The Mech Touch

After an hour of sculpting and shaping the spiritual firearm, Ves and Blinky finally put their finishing touches to the Death Lotus, breathing more life into it so that the remarkable construct completely came together!

Helena looked fascinated as Ves demonstrated the power of creation before her eyes. Though he made it look easy, her nature as a spiritual entity and one that was sensitive to both life and death allowed her to observe many mysterious phenomena!

"Our mothers were right. Ves is truly a talent when it comes to breaking rules!"

Though life and creation wasn't a part of her domain, Helena nonetheless derived several profound insights from seeing Ves at work. While it would take a lot of time for her to process her gains and convert them into real enhancements, she already saw new ways to develop and apply her death domain!

She already affirmed her decision to pay more attention to Ves. If she can harvest a few insights whenever he employed his power of creation, she would definitely be able to take off and catch up to her mothers!

Meanwhile, Ves finally relaxed when he verified that his attempt to create a living spiritual firearm had succeeded!

"Great work, Blinky. Can you check it one more time to see whether it is in the right state?"

Mrow!

Blinky dove forward and circled the floating pistol. The cat did not detect any traces that needed to be corrected. The Death Lotus largely conformed to its original design!

Mrow mrow.

"That's great. You can get back now. I'll take it from here." Ves said as he carefully picked up his new weapon.

He did not underestimate its danger and made sure to follow the basic safety rules while handling his new gun.

While he was pretty confident in his own spiritual defenses, he did not want to see what would happen if he actually pulled the trigger while he was looking straight down the muzzle!

For a moment, he admired his own handiwork. Though the Death Lotus had not become a masterwork, he was impressed by the quality and refinement of his first true spiritual firearm.

The spiritual parts all looked proper and the surface appearance of the gun looked even more charming than he envisioned. It appeared that when the Death Lotus gained life, it was already predisposed towards strengthening its beauty.

Perhaps the Death Lotus was already smart enough to know that its future was related to how much Helena appreciated her new weapon!

Certainly, the Death Lotus already succeeded in its objective. Helena looked starry-eyed at the new gun. What it lacked in ferocity, it made up for it with elegance. Its tasteful flower motif added a clear feminine touch to the gun without making it look as if it was a toy.

Ves mentally turned a switch that caused the Death Lotus to transform from its Pistol Mode to its Flower Mode.

"Ah!" Helena gasped with delight. "It looks even prettier in this form! I love the glow effect!"

The lotus flower turned black, but the subtle gray corona surrounding its shape made sure that it would not go ignored!

As Ves studied the Death Lotus in its dormant form, he could feel that he was holding the equivalent of a bomb made out of death energy. Holding it was no different from holding a plasma grenade!

The only person who could hold it safely was Helena, who was its sole intended user. Others who managed to get their hands on the Death Lotus for whatever reason would quickly be met with a nasty surprise if they tried anything!

Of course, the Death Lotus was still knowledgeable enough to recognize that certain close family members such as himself and his mothers should be exempt from its theft countermeasures.

"Can I… can I hold it, brother?" Helena hungrily asked.

"Hold on for a moment. This is not a toy. I don't want you to go off shooting this weapon in a random direction. The chances are high that the death beam that you'll be able to discharge will kill a lot of innocent Larkinsons in its path!"

Ves did not want to take any risks with this potent new weapon! Given Helena's excitement and relative youth, he felt it was irresponsible to hand over his present right away.

He decided to take a short trip into space. He did not want to remain close to his fleet while he tested a weapon that should theoretically be powerful enough to kill a dark god!

He instructed his staff to prepare his shuttle for departure. He also called for a squad of Battle Criers as well as Venerable Joshua and the Everchanger to accompany him out into space.

"Hmm, maybe I should take Jannzi as well."

Ves briefly considered this option before he decided it was better not to do anything too extravagant in the Davute System.

Ves carried the Death Lotus to the hangar bay and hopped inside his shuttle without giving Helena a chance to play with the weapon.

Naturally, the Daughter of Death was quite peeved about that. She resentfully stared at her overcautious brother while hugging Lucky against her chest.

"Hmph! Who do you think I am? I'm not a baby, you know! I know how to handle weapons responsibly!"

Ves threw a skeptical glance in her direction. "You are technically only a day old, you know. Even my daughter Aurelia is older than you! Let alone a gun, you shouldn't be allowed to handle a knife."

"I'm a god, not a mortal! We are born differently!"

"Whatever you say, baby."

"Idiot brother." Helena grumbled.

"Meow!" Lucky concurred as he did not hesitate to take the gray lady's side.

The armored shuttle flew out of the Spirit of Bentheim and slowly headed towards the perimeter of the expeditionary fleet's patrol range.

The orbit of Davute VII was quite busy. Thousands of ships had settled into different orbits while thousands more traveled back and forth in order to fuel the planet's booming economy.

Fortunately, space was incredibly vast, so there weren't any fleets or ships that were uncomfortably close to the expeditionary fleet.

After reaching a distance that was far enough from the main fleet, Ves ordered the shuttle to make a relative stop. He then instructed the crew to deploy several specialized jamming beacons that the clan had acquired during a previous procurement round.

The jamming beacons were all quality products that could form a fairly powerful localized jamming field that was enough to scramble and block nearly all forms of observations.

However, Ves wasn't satisfied with employing just a single measure.

"Deploy the blocking screens."

The Bright Warriors piloted by the Battle Criers all brought out large sheets of flexible material and folded it out to envelop the shuttle in a giant metallic 'tent'.

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After he became satisfied with these precautions, he was finally ready to test out the Death Lotus.

"Hey, are you going to fire my new gun? Why don't you let me pull the trigger first! Give me my new flower!"

Ves held off his whining sister. "Be patient. As a craftsman, I have an obligation to make sure that my creations are safe and responsible."

He was truly afraid that his sister would accidentally fire a blast at full power at the surface of the planet or a starship that was unlucky enough to be in the way!

In order to make sure that accidents like that wouldn't take place, he accessed his comm and visited a database that registered all of the known coordinates of ships and mechs in the star system.

A lot of different dots appeared on the map. Many of them were concentrated around planets such as Davute VII, but there were also a lot of other ships that were positioned elsewhere on a horizontal plane.

There were remarkably few ships who flew 'above' or 'below' this plane. There were hardly any reasons for them to do so as all the planets and asteroids of value were located on the horizontal plane.

However, there were still enough ships and other installations in odd places that Ves had to make sure to determine an angle that minimized the chances of hitting anything that did not deserve to get struck.

"Over there."

He commanded the shuttle to rotate along its axis so that Ves was able to extend the Death Lotus in the right direction if he aimed it straight outside the hatch.

Ves briefly checked its energy reservoir. "It should have enough left over after its creation."

He switched off the spiritual firearm's safeties but did not wait too long for it to charge itself up. After verifying the direction of his shot one last time, he carefully pulled the trigger.

A small and thin gray beam shot out from the elegant-looking weapon. The energy beam looked distinctly unimpressive and underwhelming, but Ves almost felt a palpating strong threat from this isolated discharge!

He estimated that while Blinky should be able to stop it, his companion spirit would certainly suffer a bad stomach ache in the process!

If the Death Lotus struck him a second time, then Blinky wouldn't have any spare capacity left to negate the concentrated attack!

Soon enough, he smiled. "This is almost exactly what I wanted to achieve!"

A flashy and powerful beam attack might look cool in all of the action dramas, but they were horribly wasteful and inefficient.

What Ves sought was to turn his Death Lotus into a weapon that could slay the dark gods by overcoming their formidable energy-based defenses. Other than draining the shields through exhausting it, the only other way to do so was by launching an attack that was so powerful and concentrated that it could punch through any barrier!

Another useful feature about the Death Lotus was that its output possessed a terrifying range!

Many ordinary spiritual attacks dispersed rather quickly because they weren't coherent enough.

It was different for a specialized tool like his new spiritual firearm! While its beam wasn't entirely straight, it was close enough for it to be able to hit targets that were hundreds of thousands or even millions of kilometers away!

As long as Helena's aim was precise enough, it was definitely possible for her to snipe distant targets far beyond the range where she risked retaliation!

"This attack… is completely different from the one I used to win my first battle!" Helena uttered in fascination.

"Meow!"

Even Lucky looked spooked at the power of this new spiritual firearm!

As Ves parsed the data of his first test shot, he adjusted the settings of the Death Lotus and pulled the trigger again.

This time, the beam was a lot weaker than the previous one. He had put it at the lowest setting possible, but the lethality was still too big! Any ordinary person who stood in its way would definitely get killed no matter how much armor and energy shielding was in the way!

Ves suddenly realized that he had just invented a near-perfect assassination weapon!

He handed it over to Helena before he became engulfed by new ideas.

"Here. You should try it now."

She looked surprised. "You're finally willing to let me use my new present?"

"Yes, but make sure you only fire in the same direction as I did. I don't want you to get me into trouble!"

"Hey, just because I am the incarnation of death doesn't mean I am eager to reap people's souls. The Valkyrie mechs under my supervision already do plenty of that in my name."

In order for Helena to grow and evolve, it wasn't enough for her to collect the spiritual feedback of mech pilots.

She needed to develop her death domain in a qualitative fashion, and to do that she needed to harvest the energy of the death, among other requirements!

Ves did not feel bothered by that at all. So what if his sister was a spiritual parasite who relied on the slaughter of many lives in order to grow stronger? His family was more important than all of the poor schmucks who were unlucky enough to die in front of his Valkyrie mechs!

After Ves briefly instructed her how to utilize the Death Lotus, Helena couldn't hold herself back any longer.

She aimed the weapon at a safe direction but did not pull the trigger immediately.

"Wait, what are you doing? Are you charging your gun? Slow down! You're putting in too much energy!"

Ves grew alarmed as the Death Lotus eagerly sucked in a copious amount of free death energy!

The concentration of death energy became so high that the pistol was radiating a huge amount of threat towards all life!

"Give me back the gun! Don't pull the trigger! It's too dangerous!"

It was too late!

After Helena put in enough energy into the Death Lotus to pose a serious threat against a dark god, she gleefully pulled the trigger!

A larger and brighter beam of concentrated death energy shot out of the gun and soared far away into the distance!

Ves didn't know how far the powerful death beam traveled, but he guessed it was not short!

"Fortunately, there wasn't anything in the way." He sighed in relief.