The Mech Touch

Ves had moved closer to his cat. He watched with all smiles as Lucky panted and squirmed as if he was in great pain.

In the past, Ves suffered from stomach aches as well, mostly because he ate something that didn't agree with his digestive systems. With advanced pills and remedies, these problems usually went away quickly, but none of them worked for a mechanical lifeform such as Lucky.

His cat had no choice but to work out his problem the natural way.

"Meooww… meowww…"

Though Lucky didn't look as limp as before, he was far from going back to normal. The gem cat weakly jerked his limbs as if he wanted to get as far away from Ves as possible.

For his part, Ves kept smiling in expectation at his cat. After all this trouble, his cat would hopefully recover from his lengthy affliction.

"Come on. It's almost over."

After half an hour of increasingly tortured activity from his cat, Lucky finally seemed to have reached a limit!

"MEEEOOOOOWWWW!"

Several objects suddenly ejected from his backside! They flew out with so much force that they collided against the bulkhead like miniature railgun projectiles!

"Yes! That's it! More!"

To his surprise, Lucky wasn't finished yet. His rear continued to eject a couple more gems at great speed until his cat's digestive track finally emptied.

"Meoooooowwwwww….."

Lucky looked incredibly relieved. It was as if most of the pressure that built up in his stomach had disappeared. While his stomach still exhibited plenty of activity, much of whatever caused him to feel stuffed was gone.

Ves had long stopped paying attention to his pet. Instead, he immediately walked over to the side of his stateroom in order to pick up the freshly-produced gems.

With so many new gems, Ves looked forward to what Lucky had been holding this these past few weeks.

He picked up the new gems and quickly counted them. His eyes lit up as he realized that he was holding on to a whopping nine gems!

"Nine! Wow! I haven't seen that many gems in years!"

Seeing so many gems instantly brought up his suspicion that Lucky was secretly keeping most of what he ate to himself. Despite his designation as gem cat, Ves always suspected that his thieving cat was embezzling most of what he ate!

Certainly, this was not entirely bad. Whatever Lucky kept for himself would inevitably go on to strengthen his capabilities in some way.

At the start of his mech design career, Lucky wasn't nearly as formidable as now. Through continuous eating his cat had grown quite formidable! From antigravity to phasing powers, his cat had upgraded himself into one of the most deadly killer creatures that Ves knew of. Perhaps not even Centerpoint could build something better of the same size!

"Now let's see what goodies I've received."

He had to utilize his System vision to understand the products produced by Lucky, who was ostensibly a System product as well.

Five of the gems looked similar.

[Unstable Chaos Essence]

A terrible essence of chaos is locked within this gem. The essence is stolen from a great and ancient horror that would dearly wish to regain it. Carry this gem at your own risk.

"Wait a minute, this sounds familiar."

Ves expected to gain some gems that he could use to empower his mechs. For example, he wanted to gain something that could increase the damage of a rifle, boost the resistance of armor or something else that he could use to elevate the performance of his custom mechs.

Instead, he got something different.

"This goddamn chaos essence! What use is it to me?! Nothing about this description states that it is useful in empowering mechs!"

Different from the orange gem that Lucky produced before, the collection of five new gems were all radiating a grey glow from within. This reminded him a bit of the dark energy that the B-stone had just ejected out of Lucky's stomach a short time ago. Could it be…

"Is there Unending One energy inside these gems?"

He felt nothing, but he chalked that up to the excellent isolating properties of the gems. Whatever the case, the seemingly useless gems ruined Ves' mood.

"When I told you back then to produce more gems like these so I can have a match, I didn't mean you should produce five more at the same time!"

"Meooww.."

"At least vary their colors a little! Why do they all look grey?"

With his hopes dashed, he set the Unstable Chaos Essence gems aside and inspected the second batch of gems.

[Highly Unstable Chaos Essence]

A terrible essence of chaos is locked within this gem. The essence is stolen from a great and ancient horror that would dearly wish to regain it. This gem is very frail. Carry this gem at your own risk.

"Ugh!"

The Nyxian Gap was definitely messing with Lucky's digestion! There was no other explanation for it. The highly unstable versions looked larger, but Ves didn't see anything about them that would suggest they were prone to blowing up. Regardless, the way these gems came into existence gave Ves enough concern to handle them carefully.

He returned to his desk and placed the gems onto the surface. He reached out in his uniform and brought out a purple gem that largely matched the first batch of gems that Lucky produced.

He still intended to use the purple Unstable Chaos Essence as a jewel for one of his wedding bands. Though Ves would have preferred it if Lucky produced something useful instead of lots of identical gems, at least he fulfilled this request.

Ves picked up a random Unstable Chaos Essence gem and pressed it close against his purple gem. They largely matched in appearance and dimensions, and that was enough.

"Together with Unending alloy and some other miscellaneous high-grade exotics, I should have enough materials to delight Gloriana when I catch her at our wedding."

As for the remaining gems… Ves did not feel very comfortable with them. It did not seem like a great idea to use something that sounded so dangerous on the custom mechs of his expert candidates.

Ves already upgraded and enhanced the Quint, the Shield of Samar, the Blueshift and the other mechs quite a bit. Once he equipped them with gear made out of Unending alloy, their comprehensive strength would reach a level where they could probably give their upcoming enemies a lot of headaches.

The question was whether this was enough.

Despite the many preparations that he and his fellow Larkinsons worked on, Ves didn't think it was enough. Reinforcing the ships, modifying the mechs, turning the Penitent Sister carriers into giant torpedoes and so on all should have increased the odds, but the opposition was so overwhelmingly strong that it was easy for him to feel that they were still too weak.

There was only so much a fleet of mechs and unarmed carriers could do against a swarm of pirate warships. The Gravada Knarlax inexorably closed in on Task Force Predator like an antimatter missile descending into the atmosphere of a populated planet.

The large caliber primary cannons of the Gravada Knarlax weren't very sophisticated. They were simply basic ballistic or kinetic cannons scaled to gigantic proportions. Whatever complexity that the pirates added were merely there to keep such a big and powerful weapon system under control.

"Yet these crude methods are enough to wipe out all of our ships!"

While Ves hadn't attended many meetings with Major Verle and the other military leaders, he knew how slim their chances were. The projections remained as pessimistic as ever. Though the exact strength of the pirate armada was still fuzzy, some of the intelligence that Calabast collected suggested that the Allidus Alliance fleet had hired some local pirate groups to bolster their numbers.

The infamy of the Allidus Alliance in the Nyxian Gap was high, and the heavy turrets bringing their huge guns to bear against the smaller pirate groups must have been an effective way to force the latter's surrender!

Once the Larkinson Clan received word of this development, Major Verle had to revise his projections downwards. The simulations all showed varying degrees of crushing defeats. Even the potential breakthrough of Joshua and the other expert candidates didn't help improve their odds that much.

It was already bad enough to confront a heavy cruiser escorted by a bunch of smaller warships. It was even worse if several thousand pirate mechs accompanied these vessels!

In fact, Ves even believed it was overkill to bring so many additional mechs along.

The Larkinson Clan may be strong, but it wasn't that strong!

"I've already taken plenty of risks, but it's not enough. I truly need to do more, and these gems might help!"

Despite suspecting that the new gems were filled with the Unending One's essence, Ves still felt he could make use of them. Compared to before he entered the Nyxian Gap, he had considerable progress in his design philosophy!

He expanded his spiritual toolbox with a lot of useful new tools and even found methods that could make mechs more alive and hasten the breakthroughs of expert candidates.

With all of this improvement, Ves refused to accept that he was incapable of harnessing the potential of these so-called Unstable Chaos Essence gems!

He already developed plans to embed these gems in the mechs or possibly the gear of his custom mechs. Of course, he recognized that planting them without any further steps was not a wise idea.

In the worst case, he might grant the Unending One a backdoor into the crucial mechs piloted by his expert candidates!

"I need to treat these gems in some way."

Ves turned his gaze at the larger but more dubious-looking gems. The 'Highly' Unstable Chaos Essence gems were presumably identical to their smaller cousins in most aspects.

"What exactly happens when they explode?"

He didn't know, and he felt very reluctant to use up one of the gems. He only had four of them in total.

"Maybe.. I can stick them into one of the Penitent Sister carriers?"

Each of the ships had been modified to a very extensive degree. Once the mechs inside deployed into battle, the combat carriers would no longer be receiving any of them. They were destined to boost ahead and try their best to collide with the Allidus warships.

If the initial momentous impact did not cripple the targeted warships, then the nuclear bombs and all of the other explosive goodies should do a considerable amount of damage if they exploded up close!

What if he added these 'Highly' Unstable Chaos Essence gems to the ships? Would the Unending One be able to stop the ships, or would his own energy amplify the explosions somehow?

Ves grinned. "It's worth a try."

He only had four of the gems to begin with. If it backfired on him in any way, then only a portion of the suicide ships would be compromised. The rest should be able to go on their merry way to ram the Gravada Knarlax.

It would be great if he could process the energy locked within the gems, but Ves wasn't sure whether he should tamper with them. What if they blew up in his face?

"Well, let's not push my luck." He softly muttered.

He put the gems away but continued to imagine all of their potential uses. While Ves was pissed that Lucky seemed incapable of producing any normal gems, at least he delivered something instead of nothing.

"Meowww…."

Lucky still hadn't recovered up to full yet, but at least he looked better than before. Perhaps when he finally processed the B-stone, he might get completely back to normal.

Ves picked up his cat and hugged his pet. "Good job, I suppose. Are you feeling well enough?"

"Meooww…"

"Hehe, you can't sue me. I told you already, you're not a human, so your feeble threats are pointless."

"Meow!"