The Mech Touch

The days went by in a frenzy.

Alexa Streon, Gavin Neumann and many other leading figures of the Larkinson Clan all worked together to expand the scope of the much-anticipated product reveal.

From organizing more formal receptions to setting up more exciting exhibition matches, the Larkinsons in Bortele had to do a lot of extra work in order to do the Fey Fianna justice.

Few people complained about this. The bigger the show, the greater the prestige. The Larkinsons felt glad that the latest commercial mech of the Living Mech Corporation earned such luxurious treatment.

The greater the success, the more money poured into the coffers of the Larkinson Clan!

Even though the clan actually earned a lot more money from selling the plunder obtained during the Trailblazer Expedition, the income was way too risky and inconsistent.

Any well-established clan had to establish a strong commercial enterprise in order to maintain its prosperity across multiple generations.

The current Living Mech Corporation had supported the growth of the Larkinson Clan for a long time, but the former had become increasingly unable to keep up with the latter in the past few years.

It went without saying that this was a huge problem. Neither the Living Mech Corporation nor the other daughter organizations of the Larkinson Clan could pay for all of the rapidly growing expenses.

This was already bad enough when the Larkinson Clan established a lot of costly branches across many different planets in the middle zones.

The problem became a lot worse once the Premier Branch started to pick up steam!

In fact, just the cost of maintaining all of the expensive first-class instruments and facilities over at Diandi Base was a huge burden in itself!

If Ves or the rest of the Larkinson Clan were unable to bring in so much money, it was impossible for the Living Mech Corporation alone to cover for all of these expenses!

"All of that can change if the Fey Fianna can dethrone the Sparrow Storm."

Due to the Red Association's excellent data gathering and record-keeping habits, it was not that difficult to obtain records of the Sparrow Storm's sales figures.

Of course, much of the statistics were not that relevant to Ves. That was because the state of the mech market during the Age of Mechs was much bigger and more comprehensive at the time.

Losing access to the enormous market of the Milky Way as well as all of the mech designers who resided over there had completely upended the mech industry at the start of the Age of Dawn!

Although a lot of mech companies had fallen overnight due to losing contact with the well-established lead designers from the old galaxy, not all of them perished in the Red Ocean.

SKL was so big and employed so many excellent mech designers that it still retained the services of many first-class, second-class and third-class mech designers!

Even though SKL was unable to support its immense product catalog after losing access to so many mech designers, the megacorporation was so powerful that it could easily hire hundreds of high-quality applicants to compensate for all of the absences.

This ultimately meant that SKL Mech Industries in the Red Ocean had not actually lost any strength. It quickly recovered from the abrupt transition to the new age and took advantage of the introduction of the Hyper Generation to reorganize all of its product lines.

The Sparrow Storm Mark XII was not only a lot different from the Mark XI iteration due to the inclusion of hyper technology, but also because many of its contributing mech designers had changed!

Still, SKL was highly accustomed to rotating the lead and contributing mech designers of its long-established mech lines. It had a mature system and approach in place to allow other mech designers to inherit its staple mech designs.

The Sparrow Storm Mark XII was therefore a qualitatively superior line of mechs that had been optimized to a fantastic degree.

The only flaw that Ves could speak of was that its hyper technology application was still too shallow and rudimentary. This was exactly the vulnerability that Ves intended to take advantage of when he was ready to push his Fey Fianna!

"This is the Age of Dawn." Ves reminded himself as he stared at the design of his new water fey. "Unlike the Age of Mechs, conventional technology no longer carries as much weight as before. E-technology can boost the performance of mechs just as much if not more!"

E-technology had many different meanings, but to Ves it represented an attempt to apply cultivation science to modern technology.

Ves recently embraced the model of treating his living mechs as artifacts.

This was a perspective that encouraged him to think of his products as remarkable objects that could be made strong through special production and evolution processes.

However, now that Ves needed to figure out better ways for his Fey Fianna to compete against a formidable mainstream mech line, he believed that this was no longer the most appropriate way to treat his machines.

"Artifacts are objects." He frowned. "Even if they are extremely precious and powerful, they cannot escape the fact that their scope is limited."

Ves had a different vision in mind for his living mechs.

From the early days of his career, he always dreamt of turning his products into true living beings.

He wanted to turn them into fully sentient beings with all of the rights and obligations that came with their status. He wanted his mechs to become fully recognized as ideal partners that attained permanent symbiosis with the human race.

"If living mechs can become like humans, why not treat them like cultivators?"

This was a highly impactful mental model. Treating his living mechs like cultivators meant that he would become more inclined to focus on their ability to practice cultivation methods, thereby enabling them to produce dramatic results once they mastered powerful techniques!

Although Ves had already started to do this by devising the Larkinson Metal Guardian Mantra for his living mechs, it only represented a single step in the right direction.

When Ves recalled the mantra that he had devised by combining several components from other ancient methods, he grew increasingly less satisfied with the lack of sophistication and power of his work.

"I was a lot less knowledgeable at the time."

Much had changed in the months that had passed since he made that mantra. Ves learned so much more about cultivation science as well as the interaction between E energy radiation and his living mechs.

He felt it was time for him to either update the Larkinson Metal Guardian Mantra or expand its techniques so that it was no longer confined to passive strengthening.

This was a huge undertaking. Ves needed to cooperate with multiple experts up to and including his mother in order to achieve the best results.

"There is not enough time." He shook his head.

The upcoming product reveal was scheduled to start pretty soon. There was no way for him to upgrade the Larkinson Metal Guardian Mantra in so little time.

Even if he managed to improve it, the Fey Fiannas would not have enough time to cultivate the improved method for more than a few days.

"I don't need to work on such a big project yet. I should focus on a smaller and more focused undertaking."

Ves gazed at the water fey that he had been working on. The water element corresponded best to non-offensive uses, so he had been trying to improve its utilization in the space suppressor fey and the energy shield fey.

While the Fey Fianna was divided into several editions, Ves mainly focused his attention on the non-transphasic version of the mech.

Even though it was the weakest out of the three existing editions, it was the one with the greatest marketability. The Standard Edition had to perform well in order to sustain the popularity of this mech line!

This was why he had been working hard to improve the existing implementation of hyper technology and E-technology into these two particular fey types.

Without using phasewater, Ves believed there were still ways for him to massively boost the performance of these two fey!

He smiled and raised the artifact flute that he had placed on his desk. "I can't do this without your help."

As soon as he held the flute, his affinity to water strengthened in an instant. It became a lot easier for him to develop intuitive solutions to problems related to water manipulation.

Although this function primarily served to boost the ability of a qi cultivator, Ves was able to take advantage of it to improve his design solutions!

"Now that I think about it, these living fey are equivalent to qi cultivators who specialize in the water element. The techniques derived from the Oceancaller can easily be transplanted in these fey!"

It was difficult to improve the space suppressor fey and the shield generator fey in a significant fashion. Any other mech designer would probably think that Ves had gone crazy for believing he could boost their performance by a large extent in just a handful of days!

However, as Ves continued to apply different concepts of water to the two fey types, he did not seem to get stuck.

He had already been thinking about applying these solutions before he left Ocanon Vi!

Ves already solved many of the possible problems in advance. This was why his progress was so remarkably smooth.

By the time he was nearing the end of this short design spree, he began to take a step back and evaluate what he had accomplished up to this point.

Both the space suppressor fey and the energy shield fey should have become much more powerful than before.

Though he had yet to fabricate them and test their performance in reality, he knew in his heart that they were no longer as unassuming as before. He was willing to bet his life on this prediction!

The only issue was that he felt that his upgraded fey was still missing a crucial component that could tie their enhancements together.

"What am I missing?" He frowned.

Since he designed these living fey as if they were qi cultivators, he started to think back on what he knew about the latter.

He had read through numerous qi cultivation methods and also received a few insightful lessons about them from his mother.

What characterized qi cultivators the most?

"Their artistic conception."

His back suddenly straightened as he realized why he felt his work was still incomplete.

Though he had implemented several concepts related to water to his upgraded fey, that did not mean that they made for good artistic conceptions.

Thinking about currents and whirlpools all of the time was like wearing gray t-shirts every day. There was little depth, complexity and potential in developing them any further.

The truly powerful qi cultivation methods often based their artistic conceptions around complex, multilayered subjects that enabled practitioners to develop their abilities in more sophisticated and powerful directions!

If a qi cultivator dreamt about becoming a Phoenix, he could eventually incarnate as one, similar to what the First Flame had done!

Although there were many difficulties involved with practicing such complicated methods, the rewards were much greater!

Ves' eyes shone as he gazed at his two water fey models.

He needed to put his imagination to good use.

"There are undoubtedly limits to what I can do, but I have to try this out. The potential is just too great!"

The defining characteristic of his mechs was that they were alive. No other mech designers aside from his wife and his students could make anything close

Ves had nothing to fear from SKL!

Though the powerful mech company had a bad habit of trying to imitate and surpass the selling points of rival products, there was no way that SKL could make their own mechs manipulate E energy as if they were qi cultivators.

That was because their products were not alive!

He suddenly frowned. "Well, that is not entirely true anymore..."