The Mech Touch

Long after Calabast had left his stateroom, Ves continued to think back on her words.

She seemed very confident that Ves would change his propensity for risk once he grew older.

"Where does she get that idea?" Ves scratched his head.

He didn't really feel like changing himself. Though he found his current circumstances to be very challenging, he didn't regret the choices he made.

No one won all the time. Every risky decision entailed the possibility of losing. Ves had already accepted this possibility when he initially made his bet. Even though the current circumstances exceeded his estimates, he only had himself to blame, and that was fine.

Perhaps the main issue of contention to him was that he felt a little conflicted about his principles.

As a Larkinson, he should seek opportunities, but at the same time care for his fellow Larkinsons.

There was an inherent contradiction between these two values. It wasn't that much of a problem for the Larkinson Family because the mech pilots assumed most of the risks. The norms mostly remained behind and lived normal lives. No matter how many Larkinsons died on the battlefield, the family's foundation was never under threat.

This no longer applied to the clan. Without the protection of a state, the civilian Larkinsons solely relied on the protection of the mech pilots of the clan. If the latter suffered enormous losses, then the others became vulnerable to predation.

"Maybe I should dial it back in the future."

Though he thought about it, he felt it was pointless to make any choices when the future was so far away. There was no way to predict what would happen years later so Ves felt it was pointless to agonize about it. Certainly, he was aware that he might need to make better choices, but he hadn't come this far by being timid.

"Well, enough moping around. I need to get to work."

He spent time on various priorities such as trying to figure out how to form specialized combat-oriented spiritual networks for some of his mech forces.

Though he only possessed a shallow understanding of Master Huron's neural networks, Ves vaguely understood the basic premise.

A neural network enabled different like-minded mech pilots to pool their thoughts and share them with each other.

This was already a very delicate process under normal circumstances. Any variable or disturbance could easily cause unexpected fluctuations that might cause severe brain damage to anyone connected to a destabilized network!

The genius of Master Huron was that he managed to form a stable neural network that was safe and robust enough to function properly on the battlefield.

This was a true miracle!

Every mech designer knew that messing with neural interfaces was exceedingly dangerous. Master Huron not only performed a couple of tweaks on the neural interfaces of his mechs, but outright expanded their functionality, thereby redefining what neural interfaces were supposed to do. Only a fearless and confident mech designer would be able to realize a design philosophy centered around this insane idea!

Therefore, even if Master Huron belonged to the opposing side, Ves had nothing but respect for this old but inventive mech designer.

Knowing how exceptional it was to develop such an innovative way to increase the battle effectiveness of mech units, Ves became a bit unsure about his own way forward.

"I'm not a Master. I don't know much about neural interfaces, let alone connecting people's minds together."

That didn't stop him from forming the Larkinson Network. When Ves swept his glance to the Larkinson Mandate, the Golden Cat happily administered her bonds with every clansman.

Nyaaaaaa!

Ves couldn't help but smile at the adorable ancestral spirit. "Keep up the good work, Goldie. We need to keep morale as high as possible. Don't be afraid to tell me if anyone is beginning to think impure thoughts."

Nyaaaa.

Though the Larkinson Network he masterminded turned out to be both safe and useful, its applicability in combat was very limited.

For a long time, Ves accepted this, as he never saw any need to fix something that wasn't broken. The Larkinson Clan was already doing fine with its existing advantages.

That no longer applied to the present situation. Ves had to grasp any possible way to strengthen his forces, and forming a better spiritual network was one of his key ideas.

The question that first came to mind was whether he should alter the existing Larkinson Network or form a new network or subnetwork.

Ves chose the latter option. He wanted to confine his new developments to a smaller and more homogenous group of participants.

The existing Larkinson Network was already doing a good job by itself. Ves didn't want to take the risk of breaking it. While he liked to live dangerously every now and then, this was a preventable risk.

While Ves was not a neural interface specialist, he knew a fair bit about spirituality and how they interacted with people. All of the experiments he performed on the captive pirates had borne considerable more fruit than the direct results to his tests. His overall insight and intuition of spirituality had grown substantially.

He possessed just enough confidence to make it work.

Though spiritual networks were not identical to neural networks, Ves nevertheless took a lot of inspiration from Master Huron's applications.

When Ves browsed the galactic net and looked up on the latest instances where Master Huron's products made a splash, he noticed a clear division of networks.

The ordinary users of neural networks all consisted of normal but well-trained mech pilots. Each unit consisted of crack troops in order to meet the prerequisites. It wasn't a secret that every member of the neural network had to be aligned with each other in order to function properly. The greater the heterogeneity, the greater the instability.

If Ves wanted to implement a new spiritual network with this style, then he had to abide by the same logic. Of all of the mech forces at his disposal, only the Swordmaidens, the Battle Criers and the Penitent Sisters met this strict standard.

"Each of them are well-trained veterans with lots of shared battles and experiences under their belt. Their martial cultures strongly emphasize a common identity that sets them apart from other people. In short, they are made for neural and spiritual networks."

The other mech forces regrettably did not meet the necessary standard.

The Avatars of Myth was very strong, but it lacked too much experience.

The Living Sentinels possessed a weaker culture and featured a lot of heterogeneity within their mech roster.

The Flagrant Vandals boasted a lot of veterancy but their martial culture emphasized a lot of autonomy, so every Vandal was different.

"I don't think any mech pilot under these three mech forces will like it when they meld their minds directly to their fellow mech pilots."

Perhaps Ves was making the wrong assumption. The strict standard that Master Huron adhered to only applied to his neural networks.

Spiritual networks were different. Some of the principles were the same, but the implementation was very different. Spiritual engineering did not operate by the same rules as the ones underpinning neural interface technology.

That said, Ves believed it was better to start with the Swordmaidens, Battle Criers and Penitent Sisters. If the results exceeded his expectations and if he still had some time, he might look to augment the remainder in some other fashion.

For now, he focused his attention on his current choice.

He had something special planned for the Battle Criers. They had long been neglected by him even though they had been performing well. All this time, they maintained absolute loyalty to him rather than just the Larkinsons as a whole. Ves wanted to reward them by implementing something that would allow them to stand out from the other Larkinsons.

Because of the elevated risks involved with empowering the Battle Criers in this fashion, Ves wanted to experiment with them later.

His first target was the Penitent Sisters. While their strength made them very important for the upcoming battle, Ves cared the least out of them. Even if they were Larkinsons, he was still inclined to use them up because of their Hexer heritage.

Ves wanted to turn them into his first guinea pigs. He wouldn't shed a tear if any of these crazy Hexer died as a result of his experiments. They were just as good as his pirate test subjects in that regard!

"I can't afford to lose too many of them, though."

He intended to start with a modest amount of Penitent Sisters and slowly add more members to the network from there.

The goal of implementing this new kind of spiritual network was not to replicate the functionality of the existing Larkinson Network. Neither did he want to copy Master Huron's accomplishments.

All he wanted to do was to boost the battle performance of the mech pilots connected to the new network. How this strengthening took shape didn't matter to Ves.

Normally, Ves wasn't confident in his ability to create a network that exceeded the Larkinson Network in this aspect. He didn't really know how the latter exactly functioned. There were way too many gaps in his understanding of spiritual engineering for him to be able to explain every single component.

"That's fine. It's not as if I have to understand something down to the tiniest details."

To Ves, Spirituality was a product of thought and emotions. As long as he willed something to work in a specific fashion, the spiritual energy he manipulated would make it happen somehow.

Of course, this was only practical with simpler applications. Creating vastly more complex spiritual applications such as the Grand Dynamo required way more detail and precision than daydreams could accomplish.

"I should keep it simple, then."

The battle-oriented spiritual network that Ves wanted to create for the Penitent Sisters was based on a fairly simple idea.

He wanted to center this battle network around the Superior Mother!

His mother's position wouldn't be the same as that of the Golden Cat. In the Larkinson Network, Goldie played the role as network administrator more or less. This was a fairly restrained role as Ves aimed for stability and did not dare to ask for more at the time. He also wanted to avoid interfering too much in the lives of his clansmen.

A battle network should be able to do more. Ves believed the key to empowering it was to tie in the design spirit in a more direct fashion. Instead of playing the role as a passive system administrator, Ves wanted to turn the Superior Mother into a source of power to those connected to the network!

This was different from empowering mechs. Ves wasn't really sure what would result from channeling some of the essence of his mother into the Penitent Sisters in this fashion, but he hoped that something good might ensue.

"As long as this experiment succeeds, I can proceed with the next one."

He had something else in mind for the Swordmaidens. Not only were their Swordmaidens some of the most cohesive troops he had ever seen, they were also helmed by an expert candidate that was close to becoming a fully-fledged expert pilot.

Ves took inspiration from the rumored 'asymmetrical neural network' that supposedly allowed Ghanso to run around with fifty quasi-expert mechs.

"What if.. Commander Dise gains her own entourage of empowered mech pilots?"

The result would definitely be different from that of Master Huron's latest innovations, but Ves was eager to see what this expert pilot-focused battle network might produce!

In short, Ves aimed to create two different battle networks centered around two different powerful subjects.

Whether the subject was a design spirit or an expert pilot, both of them were powerful in spirit! As long as he tied them together with mech pilots that were very closely aligned with the central subjects, Ves believed that the risks were manageable.

"Now how am I going to put a battle network together, exactly?"