The Mech Touch

"Meeoow... meoooowww..."

Lucky looked like he had been utterly drained. The damaged gem cat hadn't been in good shape to begin with, but his latest effort impacted him to such an extent that he soon gave in to exhaustion.

Ves on the other hand became more energized than ever!

All of the excitement that happened in the past did not wear him down in the slightest.

Though he managed to accumulate quite a sum of remarkable gems, it was always useful to have more. This was especially the case when he had grown powerful enough to exploit Lucky's gems in more varied ways than embedding them into a mech.

Now that the Larkinson Army had grown into a large and powerful second-class mech force, Ves no longer became so dependent on the power boosts of his gems.

He also discovered that the boosts provided by his gems were comparable to the domains formed by ace pilots and other domain shapers. This meant that there was a high likelihood that he would just waste these precious treasures if he embedded them into an existing ace mech.

The best destination for these gems were newly fabricated mechs dedicated to expert pilots or champions who had yet to find their way.

As long as the properties of the gems matched their inclinations, the young but talented mech pilots not only gained a crucial boost of power, but could also comprehend the principles of the effects bestowed by the gems.

Once these mech pilots successfully advanced to the rank of ace pilot, their domains would perfectly synchronize with the inherent properties of their gem-boosted mechs, thereby allowing them to gain a huge head-start in integrating them further!

"If my suspicions are correct, a deeper synchronization of domains might actually help these pilots complete the second phase of the Mech Body Merger Process one day!

Of course, that was so far away in the future that there was little point in thinking about it now. A lot of accidents and complications could happen in between. The Red War became more intense every day, so the battles in the years ahead were bound to cause more serious casualties.

Not even Ves could guarantee that the Larkinson Clan's current batch of high-ranking mech pilots would successfully reach their ultimate bottlenecks!

This was why it became more important than ever for the clan to continually produce new expert pilots.

The greater the quantity of high-ranking mech pilots, the higher the chance that a handful of them would successfully overcome all odds and reach the third major cultivation rank!

Ves snorted. "I'm thinking like a mecher now. Everything has become a game of numbers nowadays."

He did not really like this mindset. It encouraged him to think of his subordinates as cannon fodder rather than members of his own family.

Alas, this was how the game was played. Ves did not possess the power to flip the table and impose a new order. He could only adapt to the current reality and hope to grow strong enough to have a real voice one day.

Ves finally turned his attention to his precious gems. He placed them on his desk and spaced them out so that they stood out more.

Before he examined them in detail, he could already tell that this new batch of gems were undeniably different from the previous ones.

The gems that Lucky excreted in the past were akin to solid crystals. They were so solid and closed that nothing could go in or out. Ves now deduced that this was primarily done to prevent whatever was inside from spilling out until they became completely drained.

That made the current batch of gems more remarkable. As Blinky cautiously examined the spiritual activity around the gems, he discovered that the exterior of every gem had actually become semi-permeable.

It was as if every gem had become surrounded by dozens of tiny one-way ports that allowed spiritual energy to seep into the center of the gem without allowing any of it to spill out again!

Though the change in the design clearly made the gems a little bit more fragile, the ability to absorb E energy radiation had massive implications!

"These gems are a lot different." Ves noted with increasing amazement. "Perhaps... they can even grow over time."

At the very least, Ves suspected that these gems possessed the inherent ability to interact with the power of heaven!

"It turns out that Lucky is not only able to evolve his body, but he can also evolve his output."

This was such a significant improvement that the three new gems already deserved their own classification, as they may possess even greater properties that Ves had yet to discover!

"I'll call you heavenly gems."

Ves had encountered a number of odd gems. The unstable chaos essences and the more recent batch of archmetal gems all aroused his curiosity.

However, this was the first time that he encountered gems that had fully adapted to a medium-energy environment!

"Let's see what you can do." Ves began to grin as he cautiously picked up the flashiest gem.

It had attracted his attention from the very beginning. It was a large heart-shaped gem that possessed an internal glow that intermittently cycled between green, red, yellow, silver and blue.

His blood pumped harder in his true body as he already had a very good guess of what this heavenly gem contained.

[Heart of the Five Brothers]

The yearning of life from five innocent souls is encapsulated in this gem. Grants an inherent authority that greatly increases speed and efficiency of transforming the power of wood, fire, earth, metal and water into other phases.

ii ti ...

Ves fell silent as a lot of old wounds opened up all of a sudden. The heavy failure that took place on New Constantinople VIII occupied the center of his attention once again!

With the knowledge that he possessed today, he felt incredibly shamed by how stupid and ignorant he was back then.

Inspiration had driven him to bring the Elemental lord to life, but his overambitious work suffered from its creator's lack of understanding.

The Elemental Lord had already been condemned to death from the moment he conceived of this ambitious idea!

Ves vowed to never repeat such a painful blunder again. Even if he entered into a powerful inspired state in the future, he needed to remind himself of this agonizing failure in order to rein in his unbridled creativity.

He previously thought that he had paid an extremely heavy price for his avoidable failure. The guilt of killing his own 'child' weighed so heavily on him that he had entered into a slump that only disappeared once he went on vacation.

This was why he suddenly felt delighted to see that at least a modest remnant of the five brothers had managed to survive the calamity that disintegrated the Elemental Lord!

"It appears that even lighting tribulations can be fooled."

Nothing was absolute. Everything had exploits.

Lucky was somehow able to smuggle out a piece of the Elemental Lord before the extraordinary five element mechs collapsed into ash without catching the attention of a ruthless heavenly authority.

Ves really wanted to cut open his gem cat and see how Lucky actually worked!

"Ahem."

He carefully put the precious heavenly gem into his pouch. He had no ideas about using the gem in any of his products for the time being.

Now that he had a chance, however small, to redo the creation of the Elemental Lord, he needed to do the utmost to raise the chance of success as high as possible.

If he wanted to bring the mech that he had envisioned into a proper form of existence, he needed to make extensive preparations!

Ves had learned his lesson.

He promised to himself that he would not think about giving the Elemental Lord a second chance at life until he thoroughly mastered the five classical elements.

He also needed to work on his fundamentals and improve mech design capabilities well enough for his work to withstand a multi-modal 81 strikes lightning tribulation.

"Let's see what else I have gained."

He picked up the second heavenly gem and actually felt as if he was holding a miniature power reactor. There was so much electric potential inside this gem that it could produce a remarkably powerful explosion if he converted it into a bomb!

[Electric Roar]

The final roar of a great beast is locked inside this gem. Increases the electrical damage output of a mech by up to 200 percent.

Ves started to frown.

He did not think the heavenly gem was weak. A 200 percent boost was massive.

The issue he had with the gem was that its amplification was extremely specific. Ves had encountered gems like that before. There appeared to be an inherent tradeoff between potency and applicability.

The Electric Roar gem clearly leaned much more towards the former than the latter.

If his guess was correct, then the gem was unable to increase the output of the power reactor of a mech.

That would have been extraordinarily useful for a high-end first-class multipurpose mech!

Those powerful machines depended so much on power output that its cost even started to rival the cost of their armor systems!

If a single gem was able to make it so that they could channel three times as much energy than before, then that could boost the power of any energy weapon platform to a ridiculous extent!

Alas, the heavenly gem's effect restricted itself to amplifying the power of direct electrical attacks.

"This should be an incredibly suitable gem for one of Ketis' new Storm Sword mechs." Ves concluded.

Ketis actually had more experience with electrical weapons. Stormblade technology continued to be useful as it was one of the many technical applications that received a substantial boost in the Age of Dawn.

The rise of hyper technology enabled stormblade weapons to become even more powerful than before. Their ability to destabilize and overload energy shields had become even more crucial now that melee mechs experienced a revival in the Hyper Generation!

A rising expert pilot that broke through while piloting the Stormblade Samurai or the Storm Sword would definitely have the potential to become a veritable storm lord once his expert mech became embedded with the Electric Roar!

"This should be a nice birthday gift for my former student." Ves ultimately smiled in satisfaction before stowing the prickly gem away.

"Now, onto the last one."

This gem looked more ominous than the other two. It was pitch black but its center sparked with occasional flashes of white light.

[Final Sacrifice]

The sacrificial intent of a true ideologue is contained within this gem. When fully charged, it allows a mech to generate a large weapon construct that can fire a single full-powered energy attack that can bypass all energy barriers and disintegrate all matter.

This was yet another heavenly gem that clearly shared a relation of the previous assassination attempt.

Though Ves loathed Master Xieliq Quan for betraying his trust as well as his own race, the old man at least provided compensation in the form of giving Lucky the 'ingredients' he needed to produce these powerful gems!

Ves briefly questioned how Lucky was able to produce a heavenly gem like this only a day after near-traumatic event, but he quickly set this puzzle aside in favor of determining the power of the Final Sacrifice gem.

"The description is too vague." He scowled.

The effect of this heavenly gem was completely novel. Ves had never encountered a gem that could allow a mech to manifest a powerful weapon out of energy and use it to launch an incredibly exotic attack.

It certainly saved Ves the trouble of obtaining and mastering molecular disintegration technology, but that might not necessarily be a good development.

"If I want to bestow a mech with the power to disintegrate elements, then I need to do a proper job instead of resorting to a shortcut."

Still, there were many possible uses for this highly promising heavenly gem. The idea he came up with was to embed it onto a melee mech.

If the heavenly gem was accurately able to recreate the astounding sacrificial attack of the Dustweaver, then the damage potential was insane, especially against shielded targets!