The Mech Touch

Ves did not actually have to invest much time in order to set up his ambitious Mental Simulation Training System.

Vulcan had already begun to use his formidable expertise and capabilities to build it up from scratch. By borrowing Ves' expertise as well as the knowledge that he had absorbed from his growing number of 'associates', the spiritual incarnation achieved incredible progress in a short amount of time.

In fact, Vulcan's ability to construct the MSTS was so impressive that Ves even contemplated the possibility of outsourcing future work assignments to his incarnation!

The difference in productivity between the two was too great. Ves was still bound by mortal limitations while Vulcan was much less constrained in this sense.

Of course, Vulcan was not capable of replacing Ves entirely.

The design spirit did not have direct access to a design seed, so he was unable to fully replicate the performance of a mech designer, especially the higher-ranking ones with unique design philosophies.

Ves' hopes of imitating the strengths of rational mech designers by emulating other design philosophies were dashed.

What Ves did manage to find out was that Vulcan could still function like an assisting design team on his own! While the spiritual entity was not good at some assignments, he was pretty good in many other aspects!

"This is interesting." Ves rubbed his smooth-shaven chin as he thought about the implications of this accidental discovery. "Why didn't I think about this possibility before? I can single-handedly increase my productivity by as much as half or more by off-loading the more tedious design tasks to Vulcan!"

The increasing amount of design projects that he committed to working on became a lot more manageable all of a sudden once Vulcan came into the picture!

It was as if Ves suddenly remembered that he had a spare design team as well as a supercomputer laying around in his backyard!

The thought that he had access to all of this extra capacity but forgot about using any of it until recently made him feel as if he was stupid!

"You dummy!" Ves admonished himself and slapped his forehead for good measure!

Fortunately, it wasn't too late to begin with utilizing Vulcan if only to avoid wasting the available capacity.

Right now, Vulcan was still investing most of his attention on completing the MSTS, so Ves was not yet able to assign any mech design-related assignments to his incarnation. He would surely do so once the Tutor Project was finally complete in every aspect.

Whenever Ves paid attention to his other self's progress, he noted that Vulcan already developed a high amount of competence in spiritual engineering. This was what the design spirit excelled at because he was a spiritual entity himself.

Ves saw new possibilities in Vulcan because of this reason.

If his incarnation was good enough to develop something as innovative, complicated and ambitious as the MSTS, then Vulcan would surely be clever enough to work on other advanced spiritual engineering projects!

"Maybe I should have let you design the Death Lotus instead of me!" Ves muttered.

Vulcan had one big flaw, though. His domain was based on the spiritual attributes of dwarfs, mechs and craftsmanship. He also incorporated a tiny amount of high-grade metal attribute, but hadn't evolved to the point where he could freely make use of this element.

Nonetheless, for all of Vulcan's strengths, he lacked the life attribute that enabled Ves to make all of his products alive.

This meant that Vulcan could not take over all of Ves' work entirely. Both of them needed to work together to maximize the potential of their own creations.

"Oh well. This is already good enough."

Time continued to pass as Vulcan fleshed out the MSTS. Over time, he also brought in the Quint as well as Helena to the spiritual engineering project in order to properly incorporate their respective contributions to the simulation program.

The Quint's reaction to this initiative was rather interesting.

When Ves first brought up the topic to his colorful masterwork mech, the evolved machine's eyes flashed with excitement.

"THIS WILL BE FUN, HAHA!" The speakers that the Quint gained access to had boomed. Ves had already provided his most valuable and most developed living mechs extra privileges in order to keep them happy. "AS LONG AS YOU GIVE ME CONTROL OVER THE ACTIONS AND BEHAVIOR OF THE 'NPC' MECHS, I WILL MAKE SURE THAT THOSE CUTE MECH CADETS WILL LEARN HOW TO HANDLE THEMSELVES IN BATTLE."

Ves directed a suspicious glance towards his mech. "I can give you the freedom to construct your own battle scenarios based on the fights that you have participated in as well as whatever you managed to obtain from other sources, but they will not be the only simulations that the users of my Tutor Project can utilize. Some of them are younger and need to work on their basics, so it is not appropriate to throw them off into the deep end right away. The NPCs in these simpler battle scenarios need to be dumbed down as well in order to give the younger mech cadets a decent chance at defeating them with their inferior piloting skills."

"...FINE. I WILL DO MY PART IN ACCELERATING THEIR IMPROVEMENT AND TEACH THEM THE LESSONS THEY NEED TO IMPROVE THEIR SKILLS."

Ves feared that the main reason the Quint wanted to put in all of this effort was so that it wouldn't take as much time for the mech cadets to qualify for the more advanced battle scenarios that his crooked mech had in mind!

Oh well. No matter the Quint's motivations, as long as the users of the Tutor Project improved faster and became more competent in battle, it didn't really matter. Ves just hoped that the living mech would have a sense of measure and avoid torturing the immature mech pilots too much.

After hashing everything out between the participating design spirits and coordinating their respective contributions to this great spiritual engineering endeavor, the MSTS finally reached a state where its basic functions were all complete.

It became a lot more difficult to develop the spiritual software program any further than that. Vulcan might be a lot more competent in spiritual engineering than Ves initially thought, but even he was reaching his limits in working so long on something without testing its actual performance all this time.

"We need more data! We can't go on without seeing how it actually functions in its current state!"

This put Ves in a difficult position. As promising and revolutionary as it sounded, the MSTS was a highly experimental spiritual construct that was anything but safe.

Who knew what happened if the test pilot of a prototype version of the Tutor Project started to engage this function?

Would the test pilot merely experience nothing as the MSTS failed to come online?

Would the test pilot's head explode as a glitch in the MSTS caused it to exceed its safety limits?

Would the test pilot perform normally at first but slowly develop brain damage as well as mental disorders due to gradual exposure to the extreme stimuli produced by the MSTS?

Ves had no answers to these questions! Although he developed the MSTS with the best of intentions, he knew first-hand that even the most beneficial inventions could produce adverse results when put into use.

He did not have enough confidence in the soundness of MSTS to test it out with his Larkinson mech pilots or mech cadets.

There was no way he would put someone as precious as Lanie Larkinson in an untested Tutor Project mech!

"Where the hell am I supposed to find the test pilots for my new design?" Ves grumbled and scratched his head.

Could he make use of his pakklaton prisoners?

"No. None of them are mech pilots. I don't even know if there are any neural interfaces that can establish a stable and working connection between their alien minds and a mech designed for humans."

Should he instruct his Black Cats to sneakily kidnap and smuggle over a handful of criminal mech pilots?

That sounded like trouble. If the operatives ever got caught, Ves would get into a lot of trouble!

"Wait, why am I treating this as a shameful act that needs to be covered up at all costs?"

Ves began to entertain a course of action that he would have never considered in the past.

While it sounded crazy to him, it made complete sense with the knowledge that he possessed.

He did not hesitate any longer. He activated his comm and called his buddy Jovy Armalon.

The connection did not go through. This wasn't too unusual as Jovy hadn't been easy to reach ever since Ves gifted him with the Eye of Providence.

"Let's try this one then."

Ves initiated a call to a different mecher.

It took twenty-four seconds for the man to accept the call. The face of a distinguished-looking man with graying hair appeared in the projection.

"Mr. Larkinson. I do not make a habit of accepting the calls of a Journeyman, but I have determined that there is a high probability that you are about to present a case to me that is sufficient to hold my interest."

Well, that was an interesting way to open a conversation. Ves understood that he was treading on thin ice.

A person as important and accomplished as Master Termaneo Dervidian definitely wouldn't be amused if a bratty little Journeyman took up the man's precious time for a project beneath his notice!

"I need your help or the help of your faction." Ves quickly stated. "First, are you impressed with my ongoing mech design projects?"

"No. As promising as you may be, I am not bored enough to pay attention to the work of my juniors."

"Then let me explain the premise and the progress that I have made on my Tutor Project to you. I'll send you a few documents on my design project as well."

As Ves explained the Tutor Project's goal and unique, groundbreaking features, the MTA Master quickly processed the documents he received over the comm.

It only took a few minutes for Master Dervidian to catch up and understand what he needed to know.

Suffice to say, the existence of a psionic construct that was capable of breaking through the technological bottlenecks that limited the progress of developers for many years was completely astonishing!

Such an invention was fully worthy of his attention!

Someone as clever as Master Dervidian was already able to understand the greatest uses of the MSTS!

If Ves wasn't lying about the possibilities of this revolutionary new system, then it could be used for a lot more purposes than training mech cadets!

The Transhumanist leader's eyes glinted as he gazed at Ves with greater appreciation. He didn't even care whether the Journeyman had embellished his story or created a more flawed product than he thought.

As long as the Mental Simulation Training System had any possibility of working as intended, then it would become a revolutionary new technology that could unlock a lot of useful possibilities to the mech industry!

"I understand. I will personally make the arrangements. What do you need?"

"I need test pilots." Ves answered. "I need at least a hundred teenage mech cadets as well as older mech pilots. It is best if their ages, specialties, training and background are as varied as possible. My focus lies on second-class mech pilots, but I won't say no to receiving a batch of third-class and first-class mech pilots as well."

"You will obtain what you need to thoroughly determine the safety of your MSTS. Do not be afraid to use up the test subjects that we will deliver to you. Before we will allow you to put such a new and experimental system to use, our Association must thoroughly understand its safety parameters. I shall dispatch a team of research assistants to facilitate the experiments and collect the required research data."

"Er… you don't need to do that, sir…"

"No need to thank us, Mr. Larkinson. We are happy to help."