The Mech Touch

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Ves knew Gloriana well enough to know that she would often be inclined to accept his suggestions.

Naturally, the only exception was when it came to her design philosophy or her core Hexer beliefs.

Aside from that, whenever he proposed something risky or radical, Gloriana often went along, trusting Ves to do what was best.

Ves liked being trusted for once. It was such a rare concept for him that he treasured every moment where he gave and received unconditional trust.

To be honest, Ves sometimes abused her easy acquiesce to his advantage. He managed to get her to agree to go on a grand expedition and persuaded her into providing him with a workable sample of pure ASMAS.

The suggestion that he presented to her just now was just as controversial. He couldn't stand letting Gloriana participate in this risky venture without understanding the risks and dangers associated with it. Not this time!

"Do you understand what this means? Since you can't do this on your own, I'll have to manually enter your head, extract your energy and some thoughts regarding Vincent and the Adonis Colossus, all the while preventing your self-defense mechanisms from stopping my intrusion."

"Self-defense mechanisms?"

"The.. thing that empowers your design philosophy is the same thing that guards your mind. I'm not sure how much control you have over it, but you have to restrain it from attacking me while I'm in your head."

"I'll try." Gloriana simply said.

"Think of what I'm doing. I'm proposing to enter your head and rummaging through your mind."

"I don't mind." She responded with a smile. "I don't have any secrets towards you. Besides, it's for a good cause, right? I really want the Adonis Colossus to be the culmination of our joint design efforts. If a better option is available, I don't want to ignore it because I'm too afraid to do what it takes to elevate our mech design."

"I've never done this, though. Who knows whether taking some of your thoughts and other stuff in your mind will damage your mentality."

Ves was still too inexperienced in messing with people's minds.

For some reason, his thoughts wandered back to his mother. She appeared to be a lot more adept in this kind of spiritual manipulation than him. Sometimes, he even feared that she even tinkered with his head, changing him in some way that suited her purposes better!

Of course, that was just his paranoia speaking. A real mother wouldn't harm her son, would she?

He shook his head to get rid of this useless tangent.

Fortunately, Gloriana took the time to consider the matter seriously.

"If you think this is the best course of action to make our mech design great, then go ahead. I want to do everything possible to make our work a mech to be remembered. How can we do that when we are too scared to do what is necessary?"

"I wouldn't say it's necessary. The Adonis Colossus would still be a mech that is good enough to fulfill our commission."

"That's never the proper attitude to adopt!" Gloriana snapped at him. "We should always endeavor to make our mech designs as perfect as possible! I will never settle for 'good enough' if a better solution is available! Now stop dilly-dallying around and proceed with your plan!"

"This.. requires some preparation. We also have to go somewhere quiet."

The two entered and an enclosed portion of the design lab. After a bit of consideration, Ves decided to hold the procedure inside the testing chamber where he used to experiment on William Urbesh.

This was because Melody and the guards of the Glory Battalion simply refused to let Ves alone with Gloriana without supervision.

No matter what excuses he brought up, they still wanted to keep an eye on Gloriana and him. So for lack of a better option, Ves decided that they could watch from the observation room while jamming every sensor and observation device.

Luckily, all of his spiritual procedures were invisible to the naked eye. Gloriana's assistant and guards would never be able to observe what was going. They would simply see Gloriana and Ves sitting opposite to each other while doing nothing.

The same applied to Gloriana as well. As far as he knew, her spiritual senses were extremely weak and she never developed an ability akin to his spiritual vision.

This would make it a bit harder to work with her in the creation of his fourth spiritual product.

His first spiritual product was Vescas, the design spirit of the Kinslayer.

His second spiritual product was the Solemn Guardian, the design spirit of the Desolate Soldier and its variants.

Now, he was about to create a new spiritual entity for the third time.

He already made ample preparations beforehand. He refined and cut down the chaotic, alien elements from the spiritual fragment he harvested from Nyxie long ago.

He also formed various images in his mind that corresponded to the Adonis Colossus' spiritual foundation. This not only ensured a seamless fit, but also shaped the glow of his mech design in the right fashion.

The Adonis Colossus was a mech designed to affirm Vincent's sense of masculinity.

Whether his sense of masculinity warped or not didn't matter. As long as the client was happy with the product, these issues didn't concern Ves very much.

"The important thing is to stay calm and suppress your mental defenses as much as possible." Ves cautioned yet again. "I can't stress the importance of this. The operation that I'm about to do in your mind is very delicate."

"My mind is under my control. I won't allow myself to disturb you in anyway. This is my promise."

"That's good. Strong conviction is vital in allowing everything to go according to plan. What we are about to do is an act of creation. The spiritual product that we are about to create is just as alive as any child born out of our union."

Her words instantly excited her. "A child?! It's too soon!"

"Calm down, Gloriana!" Ves panicked a bit. "It's just a metaphor! It's not truly human or a real child! It's just a living spiritual component to be added to our mech design."

"Still, I feel kind of hot." She blushed all of a sudden. "Should we move this to a bedroom?"

Ves palmed his face. "Don't joke around. If a spiritual product is our child, then it's not the first one. We've already created various mech designs together. Do you consider them all to be our children as well?"

She offered him a brilliant smile. "In a way, yes! Each time we create something together is something worth celebrating about! Of course, I don't consider our joint creations to be our literal children, otherwise we'd be limited to just six creations."

He ignored the implications of her words and began to proceed with the operation. A sense of solemness overcame him as he rid himself of all distractions and concentrated his mind. A very powerful spiritual sensation emanated from his mind.

Though weak and self-contained, Gloriana clearly felt the difference at this proximity.

"Concentrate your mind and bring it under your control."

She tried to follow his instruction. She sat straighter and began to concentrate. Due to working alongside Ves for some time, she had plenty of practice of doing so. It only took her ten or so seconds to achieve a focused state.

Though not as pure as his own, Ves deemed her state to be satisfactory. He picked up the P-stone and held it in front of him. It held the main ingredient for their third act of creation.

For a serious mech design, Ves would have usually tried to borrow the spiritual fragment of an expert pilot to make his spiritual product more compatible to mechs.

However, Ves did not do so this time. It was far too much trouble to track an expert pilot down and find some way to borrow a spiritual fragment, especially during these hectic times!

The Adonis Colossus was a ranged hybrid mech that wasn't quite a rifleman mech. It would not be easy to find an expert pilot who specialized in these kinds of mechs.

Of course, the main rationalization for skipping this step was because the benefits wouldn't be of much use to Vincent anyway.

Since he was quite familiar with creating spiritual products by now, he proceeded with the steps without much fanfare. He smashed Nyxie's spiritual fragment until it fractured into shards of condensed spiritual energy!

He moved quickly, then. He employed his Spirituality and disgorged a lot of images and energy stored in his mind. They mixed in with the shards of the broken spiritual fragment without blending together.

Ordinarily, Ves would have tried to massage and piece the ingredients into a new and greater whole, but he had to add another batch of ingredients first!

"It's time." He whispered. "Open your mind to me. I'd like to enter it without forcing my way in. Can you do that?"

Gloriana briefly frowned. "How do I do that?"

"Use your imagination. Imagine your mind as an intangible field that is shaped like a bubble in your head. Imagine forming a partition in this bubble to allow me inside."

Fortunately, this step went a lot easier than he thought. Perhaps because she had done it before, her mind granted him an opening as soon as he extended a spiritual projection.

He entered her mind for the second time.

Just like before, her brilliant and active mind was a spiritual sight to behold. Her mind and spirit was so indescribable that Ves had to force himself to hurry up and proceed with his task.

Now that he broke Nyxie's spiritual fragment, he only had a limited amount of time to add extra ingredients to the mix!

Upon his exploration of her mind, he quickly stumbled upon his dormant spiritual fragment. He couldn't help but pause his search a bit to examine its state.

Compared to the lively spiritual projection of before, it had automatically collapsed in on itself after Gloriana's design seed cut off his direct connection. Even now, the spiritual fragment from his own spiritual energy didn't seem to be entirely in his control anymore.

Had it been contaminated by Gloriana's design seed?

The placement of the fragment was also very odd. It orbited close to her design seed as if it was a planet revolving around a sun.

Ves repressed the urge to take back what was originally his. He had no idea what was going on, but he intuitively sensed that it wasn't necessarily bad for him. Letting the fragment stay in her mind for her to enjoy might even lead to something good.

For now, he returned to his mission and began to scour her mindscape for thoughts related to the Adonis Colossus.

Perhaps because of the circumstances or because she spent such a long time on the design project, Ves immediately identified large amounts of relevant thought matter, for lack of a better word.

This was the most dangerous part. As Ves extended his spiritual projection, he attempted to harvest a portion of thought matter.

Take too much, and Ves might warp Gloriana's perception of their work or damage her mind.

Take too little, and his spiritual product would end up unbalanced.

He had to take just enough thought matter, and that was very difficult for Ves to judge.

Eventually, he hijacked a substantial portion of thoughts, enough to affect Gloriana's mind, and not in a good way!

Her mind immediately shuddered and her design seed began to spike with activity!

"Bear with it, Gloriana! I'm almost done! Stay calm!"

Her face scrunched with pain as she felt as if her mind had been wounded! Her instincts compelled her to firm up her mental defenses and lash out at the offending party, but she tried her best to keep herself under control.

Even though she knew she was hurt somehow, she needed to bear with the loss!