The Mech Touch

The birth of the Golden Cat was the true climax of this founding ceremony!

The successful fusion of so many disparate spiritual elements led to the creation of a spiritual form of life that embodied all of their influences.

The importance of this moment couldn't be overstated. Not only did Ves create his most complex and sophisticated spiritual product to date, the outcome also served to transform the Larkinson Clan into a real entity!

The Golden Cat was much more different than any spiritual product he brought to life in the past!

Unlike Vescas, the Solemn Guardian and Bravo, The Golden Cat did not exist without a root.

Instead, from the moment of its birth, it possessed a strong and intricate tie to the Larkinson Mandate. The Golden Cat was born in its P-stone-infused materials and would continue to reside here unless Ves made other arrangements.

The Golden Cat's nature was strongly tied to the Larkinson line, and so was the Larkinson Mandate. The two not only matched each other perfectly, but also complemented each other's strengths!

Without the Golden Cat, the Larkinson Mandate would largely exist as a symbolic relic. Though it still retained a lot of value in this role, it didn't convey any direct power! Symbolism on its own was just as useless as honor and reputation in a battle or crisis situation!

Without the Larkinson Mandate, the Golden Cat would not be able to bond so much with the members of the clan. The book amplified the ancestral spirit's ties to the Larkinsons while also making sure that she remained loyal to the clan and its tenets!

In short, the book and the spiritual product weren't very remarkable on their own, but became incredibly potent when combined as one. Even now, Ves could see the triumphant Golden Cat establishing and deepening its connections with the imprints in the book!

A spiritual warmth and vibrancy emanated from the object as the Golden Cat soon extended outwards and instinctively explored its many latent connections to Ves, Gloriana, Lucky, Clixie, Jannzi, Tusa and every other member of the Larkinson Clan!

Though Colonel Ark Larkinson soon resumed his interrupted speech, many people in the audience did not pay close attention to his words anymore.

Instead, they began to bask in the odd sensations that buffeted them. The founding ceremony continued to exceed their expectations and bring new surprises. Their connection to the Larkinson Clan constantly deepened, both from their own accord and from the warmth they felt after the Golden Cat actively sought them out!

Ves remained poised even as he drained his hidden P-stones of their accumulated spiritual energy. He rapidly managed to top himself up, returning him to peak condition.

Whether it was enough to rein in the Golden Cat was another matter though. All of the spiritual energy it consumed allowed it to start off strong without even receiving a lot of spiritual feedback!

Even though his latest spiritual product ought to be innocent and naive, Ves did not get this sense from her at all. The Golden Cat acted with care and purpose as she reined in her curiosity and settled for exploring each of her connections to the Larkinsons one by one.

Strangely enough, the Golden Cat's possessed way more ties than the number of Larkinsons who left their marks on the pages of the book.

The Larkinson Mandate may be the heirloom of the Larkinson Clan, but its first part was intricately related to the old Larkinson Family!

This caused the Mandate and by extension the Golden Cat to possess faint but very real ties to the Larkinson Family!

Ves did not expect such a phenomenon to occur, though he didn't exhibit much surprise once he confirmed the existence of these extra connections.

He never desired to isolate the Larkinson Clan from the Larkinson Family.

They had their differences, yes, but just because Ves wanted to stab Ghanso in the guts didn't mean he let his animosity define the clan's relation from the family.

He needed to be bigger than that if he wanted to serve as the patriarch of his clan.

Like many clan members, Ves still possessed many ties to the Larkinsons who decided to stay with the old family. He still wished to remain in touch with his grandfather Benjamin, his uncle Ark, his cousin Melinda and some other relatives.

As Ves carefully inspected the extra connections, he even sensed a small thread that led to Raella Larkinson, who wasn't technically part of the family anymore!

It seemed that Larkinson Mandate possessed the ability to associate itself with any individual who shared the same blood and spirit as the Larkinsons who marked its pages!

The book was like a search dog whose nose had been trained to detect traces similar to the scent that the members of the audience had left behind. As long as there was enough similarity, the book would unquestionably be able to connect with a Larkinson!

As Ves inspected the Mandate further, he made an unexpected discovery.

The book and the Golden Cat not only possessed active ties to the Larkinsons, but also allowed Ves to determine their direction!

Hundreds of firm spiritual ties pointed forwards, fanning out to encompass the entire crowd in the auditorium.

More than a thousand weaker ties extended in an entirely different direction. It didn't take Ves too long to determine that their overall direction pointed towards the Bright Republic!

The properties of these ties were very useful to Ves! If he wanted to, he could potentially use the Larkinson Mandate to follow the direction of the connection and locate a missing Larkinson!

In fact, one of the stronger connections happened to lead to Gloriana!

The exhausted and depleted woman smiled at him when he checked her condition.

"She's a woman, right?"

Ves sheepishly nodded. It appeared that in the process of the spiritual restoration process, he kept her words in mind, causing him to slant the Golden Cat's gender!

Well, whether the Golden Cat was male, female or genderless, it didn't matter in the greater scheme of things. She was still the clan's ancestral spirit, and that was what mattered the most!

Therefore, he was happy to see that the Larkinson Mandate blessed the continued association between the clan and the family.

Although there was no chance for the two sides to come together and merge back into one, they would still continue to be related to each other even as they existed by themselves.

As the Golden Cat continued to spend the first minutes of her existence in studying her ties to his relatives, Ves took advantage of the moment by ascertaining the nature of her existence in the context of his clan.

The impetus to planning the experiment that created the Golden Cat came from the inspiration he derived from Master Huron and Aisling Curver's specialty.

Ever since Ves became exposed to the concept of neural interconnectivity, he always desired to form a spiritual equivalent.

Though messing with someone's spirituality was just as risky as messing with someone's brain, Ves never gave up on this goal no matter how reckless it sounded!

In the worst case scenarios, his experiment might have created a spiritual abomination or a monstrous spiritual network that damaged every Larkinson who bequeathed their marks!

If Ves failed to control these destructive manifestations, then his mistakes might have led to the mental deaths of all of the Larkinsons who entrusted their lives and future to him! Regardless of whether he survived this catastrophe, Ves would definitely become one of the relived villains of the Larkinson Family for killing so many of his relatives!

Despite these morbid risks, Ves nonetheless decided to proceed with the experiment in the confidence that it would succeed.

Even if complications arose, he was certain he could keep the situation under control by borrowing from the power of the F-stone to kill any malignant spiritual manifestations!

Fortunately, the Golden Cat appeared to be exactly as benevolent and friendly towards the Larkinson Clan as he intended. Her strong ties to so many Larkinsons permanently carved her devotion to their bloodline in her spiritual makeup.

Unless an overpowering spiritual entity managed to contaminate her very essence, his youngest spiritual product should always stay loyal to the Larkinsons!

While he was very happy that at least this part of the experiment had gone right, he wasn't sure whether he succeeded in his other objectives.

At the very least, it didn't appear that the connections interacted with each other.

Ves originally envisioned the Larkinson Mandate or the Golden Cat as a router which allowed for the exchange of thoughts, emotions and other data between one Larkinson to another.

In other words, Ves wanted to form an actual spiritual network that functioned just like a communication network, though on an entirely different plane!

As Ves studied the connections and the individual Larkinsons in the audience, it didn't seem like any of that took place.

Ves experimentally tried to transmit a spiritual message to Gloriana using the Mandate as a hub, but the only thing that happened was that the Golden Cat started to turn her attention to her creator.

"Can you relay the spiritual message I sent to Gloriana?" He mentally asked.

Nya? The Golden Cat tilted her adorable head.

Her current incarnation made her appear as an adolescent cat that was almost as large as Lucky.

While she started off more powerful than his other spiritual products, her strength and wisdom did not even come close to matching a formidable spiritual entity such as Qilanxo!

As it was, the Golden Cat mostly functioned as a mascot to the Larkinson Clan. Aside from making the Larkinsons feel warm and connected to their clan identity, she didn't really offer any other uses.

Ves did not let that squander his mood. The Golden Cat was a living ancestral spirit whose life and death was intricately tied to the state of the Larkinson Clan.

When the clan grew and prospered, the Golden Cat would definitely benefit as well!

Even without this feedback, its nature as a living spiritual entity meant that it could grow and develop in ways unique to this type of lifeform.

It was not impossible for the Golden Cat to acquire other abilities in the future that would serve the Larkinson Clan well.

Anything that benefited the clan and increased its cohesion was something to be celebrated!

Therefore, Ves did not feel bummed when he definitely concluded that he failed to establish a spiritual network.

Just because it didn't exist today didn't mean it would never emerge in the future.

If the Golden Cat still didn't facilitate the formation of such a transcendent network in the future, then no harm was done.

He could still attempt the creation of a spiritual network through other means, or he could drop this research direction entirely.

He already had his hands full with other pending priorities. For now, he was much more interested in creating imaginary mechs than forming a spiritual network!

The latter may be useful in increasing the cooperation or coordination between mech pilots, but the former had the potential of empowering his individual mechs to an entirely different height!

Both of them seemed to lead to entirely different directions. Whether Ves sought to increase the strength of a group or an individual, in the end he wanted to find new ways to express his design philosophy and increase the value proposition of his products!

In fact, the Golden Cat formed an intrinsic part of a follow-up experiment.

One of the reasons why he wanted to create the Golden Cat was to employ it as the spiritual component to one of the mechs he intended to design.

Ever since he left the Bright Republic and took some of the Larkinsons away, he wanted to empower his dependents by providing them with a mech that belonged exclusively to his own orbit!

In short, he wanted to design a mech that possessed a glow that only belonged to the Larkinsons and those he approved!