The Mech Touch

Ves examined the enlightenment fruits closely. He not only paid attention to their benefits, but also noted their requirements, their origins and how they might augment his development.

A lot of the more expensive enlightenment fruits truly aroused his desires. Although he never heard of any of these powers or the groups that apparently created them, he did not doubt the System's accuracy when it came to supplying information.

"There are actually a lot of hidden cults in human space! From the looks of it, these cults are more than scam operations."

He had already noticed these details back at the Divine Bazaar, but now that he encountered similar mentions of organizations that developed the capability to harness metaphysical power, he became convinced that there was a large hidden community in human space!

"The big question is how these cults are related to the biggest of them all? Are they formal subsidiaries of the Five Scrolls Compact or are they completely independent from the outlaws?"

Ves did not think that most of these weird-sounding cults could escape the reach of the Five Scrolls Compact.

The big daddy was simply too dominant in this arena!

The enormous storm unleashed by the Crown Uprising was a clear indication that the Compact influence was able to reach every corner of human civilization.

As such, Ves assumed that these cults were either formal splinter organizations of the Five Scrolls Compact or founded by former members who escaped the deranged organization and went into exile.

Either of these possibilities could be true. A former behemoth like the Five Scrolls Compact was so big and expansive that managing its entire organization across hundreds of thousands of light-years was extremely complicated.

It became a lot simpler to keep everything organized by splitting off the bottom level and allowing the underlings to take care of themselves.

Ves had already encountered plenty of these splinter organizations in the past. He noted that while their connection to the Compact was rather faint, they often managed to master at least one weird method.

Exiles and fugitives probably comprised another group of hidden spiritual practitioners in human space. Ves had figured out that his mother likely originated from one, which technically meant that he himself fell into this category as well!

The problem was that unlike the members of formal splinter organizations, those that had either fled or been kicked out of the Compact had no chance of gaining access to the grand cult's library!

This was a serious flaw and one that should have limited Ves' ability to develop his spiritual engineering.

"That is no longer the case." He grinned.

As he looked up at the Tree of Possibilities, he could essentially pluck any of the fruits that all of those different cults had developed or obtained at great cost.

Many of these methods, techniques, manuals and so on were most likely extremely rare and only accessible to a small gathering of people located in a hidden corner of human space.

It would have been impossible for Ves to seek out any of these obscure cults. They were so well-hidden and so entrenched in their local regions that perhaps not even the MTA was able to sniff out their presence!

The only comparable scripture that Ves had managed to get in touch with was the strange Annals of Terra Vita that the Aduc Family held for many centuries.

Aside from that, Ves had no chance of getting in touch with any other ancient scrolls or books unless he invested a disproportionate amount of manpower and resources into hunting down each and every cult or group of exiles!

"This is too impractical!"

Ves only managed to come across the Aducs because the Transhumanist Faction literally shoved them onto his lap. Where was he supposed to get into contact with other cults and remnants?

The evolution of the System solved all of his concerns. Even though it limited itself by growing just a couple of hundred of enlightenment fruits at a time, the secrets locked inside of them could easily be obtained as long as Ves was willing to fork over his Ascension Points!

"Of course, it's not so easy to earn these Ascension Points."

As the System had leveled up, so had its standards. Ves could not mindlessly order the Design Department to start a hundred design projects at once and only briefly spend his time on each of them in order to make them alive.

No. The System clearly stated that Ves had to put real effort into their design. At the very least, the mech had to embody his vision and design choices in order to earn him an Ascension Point, and that meant he had to invest a lot of time in the design lab.

"I can't earn Ascension Points quickly enough!"

The enlightenment fruits that cost a couple of points to a dozen or so points were all reasonably priced in his eyes. Though the knowledge and benefits they provided did not sound too extravagant, Ves did not truly mind that at this point.

He had been fumbling around in ignorance for his entire career. If he wanted to make his work more structured and systematic, then he needed to strengthen his foundation by learning the basics.

Ves already had his eye on the enlightenment fruits that contained the essence of different foundational manuals and scriptures. Each of them possessed a ton of introductory and foundational reading material that would doubtlessly be able to fill up all of his holes in his theories related to spiritual engineering!

He momentarily frowned as he recalled a warning.

"My mother told me that it's best not to come into contact with existing knowledge about spirituality."

She had always refused to teach him anything and that had always frustrated him. Now that he gained a better channel to obtain these secrets, he wondered whether he would be making a mistake by partaking in these enlightenment fruits.

"...Nah."

Ves did not think there was any problem in gathering information. To him, spiritual engineering was similar to mech design. They were both creative as well as scientific disciplines with similar approaches.

Ves had managed to develop his own distinct design philosophy when he rose up as a mech designer. He studied many textbooks and acquired even more knowledge through the System's Skill Tree, but he had never been at serious risk of losing his way due to getting exposed to other shiny tech or theories.

"I'm already a Journeyman Mech Designer. I know how to manage my learning. I already developed a philosophy for my spiritual engineering work as well. There shouldn't be any harm in coming into contact with other philosophies or theoretical frameworks. Even if they are more advanced than I have ever come into contact with before, I will just use that to supplement my own spiritual engineering style."

He believed that there were two reasons why his mother didn't want to teach him anything.

First, she had probably pledged an oath or signed a pact that prohibited her from divulging the secret knowledge that she had learned.

Second, she was probably afraid that Ves would learn a powerful cult or group's exclusive secret method. If he started to sell mechs across human space that blatantly contained elements that originated from an old but dangerous organization, then he would definitely attract a lot of trouble!

While the first possible reason did not really concern him in the slightest, the second one still sounded worrisome to his current situation.

Ves had interacted with the System long enough to know that it never bothered with any nonsense. If it mentioned the name of a creator or organization that developed a specific method, then it was surely relevant to his own decision-making!

He took another glance at one of the most expensive and presumably the most powerful enlightenment fruits that the Tree of Possibilities had to offer.

[Atmer Guardian Mantra]

Price: 299 Ascension Points

This so-called mantra was so powerful that only a select few people were able to make use of it to begin with! As long as the individuals in question met all of the hefty requirements, they could supposedly practice it until they became as powerful as a 'god'!

There were a lot of frightening implications to the Atmer Guardian Mantra. Ves was certain that there were definitely people who practiced it to the fullest, and each of them were probably as powerful as ace pilots at the very least!

If any of these powerhouses noticed that a random mech designer in the Red Ocean had started making use of their precious heritage, then they would definitely come and demolish the thief!

"Damnit!"

While there was a chance that the organization behind a specific method had already fallen, Ves could not take the risk to make blatant use of other people's work in his own products.

He needed to be more careful and make sure to retain his own style and methods while absorbing foreign study materials.

Did this mean that Ves would have to refrain from absorbing any of the new enlightenment fruits?

"Hell no!"

If he wanted to speed up his progress in developing his spiritual engineering capabilities, then learning from others was unavoidable.

"I just need to be more sneaky about it." Ves rubbed his imaginary smooth-shaven chin. "It's a good thing that I happen to have a lot of practice in corrupting and bastardizing other people's work!"

His spiritual networks and his luminar crystal weapons stood out as two prominent examples.

Before he left this site and continued his journey to the top of the mountain, he took one last look at the different fruits.

One of the complications that Ves felt bothered by was how most of them were actually incompatible with his domain.

His Spirituality mainly centered around life and mechs. This meant that he was unable to make full use of the enlightenment fruits that were aligned to different attributes or elements!

"Does this mean that most of these fruits are useless to me?" Ves frowned in puzzlement.

However, he soon recalled the instance where Gaia came into contact with the Annals of Terra Vita.

Whereas Ves was unable to derive anything useful out of this secret scroll, Gaia whose spiritual attributes matched extremely well with the contents had completely devoured the Annals to the point where it had crumbled into dust!

This incident showed Ves that it was still possible for him to make good use of all of the enlightenment fruits!

"Perhaps this is also the reason why I can bring these fruits into reality!"

The System already anticipated this need and made it possible for him to share his bounty with others!

For example, Ves could easily exchange the enlightenment fruit that contained Modu Cult Maiden Scripture by exchanging just 2 Ascension Points.

All he needed to do after that was find a spiritually active woman within his clan that developed an affinity for water. Such a person would be able to make full use of this cultivation technique to develop her water domain even further!

"That isn't my only option."

Ves could also feed the enlightenment fruit to a design spirit. Whether he fed it to an existing one like the Phase King or made a brand-new one with an aquatic theme, as long as the spiritual attributes, compatibility shouldn't be a major problem!

"I can also take this even further!"

Why feed his enlightenment fruits to others when he could keep them for himself? Ves still had a way of absorbing ones that centered around different attributes.

The only thing Ves needed to do was create more incarnations of himself that possessed different domains!

"I already have Blinky and Vulcan. Both of their domains are significantly different from mine. The Spiritual Ascension upgrade track already mentioned that it is able to help me create more incarnations. I wonder how many different versions of myself I can make if that's the case?"

This was definitely a crazy idea!