The Mech Touch



A mental and spiritual explosion set off inside Ves' mind as soon as Venerable Jannzi informed him about her suspicions with regards to her newly formed Blood Pact.

Ves hadn't been paying attention to this possibility at all. For all of the work he put into the development of the Carmine System and its associated Blood Pact, he could not foresee the full implications of what he had brought to life.

It couldn't be helped. Everything he worked on was completely new and unprecedented as far as he was concerned. As a successful innovator, he understood that a single person's imagination was ultimately limited.

Yet how could he have missed such an enormous implication?!

Ever since he was born, each time he inquired about what it took to pilot a mech, his father and his fellow Larkinson relatives always told him that he shouldn't get his hopes up. Practically every child heard the same answer.

"There is only a 3.5 percent chance you can become a mech pilot." Ryncol Larkinson once told Ves when he was around 6 years old. "You have to win the genetic aptitude lottery in order to become eligible to pilot a real mech."

"But I heard our family was special!" Little Ves complained as he sat on his father's lap. "Aren't we supposed to be natural pilots?"

The father chuckled after hearing his boy's words. "Our relatives like to claim that, but the reality is much less glamorous than you think. The ancestor who started our family was strong. He was really strong. We not only inherited his original genes, but also follow many of his proscriptions several centuries after his passing. I think that has increased the chances that our family can produce mech pilots, but even if it has doubled, that only gives us a 1 in 14 chance to possess the right genetic aptitude. Do you understand what that means?"

"Uhhh…"

"If there are 14 Vesses like yourself, only a single one of you will be lucky enough to become a mech pilot. The other 13 have little choice but to find another job. This is why none of our family wants little boys like you to think you will definitely get to pilot a mech in your life. Many people are actually ordinary and decent folk who are already happy with doing something normal for a living."

"That sounds boring~" Cheeky little Ves whined.

His father had a different opinion. "Boring is safe. Boring is steady. Boring is a blessing. Becoming a norm is not a curse. It is a relief. Not every potentate is cut out to become a soldier, but those who have the power to pilot a mech are often pushed into this dangerous job regardless of their wishes."

"What about the norms who really want to fight but don't have the right aptitude?" Ves eagerly asked.

Ryncol smiled down at his son. "There is no great expectation for ordinary people to take part in a fight. If you truly want to make a difference, you can always learn the skills to support the mech pilots that do the actual fighting. Many of our family members end up doing that due to their sense of duty. Even if they cannot enter the cockpit themselves, they can still do their part by repairing damaged mechs or serving aboard the carriers that transport the mechs to their destinations. Everyone has their own place in life. Genetic aptitude is one of those things that sets people apart. That's life."

As Ves took in the enormous implications of Jannzi's suspicion about the Blood Pact, he briefly recalled this particular conversation with his father. He thought back on those words because they played a large role in shaping his attitude towards the so-called genetic aptitude lottery.

Life wasn't fair.

The chance that a ten-year old kid would have the right genetic aptitude to pilot a mech was too low.

What was worse was that there were few if any means to influence a child's chances of becoming a potentate.

There were no known training methods that could increase a child's probability of developing the right genetic aptitude.

Nutrition did not seem to matter and a lot of miracle medicines turned out to be complete scams.

Ves couldn't count the number of enthusiastic young children who possessed a lot of talent to become a soldier, but eventually grew into jaded adults due to the simple fact that their brain chemistry just hadn't grown in the exact right manner.

What would happen if genetic aptitude no longer served as the crusher of dreams?

What if every human gained the option to pilot a mech just as proficient as real potentates?

How many other professionals would abandon their successful and impactful careers in other sectors just so that they could revive their buried desires?

The potential consequences of announcing and popularizing a viable means to pilot a mech through an alternative control method were too great for Ves to fully contemplate!

As Ves' incredibly powerful mind continued to wrap around the ideas that sprung into his mind after hearing Jannzi's words, he understood that he may have inadvertently opened one of Pandora's many boxes.

If Jannzi's suspicion turned out to be accurate, then he may have brought an invention to life that could never be unmade!

The Carmine System and the Blood Pact had gained a huge amount of significance!

Ves had already decided to center his major around its many possibilities. He initially thought that the successful formation of the Blood Pact today fully paid off all of the hard work he put into inventing this radical and controversial means of empowerment, but it turned out that he had only scratched the surface of its potential!

A strong part of himself warned him that there was no way it would be that simple!

A huge reason why mech pilots gained the capacity to control large and complicated war machines was because their brains could withstand much greater data throughput!

In other words, their brains had mutated in a way that allowed them to function as highly active organic processors!

A normal human individual did not possess this capacity. Any attempt to forcibly exchange huge amounts of data would quickly cause a normal brain to wear out in a matter of seconds depending on the severity!

However…

What if there was no need to rely on brainpower to control a mech?

One of the basic fundamentals of the Blood Pact was that it was formed on a spiritual level rather than a neural level.

Just like how the Larkinson Network worked according to completely different principles from Master Huron's neural networks, the Blood Pact did not have anything to do with the most basic form of the man-machine connection!

The neural interface induced a heavy load on a mech pilot's brain because it directly channeled data back and forth.

The Carmine System operated through a more mystical means. Aside from requiring that the mech and mech pilot share the same circulation, it did not do anything directly to the latter's brain!

So how could Jannzi's suggestion work?

Through spirituality.

When Ves examined Jannzi from a spiritual perspective, he could clearly see that her force of will had developed a permanent entanglement with the completed Dullahan Project.

Due to Jannzi's extraordinary willpower alongside her strong connection with the successor of the Shield of Samar, this spiritual bond had already grown to become exceptionally strong and firm.

Ves could fully imagine that it possessed the bandwidth to channel the huge amount of data required to pilot a normal mech, though he was less certain whether it was sufficient to pilot a highly complicated quasi-first-class expert mech.

So what if it was not sufficient?

One of the defining traits of his design philosophy and all of its applications was that the starting point was just the beginning!

Each of his works possessed the capacity of growth, and it was not a one-way street either!

If Venerable Jannzi was not yet capable of piloting the Dullahan Project by relying on the Blood Pact alone, then she could always wait until she grew strong enough to make it possible!

This applied to other people as well. Ves already deduced that if he wanted to make this radical new means of controlling a mech viable, he had to ensure that the irregular pilots possessed the spiritual strength necessary to absorb and process large quantities of data.

Although this sounded like an enormous limitation, Ves already knew that he had a potential solution to this new hurdle.

Companion spirits.

What if he combined the strengths of companion spirits with the possibilities of the Blood Pact?

Both innovations happened to complement each other!

Granting companion spirits to normal people not only allowed them to activate their spiritualities and grow their spiritual potential, but eventually allowed them to grow strong enough to perform many complex actions, including the act of controlling a full-sized mech!

In fact, the companion spirit could even serve as a special channel that could make the process of controlling a mech a lot easier!

After all, if Ketis was able to control her swords a lot better by imbuing them with Sharpie, an irregular mech pilot could theoretically merge his companion spirit to a living mech in order to improve the control process!

Embedding a companion spirit to a living mech also unlocked other wonderful possibilities that Ves could scarcely think about!

There was no point in thinking any further. He was going way too far in his speculations when he hadn't even verified a single word of what Jannzi had just said!

He needed to obtain proof before he could properly explore the immense new possibilities opened up by the Blood Pact!

Yet even as his rationality told him that he needed to contain his excitement, his passion told him a completely different story!

As a successful and experienced mech designer and innovator, he knew in his heart that Venerable Jannzi's suspicion was not an idle guess.

It fully conformed with the theoretical framework that Ves had built up in his mind. He was even able to use his existing knowledge on spiritual engineering to derive all kinds of possible outcomes, many of which had a realistic chance of coming true!

Aside from that, his powerful intuition strongly told him that he had become exposed to a discovery of such great significance that he could easily shake the fabric of human civilization if exposed!

While Ves had admittedly developed numerous different innovations that could already change people's lives, this particular train of thought was different from the rest.

He could hardly think of a better way to put his stamp on the Age of Mechs than by giving humanity a viable means to turn every person into a mech pilot!

No matter whether they were space peasants or mechers, each of them could gain the means to control a mech, just like the potentates they always envied!

The Blood Pact had the potential to turn the infamous and much-maligned genetic aptitude lottery redundant!

As Ves thought of the enormous impact he could make on human society, he understood right then and there what his subsequent research direction should be from this point onwards.

Ves still wanted to pursue mutual growth, but rather than focusing on empowering the strongest and most gifted mech pilots such as Venerable Jannzi, he wanted to serve the needs of the weak and underprivileged.

What better way to make his mark as a mech designer than to fulfill the collective wish of 96.5 percent of all humans living in the Milky Way and the Red Ocean?

Ves couldn't imagine how many people he could satisfy by giving them the option of piloting an actual mech!

As a professional service provider, he could not think of a worthier cause!

He believed that not even the likes of the Polymath could make this impossible dream come true!

Many people had long thought that it was impossible to liberate mechs for normal people.

Ves rejected this truth!

His strong belief in the Blood Pact and his determination in liberating humanity from the tyranny of genetic aptitude eventually sparked an irreversible transformation in his essence.

After years of silent accumulation, the design seed that encapsulated his design philosophy started to explode with power!

Ves had finally found the breakthrough opportunity that he had always sought!

Even as Venerable Jannzi looked alarmed and concerned, Ves had entered into a completely different state of mind!

For the second time in a relatively short amount of time, Ves went through another sublimation!

This time, his evolution purely took place on a spiritual level!