The Mech Touch

Unknowing of the esteemed audience that he had managed to attract back in Bridgehead One, Ves continued to present the defining strengths and features of his latest commercial mech model.

Millions of people inside Phoca Arena became completely enraptured by his elaborate explanation.

Those who watched the product reveal in the comfort of their own homes or workplaces also became fascinated by the range of features or the depth of complexity by what should really be a simple drone mech.

Though Ves veered into his professor mode at times, few people complained about his lecturing. He knew his audience well and kept everything simple in order to avoid flooding people's ears with numbers and mathematical formulas.

Of course, Ves did not want to give rival mech designers any freebies if he could help it. Just because he did not mind it if others started to figure out how to design living mechs on their own did not mean he wanted to give away all of his trade secrets!

He had worked hard to develop his multi-spirit living mechs. He studied a lot of obscure and confusing cultivation texts. He conducted a lot of tedious and repetitive spiritual experiments in order to figure out brand-new mechanisms. He squeezed his ingenuity to the limit to solve various problems that limited the practicality of the Fey Fianna.

All of that work and effort paid off in spades. The Fey Fianna was not a simple multi-spirit living mech.

One of the features that he only mentioned in part was that it not only came to life with four subordinate spirits, but that it could also generate more if necessary!

Ves did not bother to explain the exact rules and conditions behind this vital mechanism because it was not relevant to most people.

Yet its importance was still great to the mech pilots and the owners of the Fey Fianna.

The Fey Fianna was designed to pair with 4 fey at the start. There was nothing stopping it from controlling additional fey, for example ones that had been left behind on the battlefield, but without any spare subordinate spirits, the control wouldn't be as good.

A true living fey had to be occupied by a subordinate spirit!

In order to develop a reliable solution to this problem, Ves came up with multiple ideas before settling on a single approach.

He granted the Fey Fianna with the ability to create its own subordinate spirits on demand!

This was like a human operating on his own spirituality so that he could make his own companion spirit!

While it sounded crazy at first, the difference between a Fey Fianna and a human was that the design of the former was completely under control.

Ves had many different ways to program elaborate functions in his mech designs. It was easy enough for him to alter the spiritual design and implement a self-carving function that would enable the Fey Fianna to create additional subordinate spirits so that it could perfectly control 5 or more subordinate spirits at the same time!

The only requirement was that the Fey Fianna received permission from the mech pilot to do so and that it had enough strength to donate to the new subordinate spirit.

Each birth of a new subordinate spirit weakened the dominant spirit to an extent.

This traumatic process should not be performed in quick succession as the dominant spirit needed time to heal and regain a lot of strength.

In this regard, the faster the growth, the more often it could split new subordinate spirits!

There was no theoretical limit to this process. So long as the Fey Fianna continued to heal and grow in power, it would always have enough spirituality to spare for this purpose.

It could even perform if it was upgraded into a high-ranking mech!

Ves could already imagine the sights of the future.

Perhaps one day, expert pilots would emerge with dozens of living fey at its beck and call.

Ace pilots may show up that could control hundreds of living fey at a time!

As for what might happen next, there may be a chance that the Army of One would no longer be the only drone mech among the ranks of gods pilots.

Of course, that was too far away from him. Ves mainly implemented this handy function in order to serve the more immediate needs of his future customers.

If there was any downside to relying on growth to expand the subordinate spirits of his Fey Fianna, it was that it was almost impossible to make a copy of this drone mech that could perfectly command more fey from the start.

Unless Ves was willing to spend his valuable time on fabricating a masterwork Fey Fianna that started out as a third order living mech right from the beginning, all other Fey Fiannas had to start with just 4 fey!

Fortunately, the Fey Fianna was not a mech that emphasized quantity. It was much more logical to upgrade the existing fey that the drone mech had at its disposal.

He made sure to emphasize that as he explained the other fey types.

"The water hyper energy shield fey can serve as an important lifesaver and defensive tool." He said as he patted the surface of one of the fey in question. "Since it is based on water energy, it can get close enough to the main body without generating any conflict. In fact, sticking together will be beneficial for them both as they can increase the concentration of water energy even further, thereby enabling them to amplify the performance of their defenses even further. You will be able to witness the defensive strength of its energy shield later."

While the Fey Fianna benefited from an excellent adaptive modular armor system, it was not ideal for the mech to rely on it for protection.

The energy shield fey might not possess a lot of energy cells, but they were somewhat sufficient to power a single primary function.

The more the energy shield fey could rely on water energy to strengthen its defenses, the longer its energy cells could last.

This meant that older and more experienced subordinate spirits would be able to resist way more attacks when inhabiting this fey model!

After explaining a few essential technical details about the energy shield fey, Ves gestured towards another essential fey model.

"Unlike many of the drone mechs that are only able to equip themselves with thin and needle-like spurs, a fey has enough internal space to fit a relatively compact space suppressor module."

It was a rather tight fit, and Ves had to compromise on a lot of structural components, but the space suppressor along with other supporting parts finally managed to fit into the fey design.

This was incredibly useful as it was always better to throw a lot of disposable spurs rather than more valuable mechs onto alien warships!

Space suppression technology had become an essential tool for red humanity.

From preventing alien warships from warping away to weakening their powerful transphasic energy shields, space surpressors had already become a mandatory addition to every mech force in the short time they became available.

"The space suppressor fey is augmented by water hypers as well." Ves explained to his audience. "That is not because it is meant to align with the defenses of the main body. This is because I have discovered rules and interactions that can amplify the effects of a space suppressor. Let me give you a demonstration."

One of the space suppressor fey flew forward and stopped in front of a transphasic energy shield that just came online.

It went without saying that it was a simulation of a typical transphasic energy shield that one would see around an alien warship.

When the fey activated its space suppressor module, an invisible energy field came online.

Since this field obeyed the inverse-square law, the effectiveness of this space suppressor field was much more effective at close range than at a distance.

While this should have allowed the fey to make a substantial impact on the transphasic energy shield, the reality was that their power levels were too far apart.

It was like hitting a stone against a dam!

Ves grinned as he saw this result. This was just a reference test. The true power of his space suppressors would become clear soon enough!

Under the instruction of the mech pilot, the space suppressor fey began to absorb as much water energy in the environment as possible.

As an energy vortex formed around this fey, the space suppressor field began to fluctuate.

The field started to glow in blue as the insertion of water energy changed the energy field's properties in a profound manner.

Then, the space suppressor module started to pulse from the center. This pulsing pattern repeated over and over, causing the effects of the energy field to become uneven.

Yet instead of making the effect weaker or less consistent, the transphasic energy shield started to destabilize more and more.

Even though the effect was still slight due to the difference in power level, the relatively small water suppressor fey was doing an excellent job at amplifying its performance.

As the water suppressor fey continued to make use of its water hypers, the glowing energy field gradually started to pulse increasingly harder.

The amplification bestowed by water energy became stronger with each subsequent pulse.

Soon enough, the blue glow started to take on the form of water waves that continually spread from the center of the fey.

These waves gained more and more 'momentum' and damaged the integrity of the transphasic energy shield increasingly more.

The wave illusion also became more realistic. They gained more detail and evoked the power of stormy waves in the middle of an ocean much better!

Even if this image was just false, due to certain rules, it could actually affect the performance of the space suprpessor field in reality!

After the space suppressor fey battered the transphasic energy shield with enough waves, it finally broke!

For a moment, everyone had fallen silent.

Then, a lot of knowledgeable people started to talk to each other about the remarkable sight that they had just witnessed!

"How can that be? According to the specs listed by the table, the small-sized space suppressor should never have been able to exceed the restoration rate of that transphasic energy shield. Those water hypers must have strengthened the space suppression field, but I have never witnessed any instance where it had been amplified by this much!"

"I would have expected this to happen with a transphasic space suppressor. Only phasewater can effectively neutralize other phasewater effects. If this fey just now truly doesn't have a single drop of phasewater, then this humble construct holds the secret to breaking many powerful transphasic energy shields on a budget. I must find out the secret behind this application."

"This is true mech design! Our work is never about defeating the strong with even stronger mechs. It is about enabling the weak to defeat the strong! Professor Larkinson truly deserves his accolades if his skills are this good. If he can popularize and license out his proprietary method of amplifying the performance of space suppressors with water hypers, then he could earn a fortune!"

Ves allowed the people to speak among themselves for a time before he resumed his presentation.

"I am glad to see that enough of you understand the implications of what you have witnessed. What happened is not that complicated. The space suppressor controlled the power of water and blended it with space to form an effect that can deprive transphasic defenses of the advantages bestowed by phasewater. After all, this substance has 'water' in its name, so when it becomes affected by the metaphysical waves, it would be hard for the phasewater to remain impervious."

What he just said was a rare accomplishment.

This was not the first time that a mech designer exploited the water element to weaken transphasic parts.

That did not mean it was common!

In this relatively early phase of the Hyper Generation, any mech that possessed a more effective but also affordable means of generating a space suppressor field had much less to fear from alien warships!