he detected the minute presence of another life in their bodies, Ves tried his best to measure and quantify the spiritual strength of the fetuses.

"All of them are weaker than my child." He observed.

This was rather peculiar because the women he scanned were at least several months into their pregnancies.

What Ves was able to conclude from this observation was that his first daughter was already significantly ahead in this area!

The only uncertainty was that Ves wasn't sure if his active intervention was the main cause of his daughter's accelerated spiritual development.

Since he didn't appear to be doing any harm, he decided to continue this treatment.

With each day that passed, Ves would always place his hand on Gloriana's belly. He had become so practiced with this procedure that it only took a second to give his growing offspring a small spurt of purified spiritual energy that Blinky had prepared beforehand.

"Ves…" Gloriana smiled at him as she placed her own hand on top of his. "You don't have to rub my belly so many times, you know. Our baby is growing well at the moment. I make sure to visit the infirmary every day to confirm that. So far, the specialists see no need to adjust her genes at this time."

"I'm not worried about that. I just want to strengthen my bond with her. You know what life means to me. Being able to feel the beginnings of a brand-new life is magical."

To be honest, he was still worried. All of his active intervention definitely affected his daughter's growth. Whether this would lead to physical mutations, he couldn't tell. All he could do on his end was to monitor her spiritual development and make sure it wasn't moving in an undesirable direction.

For now, his daughter was growing stronger on this front. This was the result he desired, but Ves could not fully map out all of the consequences for supercharging the spiritual development of an unborn child.

All of this was completely new and foreign to Ves. The outcome of his experiments related to his daughter was so open-ended that he already had a suspicion that his daughter's mental development would be anything but normal.

"Let's go back to refining the design of the Sentry Project. We've been making fantastic progress lately."

The mood in the design lab had reached a high tide. Gloriana's pregnancy had transformed his wife into an exceptionally motivated mech designer.

This was significant because Ves discovered that Blinky was capable of passing on a portion of her enthusiasm!

Her optimism and willingness to work hard were so high that all of the connections that Blinky established passed these sentiments on in a dilution fashion!

This caused Gloriana to single-handedly lift up the morale and productivity of the design teams.

Along with Ves who also felt driven about becoming a parent, the Sentry Project was rapidly approaching completion.

It was a pity that they could not sustain such a rapid pace.

"Damnit! We're doing so well now! Why must we be bottle-necked by the lack of processing power?!"

Even with the addition of four new capital ships that have all lent a portion of their processing capabilities to the Design Department, the design teams still had to wait for minutes, hours and even days to complete their data-intensive assignments!

Though the lack of faster calculations interrupted Gloriana's flow, Ves took advantage of the freed-up time to attend to several stalled responsibilities.

"Let's see what our prospective chief ministers are like. I've been meaning to meet them for a while."

Upon the next available opportunity, Ves boarded a shuttle and decided to visit the Mother's Wrap, a second-class combat carrier that served as their current flagship.

He was curious of what he might encounter aboard this Hexer vessel. It had been a long time since he last inspected the Penitent Sisters. A lot of aspects of his clan had changed by then, and the former Hexer cultists were no different.

Had they truly moved away from their Hexer route? That was what he was about to find out once he left his shuttle.