The Mech Touch

For a long time, Ves gained awareness that human civilization actually encompassed two societies.

By far, the majority of humans living in this age ignorantly believed that their civilization was based on conventional technology.

That did not mean that humanity eschewed alien or unusual tech, but by and large people always desired to master and advance their own advancements.

This was human civilization in the bright. Most humans believed the most powerful expressions of their civilizations came in the form of starsh.i.p.s, mechs, space stations, massive cities and other monuments of technological advancements.

Few people were aware that another society existed in the shadows. Hidden beneath the surface, a few humans possessed awareness that human potential did not solely lie in developing better machines.

Instead, they sought to exploit and strengthen the extraordinary potential within themselves.

Only a tiny proportion of humans acquired this remarkable potential, and even fewer ever gained the opportunity to develop it. Since humanity ascended to the stars, the general public never found out about this hidden facet of themselves.

That said, the existence of the Five Scrolls Compact, which ostensibly guided the rise of humanity in the dark, suggested that the power of spirituality already played a major role.

Somehow, everything changed at the end of the Age of Conquest. All Ves knew was that the Five Scrolls Compact lost many of its Sacred Scrolls and was driven even further in the shadows.

In their place, the MTA and CFA rose up and took charge of humanity. They did so in the open, thereby gaining an immense amount of wealth, power and legitimacy.

The Big Two obviously possessed a different governing philosophy from their suspected parent organization. Not only that, they also emphasized the development of conventional technology rather than weird and unnatural spiritual sorcery.

As far as Ves was concerned, the Common Fleet Alliance pursued the path of pure technology. The fleeters worshipped the power of destruction and expressed their devotion by building formidable warsh.i.p.s that carried a formidable arsenal of massively scaled-up weapon systems.

The MTA followed a different trajectory. It focused on promoting the development of more modest-sized war machines that were much more constrained in their destructive potential.

In addition, the MTA had not entirely abandoned the development of spiritual power. The advent of mechs provided a clear route for spiritually-active individuals to develop into mech pilots and mech designers.

Ves was one of the people who had stepped onto one of the paths proscribed by the MTA. Within the clan, several expert candidates had also developed their spiritual potential by merging their willpower with their ability to pilot mechs.

Even though both mech designers and mech pilots had the potential to become spiritually formidable, their applications were almost exclusively tied towards mechs.

On the surface, mechs were purely mechanical expressions of technology. The public was hardly aware that the mechs developed by more formidable mech designers partially depended on the manifestation of spiritual phenomena to augment their performance.

Strangely enough, pretty much every human who didn't live under a rock openly worshipped the supernatural power of high-ranking expert pilots.

It was a strangely effective form of misdirection in the open. Even though there was clearly something abnormal about how certain mech pilots were capable of warping reality through their willpower alone, the public just regarded them in the same manner as superheroes!

Hardly anyone looked deeper into the source of their power. Spirituality or psionics never came up in any conversations.

Ves tipped his hat towards the MTA. They truly knew how to keep secrets while paradoxically keeping some of them in the open. It was a very contradictory but effective means of keeping most humans in the dark.

For some reason, everyone who interacted with spirituality in some way all abided by a covenant. Neither the MTA, CFA or the Compact publicised or spread the secret of spirituality to the common people.

Why?

Why must something so powerful and with limitless applications be withheld from the rest of humanity?

Was it because the few powers who exploited it wanted to keep it for themselves?

Another mystery that confounded Ves was why the Five Scrolls Compact bothered to play by the Big Two's rules. Since the cultists who ostensibly controlled humanity in the past had lost a huge power struggle, what was the use of protecting this secret?

Regardless, the Compact which he only knew from second-hand information still retained an enormous heritage of spiritual development.

Even though it resembled magic on the surface, so far Ves was more inclined to treat it as another branch of science. Though the members of the Compact tended to come across as crazy, Ves thought that they were truly some of the most passionate researchers in the galaxy!

As a more obscure expression of 'human technology', spirituality was not as illogical and arbitrary as he thought.

Though Ves discovered many fuzzy mechanics about spirituality that reminded him of magic, he discovered it operated according to its own rules. The existence of spiritual engineering proved that this extraordinary force could be manipulated like conventional forces such as gravity or electromagnetism.

In fact, he also discovered that it was possible to adapt a lot of existing engineering principles based on other forces to spirituality.

Power was power. Energy was energy. Matter was matter. Even though spirituality abided by some very funky rules, the basics still remained the same. Ves successfully applied many common rules of nature such as the inverse-square law, the second law of thermodynamics, Newton's third law of motion and so on in his spiritual creations.

Right now, as the dark sphere enveloped Ulimo Citadel and a wide perimeter around it, Ves had fallen victim to his old mentality.

He mistakenly viewed the artificial anomaly as an inexplicable manifestation of transcendent power. He let his unpleasant experiences with the Church of Haatumak color his judgement and reinforce his fears towards the unknown.

It was only now that he recognized that he was too weak and ignorant back then. He failed to see that the worshippers of Haatumak likely engaged in their own form of spiritual engineering that was taught to them by the Five Scrolls Compact.

The same should apply to the Hallowed Abyss Temple as well. Despite the immense reach of this dark sphere, the guidance provided by James woke him up to the fact that it wasn't comparable to a true anomaly.

The strange temporal incident that had swallowed the Nova Krakow came and went like an unstoppable force of nature. Back then, Ves felt that there was no chance at all to resist such might.

This time was different. Once Ves studied the anomalous hazard in a different light, he discovered that the power exuded by it was not as overwhelming as he thought.

"You're right." He said to James as he ignored all physical boundaries and observed the huge spiritual manifestation with his spiritual senses. "An immense amount of power is sustaining this anomaly. Because the area of effect covers such a huge volume, the concentration of energy is actually not that big. We might be able to pierce or overpower a portion of the sphere!"

It was difficult for a mosquito to fight a human in open combat. The power disparity between the two life forms was too immense!

However, if the mosquito wanted to achieve something more modest such as sucking the human's blood, it could sneakily employ its proboscis to drill through its unsuspecting victim skin.

There were many ways for the weak to surpass the strong. In fact, humanity's rise was almost entirely dependent on leveraging technology to overcome the limitations of its race.

What Ves needed to do now was to develop a couple of new applications of spirituality to accomplish two different objectives.

FIrst, he needed to overcome the dampening effect of the dark sphere in order to communicate with Ketis and the Mirror Raiders trapped inside the pirate strong.

Second, he had to develop some sort of means to push away the dark fog and rescue some of his trapped mech troops.

James smiled as if he possessed absolute confidence that Ves was able to solve these problems.

"You are capable of accomplishing more than you think, Ves. Power can be expressed in many ways. The possibilities are endless, but too many people are constrained by their limited imagination and the dogmas that their teachers have imparted to them. You are different from the rest. You possess the heart and mind of a creator."

Though Ves still felt that James was annoying as hell, he had to admit that he wouldn't have known what to do without the clone's advice.

His opinion of James had changed. Perhaps it wasn't so bad to keep this religious nut and his flock of fanatics in the Larkinson Clan. While Ves would have liked to employ more rational spiritual engineers, he wasn't sure whether these types of people existed in the first place.

It seemed that Ves had no choice but to settle upon the obnoxious git as his only available advisor in spiritual matters.

"Let's start with trying to communicate with Ketis." He said as he reminded himself of the urgency of the current situation. "From what I have observed, the dampening effect generated by artificial anomaly is probably analogous to the interference fields generated by signal jamming devices."

Ever since Calabast first introduced their existence to him, Ves frequently made use of signal jammers to hold private conversations or do something that he didn't want to expose to others.

He possessed a great familiarity with the principles and mechanisms surrounding ECM and jamming technology.

Unfortunately, he possessed little understanding of the spiritual mechanisms that sustained the dark sphere.

This meant that it wasn't possible for him to figure out and exploit the dark sphere's dampening effect in a short amount of time.

How could he possibly take the time to observe and study the phenomena that was destroying his mechs and killing his mech pilots with every passing second?

Ves needed to resort to more expedient solutions. Overcoming the spiritual jamming through brute force appeared to be only viable means for him to quickly reach out of Ketis.

As his spiritual senses looked at the immensity of the dark sphere, he felt a bit inadequate, but just for a moment.

He didn't need to overcome the entire dampening effect. He just needed to push through to a tiny portion of it. To achieve his goal while expending the least amount of energy, he needed to form some sort of direct connection to Ketis.

He turned to the Larkinson Mandate. "Goldie. Let's try something new. Can you strengthen the bond you share with Ketis?"

Nyaaaa. Nyaa?

"If you can't leverage enough power, what if I can help? I have plenty of spare energy to go around."

He opened his B-stone lockbox and pulled out a P-stone that stored a decent amount of excess spiritual energy.

"This rock contains my energy." He placed it on top of the Larkinson Mandate. "While it carries my imprint, I believe you can draw upon it. I used a part of this very energy to bring you to life. Try and see if you can draw upon as much energy as you need to strengthen your spiritual bond."

The Golden Cat tentatively tried to draw upon his spiritual energy. Just as Ves suspected, Goldie was tentatively able to make use of his spiritual energy, though she exhibited some difficulty in harnessing it. She ultimately failed to make adequate use of his energy to overcome the dampening effect.

Nyaaa.

"It's okay." He reassured the downcast ancestral spirit. "Maybe you need my help. It's my energy, after all. There are many efficient ways to propagate signals. Let me try something to boost the signal."

It was too much to hope that Goldie was able to adapt seamlessly to his spiritual energy. The spiritual entity was unlike his mother in this regard.

Perhaps his mother had to exert effort or employ some technique to absorb his spiritual energy.

In any case, this just meant that Ves had to employ some of his expertise to upgrade the Larkinson Network!