The Mech Touch

"So these are the living mechs of the new generation."

"Mhmm."

"How much do you know about the new Fey Fianna?"

"Not as much as you think. I mainly involve myself in swordsman mech designs. I have little motivation and reason to push myself into other mech design projects, even if they are assigned a sword or a knife as a backup weapon. Ves' latest pet project is clearly oriented to mid-ranged combat. The battle has clearly taken the wrong turn. The Fey Fianna is primarily designed to avoid close confrontations."

"I see." Venerable Joshua responded as he enjoyed the warmth of Ketis' hard and athletic body. "Are you interested in designing a melee variant of the Fey Fianna? It might be fun to make a mech that indirectly controls 4 extra swords that can swing in any direction and in different places at once. It might be difficult to make the sword fey strike hard enough, but I am confident that your swordmaster expertise can solve this problem."

Ketis shoved her elbow against her silly husband's side with more than a little force.

"Mech design doesn't work like that. We can't magic every difficult problem away. My gifts as a swordmaster can only do so much."

As the married couple enjoyed a rare day off, they settled into the couch as they watched the projected feed that dominated half of their stateroom aboard the Spirit of Bentheim.

Meanwhile, a pair of cute and growing kids went off to play with each other. Currently, big brother Kirian was trying to teach basic swordplay to his adorable little sister.

"You need to swing your sword this way!"

"This way?" Little Mayra asked as she swung her fuzzy sword-shaped toy in a wobbling manner.

"You're doing better, but you should control your grip. Don't hold the hilt too tight, but don't loosen your fingers too much either. Do you get it, sis?"

"I'm bored. I want to play with my dolls."

"Dolls are boring! Don't you want to become a cool swordmaster like mommy?"

"Mmmmm.... No." Mayra shook her head.

"You're stupid!"

"No, you're stupid!"

"Nuh-uh, you're stupid!"

As the children started to feud against each other, their father reached out and gently drained their frustrations with his soothing force of will.

"Settle down. No one here is stupid. Kirian, if Mayra wants to play with her dolls, just let her. She is not old enough to begin her swordsmanship training. Give her time."

Once he was done with admonishing his children, he resumed his observations of the product reveal that had already produced a lot of excitement.

The patriarch unveiled all kinds of new and improved features with the introduction of the Fey Fianna.

"Fourth generation luminar crystal technology. Fifth generation living mechs. Multi-spirit living mechs. All of that sounds amazing. How soon will those improvements roll out in the expeditionary fleet?"

"You are in for a long wait." Ketis replied in a flat tone. "It takes time to update all of our existing mech models. Many of our lead designers have left to undergo EdNet training. I would like to help, but I only design melee mechs. Ves is the only mech designer in our clan that can implement his improved solutions, and his schedule is always full."

That caused Joshua to frown. "He should hire more mech designers if that is the case. He used to be a lot more relaxed and approachable in the old days. Now, he is not in the same location as us anymore."

"The clan has grown, and so has our patriarch. His burden of responsibility has become much greater than before. I predict that it will take at least a year before he even thinks about updating your Everchanger. There is a chance it may even take longer before he gets around to improving your living mech." Venerable Joshua dramatically threw his hands up. "That's too long! Not just me, but the rest of the old gang have heard little about any anticipated updates to their old expert mechs. Our machines aren't weak, but ever since our resonance strength started to grow like a rocket, many of us feel like our own battle partners are starting to fall behind. We can do much more if we have room to express our expanded power. We at least want our expert mechs to keep up with the times and take advantage of all of the new hyper tech."

Though Ketis pretty much knew what her husband was talking about, it was best not to mention the experimental general cultivation elixirs out loud.

Half of the people in the expeditionary fleet knew that the expert pilots of the Larkinson Clan benefited from an amazing opportunity.

The general cultivation elixirs could be hidden, but their effects were far too obvious!

Every working resonance meter could easily detect the discrete jump in resonance strength right after the expert pilots recovered from their latest elixir ingestion.

Joshua happened to be the expert pilot that derived the most benefits from the general cultivation elixirs!

Whereas the other expert pilots only managed to grow their resonance strengths by 2 to 3 laveres, Joshua never failed to boost his own resonance strength by 4 laveres!

That was not all. He recovered considerably faster than anyone else. Though the traumas induced by the illusions created by the elixirs could push any expert pilot to their limits, Joshua possessed qualities that enabled him to bounce back with greater ease.

This has caused his schedule to go out of sync compared to the other Larkinson expert pilots.

Whereas Venerable Tusa Billingsley-Larkinson and Commander Casella Ingvar had to wait at least 3 months before they could safely ingest another elixir, Joshua was able to restore his condition back to his peak in less than 2.5 months!

It might even be possible to push the interval down to just 2 months, but not even the mechers dared to endanger Joshua's health to such a degree!

They were much more interested in keeping track of his progress over a longer period of time.

In any case, Joshua's growth over the recent months had been nothing less than record-breaking.

Starting from around 24 laveres, Joshua swallowed 3 elixirs, which combined with his 'regular' progress caused his resonance strength to measure at 38.8 laveres on average last he checked!

This meant that Joshua went from a fresh mid-tier expert pilot to almost reaching the threshold of a high-tier expert pilot!

He did not know of any other expert pilot in the past that managed to race through the ranks in such record time.

There were far more expert pilots who stagnated and eventually never managed to push their resonance strength past 40 laveres due to many different factors.

Not even the Chosen Human could match's Joshua's growth rate at this stage!

Of course, that did not mean that Joshua became conceited enough to think he was superior to a god pilot.

He had mixed feelings about the general cultivation elixirs. They were certainly effective, but they made it too easy.

If not for the fact that the expeditionary fleet still remained active in the border regions of human-occupied space, Joshua would have started to feel that he did not deserve to receive his rapid boost in strength.

In any case, it was due to this extreme occurrence that Joshua yearned to pilot a more powerful version of the Everchanger even more!

Though the mech had received minor upgrades every now and then, the core technical features and attributes of the machine remained the same.

Ketis did not entirely agree with this assessment.

"Technically speaking, the Everchanger is already a hyper mech. The same goes for all of the other older Larkinson mechs. We did not know it back then, but when Ves incorporated Unending alloy into your machines, he turned them into prime mechs, which nowadays is regarded as a variation of a hyper mech. You should feel grateful, Joshua. You are far ahead when it comes to harnessing E energy. Your combat effectiveness has skyrocketed ever since we entered the Age of Dawn. Your mech has almost fully kept up with the times. The only changes that are truly necessary is to bring your armor system and a number of other systems in line with the standards set by the Red Association."

Joshua pressed his fingers against his forehead. "I know that my Everchanger is special and has grown a lot during the Age of Dawn, but it still feels back that my battle partner is still working with tech that is a decade old. Many other expert pilots like those from the Cross Clan and the Boojay Family meanwhile get to show off their completely updated expert mechs in front of us. I don't even have to look outside of our clan. Have you seen what the new Blood Star Mark II and the Lionheart can do?! Those expert mechs are on another level than the rest of our machines."

"The Blood Star Mark II and the Lionheart are indeed technological marvels, for different reasons." The female mech designer admitted. "Both of them are designed as high-tier expert mechs from the start. They are also quasi-first-class mechs that push the limit of what their power reactors can support in their mech frames. I would not say your Everchanger has fallen too far behind compared to them. Your expert hero mech is armed with the Scarlet Ember and has access to the Gray Lotus as well."

"Those are nice weapons, but they don't really fit my expert mech. The plasma sword is an energy hog, and the Gray Lotus hardly makes a difference when I don't know where all of the important alien officers and leaders are located inside their huge warships."

Venerable Joshua did not want to wait much longer. He was on track to become a high-tier expert very soon. This was where all of his accumulation so far would begin to produce qualitative changes that significantly boosted his combat effectiveness!

If his prodigiously fast growth rate persisted after this crucial turning point, then it would only take a little over a year for him to become an ace pilot candidate!

By then, his demand for a proper high-tier expert mech version of the Everchanger became most acute!

Not being able to pilot a properly upgraded Everchanger by that time would be as painful as trying to fight a sparring match against Ketis while armed with a skinny little knife.

His wife picked up his growing need. She placed her calloused hand over his palm.

"I will let Ves and his wife know. I think Gloriana will be especially eager to test her new cranial implant by working on multiple expert mechs."

Joshua smiled and relaxed. He gestured at the projected live broadcast. "If you do manage to get in touch with Ves, can you ask if he can add a few of these spurs to my machine? My intuition tells me that I can do a lot with them. There should be enough room on my Everchanger, right?"

"Ves and Gloriana will have to redesign the rear sections of your Everchanger depending on the size of the new spurs. Are you sure you want to add this extra complication to your expert mech?"

"I am sure." Joshua spoke with greater firmness in his tone. "I don't need too many spurs, but the possibility of having a pair of them by my side makes me excited. Just imagine what it would be like to pilot an expert mech version of the new Fey Fianna. Maybe I can produce amazing decoys, or maybe I can produce a really big energy shield that can cover an entire starship."

"Keep dreaming."

Every mech pilot of the Larkinson Clan dreamt of piloting more modern and powerful mechs.

The Fey Fianna model had already begun to roll out in the expeditionary fleet, but that only satisfied a small group of Larkinson mech pilots.

The rest still yearned for updates of their established mechs. As the battles against the native aliens continued to intensify, the Valkyrie Redeemer, the Ferocious Piranha and many other mech models were all starting to show their age.