The Mech Touch

The first day of hunting passed without any further incidents.

Though Ves did not want to occupy his mind with work during his hunting trips, he had gone back on this decision, but for good reasons.

He couldn't help himself. Each time he gained inspiration, he entered into a more active state of mind. He felt compelled to work out his ideas on the spot!

Swapping ideas with Helena enabled Ves to develop a thorough blueprint for a promising new design solution.

Ves could not wait to design mechs that incorporated his latest idea!

So long as it worked out according to his intentions, his future living mechs would be able to grow at a much more rapid pace!

The best part about all of this was that wars and other active conflicts enabled his living mechs to grow faster.

While this dynamic already existed among herbivorous mechs, this was mostly because the mech pilots gained new experiences and made new realizations in battle.

This additional growth component would largely be fueled by living mechs, but it was not impossible for mech pilots to benefit as well.

After all, the man-machine connection caused the lines between the two to blur. The feedback generated by killing others might bleed over to the mech pilot as well, thereby increasing his chances of breaking through!

If this was the case, then the benefits of adding a 'killing module' were much greater than he initially assumed!

It was difficult for him to flesh out this thought experiment further. He needed to work it out and test it in reality before he could make any definite conclusions.

This was why Ves decided to put this matter to the side for the time being. There was plenty of time for him to resume his work on this idea once his vacation was over.

Ves spent the rest of his stay in the Hanlin #6 Hunting Ground while accompanying his children.

Each of their mentalities experienced a considerable degree of growth after they had harvested the lives of other organisms.

In the past, they always treated other humans and animals with respect. Their growth environment had immersed them with peace and harmony for so long that they had no understanding of the savagery that existed beyond their safe and comfortable bubbels.

Though the current hunting ground was far from matching the cruelty of the real cosmos, it had offered enough opportunities for the children to mature in different ways.

A part of Ves felt guilty about depriving them of their youthful innocence so soon, but he convinced himself it was for their own good.

He especially found it difficult for Marvaine to claim his first kill.

From the moment he pulled the trigger of his cute little rifle, the death of a furry jumping mammal had become seared in his mind!

Marvaine even dropped his weapon when he directly experienced the passing of life through the companion spirit that he attached to his bullet.

"Meow!"

"I'm scared! Where is mama? I want mama!"

"Miaow!"

Clixie immediately ran over to the young boy just as he started to tear up and tried to comfort him, only to no avail.

Ves soon arrived and lifted Marvaine up in his arms just as he began to cry.

"There there. It is alright, my son. It is always scariest at first.You will get used to it the more you do it. Once you do, you will be able to grow into a man that is just as strong and smart as me! Doesn't that sound like a dream come true?"

It did not take long for Marvaine to calm down and return to his happy self. He even went back to hunting a few prey near the end of their hunting trip.

By the time they returned to their hotel in Tixe City, all his children had become satisfied with what they accomplished.

"Do you want to eat the exobeasts you killed? I can send them off to a restaurant where the meat will be processed and turned into edible food." Ves proposed.

"No!"

"Eeew!"

"I don't want to eat that nasty meat!"

Their father shrugged. "Okay, then."

The next day, Ves decided to bring his children to the Gesora #12 Hunting Ground.

Different from #6, #12 encompassed a large body of water. Only a small part of this territory consisted of shorelines and wet marshes. The rest consisted of an ocean and offered a rich diversity of alien fish and other underwater life forms.

One of the common traits of many fish in the Gesora #12 Hunting Ground was that many of them were colorful.

That turned this patch of water into a popular fishing and diving destination. A lot of visitors traveled to this place in order to introduce their children to fishing.

Ves and his family boarded a seafaring boat that was especially prepared for them and sailed away from the shoreline.

Once they reached a suitable location, his children curiously held their fishing poles and followed a tutorial on how to get started.

To be honest, Ves had never fished in his life, so he had little to teach to his children. He could only let the helpful AI embedded in the boat tell his children on how to fish with the right setup and techniques.

Fortunately, the alien fish were not that difficult to catch, especially when the fishing lines attracted their attention with the right lures!

"I caught one! I caught one!" Marvaine said as his fishing pole threatened to jerk out of his hands.

"Ohhh, ooh! Let me help, 111 bro!"

With Andraste coming over, they quickly managed to lift up a flat red-scaled fish that possessed a handful of beautiful glowing scales.

"So pretty! Why do these scales glow?"

"I don't know, but the fish is jumping on the dock! We need to kill it quickly!"

"Miaow!"

Clixie quickly jumped over and put the flopping red flesh out of its misery with a single claw swipe through its head.

"Good job, Marvaine." Ves stepped forward and gave his son a reassuring pat on the shoulder. "I am proud of you for catching your first fish. If you want, we can process it and grill it over a fire."

"Uhm, no thanks. Can I have those glowing scales? They look so nice. I can use them to decorate my Mekanos."

"Hm, sure. Lucky, you heard what he said. Get to work."

"Meoooow!"

It took a while for Aurelia and Andraste to catch their own fish as well. Their buckets soon started to fill up as they continued to catch one stinky alien fish after another.

As Marvaine cast his line a short distance away, he looked at his father in confusion.

"Why are you not fishing with us, papa?"

"I want to experiment a bit. There is no better place to do this than when I am surrounded by water." Ves responded.

The Oceancaller had become a fixed addition to his standard loadout. Though it was annoying to carry such a long object on his person all of the time, it was the best way for him to increase his intimacy with the high-level artifact.

Ves had stuffed into the Vault of Eternity in the past, but that quickly caused the Oceancaller to convey a lot of dislike when he next pulled out the flute!

That little incident had taught him a lesson about how he should treat his living artifacts.

In any case, Ves had never utilized his flute in such a water-heavy environment before.

He could already feel he could accomplish a lot more with his fancy flute than before.

This was not just because the environment was richer in water energy.

It was due to the conceptual changes of entering an ocean environment.

A lot of this stuff was mainly relevant to qi cultivators, so Ves did not think too hard on this. All that mattered was that the Oceancaller had entered an environment that resonated with its very existence.

Ves carefully put his lips over the hole and started to play a single soft note.

The water energies surrounding the entire boat shifted.

A small wave had formed that slowly blended into the other waves of the ocean.

"Good."

Ves knew what he was capable of when he played that note. This time was different because he felt a lot more in tune with all of the surrounding water.

He was able to accomplish more with less. Not only that, but he found that he was starting to gain insights with greater ease than before!

It had been the right decision for him to come out here!

After playing a few more notes, Ves confirmed that he was still able to maintain control over the Oceancaller.

Though Ves had the sense that the flute eagerly wanted to summon the largest possible tsunami and engulf the entire shoreline of the Melrose Continent with humongous waves, there was no way he would turn this into a reality!

He kept his notes soft and stuck to playing simple and repetitive tunes.

As he played his flute, he closed his eyes and tried to deepen his connection with the surrounding ocean and water-attributed E energy.

Ves did do this aimlessly. He had a definite purpose in mind when he decided to practice with his Oceancaller.

The flute and its 360 runes possessed a lot of associations with many different water attributes.

Ves wanted to take advantage of this by familiarizing himself with one of the lower concepts of water.

There was no need for Ves to develop comprehension in all of them. It was enough for him to explore the ones that were more accessible and useful in his mech designs.

With that in mind, he ignored the other water attributes as best he could in favor of concentrating on just a single expression of water.

"Fluidity."

Water did not always exist in a liquid form, but this was the most common way to visualize it. The concept of fluidity had always been strongly associated with this element. Ves was easily able to get in touch with it by relying on the amplification granted by the Oceancaller.

Just holding the flute was enough to expand his sensitivity by an order of magnitude!

As Ves continued to play different notes, he continued to stir the waters of the oceans in several subtle ways.

Each change induced by his note playing caused the ocean water to express its fluidity in different ways.

Ves began to learn more about the fluid nature of water.

Though his progress was not fast, he was satisfied with this pace.

He only needed to gain enough understanding of the concept of fluidity to apply it into his own mech designs.

The reason why Ves wanted to understand fluidity first was because he had an ambitious plan in mind.

He wanted to design a mech that could pose a formidable threat against alien warships by taking advantage of hyper technology and E-technology that applied this concept in a practical manner!

He already had a few offensive and defensive mech ideas in mind, but he did not intend to go any further until he had developed enough of an understanding of this concept and possibly other ones.

It wasn't quite as good as comprehending the concept of water in its entirety, but it would take way too long for him to apply his gains into his mech designs.

"Perhaps I should spend a bit of time on increasing my comprehension of waves."

This was one of the core concepts of the Oceancaller. Ves did not think he could unlock the flute's greater potential if he did not develop a greater understanding of the power of waves!

However, Ves did not dare to play any songs that could promote the buildup of waves.

The original Oceancaller primarily served as a tool for mass destruction. Summoning world-ending tsunamis was the most proper way to utilize its power!