The Mech Touch

Gloriana's inexplicable collapse and slumber alarmed her custodians. Melody and the guards of the Glory Battalion barged into the testing chamber and immediately took their charge away.

If she hadn't sent a secret signal, the Glory Battalion might have treated him as an enemy!

Fortunately, their initial examinations did not reveal anything wrong with her body. She was just exhausted for some reason. Her brain activity had diminished considerably to the point where she wasn't able to stay awake.

"She'll probably recover after a good night of sleep and some special treatment." Melody concluded after she analyzed the readings from her multiscanner. She threw a scornful look at Ves. "What in the galaxy were the two of you doing here? What is so special about this rock?"

In their distraction, Ves had already picked up the P-stone and returned it into its container. He would never allow the Hexers to 'confiscate' this vital object!

"It's a trade secret." Ves bluntly replied. "Ask Gloriana if you really want to know."

"Oh, I'll definitely do that, Brighter. If she doesn't wake in a day, I'll come back to you again. I hope you'll be more forthcoming at that time." Melody spat.

Melody and the guards quickly moved Gloriana away on a deployable floating stretcher. Right now, they were far more concerned about Gloriana's health than figuring out the reasons for her inexplicable collapse.

"Please wake up soon." Ves whispered.

He did not wish to deal with angry Hexers. They would definitely fault him for putting her in a bad condition!

If Gloriana's slumbered longer than a day, then Ves might have to go on a spiritual excursion in order to check her condition!

"That's for later." He shook his head.

He wrapped everything up and left the testing chamber. He checked up on his design team to make sure they were performing their assigned tasks. After that, he entered one of the private offices next to the design lab.

While he wasn't as exhausted as Gloriana, he expended plenty of spiritual energy. In order to recover, he absorbed some excess spiritual energy from another P-stone.

He finally returned to a semblance of normalcy after topping off his spent reserves.

"Let's see what result we've achieved!"

The exceptional circumstances earlier augmented the original spiritual restoration process in two different ways.

Gloriana's native ability to detect and correct some flaws was already remarkable enough. The only flaw was that she didn't have any direct control over her spiritual projection, let alone perceive what was happening.

Unless she became more like him, she would never be able to exert the same level of control as him. This meant that she could only use her power in this manner with his assistance.

Now that he had some time to reflect, he wondered whether they could replicate what happened earlier. Though the strange developments only happened through sheer accident, Ves was confident they could repeat the process.

"The key is stealing something from her mind. As long as I dangle her stolen thoughts in front of her as bait, she will definitely be compelled to fix the flaws in her mind by taking back what she lost!"

This was a rather crude and tasteless method to Ves. The biggest problem concerning this method was that he risked damaging Gloriana's mind each time she harvested a piece of her thoughts.

Ves instinctively felt that this action wasn't trivial. All of her thoughts were infused with a bit of her spiritual energy. Losing that energy probably impacted her mental condition.

If something like that happened to Ves, he would have shrugged it off. His many spiritual shenanigans had already increased the resilience of his mind and Spirituality. He could take a considerable amount of abuse!

This was not the case for other mech designers! Ordinarily, they never employed their spirituality in such a direct manner. Even a minor change in Gloriana's mind and spirituality would probably come across as a major shock to her equilibrium!

Ves wasn't sure if what he did to her damaged her mind permanently. He would have to check up on her frequently in order to reassure himself that the damage wasn't lasting.

Even then, he should not employ this procedure too frequently. Her mind needed to fully heal in order to withstand another attack.

Perhaps exercising her mind in this fashion was not a bad idea. Just like Ves, repeated impacts to her mind would eventually stimulate her mind into fortifying its defenses and improve its resilience.

Of course, Ves needed to be careful and verify the changes in her condition. What he could do, Gloriana might not be able to. He couldn't afford to make any presumptuous assumptions.

He turned his attention back to the P-stone that carried his newborn spiritual product.

"Hello, Bravo."

In order to avoid contaminating Bravo, Ves made sure to avoid direct spiritual contact. He only observed Bravo passively using his spiritual vision.

"As expected, you're much more wholesome than your predecessors!"

His previous two spiritual products always felt a bit discordant and fractured shortly after their creation. The problem was particularly severe in the case of Vescas as the fusion of spiritual elements was very poor.

Vescas was like a fragile dining plate that Ves threw on the ground and hastily glued back together.

While Bravo started off the same, Gloriana's involvement vastly improved the repair process. Not only that, but she also dusted off some of the dirt and other grime that had accumulated on the broken shards!

The end result was a plate that looked much more cleaner and whole than before!

"Sadly, it's not enough." He shook his head in disappointed.

Gloriana's spiritual projection mainly acted with instincts and within the limitations of what it could do. Spiritual manipulation was never her strength, so her spiritual projection only fixed the most obvious flaws.

In the face of more complicated problems, her spiritual projection could only give it up.

Aside from this, Gloriana also withdrew her spiritual projection prematurely without finishing the entire process. Plenty of unaddressed imperfections remained which Ves wasn't able to fix despite seeing Gloriana at work.

Unlike her, Ves did not possess an intuitive and extraordinary understanding of flaws.

If there were 999 ways to botch the correction and only one way to do it right, then Ves would definitely fail 99,9 percent of the time!

As for Gloriana, even if she faced the same situation, her intuition and her design philosophy would definitely force the failure rate downwards to 20 percent or even less!

This was one of the exceptional advantages of Gloriana, and she developed this intuitive understanding through both talent and a lot of effort!

Ves had learned a lot from the events that took place today.

At the very least, discovering a fourth form of synergy which he tentatively called Artificial Conception was enough to drive him wild!

It was the only form of synergy so far that explicitly involved resonance between him and his girlfriend!

Now that they resonated once, Ves believed that it wouldn't be so impossible to resonate again!

"Something like this should definitely be easier to accomplish with practice!"

Though the difference it made in Bravo wasn't too drastic, Ves believed this was only the start.

In the future, he might be able to have the resonance ability to transform spiritual attributes to clean up Nyxie's spiritual fragment and reduce its pollution.

Ves believed that hardly any other entity in the galaxy could achieve what he and Gloriana had inadvertently accomplished!

"This is a true miracle!"

It was as if their combined efforts actually accomplished the impossible feat of lying to reality!

He knew how difficult it was to change the nature of a spiritual attribute. It was akin to transmuting lead to gold. Without sufficiently advanced magic or technology, he could forget about performing something that bent reality so drastically!

While it was possible to achieve similar results through spiritual contamination, artificial conception was much more cleaner!

Ves inspected Bravo over and over again, paying special attention to its attributes. Nothing suggested that its pollution level, defined as the proportion of undesirable attributes, had increased.

"This is extremely precious!"

He always desired the ability to transform spiritual attributes.

From his observations and manipulations of mech pilots, he knew that changing their spiritual attributes was the key to facilitating their advancement into expert candidates or expert pilots!

Naturally, this only applied to potentates who already possessed spiritual potential. If a mech pilot did not possess any spirituality, there was nothing to transform.

The question was, could he use this ability to turn a mech pilot into an expert candidate immediately?

"There are too many uncertainties." He grimaced. "I also can't pull this ability off willy-nilly. At the very least, I need Gloriana's help."

The state of resonance they achieved hadn't come about instantly. It only appeared during a very important moment where the both of them concentrated on nearly the same ideas.

Such a state was very difficult to reproduce, especially if they weren't creating another spiritual product.

Even if they managed to perform this ability on command, it was not a given to transform an average potentate with spiritual potential into an expert candidate.

Ves noted that those who did so always seemed to adopt a single dominant value or principle.

Someone who was too muddle-headed would never be able to advance to expert candidate if they didn't possess any strong beliefs in something.

While this could be trained to an extent, Ves discovered that many people weren't actually good at focusing themselves to a single pursuit.

Humans were inherently complex and multifaceted. Someone as single-minded as Venerable Foster was the exception rather than the rule.

Ves believed that this was the main reason why most mech pilots with spiritual potential never found the catalyst that allowed them to break through. Their inclinations were too normal, dooming them to live out their lives as mortals.

"Perhaps it is not without a reason that expert pilots are called demigods." He muttered.

Each demigod was partly a god, and each god possessed at least one domain or sphere of power.

This was where his new ability came in. As long as he used this ability to transform much of a mech pilot's spiritual attributes into a specific form, he could forcefully make them single-minded enough to enable their breakthroughs!

Of course, such a drastic attempt at spiritual surgery would definitely alter his patient's personality. This meant that making another Silent William was definitely possible, though not as severe.

"I don't understand enough right now." He sighed. "I need more test subjects so I can experiment more."

He wasn't in a hurry to turn someone into expert candidates or expert pilots anyway. The Mech Corps would get their greedy hands on any mech pilot he uplifted, especially during these dire times.

Each additional expert pilot could save another planet from getting engulfed by the sandmen!

The only exception was Silent William himself. Now that the MTA announced the invasion of the Red Ocean Dwarf Galaxy, getting closer to the Rim Guardians had become one of his main priorities.

He recalled the reports he read about his performance in recent battles.

"So far, William hasn't shown any signs of breaking through." He frowned.

If William showed no improvement by the time the first detachment of Avatars returned from the front, Ves might be willing to employ his new ability to operate on his spirituality again.

After all, he already messed with William once. He might as well do it again to make sure he achieved his intended result!

Just as Ves was about to muse further, an alert suddenly rang throughout the entire Mech Nursery!

When Ves emerged from his private office, Miles Tovar ran up to him in panic!

"Ves! It's an emergency! We have to run to safety!"

"Calm down! What is going on, Miles?"

"It's the sandmen!" The Apprentice replied breathlessly. "They've come to Cloudy Curtain!"

"What?!"