The Mech Touch

Ves became so obsessed with designing a set of powerful water fey that he neglected to leave his design lab for several days.

This was abnormal as he had just arrived on an entirely new planet!

He originally planned to tour the most prominent sites of Bortele III. So many mech forces stopped by the port system that the place had become livelier than Davute.

At the very least, he wanted to stop by the local branches of the Larkinson Clan, the LMC, the Open Consortium and the Creation Association.

However, he threw most of these appointments out of the window when he became determined to add a lot of extra oomph to his living fey.

The challenge of defeating one of the dominant mech lines in the market compelled him to work as hard as possible!

Many people regretted the fact that they would not be able to meet with the famous patriarch of the Larkinson Clan, but there were also a lot of other people who felt relieved that he remained out of sight.

The less he moved around, the easier it became for the mechers to defend his life!

Ves received occasional reports about additional protectors dispatched by the Red Association.

Even the entire venue where he planned to conduct his product reveal came under special protection.

All of this did not bother Ves too much. He had firm goals in mind and felt driven to complete them now that he had recovered from his most recent failure.

The water fey was all done. Ves had just fabricated a few batches of them after spending a day in the mech workshop. Since they were not as big as mechs, it did not take a lot of time and effort to bring them into existence.

The only issue was that the mech pilots as well as the living mechs needed to spend precious time to get accustomed to their quirks.

The new fey came with additional complications which made it a bit more troublesome to utilize them at their full capacity.

Still, now that Ves had managed to complete this essential chore, he had enough time to focus on other priorities.

"Gavin?"

"Yes, boss?"

"Please purchase a dozen or so used mechs from the second-hand mech market. You can pick and choose whatever you like so long as they are not LMC mechs."

His assistant furrowed his brows. "That is an open-ended request. Bortele III has a thriving market for second-hand and even third-hand mechs. Can you narrow your criteria further so that I have a better idea what I should buy?"

"I want to study how constant exposure to E energy radiation has changed them. I don't need lots of samples, so a dozen is already enough. I don't care about their mech types, quality, features and price levels. What I do care about is how long they have been used. Try and purchase mechs that have been in constant use for over a decade or further. Make sure that they have also been piloted for at least several months during the Age of Dawn. The older the mech, the more I can gain from my observations. Is that clear, Gavin?"

His assistant vaguely figured out what Ves wanted to look for. The dutiful man nodded in understanding.

"Don't worry. Many mechs that tend to be older than one or two decades usually consist of guard machines that have rarely seen any actual use, but there are always exceptions. I will make sure to buy the oldest available machines that are still intact. Most people usually recycle them as they are pretty much worthless after suffering so much wear-and-tear, but maybe there are a few weirdos who can't let their precious machines get ripped apart in order to recover their materials."

"Just make it happen. The sooner you bring those mechs back, the sooner I can complete my research." Ves said. "Don't worry about putting them to use. 1 have no intention to field them or anything. We can send them to the recyclers once I have completed my examination."

"That will make my search easier."

Just as promised, it only took Gavin and his team a few hours to quickly scrounge up a small collection of used mechs from the second-hand mech market.

It turned out that a lot of established mech forces dumped their lastgen mechs in order to free up room for their shiny new hyper mechs.

While there were many forces that were willing to wait a few months to upgrade their existing mechs to an updated version, not every group was willing to take this route.

With the introduction of the Hyper Generation, the second-class mech market had become filled with models that belonged to the Phasewater Generation or even older!

The conditions of these mechs were actually pretty good for the most part. Even the shabbier machines got patched up in order to restore their fighting condition. This was because their owners all expected to make use of them for many more years.

The start of the Age of Dawn had changed everything, so all of these decent and serviceable mechs of the Phasewater Generation suddenly turned into unwanted foster children.

"You won't believe how many of them have been piling up inside the warehouses." Gavin said as the recently purchased mechs were being shipped into an underground hangar of branch headquarters of the Larkinson Clan. "Tens of thousands of them have been put on sale. An even greater quantity of mechs have been sent straight to the recycling companies, who are enjoying a massive boom in business by the way. It was easy for us to pick out the oldest and most used machines among the extensive collections of intact castoffs."

Ves couldn't help but feel uncomfortable about this. This sort of treatment fully reflected the prevailing attitude. Most people generally treated mechs as objects, commodities or disposable assets.

Once they had outlived their immediate usefulness, their owners had no qualms about selling them off or scrapping for parts and materials!

"Did you happen to see a lot of LMC mechs among those heaps?"

"Surprisingly, no." Gavin smiled. "Our living mechs all have glows and other functions that are irreplaceable, at least for now. There is no substitute for the Pacifier line for example. Our existing products have all undergone a lot of growth. They not only became more useful, but also developed strong emotional bonds with their mech pilots. No one is willing to phase them out so easily. Many of them are still waiting for our clan to upgrade their models into hyper mechs."

"I know. I won't make them wait too long. It is good that these customers are willing to stick to their old machines and wait to upgrade them into more modern incarnations. They will fully be able to retain their growth progress if that is the case."

As far as Ves was concerned, this should happen a lot more. He still had a lot of work to do in order to turn this ideal into a universal standard.

Ves continued to ask about Gavin's observations when he went out to buy the used mechs.

Alexa Streon arrived a few minutes later.

"I heard that you were looking to examine a number of old mechs. Is this related to your design philosophy, professor?"

"It is." Ves admitted and started to stride forward. "Come with me. Let's take a look at them. That reminds me, you should be close to choosing your own design philosophy, right? Has your extra duties delayed you in taking this crucial step?"

"It is fine, sir. I do not mind it if I can take my time. I have continued to gather more insights from your work. The more I know about living mechs, the more certainty I will gain once I have set my course. It is better to embark on mech design with a clearer understanding of what lies ahead."

She was right. Ves was on his own when it came to developing living mechs. This was the downside of becoming the pioneer of an unexplored field.

They eventually stopped in front of a worn and weather-beaten landbound hybrid mech. It used to feature bright yellow coating, but it had suffered so much neglect that it had dulled to the point where it had partially worn away.

Gavin proceeded to introduce the machine.

"This is one of the oldest mechs that we managed to pick up from the used market. It is a 15 year old mech that is originally based on a model called the Balsem Indigo RIX-76P. It has swapped between four different owners according to its logs, and has been used by 9 different pilots over the course of its existence. It was already outdated during the Phasewater Generation, but it is still a cheap and useful mech when used to defend vulnerable colonies against exobeasts and enemy raids. It has seen infrequent action over the years, and has been repaired and modified too many times to count. The only reason why it has still remained in use for so long was because it has been continually upgraded by many different mech designers."

The Balsem Indigo was a mess.

It originally started out as a normal production copy, but gradually turned into a frankenstein mech.

Ves did not need to read a log in order to perceive the history of this old machine.

Its limbs got blown off multiple times. This was a machine that experienced more than its fair share of battles over the course of its life.

Its inferior parts got replaced by superior ones, which in turn got replaced again when newer parts became available.

Old tech occasionally made way for newer tech, but this did not apply to every mech system. Its weapon systems got replaced most often while much of its internals remained as old as the mech itself.

The Balsem Indigo also retained the echo and imprints of multiple mech pilots. Strangely enough, Ves could only clearly perceive 6 of them. This meant that the remaining three had spent so little time with it that they never managed to influence the machine.

All of these events and more formed a living tapestry that defined the life and history of a simple landbound hybrid mech!

It was beautiful.

"What do you think about this mech, Alexa?" Ves asked as he entered his teaching guise again. "Is it a simple rustbucket, or does it hold greater value than what is obvious on the surface?"

The woman did not answer immediately. She instead sent out Maia in order to study the spirituality of the Balsem Indigo.

"Myah."

"I... am not entirely certain whether it holds greater value, but... I think it is alive." Alexa eventually replied. "I do not mean that in the conventional sense. This mech isn't close to matching the liveliness of your living mechs or even that of the Monster Slayer. It is... much less developed. It is like a mouse to a human. How can this mech be alive in the first place? Has it spontaneously gained life after being bombarded by E Energy radiation?"

Ves nodded. "I think that is an important contributing factor to its current state. In the past, I would have told you that this mech has developed an X-Factor due to being shaped by the minds of mech pilots over a long stretch of time. Normally, that would have been the end of this story, as the concept of X-Factor is so vague and difficult to determine that most people simply don't think it exists in the first place."

"That has obviously changed. The Age of Dawn has rewritten the rules."

"That is apparently the case." Ves agreed. "My theory is that mechs with X-Factor can gradually evolve into proto-living mechs after being exposed to E energy radiation for a long stretch of time. While they haven't met the standard of first order living mechs, I am afraid that it may be possible for other mech designers to detect this properly and improve it through their own means."

Both Alexa and Gavin looked shocked as they realized the implications of this statement!

"Does that mean... your living mech monopoly is about to end?"