The Mech Touch

Initially, nothing happened aside from eliciting a weak rejection reaction from the crystal golem.

Ves was not discouraged. He kept pressing the shards of the Blinding One against the crystal golem as if he expected them to fuse.

Perhaps it was silly for him to think so. Forcing the crystal golem to absorb the shards of the Blinding one could be considered cannibalism.

He did not see it that way. As far as he was concerned, the crystal golem should feel grateful that he was willing to improve its strength!

"Come on. Eat already! It's your brother. Doesn't he taste yummy?"

Unfortunately, just because he wanted something to happen didn't mean he was able to get his way. The crystal golem kept repelling the shards to keep them out. Even if the design spirit stopped resisting, there was little reason for his body to absorb the shards.

"I may have overlooked an essential step."

He frowned and halted his current action. He tried to figure out a way to initiate a fusion process.

"I need to create an opening, but I can't allow the crystal golem to die. How can I do that?"

Clearly, pressing a steak against his skin didn't work. How was he supposed to absorb it, then?

"By eating it, of course!"

The problem was that the crystal golem did not possess any innate devouring capabilities. Its existence did not revolve around preying on other spiritual entities in order to fuel its growth.

"Maybe I can change that!"

If the crystal golem didn't take the initiative to open itself up, then Ves would just have to create the openings himself!

Ves split his concentration in order to form another spiritual blade. As soon as it finished forming, he drove the knife to the crystal golem and began to cut a small opening!

The crystal golem convulsed! Pain and confusion radiated from the design spirit as Ves made some additional cuts.

"I know it hurts, but I'm doing this for your own good! Just endure it. Once I'm finished, you'll feel much better in the end!"

Once he made enough cuts, he dissipated his blade and began to shove the shards into the open wounds.

The crystal golem convulsed even harder as Ves kept shoving foreign shards into the wounds before they had time to close!

It didn't take long for Ves to complete this step. Once he inserted all of the shards, he made sure to embed some of his spiritual energy into the shards in order to encourage them to fuse with the body of the crystal golem.

"Come on. Don't reject my gift! You've been with me for so long. Have I ever mistreated you? This is your golden opportunity to transform yourself and become a fully-fledged design spirit."

Ves continued to coax the crystal golem. While the spiritual entity instinctively wanted to push away the intrusions, some changes took place.

"Yes! That's the spirit! See? The shards aren't as foreign as you think!"

The crystal golem tentatively began to absorb the shards. Ves grinned as he confirmed the viability of this new method. While it was incredibly crude, he had no reason to complain as long as it worked!

Even so, Ves still remained on guard. The most dangerous aspect about this new and unknown fusion process was that the crystal golem wasn't able to stomach something as potent as the remains of the Blinding One.

He also feared that the differences between the two might elicit some sort of rejection reaction.

He just hoped that the two were similar enough to accept each other. He imparted ten percent of his spiritual energy reserves to facilitate the merger process.

The move worked.

As Ves carefully observed the gradual fusion process, he noted that his spiritual energy accelerated and eased the fusions.

Though the crystal golem exhibited more and more strain, Ves kept encouraging it with his words.

"Keep going. I know it hurts, but it will definitely pay off if you persist. Just think about it. Do you want to grow as powerful as the Blinding One? Then absorb his remains and turn his strength into your own! A bright future awaits!"

Numerous profound changes took place inside the crystal golem. The design spirit's entire spiritual composition experienced drastic shifts as the essence of the Blinding One sought to find a new home.

While Ves feared that the crystal golem wouldn't be able to persist, its determination was surprisingly strong.

The crystal golem yearned for strength. This was something that the design spirit inherited from the original luminar leader.

For a moment, Ves gained a vague connection to the crystal golem.

He could sense the inherent sense of inferiority of the luminar race.

When the luminar race was at its prime, the crystal builders experienced constant suppression from the other alien races.

The root of all of this bullying was their small physical size. Unlike most successful alien races in the galaxy, the luminars only grew to the size of a human finger. Though their civilization made incredible advances in the manipulation of light, energy, crystals and space, their tiny sizes earned them remarkably little respect when the dominant alien races literally towered over them!

Unless the luminars were willing to abandon their biological origins, their race would always experience suppression!

The luminar society became split.

As the race stubbornly sought to carve a place in the galaxy in the distant past, most luminars believed that they could eventually earn the respect of other aliens by advancing their technology.

In fact, the most ardent advocates of this approach believed they might even surpass and rule over the other alien races one day!

Ves felt very much in tune with this mindset. As a mech designer, he constantly worked to improve his mechs and make better ones every day. The charm of technology was that there was always a way to improve it. Progress never ended.

Yet not every luminar believed that relying on technology was sufficient.

A smaller faction of Luminars developed a different belief. Relying on crystals and crystal-based machines alone was not going to cut it. Many of the powerful alien races that dominated the galaxy did not solely rely on their intellect and mastery of technology to maintain their superiority.

They relied on the innate strengths of their physical bodies as well!

Having evolved from planets rich with powerful exotic deposits, these aliens grew larger and developed powerful abilities by leveraging the potent materials they absorbed.

To the radical faction of luminars, the only way forward was to imitate their betters!

What happened next was very vague to Ves. Evidently, a huge amount of time went by as the radical faction slowly diverged from the main luminar society.

The extremists engaged in radical research that increasingly disgusted the more mainstream part of their society.

Yet despite the many setbacks the researchers suffered, they gradually succeeded.

With each passing generation, the luminars became taller and bigger.

Their bodies diverged from the baseline luminar genetic pattern as the descendents of the radical faction gained more mass.

What happened next… was unknown to Ves. He received no more information from the crystal golem.

"Damn." Ves cursed as he pulled his mind out of the illusion generated by the transforming crystal golem. "I really want to know what happened next."

While the impromptu history lesson did not teach him much, he did learn something important.

The crystal golem was aligned with the main faction of the luminar race.

The Blinding One belonged to the radical faction!

"Just as I expected! It's no wonder this dark god was so big and tall. He really went all out to make himself as big as possible!"

Every luminar yearned to grow bigger. No matter if they pursued pure technology or self-evolution, they both believed that size mattered. The bigger, the better! No exceptions!

"What a dysfunctional race of aliens." Ves concluded as the fusion process neared completion. "I wonder if their desires eventually resulted in their extinction."

At this point in the merger process, the crystal golem experienced drastic changes!

It became bigger, stronger and more intelligent with each passing second. Ves sensed a lot of other profound changes that he didn't fully understand.

Yet no matter what was happening, Ves became increasingly more convinced that the transformation would succeed!

His intuition and his sensitivity towards life both pointed out that the transforming spiritual entity had succeeded in absorbing the shards. The crystal golem was truly inheriting some of the Blinding One's strengths!

Due to the incredible difference this made, the entire character and feel of the crystal golem changed enormously. Ves even felt that it was losing a part of its original identity.

Change was inevitable. After absorbing so many powerful shards, the crystal golem experienced a great transformation.

When the process finally ended, a small but powerful spiritual shockwave emanated from the evolved design spirit!

A blast of imperceptible light and energy washed over Ves!

With his spiritual strength, he easily blocked the energy wave. The radial blast spread and affected the rest of the Scarlet Rose, momentarily shocking everybody aboard the ship.

"Meow!"

Lucky jumped from the desk and stared vigilantly at Ves.

"Calm down! It's fine! The Blinding One isn't back!"

Someone else emerged instead. The transformed design spirit was undeniably the crystal golem, but he looked much different to his senses.

A plethora of light radiated from his larger form. The crystal golem had grown at least ten times larger. Part of it was because of the infusion of an abundant amount of energy, but Ves suspected there was more to it. Whatever the case, the improved design spirit was anything but weak!

"How are you? Are you still in control of yourself?"

The altered design spirit had become a lot more intelligent and responsive. The radiant entity nodded his head and communicated both gratitude and optimism.

"Good! I told you it would work! Let's celebrate your successful transformation by giving you a new name! I used to call you the crystal golem because you weren't very lively. That's not the case anymore. Now that you have inherited the power of the Blinding One, you have the potential to become just as powerful. From this day onwards, you shall be known as the Illustrious One!"

The moment Ves renamed the crystal golem, a shiver of excitement ran through the spiritual entity. The rainbow lights radiating off his form varied at a greater and greater frequency!

Ves relaxed his mind and let the Illustrious One celebrate his evolution by himself. The dazzling lights that his body released was disorienting.

Even though Ves paid the modest price of ten percent of his spiritual energy, he still had some reserves to spare, however meager they may be. This comparatively small loss did not impair him too much.

The price was worth it! Ves may not have created a new spiritual product as remarkable as the Superior Mother or Lufa, but it did not cost him too much to transform the crystal golem into the Illustrious One!

"I hope you succeed in realizing the ambitions of your predecessors one day." He sincerely wished.

Despite the fact that humans shouldn't sympathise with aliens, his close connection to the Illustrious One made it difficult for him to remain unmoved.

"This is why I love my work."

Compared to developing a crude but effective method of upgrading his existing design spirits, finalizing the Crystal Lord Mark II hardly took any effort.

Ves wasn't really sure what the Illustrious One was capable of, but the Crystal Lords would definitely gain a powerful blessing.

For this reason, Ves did not feel any need to add too many extra abilities to the Crystal Lord Mark II. He just added a single triggered ability called Final Light.

Unlike the other triggered abilities, Final Light only activated under very specific circumstances.

As its name suggested, it was a measure of final resort. Even Ves didn't know what would happen if the mech pilot triggered the conditions to activate this hidden ability!