The Mech Touch

Ves designed a few more coins.

He also reimagined the purpose, uses and definition of the lark coins.

"They have become more than straightforward methods of payment."

He readily admitted that he had gone overboard and turned the coins into a full-blown side project that didn't need to be this complicated.

In a modern society, almost all transactions were virtual. Coins and other forms of payment such as bills, jewels, raw ore and cattle were all cumbersome and outdated. They were rightfully phased out of daily use due to their inconveniences and inefficiencies.

Nonetheless, coins still played a symbolic and ceremonial role in modern societies. Not just humans, but also aliens tended to make use of physical tokens of payment.

They made money more real to people. Being able to touch them, carry them and pile them up evoked all kinds of emotions.

Without coins or bills, money was just a number to many people. It was far too easy for individuals who lacked financial literacy to squander all of their savings, go way too deep into debt or fall for all kinds of unrealistic investment scams.

Having a physical anchor to remind people of what money was truly worth could do wonders in grounding their monetary sensibilities.

What Ves came up with went beyond this purpose. The coin concepts he developed in an hour were all alive and vivid in a way that no other coin could match.

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That was valuable enough alone.

Their connection to greater existences and the possibility that they could grow in the future all added a lot of mystique to the objects.

After puzzling over the concept and design of the most expensive tier of coins, he finally settled on using the masterwork mechs of the Larkinson Clan as their basis.

He developed a total of five coin concepts, each of which stood for a different masterwork mech.

The Quint Coin, the Amaranto Coin, the Shield of Samar Coin, the Everchanger Coin and the Minerva Coin were all exactly what their names suggested.

Each of the sketches that he had made depicted different large, palm-sized coins with different faces.

Their front sides all depicted the contours and outline of the five masterwork mechs that were currently in service in the clan.

He found that it was a bit too awkward to fit the entire mechs into a circle, so he had cut the images of the mechs down to show off their heads and torsos.

Fortunately, the upper half of the mechs each looked distinctive enough that people would easily be able to tell the difference.

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Ves was briefly tempted to color the images in different shades, but he found that the coins became too tacky. To him, coins still needed to convey a sense of dignity and timelessness in order for them to earn people's appreciation over the long-term. Making them too colorful would just turn them into a fad that would inevitably fall out of fashion.

Still, despite being limited to using shapes and lines to differentiate his coins, he was proud of the draft designs he whipped up. They were sure to impress many people as long as he fleshed them out and infused them with more life.

After staring at his projected drafts for a while, he wanted to obtain a second opinion.

"Lucky? Oh, I just forgot. You went with my wife."

Fortunately, he could still call on two more cats.

"Bygul!"

[Mew!]

The personification of the Spirit of Bentheim's AI core physically projected into view. The blue electronic cat brushed his form against Ves' side before studying the coin designs.

"What do you think about my coin designs?"

ᴘᴀɴᴅᴀ N ovel

[Mew mew.]

Ves didn't really expect a serious answer from Bygul. The AI was not sentient and was incapable of experiencing irrational feelings.

"Blinky!"

Mrow!

A second cat emerged from his head. The purple companion spirit briefly glanced at Bygul in disdain before looked up at the various coins under development.

As a spiritual cat, Blinky was able to sense the hint of life from the sketches.

Mrow mrow mrow.

"Yeah I know the masterwork mech coins aren't worth 1000 MTA credits. This is why I have planned to compress the coin denominations. Anyway, the lark currency is even out yet, so we can easily change its exchange rate without anyone losing money."

Blinky hovered close to the smallest Golden Cat Coin sketch and tried to lick the projection.

ᴛᴏ ʀᴇᴀᴅ ᴍᴏʀᴇ ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀs, ᴘʟᴇᴀsᴇ ᴠɪsɪᴛ ᴘᴀɴᴅᴀ-ɴᴏᴠᴇʟ,ᴄᴏ.ᴍ

Mrow!

"Its value may be low, but that doesn't matter. It's only for internal use."

ᰍaꪧda ᱅o᱇ꫀl The companion spirit lingered in front of the Golden Cat Coin for a moment before he surveyed the other draft designs.

The masterwork mech coins particularly attracted his attention. It was quite odd to base the coins on machines all of a sudden, but Ves had already proved with the Enlightened Warrior that not only his masterwork mechs, but any living mech could be used in the same roles as a design spirit.

The issue was that most of his living mechs simply weren't powerful enough to make that worthwhile. Only his third-order living mechs that had gained an impressive level of strength came close to matching the strength and capabilities of his traditional design spirits.

Mrow mrow mrow!

"Huh? That might actually be a good idea. Let me try and see whether it can work."

Blinky, despite being another part of himself, possessed an independent personality, so the cat occasionally noticed details or came up with ideas that were different from himself.

Ves took up his cat's suggestion and modified the Everchanger Coin in a special way.

ᴘ ᴀɴᴅᴀ ɴ ᴏᴠᴇʟ

Instead of using a more generic design on the other side of the coin, he instead placed a side profile of Venerable Joshua's head on its surface!

This gave the coin a substantially different meaning and appearance!

"The Everchanger on one side and its pilot on the other side. How fitting!"

The only problem that Ves faced was that an expert pilot couldn't be used as a design spirit directly.

Ves had dabbled in this in the past. When he came up with the idea of using mechs like the Quint as a design spirit for a derivative mech, he had also tried to substitute the Quint for an expert pilot such as Joshua.

It didn't work.

Expert pilots were beings that relied on their own willpower to gain strength. Their solid and tenacious wills were purely derived from their own mentalities. They did not rely on external influences to further their growth or spread their influence.

The only exception was their expert mechs. Their machines provided them with a battle steed and an object they could resonate from to generate even greater power.

"Hm, it's a pity that there is no point in putting expert pilots into coins."

Ves still decided to leave their heads on the coins regardless. They looked nice and the symbolism was a lot more powerful now that the expert mechs were joined by their respective pilots.

He liked the change so much that he even went back to his other coin sketches and altered them so that they gained a more human element.

"I suppose the sides with all of the heads are the front of the coin now. The sides with the mechs or design spirits constitute the rear of the coin."

Ves had to alter his designs and change the proportions so that it made sense. When someone wanted to flip a coin for whatever reason, there should be no ambiguity on which sides represented heads or tails.

He surveyed his collection of coin sketches once again.

Due to compressing the denominations of the coins, the highest value one was the 1 kilolark coin. This coin came in five different variations, of which four of them depicted the masterwork expert mechs and their respective expert pilots.

"Amaranto and Venerable Davia Stark. Shield of Samar and Venerable Jannzi Larkinson. Everchanger and Venerable Joshua Larkinson. Minerva and Commander Casella Ingvar."

The meaning and significance of the coins had changed after he made his latest revisions. They became almost sacred in how they could tempt people into worshiping the pairs of expert pilots and expert mechs.

The only kilolark coin that did not fit this pattern was the one that honored the Quint. The masterwork mech differed from the other ones in that it was not a machine that was locked into a specific mech pilot.

Ves briefly contemplated the option of putting the head of the Quint's current pilot on the front side of the coin, but he felt that would be silly. Isobel Larkinson had not yet acquired the strength and prestige to immortalize her into a coin.

"What if she breaks through a year or two later? I'll have to go back and design another coin."

He anticipated that the pilots assigned to the Quint would probably be swapped out on a frequent basis. Given this circumstance, it was a bit too much to update the design of the Quint Coin each time a new pilot came along.

In order to make sure the design of the Quint Coin became more timeless, he used a different head as the front side of the coin.

His own.

"This looks nice, doesn't it, Blinky?"

Mrow.

Blinky rolled his eyes. Of course Ves would put himself in the coins he planned to make.

"Hey, this is standard convention, you know! A lot of states put their heads of state onto their own physical coins. The head of the Star Emperor graces the coins minted in the Rubarth Empire while the Terran ancient clans all put their own leaders and legendary figures on their own coins."

Although the Larkinson Clan wasn't a formal state, now that it was ready to mint its own coins, Ves might as well abide by this custom.

The other coins also graced his own head as well.

For example, the 1 lark coins featured his head and the Superior Mother or Bravo on the reverse side.

The odd combinations altered the symbolism of the coins.

He liked the only hexagon-shaped coin in the series. The Superior Mother Coin depicted both mother and son, although only a few other people were able to recognize it as such.

The Bravo Coin on the other hand made him feel more masculine and grown-up. This was the true alpha male badge!

"Maybe I should carry one myself." Ves murmured.

The remaining coins were not as big or dramatic, but they conveyed plenty of meaning as well.

Ves had upgraded the Solemn Guardian coin to a 1 centilark coin denomination. This made it more convenient to use in daily transactions in the future as the Larkinson Clan steadily grew its prosperity closer to first-class standards.

The Golden Cat Coin held the same face value as before. With a value of 1 millilark, it should be possible for every Larkinson to have them in their pockets.

All of the drafts he surveyed so far would constitute the first series of coins he intended to mint.

He planned to release additional varieties of coins in the future whenever it was convenient.

For example, he might decide to release a coin dedicated to other design spirits that missed the initial cut. He also had to make a 1 kilolark coin based on Venerable Imon Ingvar and his future expert mech.

"It will take a while before I can make that coin. For now, I should convert these drafts into full designs and figure out how I can mint them en masse."

He soon dived into his design work and tuned out everything else. He had become so interested in this project that he had become passionate about turning it into a reality.

The coins he envisioned during this session transcended the common meaning of legal tender.

They became tribute coins to Ves. Each of them honored the entities that were depicted on the coins and extended a portion of their majesty outward.

"The only challenge that remains is to figure out a way to mass produce these coins!" Ves reminded himself.