The Mech Touch

When Ketis showed off her 'superpower', Ves quickly guided her to an empty office in the base.

What she had just shown off was not something she should reveal so casually!

"Since when were you able to perform this trick?" Ves asked.

"Just a month ago!" She grinned! "During the flight to Sentinel, there wasn't any work for me aboard the ship I was on. Aside from studying and polishing my swordsmanship, I didn't have anything else to do, so I began to see if I could develop my own superpower!"

"Superpowers don't exist, at least not in the way you think." Ves frowned.

Ketis tilted her head. "Didn't I just show off something that no one else could do?"

"That's not a superpower! That's just a side effect!" Ves insisted. "Could you demonstrate it for me again? I didn't pay enough attention the first time. I need to confirm something."

"Okay, but my power can't cut through anything." She warned as he pulled out another steel bar.

It seemed that she had already come prepared.

This time, she placed the small metal bar on a table. When she raised the hand holding her butter knife, Ves keenly studied her with his spiritual vision.

Just as he suspected, through some method, Ketis somehow drew out a considerable portion of her spiritual potential and coated it around the edge of the butter knife!

As soon as her cutting implement was fully enveloped by her spiritual energy, she chopped it down!

Ves paid very careful attention to the metal bar. It parted in half when it met the spiritually-enhanced blade.

It was as if Ketis wasn't a human, but an expert mech that employed true resonance to enhance the sharpness of its blade!

Yet that was impossible. Ketis was not an expert mech, and her application of spirituality diverged significantly from true resonance!

Clunk!

The blade she used to chop the bar continued to cut through the surface of the metal table until it suddenly something that was too hard to continue!

The spirituality surrounding the blade had completely exhausted itself. This must be the limit that Ketis was talking about.

"What are the rules governing your superpower?" Ves probed without shame.

Fortunately, Ketis trusted Ves enough to reveal the details of her newly-developed ability without reserve. "I call it Imbue Sharpness. I can impart an edge on any blade I hold. However, when I tried it out with my greatsword, I quickly learned that the cutting power rapidly dilutes over a longer edge. That's why I can only show off this power with a butter knife. Anything larger quickly causes the additional sharpness to grow weaker."

These rules were easy to understand to Ves, especially since he had seen her ability at work with his spiritual vision.

Right now, her spiritual potential is still within the range of an Apprentice, which wasn't all that much. Perhaps she might be able to empower an actual sword once she advanced to Journeyman, but until then the energy she was able to draw from her mind remained limited.

"What about the duration of this ability?" Ves asked.

"The sharpening effect only lasts as long as I keep concentrating. It's easy to interrupt the effect if I get distracted. Furthermore, my blade can only cut through normal objects. A piece of steel like this bar is still doable, but as soon as I try to cut into the armor of a mech, my sharpness effect instantly runs out! I don't have the strength to cut through harder materials as of yet, but I'll surely do better in the future!"

Everything followed a rule. The energy she was able to channel in her ability could only last for so long. Cutting the small, hand-sized steel bar was no challenge at all, but as soon as her blade cut through the table underneath, her imparted energy rapidly depleted itself because the table was made of a more durable alloy!

After a bit more elaboration, Ves fully understood the gist of her ability.

"It's not a superpower." Ves corrected her. "It's a side effect of your design philosophy."

"Isn't that the same thing?" Ketis frowned in confusion. "I worked really hard to develop my understanding of sharpness! This superpower is the culmination of all of my efforts in the past few months!"

Ves felt like he was talking to Gloriana. Ketis was so convinced that her own framework was right that she simply refused to accept alternative explanations!

"Mech designers." He muttered. "We're just as stubborn as expert pilots."

"What was that, Ves?"

"Oh, nothing. I need to study you a bit. Could you sit down so that I can look into your head? I need to observe something."

"Okay."

Though she was wondering what he was doing, she still sat down so that her head was within his reach.

He placed his hands on her head and tried to peer inside her mind with his spiritual senses.

"Ouch!"

He immediately encountered her mental defenses! It was as if he bumped into a wall of blades!

"Could you relax a bit, Ketis? Just imagine as if you are opening yourself up to me. I want to sense something in you, but to do that, you need to trust me. Can you do that?"

"Uhm.. okay."

Though she began to harbor some doubts, she still followed his instruction, though with some difficulty.

Once her mind cleared up enough for Ves to peek in her mind, he only observed long enough to understand her progress.

Just as he suspected, her nascent design philosophy was incredibly pure!

Not only that, but it had developed to an advanced state! This was not the design philosophy of a Novice or an inexperienced Apprentice. This degree of development was more typical to those who were within reach of advancing to Journeyman! Not even Miles Tovar was this far ahead!

"You have progressed enormously!" Ves gasped. "What did you do in the past year?"

"I already told you. I studied like a demon, I designed a couple of incomplete mechs and I spent months servicing the mechs that belonged to Raella's unit."

All of that sounded simple, but that made her accomplishment all the more remarkable!

For a long time, Ves always thought that Ketis held a lot of promise, but it would take a lot of time for her to exhibit her value.

Yet now, despite not having finished a single mech design, she was already within range to advance to Journeyman!

"This is crazy! This is impossible!"

Compared to an Apprentice, Ketis possessed a lot of theoretical and hands-on experience with mechs. She overpowered in these areas.

Yet just like Ves in the past, she didn't possess enough design experience! The number one purpose of a mech designer was to design mechs. There was no way that Ketis should have been able to progress her design philosophy that quickly without spending enough time on her core activity.

As Ves continued to gaze at Ketis in confusion, he tried to figure out why she bucked the trend.

Her spiritual attributes might hold some clues. He had already studied them and found out that her mentality was remarkably more pure than the average mech designer!

Whereas people like Ves possessed a lot of emotions and other junk in his mind, Ketis was almost as strong-willed and single-minded as an elite mech pilot! Her Swordmaiden training shaped her personality in a way that caused her to obsessively dedicate herself in any pursuit related to swords and swordsmanship!

This tendency along with her extremely-pronounced Concentration score likely caused her to unconsciously excite and channel her spiritual potential until she succeeded in creating her own 'superpower'!

Ves realized that Ketis had somehow turned a misunderstanding into truth. Through crooked means and mistaken assumptions, she exerted her concentration in a manner that should have resulted in nothing but actually managed to warp her spiritual potential into a completely unprecedented application!

Not only that, but her constant mental efforts also honed her mentality and purified her spiritual attributes! The amount of effort she put into her inadvertent spiritual manipulation should be the actual reason why her design philosophy progressed so quickly despite her lack of design experience.

She managed to deepen her perspective and understanding of sharpness through an alternate method!

The implications of these realizations were very profound, though difficult to put to use. All Ves knew was that Ketis suddenly possessed a lot more promise in his eyes!

In fact, she might currently be the mech designer under his employ that was closest to advancing to Journeyman!

His plans for her changed considerably!

"I see you're wearing the uniform of the LMC. Have you joined the clan?"

She nodded. "The Swordmaidens have all pledged to become Larkinsons. How could I not follow suit? I'm still not used to it, though. For a long time, I was a daughter of the frontier. It's hard to shake off my roots. I still consider myself to be both."

"That's okay."

He didn't need to ask whether she became a Larkinson. He could already see that she possessed an active bond to the Golden Cat.

Knowing that Ketis took her oaths seriously like any other Swordmaiden, Ves was completely assured of her loyalty to him and the clan. There was no way she would do anything to betray the Larkinsons!

This made him feel much more reassured about his intention to facilitate her growth. Even without his help, she probably would have found a way to advance on her own, but with his ability to judge her state, he could probably speed it up by a couple of years!

"From now on, I'll be setting your tasks in person. My first order is to cease your studies. You already know more than most Apprentices. There is no need for you to waste anymore time in reading books at your stage."

"Hey!"

Ves crossed his arms. "I'm serious! Too much study without putting all of your knowledge into practice is bad for you! Haven't you realized that already when you never finished your mech designs? In fact, that will be your focus for the next couple of months. I want you to transfer all of your design files to me so that I can study your work. I will then instruct you to finish every single design you started."

Ketis looked scandalized!

"I can't! They're outdated! Most of them are lastgen mechs even!"

"I know you're embarrassed of your old work, but you need to finish what you started. These incomplete projects will always hang over your head as long as you leave them incomplete!"

"B-B-But they're too bad!"

"You won't embarrass yourself." Ves spoke in a softer tone. "I won't judge your work as long as they are earnest expressions of your passion. Everyone has to start somewhere. I would feel ashamed of my earliest work as well, but that doesn't mean I feel proud of what I managed to accomplish at the time."

What Ketis truly needed was to develop the appropriate mindset towards her project. Starting new projects but abandoning them halfway was a bad habit that could easily lead to a lifelong pattern of half-hearted effort.

This could not take root in his first student!

What Ketis needed to learn was that not every project had to be perfect. It was fine to make some compromises in order to meet a deadline or finish her work quickly. Expediency was just a factor of their profession as thoroughness.

Besides, once Ketis had some completed mech designs under her belt, Ves believed that her design philosophy would progress a lot closer to the eventual formation of her design seed!

When Ves finished passing on his instructions to her, she departed the office to perform her new tasks.

Ves looked back at the parted pieces of metal and hummed. He looked around the office and noted that it probably belonged to a chief technician.

He rummaged through a few drawers until he finally found a small knife designed to cut miscellaneous objects.

While it was sharper than a butter knife, it still wasn't capable of cutting through a metal bar.

"This is good enough."

He held the knife in a firm grip and raised it above his head. He concentrated his mind and tried to emulate the same trick that Ketis pulled off.

After some time, he managed to form a spiritual projection that wrapped around the blade in the same fashion that Ketis had managed to do. While there were a couple of differences, it was close enough to suit his purposes.

He took a few deep breaths as he shifted his eyes to one of the halves of the metal bar. While it was smaller than the original object, it was still large enough to use as target practice.

"Cut!"

He swung the blade down, only to meet immediate resistance!

Clank!

Despite his enhanced strength, the knife only dug a shallow groove before spinning away from his grasp!

"Damn."

It didn't work!

"My domain and attributes are too different. I can't replicate her superpower." He glumly concluded.