The Mech Touch

Ves grinned like crazy when inspiration bestowed him with an idea that surpassed all of the ones that he had entertained in the past.

He called up the full design of the Fey Project yet again and thought that it was a lot less magnificent than before.

It was remarkable how a single realization could drastically alter his perception and evaluation of his mech design.

Before he embarked on this fabrication run, he thought his Fey Project was shaping up to become the best and most effective standard mech design after its completion.

The design incorporated much of the fancy new hyper tech that came out after the start of the Hyper Generation. It also benefited from Ves and Gloriana's recently acquired insights after they fabricated the Lionheart and the Blood Star Mark II.

Yet it was only now that he realized that his approach towards designing the Fey Project was too conservative and restrained.

The Age of Dawn introduced red humanity to a bright new future where people gained access to an entirely new source of power that possessed unlimited potential.

The Red Two's joint development and release of scientific theories and engineering principles gave the common folk a structural and systematic introduction to the wonders of the hyper technology, but they did not go into too much depth of the uses of E energy and hyper materials.

This made sense as the vast majority of red humans had only come in touch with all of this brand new phenomena for a short amount of time.

While Ves was convinced that the mechers and the fleeters could do a lot more with the same resources, they withheld much of their advanced knowledge for two reasons.

The obvious one was that the Red Two sought to preserve their technological superiority. This was nothing new as they had already done the same with phasewater technology.

The less obvious reason was that hyper technology could be dangerous if misused or misapplied. E energy was not harmless and could produce all kinds of accidents or self-destructive applications if hyper tech was handled without care.

Nonetheless, the risks were commensurate with the rewards. The only way to squeeze more power out of hyper technology was to move beyond its shallow applications and start to play around with more advanced concepts.

Fortunately, certain people like Ves did not have to blindly explore this vast field. They could draw upon the ancient legacies of the past to give them a head-start and clarify more advanced theories in advance!

While not every piece of knowledge from the past could be applied to the present, the wisdom of the ancients still provided Ves with plentiful ideas and inspiration!

That was exactly what happened to him just now. After so many months of working on the Fey Project, he finally connected the multi-spirit properties of the mech designs with the theories of cultivation science.

There were various different ways that Ves could apply his insights on cultivation science to the Fey Project, but only one particular idea resonated with him more than the other ones.

He became attracted by a bold and risky strategy that could completely transform the Fey Project and transform it into a drastically different but superior machine!

Any comparison between the original Fey Project and the one that incorporated his latest idea would lead to the latter outshining the former in almost every aspect!

Of course, the price of implementing his latest idea was also considerable.

First, he needed to incorporate a lot of new hyper materials attributed towards multiple different attributes.

The supply of mid-grade and high-grade hypers was relatively inconsistent from region to region. Ves already knew that Diandi Base was lacking in the ones that he needed to turn his latest vision into a reality.

Fortunately, New Constantinople happened to be a port system and the capital of the Riston Territory.

As the main seat of power of the Devos Ancient Clan, a lot of traders flocked and sold their wares in one of the many marketplaces of New Constantinople VIII.

Alexa had already contacted the Premier Branch's fixed suppliers and easily ordered several batches of the required hyper materials on favorable terms.

The second complication related to his new idea was that Ves needed to solve several new design problems in order to realize his bold vision for the Fey Project.

The main body and its associated fey needed to cooperate and synergize much more extensively with each other than before!

Ves could not treat them as casually as before. He had to tie them together and figure out a way for each unique construct to interact with each other despite their strong differences.

Lastly, in order to make the Fey Project a lot more powerful while preventing it from tearing itself apart, Ves had to delve a lot deeper into cultivation science.

More specifically, Ves had to dive a lot deeper into aspects of qi cultivation that he previously neglected due to his limited interest in this field!

"Every piece of knowledge has its uses." Ves reminded himself. "Mechs are artifacts that can effectively incorporate almost any power or concept. The only limit is the imagination of the mech designer."

Right now, Ves felt incredibly brave and inspired. His idea had incredible potential, but also introduced a lot of heavy risks that could easily ruin his chance to fabricate a masterwork mech!

Although Ves could have taken the more sensible option by reserving his latest idea for a future mech design project, he was unwilling to shove it aside when he could work on it right away.

So what if he chose to develop a substantially more radical variant design of the Fey Project on the spot?

His passion had been stoked and his design flame burned hotter at the prospect of transforming the Fey Project into a more promising and exceptional machine!

"It is a good thing that Gloriana isn't working with me at the moment, because she would never tolerate the decision to scrap the schedule and go freestyle!"

Ves completely liberated himself from a lot of planning, scheduling and other preconceived notions.

His surging mind became more stimulated as his creativity continued to come up with all sorts of strange ideas that might or might not be helpful to his latest brainchild.

He picked the ones that sounded promising and fitting enough for his latest vision and decided to implement them into his current work without too much consideration!

The mech design of the Fey Project changed rapidly as Ves utilized his cranial implant to quickly and efficiently alter the schematics!

None of the changes had been tested. Ves simply did not have enough time to verify and optimize the spontaneous changes and additions that he had made to his mech design.

The Fey especially went through an extensive redesign as Ves had envisioned entirely different roles for them! They no longer became as weak and expendable as before.

As Ves spent an entire hour in the mech workshop on redesigning the Fey Project on the spot, it was as if he was completing weeks worth of design work in just a fraction of the time!

Ves was not surprised by this. His productivity always rose meteorically when his passion burned strong and when inspiration struck his mind.

He also made a lot of new connections between many discreet theories and phenomena.

It was as if he had struck his head with his hammer!

He recognized that he had fallen into a natural inspired state, one that was considerably more effective than the false version that he could artificially induce with the help of the Hammer of Brilliance.

In fact, part of the reason why he was so effective this time was because he was intimately cooperating with Vulcan at this time!

Vulcan became affected by Ves1 inspiration as well.

Due to his different heritage, cultivation method and experiences, the design spirit was able to produce a lot of brilliant ideas that Ves wouldn't have thought of under normal circumstances.

This meant that the current inspired state had doubled in effectiveness! Ves got at least twice as many benefits from this period of heightened excitement than in past cases!

The final contributor to Ves' rapid rise in productivity was Blinky.

Though the companion spirit had to direct a lot of focus towards fueling the demanding Living Workshop ability, his Blinkyverse was more than just a reservoir of lots of spiritual energy.

The primordial planet was partially covered by E-computers. Months of cooperation with the researchers of the Transhumanist Faction had caused the imaginary processors and databanks to leap past many different generations!

Although the current iteration of E-computers still performed far worse than any modern computing system, they had already reached a point where they could imitate the performance of a relatively basic first-class cranial implant that was especially configured for mech designers!

All of that additional processing power came in handy at this time as Ves had to perform a huge amount of calculations in a short amount of time.

If not for the additional help provided by all of the E-computers, it would have taken Ves several more hours to come up with the same amount of revisions to the Fey Project!

His current gains taught Ves another important lesson.

"Inspiration alone is not enough for me to produce a far better mech. An ordinary third-class or second-class mech designer would never be able to realize anything close to my newest vision. Better resources, workshop facilities and processing power are all essential to producing more transcendent works."

Ves did not linger too much on that. It was more important for him to complete the rapid development of a brand new type of mech that was certain to be unprecedented in the entire mech community!

The reason why he was convinced that no other mech designer had ever developed this kind of mech was because the demands were too high!

It required a much deeper and more intricate application of hyper technology and more importantly E-technology!

As his redesign started to take shape, it finally became clear on the surface what Ves was working towards.

"Fire."

A red-coated fey came into view.

"Water."

A blue-coated fey appeared next.

"Wood."

A green-coated fey showed up in the projection.

"Earth."

A brown-coated fey took the place of the last one.

"Metal."

No fey appeared this time.

Instead, the gunmetal gray main body of the Fey Project showed up last.

The four elemental fey soon made a reappearance. They were initially mounted on the slots in the main body's rear.

Once the redesigned fey became activated, they detached themselves from the drone mech frame and surrounded it from four directions!

The visual image produced a striking impression!

"The five elements combined into a cohesive whole." Ves uttered in a reverent tone.

Even though the simulated image of the redesigned mech could not reproduce the powerful and complex interactions of five different variations of E energies, Ves was certain that his bold new machine would not be weak!

A mech like this shouldn't even be possible in the early stage of the Hyper Generation.

The easiest applications of hyper technology was based around harnessing the power of a single E energy attribute.

The slightly more complicated ones combined two different attributes. This introduced a lot more complications, but could usually be managed by working with complementary elements.

Design applications that utilized three or more E energy attributes in a significant capacity were much rarer, because it became exponentially more difficult to juggle them at the same time!

Ves had learned enough about cultivation science to know that combining the five classic elements was one of the most difficult but powerful accomplishments in qi cultivation!

The Beginner Five Elements Spells Manual that he had acquired from an enlightenment fruit only hinted at the endless power and potential that could be gained by fusing the five elements.

This was not a power that Ves was qualified to work with in his current state, yet he did so anyway!

The reason why he disregarded all of the warnings and broke the rules without fear was because he was utterly convinced that he could do the impossible this time!

Perhaps ordinary qi cultivators would never dare to fuse the five elements together, but this was different!

Ves wanted to create a brand new synthetic life form that innately wielded the power of the five elements!

"The inherent synergies of this amazing mech will become insanely strong! 1 just have to make sure that it doesn't blow up on the spot!"