The Mech Touch

Ves continued to study the spiritual design his mother presumably sent over. He became very troubled by the harsh demands it imposed to make it. So far, he had a hunch that its complexity equaled that of a mech.

Did that mean that Ves was capable of making it? Hell no! Just because he was capable of designing and building mechs didn't mean he was good at other occupations!

His spiritual engineering fell far behind his mech engineering abilities. While he relied on the former to gain an advantage in the latter, that did not mean he was actually good at spiritual sorcery. It was just that most of the competition in the mech industry didn't have a clue about spirituality at all, which meant that Ves gained a monopoly by default.

Another way to describe his situation was to describe him as a slightly less stupid person among idiots.

Compared to a giant like his mother, Ves was merely a marginally taller dwarf!

"What does my mother think I am? Her heir?"

She hardly taught anything to him! For some unknown reasons, she seemed unwilling to teach him the basics of spiritual engineering and spiritual manipulation. The issue continued to haunt him at times. He had thought very long and hard about the possible reasons behind her unwillingness to share what she knew and came up with a lot of theories, many of which sounded absurd.

Maybe she thought her knowledge would corrupt his innocence. She shouldn't have bothered.

Maybe she lacked a prop or resource that was necessary for him to inherit her abilities. Perhaps her heritage was difficult to pass on without this requirement.

Maybe she was under some kind of limitation that prevented her from teaching what she knew. Was there some kind of lock in her spirit?

Perhaps the most optimistic reason was because she wanted to do what was best for him. By allowing him to find his own way, he was able to go off the beaten track and develop his spiritual abilities in a way that completely fit his needs.

Whatever the case, Ves had learned to stop hoping that his mother would enlighten him in the ways of spiritual sorcery. He was already doing rather decently on his own. Perhaps in a century, he might even be able to surpass her in this aspect!

Yet that would take time, which he didn't have. With days to go before Calabast expected the pirate armada to intercept their task force, Ves really did not have the time to spend on putting together such an elaborate spiritual construct.

It was like telling Maikel Larkinson to fabricate a complete mech on the spot!

No matter how smart he was and how much he learned under Ves, the kid still had years to go before he was ready to put together his first mech!

"The problem is that I'm in this situation as well. It's funny if someone else is in this predicament, but it's not so funny if I'm the one who is suffering!"

The spiritual construct design put Ves in a difficult position. Battle loomed closer and he could be spending his remaining time on many other productive activities that boosted his chances of winning the upcoming battle.

Should he put those activities aside and try to create the complicated spiritual construct?

Ves really didn't have the confidence to be able to do that within the limited time span available!

If he had enough time, let's say a few months or a few years, he could probably finagle something together. Even if he didn't have the knowledge, he could still resort to trial and error to kludge the construct together.

If he was half as knowledgeable as his mother on spiritual sorcery, then he didn't need the time. He just had to get enough spiritual energy from somewhere and spend a day or so to perform all of the fine work necessary to complete the construct.

No matter how much he tried to dissect the design, the individual sections were already far beyond his capacity to put together. He had to create spiritual components that concentrated lots of energy, enabled very advanced reactions or possessed other demanding properties.

It was as if he was a caveman who just received an order to build a musket.

"Musket? Why does this club look so strange? What is this big hole for?" Ves imagined his caveman self scratching his head in confusion.

After more than an hour of trying to wrap his head around the design, Ves eventually threw up his hands and gave up! His mother expected too much from him! How could she ever think he was good enough to make something so complex?

"Is she setting me up to fail or something?!"

Maybe the point of sending over this design wasn't to make it straight away. It could be that she expected him to survive the upcoming battle. Perhaps years or decades later, Ves would eventually be able to reach a high enough proficiency in spiritual engineering to make this spiritual construct.

Ves shook his head. "This doesn't make much sense. Why pass it over now instead of sooner. She could have given me this several times back when she met me in person."

Another theory was that he wasn't meant to create the entire spiritual construct. Instead, he was supposed to make just one or a couple the simpler spiritual constructs. This was a more reasonable explanation, but one that still seemed unlikely to Ves. Couldn't his mother just told him what he was supposed to build and what he was supposed to ignore? In fact, why didn't his mother just transmit the most relevant data?

After a bit of thought, Ves came up with a third theory. This one sounded a lot more plausible than his previous guesses.

"Maybe… I'm not meant to create this spiritual construct. Maybe some other powerful spiritual entity is supposed to do that in my stead!"

Was it James?

Ves attempted to call him over, but his spiritual adviser refused.

"I am a prophet, not a craftsman." He simply stated before cutting the connection.

"Tch. Bastard."

Maybe his design spirits could do something with it. He presented portions of his mother's designs to the Golden Cat and so on. None of them were able to make heads or tails out of the elaborate design.

Not even Qilanxo, who developed a lot of abilities, was capable of reproducing his mother's design!

As an exobeast who grew up on a planet where technology constantly declined, she spent far more effort on mastering her own inborn talents. She was very good at spiritual manipulation but spiritual engineering was something else entirely.

None of his other design spirits could help him out either. While he skipped over his hostile design spirits, he didn't think any of them were willing or able to help him. They were probably hoping for him to get smashed to pieces!

There was one more spirit that Ves that stood out from this group. Of all the design spirits he knew, only the Superior Mother might actually be able to do something with what his mother sent over.

The Superior Mother had remained dormant for so long that Ves forgot about her entirely. Perhaps it was better to keep her asleep, as a design spirit that was not only his mother but a very bossy mother was not fun to have around!

That said, if he could even the odds by waking her, he would gladly do so. It was unfortunate that Ves had no clue how to do that safely.

Would waking her even help him make this complicated construct? Ves vaguely guessed that this should be the case. The logic behind this possibility sounded very compelling. It made too much sense.

"Why does my mother need to send something to me instead of passing it to herself directly?"

Was his mother not connected to her own incarnation? Were Cynthia Larkinson and the Superior Mother two separate entities who only shared a marginal relation with each other?

Ves felt really confused, but this was what his logic dictated.

Now, Ves had to make a difficult decision. He could either continue to figure out how to make this complicated construct by himself, or he could shift his focus on waking up the Superior Mother and make her do something with the complicated spiritual design.

Logically, he should do the latter. Trying to figure out how to pull the Superior Mother from her slumber sounded much easier than the other option.

In addition, the Superior Mother was powerful and probably knowledgeable as well if she inherited some of Cynthia's spiritual sorcery. Just having her at his disposal like Qilanxo would help a lot.

However, his intuition hinted to him this was not a simple choice. Waking the Superior Mother before she was done with whatever she was doing might cause her to interrupt her evolution or something. The repercussions of this were severe, and Ves would rather avoid hindering the Superior Mother's growth.

He eyed the design schematic with greater resentment. Did his mother automatically assume that Ves was not capable of realizing it? Did she really think so little of him due to his ignorance?

"I'm not as incompetent as you think I am! I'm a mech designer! I'm good at creating my own stuff!"

Why should he follow her arrangements like an obedient little boy? No one said that he wasn't allowed to make this spiritual construct himself!

As a mech designer, Ves was a problem solver by nature. When faced with this challenge, Ves had the urge to surpass it. Perhaps he wasn't qualified to produce such a complicated spiritual construct if he tried to do so conventionally, but he possessed other abilities that might be of use in this instance!

"What if.. I don't make this construct, but rather grow it? As long as I build a powerful enough spiritual seed, it can grow and bloom into this design by itself!"

His eyes lit up as he came up with this radical and innovative idea!

He came up with it after recalling the way that the mech designers of the Life Research Association produced their distinctive biomechs.

Instead of fabricating the individual parts before assembling them together to produce a fully-functional mech, the biomech designers instead design their products in a way that allowed specially-cultured organisms to 'grow' into them! The process sounded rather disgusting to Ves, but it was evidently quite an effective method of producing mechs without relying on mech technicians or industrial machinery!

A producer just had to prepare some growing pools. These large, advanced bioengineering creations enabled any biomech culture to grow autonomously as long as someone dumped the required raw materials in the pools.

While the growth period was rather slow, there were several advantages to this process. The key was that as long as someone clever set the process up, the growing pools would basically run themselves!

It was this advantage that Ves sought to transplant in this situation. So what if he didn't possess the expertise required to realize his mother's design?

He would simply leverage his own expertise to build some sort of spiritual seed that was loaded with the design! While Ves couldn't guarantee that the budding seed would bloom in accordance with the design, if it was at least somewhat similar, then that was already fine!

Ves became enormously enchanted by this new and unconventional method of producing spiritual constructs. Compared to his old method, it was a lot less demanding as long as he figured out how to get it to work.

"I can probably accomplish this in a day! Maybe even less!"

The caveat was that Ves could only gain this convenience by giving up control. By giving up the opportunity to make his mother's construct piece by piece, he had to let the seed grow while only being able to exert a limited amount of influence.

"It's worth a try. If I can't get it to work, then I'll just wake the Superior Mother!"