The Mech Touch

His mother served as an invaluable resource and teacher to Ves.

She patiently went over all of the flaws and shortcomings of the Imaginary Universe Method Version 2.0.

Though she could be merciless about picking up all of the stupid mistakes and dangerous constructions in his work, she had good reasons to adopt such a stern tone!

"You need to hold yourself to a higher standard, my child." The woman said as she lightly spanked Veronica's metal bum. "If an engineer makes a serious mistake in the design of a shuttle and it somehow doesn't get noticed by subsequent inspections, he will have blood on his hands. The same applies to cultivation as well. You are playing with life and death with each cultivation method you create. I do not mind too much if you develop them for ordinary people, but I will not permit you to be so careless when your life and wellbeing are directly at stake! Do better, or you will make your mother truly angry!"

"Myaow! I will do better, mother!"

Cynthia somehow made Ves feel as if he had been reduced to a child again. It was frankly embarrassing for a Senior Mech Designer and a father of three lovely children to feel this way.

Nonetheless, there was a childish and more innocent part of Ves that profoundly enjoyed these mother-and-son interactions.

He felt as if they were making up for lost opportunities.

As much as Ves felt a lot more confident about his mastery of cultivation science, his mother's feedback quickly put him back in his place!

Compared to a relative newcomer like Ves, an older and much more powerful True God possessed a wealth of understanding that went far deeper than anything he could have imagined!

She illuminated all kinds of different problems that Ves had never thought about due to his lack of depth and experience in formal cultivation.

Fortunately, Ves was largely able to invent his own solutions once his mother identified many of these issues.

He addressed the very real risks of hostile intrusion in multiple ways, from setting up a spiritual filter to adding internal defense mechanisms that automatically hunted down intruders that did not belong.

He also attempted to develop solutions to other problems such as elemental imbalances and restoration after suffering catastrophic damage.

His mother even took matters in her own hands at times whenever she grew dissatisfied with his amateurish and inadequate work!

Soon enough, they thoroughly perfected, optimized and expanded on the cultivation method presented by Ves.

Compared to its last iteration, the Imaginary Universe Method Version 3.0 was a lot safer, stabler and more reliable than ever before!

It might not add that much additional power or versatility, but it fully utilized the conditions and resources at hand to produce progressively greater and more exaggerated results!

Once the two completed their exhaustive revision effort, Cynthia held Veronica in her arms and began to look concerned.

"I respect your decisions, Ves, but this is a step that you cannot undo once you make it. Once your companion spirit creates his own new and constantly expanding universe, it is nearly impossible to change to another cultivation method. The only way Blinky can proceed from that point onwards is to modify and expand on his current method, but there are clear limits to how much he can deviate from his original direction."

Veronica let out a sigh as she relaxed in her mother's arms. "I have already spent a lot of time thinking about this and I am sure about my decision. I am happy with this configuration. It may be extravagant and unreasonable in many ways, but I am willing to endure the initial difficulties in order to gain a much larger payoff in the later years. Don't forget that I need to accumulate an enormous amount of power and resources in the coming decades in order to prepare for the inevitable arrival of alien invaders from Messier 87."

Ves did not fear the native aliens of the Red Ocean all that much. Even if the closure of the greater beyonder gate caused red humanity to become incredibly outnumbered all of a sudden, the Red Two still possessed a lot of effective combat power.

The Red Association and the Red Fleet would definitely do all of the heavy lifting when it came to defending red humanity's space!

What Ves truly worried about was whether the Red Two still possessed the qualifications to resist the extragalactic invaders from M87 a few decades later.

Ves needed to be ready to either give the Red Two assistance to prevent red humanity from going extinct.

Alternatively, he might have to build a powerful enough fleet to run the hell away from the Red Ocean before he and his clan could get hunted down by unimaginably powerful alien invaders!

His mother still had issues with Blinky's cultivation choices.

"Your Imaginary Universe Method is a pure qi cultivation method." She stated.

"Yes, that's right. I tried to keep it as contained as possible. What's the problem?" Veronica asked.

"You can easily incorporate deity cultivation in your imaginary universe method. It will not detract too much from the existing processes. Whether you make it so that Blinky derives energy from getting worshiped by your fellow clansmen or the native spiritual life forms that will come to inhabit his internal universe, you can still implement solutions that can speed up his cultivation."

Veronica knew what his mother was talking about. That did not mean the cyborg cat had to agree with her elder!

"No. I am not going to entangle Blinky with this kind of stuff. Deity cultivation is all well and good, but I don't want Blinky to become overdependent on other people. This may be my only incarnation that can remain fully self-sufficient. He can do well in any location with enough concentrations of ambient spiritual energy. I don't want Blinky's development to become warped by the biases and preconceptions of third parties."

The greatest danger and shortcoming of deity cultivation was that the god in question could get contaminated by the ideas and emotions of his own worshipers.

This was the inevitable consequence of deriving a great amount of growth and cultivation process by absorbing spiritual energy from other living sources!

In contrast, ambient spiritual energy was a lot more neutral and less opinionated due to the fact that it was mostly unowned background radiation.

"I already have Vulcan if I want to derive growth from deity cultivation." Veronica added. "He is pretty popular among dwarves. I am sure that I can develop a highly suitable deity cultivation method for him that will give full play to his own unique conditions."

His mother looked thoughtful. "You are correct. I understand your logic. Vulcan is not as close to your main self as Blinky, so any undue mental influences will not affect your real self that much due to the greater separation."

Vulcan had already changed considerably since his birth.

The exponentially greater amount of dwarves that prayed to the supposed God of Dwarves, Mechs and Craftsmanship resulted in a flood of messy spiritual feedback!

The input grew so enormous that Vulcan sympathized a lot more with the dwarves than humans nowadays!

They chatted a bit more about what sort of cultivation methods that Ves should prepare for his specific incarnations.

"You need to worry about your development on this side as well, Veronica." Cynthia said as she tapped the cyborg cat's head. "I cannot help you as much in this regard because I can feel that your cat body has partially embarked on a path of body cultivation based on phasewater."

"I will figure it out." Veronica stated with a bit less confidence than before. "I am hoping to get my hands on a few phase lords and phase whales so that I can study how they work. I know that I will have to get my hands on a lot of phasewater in order to continually expand the volume of my full physical body. Are you able to materialize phasewater out of energy?"

The mother pressed her lips.

"I am working on it, baby. Phasewater is a special exotic, and it is much more difficult to reproduce than many other high-grade materials. Water is not my main element, and I am still in the process of mastering it. There is no reason for you to be concerned. The stolen crown will provide considerable help."

That was right. His mother had partially managed to capture the authority of the Water Scroll. Though Ves had no idea how that benefited her exactly, it was not that big of a stretch to think that her mastery over the element of water would skyrocket in the future!

Anyway, now that Ves got what he wanted from his mother, he directed his main focus back to the Red Ocean.

He couldn't wait to initiate Blinky's new cultivation method!

He headed down to his private lab and workshop and entered an enclosed chamber for safety reasons.

Ves briefly considered whether it would be prudent to call for a few expert mechs to respond to any possible emergencies, but he decided against it as he did not think it would matter.

Although the process of creating an entirely new internal space was an inherently dangerous process, the Imaginary Universe Method Version 3-0 had been optimized and improved upon by a highly knowledgeable True God!

"Nothing should go wrong."

Even if he was wrong, it was not a bad idea to feel overconfident. Exotic radiation responded to his own thoughts and emotions. This meant that if he was convinced that a procedure would work, then reality might work a little extra to make sure the desired outcome took place!

"It's really strange, but whatever. Come out, Blinky!"

"Mrow!"

The Star Cat looked a lot more enthused than ever. After years of experiencing gradual growth through natural cultivation, the companion spirit was set to become the first of his kind to practice a formal method!

Since Blinky was just another personality of Ves, the companion spirit did not need to spend any time studying the Imaginary Universe Method.

The cat already understood it as well as Ves himself!

The method was not that difficult for the most part. It was designed to operate consistently in the background in almost the same way as natural cultivation.

The biggest complication was that it was quite difficult and potentially dangerous to get started!

An aged and damaged stone obelisk suddenly appeared next to Ves!

Seconds later, several tough and reinforced barrels filled with phasewater materialized into the chamber!

Ves was willing to invest too kilograms of pure phasewater for several reasons. He wanted to reduce the difficulty of forming a new universe and boost the initial expansion of its volume!

There was no need to add any other ingredients to the mix because Blinky could rely on absorbing vast quantities of ambient spiritual energy to make up for the rest.

"Let's start."

"Mrow mrow."

The purple companion spirit closed his eyes and began to devour the surrounding ambient spiritual energy.

An increasingly larger suction formed around Blinky as the cat continually accumulated and compressed the gathered energies.

Time passed by as Blinky began to struggle to contain so much excess energies. Most of it escaped from his grasp, but the cat persevered because he needed to obtain as much juice as possible to generate enough force to successfully open up a new space!

As the cat slowly reached critical mass, Blinky finally opened up his glowing eyes.

The suction vortex around the spiritual cat suddenly grew so strong that from the moment Blinky opened his maw, he successfully managed to devour both the Urvenk Obelisk as well as the barrels of phasewater!

The cat had gathered all of the ingredients he needed to form his new internal space!

"Mrow mrow mroooooow!"

The cat glowed increasingly brighter and more energetic as he engaged in an irreversible process.

This proceeded onwards for several tense and nerve-wracking minutes until a massive explosion took place in an entirely different dimension and space!

BANG!