The Mech Touch

Starting a new expert mech design project was not an easy task. Fortunately, Ves already completed them before and knew what was needed in order to start them up. Finding compatible resonating materials was usually one of the first steps to designing expert mechs.

Every expert pilot depended on resonating materials to generate true resonance with their powerful machines.

An expert mech without suitable resonating exotics or alloys could not be called an expert mech at all! It would merely be regarded as an overpriced custom mech!

Ves therefore brought Commander Casella on a quick tour through several different material warehouses and marketplaces.

A lot of visitors — mostly mech designers — frequented them as these locations sometimes held the key to their advancements.

Ves decided to visit the marketplaces for another reason besides finding suitable resonating materials for the Larkinson Clan's latest expert pilot.

He wanted to see if he could discover new spiritually-reactive materials.

The Red Ocean was a dwarf galaxy that emerged under different circumstances than the Milky Way. It was filled with brand new satellites that generated a wealth of different substances that each possessed properties that were rare or nonexistent back in humany's home galaxy.

Not only that, the Red Ocean was also filled with brand new alien civilizations!

Ves was curious to see whether any interesting alien races managed to develop any materials and technology that interacted with spirituality in any way.

So far, it sounded as if only the mysterious phase whales might have developed applications in this direction, but the problem was that they were way too elusive.

During his tour of the marketplaces, he surprisingly failed to find any materials that responded to his spiritual probes.

This disappointed him a lot. He had a lot of expectations about the Red Ocean. He hoped that the resources available in the Red Ocean would be more spiritually sensitive than the resources back in the old galaxy.

Still, Ves consoled himself that these public marketplaces only held a sample of all of the diverse materials available in the Red Ocean.

"Meow~" Lucky excitedly gestured his paws at a shop that sold wreckage of alien starships.

"Not now. I'll promise I'll buy you a snack when we get out, but for now I need to save my wallet for business expenses."

"Meow!"

It was torture for Lucky to gaze upon all of these yummy new materials! Each of them looked and smelled delectable to his artificial senses. Why did Ves even bring him along if he wasn't allowed to snack whatever grabbed his fancy?!

It was too bad that Ves remained unsympathetic to his gem cat's plights. The main reason for taking Lucky along was to 'update' his database.

As long as Lucky encountered a specific material once, he should be able to find and recognize it more easily.

There was one special substance that Ves wanted to seek out the most.

"Let's head to the upper floor." He told Casella.

"Isn't that the…"

"Yes. We're not going to buy any of it, but it would be good to see it in person."

Ves, Casella, Lucky and their small entourage of guards floated up to the top floor of the market building.

Not everyone was allowed to enter this special place, but Ves easily made it through due to his pioneer status.

He entered a small chamber where dozens of other pioneers were standing or floating around a transparent cage which contained a highly remarkable material sample.

"Meow?!"

The cat twitched and acted as if he was in the presence of a furnace.

Ves looked curious at his pet's reaction. He found it strange that the special material was able to elicit such a weird reaction from Lucky while he felt nothing different.

It was only when he stepped a little closer that his body began to react in a strange way.

His flesh and bones seemed to shake as if they were being massaged by a faint pressure wave.

"You must be feeling it now." A pioneer remarked as the older woman glanced at the newcomers. "What you're experiencing at the moment is a sign that you're in the presence of a good that can change humanity."

Humanity already sang so many praises about this wonder material that people even began to refer to it as the gate of heaven or the instrument of conquest!

"Your body isn't actually shaking. What is actually happening is that the material dimensions around you are warping due to the activity of the precious exotic captured within this cage."

There was only one natural material that could achieve this effect.

"Phasewater."

A gravity cage suspended 10 mL of pure, unprocessed phasewater above a pedestal. If anything happened, a hard cage would instantly form around the floating drop to prevent it from threatening the lives of the people who visited this exhibit.

Phasewater was an extremely dangerous and toxic high-grade exotic that should never be handled without protection!

For this reason, no one was allowed to step within 20 meters of this tiny drop of phasewater!

Ves was a little disappointed at this excessive safety measure. Though there was plenty of documentation surrounding the dangers of phasewater, he still wanted to get closer because he felt a subtle connection to this material.

To be more precise, his Jutland organ and the strange high-level energy cycle it maintained in his body both began to react from the faint dimensional warping taking place around the phasewater sample!

A lot of different thoughts rolled through his mind. While he wasn't able to confirm that his Jutland organ had any special relations with phasewater, it at least reacted to destabilizing effects of this liquid exotic.

"That's not why I'm here, though."

There was another for him to seek out phasewater. What he truly wanted to know was whether phasewater was spiritually reactive!

The implications of phasewater interacting with spiritual energy in any way were massive. Not just Ves, but also the Five Scrolls Compact and many other powerful organizations would look at this exotic in a different manner if it could be manipulated with metaphysical power!

Ves needed to act extremely cautious here. Although it was a risk for him to attempt this exploration in a settlement that was under the complete control of the MTA, he simply didn't want to wait until he stumbled upon phasewater in the wild.

Who knew how long it would take for that to happen!

Though phasewater was supposed to be relatively prevalent in the dwarf galaxy, that didn't mean it was easy to find. Many alien races already understood the value of this exotic and exhausted a lot of easy sources.

Even then, the horde of human pioneering fleets flooding into the new frontier already uprooted a lot of them. Humanity's hunger for phasewater was as insatiable as Lucky's desire to fill his stomach with exotics!

All of this meant that the zones closest to the central star nodes such as Vulit had already been drained of phasewater. The Big Two along with the earliest waves of pioneers had already scoured them clean of every accessible drop of phasewater in all of those star systems.

Though there were probably more deposits of phasewater hidden in those areas, it probably took a lot more effort to uncover them. Even if the Larkinson Clan possessed the advanced prospecting tech that were sensitive to phasewater, it was unlikely that Ves could intrude into other people's turf and steal away the bounty unnoticed!

If the Larkinson Clan wanted to harvest phasewater in peace, it needed to range much further beyond the starting point of humanity's invasion of the Red Ocean!

All of that would take a lot of time. If Ves and Lucky didn't get in touch with phasewater in advance, who knew when they would actually have the chance to get close again!

This was why he decided to try and reach out to the phasewater sample today. He just couldn't hold himself back anymore.

Of course, he tried to act as discreetly as possible. He pretended to explain a few basic properties about phasewater to Casella while he quietly extended a minute spiritual projection towards the silent drop.

Just like regular water, phasewater was completely transparent and possessed the same fluidity.

If not for the fact that phasewater generated increasingly greater dimensional fluctuations up close, it would have been difficult to tell them apart!

As Ves brought his spiritual probe closer, he increasingly felt the effects of the dimensional warping.

It was as if he was walking on smooth pavement only to go offroad. The trail he traversed became increasingly difficult to traverse as it led straight into wild country!

When his spiritual probe approached a distance of around 13 meters of the sample, it became a bit more difficult for Ves to maintain it. The warping effect became more turbulent as his probe continued its way to the center of the cage.

Ves could already imagine that a lot of tech would malfunction when subjected to this dimensional turbulence. Moving parts would get misaligned while electronic signals might no longer convey their original messages!

"This effect is familiar."

The effect these strange dimensional fluctuations could have on technology reminded him of the hazardous conditions that Ves and the Flagrant Swordmaidens once endured on the surface of Aeon Corona VII.

He did not forget that the planet-wide dimensional warping effect was originally created by a crashed CFA battleship!

The Starlight Megalodon's malfunctioning FTL drives created such a powerful spectacle that a completely different ecosystem appeared on that cursed planet!

With all of the knowledge and insights he acquired since that time, Ves began to develop a different understanding of this incident.

His eyes minutely narrowed.

Did the CFA already possess abundant access to phasewater long before the Big Two secretly invaded the Red Ocean?

The fleeters put enough phasewater into the FTL drives of the Starlight Megalodon that their partial ruptures completely changed the environment of a heavy gravity planet!

Ves doubted that this could be done with just a single drop of phasewater!

The Starlight Megalodon last operated over three centuries ago. Humanity had just climbed out of the Age of Conquest and the Age of Mechs was just getting into swing.

Did humanity already reach the Red Ocean back then? What did the MTA or CFA do over here? Why did it take several centuries for the Big Two to finally open up the dwarf galaxy to the public?

Ves generated so many questions in his mind that he almost lost focus of his spiritual probe!

He quickly shook his head in order to clear his head of irrelevant thoughts. Though all of this speculation might have grave implications, he didn't have enough information to answer them. Whether the Big Two secretly came into contact with the Red Ocean centuries earlier was not even relevant to his interests.

Once he cleared his mind, he soon tried to complete his little test.

When his spiritual probe came as close as 6 meters to the drop of phasewater, the dimensional fluctuations became more severe.

Even though the space around the suspended drop of phasewater looked completely calm, Ves discovered that it was anything but tranquil! Strong dimensional turbulence along with strange tears in the fabric of reality either battered or siphoned away the structure of the spiritual probe!

Ves hastily reinforced his fragile probe in order to prevent it from collapsing too early.

The longer his probe lingered in this area, the more damage it sustained, so Ves hastily pushed it closer to the phasewater drop.

The closer it got, the more he began to feel as if he was nearing something powerful and profound.

What would happen if his spiritual energy came into contact with phasewater?

Would it become disturbed? Would it pass on harmful energy to the spiritual probe? Would it become volatile and explode?

Ves already came up with many different answers, but when his spiritual probe finally reached the phasewater sample, it passed right through as if it was regular matter!

"What…?"