The Mech Touch

After Ves successfully created a companion spirit in an alien test subject's mind, he gained enough confidence to repeat the process.

The younger pakklaton specimen possessed a lot more fire than his older counterpart. The presumably adolescent alien continually resisted the restraints while crying out as loudly as possible!

Pure animosity burned in Subject 2's eyes as the pakklaton wished pure death and suffering on Ves and his fellow humans.

"Heh. Get angry all you want. The greater your emotions, the more you will stimulate the development of your companion spirit!"

At the end the operation, not even Subject 2 was able to think straight anymore when a piece of his spiritual potential had literally been carved and modified until it had come to life!

Ves stepped back and studied the two mentally-injured captives with considerable interest.

Since he had refrained from artificially boosting the growth of the companion spirits, the new pets weren't ready to make an appearance yet. The two aliens needed to recover to an extent before they could discover what Ves had added to their spirits.

Even Ves didn't know what shape the companion spirits would take. This was because he applied an extremely basic companion spirit template to them for this experiment.

"They can potentially evolve into any form." Ves rubbed his smooth-shaven chin as he contemplated the possibilities.

That was the interesting part of this experiment!

In all of his previous attempts of making his companion spirits, he always had a specific template in mind. He designed his spiritual products beforehand and tried to realize them as faithfully as possible.

Another factor that skewed his companion spirits was the inclusion of spiritual ingredients that each introduced their own properties. Their specific spiritual attributes introduced strong biases in the companion spirits and bestowed them with new capabilities.

For example, Blinky excelled at processing and manipulating spiritual energy due to incorporating a spiritual fragment of the Unending One.

Alexandria was able to generate long-lasting design networks by incorporating half of Aisling Curver's design seed.

Even if Ves did not introduce any foreign ingredients, the subjects themselves were able to make up for the shortfall. This was how Venerable Dise gained her Respa and Ketis obtained her Sharpie.

In both cases, the recipients already possessed strong spiritual attributes that immediately shaped their companion spirits in highly complementary forms.

"This time is different."

The two pakklaton test subjects might have spiritual potential, but there was nothing special about them as they remained dormant all this time.

Without actively drawing out the potential and applying it to a specific way, the bird aliens had lived their entire lives without realizing their hidden power.

Now, Ves had forcefully drawn out a portion of it by bestowing them a companion spirit.

If nothing else, the birth of semi-independent spiritual creatures would definitely introduce them to the world of spiritual phenomena!

Since their companion spirits were made out of a portion of their spiritualities that contained ordinary attributes, the new entities probably wouldn't possess any special abilities.

"It's hard to cook a tasteful meal with plain ingredients."

However, the advantage of using boring ingredients without cooking them in a specific way was that the meals could turn into anything!

"Will the new companion spirits turn into miniature images of their pakklaton counterparts like the new Sharpie?"

"Will they take the form of their favored tools and objects like the older form of Sharpie?"

"Will the companion spirits spontaneously take completely different forms such as humans or planets?"

"To what extent will the strongest thoughts and emotions of the test subjects shape the abilities of their companion spirits?"

"Can companion spirits even develop special abilities without the support of powerful ingredients?"

Ves wanted answers to all of these questions and more. He originally thought about performing this experiment on lab animals, but now that the Dragon's Den hosted so many pakklaton captives, he could make use of more human-like test subjects!

So far, he did not encounter any signs that their spiritualities were significantly different from that of humans.

Their biological differences didn't matter as long as their spirits roughly behaved the same to his procedures.

This meant that as long as he was able to develop a powerful new application with the pakklatons, he could easily transfer that to humans!

"Let's take you back to your homes. I don't want you to go crazy."

Ves wrapped up the session and commanded the catcher bots to return Subject 1 and Subject 2 to their biomes.

Hopefully, the two test subjects would be able to recover with the help of their fellow pakklatons.

Once they enjoyed enough time to heal their injuries and mold their companion spirits into specific forms, Ves intended to return to them and inspect their properties.

Even if the bland companion spirits hadn't taken any strong or specific forms, the experiment was already a success if Subject 1 and Subject 2 both survived and returned to full health!

If their companion spirits eventually evolved into useful entities, then Ves completed the first step in mass producing companion spirits for his entire clan!

"This is my real goal!"

He had long thought about how he wanted to spread this advantage to his entire clan.

It wasn't fair that just a handful of prominent Larkinsons such as himself, his wife, his daughter and his close comrades obtained such a useful addition to their lives.

While he was willing to provide his other clansmen with companion spirits if possible, he faced the same problem with regards to producing living coins.

There was no way to delegate or automate the procedure!

It was impossible for Ves to manually work on his clansmen one by one, especially when each operation took a lot of effort and attention to complete.

What was worse was that he needed to make use of precious ingredients in order to make strong or highly-specific companion spirits.

This was why he conceived of the current trial. If everything worked out as he hoped, he had a basis of creating companion spirits with less effort and investment than before.

"This will substantially reduce the amount of time, effort and resources I need to spend to create a companion spirit, but it doesn't address the mass production issue."

This was the biggest hurdle to this grand and ambitious plan.

He already came up with a potential solution to this problem.

"What if… I create a companion spirit that specializes in creating other companion spirits?"

The idea sounded viable, but it would probably be incredibly difficult to make it possible!

The operator companion spirits needed to be as good as Blinky when it came to manipulating spiritual energy. They also needed access to his spiritual energy, because only he possessed the unique life attribute that breathed life into objects.

Perhaps it was possible to recreate a companion spirit like Blinky in someone else's head, but why should Ves hand over so much power to others?

An entity like Blinky might not be able to affect the material realm that much, but he was a natural enemy against spiritual entities!

There was no way that Ves would arm another person with a companion spirit that could threaten his spiritual applications!

"I don't think there's another way to turn other people into companion spirit surgeons."

How else would he be able to mass produce his companion spirits? There had to be a more practical and foolproof way to bestow this advantage to the rest of his clan!

He thought back on how he was in the process of mass producing his living coins.

An idea suddenly popped up in his mind. A.L.L N.O.V.E.L F.U.L.L

"What if… I can grow a companion spirit tree?"

He froze.

As long as the Golden Fruit Project succeeded, he would have solid proof that a bioengineered flesh tree was capable of growing living coins!

Since the trees were capable of producing coins with spiritual properties, what if he developed a tree that grew a different kind of fruit?

"The seed won't take the form of a solid coin that just happens to be alive. Instead, it will be a spiritual seed that someone can integrate by eating the fruit grown by the special tree!"

This could become a revolutionary invention if he was able to make it work! A companion spirit tree had much wider implications than a living coin tree!

The latter functioned as a vehicle to collect spiritual feedback at best. The former could completely strengthen humanity as a whole as long as it was popularized!

What if Ves and his close companions weren't the only ones who possessed spiritual pets?

What if they weren't confined to the Larkinson Clan?

If just 1 percent of humanity obtained a companion spirit, the comprehensive potential and capabilities of human civilization would experience a massive leap!

That was because companion spirits had the potential to provide a lot of additional possibilities, especially if they grew more formidable over time!

Just as he imagined himself changing humanity forever, he quickly interrupted his delusional fantasies.

"It's nearly impossible to make this work!"

Ves had overcome a huge amount of hurdles to create his so-called companion spirit trees.

He needed to develop a tree that was able to grow a special fruit that possessed the necessary ingredients to autonomously birth a companion spirit to the eater.

What was important was that the fruit had to complete this complicated process all by itself, which was an impossible challenge if there was no one to direct the operation!

"Will it work on everyone?"

That was anything but certain.

Ves was easily able to provide Subject 1 and Subject 2 with companion spirits because both possessed spiritual potential.

What if this wasn't the case?

What if they didn't possess any potential?

Ves didn't have any clear answers to these questions!

"Also, how can I develop a working mechanism for the companion spirit fruit?"

Something had to happen as soon as a person ate a fruit! The spiritual elements grown by the tree must not go to waste!

He exerted his creativity to the fullest as he attempted to find a viable solution.

He eventually came up with two potential directions.

The first direction was to develop a design spirit that could essentially perform this delicate operation on people's spirits with great proficiency!

Such a design spirit had to be extremely powerful, extremely precise and extremely loyal!

Suffice to say, Ves had a lot of misgivings about this plan. He did not trust any other design spirits with this power except Vulcan and maybe the Superior Mother.

He did not want to hand over this power to another entity!

This was why he was more inclined to go with the second direction.

"I need to develop a completely new method of creating a companion spirit in people."

What if he came up with a less violent process?

What if a companion spirit fruit held a spiritual seed that peacefully assimilated with the spiritualities with the eater?

Once the spiritual seed was buried into the mind of whoever ingested the fruit, it could steadily grow into a new companion spirit in a more natural and harmonious fashion!

Ves' eyes lit up! Although he had to solve numerous challenges in order to make this process work, it was a much better idea than the first method!

"In fact, as long as I can make this work, I don't need to limit the method to bestowing others with companion spirits."

He could potentially create an entire class of 'spirit trees' that grew fruits that provided all kinds of spiritual boosts when ingested!

Perhaps one fruit was able to bestow spiritual potential to people who lacked this strength!

Perhaps another fruit could impart specific talents to people by allowing them to assimilate spiritual attributes related to life, mechs or swords!

Perhaps a third fruit was able to grant enlightenment by stimulating their emotions similar to getting exposed to the Aspect of Transcendence!

While all of these ideas sounded great, the problem was that Ves didn't think that he was capable of making it all possible by himself!

"The T Institute needs to get up and running!"