The Mech Touch

An extraordinary transformation took place that Ves could hardly fathom. He saw and felt the Bright Warrior changing through several senses.

All of these reactions started off with the insertion of the Accumulation of Spirit. This seemingly insignificant gem somehow managed to either activate or connect with the other four gems, causing them to become active as if they had all been attached to a whole mech!

The weirdness of it all struck Ves like a sledgehammer. After becoming exposed to Lucky's gems for so long, Ves realized he knew almost nothing about their workings or mechanisms.

He barely even figured out its rules of operation!

How could he possibly think of applying multiple gems onto a single mech by exploiting a loophole in their rules? He never thought about 'splitting' up a mech to allow for multiple gems to take effect onto a single mech!

Regardless of whether the gems became active at the same time, the fact that it was possibly to boost the quality of a mech by stacking the effects of the gems this way was inconceivable!

He recalled the descriptions of the gems. Did it turn out that the System wasn't telling nonsense, and that the gems actually contained some remnants of past entities?

Were they unable to get along with each other on the same mech due to their conflicting or overlapping properties?

Was using some gem with neutral or binding options a way to get around this conflict?

Whatever the case, Ves learned plenty of new rules about the operation of Lucky's gems! He was very astonished by the realization that there were more sophisticated ways to utilize them! Just adding a single gem to an individual mech was not the end of the story!

As the transformation continued, Gloriana became enthralled while Ves maintained a sobar mind.

This wasn't the first time he saw Lucky's gems improve a mech through unknown means. Instead, he paid close attention to the differences between this empowering event and prior instances of upgrading a mech through embedding gems.

One thing was for sure. This transformation was a lot more drastic and potent than the ones that Ves witnessed before!

What was a masterwork mech?

The answer was difficult to say. The textbook definition described them as mechs whose 'quality' had reached physical wholeness and soundness beyond the reach of what should be possible.

This description implied that a mech somehow reached perfection or beyond in terms of physical quality, but Ves already experienced first-hand that it was too simplistic and incomplete to describe the profound existence of masterwork mechs!

There was more to a masterwork than just an elevated physical quality!

Due to the extreme reaction that Ves was witnessing right now, the changes experienced by the mech were much more visible than with the Devil Tiger!

This gave Ves a much clearer opportunity to observe what the gems exactly did to the Bright Warrior mech to elevate its quality and improve its other properties!

One thing that stood out to Ves was that the changes affected it's spiritual quality as well! Whether it was due to the Accumulation of Spirit, the nature of the transformation or both, the spiritual foundation of mech strength improved remarkably!

Amongst other effects, the Golden Cat glow grew significantly stronger, causing the mech to embody her presence to a greater degree!

This wasn't all. In his spiritual vision, he also saw something that he hadn't really noticed before.

The spiritual foundation of the mech integrated much more extensively with its physical frame! It was as if they were loose friends beforehand but turned into bosom buddies!

Ves never knew that the spiritual foundation of a mech could mesh so well to the physical frame. Ideas began to circulate in his mind. Perhaps he could replicate this phenomenon on his own without relying on this exceptional reaction!

In particular, the way the spiritual foundation adopted the overall shape of the Bright Warrior suggested to Ves that his fanciful notion of combining an imaginary mech with a physical mech was not as pointless as he thought!

Plenty of other interesting phenomena took place. While Gloriana was unable to witness the spiritual transformation of the mech, she had become completely obsessed by the physical transformation of the mech!

It was not as if the mech changed shape or something like that. The effects worked a bit more extensively than that. The best way to describe it was that if reality was being overwritten in real-time!

Normally, such reality-defying transformation shouldn't occur at all because the mech designer or fabricator already shaped the mech to the standard of a masterwork mech.

The introduction and activation of Lucky's gems broke all of those rules! Their mysterious properties caused the Bright Warrior mech to literally self-correct itself to the standard of a masterwork mech!

In Gloriana's words, it was a genuine miracle!

Ever since she conceived her design philosophy, she had always been chasing after the ideal of a perfect vessel. In her opinion, creating a masterwork was her best chance of realizing her seemingly-impossible dream!

Now that she finally accomplished it for the very first time, she stood to gain a huge amount of insights that would definitely advance her design philosophy by leaps and bounds!

"I can't stay in this cockpit! I have to witness all of the changes!"

This dream come true was such a precious moment for her that her design seed became excited beyond belief!

For this reason, Gloriana quickly squirmed out of the cockpit and activated her antigrav clothing to float in the air and observe all of the physical phenomena with her very own eyes!

As Gloriana experienced one of the greatest moments of her life, Ves became fascinated by the physical transformation for a different reason.

What kind of properties defined a masterwork? What was it that made them masterwork, and how could Ves reach this standard without relying on a shortcut like Lucky's gems?

Compared to the previous time he made a masterwork, Ves observed a lot more details. Part of this was because he was already prepared beforehand, but another part was due to his high affinity for mechs!

It didn't escape his attention that due to making another masterwork, his affinity for mechs rose once again! Gloriana was also the recipient of this effect, thereby vaulted her to the exclusive rank of masterwork mech designer!

Raising her affinity for mechs was one of the principal reasons why she wanted to succeed in making a masterwork mech!

The benefits a mech designer gained from increasing their instinctual understanding were already very good as Ves had already experienced. Yet to someone like Gloriana, the boons she gained was of much greater importance!

It was not surprising for her to lash out at Ves when they had initially fallen short of making a masterwork. She obsessed so much about masterworks that it didn't surprise Ves that she would do anything to attain her goal.

He was like that too, sometimes.

Ves felt very pleased that this gamble somehow worked out. Making Gloriana happy made him happy as well.

It was just that the price was a bit too much! Wasting five gems to create a single masterwork was an awful return on investment!

If he had a choice, he would rather create five masterwork mechs with the help of these gems!

All of this was moot now. Now that the gems had been used, they became permanently bound to the mech. In prior tests, Ves already figured out that the gems weren't reusable for some reason. Removing them and putting them into a different mech didn't work because the gems lost effect.

It was yet another unexplainable phenomenon that Ves hadn't figured out!

Whatever the case, the gems were stuck for good, so Ves could no longer make use of them to empower other mechs!

He lamented over their loss. Did he regret giving in to Gloriana's demands? Partially.

It wasn't as if Ves only incurred losses. The drastic transformations that took place due to the combined effects of five gems acting together already taught him a lot about the nature of masterwork mechs.

He doubted he would be able to make so many remarkable observations if he used a gem the regular way!

On top of that, with the elevation of this Bright Warrior mech, Ves could finally apply for a masterwork certificate. This meant that he stood to become a formally-recognized masterwork mech designer just a few years after he advanced to Journeyman!

The amount of mech designers who managed to accomplish this feat in the earlier periods of their careers was miniscule! This was a club reserved only for the very exceptional, very lucky or very talented!

Regardless in which category that Ves and Gloriana fell under, there was no doubt that masterwork mech designer enjoyed an exalted status in the mech community! This was more so for those who managed to make a masterwork when they were young!

Essentially, the earlier a mech designer gained a valid masterwork certificate, the more prominent they became!

Most Masters never even accomplished such a remarkable feat in their Journeyman days! In fact, a lot of Masters still weren't able to create any masterworks!

While that didn't necessarily diminish their design prowess or their value to the mech community, such Masters still respected those who were able to create masterworks!

This was a given because every masterwork mech designer possessed a deep and intimate understanding of mechs. No matter how much other mech designers disagreed with their design approach, they couldn't help but recognize that masterwork mech designers had made an exceptional achievement in the field of mech design!

All of this meant that attaining the status of masterwork mech designer sooner was exceptionally valuable.

If it took a decade for Ves to make another masterwork mech, then he would rather pay an exorbitant cost to make one sooner.

A masterwork mech designer in his thirties was ten times more remarkable than a masterwork mech designer in his forties!

Of course, if he was already capable of making a masterwork mech within a year, then wasting five greater gems was a very large pity. Ves would never know whether the losses outweighed the gains. He had no choice but to roll with the dice and accept the consequences of the choices he had already made.

He shook his head. "Five gems or not, I'm glad the Bright Warrior I've completed today is something I can show off with pride."

This mech was a lot more significant than the Devil Tiger. The Bright Warrior design that Ves could choose to publish on the market if he wished!

There was no hindrance in applying for a masterwork certificate this time! Ves felt incredibly gratified that he could finally convert his de facto masterwork mech designer status into a de jure status!

The amount of fame, prestige and reputation he would gain if the MTA official recognized his accomplishment was significant!

In the vast and extremely competitive mech industry, it was incredibly hard for mech designers to raise their profile and stand out from the crowd.

Gaining fame this way was not about satisfying his vanity.

Instead, Ves wanted to take advantage of this new status to grasp opportunities that weren't open to him before and work with powerful partners who wouldn't pay him any mind if he was just a regular Journeyman!

More specifically, Ves anticipated that becoming an officially-recognized masterwork mech designer would open up a lot of lucrative missions from the Rim Exchange!

At this moment in his life, what Ves cared the most was earning lots of MTA merits!

Increasing his qualifications, racking up achievements and raising his profile within the mech community was the best way for him to increase his value in the eyes of the Rim Guardians and their affiliates. This in turn boosted his ability to earn merits, thereby bringing him one step closer to redeeming a beyonder ticket!

Being able to reach this point earlier made him feel a lot less sour about spending all of those gems. Regardless of their future value, in the short term, Ves would rather earn more merits, because that was the only way he could become a galactic pioneer within his original timeframe!