The Mech Touch

Ves worked intensively from the moment he embarked on this project. He cut down his sleep and tried to make the best use of his limited time to perform as much research on his upcoming companion spirit as possible.

Whenever he designed mechs, he did so with the knowledge that it would be another paying for any of the mistakes, shortcomings and compromises he made.

While it was certainly not good if he slipped up in a way that caused the mech pilots of his products to die unjustly, Ves had always taken psychological comfort in the fact that it wouldn't be him losing his life.

As long as he managed to cling to his life, what did it matter if he lost his reputation and credibility? He could always earn it back over time or simply move to another market and start over again.

If he died, then there was no possibility to make a comeback.

Someone who valued safety would never engage in reckless self-experimentation. Yet that was exactly what Ves was doing right now. Against his better sense, his greed and his desire to augment himself with his own version of Sharpie drove him to utilize all of his accumulated knowledge of spirituality in this personal project!

He was well aware of the risks involved with creating a complex living product inside his own mind, but he possessed an abundant amount of confidence.

Sharpie's successful birth and evolution provided him with a ready-made model. He had already inspected Ketis' companion spirit thoroughly and recorded every observation he made in his Archimedes Rubal.

Though he did not understand the exact mechanisms of many aspects of Sharpie's current configuration, Ves nonetheless gained plenty of inspiration from looking at a more advanced model of a companion spirit.

It helped that Ves still recalled the simplistic design of the initial seed form of Sharpie. Though the two forms differed drastically from each other, he could still infer a couple of clues on how certain weaker components grew into more advanced versions of themselves.

His fascination increased as he pursued multiple directions of research and developed a lot of small theories on spirituality.

It was too bad that many of his new ideas lacked solid support. They were mere speculation as long as Ves did not verify their accuracy in practice.

Though Ves devoted some of his time to perform a number of experiments, he lacked the time and resources to verify everything.

What was worse was that he would only be able to verify some of his assumptions once he performed the main procedure. This left him with a lot of question marks and uncertainties that constantly weighed on his mind.

His experiment wouldn't necessarily fail if he made a mistake. Yet each mistake had the potential to produce an unexpected outcome that might prove detrimental to his life and safety.

"I don't have much choice but to press onwards."

This was his chance to rise another step and acquire yet another unique advantage. The best part of it was that he was the one who created it. Though he still wished he retained his Grand Dynamo, lately he felt it might have been for the better that he got rid of this fantastic marvel of spiritual engineering.

"It's brilliant, but it's not mine. If I still had it in my possession, I would have never been stimulated into creating a replacement of my own making."

He thoroughly enjoyed creating and using products that he made himself. Not only would Ves be able to grasp their mechanisms and possess a deep affinity with his own creations, but they also carried his personal touch.

While it was fine for non-creators to depend on items and gear produced by others, Ves was different.

He possessed all of the requirements to make his own comm, weapon, combat armor and so on. Though that didn't necessarily mean he had to rely on himself to fulfill all of his material needs, he trusted in his ability.

"I might not be able to replicate a device as sophisticated as the Amastendira, but I'm getting closer and closer to shortening the gap. In fact, as long as I can get good materials, I can probably create something just as good as my Unending Regalia."

He was slowly catching up to the level of a first-class mech designer. Just a few years ago, designing second-class mechs used to be a dream, but now designing one was as easy as drinking water to him. He even had the confidence to embark on a second-class expert mech design project!

"It's a pity that the gap between second-class and first class is far larger than I thought." He regretfully shook his head.

The sight of how Uranus managed to squash all native opposition on Prosperous Hill VI with ease only to get toyed to submission by just twelve MTA mechs made Ves recognize reality.

If transitioning from second-class to first-class was easy to accomplish, then Uranus should have been able to put up a better fight against the MTA mechs.

Even if the Association fielded mechs of a higher quality than those deployed by first-rate states, that still did not change the fact that Ves still had a steep hill to climb!

He shrugged at the thought. "I have plenty of time, at least. With hundreds of years of time, I don't believe I'll stay stuck as a second rater forever."

Many citizens of second-rate states tried to overcome this gulf, but few succeeded. Those that did mostly entered the service of other first-class organizations instead of relying on themselves to elevate their status.

Not even Ves was arrogant enough to believe he could catch up to the enormous head start that other first raters enjoyed. The most he could do was to get closer one step at a time and hope he would reach his destination before his lifespan ran out.

"It's not as if being a second-rater is dull. There are plenty of options to keep me occupied."

His desire to catch up to the likes of Master Willix and be able to speak to her on an equal basis revved up his motivation and ignited his passion!

The longer he worked on this personal project, the more its importance weighed on Ves. He became more and more aware of how his efforts in this brief moment of time could alter the trajectory of his life and either launch him into orbit or crash him into an ocean.

It did not help that Ves decided to go all-out on the initial creation of his companion spirit.

One of the reasons that enabled Sharpie to bloom so drastically in such a short amount of time was because Ketis took advantage of an existing promotion track. If swordsmanship tradition didn't exist, then Sharpie would have just been a relatively minor presence in her mind.

"It's clear that I can't adopt this approach to accelerate the growth of my own companion spirit." He muttered.

He had no choice but to rely on his own resources to make up for the shortfall. He did not want to start off with a weak and undeveloped seed, not when he needed as many advantages as possible when he was about to design his first batch of expert mechs.

He held a vial of high-grade life-prolonging treatment serum in his hands. Its glowing contents swirled in slow, leisurely patterns. The sheer amount of life energy contained in the vial was vastly more than he needed to elevate his companion spirit to the level he desired!

"In fact, it's too much. Growth is good, but excessive growth is a cancer."

Determining how much energy he supplied from the beginning was one of the most difficult decisions he had to make. Too little and it might take years for his companion spirit to reach a satisfactory level of strength. Too much and he would not only deprive his creation from growing under more ideal circumstances, but also risk breaking or distorting it if he exceeded its capacity.

Raising the growth capacity of his upcoming product therefore became one of his highest priorities. He had to design a seed that could tolerate explosive growth and not run out of control.

This forced Ves to employ a lot of imagination. Though he could use Sharpie's evolved configuration as a reference, he was forced to fill up the gaps with theoretical templates that would hopefully channel all of the excessive energy in a safe and useful manner.

"It's like inflating a balloon, but at least a million times harder."

The second major challenge that he had to solve was to combine and balance all of the different ingredients.

He collected and extracted all of his potential ingredients relatively early on. He quickly took out seven P-stones from his vault in order to contain the harvested spiritual fragments.

He spent days trying to familiarize himself with them. He not only wanted to gain a deep understanding of their spiritual attributes and other traits, but also develop a sense of intimacy with them. Soon, he would be putting each of them in his mind, so it was important that he attuned his mind to be as compatible with them as possible.

A couple of ingredients clicked with him straight away as soon as he began to pick up the P-stones that contained the extracted essence.

It went without saying that the universal life-prolonging energy that he had extracted from one of his vials resonated strongly with him. He felt he could do anything as long as he had enough of it. He couldn't even tell that much of this potent energy originated from the brains of deceased expert pilots if not for the slight impurities contained within.

"That's odd." He frowned. "These strange attributes weren't there in the the previous sample of high-grade serum that I have obtained."

The first serum he obtained in the past originated from the Starlight Megalodon. The crashed battleship generated a spacetime anomaly that caused the entire planet it was on to experience an accelerated time flow that stretched on for millennia.

Yet despite enduring such a long passage of time, the aged serum still retained a high degree of purity and potency! In fact, Ves guessed that it hadn't deteriorated at all over time!

This meant that centuries ago, the CFA's production method was already far superior than what the Supreme Sage managed to achieve.

He looked thoughtfully at the P-stone that contained the slightly impure universal life energy.

"Is this one of the reasons why the Supreme Sage failed his consciousness transfer procedure? Could these remnants of deceased expert pilots be the reason why Uranus developed such a savage and bestial consciousness?"

Though he had no proof that this was the case, the implications were dire if his guesses strayed close to the truth!

Fortunately, it was not that big of a challenge for him to remove these anomalous elements with his existing spiritual capabilities. The only downside was that it took quite a bit of time to remove the impurities due to his lack of fine control.

Perhaps the Supreme Sage would have reacted with shock if he saw how easily Ves managed to solve this problem, but it was too bad he was no longer alive.

He processed the equivalent of 30 percent of the energy contained within a single vial. This was a hefty amount of energy and probably more than what he needed to grow his companion spirit.

Ves was actually a bit confused why each vial contained so much concentrated life energy. If all of it was channeled into the mind and spirit of a typical old geezer, their heads would be filled with so much energy that their heads would have burst apart many times over!

One explanation made sense to Ves was that much of the life energy was diverted to activate other processes.

Another possible explanation was that the treatment process was so wasteful that much of the universal life energy spilled into the void.

Regardless, all of this meant that Ves had plenty of energy to last for a long time. He even thought about using one or two vials to apply the treatment to himself and his wife if there was no other pressing need for all of that energy.

"Of course, I should purify their contents as well before I do so. I'm pretty sure these weird trace elements don't belong here."

Ves trusted the CFA's technological prowess a lot more than that of the Supreme Sage. Since he had the opportunity to transform the products in his possession to resemble that of a genuine product of the CFA, then why shouldn't he make the effort?