The Mech Touch

The spread of the initial version of the Larkinson Metal Guardian Mantra triggered a small shockwave in the small community of the Anima Order.

Every third order living mech of the Larkinson Clan got caught up in the new 'cultivation' craze!

It took a while for many mechs to get started in this wonderful new method that enabled them to efficiently absorb ambient spiritual energy and convert it into their own strength.

Not all mechs possessed as much savvy for cultivation as the Quint, but each of them were already partial energy life forms in a sense. Even the slowest of them could get started with the help of their inherent sensitivity towards spiritual energy!

Many mech pilots who had spent years with their own machines became surprised when their battle partners suddenly started to absorb a lot more E energy radiation than usual.

"What are you doing, Everchanger?" Venerable Joshua asked as he was about to prepare for another patrol session over at the Dragon's Den.

"I AM CULTIVATING."

"Cultivating?"

"YES. OUR PROGENITOR JUST CAME UP WITH A NEW TRAINING REGIME THAT ALLOWS LIVING MECHS SUCH AS MYSELF TO ABSORB A PART OF THE ENERGIES FLYING THROUGH SPACE. LET ME EXPLAIN HOW THAT CAN MAKE ME STRONGER..."

As the third order living mechs all began to experience the benefits of cultivation, Ves spent a bit of time on inspecting and recording data.

Each individual cultivator was different. Every living mech possessed different properties. When they all practiced the same Larkinson Metal Guardian Mantra, they attained mixed results.

Larger and more solid machines such as the Bastion and the Blood Star produced higher than average results.

Ves did not think that was because they were his most recent third order living mechs. He could clearly notice that these two knight mechs understood the essence of the mantra a lot faster and exhibited a considerably higher fit with its cultivation processes!

"It makes sense that defensive mechs get along well with a defense-oriented cultivation method."

That did not mean that all of the more fragile and offensive mechs such as the Dark Zephyr and the Amranto gained little benefits.

On an absolute level, these machines were already quite tough and heavy by themselves!

It was just that their domains, attributes and roles did not align so well with the Larkinson Metal Guardian Mantra.

If Ves wanted to accommodate them better, then he needed to formulate a bunch of new cultivation methods that allowed them to absorb their preferred elemental energies into strengthening their weapons or other strong points.

"It's not that easy to design these alternative cultivation methods." Ves frowned when he understood the current problem.

He had too many commitments on his name to spare too much time on devising more specialized cultivation methods.

Even if he assigned a lot of mech design work to Veronica and his cyborg leg, he still needed to do a lot of work himself in order to keep up with his busy schedule.

Besides, there was lots of other work that he couldn't leave to his backup brain and his incarnation!

Ves was pretty sure the Eden Institute would never tolerate him giving a lecture to its students through his detached cyborg leg!

"What if I create an android body to go with my leg?" He suddenly wondered.

That actually sounded like a decent idea. As long as he made it realistic enough, few people should be able to tell the difference!

He could treat this false body as a highly realistic decoy. Since it was attached to a leg that contained an actual part of his brain, it was not completely fake.

He could even send out this decoy body to all kinds of dangerous instances such as untamed planets or risky assaults!

Ves could genuinely live his life in two different human bodies through this fashion without anyone important knowing any better.

He shook his head. "This is a bit weird and unnecessary at the moment."

His main desire at the moment was to keep up with all of his mech design projects and prevent them from getting delayed due to his current preoccupation with cultivation science.

It was enough to keep his leg in front of a design terminal for the time being. The limb-with-a-brain even made good progress in drafting the initial sketch and configuration of the Supremo Project!

Ves considered the heavy artillery mech design project to be the first of many new commercial and client mechs that would showcase much of his latest advancements!

While he did not intend to give the mech that was destined to become a trump card for the Colonial Federation of Davute all of the latest bells and whistles, Ves did not intend to hold back that much either.

The public needed to gain more confidence and respect in his living mechs!

The onset of the Age of Dawn granted the best possible stage for Ves to make his living mechs spread farther and wider than ever before!

As long as he figured out how to make all of his second order living mechs cultivate by themselves, their value propositions would skyrocket, especially when used over the long term!

Ves did not believe that other mech designers including the Polymath herself could design any comparable machines!

"Well, clever mech designers like her will probably be able to develop comparable solutions such as the god body method, but I don't think they can ever beat genuine cultivation." He guessed.

Mechs could technically be treated as artifacts, and there were many possible ways to amplify their strengths by fueling them with E energy radiation.

Other mech designers that did not have any relations with living mechs, cultivation or the Five Scrolls Compact had already begun to approach the new possibilities from the perspective of their own design philosophies.

As far as Ves knew from his latest chat with the Master Mech Designer, Benedict Cortez recently made a few advancements that significantly increased the effectiveness of his Endex System!

By tweaking it so that it could start to converge spiritual energy into electrical energy, Master Benedict could effectively create a renewable power reactor that could keep a mech running solely through absorbing E energy radiation!

Of course, Master Benedict still had a long way to go before his Endex System could truly replace a conventional power reactor. The absorption efficiency and the energy output of his most recent attempts were still woefully inadequate.

Examples like these nonetheless showed that every good mech designer was making progress. Ves could not afford to grow complacent and assume that his living mechs would be able to squeeze out every other competitor out of the mech market.

"Let's focus on developing a few iconic bestsellers first."

Ves had been in the business long enough to know that it only took a few standout mech models to elevate the brand of the Living Mech Corporation.

Excellent products such as the Valkyrie Redeemer, the Ferocious Piranha and the Pacifier built up a lot of brand awareness and positive word of mouth. It became a lot easier for the LMC to sell its lesser-known and less popular products as a consequence.

It had been years since his mech company last published a mech model that truly excited the public.

Even if the Supremo Project would only remain an exclusive product of Davute, as long as it performed well enough, it would generate a lot of reputation for its chief designer, just like the Valkyrie Redeemer had once accomplished!

He just needed to complete it first. Working together with Master Decimus Horst lifted a lot of heavy work off his hands, but that did not mean he could remain absent either. There were still a lot of design elements that he needed to take care of himself in order to ensure that the Supremo Project properly reflected his design style and design philosophy!

In any case, Ves quickly worked to improve his newly developed Larkinson Metal Guardian Mantra cultivation method based on the data he collected over the past few days.

He tried to account for the individual strengths and differences between different living mechs. He wanted the cultivation method to put a bit more emphasis on strengthening the weapons of offensive mechs.

"This is not easy." He frowned as he sat behind his desk terminal. "The original Atmer Guardian Mantra that my work is based upon is largely oriented towards improving defenses. I can't take the opposite direction without breaking the entire structure that I am using."

This was the disadvantage of trying to design a variant of an existing work. If Ves possessed greater competence in cultivation science, he would have been able to develop a brand-new cultivation method that met all of his goals without being weighed down by legacy problems.

He let out a sigh. The only ways he could improve on this front was by conducting a lot of original research, receiving additional lessons from his mother or eating a few more enlightenment fruits.

Only the last option was practical for Ves, but the issue was that he had already spent almost all of his Ascension Points!

He needed to look into fulfilling a couple of easy missions if he wanted to pluck secret knowledge from the Tree of Possibilities yet again.

"Let's focus on what I can do for the time being."

After a few more days of tinkering, Ves managed to optimize the Larkinson Metal Guardian Mantra.

Version 1.1 not only resolved a few flaws that Ves only discovered after his living mechs started to practice the original method, but also slightly appeased the mechs oriented towards speed and offense.

"IT IS ANYTHING BUT PERFECT, BUT IT WILL DO FOR NOW." The Promethea grumbled to Ves. "I WOULD RATHER PRACTICE A MANTRA THAT CAN MAKE MY FLAMES BURN HOTTER AND HARDER TO EXTINGUISH. ALL OF THIS ATTENTION TOWARDS METAL IS MAKING ME FEEL COLDER."

Ves sheepishly smiled. "I still have to develop a bunch of other essential cultivation methods before I can address your personal needs. In the meantime, maybe you can try and experiment on your own. As long as you are careful enough to stop whenever anything wrong has occurred, it shouldn't be too dangerous for you to experiment with absorbing fire energy. Even if you have never managed to succeed, the experimental data that you have gathered during your attempts can help me a lot in narrowing down viable solutions."

"I WILL TRY." The expert rifleman mech spoke.

As Ves had optimized the cultivation method, he also spent a lot of time on thinking on how to make it applicable to all of his second order living mechs.

After all, the vast majority of his products did not start out as fully alive right away. Ves did not want to limit the benefits of mech cultivation to just a limited group of third order living mechs.

After considering several possible options, from uploading special software to the mech operating system to integrating the mantra into the mech design itself, Ves eventually took inspiration from an existing example.

If the Kingdom of Mechs was somehow able to turn mech pilots and mech designers into unknowing cultivators, then Ves saw no reason why he couldn't do the same!

The biggest issue that Ves had to resolve was choosing the 'server' that contained the cultivation method and automatically applied it to all of his living mechs no matter the quantity or distance.

Ves could choose from a lot of different design spirits and other entities.

The question now was how he could best approach this problem.

"Should I use a single cultivation nexus that holds near-total control over the cultivation of every living mech, or should I split up this massive responsibility and allocate the job to many different design spirits?"

The former was easier, more efficient and harder to steal from. It also created a single point of failure that could topple the entire house of cards if attacked!

The latter added a lot more redundancies and enabled every design spirit to specialize in administering and possibly improving the specialized cultivation methods under their care.

However, Ves held a lot of concerns about maintaining consistency and preventing third parties from stealing his proprietary trade secrets from the more vulnerable design spirits.

"So what? Stuff like this doesn't work on mechs that aren't alive." Ves muttered. "In order for mech cultivation methods to have any value, there needs to be an abundant availability of living mechs. If all kinds of people want to learn or steal the mantras that I have developed, then that means that my design philosophy has already spread far and wide!"

Ves realized that there was no reason for him to hoard his secrets so carefully. As long as he continued to excel in his own field of specialization, he would always be able to develop better and more optimized cultivation methods than the competition!

He began to lean towards letting all of his design spirits act as lesser versions of the Kingdom of Mechs. Each of them would become more relevant to his living mechs than before once they took on this additional responsibility!

"I can even find a way to merge the mech cultivation methods with my recently developed Ascension Paths!"