The Mech Touch

In addition, he held the Larkinson Mandate and the Hammer of Brilliance close at hand. Goldie and Vulcan would readily be able to provide aid when needed.

"These measures are not enough."

Ves decided to bring over the statue of the Superior Mother as well. While the Hexer ancestral spirit was strong enough to manifest close to Ves anyway, it was a lot more convenient if she extended her power through her original totem!

"Is there anything else I can bring?"

He was tempted to call over the Shield of Samar and the Everchanger for added insurance. Although it sounded excessive to bring over his expert mechs, he truly couldn't afford to underestimate whatever came out of this revival attempt.

After all, Ves had managed to bring Ylvaine back to life after scraping off a tiny spiritual remnant from a nutrient pack wrapper!

The spiritual remnant he was handling at the moment was not only more intact, but also derived from a much older and stronger spiritual entity!

"I should call for backup just to be sure."

He contacted Venerable Joshua and Venerable Jannzi and ordered them to hop into their expert mechs before moving to his personal workshop.

Though neither Joshua nor Jannzi sounded pleased with being summoned like this, they couldn't casually reject the patriarch's orders.

Half an hour later, both mechs stepped into the workshop, causing the entire compartment to look a lot more cramped.

The Everchanger was not a particularly big mech. It was actually on the slender side though it still possessed a sufficient amount of armor.

The Shield of Samar was a different story. After its latest revision, it had transitioned into a full heavy mech. Its mass and bulk were so great that Ves could clearly feel the vibrations beneath his feet whenever the heavy mech stomped forward!

In truth, the workshop was still big enough to comfortably accommodate numerous more full-sized mechs as well as his larger totems.

The actual reason why Ves felt that the expert mechs took up a lot of space was because of their active resonance.

Even when Joshua and Jannzi did not put any effort into syncing with their machines, they were so attuned to their living mechs that they could resonate with them even if they were asleep!

Ves briefly frowned. "Please wait. I need to rearrange the placements of all of the elements."

He decided to put the Aspect of Tranquility between the test site and the expert mechs. This way, Lufa's glow dampened and weakened most of the auras emanating from the Shield of Samar and the Everchanger.

While Ves fiddled with the placements, Joshua finally couldn't hold in his curiosity.

"What's this about, sir?"

"Hehe. Something great. What I'm about to do should be of considerable interest to you. Pay close attention. You might learn something today. Just make sure to stay on guard and be ready to respond whenever needed."

"What do you mean by that, Ves?" Venerable Jannzi transmitted from her own expert mech. "I can feel that Qilanxo is a lot more on guard now. Are you attempting to do something dangerous again?"

Ves shrugged. "I don't know."

"You don't know?!"

"If anything happens, I have lots of help on hand! Nothing will go wrong! I just want to be sure, that's all. Now stay quiet, please. I'm ready to start my experiment."

He made sure to wear his Unending Regalia for this. The thin B-stone layer integrated in his armor might not protect him against powerful spiritual intrusions, but it would serve as an additional defensive barrier in case his fears became true.

He approached the table where he had placed the P-stone containing the spiritual remnant of the Titania.

It hadn't changed since he last checked up on it. The spiritual remnant was in a dormant state. Ves guessed that it had lost so much that it was knocked into the equivalent of a spiritual coma. It needed to spend a lot more time to recover from its previous trauma and get accustomed to its new and crippled state.

Ves was about to rush through all of this by injecting a large amount of universal life energy into the spiritual remnant.

He had already sacrificed 5 percent of the energy contained in a single vial of high-grade life-prolonging treatment serum in order to rescue it from death. The fact that it took that much energy to stabilize the dying spirituality of the Titania already showed that it used to be powerful in its heyday!

Ves suspected that it would take a hefty investment to restore it back to a semblance of its full strength.

That was unacceptable.

Not only would an instantly-revived astral beast spirit be impossible to control, Ves wasn't willing to invest that much high-quality energy!

While many of his design spirits received various boosts from him, most of them grew to their current height by feeding on spiritual feedback provided by lots of mech pilots.

This was a cheaper and more sustainable way of nurturing and growing design spirits. Ves intended to rely on it to slowly get the Titania back up to strength.

At the same time, he wanted the influence of human mech pilots such as Commander Casella to ‘humanize' and tame the revived Titania.

Spiritual feedback wasn't just about providing energy. The linkages also enabled the mech pilots to pass on pieces of themselves to the design spirits.

Ves hoped that by exposing the Titania to a lot of different mech pilots, it would come to understand and grow friendlier with humans.

There was a significant chance that this might not work out, though. The Titania had grown so old that it must have developed a powerful personality. Any old and powerful life form did not get influenced easily. They usually solidified the essence of their personality in the core of their beings. Change did not come easily for them, so if Titania happened to develop a rabid hatred of other species, then perhaps all of the precautions might come handy at that time.

He went over his plan for a final time.

In order to adapt the Titania to its new role, he did not intend to empower it straightforwardly. He also wanted to blend it with other spiritual ingredients so that it became more suited to its new role.

He brought out a few other P-stones.

First, he collected another modest spiritual fragment from the Golden Cat.

"Sorry, Goldie, but I really need your help."

Not only did Goldie excelled at maintaining and managing spiritual networks, she also possessed a strong loyalty towards the Larkinson Clan. Ves mainly wanted to employ her because of the latter reason.

Second, he prepared the spiritual fragment taken from a masterwork doom crawler back in Chance Bay.

Although the Husk Maker used to be employed in a destructive massacre, it was still a powerful mech that used to fight as a fearsome armored ranged platform. The way the Husk Maker fought was roughly similar to that of the Titania.

Ves mainly wanted to invest this ingredient into the revival and reformation of the Titania because the Husk Maker not only introduced a lot of pure mech-related attributes to the design spirit, but also brought attributes related to ranged combat.

Hopefully, integrating the spiritual fragment of the Husk Maker would allow the Titania to enhance the firepower of physical ranged mechs.

"Last but not least."

The final P-stone held his most precious ingredient. It contained what was left of Lady Aisling Curver's design seed.

He had already used it twice before.

First, he carved out a small spiritual fragment in order to make Blinky, his companion spirit.

Second, he used half of the design seed to create Alexandria, Gloriana's proud companion spirit.

Now, he intended to use up nearly half of Aisling's original design seed to augment a powerful ancient astral beast spirit!

"This is the riskier bet of my experiment!"

If he successfully integrated the remaining design seed into the Titania, then he would be able to turn the spiritual entity into a powerful networking specialist, able to connect different people and mechs together on the battlefield!

If the integration failed or if the Titania turned irrevocably hostile, then Ves may have wasted this precious resource!

Though Ves could think of many possible uses of what remained of this incredibly useful design seed, none of them were as promising as this particular application!

The Titania was already inclined to connect different elements together. If it integrated this design seed, then the spiritual entity would definitely be able evolve this particular strength to a much higher level!

"Even if it fails, I still have a backup option."

If the Titania truly didn't want to cooperate with Ves and the Larkinson Clan, then he would not hesitate to kill the rebellious spiritual entity and harvest its spiritual fragments to create a brand-new design spirit!

After going over his plan one final time, he turned towards Blinky.

"Begin."

Mrow!

His companion spirit was a much better spiritual manipulator than himself, so the cat took the lead yet again.

First, Blinky approached the Titania's spiritual remnant and cautiously broke it open.

The Titania could be reformed if there weren't any openings. This was a necessary process but also a painful one. Ves could sense the alarm and distress from the remnant despite its infirm condition.

Once the Titania's spiritual remnant received enough tears, Blinky quickly integrated the spiritual ingredients one-by-one. The companion spirit shattered every spiritual ingredient and smoothly pressed the shards into the Titania's large and open wounds.

The method looked incredibly messy and ordinarily shouldn't work. However, when Blinky channeled Ves' spiritual energy to the mixed area, he managed to suppress any rejection reactions and facilitate the integration process.

It didn't go very smoothly, though, but Ves had an answer to that.

Once he started to channel universal life energy, the crudely augmented spiritual remnant eagerly accepted the new energy source.

The nourishing and healing properties of universal life energy not only helped to close the spiritual remnant wounds, but also accelerated the integration of the different ingredients.

The high-level energy also allowed the spiritual remnant to grow stronger again!

Ves was careful not to feed the Titania a lot of universal life energy. He cut off the feed when he channeled the equivalent of 5 percent of the energy locked in a high-grade life-prolonging treatment serum vial.

This was just enough to revive the spiritual remnant into a weak but awakened spirit but not enough to pump it full of strength.

As Ves and Blinky both ended their spiritual manipulation, they stepped back and examined the spiritual entity that they had just revived and reformed.

Its spiritual character had changed significantly after integrating all of the new ingredients. Its savage, astral beast flavor became a bit weaker as more human and friendly elements merged with the spiritual entity.

Ves could still sense different hints related to the other ingredients as the spiritual entity slowly figured out its new identity.

Slowly but surely, the reformed Titania pulled itself together. The disparate elements slowly disappeared as they melded into the main entity.

Everything remained quiet for a moment as Ves became increasingly more excited. He could see that the transformation was a success! The spiritual entity smoothly integrated all of the precious ingredients!

"C'mon. Say something."

After the altered spiritual entity completed its initial changes, Ves sensed that it was gradually taking stock of itself and its surroundings.

It became aware again. Ves knew that the transformed spirit was probably confused and disoriented, but he didn't know how to deal with that. Should he take the initiative to communicate with it or should he give it time to figure everything out by itself?

The revived entity took that choice away from him when it finally started to act.

The Titania spontaneously shot out a spiritual bond from its intangible body and tried to connect with Ves!