The Mech Touch

Spiritual energy possessed all kinds of mysterious and profound effects. Some of these effects seemed to bend or break the laws of physics.

Yet Ves thought that was merely because his understanding of spirituality and how it functioned as part of the fabric of reality was incomplete.

As far as he was aware, spiritual energy obeyed the first law of thermodynamics, just behaved like any other kind of energy.

Otherwise known as the law of conservation of energy, this law stated that energy didn't magically come from nowhere. No matter how many transformations or movements a given amount of energy underwent, there should be just as much energy at the end, just in different forms due to the processes it underwent.

If for some reason any extra energy showed up from nowhere or a bit of energy was missing at the end, then the model applied to understand what was happening was either flawed or incomplete.

In any case, what this meant to Ves in his current situation was that he needed to find an input source in order to get his power generator working.

When cavemen created fire, they used wood as their input or fuel.

When ancient industrialists started changing Old Earth, they used coal to fire their steam machines.

When the first human spaceships started to explore the Sol System, these vessels relied on a variety of synthesized fuels to propel themselves forward.

At this point in time, human civilization had reached a point where it developed many sophisticated means of energy generation to power all of the technology it depended on to dominate the galaxy.

Yet what pained Ves the most at the moment was that he could not rely on all of this known body of knowledge to design his energy generator!

"It's not like I can go down the cargo hold of the Spirit of Bentheim and pour a glass of high-density ship-grade reactor fuel in my mouth." He depreciatingly said to himself.

Augmented body or not, ingesting all of that highly toxic fuel would definitely result in his death!

He pressed his palm on his face. The problem he was suffering from right now was an enormous disparity in understanding between technical knowledge and spiritual knowledge.

He felt very confident about his mastery of the former. Even though his utilization and fluency of advanced technical theories and applications fell short of that of his wife, he was still considerably better than the average Journeyman when it came to designing complex, technical systems.

"As for the latter…"

He felt ashamed to call himself an expert in spirituality. His current degree of mastery of the spiritual domain was so rudimentary and scattered that he might as well call himself a witch doctor instead of a scientist!

The only reason why he did not feel ashamed was because he probably grasped more knowledge in this field than pretty much every other mech designer in existence!

When every other mech designer around him only knew how to swing clubs, he felt pretty proud of himself for knowing how to mix certain weeds together in order to brew herbal medicine.

This was the basis of his strength and the foundation of his career as a mech designer. It was the reason why his mech designs became so successful.

Yet applying his sometimes experimental innovations on products meant for other people was different from performing an experiment that directly affected his own life!

Considering how the first companion spirit he had ever created became such an integral part of Ketis' mind, spirit and will, Ves was a lot more lurid about proceeding with this risky project.

He thought back on the many experiments he performed on the test subjects his airfleet captured on the surface of Prosperous Hill VI.

He couldn't even count the amount of heads he exploded in his quest to develop a safe and viable method to activate spiritual potential in people who lacked this rare quality.

In the end, he never managed to succeed. All he got in return for all of the blood he spilled was another way to kill people or drive them mad.

This incident reminded him that not all of his experiments succeeded, let alone work out well for his test subjects.

Of course, he didn't care what happened to the latter. Unless they were Larkinsons or someone else he had reason to care about, he felt nothing if they died or received a crippling injury. If they were criminals or something, their eventual fate was already set in stone. There was no way that Ves would allow them to live and expose his dubious experiments.

He never had a problem with this callous but effective approach until now. His lack of rigor towards safety and risk management became a lot more questionable when he was the one who sat in the shoes of his test subjects!

The worst part about all of this was that he could not effectively perform tests on other people in order to verify that his plan was sound.

First, he was working with scarce resources. The spiritual fragment of the Unending One was unique and irreplaceable. Even if Ves did not intend to use it all up at once and even if he theorized that he could grow it like a plant, it was still an extremely rare commodity that he shouldn't have possessed under normal circumstances!

Second, the nature of his production method inherently induced a lot of variability. The seed he created was merely the starting point of his companion spirit. Once he planted it in his mind, it could sprout in many different ways and grow to maturity in countless different ways based on an endless amount of variables.

In other words, performing an identical experiment on a different Larkinson would probably yield a drastically different companion spirit, not the least because the ingredients and the person it bonded to had already changed from the beginning!

Did this mean it was useless to perform an experiment on another person? Not exactly.

"I can still use this opportunity to verify whether some of my assumptions on companion spirits are realistic."

He had several weeks of time to plan, study, experiment and learn a couple crucial lessons.

Yet before he considered this option, he turned his attention back to his previous preoccupation, which was deciding what extra ingredients he should add to make his companion spirit.

An energy generator required a lot of spiritual energy as input, and he had a number of sources he could choose from. The most ambitious choice he had so far was to try and harvest spiritual tribute from as many humans as possible.

He stood up from his chair and approached the four Aspects of Lufa stored in his personal workshop. The organic statues looked as radiant and exceptional as ever. The texture of their skin and the fluffiness of their feathers made them seem as if they were actual angels who just happened to be put in a form of eternal stasis.

If not for the fact that Ves knew for certain that the statues each possessed solid inorganic cores, even he would have doubted whether they were more than ornaments!

"The fact that even I am affected by their charm means that their attraction to ordinary people is even greater!"

The Aspect of Tranquility and the Aspect of Healing had proven to be enormously popular among the Lifer refugees that had joined his airfleet.

Of course, this was not entirely reflective of how other people in the galaxy would react to them. Organic statues appealed a lot more to the citizens of the Life Research Association than other people.

"Even so, I can just make a conventional statue if that is what it takes to attract people."

The only problem involved with this was that he had to craft the statues by himself in order for them to function as valid totems. If he simply ordered the Spirit of Bentheim to mass produce a large batch of statues of Lufa, they would not possess any intrinsic life and possess any connections to his angelic design spirit.

Ves frowned. "This is a troublesome bottleneck. How can I mass produce a vessel that can compel people to donate their spiritual tribute to Lufa?"

The more input Lufa received, the more the design spirit could supply fuel to his companion spirit!

An idea suddenly came to mind. "Wait a second, don't I have a design available that is suitable for mass production?!"

Ves activated his comm and pulled out one of his finished mech designs. A projection soon came into existence which displayed his Sanctuary mech.

Despite completing this design a long time ago, Ves always hesitated in publishing it onto the market. Selling a third-class mech that was able to counter his existing LMC mechs would definitely result in a lot of upheaval in the mech market! Once it began to enter circulation, the Sanctuary would definitely make a lot of existing customers unhappy, so it was not wise to put it up for sale without greater considerations.

For now, Ves had ordered the design to be held back from release unless there was a suitable reason to put it out. One scenario where the Sanctuary could be useful was to suppress any counters published by his competitors.

That did not happen yet. While the Fridaymen managed to come up with some limited counters to his glows, the solutions developed by Master Olson were too expensive for the third-class mech market.

As long as this did not change, it was not necessary for the Sanctuary to see the light of day.

Yet what if he had another reason to put it out onto the market? What if he repurposed its primary function from countering glows to providing psychological comfort?

His eyes shone. "This idea has a lot of potential!"

Previously, Ves always treated the glows of his design spirits as supplemental tools to enhance the combat capabilities of his mech designs.

This meant that he always imagined how glows affected both friendly and hostile mech pilots on the battlefield. What they did off the battlefield was of little concern to him. Mechs existed to fight. Every mech designer had been trained to think on how they could maximize the combat performance of their products.

A mech model that looked pretty in parades but fell apart at the first blow in a combat scenario was not worth the money it took to produce a copy!

"What if… looking pretty is the main point? What if the combat application of the mech is secondary to its ability to attract spiritual energy donors?"

This was a great idea! Unlike his statues and other totems, he didn't have to craft his mechs in person for them to become alive.

Otherwise, all of the millions of mechs the LMC sold so far were overpriced by at least 30 percent if they were all lifeless!

Ves did not have to task the Marketing Department to perform any in-depth market research in order to know that his Sanctuary would definitely be able to catch on as a peaceful tool to provide mental comfort.

While he knew that there were bound to be drugs and all kinds of other treatments that could induce similar effects to humans, their different mechanisms meant that the outcomes would always be different.

The advantage of his Sanctuary was that it acted directly on the mind and spirit without fail. There were no side effects to worry about and the physical condition of the people in question was completely irrelevant.

He did not believe that the medical community had a better and more convenient way to calm or heal someone's mind!

Even if such solutions existed, the treatments were probably so high-end that it was only accessible in more advanced states.

As for his Sanctuary? It was just a third-class mech model!

Its production cost amounted to around 1.5 million hex credits under normal conditions. This might be a hefty amount of money to a third-class organization, but it was very cheap by second-class standards!

A typical Bright Warrior Mark I Version B cost around 500 million hex credits to produce, so the Larkinson Clan could easily produce over 300 Sanctuaries for the same amount of money!

"This is a much better solution than producing mech-sized statues or smaller-sized medallions or something!"

If he chose to do the latter, he would not only have to commit a lot of days of his life to fabricating individual totems, but he would never be able to supply them to enough humans to earn enough spiritual tribute.

Yet if he chooses to repurpose his Sanctuaries and market them as mental healing solutions, Ves predicted that they would definitely be able to catch on in their new capacity!

If he was able to sell a million copies to customers who used his Sanctuaries for their intended purpose, then Lufa would be able to receive an immense amount of spiritual feedback on a continuous basis!

Better yet, since the Sanctuary mechs weren't supposed to be deployed in battle, their longevity would become a lot higher. Perhaps a century from now, the original Sanctuaries that the LMC initially put out on the market would still be performing their roles without any loss of effectiveness!

His mouth started to drool at the possibilities. Since his Sanctuaries were so cheap to produce by the standards of the current Larkinson Clan, it was not impossible to fabricate a billion copies within a couple of years.

If that was the case, then Lufa would definitely be able to supply an endless amount of spiritual feedback to his companion spirit!

His body suddenly shuddered.

"Since the cost of my product is disproportionate to its value, I can easily justify the decision to jack up its price. What if I sell a third-class mech at the price of a second-class mech?"

Perhaps earning a huge amount of spiritual feedback wouldn't be the only profit he could earn with this radical plan…