The Mech Touch

Ves continued to discuss and explore his vision with Venerable Jannzi.

It was crucial that he obtained her buy-in from the start of the Dullahan Project. Its importance to himself, his clan and Jannzi could not be overstated.

He recognized that after a long time since he last achieved any major progress in his design philosophy, he was finally progressing his core work in a proactive manner.

The fact that he did not have a good idea of the outcome of the Dullahan Project was a great sign that he was embarking on a new and innovative feature.

When he looked back at how he began his mech design career, he split up his progression into multiple different stages.

The first stage was when he began to dabble with the X-Factor after the System guided him towards this direction.

The second stage was when his mother introduced him to the possibilities of converting spiritual entities into design spirits.

The third stage was the gradual discovery and realization that living mechs went through qualitative transformations at specific thresholds, leading him to develop his so-called Larkinson's Orders of Life Theory.

All of these advancements were mainly rooted in spirituality, life and growth.

Some of it required active intervention and effort from Ves, but a lot of growth-oriented changes happened naturally over time.

Lately, Ves felt that his design philosophy became overly slanted towards growth.

While he was happy to see mechs grow stronger and evolve into third order living mechs after sufficient growth and accumulation, Ves didn't feel much accomplishment from this phenomenon because he didn't really get involved in the process.

Sure, he may have set up his living mechs to grow into strong and amazing life forms, but aside from getting involved in the beginning, he surrendered all of the initiative to time and nature.

It was too passive. Lack of control translated into lack of determination.

Ves thought back on how he struggled with an old philosophical struggle related to his approach towards progressing his design philosophy.

He viewed his range of options as a spectrum between two extremes.

The path of determinism was an aspiration to become more actively involved and exercise greater control over growth of his living mechs. It was an explicit attempt to reduce variance and minimize uncontrolled and undesirable outcomes.

Nurturing and influencing living mechs as they grew through different means allowed him to exercise a high amount of control on how they matured. It was similar to raising a kid.

The path of life sought to do the opposite. Rather than trying to control an inherently chaotic concept such as life, Ves embraced its incredible variance in the hopes of obtaining incredible results.

He did so by creating the seeds of life at the start before releasing them into the wild where they could grow and develop under different circumstances.

Ves understood the advantages and disadvantages of both approaches. He did not want to commit to a single path at the cost of giving up all of the benefits of the other path. He believed that his design philosophy would become a lot simpler but also a lot less promising if he aimed for simplicity.

Generally, he tried his best to balance his progression between these two extremes. Perhaps he would never be able to explore the extreme limits of either path, but the combination between the two could yield incredible results as well.

The problem that Ves faced as of late was that his work over the last years veered increasingly more towards the path of life.

Ves felt as if he had increasingly turned into an architect that was solely responsible for designing a city.

Once it was built and once people started using the various buildings and facilities of his design, Ves no longer needed to do anything. Everything seemed to go on the right track and no one needed his help any further.

Was this the sort of mech designer that he aspired to become?

Not really.

It was too passive. A mech designer's job should never be done. There was always work to do. There were always ways to update and improve his existing designs.

If all he needed to do to realize the best living mechs was to set them up once, then what was the point of staying in his profession?

He might as well retire after that point!

Therefore, Ves was eager to find a way to shift his design philosophy back towards the path of determinism and exercise greater control over his own products.

While there was nothing wrong with allowing living mechs to grow by themselves without any further intervention, his responsibility as a mech designer demanded that he should find more ways to actively influence the growth process to achieve more optimal outcomes.

This at least enabled him to affect the growth pattern of specific mechs that he favored more than most.

Larkinson mechs and more specifically the high-ranking ones played a vital role to his clan and his own career.

It was more than worth it for him to spend more time on improving their growth conditions and preventing them from being weighed down by their undesirable baggage.

As far as the Shield of Samar was concerned, Ves slowly became convinced that its recent setback was not that big of a detriment anymore.

After all, the Shield of Samar went through six major revisions, several of which drastically changed the mech to the point that it was almost unrecognizable from its previous iterations.

Ves did not forget that the Shield of Samar was never meant to become a powerful masterwork expert mech.

It initially started out as a weak, commercial third-class standard mech!

Though Ves was incredibly proud at how he was able to elevate such a humble mech into one of the most powerful machines of the Larkinson Clan, he recognized that its spiritual evolution did not keep up with its physical transformations.

Ves had plenty of ways to upgrade the Shield of Samar's technology and physical components, but his ability to improve the spiritual design of the same mech was not as great.

That might change in the near future.

The Dullahan Project was a chance for Ves to cleanse the Shield of Samar of its impurities and acquire a deeper and more promising foundation.

His hope was that the Shield of Samar would not only be able to make up for what it had lost, but also progress further as if it had transformed into a rocket!

This might even be a way for Ves to push the evolution of a living mech to the next level!

What did this mean? It gave him the hope that the Shield of Samar may be the first to evolve into a fourth order living mech, a classification that only existed in his theories up to this point!

Though Ves only explained a part of his ambitious vision to Venerable Jannzi, the expert pilot clearly sensed his energy and enthusiasm.

He had become fired up by the promise of pushing living mechs to a higher limit. The prospect of allowing the Shield of Samar to be reborn anew and at a higher starting point was so interesting that his passion became more and more enflamed!

"I'll be honest with you, Ves." Venerable Jannzi said. "I have my doubts about your ideas. They don't make as much sense to me. I'm not a professional, though. You know more about living mechs like the Shield of Samar than anyone else. I might not agree with you on many issues, but I at least trust you to do what is right for any mech, including my own. You have proven yourself to be nothing but trustworthy and reliable in matters relating to mechs. I can't say the same with regards to everything else…"

Ves dismissed her backhanded compliment. "I can promise you that I will do my utmost to present your Shield of Samar with a brighter future. Death is not necessarily the end for a living mech. I sincerely believe that even if they have fallen apart, there is still a way to give them a chance to be reborn. The Dullahan Project is not just an opportunity to give your old mech a new life, but many other mechs that have suffered similar fates!"

Now that he gained Jannzi's approval, Ves immediately wanted to flesh out his new experimental project.

He quickly left the hall where the remains of the Shield of Samar was stored and headed back to the design lab in order to begin his preparations.

He encountered an unexpected surprise when he reached the main lab.

His wife looked annoyed while his kids had all burst into tiers!

"Waaaaaaahh!"

"Waaaaah!"

"Wahhhhh!"

Ves' heart tugged when he heard the distress from all three of his children. He immediately walked up to his wife and pinned her with an accusing stare.

"What did you do, Gloriana?!"

"It's not me! It's your cat!"

"What?!"

Ves turned around and stared at Lucky. He recalled that his cat had returned to the fleet rather late after he scurried around on the surface of Pima Prime V.

Though the gem cat looked a bit bloated upon his return, Ves didn't really think about it any further.

It appeared that Lucky had truly bitten off more than he could chew this time.

"MEOOWWW…. Meeeeooowww…"

Lucky mewled in pain as he listlessly laid on the deck.

His little tummy looked conspicuously rounded at this time, and from the way that Lucky was squirming about, it was clear that this was the source of his distress!

"Papa!" Little Andraste ran up to Ves and embraced his leg. "What's wrong with Lucky?! Can't you do anything about him? He's so sad!"

Ves chuckled and sneered. "There is nothing to be concerned about, sweetie. Lucky has brought this on himself. This is what happens when you eat more than you should. If you don't want to end up like our cat, then you need to make sure that you don't exceed your portions. The mistake that Lucky has made is that he let his desire for eating overtake his good sense. His punishment for disregarding his health and overtaking his limitations is becoming afflicted with a tummy ache."

His light and confident tone implied that nothing was wrong. He successfully caused his kids to stop crying now that they thought that Lucky wouldn't be going away forever.

"Won't it stop, papa?"

"That depends." He replied. "I don't know how mechanical cats Lucky solve their indigestion problems. Just let him suffer for a few days. If he hasn't used the litter box by then, I'll feed him with a special medicine that is guaranteed to empty his overstuffed stomach."

"MEEEEOOOWW…. MEOOOOWWWW…!"

"Don't complain, Lucky!" Ves snapped back. "How many tons of metals and ores did you eat last time?"

"Meooww…"

"What do you mean you don't know?! Can you give me an estimate at least?! How about a metric ton?"

"Meooww…"

"ten metric tons?"

"Meow…"

"Fifty metric tons?"

"Meow…."

"A hundred metric tons?"

"Meow….."

"A thousand metric tons?"

"..."

"You gotta be kidding me." Ves disbelievingly said. "How can a tiny cat like you stuff so much junk in your belly? Wait. Forget what I said. A cat like you clearly doesn't abide by common sense. It's a shame that your ability to stuff yourself with metals hasn't been able to catch up to your ability to digest it all. Should I bring over a laxative?"

"Meeeow…!"

Ves already began to smirk. "Maybe I should wait a few days or weeks. The longer you're digesting your meal, the more you will convert the nutrients into 'waste products'. It's been years since you last used the toilet. Perhaps it is finally time for me to earn a return on my investment. Maybe I should feed you with additional high-grade exotics that our clan has managed to plunder from Pima Prime."

"Meow meow meow…!"

"Oh, there is also a lot of high-quality wreckage that we have picked up from the battlefield. We've got fragments that originated expert mechs like the Shockshell and the Skorpion Kommando. Don't they sound yummy, Lucky?"

"MEEEEEEOOOOW…!"

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