The Mech Touch

Ves leaned back on his seat behind his workstation while propping up his feet on top of his work table.

He gazed at the metal ceiling above his head while his mind wandered off into thought.

His personal workshop fell into silence. None of the production machines were active and there were neither mechs nor materials present in the spacious hall.

The only objects of note that were present in the workshop were the four Aspects of Lufa. Ves was still undecided on how to put any of them at the disposal of the Larkinsons. Though the side project related to releasing the so-called treatment versions of the Sanctuary Project was proceeding well, he wasn't really sure whether it was wise to rock the boat when the Five Scrolls Compact was acting out at the moment.

"I need to stay under everyone's radar, but that's hard to do when I come out with groundbreaking inventions." He muttered.

He was constantly plagued by these dilemmas. If he truly got rid of all of his inhibitions, he could immediately disrupt the second-class mech market by releasing public versions of most of the mechs that he had designed for internal use.

In fact, just releasing the second-class versions of his popular third-class mech models would already succeed in causing mass disruption!

Ves had no intentions of doing so. Not when he was hunted by several major organizations.

"I should at least wait until I have left the Yeina Star Cluster far behind before I spark a revolution in the mech market." He muttered.

His sense for trouble might not be very reliable, but even he could figure out it was best to leave the scene of the crime before it erupted into chaos!

He would feel a lot safer if the consequences of his actions weren't able to catch up to him. As long as he left this corner of the galaxy, he could even turn it into his personal experimental grounds as long as he was safely on the other side of a beyonder gate!

Of course, this issue could wait for later. Right now, Ves needed to think about how to approach the kinship networks that he agreed to provide to his two allied partners.

Serving the Glory Seekers required very little thought. He knew what they were about and they were already acquainted with the Superior Mother. It also helped a lot that she was already maintaining two existing networks.

Since Ves had invented at least three different types of spiritual networks, he decided to name and define the remaining one as the population network.

It was the weakest but most easily propagated kind of spiritual network. Unlike the battle network and the kinship network, those who aligned with the network and its nexus automatically became a part of it without needing to be introduced by an existing member.

It did not come with any immediate boost in combat power like his battle networks. It also lacked the close intimacy and the ability to detect treachery like his kinship networks.

However, the population network was undefeatable and harvested large quantities of spiritual feedback. Even if every individual connection was faint and weak, when trillions of people piled up together, the sum of it all was enough to drown the spiritual feedback of any of his mech-bound design spirits!

It also had a weak influencing effect, as those who first made a faint connection to the Superior Mother always found it to be pleasant. This encouraged the Hexers who dipped their toes in her territory to go even deeper. The best way to do so was to align themselves to her motherly values, so in this way they became incentivized to abandon some of their old ways!

"It's too bad that there are limits to this shift."

It could encourage a leopard to change her spots, but it was not powerful enough to transform this ferocious predator into a tame housecat!

The Hexers were still Hexers, and their insistence on discriminating by gender had been baked into their DNA. There was no way to moderate them quickly enough to make them palatable to the rest of the galaxy.

Real and lasting change could only be accomplished over long stretches of time. If the Hexadric Hegemony enjoyed multiple decades of peace, then it might have been able to turn itself in a state where boys were nurtured and protected instead of treated like devils in the making that had to be suppressed at every turn.

Yet the Komodo War seemed hellbent on denying the female-dominated state the time to reform its culture and institutions.

Ves shook his head. "This is not a failure on the part of the Superior Mother or her population network. The Hexers only have themselves to blame for being so obnoxious."

He didn't know what he should do with his mother's population network if the Hegemony fell. Though the Hexer people would not die out anytime soon, it was a lot harder for them to gather and prosper when they were scattered and trying to survive while wandering through space.

Perhaps he should expand the scope of the population network so that it accommodated every mother.

"That might be a viable idea." He determined. "It will be just like how I am planning to popularize Lufa."

Though Ves was not short on spiritual energy and feedback these days, it always helped to secure an abundant supply before his future endeavors became more energy-intensive. He could easily imagine how he might need a thousand or even a million times more spiritual energy to create greater works!

The problem was that his level of spiritual engineering hadn't progressed to that point yet. He was quite willing but currently unable to match his mother's prowess.

Ves eventually returned to thinking on what he should do for the kinship network of the Cross Clan. He briefly glanced at the P-stone that he had placed in the middle of one of his work tables. A surprisingly strong remnant will still emanated from within the spiritually-reactive exotic.

The small fragment that Blinky had managed to harvest was a lot more troublesome to deal with than he thought.

Saint Hemmington Cross was definitely dead, but this stubborn little will fragment was still alive in a sense. Ves knew that because it rejected any intrusion, fought hard against Ves and Blinky and did not accept any of his friendly overtures.

"What a stubborn little fragment."

Ves released a small spiritual projection from his mind and cautiously extended it to the occupied P-stone.

Just as it touched the stone, the tiny spirit and will fragment violently lashed out! The indomitable will smashed and ripped apart the incoming projection with ease due to its great concentration of strength!

Ves winced a bit. He did not mind the loss of spiritual energy because he could replenish it easily enough.

What he actually found troublesome was the fact that fragments that were mostly made out of highly-condensed will appeared to possess different properties from the purely spiritual fragments that he previously handled.

"They're like oil and water. They don't mix together."

Different from the lower-quality willpower energy that expert pilots had just begun to form, the willpower that Hemmington Cross had left behind was a lot more closed.

Apparently, advancing from expert pilot to ace pilot induced a qualitative transformation of willpower. It became a lot stronger and more capable of accomplishing something on its own. It had also become a lot less dependent on spiritual energy to serve as a medium and an amplifier for its effects.

This came with a downside, though. The willpower of an ace pilot became so strong and domineering that it began to exclude other sources of energy! No matter whether it was spiritual energy or willpower from another source, an ace pilot apparently excluded all of them as long as they were external!

The little fragment had taught him a lot about ace pilots. Ves was able to glean several important clues and string them together into tentative theories that possibly explained why ace pilots were stronger than expert pilots.

When he combined his new theories with what little reliable information was available in the public, he developed a strong guess about how ace pilots fought.

"The most important difference between expert pilots and ace pilots has to be the domain!"

Expert pilots possessed domains of sorts, but they were mostly weak and fairly useless. Their only function was to allow expert pilots to resonate with their own mechs.

Ace pilots possessed much stronger domains. These willpower domains not only affected the mech around the ace pilot, but also the space around the machine. How far they extended, Ves wasn't sure, but it should at least be long enough to envelop another enemy mech if the distances were close enough.

The consequences were very dire if an enemy fell into the domain of an ace pilot! Perhaps only other ace pilots or god pilots who also possessed their own domains were able to maintain their own strength.

Everyone else would just get lost in someone else's domain!

Ves possessed a domain as well, but it was of a different kind. Since Ves did not infuse his own domain with extraordinary willpower energy, it was quite open and easy to cooperate with. Ves could bend or combine his spiritual energy with other sources in order to achieve greater outcomes.

In other words, the nature of spiritual energy was a lot more inclusive. Their attributes might be different, but as long as they learned how to get along, they could be combined to achieve transformative effects.

This was also the basis behind much of his spiritual engineering. All of his design spirits were creations that organically combined his own life-attributed spiritual energy with powerful ingredients from other sources.

Hence this was why the will fragment from Saint Hemmington Cross gave him such a headache.

"How the hell can I combine this ingredient with other stuff when it tries its best to reject outside influences?"

Ves didn't think his usual approach of shattering it into little shards before merging it together with other shards would work. As long as their exclusionary nature remained, they would always resist merging with other sources.

Would he even be able to create any kinship network by leveraging this key ingredient?

"Probably not directly, at least."

He turned his thoughts into another direction. Instead of creating a new ancestral spirit for the Cross Clan that centered around Saint Hemmington Cross, Ves could create an alternative that did not have any direct relations to the deceased ace pilot.

This was a much more palatable solution to Ves. As an ally and partner of the Cross Clan, he did not want them to go down the path of Hemmington Cross again. The ace pilot's warmongering ways had already caused the Crossers to fall once. Ves did not want to set them up for a second fall!

He began to consider an alternate solution. He was much more inclined to create a softer and more generic ancestral spirit.

Just like how he was attempting to make the Hexers less extreme, Ves might be able to accomplish something similar to the Crossers.

Of course, the new spiritual product he intended to create still had to appeal to Patriarch Reginald and the rest of the Crossers. His client would not accept an influence that was too different from the current Cross Clan.

Ves began to draft out a profile of an entity that shouldn't elicit too much backlash.

"The Cross Warlord."

Just as its name suggested, the Cross Warlord retained the aggressive and glory-seeking traits of the Crossers. Yet the Warlord was a leader as well as a fighter, so it paid quite a lot of attention to good governance and the wellbeing of the masses.

Perhaps these additional properties were incompatible with the kinds of warlords that emerged from the endless struggles of the Garlen Empire, but this was his own version of an ideal warlord!

"This is a great way to rehabilitate the Cross Clan!"

Ves knew what Patriarch Reginald Cross and his band were like. If Reginald ever advanced to ace pilot, then there was a considerable chance that the son would follow in the footsteps of his father!

"It's best if I can nip this in the bud!"