The Mech Touch

"So this is it, huh?"

"Yes, sir." Director Pesca Aduc said as she stood in front of a transparent container that currently stored a modest amount of space junk. "What you see before you is 23.7 kilograms of raw ore that has yet to be identified and included in the Red Two's materials database. According to our logs, our clan harvested this ore from a nearby asteroid in one of the star systems that we have visited in the past. It does not possess any special traits. Our clan mainly kept it in storage to build up a diverse library of samples. None of us had any expectations that it would have any significance, but it is the material that responded the fastest after being subjected to the Everchanger's glow."

The speed in which these chunks of rocks completed their hyper transformations demonstrated that their potential was low. Maybe too low to justify his personal interest in their existence.

Nonetheless, Ves did not have anything else to play around with, so he had little choice but to take this new hyper material seriously.

As Pesca Aduc continued to recite more information about this case, Ves had already begun his own investigations.

His spiritual senses told him that the transformed ore had absorbed a slight amount of spiritual energy attributed towards death.

A part of it had altered its physical properties and caused all kinds of modest changes.

Another part of it continued to linger inside the ore, enabling anyone to leverage the stored energy in different ways.

This caused Ves to classify it as a death sympathetic material in his new model of hyper materials.

Its properties shared a close resemblance to that of a P-stone, but the new death sympathetic material was a lot more fragile and limited in compatibility.

"What is it called?" Ves asked.

"For now, we have labeled it as D-l, as it was the first material that exhibited clear physical changes according to our observations. You are free to change it to a name of your choosing."

He shook his head. "That isn't necessary. I think it is clear to the both of us that this material ranks at the bottom when it comes to hyper materials. It is the equivalent of a junk exotic, and quite a bad one at that. Its only advantage is that it is probably easy to obtain in large quantities. How prevalent are the asteroids that contain the ore that D-l is derived from in the Red Ocean?"

"According to our investigation, the asteroids are not exactly common, but they are not scarce either. You can stumble upon them in 1 every 20 star systems in the Red Ocean. They are not available in the Milky Way, not that it matters."

It did matter, actually. If it was possible to mine large quantities of D-l in the Milky Way, then Helena would be able to flex her power a lot more extensively when it was all shipped to the Nyxian Gap!

As the director of the T Institute spoke, Ves noticed that she looked slightly ill at ease.

"What's wrong, Pesca? Is your proximity to D-l making you uncomfortable?"

The woman who had come to worship Gaia as a literal goddess nodded after a couple of seconds.

"As you know, I worship the patron of Old Earth and the life that has flourished from our ancestral planet. Death is... a part of nature, but that does not mean I am comfortable with remaining in its presence. I don't sense a threat from this material, but it is slightly interfering with my inner peace."

It was like introducing a durian into a room. Even though it was relatively harmless, the smell of this infamously stinky fruit could easily drive people who hated this controversial delicacy to madness!

"I understand. Death is not a pleasant concept. I will take this batch of D-l off your hands and tinker with it further. By the way, I will also inform our clan to mine larger quantities of this ore whenever possible. Even weaker hyper materials can be incredibly useful to us if there is no readily available alternative. You should reserve enough space aboard this ship to accommodate mass production."

Though Pesca Aduc did not look enthused, she acknowledged the instruction.

Before Ves began his experiments, he chatted a little more with the woman. He was curious about what her family was up to these days.

The director of the T Institute became a lot more animated.

"I am aware that times are not good for red humanity as a whole, but our family's prospects are rising." She frankly said. "Ever since our ancestral teachings have become more effective in the new environment, our family's terraforming work has experienced massive improvements. Our services are in much higher demand than before, and we command much greater prices. The Red Two is also offering rich incentives to terraform planets that fall within the territories that red humanity currently occupies."

"I heard about that last part. The mechers and fleeters think that we will stay on the defensive for a long time. If we want to expand our population, our resource extraction and our industrial capacity, we can no longer rely on creating new zones and occupying the most attractive star systems."

There were still plenty of star systems in the Magair Middle Zone and the Krakatoa Middle Zone that were completely devoid of human occupation.

These empty star systems were not barren. They just didn't have any phasewater or sufficient deposits of exotics to make it worthwhile for pioneers to plant their flags.

Times had changed.

With the Red Two's warfleets on the defensive and with the Torald Middle Zone becoming increasingly more penetrated by alien raiding fleets, it made a lot more sense to colonize the previously forgotten planets that were located away from the local galactic center!

According to Pesca, the spread of cultivation within the Aduc Family caused many of its terraformers to develop a green thumb of sorts!

"We can always find a way to make nature flourish." She said with a smile that radiated pride. "Our family has also gained influence among like-minded people and organizations. We have all come together in order to locate the perfect surrogate planet for Old Earth. We have a strong belief that there is a globe out here in the Red Ocean that can be turned into the perfect temple of Gaia in this corner of space!"

"Uh huh." Ves spoke. "Has your little alliance made contact with the Terrans? As far as I know, there are people within the Terran Alliance that are looking to do the same."

"Our family hasn't made any direct contact, but one of the other organizations in our group claims to enjoy Terran backing. We hope to obtain more substantial support once we have made more impressive attainments."

It was difficult for Terrans to take second-raters seriously. Ves did not have much hope for the Aducs and their little club.

He still found it interesting that the Aducs were doing particularly well with the help of their proprietary cultivation method.

It showed that groups that still preserved and respected their old legacies or inheritances could easily get ahead of their rivals and competitors!

Ves wondered how many other organizations were in the same position as the Aduc Family. He had a strong suspicion that red humanity was still rife with people who had not forgotten all of their former ties to the Five Scrolls Compact.

Once Director Pesca went back to supervising the experiments centered around companion spirits, Ves immediately began to tinker with the newly produced batch of D-l.

He did not even bother returning to his private workshop over at the Spirit of Bentheim. He immediately sought out a spare workshop in the Dragon's Den and began to play around with his latest toy.

He felt as if he managed to get his hands on a super discounted version of Black Dragon Steel. If not for the fact that it could not possibly withstand the rigors of mech combat, he would have felt tempted to integrate it into an existing mech, perhaps one of the Valkyrie expert mechs of the Glory Seekers.

His initial experiments confirmed that D-t indeed possessed at least some of the properties of a prime material.

It could store a small quantity of death energy. Ves even tried to make more precise measurements.

After a bit of experimentation, he estimated that 1 kilogram of D-l could store approximately 0.00003 Ves.

"That's not too bad for a material as prevalent as this." He noted with a bit of respect.

The maximum energy density of D-l sounded abysmal at first, but that was when he had just 1 kilogram of this hyper material.

What if he had 10 kilograms of D-l?

That would mean he could store up to 0.0003 Ves of death energy, which was a big improvement!

If he somehow managed to get his hands on 1000 tons of D-l, then he would be able to store 30 Ves worth of death energy!

This was a pathetic ratio compared to a more sophisticated sympathetic material like Black Demon Steel, but Ves did not mind it because of one crucial difference.

Ves had yet to find any trace of Black Demon Steel outside of the Mech Designer System, whereas his clan could easily mine all of the tons of precursor ore of D-l as it wanted to in the new frontier!

It was not feasible for the Larkinson Clan to pile up all of the D-l in the cargo hold of its starships. Storage space was far too limited and precious in the expeditionary fleet.

What he could do instead was to go through with his earlier plans to establish hyper material production facilities on planets such as Davute VII and dump as much D-l on the surface as he wanted!

It didn't matter if he had an actual need for all of that D-l, because the cost of storing more of it was trivial!

Ves tried to imagine the possible uses of D-l based on the assumption that its supply was practically limitless.

He could use it to mass produce billions of extremely cheap totems. They might be incredibly fragile, but his clan could produce so much of them that it didn't matter if they were roughly handled!

He could produce giant temples in the Hex Federation that were entirely devoted to Helena. His eldest sister could communicate more effectively with her subjects and harvest a lot more spiritual feedback from the Hexers.

He could use it as a key material to construct a special starship that allowed Helena to exert her strength in the expeditionary fleet to the maximum without needing to rely on battle formations.

Ves tried to imagine what it would be like to live in a city that largely consisted of structures made out of D-l.

Would humans even be able to survive in such an environment, or would the sheer concentration of death energy make it impossible for weak organic life forms to cling to their lives?

This was an interesting thought experiment, so much so that Ves might actually think about turning it into a reality, just so he could see what would happen!

As ideas continued to bombard his mind, he quickly completed his initial examinations by quickly carving a bunch of small totems of the initial batch of D-l.

Once he completed them, he found them to be decently more charming and effective at channeling Helena's presence and glow than comparable objects at the same size.

It didn't matter if their energy capacity was still stupidly small. Any trace of the Daughter of Death within a totem was already enough to increase its transmission efficiency by several times!

"This is a huge improvement!"

If Ves was able to do this with an extremely weak hyper material like D-l, what about other sympathetic materials that were sensitive towards death-attributed spiritual energy?

"There's also mechs as well. If D-4, D-5 or D-6 are strong and resilient enough to be integrated into mechs, how much stronger will the next generation of Valkyrie mechs become?"

Perhaps those mechs no longer needed to employ a battle formation to channel Helena's power in the material realm.

With the help of powerful enough sympathetic materials, the Daughter of Death would always bless their attacks!