The Mech Touch

A couple of days went by as Ves worked to fabricate his new five elements mech.

While Ves still considered it to be a variation of the Fey Project, it was clear that the new design had transcended its original root and reached a higher level!

This was the sort of advanced mech design that only Master Mech Designers and other highly competent figures would be able to design.

The sheer difficulty and complexity involved with incorporating the five elements in a single mech would frustrate any other mech designer!

"Gloriana can never design this kind of mech. This falls so far outside of her area of expertise that she would not even know where to begin."

Only people who had become exposed to the secret of ancient cultivation science knew how terrible it was to combine all five classical elements in a single product.

Ves primarily derived his confidence from two factors.

First, he did not foolishly try to combine all five elements in a single mech frame. That was a step too far for him. He needed to develop a much greater mastery of the five elements and become intimately proficient with fusing them with each other before he could develop a genuine machine that could contain all of that combined power.

Second, he believed that creating five living entities that each possessed an inherently high control over their assigned elements would help to control all of those combined elements.

Instead of letting a single living mech bear all of the burden of managing several different energies, Ves split the load and relied on teamwork and a division of responsibilities to better harness all of these complicated interactions.

That made the Fey Project a substantially different living mech than anything else he had conceived of in the past.

In his eyes, the Fey Project was not strictly a mech anymore, but had shifted into another kind of existence.

The use of multiple living personalities and the high relying on teamwork and coordination reminded Ves of how starships were run. Many different ratings and officers utilized their own expertise to fulfill their own distinctive roles and manage their stations to the best of their abilities.

Alone, these spacers were only good at a few jobs at best, but together, they could turn any starship into an efficient and high-performing machine!

Although the Fey Project was clearly not a starship, Ves began to develop the notion that his work started to operate in the same way as a larger vessel.

This caused Ves to entertain troubling thoughts for a while.

"Is this truly a mech?"

One of the fundamental principles of mechs was that they were singular machines that should be controlled by one pilot at most.

While there were rare instances where parties designed mechs that could be piloted by two or more specially trained individuals, they had fallen out of vogue centuries ago due to their heightened manpower requirements.

Ves clearly did not have to worry about this problem for the Fey Project, but substituting multiple mech pilots with multiple semi-autonomous fey was another matter!

"My mech will definitely become a handful to any mech pilot that is 'lucky' enough to pilot it." He chuckled.

He did not worry too much about personality clashes and so on. He inherently designed the fey to maximize their cooperation with each other. Working together to produce greater synergies was their fundamental purpose.

What truly concerned him was whether the final product would become stable enough to be usable in a practical setting.

Even now, Ves was not entirely certain whether he was making his most innovative standard mech to date or whether he was putting together a giant superbomb!

"1 have no other choice to see this through." He frowned. "No amount of baseless predictions or questionable simulations can give me any certainty. Only the actual mech can determine once and for all whether my idea has any merit."

He was under a compulsion so see this abnormal project through. Ves could not stop himself even if he tried.

This was the scary part about entering into an inspired state. He had become so driven in his current obsession that he needed to explore it to fullest if he wanted to gain true satisfaction!

Two days went by. It took that much time for Ves to fabricate all of the parts of the revised Fey Project even when he took the additional delays into account.

This was remarkably faster than any of the expert mechs he had fabricated before.

The Fey Project was not as packed with advanced technology as those high-ranking machines.

The Elite Edition of the Fey Project might be a lot more technologically endowed than the typical second-class mech, but it was still a standard mech in the end.

With a modern suite of Terran production machines at his disposal, Ves was able to churn out all of the parts a lot faster than before.

Even the transphasic mech parts hardly took any additional time to make!

As Ves worked on components that integrated hyper materials that were related to one of the five elements, he steadily began to learn more about their uses and the way to handle them. Practical learning granted him plenty of new insights that were never prominent in theory or in his design process.

All of this helped to make up for the considerable gaps in his understanding of the five elements.

Ves knew he could make his life a lot easier if he was willing to call upon a little help.

For example, he could ask certain design spirits for tips. Gaia was an especially prominent entity. Her innate comprehension of wood and earth was so high that she could definitely boost these aspects of the five elements mech!

Ves and Vulcan already possessed a high degree of understanding and feel for metal, so they did not require any additional assistance in this regard.

Only the elements of water and fire were a bit more troublesome to resolve.

If he truly needed help in harnessing the power of fire, then he could call Venerable Isobel Kotin for help.

As for taming the power of water, Ves did not have any better choice than turning to the Phase King.

Neither of these choices sounded reliable to be honest.

Even if Ves was able to borrow a lot of deeper insights related to controlling the five elements, all of this knowledge was only relevant if his Fey Project manipulated them in isolation.

"That is not good enough."

What he truly needed was actual knowledge related to fusing several elements together. Its absence left a glaring hole in his five elements mech that Ves had to fill up one way or another.

He could choose from two different approaches to solve this massive problem.

First, he could rely on his own innate understanding and guesswork to design his living mech and living fey in such a way that would hopefully lead to a favorable outcome.

Second, he could rely on a course of action that had always helped him a lot in these kinds of situations.

He could approach his mother for help.

She was by far the most powerful and knowledgeable qi cultivator in his orbit. Her understanding of cultivation science was incredibly deep. She could always make an insightful remark that instantly illuminated his mind and solved all kinds of questions that had been bothering him for a long time.

Although the Oblivion Empress had never explicitly demonstrated any powers related to the fusion between different elements, Ves was sure that she was able to do so if she wanted!

Even if her ability to utilize multiple elements at once was not that great, a True God should still be able to juggle the five elements on a basic level at the very least!

Besides, his mother gave off the impression that her abilities were far more comprehensive than that.

There were times where Ves would not have hesitated to use Veronica to ask for Cynthia's input on a matter.

However, he felt intensely repulsed by the idea as soon as he thought about it. The reaction from within was so jarring that it almost knocked him out of his inspired state!

"This is my work. The Fey Project I am working on is the result of my own efforts and understanding of the five elements. It might not be perfect, but it is an accurate reflection of my own creativity and abilities. Only I can be responsible for its success and failure."

Ves felt it would be a violation of his spirit as a mech designer to rely on his mother's help to smooth over any problems and increase the fusion of the five elements.

He would lose his incredibly high sense of ownership of his current work, making him feel as if he had realized his mother's interpretation of the five elements as opposed to his own vision!

Aside from that, Ves had developed a sour taste towards any idea that was related to relying for help on anything.

She had taught him a profound lesson that it was better to figure out stuff by himself than to rely on answers that he could not fully understand by himself.

If he had to make a choice, then Ves was far more inclined to put his trust in his own messy solutions, as rough and flawed as it may be. He was willing to bet that his intuition, his inspiration, his brilliance and his prior accumulation were all sufficient enough to produce a successful result.

"Since that is the case, I should just let go of my worries and see whether I can make my vision come true."

He soon transitioned to the assembly phase, which had become a lot more crucial than in previous cases.

Not only was Ves attempting to create five life forms in a single cohesive package, he also had to work carefully and prevent the different elements from generating any explosive interactions.

"Alexa."

"Yes, sir?"

"I need you to activate additional security precautions. This mech workshop is about to become a lot more dangerous than before. At worst, this entire chamber might get engulfed in an explosion that is as powerful as a dozen heavy artillery shells exploding at once."

"That is impossible! There should be nothing volatile in the design of the Fey Project that could produce such an excessive blast. Even the power reactor should be relatively safe due to its extensive safeguards."

Ves smirked at his assistant. "Your understanding is too shallow. Trust me, this is not a mech that you can put together without care. Just make sure that there is enough energy shielding and so on to contain any possible incidents."

"If you say so, sir."

Assembling a standard mech shouldn't be as difficult as putting together an expert mech.

That still remained true for his five elements mech, but Ves still did not dare to let down his guard as he calmly combined the parts together.

He decided to stick to familiar ground and assemble the main mech frame first.

This was the base of his altered Fey Project and harnessed its most dominant element.

Though Ves desired to make a mech that could harness the power of the five elements in equal measure, that was not possible for this mech design.

He instead opted to make the metal element stronger than anything else so that the main body could suppress the four fey if necessary.

This made the fey comparatively weaker in exerting the power of their separate elements, but it couldn't be helped.

As Ves began to fabricate the living fey one by one, he could feel as if he was bringing different elemental seeds to life.

Fire. Water. Earth. Wood.

Each additional fey altered the flow of E energy radiation in the environment.

The entire surroundings became more and more charged, and when different elemental energies started to get into close proximity to each other, the interior of the mech workshop started to show faint signs of instability!

Nonetheless, it was impossible for Ves to stop now that he had come so close to completing his latest experimental work!

He could already judge that his five elements mech would become a masterwork as soon as it was complete, and its quality would not be low among its exalted kind!

This was by far the most innovative mech that he had designed in a long time. Not even the Lionheart or the Blood Star Mark II could make him feel so excited as today!

However, the closer he came to completing his five elements mech, the more he felt that everything was heading towards a certain explosion!

If the newly created living mech could not get its act together and immediately work to control all of the volatile energies, it would rip itself apart due to an inability to control all of the conflicting forces!

"Damnit, I am counting on you all! Don't let me down!"

Sweat dripped from his brow as he slowly put together the parts of the final living fey.

A part of him wanted to separate all of the fey from each other and the main body.

That would easily solve the immediate risk and prevent an explosion from occurring.

However, doing so would cause the fey and the main body to become a lot more distant from each other. They would no longer be able to produce strong synergies from fusing their elements in deep and profound ways.

This would defeat the purpose of designing this special mech!

This was why Ves deliberately kept all of the completed elements close to each other. Only this way would all of the living entities share close enough bonds with each other!

"Almost there."

Ves visibly slowed down as he carefully affixed the final plates and screwed in the final pieces.

He worked so slowly that the mech workshop had almost descended into silence. Even the smallest of noises became amplified in this charged environment.

Ves did not dare to work any faster. He felt as if he could instantly cause the situation to cascade out of control as long as he made the wrong move!

His mind, spirit and body tensed to the greatest possible extent as he felt as if he was fighting the hardest battle of his mech design career.

As he began to put the finishing touches on his work, the accumulated E energies began to produce stronger and stronger interactions with each other.

This was already a sign that a chain reaction was about to take place!