The Mech Touch

As Gloriana was giving her son a much-needed corrective lesson, Ves just completed his initial test of a brand-new weapon concept.

The plain-looking luminar crystal pistol that he had made in a hurry still glowed with energy as Ves had just discharged a series of laser beams at a practice target.

The power of the laser beams was hardly impressive, but that wasn't important.

What Ves actually paid attention to was whether the transphasic properties of the gun displayed higher-than-average performance due to the active intervention of the Phase King.

The reason why he did not look happy was because the results did not appear to be any better than usual.

"Is my theory wrong?" Ves began to doubt his work. "No. It's too soon to make any conclusions. I need to generate and gather more data."

He went back to the lab machines and began to fabricate an identical transphasic luminar crystal pistol.

The difference was that Ves made sure not to make his living gun alive. The lifeless weapon did not possess any coherent spiritual foundation nor displayed any connections to the Phase King.

When Ves took this mundane pistol to the small firing range and opened fire on another practice target, he carefully studied the data collected by the advanced sensor systems.

"There are no meaningful differences." Ves furrowed his brows.

Though the initial gun that he had made according to his latest theory showed slightly better power and penetration characteristics, the differences were so small that they could be attributed to other factors.

Ves did not get the impression that making the first pistol alive made any difference to its hard performance.

Trying to forge a more extensive connection between its attack phase crystal and the Phase King seemed like a wasted effort.

"No! I'm still overlooking a couple of details!"

He picked up the first pistol and fired it a few times while observing it carefully.

There was nothing technically wrong with the weapon, but when Ves tried to observe its spiritual activity, he did not sense any special spiritual activity.

It remained almost completely dormant when Ves pulled the trigger.

He frowned at this sight. This was not what he envisioned.

"I understand now. It's not enough to form a passive connection to the Phase King and call it a day. The design spirit needs to put in actual effort to enhance the firepower of this gun."

Ves called up the footage of the Blade Chaser Mark II making use of the Gray Lotus in battle.

Though rewatching old footage was not as good as watching a battle as it happened, Ves tried his best to observe and infer the performance and workings of the relic mech pistol during the previous battle.

It became quite clear to him that Venerable Imon Ingvar and his expert mech weren't the only ones who were powering the Gray Lotus.

The weapon was able to output substantially powerful shots with the help of the energy supplied by the Blade Chaser Mark II and the true resonance generated by Venerable Imon, but that was far from everything.

The true reason why the Gray Lotus was able to output powerful death beams was because Helena played an active role in this engagement.

Though Ves didn't know for certain how much help she provided during this battle, he could always call her up and request clarification for her in person.

"Helena!"

"You called, little brother?"

Ves tried his best to hide his displeasure. He didn't like it when Helena browbeat him into accepting her status as the eldest sister in their 'family' when she was only around half a decade old.

He had lived at least three decades longer than Helena! He should be the big brother in this relationship!

It was a pity that whenever Ves raised this issue in front of his spiritual sister, she immediately showed a part of the power and ferocity that came with being the Daughter of Death that harvested many souls in the Nyxian Gap!

Helena was so much stronger than Ves in terms of absolute power and combat ability that she could rewrite any history by force!

"Ahem, I need your help this time." Ves spoke and waved at the projection. "Do you remember this battle?"

Helena smiled. "I do. There were a lot of deaths back then. I remember that the wielder of that pistol managed to harvest a fair amount of soul with my power at the time."

"Can you explain to me what you did to facilitate the functioning of the Gray Lotus?"

"Sure."

It turned out that the Gray Lotus was so tied to Helena that it only operated at full power at the behest of Helena. If she did not do anything special, then the gun wouldn't have been able to fire any potent death beams no matter whether it contained any Black Demon Steel or not. This was because the material served as a channel rather than a source of strength.

The Gray Lotus was not so much a self-contained weapon but rather a conduit with a strong connection to Helena and the Death Lotus.

In other words, whenever Venerable Imon pulled the trigger, the Gray Lotus did not solely generate all of the destructive energies that it was able to spit out from its own structure.

Instead, it siphoned a substantial amount of death energy from Helena through an invisible connection and mixed it up with other energies to generate a powerful energy beam.

What was special was that this powerful attack ultimately imitated Helena's power to a large degree.

This was what Ves was trying to accomplish. With his eldest sister answering every question he asked without any omissions, he fully understood why his initial experiment did not make much of a difference.

"I need to have a good talk with the Phase King and tell him to help in this matter." Ves concluded.

Helena shook her head. "You can do that once or twice, but it will start to become a problem if you do it many times."

"Explain. What do you mean by that, sister?"

"Do you think that fueling the Gray Lotus is easy for me? That gun doesn't require that much energy from me, but it takes a lot of effort to complete the transfer. It's a troublesome process and I don't like to do it too often. The main reason why I helped as much as I could in the last battle is because I want to do my part in protecting you and helping you win against your opponents. If the Gray Lotus is being used for target practice or to shoot down weak and worthless aliens, I would be much less inclined to provide any help."

That caused Ves to frown. This was disappointing news. It meant that weapons as powerful as the Gray Lotus weren't as reliable as more conventional luminar crystal rifles.

The weapons equipped by the likes of the Rifle Warriors and Transcendent Punishers derived their power almost entirely from their designs and materials. These were all physical elements that could clearly be manipulated in order to determine the damage output of a luminar crystal rifle.

What Ves had accomplished with the Gray Lotus was to break past these limits by inserting an additional source of power that was not as tangible.

The advantage of connecting a design spirit to the attack phase crystal of a luminar crystal weapon was that its wielder was able to inflict more damage than normal.

The disadvantage of doing this was that the luminar crystal weapon was only powerful when the design spirit played along.

There was also another factor that Ves had to take into account.

"How many weapons like the Gray Lotus can you support at the same time?" Ves asked.

"It depends." Helena furrowed her brows. "I really can't say. I have built up a lot of reserves, so I can easily support hundreds of weapons like the Gray Lotus. However, it's impossible for me to sustain their consumption for long if they just keep squandering their energy. I will have to cut off my supply to the weapons that carry my blessing in order to preserve my strength."

"I understand. That is a bit of a disappointment."

This meant that it was not viable to borrow spiritual energy from design spirits such as Helena on a massive scale.

It appeared that Ves wouldn't be able to apply this new design solution to the Eye Project.

His new technique which he decided to refer to as design spirit channeling could only be applied to individual mechs that could most use an additional boost in firepower.

Mechs armed with existing luminar crystal rifles such as the Amaranto, the Everchanger, the Minerva, the Promethea and so on could all be upgraded on an individual basis with the help of his latest innovation.

However, it was out of the question for Ves to spread this boon to the mass production mechs such as the Bright Warriors, the Valkyrie Redeemers, the Transcendent Punishers or even the new Nullifiers employed by the Battle Criers.

Making too many blessed weapons would drain his design spirits and encourage them to stop cooperating with Ves and his clan!

It was better for Ves to reserve this new design solution for a small number of exceptional mechs.

The stronger the design spirits, the more blessings they could support.

"Can you give me advice on how to gain the cooperation of the other design spirits?"

"I can do that, little brother. I can also speak to them on your behalf if you want to make any special arrangements with them. I think it is better if you let me manage your network of 'design spirits', seeing as I am one of them." Helena said.

Ves wasn't so sure whether that was a good idea. Helena may be strong, but a few of his design spirits were difficult to work with. Gaia was a good example of a spiritual entity that had slipped out of his control.

He was willing to give her a shot.

"Can you talk to the Phase King and tell the fish-whale to extend his power to this test weapon? I need him to cooperate more actively with this experiment for me to prove the concept of design spirit channeling. His help is crucial to my effort to develop and introduce more weapons like the Gray Lotus in my clan."

"I will see what I can do, brother."

Helena's manifestation winked out. Several minutes passed by before she returned.

Her expression looked odd, which gave Ves the idea that not everything had gone right.

"Well? What did the fish-whale king say?"

"My talk with him did not entirely go according to plan." Helena reluctantly said. "The Phase King is shrewd and human enough to know that he has leverage. He isn't willing to lend out his power for free when he knows he can demand concessions from you. He even drafted up an entire contract!"

Ves blinked and paused for a second.

It soon dawned on him that he had been looking down on the Phase King way too much.

Not only did the design spirit learn from humans for over five years, but his astounding age and accumulation meant that he was incomparably wise!

He was hardly a mindless beast that knew how to do little else but fight and meet its basic needs.

Ves sighed. "Give me the contract. Let's see what the Phase King wants."

Helena transferred over a spiritual document that contained the ancient fish-whale king's demands.

Surprisingly enough, they weren't as harsh or troublesome as he feared.

The Phase King was mostly concerned with earning a higher share of spiritual feedback and serving as the design spirit for a greater quantity of mechs.

The design spirit also wanted to enjoy a higher rank and status within the hierarchy of design spirits.

More specifically, the Phase King wanted to rebuild a semblance of his old life by ruling over a bunch of weaker fish-whale spirits!

"Crazy!"