The Mech Touch



The momentous revelation session neared its end.

Ves could sense that Master Vayro Goldstein had almost shared every secret that he was meant to convey on this day.

The generous MTA Master even provided a lot of extra information on account of Ves' contributions and favorable relationship with the Survivalist Faction.

The knowledge of the Kingdom of Mechs completely changed his perspective on his entire profession.

Ves needed to spend a lot of time on thinking about the implications of what he learned. His future success and ambitions were directly affected by the variables related to the Kingdom of Mechs!

For example, he needed to behave a lot more honestly in the future in order to build up his favorability with the kingdom.

He also had to put more thought into what sort of innovations he wanted to use as the basis of the ritual needed to realize his design philosophy.

It was a pity that Master Goldstein declined to answer any questions related to the specific rules and criteria related to the realization process.

Senior Mech Designers just needed to employ their own judgment on this matter. They understood their work the best and should not let other people dictate their contributions to the Kingdom of Mechs and the greater mech community.

There was one subject that Master Goldstein needed to convey to a newly-advanced Senior Mech Designer such as Ves.

Both mech designers bowed in front of the statues of the Progenitors of Mechs in order to convey their deepest respect.

Neither of them worshiped these once-powerful human beings as gods, but that did not mean they did not revere the sacrifices that these heroes made in the past.

After that, Master Goldstein brought Ves to another section of the ceremonial hall. They stopped in front of the wall where a large and plentiful collection of antique firearms had been put on display.

"It is time to explain the secret of resonating exotics to you." He spoke. "Unlike typical journeymen, you have worked on many expert mech design projects. You have even led a number of them. Yet in each and every case, you had to rely on a more advanced mech designer to ensure that your expert mechs properly resonate with their expert pilots. This must be a frustrating limitation."

"It is." Ves admitted. "I have often thought that this limitation exists to prevent unqualified mech designers from messing around with high-end mechs."

"Do you still believe that is the case?"

"No more. With all of your revelations, I have a strong suspicion that the Kingdom of Mechs plays a large role in this process."

"You are correct yet again, Mr. Larkinson. It is not a difficult deduction to make. It is true that the Kingdom of Mechs plays an essential role in unlocking the power of resonating exotics to the mech community. Yet before I explain this method to you in detail, I must first explain what exotics are and where they come from. You have worked with them often enough to understand that they are not entirely compliant with the laws of reality."

Ves nodded. "That is true. Do they gain additional powers and properties to the Kingdom of Mechs?"

"No. The answer is not so absurd. The simple truth is that exotic materials are matter that is contaminated by the remnant energies of ancient, long-dead humans and aliens of great power."

"What?!"

Ves had uttered this word a number of times already, but it seemed he would never grow tired of saying it today!

Master Goldstein chuckled at Ves. "I surmised that would be your response. I am not lying to you. According to our extensive research, every exotic material derives its additional traits that cannot be explained through conventional science by the influence exerted by ancient beings. They may be regarded as gods in ancient times, but even gods can die. Once that is the case, what do you think will happen to the enormous reserves of energy that they have accumulated?"

"Their power… disperses into the environment."

"Exactly. The law of the conservation of energy still applies, even in the case of supposed 'gods'. The Progenitors of Mechs channeled all of their own power into the Kingdom of Mechs without any spillage as far as we know, but many other beings of great power were not as selfless or considerate. The history of the cosmos is enormous. Beings that have died centuries or even millions of years ago are still capable of leaving a legacy behind by contaminating random deposits of materials and empowering them in unknown ways."

This… sounded a bit similar to how Lucky produced his gems!

Ves bet that the two processes shared a definite relationship with each other!

The biggest difference was that Lucky generated his gems within a more reasonable timeframe while the transformation of the environment could take place over many eras!

"How fast is this contamination process?"

"Not fast at all. If a powerful mech pilot or mech designer ever perishes, the star system will not suddenly sprout a large quantity of exotics in the following years. The Mech Supremacist Faction has conducted extensive research on this matter so it can tell you more about the more specific rules and patterns. What you need to know is that exotics are not completely 'impersonal'. Because their formation is tied to ancient beings of power, they can help humanity leverage the potential of exotic materials to a greater extent."

Ves widened his eyes. His mind had been churning. Now that he received enough clues, he came up with a strong answer!

"The reason why a small quantity of exotics are able to resonate with high-ranking mech pilots is because they emerged from the energies released by the deaths of ancient humans!"

"That is an accurate answer more or less." Master Goldstein said as he did not exhibit any surprise at hearing the correct explanation. "Resonating exotics are gifts that the ancestors of our race have bestowed to its distant descendants. Each exotic that can enable an expert pilot, ace pilot or god pilot to exert their willpower in much more powerful manifestations is directly related to the humans of our distant past."

That begged the question of what ancient humans were actually like. Since the mech industry discovered and made use of a lot of different varieties of resonating exotics, it was conceivable that the people of those distant eras used to be incredibly powerful!

"Are resonating exotics solely tied to ancient humans?" Ves puzzlingly asked. "People have found enough resonating exotics in the Red Ocean Dwarf Galaxy. Do they all come from the deaths of ancient humans? What if we can enter a distant galaxy one day where humanity has never stepped foot in? Will we be able to find resonating exotics there as well?"

Master Goldstein crossed his arms. "Not all resonating exotics are related to powerful humans of the past. There is a small proportion of… aliens as well as bizarre existences that possess a friendly attitude to humans and possibly other races. This can lead to an outcome where their dispersed energies contaminate materials and produce exotics that our high-ranking expert pilots can resonate with. In fact, every material can resonate with pilots. The difference is that the effect is not usually strong enough to rely upon it. Only exotics that resonate with human mech pilots are important to expert mechs."

"I see."

All of it made sense, though Ves clearly received only a fraction of what the MTA knew about this extensive subject.

He was glad to hear that not all resonating exotics had to be related to humans in a fashion. That would make his life a lot harder if he ever traveled far enough one day.

"Okay, I understand how resonating exotics are the way they are." Ves said. "How do I get them to resonate with expert pilots and so on? Do I need to borrow the power of the Kingdom of Mechs to make this happen?"

"As irritating as it sounds, that is indeed the case, Mr. Larkinson. Every Senior Mech Designer has gained just enough access to the Kingdom of Mechs to borrow its power. What I am about to teach you is a small ritual of sorts that can enable you to properly attune an expert mech design. This may sound highly abstruse to you, but this needs to happen at the design stage as opposed to the fabrication stage. Once the design is attuned, any expert mech that is fabricated based on this design will properly resonate with an expert pilot."

That… sounded incredibly convoluted. Ves did not yet understand all of the reasons why it was set up this way, but it was hard for him to argue against the Progenitors of Mechs.

"Is there a method to manually attune a mech design to a mech pilot without relying on the Kingdom of Mechs?"

"That is an astute question. There is. This can be considered as the original method to make mechs resonate. I do not recommend you waste your time on this alternative because it is akin to ascending to the top floor of a tall building by taking the stairs. You can easily reach your destination by taking the elevator that was specifically made to offer this convenience."

Ves did not like what he heard. He felt that mech designers were relying a bit too much on the Kingdom of Mechs to resolve numerous difficulties in their work.

"What does it take to do it manually?"

"You are not strong enough." Goldstein bluntly said. "You should revisit this topic when you have become a Master and consolidated your growth for a number of decades. You must also increase your understanding of multiple different fields related to energy, materials science and more. It is only then that you have the strength and expertise to learn and apply the cumbersome manual process to attune the resonating exotics to a human pilot."

"...Okay. I think I understand why the Kingdom of Mechs allows mech designers to take the elevator."

The threshold of designing expert mechs would become way too high if people like Ves could not outsource this essential task to the Kingdom of Mechs!

This process sounded similar to relying on outside developers and consultants to perform difficult and highly specialized work.

The biggest difference was that this time the work was done by a super-powerful evolving spiritual construct instead of a normal human engineer!

Ves looked enlightened. He finally understood the secret behind high-ranking mechs. He no longer felt upset at the fact that Master Moira Willix and Master Benedict Cortez always avoided him whenever they performed this step themselves in their past collaborations.

It was truly inappropriate to share this secret method to a Journeyman like Ves, no matter how much talent and ability he demonstrated.

He felt fortunate that he managed to get rid of his Journeyman status fairly early in his career. He would never know what he was missing out on if he lingered at this stage for 40 years or more!

It did not take a lot of time for Master Goldstein to teach Ves the ritual to enable a mech design to resonate as long as it met the requirements.

Though Ves still wanted to learn the method of making his high-ranking mechs resonate with their pilots by himself, he accepted Goldstein's warning that it was best for him to wait until he realized his design philosophy and became a much more competent mech designer.

"I have explained almost everything that you are supposed to know and more." The MTA Master eventually spoke. "You should be intelligent enough to understand everything that I have said, but I will allow you to ask a small amount of questions. What do you wish to know? Keep in mind that I will not divulge too much new information because you are not yet permitted to come into contact with greater secrets."

Ves needed to think about this. He had a thousand questions on his mind, but he needed to choose carefully if he wanted to obtain clarification on the most urgent subjects.