The Mech Touch

Ves looked at the giant statue of his mother in shock!

Even as lightning continuously struck its surface, Ves was the only person present who could see what kind of fearsome existence resided inside.

The vessel that Ves planned to house his new design spirit if possible had instead drawn out his mother!

Ignoring every barrier, whether it was distance or the space warping that rendered communication and FTL travel in the Nyxian Gap impossible, his mother's consciousness suddenly showed up without warning!

The fact that his mother's spiritual fragment had rebirthed itself after being shattered was already shocking enough.

The fact that her mother's spiritual fragment was so aggressive as to cannibalize his unborn design spirit without mercy was also unexpected.

Yet the fact that this unplanned turn of events somehow resulted in pulling his mother from the beyond was completely insane!

Ves never wanted to call upon his mother! He just wanted to create a new design spirit! He had so many plans for the Superior Mother. What now? Should he ask his mother to spit out her partially-digested food?

His mother fell into silence. In his spiritual vision, he could see her sated spiritual fragment experiencing a lot of problems with trying to digest so many different attributes.

He even had the illusion that it was about to explode if it failed to solve this problem!

"Ves…" Her mother spiritually communicated. "Is this your handiwork? What kind of an abomination have you created? When I taught you how to draw upon fragments, I did not think you would do something as mad as mashing them all together! This is the most horrible expression of your power that I have ever seen!"

Ves cringed again. "I'm innovating! This is still a work in progress. It's not like you ever taught me or given me a manual. The point is that it works! I've been empowering all of my mechs this way. The Devil Tiger you stole from me is a good example of what I have been able to accomplish!"

"While I appreciate your mechs, your qi manifestations are abominable! I cannot even comprehend how they can even work! This is supposed to be impossible! You can't just create new manifestations out of the remnants of other manifestations!"

"Qi? Manifestations?" Ves questioned.

"It's not important." His mother brushed him off. "It's clear to me that you have been up to a lot of mischief lately. I won't ask why you are performing this insane ritual, but don't do it again! You're lucky enough that you have called upon me. You could have easily called upon a more dreadful existence if you were careless!"

"I won't do it again." Ves promised.

The pressure exerted by his mother's spiritual fragment exerted a considerable strain on his mind, making him feel as if he was completely powerless in her presence!

"Mrs. Larkinson, may I ask what kind of existence you have become?" Gloriana hesitantly asked.

"Some questions are best left unanswered." Cynthia quickly replied. "I don't have much time. Let me talk to my son. He has been very naughty today!"

"I told you, mom, I didn't mean it! And what do you mean you don't have enough time?"

"I'm sure you can see what is happening." She replied. "This.. manifestation of yours.. is unable to sustain its existence. I.. am not able to sustain its existence. It will reach its limit very soon. Once that happens, it will die, which means I will suffer a very harmful backlash!"

"Oh. Sorry."

"SORRY IS NOT ENOUGH! IF YOU CAN'T HOLD YOURSELF BACK, THEN AT LEAST LEAVE ME OUT OF IT! I'M ABOUT TO LOSE YEARS OF PROGRESS BECAUSE OF YOUR RECKLESS ACTIONS!"

Ves cringed again and again! His mother was truly angry!

"Is there anything you can do to prevent this outcome?"

"I'm thinking!"

"What if I can help? I was trying to make something else before you suddenly gobbled everything up. The way I see it, the best way to solve this problem is to separate what you have just absorbed."

His mother didn't reply for a moment. Ves could see that her spiritual fragment was growing more and more unstable. It probably took everything she had to prevent it from blowing into pieces!

"What.. was your original plan?" She finally asked. "Tell me exactly what you intended to do and what went wrong."

Ves did not waste any time. He rapidly and succinctly explained the steps to his plan to create the Superior Mother. He also explained how his procedure went out of control as soon as the life-attributed energy started to revive her spiritual remnant.

"I see… your theories are.. very crude. They shouldn't work, yet they do." Cynthia noted. "Perhaps it is something unique to mech designers like you. Whatever the case, I believe there is a way to resolve this crisis."

"Please explain, mother."

"From what I understand, you initially intended to create a manifestation called 'the Superior Mother' that harmoniously integrates this chaotic collection of source material, is that correct?"

Ves rapidly nodded. "All of my.. manifestations.. created through this method has never shown any incompatibility with its underlying makeup. No matter how much its individual sources conflict with each other, once I shatter them and fuse them all together, the result is a new form of life that has become its own existence!"

"If that is the case, then I will have to rely on you to steer this manifestation to a semblance of its original form."

"What do you plan to do, mother?"

"I can't divest myself entirely from this manifestation without incurring significant damage. Due to your reckless shenanigans, I am literally existing in two locations at once! This is not inherently bad, but the problem is that my existence here is highly unstable. As long as you can stabilize this manifestation, the threat towards me should be resolved."

"Will there be any lingering problems?" Ves asked.

"There will. I am not sure what, but let us get this ordeal over with first. As soon as you are ready, I will slowly reverse this transformation process. Instead of letting me consume the Superior Mother, I will instead induce the Superior Mother to consume myself!"

"Won't that harm you, mother?!"

"It's fine. My main essence resides in the Nyxian Gap. What is present here is an unexpected addition. As long as it remains alive, it doesn't matter how weak it becomes."

"How will letting the Superior Mother eat you resolve this crisis?"

"As long as the Superior Mother regains its primacy, the conflicting sources won't fight against each other anymore. This way, the Superior Mother will effectively become my incarnation."

"What is an incarnation?"

"Something that I do not want you to dabble with!" Cynthia snapped at Ves! "With your penchant for reckless experimentation, it's far too dangerous for you to become exposed to this knowledge! The less you know, the better!"

Ves looked upset. Did it hurt to tell him a thing or two?

He soon proceeded to help her 'reverse the transformation process', whatever that meant. It basically entailed trying to restore and breath life into the half-digested Superior Mother while the unborn design spirit resided in his mother's stomach.

The process was just as macabre as it sounded. Ves literally had to reach inside his mother's spiritual existence and try his best to employ his abilities.

The fact that the Superior Mother was still in an incomplete state happened to be advantageous this time.

While the Superior Mother wasn't able to defend herself, her state was highly malleable. This meant that Ves could effectively integrate portions of his mothers into the unfinished spiritual body of his design spirit!

Ordinarily, this wasn't possible, as his mother was too strong and too aggressive to allow something else to eat her essence!

However, his mother was currently doing her best to suppress all of those instincts. This allowed Ves to methodically cut pieces of her before merging it into the Superior Mother.

The process happened slowly. Even though lightning bolts continued to rain down on the statue at regular intervals, the audience kneeling in the giant hexagon still hadn't exited their strange fascination.

All of them had become enthralled by the pressure exuded by the statue!

Seeing how nobody showed any signs of acting up, Ves no longer worried about interruptions and patiently performed his task.

"This is very odd." Cynthia remarked as Ves continued to cut out more and more chunks of her spiritual body. "What you are doing appears to be exceptionally simple, but it shouldn't be possible. I can never do what you are doing."

Ves grew oddly confident after hearing that. "Creating life happens to be my specialty!"

"Idiot!" His mother admonished him yet again! "Forming manifestations like this is as absurd as chopping up random people's body parts before stitching them back together into meatballs. You should feel horrified for even thinking of doing this! Don't you realize that you have violated a very sacred taboo?"

"Oh. Anyway, it's working, right?"

"Astonishingly, it is. The crisis is slowly passing. I am very concerned you don't feel any remorse about what you are doing."

He shrugged. "I have been doing this for years, mom."

Ves broke so many rules and trampled over so many taboos that Ves didn't even bother to keep track of them. It didn't matter as long as he wasn't caught by the authorities.

Ves never even knew that his design philosophy was not permissible according to his mother. It made him feel strange. Who set this taboo? Who would Ves offend if they learned the truth about his specialty?

As the reversed transformation process proceeded smoothly, he finally felt confident enough to make a request.

"Mother? Can my girlfriend help? She was supposed to assist me in this process as well."

"Oh? Please show me, then."

"Gloriana, come here and open up your mind."

As Ves performed the same steps that allowed Gloriana's mind to draw out a spiritual projection, the Superior Mother soon integrated Cynthia's spiritual shards more effectively.

"What a stupid method!" Cynthia remarked. "I thought I had seen the depth of your lunacy, but it turns out that you are even more reckless than I imagined! Don't you realize that your girlfriend can incur some very serious injuries to her mind if you rummage through it without care?"

"Mom! This was the only way I could think of to draw upon Gloriana's assistance!"

"Ugh." His mother mentally sighed. "Let me help you just this once. I can't stand the thought of you performing this trick again."

Her diminishing spiritual fragment began to glow a bit before splitting off a mote. The tiny mote rapidly zipped towards Gloriana's mind and drilled into it before disappearing!

Though Gloriana briefly interrupted her work, she quickly resumed.

"What did you do?"

"I taught her a little trick."

The process continued to proceed until there was almost nothing left of his mother's spiritual fragment. According to his mother, Ves couldn't afford to kill it off entirely, lest his mother suffer some sort of backlash.

"Draw back." She commanded. "I can do the rest myself."

As Ves and Gloriana withdrew their spiritual projections and distanced themselves even further from the statue, the pressure in the air started to change.

A pure and motherly sensation engulfed everyone in the hexagon.

Lightning no longer struck the spotless statue as the inexplicable storm clouds slowly started to part.

A hole emerged from the cloud cover. A beam of sunlight shone onto the statue, making it even brighter and more holy in the eyes of the crowd!

Out of everyone present, only Ves could see a hint of the final spiritual transformation process.

Inside the statue, his mother seemed to integrate and latch onto the Superior Mother like a parasite latching onto an unwitting victim.

Though Ves tried his best to observe how his mother intended to turn the Superior Mother into her 'incarnation', she put up too much interference for him to get a detailed look!

A strong pulse suddenly emanated from the statue! A glow that belonged to the Superior Mother had suddenly taken on its final form!

After many unexpected twists and turns, his latest design spirit was finally born!

Even as the entire crowd rapturously basked in the motherly glow of his latest design spirit, Ves began to grow uncertain.

"Mother? Is that you?"

"I can't sustain my conscious presence here any longer." She spoke to him. "The Superior Mother is now a part of me, but she is also a separate being. Whenever I am not 'here', she exists on her own, so don't make any misunderstandings."

"You're leaving?" Ves asked, though he couldn't hide the hint of relief in his voice.

"I am, you brat. I need to get back and recover from this near-disaster!" His mother stated. "One more thing. Whatever you do, don't allow the Superior Mother to befall anything. One of the disadvantages of my current condition is that my life is effectively tied to hers!"

"Um, that's.. going to be a problem.."

"Why?"

Ves hesitated a bit. "Because… I designed her.. to be the ancestral spirit of the Hexadric Hegemony. According to my design, the Superior Mother's core existence is tied to the continued existence of a state!"

"You what?!"