The Mech Touch

　　Gathering all of these men and women and convincing them that they should labor on his behalf was quite a difficult task. It was not enough to promise them a salary and a structure. They also needed to buy into his vision and believe in his cause as if it was their own. Good communication was crucial into converting them all into his loyal and dedicated underlings.

　　He also interacted with other life forms aside from humans.

　　His cats for example. Leaving aside companion spirits such as Blinky and Alexandria, he talked to Lucky and Clixie on a regular basis. Their different cat sounds might sound incomprehensible to everyone, but Ves understood them as if they were speaking perfect standard language.

　　Perhaps ordinary people could still be trained into understanding and communicating with different cats, but Ves was far more capable than that. What truly separated him from normality was his ability to communicate with every sentient life form regardless of their species or their corporeal state.

　　He could communicate perfectly well with living mechs, for example. Though first order and second order living mechs were not sentient and aware enough of themselves to become good conversation partners, his third order living mechs came very close to talking like normal humans.

　　Yet what truly made his ability to communicate valuable was that he could speak to even stranger and more exotic life forms. He was able to develop an accord with each of his design spirits due to this. Without building up and managing his relationships with them, it was doubtful that he would be able to retain some of them on a long-term basis.

　　Now, he voluntarily accepted a spiritual bond from a revived and transformed spiritual entity that he had recently brought back from nihility.

　　The only complication was that he and his clan were actually responsible for bringing it close to death.

　　"No, not it. She." Ves mentally corrected himself.

　　From the moment they established a bond, he could immediately tell that the entity that he had taken to calling the Titania was unquestionably maternal.

　　Strong parental vibes exuded from her very being. Even after her near-death caused her to shed much of her identity, the essence of her identity was that of a mother.

　　An alien, bestial mother.

　　Both of them were new at this, so neither of them knew what to do at first. The revived spiritual entity was still in a mess. She came back to life but in a completely new state of existence. Not only that, but Ves had forcibly integrated different ingredients into her that fundamentally altered her spiritual makeup.

　　Still, all of that confusion did not stop the Titania from harboring a strong sense of pride and strength.

　　She had lived through many years, though her perception of the passage of time was completely different.

　　The Titania did not keep track of time based on how long it took for humanity's ancestral planet to complete one orbit around a star.

　　The sentient beast instead tracked time through feeling the ebb and flow of the galaxy and the amount of hostile encounters it experienced.

　　Even though the Titania's means of counting time was a lot more primitive, there was no doubt in her mind that she was old, big, and strong.

　　It did not matter that she was currently stripped from her corporeal body.

　　It did not matter that she had shed the vast majority of her spiritual strength and energy.

　　Her age was still there, and the wisdom and fortitude she developed after long years of living had built up to a formidable mental fortress that still held true!

　　However, not everything went smoothly. The Titania was missing too much and foreign elements had come and plugged the void. Many different impulses tried to alter her personality and sense of self.

　　Influences from Ves, Goldie, the Husk Maker and Aisling Curver all tugged the Titania in different directions.

　　Ordinarily, she could have easily battered aside the contamination, but her compromised state along with their deep integration into her essence left her bereft of strength.

　　She had no choice but to integrate the foreign elements regardless of her own wishes.

　　That upset her a lot, of course. She was furious at the violation, yet the same foreign elements forced her to be pleased with her changes instead. The dichotomy in her mind set of a war that fundamentally altered her character in a way that would horrify most people.

　　Ves wasn't as surprised. He had induced these changes before on other people and the Titania was yet another one of his 'patients'.

　　The only concern was that the Titania's original personality was extremely strong and formidable. Even in a damaged state, she successfully retained most of her original character.

　　Now that she began to get a grip of her new self, she finally reached out to Ves. The altered Titania definitely recognized that Ves was the cause of all of the changes.

　　"You were dead and dying." He told her in this weird imaginary headspace that he had landed himself in. "When we found your injured body, you were prey to any that roamed the galaxy."

　　A strong sense of pride and indignity welled up from the revived astral beast! The wave of fury and emotion was quite intense despite the weak and recovering state of the Titania.

　　Ves maintained a strong front. He could not afford to show weakness in front of this potentially-hostile entity.

　　"We fought you in your previous state and managed to slay you. What makes you think we can't do it again? I do not want this to happen, though. Instead of letting you die, I took you in my care and nurtured you back to life. While I cannot restore you to your previous state, I made sure that you managed to survive, if in a different form than you are used to. Are you able to accept your new state of existence?"

　　This question was far too big for the Titania. She barely had time to process her new circumstances and sort out her disparate thoughts.

　　Nonetheless, as soon as Ves conveyed the meaning of survival, he triggered a strong instinct in her essence.

　　An astral beast that managed to live for over 6000 years must have strong survival instincts!

　　The imaginary surroundings suddenly shifted into vague images. They showed brief glimpses of different events.

　　First, it displayed the birth of the initial astral beast.

　　Contrary to Ves' expectations, the Titania wasn't a natural astral beast.

　　She was an artificial creation. Her relatively small form initially came to life in some sort of alien biolab. The architecture was vastly different from anything else that Ves had experienced. It was enormous and filled with living flesh and matter.

　　Lots of astral beasts identical to the one that would eventually grow up to become the Titania occupied other flesh tanks.

　　The shimmering memories skipped forward showing different glimpses of the biolab. Ves had the feeling that the Titania failed to retain her memories of her early youth as a test subject or bioproduct.

　　What she did manage to remember of that time was that some sort of attack broke apart the biolab.

　　Lots of vague blobs that Ves suspected to be alien ships bombarded the biolab and many of the other flesh structures in the area.

　　Thousands of trapped test subjects died, but a few managed to escape the bombardment. The Titania happened to be one of them. Utilizing an advanced form of biomovement, the young astral beast naturally knew how to hide behind debris and cover and managed to escape the attackers without getting hunted down.

　　After that followed an extremely long period of growth and survival.

　　The Titania lived no differently than other astral beasts. She roamed the most remote star systems while hunting for sustenance.

　　Whether through luck or strength, she never encountered a threat that was strong enough to kill her outright.

　　Once she got over her initial period of weakness, she grew to a formidable beast that finally gained the capital to survive in the Red Ocean.

　　That was when her maternal instincts came online.

　　Survival was one of her overarching priorities, but the need to produce offspring and propagate her race became just as strong!

　　"How many children have you produced in your long and eventful life?" He asked.

　　Too many. The Titania could not count the amount of time she produced potential offspring.

　　The reason why they only had the potential to become her children was because they would not survive if they did not burrow themselves into other prey.

　　Over the course of her later life, she had launched millions of seeds at her prey and adversaries.

　　The vast majority of them never successfully took root, but the few that did made the Titania proud.

　　She did not know how many of her offspring still lived in the Red Ocean, but they had to be hundreds.

　　Though the Titania never maintained contact with any of her children after their departure, she nonetheless maintained a small sense of affection towards them. They were the legacy of her life and the continuation of her artificial lineage.

　　The changes that Ves had forced upon her had caused the Titania to become even more maternal towards her offspring!

　　It was for this reason that she quickly calmed herself down. Though the more primal part of her wanted to lash out at Ves and whoever kept her captive, the motherly side of her was wise enough to know that it would only deprive her of an opportunity to see and care for her children again.

　　"I see you have figured it out." Ves smiled. "There is a big difference between life and death. If you are dead, you will never be able to meet and care for your offspring again. If you are alive, you still have a chance to do something for them. Let me tell you that this galaxy is about to undergo an immense change. Humans like myself have invaded the Red Ocean en masse and are about to turn it into our own playground. The more territory we claim, the harder it is for your astral beast offspring to survive unscathed. Humans have a tendency to hunt down threats and nuisances."

　　This evoked a strong protective reaction from the Titania! Before she turned her ire towards him, Ves quickly tried to make her see reason.

　　"I am not your enemy! I may be human, but I have no particular interest in hunting your children! If you calm down and cooperate with me, I can allow you to live in this current state. Once you grow stronger, I believe you may be able to help the children that are still vulnerable out there. You are not the beast you once were, but in my care, you can grow stronger than you could have ever imagined."

　　His words successfully evoked desires within the Titania that conflicted with her more primal instincts. Though he could tell that while he did not manage to convert her outright, he still managed to push back her aggression.

　　This was probably the most he could do at this moment. Everything was too new and sudden to the Titania.

　　"Let me introduce you to a couple of new friends who can help you get acquainted with your new life."

　　He pulled out of the spiritual bond that she had formed and shook his head to regain his bearings.

　　He looked at the Larkinson Mandate and the statue of the Superior Mother.

　　"Can you help keep our new friend company? She is awfully new to all of this and needs a helping hand."

　　Both Goldie and the Superior Mother reacted in their own ways.

　　Ves smiled. He knew that the Titania would be in good hands.