The Mech Touch

Even before Ves spent his Design Points on upgrading his Sub-Skills, he had already managed to raise most of them on his own. Just like any other engineer, a mech designer never stopped learning. There was a huge body of existing knowledge and the mech industry constantly came up with new developments.

If Ves didn't want to stagnate, then it was essential for him to keep up with the evolution of the industry. He did not have to waste his precious DP on quickly absorbing easily accessible articles and textbooks.

One of the only instances where Ves felt it was worth it to spend his DP to acquire instant know-how was when he needed to master Skills and Sub-Skills that were not as accessible.

To him, that translated knowledge, insights and masteries that either took a disproportionate amount of time for him to learn or were not accessible through public sources.

Advanced, higher-tiered Sub-Skills such as Crystallography V, Luminar Crystals IV, Optics V and so on fell into one or both of those categories.

For the more general Sub-Skills, Ves would have to spend years to reach their degree of mastery in the relevant fields. He not only had to invest his time in a lot of book learning, but also apply the theories by performing practical experiments in order to truly comprehend what he gained.

Though these discoveries always brought joy to those who were passionate about finding new ways to improve their mech designs, Ves couldn't wait that long. Even his own patience had limits.

As someone who paid a lot of attention to efficiency, the benefits of spending his Design Points to skip through these lengthy, tedious processes far outweighed the downsides of having all of that knowledge forcefully stuffed in his mind!

This was because he deliberately spent a lot of the DP he recently earned on upgrading the Sub-Skills related to luminar crystal technology and energy weapons.

Even though this brought him further away from the crucial threshold of 1,000,000 Design Points, he believed that he was making a clever strategic choice.

"Luminar crystal technology has a lot of synergy with my main specialty." He muttered.

The luminar race who developed their signature tech were spiritually capable. This meant that their crystal tech incorporated a lot of spiritual engineering aspects right from the start!

"Anyone who tries to make use of luminar crystals without spiritual energy is simply missing out on at least half of their potential!"

It was quite interesting for him to work with luminar crystal technology. Conventional human technology did not fundamentally rely on any spiritual interactions because the human race was deficient when it came to manipulating spiritual energy.

Their sensitivity towards spirituality or psionic power was negligible. This was why humanity's tech base was highly mechanical and rooted in physical interactions. Human civilization's greatest weapons were battleships, and these titanic vessels derived their entire strength from fantastic materials and incredibly advanced technology.

Great battleships like the Starlight Megalodon that Ves had once entered in the past did not rely on spirituality at all despite the fact that the Common Fleet Alliance must be aware of the phenomenon!

In fact, the MTA actually fell out of step compared to the rest of humanity. It was the one institution that made semi-overt use of spirituality in order to enable mechs to be strengthened beyond their physical attributes.

However, it was clear that this was only a half-hearted measure as the integration of psionic power in mechs and mech designs was not that extensive.

There were huge differences between designing a mech and designing a crystal rifle!

As someone who was capable of doing both, Ves felt as if the latter pointed in the right direction. By employing technology that took greater advantage of the benefits that spiritual energy brought, the luminar race was able to accomplish greater feats while expending less resources!

The fact that the human approach to mech design was so pathetic in comparison was because of helplessness. Unlike a small number of exceptional people like Ves, most humans simply didn't possess the ability to perceive and interact with spiritual energy as easily as him. Without these basic conditions, it was out of the question for any human, even one with spiritual potential, to consciously and methodically make use of spiritual energy.

The way most mech designers like Gloriana harnessed their extraordinary power was to rely on their mentalities to passively channel their spiritualities in specific directions. Strong emotions like passion amplified and directed this effort so that competent mech designers were able to achieve real differences without seeing or comprehending the underlying spiritual mechanics.

It was an approach that worked. Human mech designers were able to rely on this rather stupid method because of their domains. Low-ranking mech designers mainly had to focus on developing their greatest interests and ambitions into a specific design philosophy that encapsulated their desired contributions to the mech industry.

Once they developed a promising and coherent design philosophy, the mech designers had to keep devoting to it. The more successful ones tended to be so obsessive about them that they essentially rewrote their own spiritual potential into a mirror of their own design philosophies!

At least, that was the current theoretical framework that Ves had developed after going through this progression and witnessing other mech designers go through the same struggle.

He even extrapolated what might be in store for him in the future.

If his guess was correct, then the main purpose of the mech designer progression track was to turn average human engineers into powerful spiritually-endowed creators.

In other words, it was an opportunity for the smartest, talented, hard-working or lucky humans to solve the deficiency of their race by developing their spiritualities step by step!

"This is quite amazing now that I think about it." He muttered.

Something similar took place with mech pilots, though they mainly developed their willpower rather than spiritual power.

Ves grew quite curious how the original members of the Mech Trade Association came up with the mech designer progression track in the first place. Did they derive it from a past profession as was apparently the case with the mech pilot progression track?

He felt as if he was beginning to touch a profound truth that the MTA probably didn't want to come to light.

"The MTA didn't come up with expert pilots, ace pilots and god pilots out of nowhere. It's quite obvious that they plagiarized many methods and principles from the ancient swordsmanship tradition." He rubbed his smooth-shaven chin. "Since this is the case, there is a high probability that the mechers didn't invent the concept of high-ranking mech designers out of the blue either. The question is, what craft or profession came before?"

Was it sword forging? Jewelcrafting? Woodworking?

Who knew. All Ves could assume was that it was unlikely that it all came out of blue now that he learned about the surprising connection between swordsmanship and mech pilot.

What all of this meant was that Ves heavily suspected that the higher ups of were likely aware of these considerations as well.

"The MTA must know of humanity's weakness in spiritual capabilities."

This was not necessarily a big deal. After all, human civilization managed to defeat countless alien races and dominate more than half the galaxy by relying on iron and blood.

Yet for some reason, the MTA fell out of lockstep with the CFA and encouraged humans to develop their spiritual potential in disguise. Why the urgency? Why did the mechers insist on mitigating one of humanity's weaknesses rather than focus on furthering their race's greatest strengths?

Speculating any further than this was extremely spurious and not that helpful to Ves. All he knew was that humans might only be able to achieve parity with spiritually gifted races like the luminars when they reached the height of Master Mech Designer or Star Designer!

"Then again, the luminars might be in a similar position as well."

It was rather far-fetched to assume that every single member of the luminar race was as strong in this aspect as Masters or Star Designers. The more probable scenario was that every luminars possessed a little talent, but certain individuals were more gifted than others such as the original crystal builder leader and the individual that eventually transcended his own undersized physique and became known as the Blinding One.

Yet from the fact that luminar crystal technology was both widespread in their heyday and heavily dependent on spiritual engineering, there had to be a lot of luminar aliens that posessed at least some capability in this area.

All of this had profound implications to Ves when he considered his future progression.

What was his goal? To make mechs more alive. To design mechs that not only served his customers better, but also come up with products that were able to do more with less.

To Ves, the best and most appropriate mechs shouldn't just grant mech pilots a lot of power, but also do so in a way that wasn't prohibitive in terms of cost and requirements.

Not every mech pilot was able to harness an expert mech like the Dark Zephyr. As long as Ves was able to design a mech that was much more efficient than the competition, then he would experience a lot of fulfillment for providing the mech market with a better option!

"Combining mechanical engineering with spiritual engineering is the key to increasing the power of my products!"

Ves was not content with following the masses.

Luminar crystal technology served as an excellent gateway to further the integration with the two. As a successful fusion between the two, Ves could derive a lot of lessons as long as he deepened his understanding of this exotic branch of knowledge!

It was one thing if Ves hadn't become exposed to the greater potential of luminar crystal technology, but now that he learned that intertwining luminar crystals with spiritual energy was capable of producing strong outcomes, how could he ever let go of this opportunity?

All of these considerations drove him to invest more in his ability to work with luminar crystal technology. He justified the expenditure of tens of thousands of Design Points in the Skill Tree in the hopes of deriving the fundamental principles that allowed the ancient luminars to successfully merge mechanical engineering with spiritual engineering.

However, what Ves got was… not quite what he had in mind.

He didn't exactly know where the System borrowed all of the knowledge from, but whatever it chose to dump into his mind was always structured from a human perspective.

The same happened when he improved his Luminar Crystals Sub-Skill to the fourth tier. The System supplied him with a large chunk of systematic know-how that gave him greater comprehension on luminar crystals from a different angle!

His main strength in luminar technology was his ability to work with its spiritual aspects. By melding his mind with Blinky or the Illustrious One, he was able to gain an even greater insight of the spiritual depth to luminar crystals, allowing him to make use of them in a different manner from the rest of humanity!

Yet the knowledge that he acquired from the System did not deepen his understanding from this angle at all. Instead, it bestowed him with a considerable amount of details on luminar crystals from a materials science perspective.

He acquired thousands of formulas on how to synthesize stronger crystals that converted incoming energy into different forms of output. Ves had already discovered some of the combinations through his earlier experiments, but it turned out that he was only scratching the surface of what was possible!

He became a lot more knowledgeable about how to shape crystals in different physical shapes in order to change or narrow down the effects of luminar crystals further. This was the key on how he was able to design and craft an energy rifle that was almost entirely made out of luminar crystals. Without being able to make crystals that excelled at different functions such as heat absorption, damage resistance, energy conversion and so on, it would have been too impractical to make such a groundbreaking weapon!

Given this different take on luminar crystal technology, Ves developed a strong suspicion on who came up with this body of work.

"Did the System steal all of this from an MTA research team?"