The Mech Touch

Ves held the Larkinson Mandate in his arms.

The heavy metal-encrusted tome felt more powerful and extraordinary than before.

He used to call it an artifact and an heirloom in the past, but it really started to behave like one after the Great Severing had occurred.

The Larkinson Mandate absorbed more and more ambient spiritual energy. Combined with its strong relationship with the Golden Cat, Ves had the illusion that it was starting to come alive and develop its own separate personality!

He looked forward to seeing what would result from this, but today he had a different goal in mind.

"Goldie? I need to discuss an important matter with you. It concerns your job as a design spirit."

"Nyaa?"

The compartment suddenly became a lot brighter as a shining spiritual cat emerged from the book!

The warmth radiating from Goldie had grown even stronger than before, signifying that she had made a lot of progress as of late.

Ves was aware that all of the design spirits had been attempting to develop their own cultivation methods.

They made limited progress so far. Ignorant of real cultivation science, their experiments amounted to little but amplifying the effects of their existing natural cultivation methods by proactively absorbing ambient spiritual energy in greater quantities.

Simply increasing the input was not enough to produce truly superior cultivation results. The processes in between had to be completely reinvented in order to exceed the limited potential of primitive and rudimentary natural cultivation!

"Nyaa nyaa nyaa!" Goldie complained as she flew circles around her creator.

Ves chuckled in a good-natured manner as he reached out and caught the playful cat. "I know, I know. I intend to work on your own needs as well. Your importance is considerable in my future plans. I just need to solve our more immediate problems first before I can work on more ambitious projects."

"Nya nya nyaaaa!"

Blinky appeared from Ves' head and pounced on Goldie.

"Mrow!"

The two spiritual cats wrestled with each other for a bit.

Surprisingly enough, Blinky managed to hold his own by virtue of his new internal universe.

Even if his Blinkyverse had not yet completed the second stage of its evolution, it was already large and formidable enough to lend a lot of additional energy and strength to the companion spirit!

"Nyaaa! Nyaaaa! Nyaaaa!"

The Golden Cat had no chance of defeating Blinky after the latter had gotten started on his powerful new cultivation method!

Not only did the companion spirit gained access to a huge energy reservoir, but his ability to devour different energies including that of Goldie had improved as well!

It became hard for Goldie to harness the power of heaven and form a pseudo-domain when Blinky kept sucking away her energies all of the time!

Ves felt encouraged by this result. Despite practicing a different method from the one originally envisioned by his mother, Blinky still possessed the ability to defend himself against other energy-based life forms.

The more Blinky cultivated the Imaginary Universe Method, the greater the amplification to his effective combat power!

It was a pity that neither Blinky nor his Blinkyverse were good at causing material harm. Ves needed to rely on other forms of protection in order to defend himself against physical threats.

Ves did not feel overly concerned about this. All of the mechs around him were no joke these days. It should be impossible for enemies to get past so many layers of defense.

Once Goldie and Blinky grew tired of wrestling with each other, Ves proceeded to brief the design spirit of his intentions.

The cat looked intrigued.

"Nyaaa nyaaa nyaaa?"

Ves nodded. "Yes. I intend to use you to administer the cultivation method for all of our Larkinson clansmen as well. You can treat this initial attempt as a trial balloon. As long as you are successfully able to make the Bright Warriors and other mechs under your supervision cultivate this new mantra, I am confident I can apply the same approach for our clansmen."

"Nya!"

"I need you to cooperate with me on this. I will need to apply a few delicate changes to you. I also need to give you a crash course on this mantra."

Ves worked together with the Golden Cat to grant her the capability to act as a miniature Kingdom of Mechs.

It was impossible for Ves to replicate the full power of the real deal, but it was not necessary for him to go that far. He just wanted to imitate the kingdom's capacity to induce subconscious cultivation to its clients.

The exact mechanics required to make this happen was quite complicated. Ves lacked the advanced theories and understanding to satisfy every essential requirement, but he only needed to ask his mother a few poignant questions in order to find solutions to the trickiest problems.

In order to develop a viable way for his second order living mechs to cultivate on autopilot, Ves had to simplify the Larkinson Metal Guardian Mantra to a great extent.

He removed and simplified a lot of the more active and demanding cultivation processes. He also added a lot of new elements in order to grant control authority to design spirits such as Goldie.

Ves felt as if he was following the footsteps of the Progenitors of Mechs. Did they devise similar cultivation processes in an attempt to create invisible cultivation methods for mech pilots and mech designers at the end of the Age of Conquest?

It would have been great if Ves could study the mechanisms of the Kingdom of Mechs in person!

Instead, he was forced to reinvent the wheel. This turned out to be quite troublesome. Even with the helpful advice of his mother, Ves wasted a lot more hours on this challenge than he originally expected!

Yet once Ves and Goldie managed to get this new mode of cultivation to work, the results became gratifying!

Both Ves and the Golden Cat watched with awe and satisfaction as a squad of Bright Warrior mechs hailing from the Avatar of Myth began to form their own miniature energy vortexes!

Of course, the cultivation speed and efficiency of these average Bright Warrior mechs could not catch up to the performance of third order living mechs.

Second order living mechs actually possessed enough intelligence and sentience to practice a simple cultivation method on their own, but the chances of accidents and deviations were too great.

Ves found it a lot better and more reliable to let Goldie administer their cultivation in the background.

"Nyaaa nyaaa."

At this time, Goldie directed a small proportion of her attention on managing the cultivation of the mechs standing in front.

Even if the Lesser Larkinson Metal Guardian Mantra was not as effective as the original version, Ves could still foresee that it would take a lot less time for the second order living mechs to promote to third order living mechs!

Along the way, all of these relatively ordinary machines that were destined not to receive too much care due to a lack of design capacity could finally take matters into their own hands!

Instead of waiting for their human owners to manually upgrade their frames, the living mechs could count on cultivation to gradually strengthen their properties over time!

It was the ideal way to handle large quantities of standard mechs!

The current form of cultivation was a combination between a qi, body and contract cultivation method.

The contract cultivation aspect played a crucial role to the second order living mechs as it encompassed the mechanisms responsible for allowing Goldie to automate their cultivation.

To put it in more general terms, the living mechs remained highly dependent on design spirit while they practiced this lesser cultivation method!

Ves had even applied deliberate changes to the Lesser Larkinson Metal Guardian Mantra to make it a lot harder or impossible to progress without the active participation of a design spirit.

The Golden Cat also possessed the capacity to hasten a subject's cultivation progress by donating her own spiritual energy.

This would not only enable a second order living mechs to evolve faster, but also deepen its relationship and alignment with the Golden Cat!

Ves had implemented key cultivation processes of the Karma Liberation Sutra in order to keep better track of this kind of stuff.

In effect, at the same time the Golden Cat administered the cultivation of associated second order living mechs, she also engaged in a form of deity cultivation!

This was killing multiple birds with a single stone. Both sides benefited greatly from this mutual relationship. Goldie had already noticed how much more spiritual feedback she received from the Bright Warrior mechs that were cultivating under her direct supervision!

"It's brilliant, isn't it?" Ves grinned.

"Nyaaa nyaaa nyaaaa!"

The Golden Cat jumped onto Ves and nuzzled his cheek with her warm and loving head.

"Hahaha! Since this test has progressed so well, let's start spreading this out to the other mechs under your care. Another operation is coming up very soon, so our mechs could all use a boost."

"Nya!"

From now on, his second order living mechs no longer had to remain stuck this way unless they experienced legendary journeys.

Even if the living mechs and their assigned mech pilots never entered into real combat, the process of automated cultivation would ensure that the former would eventually be able to evolve on their own!

The effectiveness of the Lesser Larkinson Metal Guardian Cultivation Mantra and similar mech cultivation methods depended heavily on a number of key variables.

The strength of the design spirit played a factor. Those who were stronger and had access to a lot of spiritual feedback could spend a lot more effort into accelerating the cultivation of second order living mechs!

The concentration of ambient spiritual energy also affected the cultivation speed to a large degree. If a living mech ever had the fortune or misfortune to enter Messier 87, it would probably take weeks or days for a fresh machine to evolve into a third order living mech!

"Right now, a newly fabricated second order living mech should probably be able to cultivate into a third order living mech in 10 years or less under current circumstances."

His living mechs should be able to jump to third order a lot sooner in practice as they experienced a lot of growth through regular and intensive use.

In fact, many of the living mechs fielded by the Larkinson Army had already served for five years or longer. Each of them had already progressed so much that adding cultivation should enable them to reach third order within a matter of months!

The Larkinson Clan was about to welcome a lot of new third order living mechs this year!

This was a fantastic development. Third order living mechs cooperated a lot better with their mech pilots, enabling them to avoid lethal attacks more frequently and allowing them to defeat their opponents with greater ease.

More importantly than that, third order living mechs accelerated the spiritual development of their mech pilots. This meant that the latter had a higher likelihood of breaking through to the rank of expert candidate or expert pilot!

Finally, stronger and more intelligent living mechs also provided a lot more spiritual feedback of higher quality to design spirits.

The Golden Cat, the Illustrious One, Helena and many more spirits would be able to harvest a lot of valuable gains through deity cultivation once a lot of third order living mechs started to appear!

Once any living mech model entered into mass production and started to get sold by the millions, the associated design spirits were bound to earn extravagant rewards for the services they rendered!

More importantly, none of the parties involved in these processes suffered any setbacks. The mech, the mech pilot and the design spirit benefited in their own ways, ensuring that each of them had every reason to maintain their win-win-win relationship!

Ves felt excited beyond belief as he imagined all of these implications. His design flame burned brighter as he felt that all of the time and Ascension Points he spent on this work was about far more mutual growth than he had ever accomplished with his previous works!