The Mech Touch

Expert pilots were also possible sources of spiritual ingredients.

Though their primary source of power was their willpower, they relied heavily on their spirituality to perform their feats.

This made it possible for Ves to harvest and make use of the spiritual component of their force of wills.

He had to be careful not to make too much use of the willpower component, though. Expert pilots possessed a strong sense of self and he didn't want his companion spirit to become affected by another person's personality.

"Still, just because I can, doesn't mean I should." He frowned.

He could inflict real harm to his expert pilots if he dug into their minds and took away a chunk of their force of wills. This was especially possible since all of the expert pilots under his command, barring maybe Venerable Davia Stark, had advanced relatively recently.

Venerable Joshua, Venerable Jannzi and so on had yet to mature their force of wills to the point where they could measure up against seasoned expert pilots such as the ones in the Cross Clan.

"Let's consider my choices."

Neither Venerable Jannzi, Venerable Orfan, Venerable Tusa, Venerable Dise or Venerable Stark offered anything that could complement his companion spirit.

Each of them possessed a range of useful specialties, but they only had the potential to add an isolated benefit to his design. This was not the best use of the limited capacity he still had left.

"I'm not a sword-swinging, gun-toting soldier like Ketis." Ves muttered and shook his head. "I already have my honor guard to relieve me from entering the fray myself."

Perhaps the spiritual ingredients of these expert pilots could provide him with other benefits, but he seriously doubted whether they would be relevant to him in any way.

It wasn't worth the downsides. By integrating a piece of a strong and willful expert pilot into his companion spirit, he vastly increased the amount of impurities or undesirable elements.

This was not a completely unacceptable outcome, but it had better be worth it in order to put up with all of the potential issues that might ensue.

This was why he took a serious look at Venerable Joshua. As far as Ves was aware of, their spiritual attributes were almost identical. Not quite, but close enough to ensure an extremely high compatibility.

Still, there were differences.

His own life domain was slanted towards instilling life where there was none.

Venerable Joshua was a lot better at empathizing and synergizing with other lifeforms.

In other words, both of them developed specialties that were most suitable for their respective professions.

The question that Ves faced was whether it was useful for him to acquire a part of Joshua's specialty.

"I can already communicate with other lifeforms on a spiritual level, and that has served me well so far. Do I really need any improvement in this aspect?"

He was inclined to say no. One of the main reasons why he leaned towards this direction was that he mainly took a brief moment of time to create another lifeform before letting the new entity fulfill its purpose by itself.

There was no need for Ves to handhold his own design spirits and other products all the time. Since he was not a mech pilot who directly interfaced with a mech, there were no acute situations in his life where the ability to understand and synergize with other lifeforms on a deeper level could make a very real difference in his life.

Perhaps there were other benefits to absorbing a part of Joshua's strength, but they weren't worth the cost.

Ves knew for certain that if he proceeded with this course of action, he would be robbing Venerable Joshua with something quite fundamental and helpful to his future growth.

He definitely shook his head. "I can't do this to my favorite expert pilot. I need you to grow as fast as possible so that you can be of greater use to me and my experiments."

The advantages of keeping Venerable Joshua whole and in good condition far outweighed whatever possible benefits Ves might obtain if he harvested the young expert pilot's fragment.

When the equation was this clear, Ves no longer entertained this direction.

"I still have other sources, though."

He briefly recalled some of the treasures he stored in his vault.

The most notable ones were the spiritual fragments of various deceased entities.

Aside from the spiritual fragment of the Unending One, he also possessed a fragment of the so-called Inexorable One.

Unlike with the Illustrious One, Ves did not feel any bond with the avian dark god.

The only impressive part about the Inexorable One was her sorcerous ability to conjure strange storms in space that could disturb an entire area. Yet this was yet another function that did not synergize with the primary purpose of his companion spirit.

"I'm not a speed freak like Tusa."

He had more ingredients in storage beside the fragments of the dark gods.

At the end of the Battle of Reckoning, he managed to settle his scores with a couple of his old enemies. Since they died in his presence, Ves took advantage of the opportunity to harvest as much of their spirits as possible.

He currently possessed three spiritual remnants derived from humans.

One of them was Venerable Ghanso Larkinson's remains.

Ves immediately scowled when he thought about the loathsome blood relative. He did not have anything kind to say about Ghanso, but even if he disregarded his personal bias, the dead expert pilot did not introduce anything relevant.

His next choice was Venerable Relia Foster.

Unlike Ghanso whose spirit was already collapsing by the time Ves was able to preserve what was left, Venerable Foster maintained her complete spirit and will before they were harvested.

Her spirituality still possessed a strong and lingering will component, which was a testament to the powerful Vesian expert pilot's unwillingness to die that day.

However, just like before, Ves didn't think that using a portion of Venerable Foster's surviving spirituality would introduce anything useful aside from making him more stubborn and pigheaded.

"I have plenty of that already. I don't need to amplify this character trait any further." He muttered.

The two ingredients he just dismissed were dangerous elements that required a lot of thought before he was willing to put them to use. He felt that there were definitely some good uses for them, but for now he couldn't come up with any useful ideas.

Perhaps he would use them to create other companion spirits for other people, though Ves wasn't sure if this course of action was entirely safe.

He shrugged. "Oh well. It won't be me who will suffer."

There was one more spiritual ingredient where Ves had to put serious thought in its use. He carefully contemplated the possibility of integrating the dormant design seed he had managed to scavenge from Lady Aisling Curver's mind.

Unlike his previous choices, Ves recognized a lot more potential benefits to making use of this unique ingredient.

"Curver may have been a crazy and obsessive woman when she was alive, but she is still a competent and capable student of a genuine Master Mech Designer."

Ves was attracted by her design philosophy, which delved into a specific application of neural interfaces. The neural networks that Master Huron and Lady Curver excelled at inspired him to create his spiritual networks and battle networks.

The fact that he was able to do this already proved that his specialty possessed intersections with Lady Curver's design philosophy.

Ves imagined what it would be like to gain access to Lady Curver's design seed. Would he be able to channel her design philosophy as if it was a part of himself?

"Perhaps it might be possible for me to develop two design philosophies at the same time!"

At first, this sounded impossible. No mech designer was able to develop two design philosophies at the same time.

"Yet people also say that it is impossible for someone to become both a mech designer and a swordmaster at the same time?"

Ketis managed to break this rule and achieve the impossible by using Sharpie as a vessel for her second profession.

If Ves applied this model to himself, could he enhance his mech design capabilities by allowing his companion spirit to absorb Lady Curver's design seed?

The idea excited him, but once he started to think it through, his enthusiasm slowly fell.

"It's… not that simple."

Ketis' unique situation worked out because her professions complemented each other. Both of them shared many common spiritual attributes, which meant that his student did not have to divert any attention to fields unrelated to her current interests.

In the situation that Ves was thinking about, it would be different. While he was fascinated by neural interfaces and neural networks, he did not possess an affinity in this delicate field. If he wanted to progress and make full use of Aisling's design philosophy, he would have to acquire all of the knowledge and expertise that she possessed before performing further research in a field that was not a part of his original ambitions.

Though it was undeniable that a greater grasp and understanding in neural interfaces would help him make his mechs bond with their pilots on a deeper level, this was not a necessity.

"The benefits aren't enough for me to commit to this choice. Aisling's design philosophy is too far removed from mine to allow me to rely on my existing spiritual attributes to excel in her specialty."

He felt it was a pity to abandon this choice, though. He still felt that absorbing at least a part of her design seed would be helpful in creating better spiritual networks.

Ves also had a hunch that Aisling's network specialty might also play a useful role in increasing the networking capabilities of his companion spirit.

"I don't need to use her entire seed as an ingredient. It is already enough to cut off a relatively small chunk of it, if that is even possible."

This was probably not the best possible use of an intact design seed, but his interests trumped above everyone else's. As long as it was useful to him, he was willing to squander its amazing potential.

"Besides, what else can I do with it? I'm not going to implant it into the mind of a low-ranking mech designer in order to see whether I can create an artificial Journeyman."

A design seed was a unique natural spiritual construct that contained the essence and a bit of personality of a Journeyman. The design philosophy it supported was completely tailored to that of a specific individual. Rashly implanting this seed into the mind of another person would definitely lead to a mismatch in attributes, inclinations, personality, interests and other aspects.

There was no way that someone with an incompatible design seed would be able to develop it any further, let alone advance to Master!

Ves was quite strict and traditional in this aspect. He respected the mech designer tradition and did not want to make it easy for anyone to become a Journeyman.

After reluctantly settling on this choice, he briefly summarized his current list of ingredients.

"My core ingredients are my own spiritual energy, a portion of the Unending One, a portion of universal life energy and a spiritual fragment of Lufa. My possible minor ingredients are a spiritual fragment of the Golden Cat, a spiritual fragment of the Illustrious One and a shard of Lady Curver's design seed."

That amounted to seven ingredients in total. Even if he did not intend to rely heavily on the latter two, combining them all was still a considerable challenge.

It was not challenging to mash them all together and create his companion spirit right away. Yet if he did so without any preparation, who knew what kind of monstrosity he would end up with. Even if nothing catastrophic happened, his resulting product might suffer from a lot of inefficiencies and wasted potential because its underlying ingredients clashed against each other.

Ves did not look worried though. "This is why I have several weeks to figure this all out. I will definitely design something greater than Sharpie!"

It was not enough to equal his earlier accomplishment. He initially created Sharpie in haste and without any thorough planning. This time was different. Now that he was able to treat this like a proper project, he was determined to make his companion spirit the best he could ever create!

"Let's begin!"