The Mech Touch



Ves did not often make use of the System's Superpublish function.

He did not really want to take credit for work he didn't really do. He always lost a sense of ownership towards the designs he worked so hard to make over the course of many months.

Abusing the Superpublish function was a good way to grow lazy and overly dependent on external help. This was not conducive to the growth of a mech designer. People like Ves needed to figure out stuff by themselves and learn how to push through increasingly more difficult research problems.

He would rather squander his Superpublish opportunities or use them on his less important mech designs if that was what it took to preserve his integrity as a mech designer.

Perhaps many people would scold him or criticize him for wasting these chances, but Ves always stuck to his own ideas on how he should approach his work.

That said, he felt he was ready to make use of this powerful System feature.

There was no way he could ignore the rich benefits of a Superpublished mech.

When applied to a sufficiently complex and experimental design, the System's myriad of improved design solutions could teach many lessons to Ves and other participating mech designers!

By getting in touch with the refinements of their initially crude design work, they could skip years if not decades worth of trial and error!

This was one of the more decisive reasons why Ves and Gloriana managed to improve by leaps and bounds while they were still in their thirties.

Now, Ves saw another opportunity to advance his comprehensive understanding of mech design by at least half a generation.

He had previously applied the Superpublish function on the Crystal Lord, the Bright Warrior and the Amaranto designs.

He harvested progressively greater benefits after every use as his design ability and the sophistication of his work reached new heights.

This was because the value of Superpublishing a mech design grew at a geometric rate. The more Ves progressed his design philosophy, the more time and effort it took to make any subsequent improvements to his work.

There were many Master Mech Designers such as Moira Willix that completely set aside many priorities in order to chase after meaningful evolutions of their already impressive works. They did not hesitate to dedicate many decades of their lives to invent revolutionary new design applications!

Of course, the Superpublish function was not capable of conjuring original new innovations from nowhere.

What it actually did was turn existing design solutions into better versions of themselves!

"Instead of settling for a Version 1.0 of my latest invention, I can immediately skip to Version 2.0 or Version 3.0!"

Who didn't want to receive a later update of the same work?

Both the Dullahan Project and the Ghost Project contained several major innovations that he painstakingly worked on in the past several months.

The Dullahan Project currently contained two notable innovations.

The less important one was the Rainbow Shield. Based on leveraging the spiritual energies of a dozen or so different design spirits through prime leverage, Jannzi gained the ability to generate multiple different attributed energy shields. 

This could become a potent defensive option once Jannzi's resonance strength grew stronger. She had already started to master increasingly more tricks after spending months practicing with Object 431.

Improving the Rainbow Shield was helpful in many ways, but what Ves truly cared about was the Blood Pact.

The Empowered Blood Sharing System that he devised after ingesting the Blood Cult Scarlet Oak Tree Growth Manual enlightenment fruit.

He became so inspired by the endless power and possibilities of blood that he combined what he learned with his existing expertise to come up with the novel concept of a Blood Pact!

He originally planned to design the Blood Knight Project first in order to test all of his theories and assumptions related to the Blood Pact in reality.

His plan couldn't keep up with the changes. By rushing the Dullahan Project and the Ghost Project above everything else, he had no time to fool around with the Blood Knight Project anymore.

This left him in a rather precarious situation. The concept of blurring the line between mech and mech pilot even further by making them circulate the same blood throughout their bodies sounded absolutely insane!

In fact, his other design partners such as his wife forced him to design the Dullahan Project in a manner where he could easily remove the parts related to the Empowered Blood Sharing System!

Ves had a lot of faith in this hybrid tech, though. He believed in his theoretical framework and strongly believed that the invention of the Blood Pact was a boon to highly dedicated mech pilots such as Venerable Jannzi!

So far, Ves had only been able to test the safety of the EBSS by conducting small-scale tests where he hooked up the bodies of different test animals to fake mechs.

His initial experiments admittedly produced a lot of fatalities, but Ves already expected that this would happen.

It took weeks for him to refine the application of his EBSS in his spare time. The more he iterated on his work, the greater the chance his test animals survived the risky process.

He eventually managed to work out many of the kinks. The latest version of the EBSS was still rough, but he believed that it would not kill a strong and healthy mech pilot such as Venerable Jannzi even if it did not live up to its promises.

However, this did not change the fact that he was essentially subjecting one of his strongest combat assets to a dubious and highly unethical human experiment!

"If I use this chance on the Dullahan Project, I can remove much of the risk of producing a crippling or fatal outcome."

He felt rather mixed about that. It felt like a cop-out. Innovations were supposed to be associated with risks and dangers. How could he retain his full enthusiasm if the stakes weren't so high anymore?

Of course, Ves did not forget that he had an obligation to do right by the mech pilots he served.

It was already highly irresponsible for him to include an untested biotech system such as the EBSS in the Dullahan Project in the first place.

The least he could do was to use any means at his disposal to minimize the risks to her life and career!

Ves frowned deeper. "That said, the Ghost Project also makes a good case."

As far as value went, the Ghost Project provided much more immediate benefits than the Dullahan Project.

An expert knight mech was only useful in pitched battles against challenging opponents. Aside from that, the Larkinson Clan could easily solve other problems by relying on its other assets.

An expert stealth mech was always useful no matter the situation. Ves did not need to reiterate its incredible ability to strike a crippling blow against the enemy in combat, but it was its uses outside of an active battle that he truly valued!

There were two crucial aspects that the Ghost Project relied upon to excel in its intended roles.

First was the Seferath AQ-3M transphasic active stealth system.

Despite frequently cooperating with the developers working for Optaar Integrated Solutions, Ves could not ensure that he applied the Seferarth AQ-3M correctly to his expert stealth mech design.

He never extended that much trust towards Professor Reylon Kavanaugh and his fellow Rubarthan engineers. They were all frighteningly smart, but that increased his determination to withhold confidential material related to the essence of the Ghost Project!

He even went as far as altering the design and operation of the Seferath AQ-3M by himself!

He never shared any of this secret work to Professor Kavanaugh. He did this to prevent the faint possibility that Optaar would expose a method that could expose the Larkinson Clan's expert stealth mech with trivial ease!

It went without saying that it was extremely difficult to match or surpass the work of specialized scientists and engineers in their field of expertise. Ves was sure he botched a few elements here and there. The actual performance of the Seferath AQ-3M was probably a bit worse due to his fumblings.

His paranoia forced him to accept this unpalatable tradeoff. He would rather work with a slightly more flawed active stealth system than to leave potential backdoors into one of his most strategic expert mechs!

"Besides, there is still a decent chance that my alterations are effective."

He always felt dissatisfied that the Seferath AQ-3M only utilized phasewater in a defensive capacity. Why did it not make use of this rare and expensive substance to enhance its stealth performance?

The changes Ves applied to the Seferath AQ-3M were meant to correct this shortcoming. He took advantage of its transphasic materials to work out a mechanism where the expert mech could dump a portion of its emissions into a higher dimension.

Ves was only able to get started on this complicated and sophisticated experimental work because of his vastly improved affinity and comprehension of phasewater.

He regularly borrowed the expertise of the Phase King in order to figure out a few difficult solutions.

So far, the small-scale tests showed that his alterations did not make the active stealth system worse, but that did not guarantee success.

If the full implementation of his modified Seferath AQ-3M was severely flawed or glitched, then Ves would have little choice but to revert his changes and settle for a more standard active stealth system.

"I can skip this if I choose to improve the Ghost Project."

The System would definitely correct a lot of flaws and hidden dangers if it exerted its power onto his customized transphasic active stealth system!

This meant that Ves could assign riskier infiltration missions to the completed Ghost Project without worrying about getting caught!

"That's not all. There's also the Geist System."

This was a much more metaphysical component to the Ghost Project than anything else. None of the people assigned to work on the Ghost Project fully understood how it worked.

Not even Ves understood all of the mechanics behind empowering spiritual fiends so that they could bypass every obstacle but nevertheless inflict real damage when it mattered!

No conventional science could help him improve or perfect it any further. Ves needed to expand his understanding of spiritual engineering to a massive degree in order to increase the performance of the Geist System!

This was fairly troublesome as Ves had no idea how good the Geist System would be if he fabricated the expert mech.

The fiends it would be able to dispatch from its frame might be strong enough to destroy critical components of an actively running starship.

At the same time, they might also turn out to be so weak that they could not even lift a tiny data chip!

If he Superpublished the Ghost Project, he would not only have greater guarantees that the Geist System was closer to the former case, but also gained an invaluable opportunity to learn a lot of lessons on spiritual engineering!

After all, if he was able to compare his original implementation of the Geist System to one that was much more refined, he could directly spot the differences and figure out the reasons why they worked!

"Damn, this is such a difficult choice." He muttered while looking increasingly pained.

He had agonized over this decision for months. He never managed to make up his mind as the completion dates came closer.

It would have been better if he could stagger the expert mech design projects over a year so that he could Superpublish both of them, but that was not practical.

He could only improve one of them before he fabricated both of his long-awaited expert mechs.

Although it was always possible for him to Superpublish an old design that he had already placed in his archives, the benefits of doing so were much less.

He couldn't procrastinate over this life-changing decision any further.

"I think I need a second opinion."

Who should he talk to? He certainly couldn't not spill anything related to the System to his wife.

Other colleagues such as Ketis and Sara Voiken lacked the perspective to provide qualified advice.

There was only one name he trusted with this matter.

"I think it's time to pay another visit to Master Benedict."