The Mech Touch

What was a living mech?

Many people in the Larkinson Clan had different answers to this question.

The mech pilots who piloted the Bright Warrior and many other mech models designed by Ves possessed the most intimate contact with living mechs. By interfacing with them day after day, most often with the same mech, they began to learn that living mechs were different from the other machines they piloted in their careers.

Whether it was the training mechs they piloted back when they attended a mech academy or the budget mechs that every rookie started to pilot when they joined an organization at the bottom of the hiercharchy, mechs were mostly machines to them. No matter how well they were designed or how much money it took to build them, each and every mech functioned like a tool. They did what they were supposed to and did not influence the decision of their pilots.

For four centuries, this had been the central paradigm of mechs. A machine is a machine and must always be harnessed by their human owners and controllers. Any mech that did not fit this definition was a potential threat as it could always go out of control at any time.

Although modern mechs were so complicated and packed with different functions that it needed to be supported by an army of algorithms and sub-AIs to control all of its systems, the mech industry always made sure to adhere to a hard limit to the autonomy of any given mech.

As long as the mech pilot stopped making the decisions that only humans should be making, a mech was no longer a mech in the eyes of the mech industry. It was a battle bot that was driven by cold hard logical programming instead of warm-blooded humans!

The MTA had always taken a repulsive stance towards excessive automation. Not only did it go against the Association's goal that technology must strengthen humans that used it, automation also posed a grave security threat.

It was much easier to subvert the control of AI-driven battle bots than induce mech pilots to betray their leaders!

While the CFA held a more accepting stance towards automation, mechs were different from starships. The difference in scale and complexity allowed mechs to become war weapons that were closely tied to humanity's own evolution and advancement.

Under this regime, a mech designer like Ves had to bend to the rules and play the same game as everyone else. He had always studiously abided by the fundamental principle that humans should always master their own technology instead of the other way around.

Admittedly, Ves had been pushing the limits imposed by the MTA. Starting from the X-Factor, he slowly explored and deciphered the phenomena that made certain mechs more impressive than others despite sharing the same design.

He slowly came up with the concept of a living mech and had continually refined his methods until he could design and make one in his sleep!

Not only that, but Ves took the idea of leveraging living entities to empower mechs a step further. After receiving the direction of his mother, he began to look outside the mech for additional sources of power and soon developed a side branch where he employed design spirits to provide more support to the meech pilots that entrusted their lives to his products.

Nowadays, these features had become the core selling points of his mechs. Whether it was his commercial mech models or his unique expert mechs, all of them were defined by the living elements that Ves imparted in their design.

Starting from the beginning, each and every mech he designed in succession became a little more stronger and sophisticated in these aspects. The spiritual foundations of his mech designs became stronger and more structural. He continually added new design spirits to his collection while his existing ones grew stronger on their own accord.

Yet no matter how much Ves improved in these areas, he had never broken the rule that a mech should gain so much autonomy that it was able to wrench complete control from its mech pilot.

The Devil Tiger came closest to reaching this point, and some might even argue that it had already crossed the line. However, Ves made sure that it could not fully function without a mech pilot.

Although Ves entertained notions about breaking this taboo, he had no intentions of acting on these thought experiments. There was no compelling reason for him to go this far because he actually agreed with the MTA for once.

"Humanity should never let technology dominate their lives."

Of course, as a mech designer, he held a professional interest in preventing the rise of battle bots. There would be no market for mechs anymore if consumers began to dispense with the trouble of training mech pilots and preferred to make use of more convenient war weapons.

However, Ves was not completely ignorant of the greater trend of humanity's evolution. Starting from the adoption of ever-greater warships, human civilization had indeed been following a dangerous road.

He simply could not agree with the CFA's vision of the future and would much rather help the MTA win the ideological struggle that might very well determine the course of humanity's future

This was why he felt rather mixed at this time.

With his bleeding palm pressed against Joshua's own injured hand, the drops of life that soaked the cockpit floor had acted as a catalyst that prompted the just-completed Chimera Project to undergo a profound transformation!

Although the mechanical elements of the expert hero mech remained the same as before, Ves could see that its spiritual foundation had reached a higher level!

It was not entirely unfamiliar to Ves. He had already encountered something similar in both the Quint and the Shield of Samar.

These two living mechs stood out from the rest by possessing greater and more conscious forms of life. Though they had their differences, their most exceptional aspect was that they were fully alive like any human being and could think like any other fully sentient being!

In fact, Ves also suspected that the Ouroboros that he had designed during one of his previous Mastery experiences also reached this height.

This was different from most of the living mechs he designed today. Though he called mechs such as the Ferocious Piranha and the Valkyrie Redeemer alive, in truth they were only half-conscious.

They weren't really active when the mechs were dormant and only came alive when the machines were activated. The living mechs only possessed faint control of themselves and still had to work together with the mech pilots to achieve the greatest influence.

This wasn't necessarily a bad thing to Ves. He deliberately designed his mechs to build up a symbiotic relationship with their mech pilots in order to generate positive synergy. Mechs existed to complement mech pilots, nothing more.

The Quint and the Shield of Samar had broken this original design intention. By borrowing the exceptional power of the breakthroughs of their respective pilots, they absorbed enough energies to become a higher order life that possessed greater potential but also greater danger!

Though there was a chance that either the Quint or the Shield of Samar might betray their owners one day, Ves didn't take it too seriously. The two exceptional living mechs were firmly in his grasp and they had already grown alongside the Larkinsons for so long that it was inconceivable that they would turn their coats!

Ves also knew that it was beyond his means to make more higher order living mechs like these. The circumstances that allowed them to evolve to a higher state were not replicable. If he wanted to increase the amount of mechs like these in his arsenal, then he could do nothing but wait until his expert candidates broke through while piloting an ordinary living mech.

Suffice to say, this was a slow, unreliable and uncontrollable production process. He predicted that he would have to become a Senior or Master before he was qualified to pursue this matter further.

It therefore came as a complete surprise to Ves that Joshua of all people found a way to make a breakthrough in this aspect!

At the very start of a mech's existence, Joshua's improvised blood ritual somehow triggered a transformation that caused the Chimera Project to turn into a higher order living mech!

Ves thought that this wasn't possible at his current level of strength. He assumed that the Chimera Project would have to leech off the energies released by another breakthrough in order to become an existence at the same level of the Quint and the Shield of Samar.

He was wrong.

All it took was a smaller trigger to transform the spiritual foundation of a mech from a half-life into a full life.

As the Chimera Project settled into its new mode of existence, Ves sensed how much it had grown from its previous state.

The same building blocks were still there. The mech had not grown stronger because it gained more building blocks, but because it rearranged the existing ones in a much more clever way.

It was just like gathering all of the materials that formed a human body. If Ves just piled up the different substances into a single box, nothing useful would come out of it due to the complete lack of structure.

By binding certain organic materials together into a single-celled organism, he could make an initial form of life, although it was so weak that it couldn't even think for itself.

By combining a greater amount of materials to form a larger form of life like a mouse or a rabbit, the living element became smarter, more capable and more aware.

By using up all of the materials at hand to create a new human entity, only then would Ves have the option to create a completely new sentient form of life!

The Chimera Project now belonged to the last category, having jumped to it by transforming its entire spiritual foundation so that everything was being utilized and nothing was being wasted!

It was a much better utilization of spiritual resources than what Ves was able to accomplish before!

Right now, his head was filled with questions and uncertainties. What were the principles behind this mysterious transformation. How was Joshua of all people able to come up with this innovation? Would Ves be able to decipher the mechanisms behind this profound change and apply it to any of his subsequent mechs?

By now, Joshua had withdrawn his bleeding hand. He calmly retrieved a small first aid gadget from his toolbelt and covered his wound with a special foam that sterilized and closed the wound.

The expert pilot silently reached out and performed the same procedure on Ves' palm.

Ves woke up from his thoughts after he received this treatment. He looked incredibly confused at Joshua.

"How?"

The expert pilot responded with a knowing smile. "I had a hunch."

The explanations could wait for later. Right now, the state of the Chimera Project was of greater importance. Ves had to secure at least one success before he could chase after other goals.

He shakily withdrew a pouch from his hidden pocket. He opened it up and dropped five lustrous gems onto his healthy palm.

He stretched his hand to his brother in arms.

"What… do you want me to do?" Venerable Joshua questioned.

This time, it was his turn to look confused!

"Choose one of these gems. Which one attracts you the most?"

Joshua wasn't sure why this was important, but he did not want to keep Ves waiting. He fell silent for a dozen seconds. He didn't feel anything special about any of the gems, so he decided to pick the one with the most attractive color in his eyes.

"This one." He pointed to the aquamarine gem. "It's the most colorful one."

"Great choice."

Ves carefully put the remaining gems in his pouch before approaching the front of the cockpit.

He quickly withdrew a multitool from his toolbelt and pried the jewel that functioned as the main startup button from its socket. He then proceeded to put the aquamarine gem which happened to share the same shape in its place.

"Let's go outside and watch." Ves said as he already floated out of the cockpit.

The mysterious transformation that the Chimera Project had just undergone had somehow increased the quality of the mech.

Although it hadn't turned into a masterwork straight away, it had come close to the masterwork threshold.

It just needed a gentle push to get over the edge, and Ves just provided one!