The Mech Touch

Ketis watched from the sidelines along with the rest of the assistants. This time, Lucky approached her position, causing her to hold him in a hug.

"What do you think, Lucky?"

"Meow."

"I don't even know why I ask." She ruefully smiled. "I don't even know what you're saying."

Clixie soon padded over as well. She looked up to Ketis and Lucky with a curious expression.

"Miaow?"

"Do you want me to hug you as well?"

"Miaow."

Since Clixie didn't seem to refuse her suggestion, Ketis picked up the organic cat.

"Wow, you're so soft! Your fur is so fluffy! No wonder Gloriana likes to carry you around a lot!"

Both cats were incredibly adorable in their own way! For a moment, Ketis wanted to obtain her own cat!

"Stupid Ves." She grumbled. "You never did get me a pet."

"Meow."

"Miaow."

"Oh, you lovelies. At least I can cuddle with you! The two of you are so warm!"

While Ketis fooled around with the two cats, Ves temporarily withdrew himself to a private office with Gloriana and Nitaa and activated his signal jammer.

He held out his hand and accepted the Larkinson Mandate from Nitaa. The Golden Cat who resided inside looked curiously at the clan patriarch.

"I might need your help." He spoke to Goldie. "What I'm about to do is very experimental and likely very dangerous. I may have to depend on your abilities to contain the possible fallout. Can you do that?"

Nyaaaaa.

The Golden Cat eagerly nodded. She had finally stabilized her strength after the Larkinson Clan had ballooned in size. Not only that, but the constant development of clan culture and clan cohesion constantly shaped her as well. Her horizons constantly expanded due to all of the diverse people that joined the clan.

With the guidance she received from Qilanxo, she was far from simple these days!

With Goldie's reassuring aura suffusing his body, Ves felt as confident as ever in the experiment he was about to perform!

His goal? To stuff two spiritual entities of equal strengths into a single mech!

This was something that he had never really done. He vaguely did something similar with his images, but that was a different case.

His original plan for his striker mech project was to designate Zeigra as its design spirit.

This was a simple and cheap solution that cost almost no effort on his part. The reason why he settled on this choice was because he believed that Zeigra's predatory intimidation should be enough to impart his striker mech with a reasonable amount of deterrence power!

Yet when he failed to solve the capacity problem, he no longer thought that was enough. Making the striker mech's flames a little more frightening was not sufficient anymore!

In order to truly raise the value of his product, Ves concluded that he needed to amp up the fear factor of his mech!

Of all of the fearsome spiritual entities at his disposal, he could only turn on the only remaining entity that had the power to frighten everyone out of their wits as long as they came close!

For this reason, Ves turned his attention to a couple of boxes placed on the desk.

He first opened up a box containing his precious F-stone. He wanted it to be ready and within his reach should anything go wrong.

He next inspected the P-stone he retrieved from the vault that contained a reserve of spiritual energy. While he didn't anticipate expending a lot of energy this time, it was still prudent to have an extra supply within reach.

After that, he took a brief glance at the P-stone which held the spiritual entity known as Zeigra. Though the former Crown Cat hated Ves with a vengeance, it knew better than to leave its confines. Zeigra would almost certainly die if he attempted to brave the corrosive winds of the imaginary realm!

After making sure that everything was in order, he finally proceeded with the most important step. He approached the B-stone lockbox and carefully opened it up, revealing a P-stone containing a very ominous spiritual fragment!

He picked it up with his hand and tried his best not to become affected by the spiritual fragment's unsettling attributes.

Ves had already purified the fragment he carved out of Nyxie beforehand. Through a ruthless cutting process, he spiritually isolated and amputated many of the spiritual attributes that had nothing to do with what he wanted.

As a result, the fragment rapidly dropped in strength while at the same time becoming less muddled!

The final version was a spiritual fragment that contained a reasonable amount of spiritual attributes that Ves found creepy.

Ever since he opened the B-stone lockbox, the fragment's disconcerting aura already started to bleed out into the office. Both Gloriana and Nitaa paled as they sensed as if something very powerful was looking down on their existences like they were bugs that needed to be squashed!

"Goldie!"

Nyaaaa!

The Golden Cat soon began to intensify her glow. The Larkinson Mandate began to unleash an aura that spiritually counteracted the purified fragment's influence!

The altered fragment backed down a bit, but still seemed determined to scare everyone within reach!

"Is this.. what you plan to put inside our mech?" Gloriana asked with worry. "This is way too much! What stops our customers from dying from fright?!"

Though he understood her concerns, the fragment wasn't representative of the end result.

"I have a plan, Gloriana. Please be patient. The glow of our mech design will be substantially different."

Actually, Ves didn't really have a good estimate on how it will end up. This was because he was doing something new. Though he formulated a range of possibilities, even he couldn't control the process!

As he held the P-stone with the suppressed fragment, he took a deep breath.

"It's time we bestow a name to our striker mech design. As a machine that is meant to deter approaching enemies in space, it should have a name that reinforces its dominion! At the same time, its name should also reflect the terror that it is able to evoke in its foes!"

What name did Ves settle on for this ambitious new mech design?

"From now on, this mech design shall be known as the Doom Guard!"

Doom Guard!

It was a name that reflected both aspects of his vision! Gloriana's eyes widened as she contemplated her boyfriend's choice!

The word doom described the unsettling certainty that people felt whenever they came under the sway of Nyxie's frightening influence.

The word guard alluded to its defensive role. Ves designed the mech to guard a ship or defensive position with its thick armor plating and formidable flamethrower.

The slow acceleration of his mech due to its proportionally-underpowered flight system meant that it moved far too slow to participate in many offensive actions.

The moment he confirmed the name for the mech design, a small shift in mentality took place in both Ves and Gloriana. After so many months of working on their mech design, they could finally call it by its true name instead of its mech type!

Calling it the Doom Guard at this moment served a very specific purpose. Ves wanted to latch on to the meaning and connotations of this name to guide the process he was about to start!

After he concentrated his mind, he began to perform several simple acts.

First, he attempted to project Zeigra's presence into the imaginary space of the Doom Guard design.

This was a relatively familiar process to him now. Soon enough, the mech design gained a glow that was very reminiscent to the Devil Tiger!

Ves didn't need all of those properties. In order to modulate the glow, he brought out various empowered images from his mind and stuffed it into the Doom Guard design.

The spiritual foundation of the design combined with the newly-introduced images. The resulting combination exerted more influence on Zeigra's projected presence.

The glow of the Doom Guard design slowly grew weaker. At the same time, it became a bit less mixed as the images weakened the primal and cat-like qualities.

What was left was mostly a sense of restrained aggression. The glow of the Doom Guard now exuded a sense of predatory intimidation, which fell in line with his previous vision.

If Ves followed his original plan, then he would call it a day at this point.

That was not what he intended to do today. He wanted to augment the glow of Doom Guard!

If he wanted to form a proper spiritual configuration for his Doom Guard, then his normal solution was to form a new spiritual product.

This option was not on the table. Each time he created one, Gloriana exhausted herself! How could Ves ask her to make this sacrifice when their Hexer mech design was close to completion?

For this reason, Ves racked his brain for an alternate solution. He wanted a way to achieve his objective without resorting to costly methods.

Eventually, he took inspiration from the haphazard spiritual surgery he performed on Silent William. He became fascinated by the way his original spiritual potential coexisted alongside Nyxie's spiritual contamination.

Ves eventually resolved this contradiction between the two spiritual presences. He broke them apart in order to create a new spiritual product derived from both.

What if he didn't?

What if he allowed the status quo to remain in existence?

Certainly, Silent William would never be able to advance to expert candidate with a conflicted mind and spirit, but other than that, he performed quite well!

During the period where his spirituality was split in opposing sides, Silent William exhibited the traits of both his original personality and Nyxie!

This was what Ves sought! This was what Ves wanted to establish in his Doom Guard!

Despite the latent risks and the inherent instability of such a dynamic arrangement, Ves believed he could establish the same kind of split presence in a mech design!

"Besides, if anything goes wrong, I can always abort this experiment." He whispered.

If Nyxie's purified spiritual fragment suddenly went out of control, then Ves wouldn't hesitate to end its existence!

With a deep breath, Ves began to initiate the phenomenon called spiritual counterbalancing.

He took the P-stone that rested fitfully in his B-stone lockbox and mustered up his spiritual strength.

In a single, continuous motion, he yanked out Nyxie's purified fragment out of the P-stone and quickly stuffed it into the intangible space of his Doom Guard!

Introducing this weakened but still volatile spiritual fragment into a space that was already occupied by something else immediately led to an explosive clash!

Though Zeigra was pissed at being treated like a tool, at the very least he was starting to get used to his role as design spirit.

What he wasn't used to was sharing his space with a spiritual entity whose strength was on par with his own!

This was completely unacceptable to the former apex predator of Felixia I!

The prideful former Crown Cat immediately set upon the entity he regarded as an intruder!

However, his opponent wasn't so easily felled!

Though cut off and cut down from its progenitor, Nyxie's purified fragment was still very formidable! It quickly resisted Zeigra's attacks and began to counterattack!

The spiritual ripples resulting from their violent conflict began to spill over into the material realm! Ves, Gloriana, Nitaa and the Golden Cat all felt nauseous to some degree!

Nyaaaa!

Goldie quickly exuded more strength in order to suppress the spiritual ripples! The problem was that she was barely able to calm everything down at her current level of strength!

Zeigra had grown stronger after serving as the design spirit of the Devil Tiger and the Prideful Soldier!

Nyxie had always been strong, and grew even more imposing as his main spirit slowly began to emerge out of his eons-long slumber!

Their direct clashes turned out to be considerably more violent than Ves anticipated! He struggled to maintain his concentration! It was vitally important he maintained his spiritual sight in order to intervene when necessary!

He could not allow Zeigra or Nyxie to gain the upper hand and dominate each other! Once that happened, the spiritual counterbalancing that Ves attempted to achieve would fail!