The Mech Touch

The performance of the three Standard Fey Fianna stood out in many ways.

From the ease in which the Larkinson mech pilots controlled their four fey to how much power they were able to draw from E energy radiation, it became clear to everyone that the Fey Fiannas represented a generational change among mechs!

A lot of mech designers understood much deeper of how exceptional it was for the LMC's Design Department to make so much progress in such a short time.

It had only been a year since the Age of Dawn had begun, and only now did they managed to see a true hyper mech!

Yes, the Fey Fianna was one of the few machines that utilized hyper technology and more importantly E-technology to such an impressive extent that it had the capital to be called a true hyper mech!

lust the fact that the mech and its fey were all alive and could imitate qi cultivators to an extent was already enough to regard them as a core product of the Hyper Generation.

No matter what, after the product reveal was over, a lot more mech designers would definitely conduct a lot of investigations into living mechs.

The majority of them had no interest in changing their specializations or studying the creation of living mechs to the limit.

However, when faced with an epochal field of technology that may be just as big as space suppression technology if not more, the mech industry may not have a choice in denying its usefulness and universality anymore.

If no other technological field was able to present a viable and competitive alternative to living mechs, then there may be a time where living mechs became just as essential as hyper technology!

By that time, every mech designer would not be able to escape the necessity of grappling with living mechs.

Those who did not gain at least a basic proficiency in this strange and unorthodox field would continue to fall behind. Only those who were able to design and create comparable machines possessed the capital to be at the forefront of the mech industry.

This was what many mech designers saw as they continued to observe the current exhibition match.

Even if it was ludicrous to expect that 3 drone mechs could win a match against 12 rifleman mechs, the Fey Fiannas merely had to hold out long enough to prove their mettle.

When the former managed to resist the combined firepower of the latter while also launching counterattacks, there was no way to deny the crushing strength of the new Fey Fianna model!

Naturally, there were many subtle ways for the Larkinsons to cheat this process. From tampering with the selection of mech pilots to secretly telling them to alter their behavior, there were many ways for a mech company to produce the desired outcome of an exhibition match that it had organized themselves.

Yet would a tier 3 galactic citizen stain his honor and desecrate his professional reputation just to gain an advantage in such a trivial matter?

Even though Ves mostly acted as if he was still an independent mech designer, he was also an honorary member of the Red Association. An entire escort fleet followed him day and night to protect and monitor him at all times.

How could a 'mecher' like Ves possibly break the rules as well as the code of conduct that the Red Association held dear?

It was not a secret that the mechers possessed many flaws and shortcomings. They were only human, after all. Yet when it came to their former namesake's duties, they had always gone above and beyond in performing all of the duties of a real trade association.

Given how heavy the Red Association's presence had become in and around Phoca Arena, everything that happened during the product reveal must have received the powerful organization's implicit or explicit approval!

The obvious presence of the mechers also made people draw other conclusions, though whether they were right or wrong remained to be seen.

"How can our works possibly surpass the continual increase in potency that comes from the growth of living mechs? Professor Larkinson is practically cheating! All of the progress that living mechs are able to make is no longer the result of his direct design work. He is just sitting back while letting his mechs grow stronger by themselves! That is no longer mech design. It is more apt to call it mech husbandry."

"If the general progress of hyper technology cannot keep up with the development of living mech technology, then the latter will become an essential component in any mech design going forward. Only a few mech designers have managed to turn their design philosophies into a universal requirement in their field, and an unusually high proportion of them went on to become Star Designers."

"Professor Larkinson is playing with fire. Designing autonomous mechs that can think and act by themselves is already dangerous enough. Giving them the power to evolve and develop without any human direction or supervision makes them even more dangerous! Has he learned nothing from the AI accidents of the past? It only takes a couple of accidents for his living mechs to turn them against their own owners. These living mechs must be castrated in order to prevent such an occurrence. It would be too late to strain these crazy machines when they have spread all across our society."

Many mech designers continued to argue with others as the Fey Fianna continued to stage an impressive performance.

At this time, the energy shields of the Fey Fiannas were absorbing heavy punishment, but they stubbornly drew on a lot of E energy to increase their resilience.

The enemy ranged mechs tried their best to focus their fire in order to eliminate a Fey Fianna quickly and reduce the pressure by 33% in a single go, but the drone mechs simply covered for each other as best they could.

The rifleman mechs did the same. While they were not equipped with powerful energy shields, it still took concentrated firepower to penetrate their defenses and damage their internals.

With 12 mechs on their side, it was easy enough to shift into formations that allowed damaged mechs to shield behind more intact mechs.

However, this was not an absolute. None of the mechs excelled in defense and the constant maneuvers frequently exposed the mechs in the rear.

What ultimately decided this fight was not tactics, but how well the mechs were able to produce effective results with the limited resources at hand.

In this, the Fey Fiannas were clearly superior to the other mechs!

To the laymen among the crowd, the simplest and most intuitive way for them to discern the differences between the two sides was to compare their 'light shows'.

The mechs that glowed brighter and produced flashier illusions had to be the stronger ones!

After all, that was usually the case in all of the action dramas where the mechs piloted by the protagonists produced illusions of mythical heroes or animals before going on a killing spree against thousands of cannon fodder mechs!

The current display coincidentally produced this association among many people. What they were seeing was practically an action drama come to life!

For example, one of the Fey Fiannas had developed a penchant for rotations.

Its water hyper energy shield fey manifested its artistic conception in the form of a miniature hurricane that seemed to swallow and disperse anything that got inside.

The projectiles launched by its earth hyper gauss cannon fey seemed to turn into drills that spun much faster than they should, causing them to punch through anything they hit considerably better than usual.

The fire hyper luminar crystal rifles shot out flaming energy beams that took on the form of brief fire vortices. They happened to break through opposing water hyper energy shields much better and transfer their heat energy a bit deeper when striking armor.

Meanwhile, the main body of the mech began to produce an artistic conception of its own. It had begun to generate a much larger whirlpool that seemed to draw in vastly more water-attributed E-energy at its location!

"Everything about this Fey Fianna is spinning. It is a mech that has discovered how to exploit the power of rotations to a greater extent."

Another Fey Fianna followed a completely different tack. This one seemed to have developed an affection for humans.

Its primary artistic conception was a large human that strongly resembled its own mech pilot. It was unclear what sort of benefits it brought to the main body, but its defenses were still respectable!

Its fey differentiated themselves much more. Each of them produced their own human artistic conceptions that were aligned with their E energy attributes.

The water energy fey seemed to cope with incoming attacks by tweaking its settings and performing constant optimizations at a greater efficiency than before. It was as if the intuition and the intelligence of the operation system of the defensive fey had gained its own pilot!

The performance of the offensive fey had increased as well. While the gauss cannon fey and the luminar crystal fey did not gain that much more damage, their accuracy and their targeting had improved by a large extent.

These two fey might not hit the hardest, but they often managed to strike the opposing rifleman mechs where it hurt the most!

Boom!

Fzzzz!

Two rifleman mechs suddenly lost power and threatened to crash onto the arena ground if the safety systems hadn't come online and cushioned their sudden descent!

The firepower directed towards the three Fey Fiannas had dropped considerably, enabling them to endure the incoming attacks a bit longer.

This reprieve was all thanks to the odd Fey Fianna that had chosen humans as its artistic conception!

The third Fey Fianna adopted the most striking artistic conception of its team.

"What is that?"

"Is that... a phase whale?"

"No. Phase whales can come in many different shapes and sizes, but they still conform to a number of rules. These aquatic beasts resemble phase whales, but there are obvious signs of hybridization."

The third Fey Fianna took advantage of the connection between its space suppressor fey and the Phase King and tried to imitate the race of the latter.

By creating multiple artistic conceptions based on fish-whales, this Fey Fianna managed to gain several notable advantages.

The first was that it became easier to borrow the power of the Phase King!

Unfortunately, the Phase King's ability to exert its power was limited when there wasn't any phasewater present, or else it could have empowered the Fey Fiannas a bit more.

Even so, just a fraction of his power was already enough to strengthen the drone mech's performance.

The energy shield fey gained the ability to imbue its energy shield with a faint spatial barrier.

Though the effect was so weak that it could not replicate the defenses of a transphasic energy shield, the small change was already enough to increase the longevity of its defense.

The two offensive fey meanwhile did not necessarily inflict more damage, but managed to perform more penetrating attacks, thereby showing that their fish-whale artistic conceptions were not decorations.

"Impressive."

There was no order or standardization to these artistic conceptions. Ves and the Larkinsons allowed their living mechs to do whatever they wanted, mostly because they did not have a proscribed formula that could guide the living mechs towards the best outcomes.

Experimentation was essential to fleshing out the power system of his living mechs!

Though all of these artistic conceptions looked gimmicky, inconsistent and unreliable, their effects were undeniable.

Even the skeptics had to admit that these odd methods enabled every living mech to absorb and utilize E energy much better than mechs that could only manipulate E energy through fixed design structures.

This was the essential difference between living mechs and lifeless mechs!

The former could effectively imitate the power of a qi cultivator, while the latter could only rigidly harness E energy through the hyper design solutions embedded in their mech frames.

To Ves, this was comparable to the most fundamental difference between a high-level artifact and a low-level artifact!