The Mech Touch

Ves had many reasons to be happy as of late.

The surprise gift of heavenly gems did much to improve his mood. Together with all of his other gains thus far, he had made a lot of gains during his work visit to Bortele III.

He was not even done yet with this planet!

He still awaited a response from the Rubarthans about a big investment deal, and Alexa was almost done with recruiting a new batch of ambitious second-class Journeyman Mech Designers.

With only a couple of days to go before he intended to return to the New Constantinople System, Ves tried to make the best of his situation by meeting with all kinds of people.

None of the deals he struck came close to the scale and significance of becoming a partial owner to a massive Rubarthan mech manufacturer, but they still represented progress in their own ways.

Ves knew better than to put all of his eggs in a single basket.

Capturing a heavy chunk of Isthmus Manufacturing would definitely enrich him and his clan to a huge extent, but losing it for whatever reason would deal a serious blow to the Larkinsons!

Ves could not allow his clan to become overly dependent on just a single source of income and production.

The Living Mech Corporation still needed to do the difficult and tedious work of establishing new partnerships with material suppliers and setting up more manufacturing complexes so that his mech company could still stand on its own feet if necessary.

More importantly, all of the wealth granted by earning dividends from so much stock could easily dominate his clan and his life to the point where they went astray and lost their original values!

Aside from meeting with the representatives of various upstream companies to ensure that the Larkinson Clan gained more access to scarce and precious raw materials, he also met with a number of Master Mech Designers.

Ves was always on the lookout to conduct productive exchanges. Every high-ranking mech designer accumulated a lot of special knowledge and ingenious tricks that could not easily be found in textbooks.

One of the most notable discussions he held during this time was with one of his prior challengers.

Master Ginevra Hubert-Colmain happened to be the only challenger out of the four who beat his Fey Fianna in a challenge match.

Her Montebra GHCMQ.-3 was a second-class hyper lancer mech that clearly leveraged the power of hyper technology to gain access to a dramatic new feature related to electromagnetism!

When Ves obtained the Electric Roar heavenly gem a short time ago, he initially thought about pairing it up with one of Ketis' Storm Swords.

The quasi-first-class transphasic hyper swordsman mech made use of an upgraded version of stormblade technology that promised to exert a massive degree of pressure against any shielded targets!

In fact, the Storm Sword model had the potential to turn into a nemesis for any enemy unit that heavily relied on energy shields and electronics in order to function!

An expert mech version of such a powerful machine would fare much better in the battlefields of today than many other high-ranking mechs!

Yet... when Ves recalled how the two Montebras were able to lock onto two opponents from a fair distance and successfully close in on them by relying on magnetic attraction, he felt it might be even better to apply his new gem to such a machine.

Ginevra's attainments in both conventional and exotic energy types were so great that she could undoubtedly make much better use of the Electrical Roar gem than Ves!

He had no intention of revealing such a powerful treasure to a relative stranger, but that did not mean he could explore the possibility of collaborating with her on developing a powerful new living mech that could leverage the power of electromagnetism like a domain shaper in advance!

Neither of the two mech designers were in a hurry, though. Both Ves and Master Ginevra possessed a lot of unique insights that could massively benefit the other party.

This formed the basis of a fruitful and mutually beneficial exchange. They spent an entire hour on trading useful tips and pieces of knowledge.

There was a definite sense of reciprocity in their words. Each of them revealed a part of their secrets in the hopes of gaining a secret of equal value in return.

As Ves enlightened Master Ginevra to the wonders of living mechs, design spirits and glows, the older woman rapturously listened and learned from the much younger mech designer.

She even developed her own insights based on all of the clues that she obtained.

"The key variable that binds all of your living mechs together is the so-called 'spirit' or 'soul'." The stately gray-haired lady noted with keen understanding in her eyes. "I agree with your claim that every human, alien, living mech or other sentient life form possesses an intangible spirit comprised out of E energy that forms the basis of their sapience. I have made my own independent observations of these spirits, but I do not have the capacity to create them or exploit them as extensively as you. That is part of your exceptional talent."

Ves grew more interested when the Master addressed this topic.

"Do you have any observations about spirits that you are willing to share?"

"I have developed my theories, but it remains to be seen whether they can be substantiated. What is relevant to you is that the existence of spirits and their importance to all life means that they can be targeted or manipulated. How easy is it for you to harm the spirits of other life forms directly?"

That was a rather sensitive question to answer, but Ves decided to provide a somewhat truthful answer.

"Mrow."

Blinky briefly appeared and generated a wisp of death energy before presenting it to Master Ginevra.

The quantity of death energy could pose a certain threat to human infants, but it was far from lethal enough to pose a serious threat against a Master Mech Designer.

Ginevra Hubert-Colmain did not even need to whip out a special scanner or anything. One of her eyeballs glowed brightly. It turned out that she had implanted herself with a high-tech cybernetic eye that could observe many different energy types!

After a dozen seconds of observation, she cautiously extended her hand and experienced the effect of death energy in a more physical manner. The brief moment of contact did not cause the Master Mech Designer any damage, but she still experienced a degree of discomfort.

"Remarkable. This negative form of E energy possesses a range of interesting properties. Is this the basis of your clan's famous battle formation attacks?"

The Penitent Sisters and the Glory Seekers had pulled off their characteristic battle formations often enough for the secret to become exposed.

The more Ves attracted attention, the more people scrutinized his past. It shouldn't be a surprise that these incessant investigators managed to acquire footage of the Valkyrie mechs channeling the power of Helena or the Superior Mother.

"That is correct, Master. This is death-attributed E energy. It can bypass all material defenses as if they do not exist and directly snuff out the spirits of life forms depending on their strength. It is a remarkably effective way to depopulate entire starships."

"Energy such as this should normally be anathema to all forms of life, but it is clear that you and several 'design spirits' are able to handle it without suffering harm. This is an interesting contradiction that I would love to explore if I am not already preoccupied with my own existing research projects. What I would like to point out is that you have been making heavy usage of spirits for many years, yet still do not comprehend them on a deeper level."

Ves frowned a bit. "You are talking about studying the fundamental principles of sentient life. This is way too big of a research project for a single Senior Mech Designer like myself. My goal is to design better mechs. It isn't necessary for me to crack all of the secrets that make life possible."

"I am not encouraging you to undertake this study straight away." Master Ginevra responded. "I am bringing this subject up to you in advance so that you have a clear understanding of what you will need to study next once you have reached a bottleneck in your progress. I anticipate that there may come a time where you can no longer advance any further unless you truly understand the essence of life. The secrets that you can obtain from this research may even form the basis of your subsequent ascension to Star Designer."

She was likely right. Ves smelled another grand design from this incredibly fascinating subject. That was also why he thought it was far too premature for him to engage in this deep and profound research direction.

His creation and exploitation of spirits may be relatively shallow, but he could already do much with his existing capabilities. Ves did not have an urgent desire to deepen his manipulation of life. It was much better to figure out how he could squeeze more value at his current level.

Minutes later, the conversation took a different turn. Ves began to inquire about how Master Ginevra managed to convert E energy into conventional electrical energy and vice versa.

The woman adopted a more confident demeanor. "This is not a difficult feat as long as your understanding of energy and many of its forms has advanced to a sufficient degree. There are many physicists that adhere to the theory that everything is an expression of energy."

"I am familiar with the theory. I happen to believe in it myself." Ves said.

His spiritual engineering endeavors taught him that there was not that much of a difference between spiritual energy and spiritual matter. The differences between the two were much less, making it easy for him to switch between one or the other.

Yet that was not what Master Ginevra wanted to teach.

"Even solid matter is merely a form of energy that has taken on a special form or state that causes them to be solidified. This is why it is not that difficult to convert matter into energy. What is important is that easy conversion also applies to many different exotic energies. They may possess radically different properties that do not share much in common with more mundane energy types, but they are actually two sides of the same coin. As long as you can identify and act on the commonalities between electrical energy and E energy, you can make the conversion yourself."

She made it sound easy, but was that truly the case?

"Have other mech designers managed to accomplish similar feats?"

The older woman nodded. "Yes, but few of their results are as good as mine. Energy specialists are capable of developing simple devices that can perform this transformation in either direction, but the efficiency and other parameters are too low. Mine is much better because I excel in transforming one energy type into another energy type. However, the ability to generate a large quantity of E energy means little if a mech cannot adequately make use of it. My applications are admittedly much cruder than yours."

"This is why I propose a collaboration between us." Ves eagerly said. "Your mechs can harness so much additional power that the potential is insane. We do not have to start a new mech design project from scratch. I am pretty sure that I can take your existing Montebra mech design and refine it to the point where it will no longer waste all of the excess E energy that your lancer mech is leaking like a sieve."

Master Ginevra did not immediately respond to that. She instead took the time to properly assess whether it made sense for her to collaborate with this young Senior on a mech design.