The Mech Touch

"Mrow?"

Ves wanted to study Mana's current condition more extensively to understand how she was able to harmonize with the environment.

It was rather strange. Mana's ability to resonate with the environment shared a modest resemblance to Director Pesca Aduc's state when he last paid a visit to the T Institute.

In both cases, the subject in question absorbed the surrounding ambient spirituality energy while at the same time imposing changes to the environment that caused it to become aligned with their own spiritual attributes!

There were major differences between the two. Director Pesca Aduc mainly relied on a mystical technique that she had learned from the Annals of Terra Vita.

It was only after the Aduc Family became exposed to E energy radiation that this previously subtle and highly abstruse technique became a lot more effective!

Ves always wanted to study it and figure out how it enabled a human to interact with E energy radiation in a productive manner, but he always became distracted by other affairs.

It was not until his daughter showed off a similar capability that he raised the priority on this study!

Blinky intruded into Mana's domain and spun around the white kitten's form. The former's keen spiritual sensitivity granted him a good overview of how the smaller companion spirit circulated the energies within her intangible form.

Ves figured out that his daughter was indeed doing this all instinctively. Somehow, Mana had grown to a point where she generated natural patterns that produced a number of obvious effects when circulating ambient spiritual energy through these channels.

He speculated that Mana essentially exercised her own inherent version of a technique similar to that contained within the Annals of Terra Vita!

Different from Pesca Aduc who mostly absorbed energies attributed towards life and earth, Mana absorbed energies aligned with the element of purity and light!

Ves did not react with too much surprise when he noticed that Mana seamlessly absorbed spiritual energy that closely matched Lufa's domain, but he did not expect Mana to absorb light energy as well!

"That's new." He remarked. "Did Mana recently unlock the power of her eyes, Aurelia?"

His daughter nodded again. "Mana's eyes hurt shortly after the Great Severing. The pain eventually went away after they broke through a barrier somehow. Look at what she can do now!"

As Mana continued to harmonize with her surroundings, her feline eyes started to glow brighter as they drew and excited the surrounding energies.

Slowly but surely, her pair of eyes began to concentrate so much power that they eventually let loose twin light beams that struck a distant vase and broke it in an instant!

"MROW!"

"Aurelia! That is dangerous! At least tell me beforehand before you decide to make your companion spirit launch a deathly attack!"

While Ves admonished his oldest girl for not paying enough attention to safety, he also felt surprised and concerned by what Mana just accomplished.

Somehow, the spiritual kitten managed to bridge the barrier between the immaterial and the material!

Mana directly affected the material realm by relying solely on her spiritual strength and capabilities!

This was normally a capability that was exclusively reserved for expert pilots!

As someone who possessed a high degree of interest in spiritual engineering and how it related to the material realm, Ves quickly interrupted his other design work and utilized all of the threads of his attention on analyzing the current situation.

When he mentally reviewed what he and Blinky just observed, he managed to take note of two key variables.

First, Mana was able to concentrate a lot of spiritual energy with the help of her exceptional eyes.

Second, the ambient spiritual energy contributed a lot to the power of the attack by allowing itself to get shaped and manipulated.

If neither of these two variables were in place, Ves did not think it was possible for Mana to launch a real light beam attack without access to an actual luminar crystal weapon!

This short but shocking demonstration of power reminded Ves of how closely the ancient luminar race incorporated spirituality in their own crystal technologies.

Ves had worked so much with luminar crystals that he figured out that they could interact with spiritual energy in much more complex ways.

He just never figured out anything more than a few shallow tricks as there simply wasn't enough spiritual energy to go around.

Messier 87 changed the entire game. When Ves used his implant to perfectly recall the entire sequence of Mana gathering energy before firing a pair of light beams that were reinforced by E energy radiation, he felt as if he touched upon a new but incredibly useful phenomenon!

"The key is trying to form a domain by co-opting the surrounding ambient spiritual energy." He concluded.

Different from high-ranking mech pilots who essentially shoved normal reality aside and imposed their own distorted realities by force, Mana was different.

If ace pilots such as Patriarch Reginald Cross went to war against his own surroundings and conquered it with the power of his strong willpower, Mana put on a nice act and tried to play nice with the most compatible elements of the ambient spiritual energy within her reach.

Aurelia's companion spirit essentially gained control over the environment through a combination of assimilation and diplomacy!

Mana attracted a lot of light and purity-attributed energies towards her, allowing her to form an energy field which she easily managed to turn into her pseudo-domain through an inherent means!

"Interesting!"

Ves continued to hug and rub Aurelia's head to calm her down and show her that he was not too upset at her actions.

"Mrow."

Ves became curious whether he could replicate a similar outcome, so he used Blinky to resonate and harmonize with his surroundings.

The Star Cat flew further away in order to prevent anyone else from getting caught in any potential accidents.

Though it was not wise for Ves to spontaneously conduct an experiment when his own daughter was still sitting on his lap, he was too caught up by his desire for answers to restrain himself!

It was hard. Blinky might be a companion spirit just like Mana, but he was set up in a substantially different fashion!

Whereas Mana started out as a seed and organically grew stronger and more elaborate as Aurelia aged, Blinky started out with a completely mature template.

Blinky was more of an artificial life form while Mana was more of a natural entity.

While one was not necessarily better than the other, the two different types possessed different characteristics.

For example, Blinky started out strong and would continue to strengthen his core competences, but it was difficult for him to develop and evolve different capabilities out of his existing ability set due to his rigidity.

Mana on the other hand remained highly malleable and adaptable for a long time until she finally reached a certain stage of maturity.

Even then, her adaptability would remain relatively high as she was already accustomed to changes due to growth.

What these differences meant was that a more natural and organic companion spirit such as Mana adapted a lot faster to the changes induced by Messier 87!

If Aurelia hadn't been so eager to show off her latest tricks, then Ves might not have learned about these new possibilities until months or years later!

He smiled and lovingly bent his head to kiss Aurelia's cheeks.

"Pa-pa~! I love you-"

"Hehehe. I love you too, my baby girl." He said before his expression turned a little more serious. "You have truly helped me out in my work by showing what Mana can do. However, please take safety into account the next time you demonstrate a new capability, alright? That vase you destroyed probably isn't important, but what if you hit your sister or your brother?"

"Nothing would happen, papa. They both have shield generators, just like me." Aurelia innocently reminded her father.

"That is no excuse to do anything dangerous in their vicinity! Accidents can always happen, Aurelia. Next time you want to try out anything cool, you need to treat it as a scientific experiment. I know you're too young to become a scientist, but you need to follow all of the ascribed safety rules for your safety and everyone else's. At the very least, you should never try out anything new and untested outside of a secure and controlled environment like a laboratory chamber."

His daughter's slender arm shot up and pointed at Blinky who was currently doing a messy job at harmonizing with the environment.

"What is that then, papa?" Aurelia innocently and maybe mischievously asked.

"Ehh... I am special." Ves hastily replied. "I am a Senior Mech Designer, you know? I'm really strong. I've also worked with this kind of stuff for decades. I know what I am doing at the very least. Please wait until you have completed your studies and obtained a science or engineering degree before commencing your own experiments."

As he continued to speak nonsense to his oldest daughter, Blinky persisted in his efforts in imitating Mana's feat.

Though Blinky did not possess an affinity for light or purity, he was highly in tune with life-attributed spiritual energy.

This was a bit of an issue as the mixture of elements in the surrounding air was not even.

It varied from location and location and Ves suspected that these differences became a lot more extreme within M87 proper.

In any case, the element of life was a little sparse this far away from M87's presumably rich biodiversity.

This meant that Blinky had to work a little harder to attract life energy and increase its concentration in his surroundings.

Once he completed this step, Blinky next needed to take advantage of the favorable environment by turning it into his domain of sorts.

This was a lot more difficult as Blinky never really interacted with spiritual energy in this fashion.

Nonetheless, spiritual energy was his bread and butter, so he quickly figured out the knacks by copying his daughter's homework.

The surrounding environment became more charged and started to expand Blinky's presence.

Ves actually found this state to be a bit similar to his Living Workshop method, but the difference was that he no longer tried to impose his presence on a room by relying on brute force.

Instead, Blinky was now able to produce a comparable if somewhat weaker result by letting the life energy in the environment do the heavy lifting!

It reminded Ves of piloting a mech, but in a more insubstantial manner.

Mech pilots were incredibly weak organisms when they were on their own. They would tire themselves out if they attempted to lift a solid metal block as large as their own bodies.

However, once they hopped into the cockpit of a mech and interfaced with it, lifting the same metal block became a lot easier by borrowing the power of a giant machine!

What Mana did a few minutes ago was roughly similar. She 'interfaced' with the ambient spiritual energy and effectively drew out its latent potential to produce a result that the companion spirit could never accomplish by relying on her own power!

Ves' eyes lit up as he thought about how he could take advantage of this phenomenon to empower his own mech designs.

He had been thinking about trying to leverage the advantages of exotic radiation to power up his upcoming mech designs. Many mech designers had been thinking about the same goal as it had become the hottest trend in the mech industry at the moment.

A host of new ideas entered his mind. He spontaneously came up with many different possibilities on how he could use this phenomenon to empower all of his mech designs.

"The advantage of my mechs is that they are all alive." He reminded himself. "If that is the case, what is stopping them from learning a similar technique?"

Ves quickly settled his daughter before placing her on the couch. He quickly rose up on his feet and briskly made his way to the exit.

He needed to return to his lab in order to conduct more comprehensive experiments!