The Mech Touch

As excited as he was to explore a viable method to artificially induce the breakthroughs of mech pilots and mech designers, he couldn't do anything without test subjects.

In the Larkinson Clan's previous clashes against pirates, Ves admittedly paid little attention to the treatment of captives.

Some pirates fought to the death. Others just wanted to flee as far away as possible. None of them met a good end. Only those who despaired against the Larkinson Clan's might and lost all hope dropped to their knees to offer their surrender.

As pirates were humans who had turned their backs on human civilization, they never received good treatment.

The Peacekeeper Association formulated a standard code of practice.

Pirates who violently resisted the Peacekeepers deserved death.

Pirate commanders and officers also deserved death, but it was preferable to take them into captivity and bring them back to the Peacekeeper Association.

The intelligence they held was often valuable in understanding the circumstances of the Nyxian Gap, and the bounties on their heads made it worthwhile for Peacekeepers to take the risks of capturing them alive.

As for the support personnel who were often kidnapped and forced into a life of piracy, the rules were a bit murkier on that. Officially, the Peacekeepers had to take them into custody and bring them back to civilized space to put them to trial.

If they were culpable for crimes against humanity, then they were put to death.

If they were just innocent people forced to service a mech or something, then they had a chance to live.

However, Ves knew that in practice the Peacekeeper outfits weren't so diligent and discriminating. Holding captives was a considerable burden and the Peacekeeper outfits didn't really receive that much rewards for bringing them back so that they could go on trial.

Therefore, the more humanitarian Peacekeepers tended to wipe out any violent pirates on a ship but leave the innocents alive.

This was not really a good solution. Those innocents stranded on ships that usually didn't possess any FTL drives were still trapped in the Nyxian Gap. They either fell victim to another pirate group or turned pirates themselves!

Therefore, the more ruthless Peacekeepers simply disappeared these tainted and unwanted people. They never showed up again, and it wasn't hard to imagine what it took to vanish them from existence.

Perhaps the only former captives who could gain a new life were well-trained engineers and other notable technical talent that was very hard to come by. Anyone who didn't meet this standard simply wasn't valuable enough to retain!

Was this unjust? Probably.

Did anyone care? Nope.

In deep space and especially in vast, isolated regions such as the Nyxian Gap, different rules applied. The commander of the fleet or the highest leader assumed absolute authority.

It was too impractical to apply the laws of civilized space in a region of space where they never took hold. Each fleet turned into a moving own sovereign domain that applied its own laws however they wanted, though within a couple of limits.

This was the risk that people had to accept when they ventured into lawless space.

In any case, Major Verle was in overall command over Task Force Predator. When the question of dealing with captives came up, he decided to act leniently and simply allowed the innocent captives to take control over the useless pirate ships that the Larkinsons viewed as trash.

It was likely that most of those captives and ships would fall into the hands of another pirate group, but the gesture at least allowed most of the Larkinsons to sleep peacefully at night.

Ves did not begrudge Major Verle's decision, seeing as he did it in order to retain the Larkinson Clan's sense of righteousness.

However, Ves regretted the executions of so many violent pirates! All of them were destined to die anyway. They could have paid some of their debts back to society by donating their spirits to him so that they could contribute to pivotal, life-changing research!

It was the ultimate way to atone for their sins!

"Next time will be different." He vowed.

Calabast already identified a juicy target that would potentially yield a lot of living test subjects if the task force managed to capture the site intact.

It would take some time to get there and perform the necessary scouting in order to plan their assault properly.

Until then, Ves had no choice but to return to his more mundane mech design work.

"I almost forgot about the luminar crystal research." He belatedly realized.

He still wanted to record and digest all of the research documents that Master Willix prepared for him. In order to do it quickly and waste as little time as possible, Ves cautiously resumed his experiments with spiritual constructs.

This time, he acted with much greater care. He aimed to create the smallest and simplest spiritual construct that could capture what he saw in a 'spiritual file'. The less mech-attributed spiritual energy he expended, the lower the impact on his mentality.

To simplify the construct as much as possible, he decided to go as low tech as possible and merely aimed to create something that could capture visual data in an analog format.

It was the spiritual equivalent of an ancient film camera.

Surprisingly, the process went smooth. Ves borrowed many elements from the spiritual eye taught by Goldie to interpret visual data with spiritual means. He actually spent most of his time on defining the format of the spiritual file in order to make sure it didn't spawn some uncontrollable horror.

When Ves tested out his 'spiritual camera' by snapping a picture of Lucky munching on a bar of Breyer alloy, his imaginary new device expended some of its mech-attributed spiritual energy to spit out a spiritual file.

When Ves accessed the file and interpreted it through a special means, he was able to recall the exact image of Lucky eating a piece of alloy in pretty good fidelity!

Certainly, the image that popped up in the forefront of his mind wasn't perfect. Its resolution and clarity looked very shabby compared to the images that could be captured in near-perfect detail by modern optical sensors.

However, this result was already sufficient enough for Ves to declare this small experiment a success!

"With this trick, no jammer can stop me now!"

The follow-up step was easy to process. Due to the partial digitization of his mind, he could easily convert the spiritual file in his mind into a digital format which his implant was able to process in many different ways.

If Ves captured a picture of a bunch of text, then his implant would automatically be able to strip it all and compile them into a proper document. At that point, Ves could leverage the combined might of his organic intelligence and his implant's data processing capabilities to absorb the knowledge in rapid tempo!

Perhaps Master Willix estimated that Ves would take six months to absorb all of the knowledge on luminar crystals.

With this measure, Ves could shorten that by just one month or less! He could easily internalize the most relevant knowledge that was most applicable to the Crystal Lord Mark II project within a week!

He couldn't help but grow smug at the fact that he succeeded in doing something he wasn't supposed to do. Everytime he circumvented a rule, he felt incredibly pleased!

The application of the spiritual camera was only useful in specific situations since his implant could do a much better job.

However, this was just the start! By developing a greater variety of spiritual augments such as a spiritual calculator or a spiritual radar, he could essentially regain some of the functions afforded by implant when it was ever rendered inoperable for some reason.

This meant that in a design duel where the mech designers had to wear implant limiters, Ves could easily boost his productivity by 50 percent or higher by making use of spiritual augments!

"Still, there's a limit to what I can do." He frowned.

The biggest downside was that each spiritual construct removed some mech-attributed spiritual energy from the table. This lowered his overall ability to design mechs. Ves had to weigh carefully whether the benefits brought by a spiritual augment outweighed the price he paid.

To minimize the impact on his mentality as much as possible, Ves stored the design or template of his spiritual camera into an encrypted file on his implant.

He loaded up the template from his implant and used it to construct the spiritual camera in just half a minute.

"I need to practice this process and speed it up even further."

When Ves stepped back into the isolated chamber that held the Darkbreak module, he activated it again and commanded it to project the lumar crystal research data.

A familiar interference field spread into the entire chamber again. He had already braced himself for the loss of access to his implant. It only took him a short amount of time to regain his composure.

He smiled as he viewed one of the documents of the data package. While his implant and his comm still weren't able to do anything, his spiritual camera remained fully functional!

Ves cautiously began to scroll through the document. He snapped the shutter of his spiritual camera every time he stumbled upon a new page. His mind gradually became filled with dozens of spiritual files.

Due to the rudimentary nature of the camera and the inefficient, unoptimized properties of its output, Ves temporarily lost a substantial amount of spiritual energy.

This forced him to halt the process. When he stepped outside the chamber, he quickly regained access to his implant, allowing him to convert the spiritual files into digital files.

After that, he reentered the chamber and continued to record more pages.

This process went on for many hours. To save on time, Ves did not even bother to read any of the text. He only looked at it long enough to snap a picture before scrolling to the next page.

Ves had lost track of the amount of times he stepped outside the chamber to initiate the conversion process! His legs received a lot of exercise that day and he probably looked very weird to others!

If Master Willix was observing him from the sensors embedded in the Darkbreak module, she might probably be thinking that he had gone crazy!

Of course, she might also suspect that Ves employed a means of defeating the Darkbreak module's jamming function.

This was something that Ves already took into account. He knew that Master Willix was quite tolerant compared to many other officials within the MTA. He bet that a relatively minor issue like this was not really worth investigating as long as he abided by the spirit of their deal.

As long as he refrained from leaking the research data to the public, it didn't really matter what method he used to!

Over the course of several days, Ves finished the recording process. After that, he rapidly expanded his knowledge base.

Not only did he learn a lot of unique aspects on luminar crystals, but he also deepened his understanding of some very specific fields!

Several of his Sub-Skills such as Crystallography, Directed Energy Weapon Optimization, Rapid-Fire Laser Weapon Operation and Optics advanced by leaps and bounds!

As one of the holy lands of human high technology, the MTA's grasp in this field was incredibly comprehensive. The theories that Ves absorbed were substantially greater in quality than the theories taught by Clarion University's textbooks. Only the knowledge directly provided by the System came close!

His eyes gleamed as he began to see laser weapons in a deeper way. As much as he didn't want to, he couldn't help but gain a bit of appreciation for Master Willix and the MTA.

Perhaps it wasn't so bad to cooperate with the Association after all!

As long as he didn't give away anything valuable, he didn't mind conducting some more trades.

It could even substitute some of the benefits that Ves usually derived from the System!

In fact, it wouldn't be too inaccurate to say that the MTA actually functioned like a public version of the Mech Designer System!

Ves froze when he made this realization. "Is this a coincidence?"