The Mech Touch

　　Her boundless curiosity and her research inclinations couldn't help but come forward at this time. She loosened the restraints on her immense strength and gradually began to reveal the majesty that a Star Designer possessed!

　　Ves turned still as he sensed the arrival of a presence that surpassed anything he had ever encountered!

　　Mrow! Mrow! Mrow!

　　Blinky helplessly squirmed and shook in place as the cat felt a piercing glance trying to scour through his intangible body. The poor purple spiritual cat never felt so exposed in his short existence!

　　As the Polymath continued to make observations of the companion spirit's intangible makeup in her own way, she apparently made headway because her expression increasingly betrayed her thirst for more!

　　Ves recognized that look on the Polymath's face. It was similar to his own whenever he came up with a brilliant new mech concept or spiritual invention!

　　Whenever he got into this mood, his caution and his morals melted away. Now, he sensed the same reaction from the Polymath as her obsession overpowered her previous stance!

　　Ves increasingly felt as if he was being dipped into a foreign ocean.

　　It was like the unfolding of a Saint Kingdom, but different.

　　He still recalled what it was like to enter the domain field generated by Saint Yila Mayorka and the Olympus Mons. The combination between ace pilot and ace mech was one of the most powerful manifestations he had ever experienced, even exceeding the strength and potency of the dark gods!

　　The only entity that he had confronted that was more powerful than that was the Temple Protector from the Five Scrolls Compact that he and his mother had once confronted.

　　The high-ranking cultist who came all the way from the Ruined Temple in the galactic center was truly the closest thing to an all-powerful being that he had ever had the pleasure of meeting.

　　However, now that the Polymath was slowly unveiling her own might, Ves had an inkling that the apparent holder of another fragment of the Metal Scroll may not be any weaker!

　　His spiritual senses became flooded with so much power that he had to dull them in order to avoid getting burned. It already took a lot of mental reinforcement for him to retain his wits in this situation.

　　"Fascinating. Truly fascinating." The Polymath commented as her eyes glowed in a blazing silver. "I have examined many powerful psionic manipulators and their horrid experiments, but your invention is completely different. Only the most confident or radical researchers would ever be willing to experiment on themselves. You should be dead or mentally damaged from what you have done, but somehow you have mitigated the damage that you have done to yourself."

　　How was she able to figure all of that out?! The more she deciphered Blinky's makeup, the more Ves realized that Star Designers were truly in another league. Her spiritual perception and understanding of spirituality turned out to be a lot better than Master Willix and any other Master Mech Designer that he had met.

　　The Polymath wasn't even finished. The more she wanted to learn, the more she began to expose her true self to Ves and Blinky.

　　The air around them began to distort! Even though the space around them wasn't subjected to any storms, Ves felt as if the Polymath's awe-inspiring spirituality was overriding reality just by existing!

　　The air around the table and the chairs glowed as silver flashes of light began to dance around them. The concentration of this phenomena was a lot higher around the Polymath's mind, making it seem she had turned into an enormous star!

　　As the pressure around her grew heavier, the dots of lights began to resolve into more elaborate constructs.

　　Symbols and formulas began to take shape. The formulas that described reality started out with simple ones such as F = MA. However, they grew more complicated as the length and complexity of the formulas quickly exceeded his own knowledge base!

　　More science and engineering-related phenomena appeared around the Polymath. Echoes of diagrams, theoretical models, mech designs, lab machines and even traditional books sprung from the Polymath's immensely powerful spirit!

　　In fact, to call it her spirit was a great disservice to its actual form! Her true nature was vastly more powerful than the pitiful design seed that he bore in his mind. It was like a blazing sun that was not only fully activated, but fully radiated its influence beyond this chamber and beyond the Davute System through unknown channels!

　　The Polymath was like a beacon in the dark, illuminating entire galaxies and perhaps beyond with her intellectual brilliance!

　　Knowledge was not only a means to an end to her. It was the basis of existence and the essence that sustained her existence!

　　Though Ves tried to remain calm and rational in front of the Star Designer, her presence was so high and mighty that he simply couldn't stop himself from getting affected.

　　As someone who valued knowledge highly and always sought to expand his own understanding of mechs, spirituality, life and other fields, much of what the Polymath centered around resonated with his consciousness!

　　He couldn't resist opening himself up to her domain or whatever it was called. Though he risked getting contaminated by her influence, he was quite confident in himself. He just wanted to take a peek.

　　As he slightly lowered his defenses, he purposefully allowed himself to get affected by the Polymath's vast domain.

　　"Ahhh!"

　　The pressure that the Polymath exerted on him was a lot higher!

　　He came into direct contact with both familiar and unfamiliar elements.

　　It only took an instant for him to recognize that the Polymath actually possessed an abundant amount of high-level metal spiritual energy!

　　Ever since he confronted Cassandra's true self, he speculated that one of the biggest hurdles that Star Designers had to overcome was to convert their mech spiritual attribute into metal spiritual energy.

　　Given how much the Polymath possessed this spiritual attribute in abundance, Ves gained a lot more support for this theory!

　　This wasn't all, though. Though the Polymath's spiritual domain was so strong that Ves could only tentatively identify its strongest attributes, he was still able to sense that it contained another powerful aspect.

　　"Knowledge."

　　No. Not quite. Perhaps the Polymath started out with obsessing over knowledge, but just like with her preoccupation for mechs, she had upgraded it into a higher-level spiritual attribute and principle.

　　Ves tried his best to parse and categorize the high-level spiritual energy that the Polymath possessed in abundance.

　　"Truth."

　　This was the best word to describe what he was currently sensing. It seemed fitting considering that it had become a lot more active around Blinky.

　　Through his connection with his own companion spirit, Ves was able to feel the Polymath's incredibly powerful domain piercing deeper and deeper into Blinky's own spiritual makeup.

　　Not even the spiritual cat's extremely complicated spiritual digestion and conversion mechanisms remained free from the scouring light of the Polymath's inexhaustible curiosity!

　　The formulas and symbols around the Polymath bloomed even further as she derived a lot of insights from studying Blinky.

　　It made Ves feel awfully exposed. Nobody wanted to be examined to such an invasive degree, but there was no way he could deny a Star Designer.

　　As Ves increasingly became exposed by the Polymath powerful domain, he began to get affected by it in a different way.

　　His mind began to revolve faster as he started figuring out new theories!

　　His eyes widened as numerous confusing matters suddenly didn't look so insurmountable to him anymore.

　　As the intangible symbols and formulas generated by the Polymath's domain passed through his head, he even began to comprehend theories that he had never studied before.

　　New, foreign and even forbidden knowledge that the Polymath had collected over the years began to pour through his mind.

　　He suddenly knew how to design an aquatic mech.

　　He gained so much insight about crystals that he could immediately start designing first-class luminar crystal rifles.

　　He learned the principles behind both warp drive technology and FTL drive technology.

　　He comprehended how teleportation technology worked and how to design his own teleportation device.

　　He even understood the secret behind expert mechs!

　　"So it's like that!"

　　He had led the design of several expert mech design projects and contributed to several more. From mechs like the Dark Zephyr to the upcoming Minerva Project, each of them possessed power far beyond what their parts were able to bestow.

　　Though Ves knew enough that expert pilots and their ability to resonate with expert mechs was responsible for generating a lot of extra power, he had no clue how this worked and how he could possibly design a mech that could resonate with any mech pilot.

　　Now he knew! The theory behind it was such a surprise that Ves tried his best to delve deeper into it while he still could. Moments like these were extremely rare and this might be his only opportunity to learn what expert mechs represented from the perspective of arguably the smartest and most knowledgeable mech designer in existence!

　　Yet even as he tried to pick and choose what he wanted to learn, the Polymath's domain grew even stronger, causing Ves to become flooded by a tsunami of knowledge.

　　"Ahhh! I lost it! Where did it go!?"

　　All of that interesting knowledge on crystals, superluminal travel and most importantly expert mechs made way for other pieces of scientific information.

　　There was so much of it that Ves could hardly hang onto one theoretical framework only for it to get pushed aside by a manual on how to treat brain damage. That subsequently made way for other valuable knowledge.

　　So much truth and understanding cycled through his mind that Ves almost couldn't take it any longer. He screamed and clutched his head as it started to get overloaded by knowledge and energy that he was not qualified to handle!

　　Suddenly, the pressure disappeared.

　　It faded so abruptly that it was as if the Polymath simply pressed the off switch.

　　As soon as she retracted her powerful domain, the remarkable phenomena around her person no longer dazzled the immediate area.

　　Everything returned to calm and the white mist continued to dominate the chamber.

　　Ves took a lot of deep breaths as he recovered from this unique and extraordinary experience.

　　His mind was worn out and his spirit became listless due to his exertions.

　　Much to his dismay, he recalled none of the pieces of knowledge that the Polymath radiated from her domain.

　　"It's gone. It's all gone."

　　He felt an enormous yearning in his heart to recapture all of that fantastic knowledge. If he was able to retain just two or three theories, he could easily advance his own design prowess by a huge margin!

　　"I have studied enough." The Polymath interrupted silence as she returned to her restrained persona. "Though your techniques are crude, the ingenuity and effectiveness of your methods are undeniable. You truly have a gift in this area."

　　She let go of Blinky, allowing the aggrieved companion spirit to zip back to Ves' mind.

　　Mrow!

　　Ves gazed at the Polymath with an expression that contained both awe and fear.

　　"What… was that, Your Excellency?"

　　She smiled as if she predicted that he would ask this question.

　　"That, Mr. Larkinson, is the culmination of my work." She answered. "The members of the Five Scrolls Compact worship mythical beings referred to as the immortal gods. The cultists believe in them because the gods must be immensely powerful in order to create the Sacred Scrolls."

　　"What are Star Designers, exactly?"

　　The Polymath smiled. "Many people have equated us as gods. Those who have gone through the same experience as yours have even begun to view me as the god of knowledge."

　　Ves really couldn't blame them. What the Polymath could do with her knowledge was far beyond anything he had ever seen from a mech designer! A part of him still felt the urge to prostrate before this supreme individual!

　　"All of these views are wrong." The Star Designer said. "As much as my capabilities seem beyond you, I am still a human. The difference between the vast majority of people in our society and myself is that I am a more complete human."

　　"A more complete human?"

　　The Polymath slowly nodded. "I am no longer defective."