The Mech Touch

Ves decided not to exchange a lot of MTA merits in order to replace his outdated shield generators with modern first-class transphasic shield generators.

The ones he utilized at the moment were not weak and could still protect him against the vast majority of attacks that might be thrown in his direction.

To be honest, he put a lot more stock in his Unending Regalia. He much preferred to place his trust on solid armor, which offered solid and reliable protection even if all of its electronic systems had been knocked offline for whatever reason.

Aside from that, as a mech designer Ves was also much more used to working with armor as opposed to energy shields. Even if his expertise on armor systems could not match the depth of Sara Voiken, he was not a complete novice either!

Another reason for him to put more emphasis on his combat armor was because the Larkinson Clan still had enough stockpiles of first-class materials to apply a hasty upgrade to his Unending Regalia.

Even if he was short on a specific material that he would really like, he could still trade one first-class material for another one without incurring too much of a loss.

Though Ves eventually planned to transform his Unending Regalia into a true modern first-class suit of combat armor, he needed a lot more time, expertise and preparation because he could remold it into the indefatigable engine that he had conceived in his imagination.

"I guess I'll have to settle for a quick-and-dirty modification plan for the time being."

When Ves arrived at the Genesis Lab, he set his Unending Regalia on a workbench and scanned it thoroughly while he began to draw a list of components he could change on a small time frame.

Ves had designed the Unending Regalia with a high degree of modularity in mind. He had envisioned that he would end up in situations like these where he gained access to better tech and materials and wanted to upgrade his primary form of protection.

Therefore, it was easy for him to disassemble his combat armor and pull out a lot of modules from their slots.

There were limits, though. Ves ideally wanted to rebuild the entire inner structure from the ground up so that he could make it completely out of much more resilient first-class materials, but that was a project for another day.

"I need to stick to the essentials." Ves reminded himself.

There was also another complication that made it a lot more difficult for Ves to upgrade his armor.

As the scans slowly revealed, the Unending Regalia substantially deviated from its original design. It had been baptized with pure metal energy that had originated from Cassandra Breyer.

This transformed the combat armor in mysterious ways. The Unending alloy armor plating had especially been receptive towards metal energy and had become more capable of fending off spiritual attacks!

If Ves confronted a dark god or a spiritual sorcerer from the Five Scrolls Compact, he possessed ample confidence that his Unending Regalia would be able to preserve his life long enough to run away!

"The problem is that I'm not fighting against those freaks anymore!"

The Five Scrolls Compact hardly expanded their presence in the Red Ocean as far as he knew. Just getting past the stringent security checks in order to pass through the greater beyonder gate was a major impediment!

The most probable threats he fought against these days were conventional human forces, alien warships and alien bio monstrosities.

Each of them possessed their own combat characteristics, but what united all of them was their extensive use of phasewater applications!

Ves stared at his Unending Regalia. He intuitively tried to judge how well its spiritually charged Unending alloy exterior plating could withstand transphasic attacks.

The answer he got was not positive.

"It's a powerful tool, but it's the wrong tool for the situation."

It was as if he had obtained the strongest hammer in existence when he actually needed a welding tool instead!

"Even if the latter is inferior, it is much more useful to the circumstances at hand."

Ves decided to strip the Unending alloy armor plating entirely and replace it with the salvaged and repurposed armor plates taken from the hull fragments of the Fractured House of the Collapsing Star.

The Genesis Lab happened to have stocked up plenty of high-quality goods and materials, so it did not take long before a heavy-duty lifter bot arrived to deliver a large chunk of space debris.

Although the exterior of the hybrid alien battleship was largely made up of conventional human armor plating, the more important parts and systems had received varying degrees of transphasic reinforcement depending on their importance. The surrounding bulkheads had also been fortified with superior transphasic alloys.

It was extremely troublesome to develop and produce transphasic armor plating from scratch.

However, there was no need for him to go through all of that trouble when he could just cut away portions of existing transphasic alloys.

As Ves examined the debris he pulled out of storage, he became mildly dissatisfied.

"The phasewater concentration isn't much, but it's better than nothing I suppose."

The construction of a capital ship required huge amounts of materials. It was prohibitive to protect the most critical components with too much phasewater. The aliens had to spread out their limited resources and could only compensate for their sparing use of phasewater by relying on thicker and bulkier structural layers.

Ves obviously couldn't do that with his Unending Regalia as it was only an infantry suit. Its exterior layer had to be relatively thin in order to control its size and make it foldable.

"It's not like I have anything better at hand." He sighed.

He went to work. He utilized the advanced first-class workshop equipment and tools that he had brought over from Spirit of Bentheim to carefully carve out the armor plating.

He worked with unnatural precision as he precisely broke down the hardy piece of ship debris into an expanding collection of exquisitely shaped metal plates.

The entire set happened to correspond to the Unending alloy plating that he had previously removed!

Slotting in the new alien first-class transphasic armor plating should be a breeze as Ves had not made any changes in the shapes.

Although the mass, density and many other properties had undergone drastic changes, they did not fundamentally interfere with the functioning of his Unending Regalia.

At most, he needed to reconfigure its operating system and settings to adjust to the many changes.

Ves did not settle for replacing the armor plating, though. He also applied a few other targeted upgrades.

For example, he improved the ECM shielding, the sensor system, the communication systems and numerous life support systems to improve its overall survivability.

He also replaced its antigrav modules to enable faster and more powerful flight capabilities.

Many of these upgrades increased the power consumption of his Unending alloy, which was a serious problem.

"I can't do anything about it except to switch to better energy cells."

He could get his hands on superior high-capacity energy cells easily enough these days. He readily obtained the products and simply slotted them in place of the older ones that had performed well enough over the years.

After making the necessary changes and tweaks, he carefully assembled the new transphasic armor plating in their intended places.

Soon, a dull gray metal suit appeared in front of Ves.

He inspected it with scanners and his naked eye. Nothing looked out of place.

"All it needs is a coating." He smiled.

Once he covered up the bare metal with a shiny new layer of coating, hardly anyone would be able to tell the difference through sight alone.

However, those who were familiar with it would be able to tell that it was not the same as before.

This was because the spiritual signature of his Unending Regalia had grown drastically weaker!

It had lost a lot of spiritually charged components, so the amount of Ves of spiritual energy it was able to hold had weakened to a massive degree.

"A pity."

In return, the Unending Regalia not only gained numerous auxiliary upgrades, but also offered drastically better protection against both transphasic and conventional attacks.

Ves wouldn't bring it to a fight against a combat mech, but it should be more than enough to crush any opponent on the infantry scale.

His only major regret concerning this hasty upgrade job was that he had been unable to work the transphasic armor plating thoroughly enough to form a connection to the Phase King.

It was a lot harder to do this on an object that was different from a mech. As a mech designer, he lost a lot of advantages when he tried to make other products such as totems and combat armor.

He estimated that he needed to build the transphasic armor plating from scratch in order to make his Unending Regalia carry the blessing of the Phase King.

"Next time." Ves vowed.

The entire process left him with a batch of spare spiritually charged materials. As Ves picked up a spare shoulder plate made out of Unending alloy, he found that it had become special due to the baptism of potent metal energy and constant exposure to himself over several years.

"I can make something really good out of these parts!"

His imagination went wild as he envisioned various possible uses for these unique components.

One radical use would be to create a hollow, life-sized totem of himself!

Ever since Ves created his living divine artifact and became baptized by mystical lightning that came out of nowhere, he had undergone a fundamental spiritual transformation that caused him to acquire at least a portion of the traits of a design spirit!

Months after this weird and unexplainable change, Ves had tried his best to suppress this abnormality and prevent anyone from finding out the truth.

Only his closest relatives and work partners such as his wife and his fellow mech designers figured out a lot of clues.

They never spoke about it because Ves simply didn't want to address this topic at all. He was still freaked out about this abnormality.

Humans weren't supposed to possess glows.

Humans weren't supposed to be able to imitate design spirits.

Humans weren't supposed to be mistaken as gods.

Ves had an especially serious issue with the last point. He could already imagine what might happen if he went on a trip to the Hex Federation and blasted out his newfound glow at full power.

Thousands of rabidly fanatical Hexers would mob him in an instant!

"This is unnatural!"

Still, Ves had no way of getting rid of it. If that was the case, then he might as well try and learn how to harness it to his advantage.

"What will happen if I make a totem? More importantly, what will happen if I design a mech that carries my glow?"

As Ves played these scenarios out in his mind, he developed an inkling of what he might create.

He became so intrigued by the possibilities that he had to stop himself from tearing apart the spiritually charged components right away!

"I can't!"

He still needed to preserve these original parts in case he encountered a spiritual threat again. Unending alloy charged with his own power would play a much more helpful role in fighting against dark gods and the like than transphasic armor.

After all, pure spiritual attacks could not be stopped by conventional forms of defenses!

Even the mighty Fractured Star of the Collapsing House had no way of stopping multiple death energy battle formation attacks from sweeping through her entire hull!

Since the new outer layer of his Unending Regalia was made out of materials salvaged from the same alien vessel, Ves had no hope it would offer as much protection as before.

"I at least managed to preserve the inner B-stone layer."

The only issue was that it was far too thin to offer complete protection against spiritual attacks.

It even hindered his own spiritual perception and spiritual manipulation abilities, especially when he closed his helmet and completely sealed his body!