The Mech Touch

Unlike the Crossers, the Glory Seekers all shared the same mindset.

"You are a mech designer. Fighting is the last thing you should do, sir." Venerable Eona Ballentine of the Glory Seekers said as she looked at Ves as if he was sick. "As the son of the Superior Mother, it is our duty and our mission to sow death on your behalf. If you are ever in a position where you are forced to fight for your life, then we have failed. That will never happen as long as we breathe."

Venerable Olivia Remis, the other Handmaiden of Death, nodded in agreement.

"No one is good at everything, sir. Aside from our Supreme, anyone lesser than her can only excel at one's respective phase of their lives. You are the embodiment of the life phase and a creator that spawns all beginnings. As powerful and as magnificent as you are, it is clear that your talents lie in creation, not destruction. We are the agents of your holy sister and the destroyers of your foes."

According to the adherents of hexism, men or ‘boys' traditionally corresponded to the first phase of existence. Since Ves possessed so many strong associations with life, the Hexers all developed the notion that he was the ultimate good boy!

Naturally, good boys needed to be protected by as many strong and valiant women as possible!

"I don't even know why I bothered to ask your opinion." Ves grumbled and as he rubbed his face.

He continued to tour various places in order to collect more input. There was no such thing as too much input. The more people he asked, the more angles he collected. He already started to look at his available options in a much more comprehensive light.

After he concluded his brief visit to the Glory Seekers, he sought out the Aduc Family next.

With the help of Gaia's powerful support, the Aduc Family managed to take rapid root in the Krakatoa Star Sector.

Gaia Worldcrafting Services was only a recent entrant in the competitive terraforming industry, but already made a name for itself in this sector.

Although the Aducs hated rush jobs, they were realistic enough to know that many pioneers wanted to settle and start living on the planets they picked out as soon as possible.

Though Gaia Worldcrafting Services did not win any records when it came to speedy deliveries, the quality of the planets terraformed by this upstart company quickly stood out for their pleasant climates and lack of problems!

The Green Dream, the Aduc Family's flagship capital terraforming ship, was pretty much never present in the Davute System. She traveled around from one star system to another in order to perform the biggest and most cumbersome terraforming assignments.

Even though Gaia Worldcrafting Services had drastically raised its prices in order to temper the demand for its services, the Aduc Family still received a lot of commissions!

Relatively few Aducs remained in Davute due to all of these jobs. The family did not want to stay idle and wanted to earn as much money as possible in order to build up its foundation in the Red Ocean.

Fortunately for Ves, the Aduc Family always made sure to station a fixed contingent in Davute. These were the specialists who had been assigned to work in the T Institute which they partly owned.

Ves had many dealings with Pesca Aduc. She was a good exobiologist and was particularly interested in ecology and such.

While her specialty was not a perfect fit for the research that took place in T Institute, her high birth meant that she knew how to take charge and handle administration.

In the years since Ves worked with the T Institute, he had few complaints on how Director Pesca Aduc ran the jointly-owned research organization. Her frequent contact with Gaia had not only strengthened her activated spirituality, but also granted her insights beyond the reach of ordinary people.

Visiting her at her workplace was quite an ordeal.

p<anda> Situated within the underground tunnel complex of the Cat Nest, few people heard of the existence of the T-1 Building. The deliberately bland and boring name was meant to disguise the fact that a lot of interesting metaphysical research took place within its halls.</anda>

The entrance to the T-1 Building wasn't on any maps. Ves had to go through various secret entrances and go through numerous mandatory security checks before he got through.

It was all worth it, though. He immediately entered into a different world once he stepped inside the amazing lab.

Trees and plants of various kinds were planted in biomes that were locked behind transparent walls.

Many of the larger trees were already growing various fruits that glinted in the light that shone down from above.

Different exobeasts and designer beasts roamed throughout the artificial environments. Many of them were unique and one-of-a-kind. Ves could sense the growing spiritualities of these extraordinary creatures.

Ves looked at each of them as either potential design spirits or potential ingredients for other purposes.

Whether they would turn into the former or the latter depended on their development potential. Not every mutated beast was worth nurturing, especially since the T Institute and its parent organizations only had so much space to grow all of these animals.

"Grow well, little fellows."

After passing through numerous corridors, he entered a lab where a group of researchers in pristine white lab coats were monitoring an ongoing experiment.

Ves looked through the reinforced window and saw that the current test centered around a member of the pakklaton race.

He happened to recognize the bird-like sentient alien that was in the process of commanding a group of feral exobeasts belonging to different species.

Normally, these dangerous alien predators would have reacted with intense hostility to other species. They would have torn each other as well as the tall avian apart if left to their own devices!

Yet what actually occurred was that each carnivorous beast obediently stood in several neat rows.

When the female pakklaton raised her winged arm, the creatures all ran around in a circular route while maintaining the exact same pace.

If Ves didn't know any better, he would have thought that these exobeasts had all undergone months or years of beast training.

In reality, the creatures had all been randomly taken from their biomes and dumped in front of the pakklaton test subject for the first time in their short lives!

"How is it going, Pesca?" Ves casually asked as he approached the side of the Director of the T Institute.

Pesca Aduc curled her lips downwards. "My day could be better, if that is what you were asking. Subject 5 showed great promise in the first few years, but her growth and development has stagnated as of late. Many of her fellow pakklaton test subjects have exceeded her in terms of spiritual development and ability proficiency."

As her number suggested, Subject 5 was one of the first pakklaton prisoners that the Larkinsons had converted into a test subject. She had taken part in one of the first research projects related to the development of companion spirits and provided a considerable amount of useful data that helped him refine this remarkable spiritual application.

Ves was quite charmed by Subject 5's ability to dominate exobeasts, but so far she had never succeeded in taking control over larger, stronger and more intelligent creatures.

She also couldn't control too many creatures. Ves could already see that her spirituality was straining and struggling to exert fine control over so many different exobeasts.

"It's not that surprising for her growth to stagnate." Ves commented. "She was one of the earliest recipients of a companion spirit. I did not add a lot of structure to the design of my creations back then, so there is a huge degree of variance between the strength and abilities of every spiritual pet. The newer generation of companion spirits are much stabler in this regard."

This was one of the advantages of founding the T Institute. Although much of the research on spirituality and related phenomena were rather vague, speculative, tentative and messy, the lessons and insights that Ves gained from the results helped with developing more refined spiritual applications.

Ves continued to discuss about Subject 5 and the state of companion spirit research with Director Pesca for a while.

It wasn't until the researchers concluded the current round of testing that Ves addressed his actual purpose.

Director Pesca Aduc briefly fell into thought.

"I don't really understand why you would ever think about becoming a mech pilot. It makes no sense even if you have the ability to do so. You have done great work. There is no one in human space that can do what you can do. I am convinced of that. Even your work in your capacity as a mech designer is not as important as the many new and amazing possibilities that you have brought to life with the help of our institute."

"So you think I should spend even more of my time on our spiritual research projects?"

"If I were you, I would stop designing mechs entirely." Pesca Aduc said. "Please don't judge me too quickly. Hear me out please. How many mech designers are active in the industry at this time? There are so many people who are dedicating so much of their lives to designing mechs that you are but one among many."

She waved her arm across the entire lab. "This is where you can truly change our entire society. All of the work we have done on spirit trees, companion spirits and breakthrough solutions will shock all of human space if others learn about the results we have gained so far. The Transhumanist Faction's increasing interest in our research is a reflection of how much more valuable your contributions in this area matter. In comparison, your mechs are not as remarkable. There are plenty of mechs that can satisfy the mech market. Maybe they don't have the same properties as your living mechs, but it is not as if your customers will become ruined if they can only work with ordinary mechs."

She was right. From a societal perspective, Ves' work as a spiritual engineer was much more impactful than his work as a mech designer, at least for the time being.

Though Ves could continue to invest a huge amount of time and effort into progressing his design capabilities, he could achieve a lot more if he dedicated himself entirely towards spiritual engineering!

"No one can do what you can do." Pesca Aduc repeated. "While there are other powerful individuals who are able to wield similar powers, none of them have come out with so many different forms of empowerment. Your dedication to researching different spiritual applications that can make people stronger and more capable than before is highly praiseworthy. If you decide to spend less time on mech design, then our T Institute will truly be able to take off! We will surely be able to help humanity ascend higher than any other race in the Milky Way and surroundings!"

That was a powerful boast, but one that might actually come true if Ves truly became more serious about his spiritual engineering activities.

Taking time off his mech design sessions was out of the question to Ves. He would never accept an approach that forced him to abandon the root of his identity.

However, if Ves opted for Spiritual Ascension, he could easily imagine a future where he became so good at spiritual engineering that he could accomplish a lot more results in much less time!

This was the perfect way for him to maximize both his mech design and spiritual engineering pursuits!

What was even better was that if Ves became better at spiritual engineering, his ability to design mechs would become even stronger!

Each of his products would become a lot more remarkable and useful on the battlefield. His ability to service the needs of mech pilots would skyrocket, primarily because there weren't any other mech designers that could come up with so many powerful spiritual engineering applications!

"You make a good point, Director Pesca."