The Mech Touch

As soon as the momentum from the breakthrough disappeared, the MTA research team immediately teleported the exhausted expert candidate away.

It was of vital interest to determine how the lucky woman's advancement had changed her and whether she was any different from expert candidates who broke through during battle.

Ves did not expect there to be any significant differences. He could already observe through various means that the new expert candidate was the real deal. Her strength, her outburst, her transformation of will and other indicators were all similar to the other expert candidates he had known in the past.

He became distracted by other considerations.

Two important consequences resulted from the breakthrough.

First, the test subject's breakthrough to expert candidate released a huge amount of spiritual feedback!

Different from the previous breakthroughs that Ves had witnessed, multiple different parties became the beneficiaries of the energies unleashed by the female mech pilot.

The prototype Tutor Project obtained the largest share. The mech became one of the few living mechs that was being piloted by an individual who had broken through while interfacing with it. This caused the prototype to become a unique mech that became stronger and more developed than any ordinary copy of the same design!

  "It also makes it rather troublesome to perform any subsequent experiments with it." Ves observed. "If I want to gather representative data on its routine performance, then I will have to change it out with a fresh and unadulterated copy of the Tutor Project."

Still, the current prototype was already a lot more valuable than before. With all of the growth and strengthening it had gone through, it could follow in the footsteps of the Quint and become a powerful living mech that excelled at training mech pilots!

The breakthrough benefited other parties as well. Since the test pilot and the Tutor Project were both connected to the MSTS, the design spirits that were responsible for maintaining its operations also received their shares!

Vulcan obtained the greatest share while the Quint and Helena were only entitled to lesser shares.

Even so, all three of them were satisfied with this 'bonus'!

The feedback from an extraordinary individual was qualitatively different from the feedback of an ordinary individual.

In order for his design spirits to evolve, it was not enough for them to accumulate a huge quantity of low-grade spiritual energy. They also needed to gather higher grades of spiritual energy that could help them reach a higher life phase.

"Interesting."

Ves was happy to see all three of them grow stronger, but he recognized that much of their gains came at the expense of the prototype Tutor Project mech.

"It can't be helped. The amount of energy released by a breakthrough event is ultimately finite."

Aside from this, Ves also took note of another consequence of the unusual breakthrough event.

The simulated battle inside MSTS that tipped the test subject over the edge briefly fluctuated and grew unstable upon the moment of her breakthrough event.

The reason why this happened was because the simulated environment was not entirely capable of getting to terms with forced resonance.

This was an outburst that briefly granted the simulation mech the power of an expert mech!

Even if it only lasted for a short amount of time, the degree in which the expert candidate and her mech distorted reality was considerable!

All Ves knew was that despite Vulcan and the Quint working together to maintain the realism of the MSTS, they failed to account for all of the weird phenomena that forced resonance could produce!

The two design spirits had to rely on their existing knowledge to construct a theorized model of forced resonance.

In other words, the simulation mech that overflowed with power due to the test subject's breakthrough entered into a fantasy scenario when it started to beat up the opposing mechs!

None of it was a reflection of reality!

If the test subject fought in the same scenario but for real, her performance and the parameters of her prototype Tutor Project mechs would probably be different from what the MSTS had tried to approximate!

Ves frowned at this sight. He already expected the MSTS to be unable to model and calculate willpower and resonance phenomena properly. After all, Vulcan had only worked on it for less than a year, and he spent much of that time building the foundation and framework of the spiritual simulation program.

It was already good enough that the MSTS was able to portray normal mech battles with a remarkably high degree of accuracy. It would be too much to expect more out of such an immature new system!

"That doesn't mean it has to remain limited in the future." He whispered to himself.

Though the MSTS failed to cope with this extreme properly this time, this didn't mean it had to stay this way!

He already made enough observations to confirm that the MSTS was not only capable of simulating forced resonance, but also the performance of expert mechs and maybe more!

This was because the MSTS was a spiritual program and was not subject to the limitations of digital software programs. It was already capable of depicting certain metaphysical concepts such as living mechs and glows. As long as Ves or Vulcan expanded its rudimentary framework to encompass more complex phenomena, it could model all kinds of irrational power manifestations! 

Ves slowly grinned. If his suspicions were correct, his Mental Simulation Training System had the potential of providing a proper simulation environment for expert pilots and expert mechs!

"The costs are high, though."

He tempered his expectations after thinking about how much he needed to invest to get to this point. In order to expand his spiritual simulation program's scope and encompass all of these ambitious phenomena that digital simulation programs weren't capable of modeling, Vulcan would probably have to spend at least a decade on this task!

Vulcan would have to start from the beginning and research how to quantify and model different forms of resonance. It wasn't enough to feed Vulcan with data on breakthrough events and how expert mechs such as the Amaranto and the Everchanger performed during their practice sessions.

The true challenge lay in trying to translate these data points into reasonably accurate formulas and rules that could predict how an expert mech would behave under many different circumstances.

The difficulty was akin to predicting the weather patterns on a typical planet like Davute VII up to a week or a month in advance!

Was it possible to accomplish such a feat? Yes.

Was it easy to do so? Definitely not!

"In short, this is not a goal that I can fulfill in the short-term."

He felt quite frustrated about that. He knew it was possible and he knew that he had the capability to turn the MSTS into an effective simulation program for his expert pilots.

Ves knew without a doubt that if he could mature his spiritual simulation program up to this point, the growth and progress of all of his expert pilots would accelerate!

For the time being, people such as Venerable Tus and Venerable Joshua had little choice but to participate in tame practice sessions. The gains they made during their friendly spars were limited because they always needed to hold back their power for fear of dealing serious damage and because they never truly faced any threat of death.

It would be different in an advanced simulation environment! As long as the MSTS could model their true resonance and the reality-breaking capabilities of their expert mechs properly, every Larkinson expert pilot could unscrupulously exercise their powers and test themselves against challenging opponents that could undoubtedly push them to their limits!

Even if it turned out that his expert pilots could not make as many gains as fighting in actual battles, this was still a far better outcome than the previous status quo!

"Argh!"

He constantly had to remind himself not to get ahead of himself. While he wasn't sure whether the MTA secretly developed a solution to this problem, he was pretty sure that there was no publicly available commercial product on the market that could compete against his MSTS!

"After all, compared to existing simulation programs who all share the same tech base that has been explored for millenia, mine is based on a completely different tech base that has barely been exploited to its full potential!"

It was like comparing two different ore mines.

The ones used by every existing competitor were not only active for thousands of years, but had almost depleted all of its reserves.

In contrast, the one that Ves had just started to dig was still rich with untapped ore!

The only problem was that he was by himself and had to use a pickaxe to manually dig out chunks of ore! It would take a huge amount of time for him to gather any yield through his own efforts!

That led him to consider whether he could employ more people to assist with the development of the MSTS.

No one said that only Ves or Vulcan could work on it. The problem was that it was difficult to find helpers who possessed the qualifications to facilitate the development of a spiritual software program.

"The Aducs can't do it." Ves shook his head.

Ever since he struck a deal with the Aduc Family, its family members had begun to take up positions within the T Institute.

The Aduc researchers employed their limited spiritual abilities to perform relatively simple studies.

Much of their tasks amounted to routine experimental grunt work. Although Ves had noticed that the Aducs started to develop their spiritualities after Gaia came into their lives, their pace of growth was not impressive.

Ves did not expect any of the Aducs to turn into qualified spiritual sorcerers or spiritual engineers anytime soon.

"In the end, I'm still suffering from the same problem as always. I don't have enough manpower."

He felt quite depressed about that. He had developed a lot of great ideas over the years. His to-do list had practically expanded into a library by now and showed no signs of shrinking.

The development of the MSTS was a major project that could take a lifetime to complete. Though Vulcan was a highly productive creator, he alone was not enough to realize the potential of this revolutionary new simulation system!

"It would be a different story if I had a thousand qualified programmers at my disposal."

He sighed and decided to just muddle onwards like it was useful and hope his circumstances improved in the future.

In any case, there was no need for the MSTS to accommodate high-ranking mechs and mech pilots at the moment. It just needed to be complete enough to pair well with training mechs.

The demands of mech cadets weren't as high as real mech pilots. The current state of the MSTS was already enough to run routine training scenarios.

When Ves finally ended his contemplations, he turned to Yarach Stimmons who looked completely excited.

"I need to pass on this result to Master Dervidian as fast as possible." The MTA Journeyman said. "Due to the sensitive nature of this development, we must maintain its secrecy as best as possible. I will have to enter a secure communication chamber to pass on word back to the Paracelsus Optimus."

"Uhh… okay?"

"There is no need for concern. Master Dervidian will undoubtedly award you with a substantial sum of MTA merits should your new innovation prove useful to us. Our Association is always always grateful for any contribution that you can make to the mech community."

Now that was a lot more reassuring to hear! Ves relaxed a bit. The mechers might be scumbags in many aspects, but they were never ungrateful.

"I will await his reaction." Ves calmly responded.

The significance of the MSTS was no less than the transcendence glow that previously excited the Transhumanist Faction.

Ves had no doubt that he had become even more important to the Transhumanists now that he came up with a second groundbreaking innovation in a short amount of time!