The Mech Touch

This forced commission turned out to be a blessing in disguise. If Ves hadn't been forced to make an imperial crown, he wouldn't have bumped into so many first-class materials so soon.

Galenta Bone was a fairly rare and obscure first-class exotic due its low supply. If Rion wanted to commission a weapon or any other piece of equipment, the likelihood that he would procure a sample of this astral beast remains was much lower!

Compared to other first-class materials, Galenta Bone was a lot less durable and did not provide any other notable benefits.

"Now that I know about it, I'll definitely not let this material go." Ves decided.

He swiped it from the cabinet and placed it aside so that he could process it later. He already developed a couple of ideas on how to make use of its properties.

It was a pity that Rion didn't commission a mech from him. Otherwise, Ves could have designed and built a new prime mech with this astral beast remains!

"These bone exotics are rather strange, though."

Ves was reminded of Rorach's Bone, which shared several similarities to Galenta Bone. Although the naming scheme was slightly different, both of them could be obtained from the remains of long-dead organisms.

In fact, didn't he obtain a sample of high-grade Rorach's Bone a long time ago? Back then, he stumbled upon the remains of a giant, long-dead humanoid species deep inside the Glowing Planet.

Similar to Galenta Bone, Ves managed to obtain the most precious version of Rorach's Bone in the giant humanoid's skull!

Was this a coincidence, or was there some kind of rule behind this phenomenon?

Ves narrowed his eyes. "Could it be that every organism with a high degree of strength develops a strange bone in their heads?"

If that was the case, Ves wouldn't necessarily have to hunt for galenta space whales in the future. He just needed to harvest whatever strange bones emerged inside the skulls of spiritually powerful beasts!

In fact, why limit his search to exobeasts and astral beasts? What if these bones emerged in sentient and intelligent life forms as well?

"Wait a minute. These bones can't be that ubiquitous!"

Ves never heard of any high-ranking mech pilots or mech designers growing any weird organs inside their heads. There were many other species that were spiritually powerful as well but no one ever talked about any strange head bones.

People either kept this phenomenon a secret or it simply didn't occur very often. Ves was more inclined to believe in the latter, especially when he read that Galenta Bone only showed up in older and more powerful alpha galenta space whales.

Even so, Ves planned to order his clan to pay more attention to any strange exotics that could only be found inside the heads of different alien species.

If there were any other beasts that shared the same characteristic, Ves would definitely try to get his hands on any suspicious bones!

"What a fruitful gain!"

This discovery alone was worth all of the deaths inflicted on the Larkinson Clan this day! Even if Saint Mayorka killed ten times as many Larkinsons, Ves would still think it was a worthwhile tradeoff for the opportunity to get in touch with Galenta Bone!

Once Ves got over his excitement at discovering a new and more accessible material that possessed spiritual storage properties, he shifted his attention to a second material.

Unlike Galenta Bone, the other spiritually-reactive exotic was not organic. It was a metallic material that took on a darker coloration but was not as black as Unending alloy.

Piraester was a metallic substance that was mostly available in the galactic heartland but also showed up in the other parts of the Milky Way.

The bad news was that Piraester had not been found in the Red Ocean as of yet. If the spiritually-reactive material was truly unique to humanity's native galaxy, then Ves would have a lot more difficulty in procuring this material if he stayed in the new frontier.

"It's actually an interesting exotic, though."

Unfortunately, Piraester possessed several downsides. The main one was that it did not cope with energy damage as well as physical damage. It had a lower melting point than other defensive first-class materials and was less effective at blocking penetrating radiation.

"It's a good material if you need to fight against dwarven opponents."

The Vulcanites mainly favored physical damage weaponry. Though there were plenty of dwarves that equipped their mechs with laser weapons or positron weapons, they possessed an obvious love for hard-hitting gauss rifles and other kinetic weapons.

Against a state or group that showed such an obvious bias, it was a great idea to design mechs based on materials like Piraester that coped much better against physical damage.

In fact, this was exactly what states such as the Empire of the Lost had done! Many of their military mech models were explicitly designed to fight against their dwarven counterparts, and one of the ways to do so was to clad them with the second-class equivalents to Piraester.

"It's not that useful for a crown, though."

If that was everything that Piraester had to offer, then Ves wouldn't have taken a closer look at it. There were other defensive materials in Rion's collection that offered a more comprehensive resistance profile. 

Due to the ubiquity of high technology, first-class mechs tended to make use of a lot of strange weapon systems. Plasma weapons were especially powerful at shorter ranges, and a material that melted fairly easily like Piraester was not a good choice!

"That's not so relevant to me, though."

Ves initially didn't know what he was dealing with. He could sense that any spiritual energy that passed through the sample of Piraester somehow became affected by the material.

He initially thought that Piraester disrupted the spiritual energy passing through it. Whatever came out of it turned wobbly and less controllable.

"That's strange."

He suspected that there was more behind Piraester than just exerting a disruptive effect. When he took the sample out of the cabinet, he experimented with it in multiple different ways.

He eventually discovered what Piraester truly did to spiritual energy.

"It focuses the energy that passes through its length!"

Ves became more fascinated by the bar of refined metal as he channeled his spiritual energy from one end to the other end.

The difference between the input and output of spiritual energy was quite substantial. He discovered that any spiritual energy passing through this spiritually-reactive material gradually compressed until the output became much more focused and intense!

"The quality of energy has actually risen!"

Of course, the difference was rather marginal. After performing numerous experiments, Ves judged that the maximum possible compression factor that he could obtain with this sample was 1.47.

This was just one of its effects. Piraester also induced a transformation in the energy that caused it to take on traits that Ves frequently encountered in more impressive sources of spiritual energy.

A higher concentration of energy was one of the properties that made universal life energy stand out from other forms of spiritual energy!

Perhaps it was too much to ask for Ves to develop an artificial way to produce the energy that made life-prolonging treatment serum so potent. However, he could still make use of Piraester to develop other applications where supplying a higher quality of spiritual energy would yield drastically better results!

Ves deeply wished he could obtain a large quantity of Piraester so that he could incorporate it into the Amaranto's luminar crystal rifle. He was pretty sure he could develop a way to focus and increase the damage output of this weapon by a substantial degree!

"Maybe I can use it on other mechs as well."

What if he added Piraester to the Decapitator? As long as he managed to pull it off, the masterwork mech sword might be able to channel considerably stronger and sharper resonance manifestations!

"This is a great material to use as a focus or an amplifier!"

The only difficulty was that Ves still had to design new mechanisms around this material. That would take precious time that he mostly didn't have.

After all, a lot of huge capital ships poured into the dwarf galaxy every day. Each of them carried lots of cargo and trade goods in order to meet the huge demand for raw materials in the Red Ocean.

Materials that were solely available in the old galaxy sold for a high premium on the other side of the beyonder gate, so a lot of pioneers tended to stock up on exotics like Piraester in order to help earn back the insanely high cost of passage.

Over time, it would probably get easier for residents in the Red Ocean to get their hands on limited goods such as Piraester. As the Big Two kept collecting more phasewater, they could build more beyonder gates that were larger or more efficient than the current ones.

Phasewater only became widely used a short time ago. Any tech that was based out of this wonderful substance was still crude and unoptimized.

"Hopefully, transit between the galaxies will become cheaper and more affordable in a few decades. Maybe I'll even be able to hop back into the Milky Way without paying tens of millions of MTA merits."

He wasn't in a hurry to return to the old galaxy, though. Why should he go back when he already paid much to get to the new frontier?

"Well, let's get this over with first before I contemplate these other matters. I won't be able to play with these special materials if I can't pass this hurdle!"

Now that Ves became aware of Galeta Bone and Piraester, he did not intend to leave them be. It would be a waste to leave them in the storage cabinets when they possessed such useful properties.

"I can use them both in the crown!"

He tried to limit the amount of materials he used for the main structure of the crown as best as possible and settled for a selection of four.

"I'll use EFV-343 as the equivalent of a battery. I'll use Extreme Cold Titanium as the equivalent for a heat sink and a safeguard against excessive heat. I'll use Galeta Bone in order to engineer something special and I'll find a way to use Piraester to amplify its power."

The only element that was missing from this selection was a source of conventional energy. Still, there were so many different power sources available that Ves did not need to make the crown self-sufficient. He could simply design it in a way that it could charge its conventional energy reserves by relying on an external power source.

There was no way that Rion would lack a power outlet.

Ves continually gained new ideas as he increased the detail of his crown design. With the help of the two spiritually-reactive exotics, he had various ways to impart spiritual abilities to the crown. He just needed to develop one that fit its intended purpose.

"What would I want if I was making this crown for myself?"