The Mech Touch



Even though Ves did not treat this as a critical project, he still took the time to do it right.

This was the first companion spirit he made after a long time. Much had changed since that time.

He recently completed a comprehensive evolution that not only turned him into a phase lord but also boosted his Spirituality to a new height.

He completed a lot of interesting projects and improved many aspects of his spiritual engineering.

He became exposed to many new and interesting phenomena that allowed him to harvest a lot of useful insights.

All of these gains and more granted him much greater confidence in his ability to implant useful companion spirits into other people.

No matter whether they possessed active spiritualities or not, Ves would find a way.

After all, if he had been able to grant companion spirits to his unborn children, then doing the same to a bunch of average people should not be challenging!

What played in Nitaa's favor was that she was one of the few people who possessed active spiritualities. Her strength in this aspect was not strong when he initially found her. A secret splinter organization affiliated with the Five Scrolls Compact had experimented on her and many other people, causing her ability to smell certain spiritual properties to become abnormally strong.

Years of spending time in an unusual organization like the Larkinson Clan had grown her spirituality by a lot. Ves theorized that frequent exposure to spiritual entities along with other forms of spiritual stimulation had caused his bodyguard to exercise her 'spiritual muscle', for lack of a better term.

Once Ves harvested a couple of spiritual fragments from the Solemn Guardian and Ylvaine, he brought out Blinky and instructed his own companion spirit to get to work.

Mrow~!

There were many circumstances where Blinky could offer no assistance, but this was not one of them. Ves had originally created Blinky to augment his spiritual engineering endeavors and creating a new companion spirit definitely qualified!

Compared to where Ves manually cut into people's spiritualities and messed around until a part of themselves transformed into semi-autonomous spiritual entities, Blinky could perform the same procedures with much greater finesse.

Mrow mrow mrow.

The cat's remarkable affinity with spiritual energy allowed him to skillfully manipulate Nitaa's spirit while inflicting as little harm as possible.

Though there was no way to avoid causing pain akin to an enormous migraine, Nitaa gritted her teeth and relied on her willpower and training to remain as calm as possible.

"It will take a little longer than I initially expected." Ves reassured his struggling guard. "Your spirit is stronger and more resilient than I expected, which is good news because your new gift will have a higher starting point. The only trouble is that Blinky has to put more effort into cutting and reshaping parts of your inner self. Please bear with it. You will get your new hound soon enough."

Both Ves and Nitaa sighed in relief as Blinky finished much of the rough cutting and shaping work.

It was at this point that Ves added the spiritual fragments that concentrated the energies donated by both the Solemn Guardian and Ylvaine.

As old humanoid design spirits, both of them got along with each other remarkably well. They were old friends who graced the earlier glow mechs that Ves had designed and introduced with great fanfare back when he was still an Apprentice Mech Designer.

Although the two older design spirits lacked the strength and extraordinary abilities of the likes of the Superior Mother and the Phase King, Ves never questioned their utility. Not all powers had to be flashy or attention-grabbing.

Breaking up the spiritual fragments and merging the shards with the new spiritual construct proceeded smoothly enough.

He recently understood that attributes mattered and that it was not that simple to merge contradictory or opposite attributes together.

While it was not impossible to fuse light and dark, life and death and other opposing concepts together, Ves had to be more creative and create a logical construct that could harmoniously fuse them together.

It was like the time he created the Ouroboros. He imbued the mech with the opposing concepts of life and death by imagining it as a cycle. It was one of the chief reasons why he chose that particular name for the first-class mech.

Fortunately for Ves, the domains of the Solemn Guardian and Ylvaine were not incompatible with each other. At best, they had little to no intersection, which meant that they did not naturally clash when squashed together.

The challenge was to draw out the strengths of both design spirits while also creating greater combinations that produced fantastic synergies.

Ves and Blinky tried their best to come up with such synergies, but they hadn't been able to do much due to lack of resources.

He knew that if he wanted to make this companion spirit start off on a stronger and more robust footing, he would have to 'expand its capacity' by feeding it with a moderate amount of universal life energy.

As much as Ves cared about his bodyguards and his safety, the universal life energy derived from high-grade life-prolonging treatment serum was still a finite resource. He was too reluctant to make such a heavy investment even if it benefited him in various ways.

Eventually, his cheapskate tendencies won out as he decided not to draw on that particular precious resource. This decision may cause Nitaa's initial companion spirit to start off weak, but it was not as if there was much of a hurry to create the strongest spiritual hound right away.

If the Compact needed to take its time to infiltrate the new frontier, then Nitaa would have plenty of years to slowly train and shape her companion spirit to sniff out the most acute threats to his life in advance.

"Let's keep it simple for the time being."

He decided to focus on imbuing Nitaa's companion spirit with three potential abilities that fit the themes and design of the scent hound.

The first and most obvious ability was Scent Detection, which Ves clearly derived from Nitaa's own inherent talent. Its name said it all and was expressly designed to sniff out spiritual threats in the imaginary realm.

The exact mechanics behind this ability was complicated and even Ves did not fully understand the theory. He just created a basic scaffold and hoped that his intent behind this aspect would guide the companion spirit's growth into filling all of the gaps.

The second ability was Danger Premonition. This was an attempt to narrow and specialize the small part of Ylvaine that Blinky blended into the companion spirit.

Ves knew from working with Ylvaine that predicting the future was incredibly vague and complicated. It was also extremely resource intensive on top of that. There was no way that Nitaa's companion spirit could endure so much work without getting exhausted in an instant.

This was why Ves heavily limited the scope and made sure that the hound's predictive talent only manifested in the form of detecting danger in advance.

Just like in the previous case, Ves did not have a good idea on how to implement it, so he merely programmed what little parameters he could set at this time and hoped that the companion spirit's organic growth would do the rest of the work.

The final ability drew from both Nitaa and the Solemn Guardian. Ves called it Bonded Loyalty and its purpose was obvious. It would allow the companion spirit to form a permanent spiritual bond with Ves that was oriented around loyalty and protection.

Ves was able to add a lot more details to this ability because he had plenty of existing examples to work with. While it sounded rather redundant at first because the Larkinsons were already connected to each other via the Larkinson Network, Bonded Loyalty possessed its own specialties.

For one, the new spiritual bond granted Nitaa a good idea on Ves' health and location. The Larkinson Network already accomplished this, but if it ever became compromised or unavailable in any way, then Nitaa could still rely on her own companion spirit to seek out Ves no matter the circumstances.

Another area in which Bonded Loyalty was supposed to distinguish itself was the ability to apply all of the companion spirit's other abilities on Ves as a focus.

For example, instead of using Danger Premonition to detect threats directed at Nitaa herself, the companion spirit should instead be able to detect danger directed towards Ves instead!

This could become an extremely potent capability in the future. If Nitaa's companion spirit became a lot stronger, it may be possible for her to offer direct protection to Ves by incurring damage on his behalf!

These were all fantasies for the moment, but Ves did not hesitate to imprint his dreams and expectations onto the companion spirit. This would serve as a rough guide and growth target for the new spiritual hound.

There was not much of a reason for Ves to hold back in making choices. He tried his best to give his children the freedom to make their own choices, but he did not have to restrain himself when he worked on his subordinates.

"It's almost done… there. Good work, Blinky."

Mrow.

Blinky arrogantly dove out of Nitaa's head. His craftsmanship and control over spiritual energy was impeccable as always. After twirling around in the air, the Star Cat returned to Ves and fell into slumber again.

"Nghh…"

The lucky recipient experienced a lot of new sensations this time. Not only was she suffering from the mental pain from having the most essential part of herself get carved into a different shape, the new companion spirit that her liege had bestowed her entered life in an abrupt and confusing manner!

Woof!

Just as Ves envisioned her, a red spiritual hound gradually floated out of Nitaa's head!

The guard may have witnessed plenty of companion spirits in the past, but this was the first time that a spirit of her own emerged in front of her eyes!

The double perspective along with the massively better spiritual senses of her new companion spirit was making her dizzy. She was unable to process the sheer amount of observation data that poured into her mind!

Ves pressed his hand on her shoulder. "Breathe, Nitaa. Don't try to take it all by yourself. Let your new hound process the input by herself. That is what she is for. She may be an evolved part of your spirit, but she is also a life form that possesses her own form of life."

The advice he provided to her helped with acclimating to her new and highly unusual spiritual state.

Wonder appeared in her eyes as she became more and more engrossed by the huge amount of stimuli that her hound was able to collect.

"It is so magical… she has just been born, but she can already distinguish smells at a much greater sensitivity than my old self." Nitaa said as she conveyed real emotion. "It is too much for me. Your scent alone overwhelms everything else."

"I am sure that will be fixed over time. Have you thought of a name for your companion spirit?"

Nitaa didn't hesitate in the slightest. "Siobhan. She is called Siobhan."

"...Alright. It's your choice."

Ves patiently gave her a lecture on how she should interact with her companion spirit, what she should do to stimulate Siobhan's growth and what she should do when encountering different types of spiritual life forms.

"Siobhan's birth may have granted you a lot of useful capabilities, but it has also exposed you to a layer of competition that can be extremely dangerous to you." He warned. "There are predators lurking in dimensions that previously had nothing to do with you. That has changed. Be sure to do everything you can to promote the growth of your companion spirit. All it takes is to engage in activities that align with her attributes."

"I understand. You will not find me wanting." His bodyguard vowed.