The Mech Touch

Calabast continued to observe what Ves was doing from above. She became more and more disturbed when many of the dwarves that were forced to step forward spontaneously exploded!

Yet when she witnessed several miracles taking place in a short span of time, she completely understood why Ves did not hesitate to conduct these experiments.

Though the price of failure was great, the payoff was even greater!

"Is it that easy for Ves to make expert candidates these days?" Calabast frowned. "If my guess is right, his current results already surpassed the best efforts of the MTA! Even if two-thirds of every mech pilot exposed to this experimental procedure will die in one of the most miserable ways that I have ever seen, it is still worth it if the remaining third successfully advance to the rank of expert candidate."

It seemed that Ves had something else in mind, though. He hardly paid any attention to the dwarves who had successfully broken through.

Instead, he spent a bit of time inspecting a lot of strange objects before setting a macabre-looking ritual!

From the way Ves placed his strange hammer at the center to how he commanded hundreds of dwarven captives to position themselves in circles around the pedestal in the middle, Calabast began to develop a bad feeling about what her strategic partner had in mind.

"Don't you know how this looks to other people?" She softly spoke. "If other people ever catch you doing this, there will be no place for you anymore in civilized space!"

Despite being more aware of the risks than Ves, Calabast didn't move to stop his clearly illegal and immoral experiments.

She grinned. After all, it wasn't her committing these war crimes. If the Big Two ever caught on that Ves inhumanely slaughtered dwarves to achieve scientific progress, then their sights would solely be set on him rather than her! At worst, she would be deemed an accomplice to his crimes, which was much less severe than being branded a war criminal herself!

"Inventors don't necessarily get to reap the rewards of their own innovations." She crossed her arms as she continued observing. "You're accomplishing great feats, Ves, but it takes much more than that to get ahead."

While Calabast was thinking how many crimes Ves was committing at the moment, the mech designer in question was finally ready to begin the creation process!

He had moved to the center with his ingredients hovering behind him like a procession. The immobilized dwarven captives who were staring obsessively at the Hammer of Brilliance finally noticed the appearance of their captor and tormentor.

"Mmfff!"

"Mffffmmff!"

Though their mouths were forced shut, Ves could easily sense their fury and indignation towards him. It would not be good for his creation process if these dwarves kept acting up so much, so he decided to address his prisoners.

"I am Vulcan." Ves plainly stated to his audience. "I'm aware it is difficult for you to believe this absurd-sounding statement, but it is the truth. The Vulcan that you have always worshipped is none other than myself."

In order to emphasize this claim, he temporarily took back the Hammer of Brilliance and began to channel Vulcan's aura!

Though many of the dwarves refused to acknowledge him as their god, what they just experienced caused most of them to pause!

Ves smirked and stopped his act in order to conserve his energy. "Now, as you can clearly see, I am human. I guess that most of you don't like that. That's fine. You see, my goal here today is to make a second Vulcan, one that is much more recognizable to you than my current form. You should all rejoice, because I intend to make use of each of you to form a dwarven version of Vulcan!"

What Ves just said shocked all of the dwarven captives! Though this claim sounded even more ridiculous to them, Ves had a very compelling way of speaking that appealed to their desires.

They couldn't help but take the human seriously despite all of the ridiculous statements he made!

Ves saw that he managed to hook the dwarves whose cooperation he needed to succeed in his upcoming process.

"This is a unique opportunity for each of you. What you are about to take part in will become a part of dwarven history. The dwarven god Vulcan does not exist at this time, but once this is over, he will come into existence with the help of your sacrifice! Each of you will die today, but through your earnest efforts a part of you shall always live on as you impart the new Vulcan with a portion of your dwarvenness!"

Whether they agreed with him or not, the majority of the dwarves felt that they had no choice but to believe in this narrative! If the evil human was right… a true dwarven god might be born today, and they would have made a crucial contribution that gave their deaths meaning!

In any case, it was a much better alternative than dying while feeling they accomplished nothing worthwhile in their lives.

"What you need to do now is to focus your thoughts on Vulcan and what he should ideally be like according to you." Ves instructed as if he was talking to a group of loyal subordinates. "He is known as the God of Dwarves, Mechs and Craftsmanship, so you must do your best to concentrate on these three domains. Do not neglect any of them! As long as your impression of Vulcan is good enough, the god you have envisioned will come to life!"

Several dwarves became so enraptured by this possibility that their faces showed traces of fanaticism!

Now that the dwarves not only ceased to resist their captivity, but also began to look eager to help Ves accomplish his objective, he smirked.

Hoodwinking these dwarves was too easy.

After performing one final check, Ves no longer delayed any further and began to create his most ambitious design spirit!

"First, the ingredients!"

Since Vulcan was supposed to become his incarnation, Ves did not rely too much on powerful external ingredients.

The base ingredient was his own spiritual energy, lots of it! This was his strongest guarantee that his upcoming design spirit would always be under his control!

"Shatter!"

Ves drew a large solidified spiritual fragment from a P-stone and shattered it with the help of the Hammer of Brilliance!

Even though the hammer was a material object, it also functioned as a totem, which allowed it to interact with spiritual energy.

"This is quite convenient, actually."

As long as Ves channeled his spiritual energy through the Hammer of Brilliance, he could use it as a mallet to smash spiritual fragments!

After breaking one spiritual fragment, Ves quickly repeated this process 19 more times. It was a tedious chore but Ves tried his best to make haste in order to prevent all of the broken spiritual shards from drifting away. It already took a lot of concentration for him to keep them all together!

"Blinky! I need your help. Make sure all of my ingredients stay together."

Mrow!

The purple spiritual cat emerged from his mind and already started working on manipulating all of the loose spiritual shards. His power and control over spiritual energy was excellent and he easily kept the huge quantity of shards in place.

"Next, my secondary ingredients!"

Ves successively drew out the spiritual fragments of both the Quint and the Amaranto.

Since he was able to derive spiritual fragments from living entities like himself or his design spirits, he knew it was possible to take them from his mechs as well!

They were alive, after all. Their spiritual foundation was similar to the spiritualities of living entities. Though chipping away at their spiritual foundation inflicted serious damage to them, Ves tried his best to take as little away as possible.

"I only need a little bit to guide my new design spirit into centering around craftsmanship."

If possible, he would have wanted to use up spiritual fragments derived from his other masterworks, but neither the Devil Tiger nor the Little Angel were within reach.

Once he blended the shards from the Quint and the Amaranto into his invisible cauldron, he moved on to putting in a shard of Aisling Curver's design seed.

"I just need you for your networking ability." Ves whispered.

Blinky was able to derive a useful ability from this same ingredient so Ves held higher expectations for a more powerful spirit like Vulcan.

He soon slowed down a bit when he brought forward his next two ingredients. The spiritual fragmen taken from the remains of the Unending One was dangerous. Still, Ves had already instructed Blinky to thoroughly cleanse and purify it of all unwanted spiritual fragments. Only the elements related to devouring and digesting spiritual energy were left, so it should technically be clean.

"Ah well. I trust Blinky!"

Ves shattered the fragment of the Unending One with the Hammer of Brilliance without any further hesitation. He quickly threw the dark shards into the mix before turning his attention to another dangerous ingredient.

"This one is trickier."

The Unstable Chaos Essence gem was not as hard and tough as Lucky's other gems. However, as long as it broke apart, it was capable of unleashing a violent spiritual explosion that would cerainly mess up his creation process!

He already thought up a solution to this problem, though. Ves smirked and tossed the dangerous gem towards Blinky.

"Eat!"

Mrow!

Blinky caught the gem with his mouth and began to swallow it whole.

For a moment, Ves thought about how absurd it was for one cat to eat the 'waste product' of another cat.

He quickly shook his head. "I can't let myself be distracted!"

Ves focused carefully on Blinky. He did not dare to take direct control because he didn't know how Blinky was supposed to handle the Unstable Chaos Essence gem.

Fortunately, his cat did not encounter any hindrances. After a dozen or so seconds, Blinky suddenly glowed as a disorienting kind of energy began to leak from his incorporeal body!

Mrow! Mrowwww!

Blinky looked so sick that he actually barfed all of the chaotic energy from his mouth!

Like a fire-breathing dragon, the companion spirit continually disgorged the weirdest type of spiritual energy that Ves had ever encountered.

He wasn't able to sense any coherent spiritual attributes or anything else, yet he also became impressed at the way this energy seemed to induce random distortions in the vicinity.

Once it reached the other ingredients, the chaos energy immediately began to stick to the ingredients, merging with them without any conscious direction.

"Well, that saves me a lot of trouble."

Once Blinky had emptied his entire stomach of chaos energy, he still looked sick.

Mrow…

"Cheer up. I bet you'll like what I am using next!"

Ves picked up the vial of high-grade life-prolonging treatment serum and commanded Blinky to slowly draw out its potent universal life energy.

A small but incredibly potent stream of concentrated spiritual energy emerged from the previous vial and soon began to melt and empower all of the prepared ingredients! Each of the shards gained a massive infusion of energy that directly improved their quality!

"Let's put the shards together, Blinky. Remember to adhere to my design."

Mrow mrow!

Though Blinky still had to feed the shards with concentrated universal life energy, he still had plenty of concentration left to begin with the most essential step of creating a design spirit.

Since much of the ingredients were derived himself, Ves did not need to add any spiritual energy from himself to merge the shards together. He and Blinky were able to perform his process without exerting themselves!

Though the huge quantity of ingredients was daunting, the ingredients weren't difficult to deal with. Ten minutes passed as Ves and his companion spirit slowly began to shape the largest and most powerful spiritual product to date!

Though the captive dwarves who were forced to stare forward did not see anything, they slowly felt a grand presence taking shape at the center.

If any of them possessed spiritual perception, then they would have noticed that the merged shards were being formed into a giant spiritual dwarf!

With so much universal life energy pumping into this incomplete spiritual product, even the dullest dwarf was able to feel someone powerful coming into existence!

Ves' ambitious design was actually coming to life!

However, only Ves knew that if he continued on like this, the Vulcan that he woud make would just turn into an independent design spirit.

"This is not enough! It has to be tied to me in order to become my incarnation. It also lacks an ingredient related to dwarves."

The latter was easy enough to solve. While Blinky continued to merge the shards into a greater and greater spiritual amalgamation, Ves turned around while holding the Hammer of Brilliance in his grip.

He approached the nearest dwarf, who happened to be one of his surviving test subjects who succeeded in breaking through to expert candidate.

"Let me do you a favor and allow you to be the first to sacrifice your life to your god."

With one powerful swing, Ves slammed the Hammer of Brilliance onto the helpless dwarf's skull!