The Mech Touch

"Hm." He nodded as he eyed the frame of the Pointed Sentinel and the parts he dug up from the junkyard. "I still need to figure out how to piece together the frankenstein mech, but that doesn’t mean you have to wait on me. First, I want you to disassemble the Pointed Sentinel into complete parts, or as much as you are able to. Make a shallow inspection of all the parts and mark out those with issues."

"What about the junkyard parts? Even if we picked the best that we could find, not all of them are in great condition."

"Allocate some men into prepping them for use. Clean them up and make a more thorough inspection. The integrity of those parts are very important. We can’t afford to make use of something that looks pretty on the outside but is rotting from within."

The swarm of mech technicians quickly split up in teams. While each of them was an independent person, right now they acted as an extension of his will. Ves felt some of his Spirituality at work. It left its brand on the parts through the efforts of the mech technicians.

Though it wasn’t as good as handling the work by his own hand, this was much more convenient. "Achieving similar results through different means. It’s not there yet, but one day I’ll be stronger."

The mech technicians only siphoned away a portion of his Spirituality. The more precise his orders, the better the mech technicians grasped his intentions.

"Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to work when I’m stepping away."

If that were true, his mech technicians back in Cloudy Curtain would have been able to substitute for him when fabricating a gold label mech. Certain properties of Spirituality worked regardless of the distance, while other properties required close proximity to be effective. Ves wasn’t too alarmed by this fact. Step by step, he was figuring out the rules that governed this metaphysical concept.

What magic? Nothing remained mystical once you successfully derived the theory that explained the phenomenon!

Ves always retained a steadfast stance regarding things he didn’t understand. This was a perspective that the Bright Republic and many other secular states had propagated among their people. After all, too much superstition bred chaos, and aliens were known to pose as mystical beings in order to hoodwink humans.

As the mech technicians went to work, Ves figured he had a few hours before they finished their tasks. Until that happened, Ves had to finalize his vision in order to know for certain what he was working towards. It wasn’t his style to fumble around with mech parts and cobble them together without any expectation of what might result.

This was the approach of someone who was working with things he didn’t understand.

"There’s nothing about these low-end mech parts that I can’t explain. Nothing about them is hidden from my sight."

Ves sat down in front of one of the control panels of the workshop and started studying the schematics of the parts he dug up. The facility had already scanned the parts from inside-out, and though they were less comprehensive than the official design schematics, the data from the scans was sufficient for him to understand their essence.

"Good. Good. All of these are good parts."

Building a frankenstein mech was exceedingly complex and involved a lot of work. Ves did not commit himself to constructing such a difficult mech on a whim.

His ultimate purpose was to synthesize a mech of a higher grade from an eclectic selection of low-end parts.

In other words, he had to combine the different parts into a whole that was greater than the sum of its parts!

A normal mech designer could easily puzzle together parts that amounted to 1 + 1 = 2.

What separated good mech designers from the bad was that they could achieve a much greater synergy. Achieving 1 + 1 = 4 would be a cakewalk for most AIs.

However, the reason why humans remained dominant in the mech industry was their ingenuity could reach greater heights! Through a combination of skill, experience and vision, they might possibly achieve heaven-defying results such as 1 + 1 = 10 or even more!

Of course, this was a very simplistic way of looking at the mech design profession. A more realistic equation involved at least a couple of thousands variables. The complexity of designing a new mech without ripping off an existing one went far beyond most AIs.

Nothing was absolute, though. Ves heard rumors about the creation of super design AIs by some crazies from the New Rubarth Empire. There were always people that believed that everything could be automated by machines and lines of code.

As this endeavor directly threatened the livelihood of every mech designer, those crazies hid themselves well. If they ever leaked out their whereabouts, nothing would stop their annihilation!

"Well, that’s not for me to worry about." He shook his head.

He shifted his attention back to his design. He opened a design suite from the control panel and imported all of the parts in a wireframe form. This allowed him to easily modify or remove certain portions from their whole.

An hour went by as he unceasingly fit together the parts. This required a lot of modifications in order to make them fit. Ves had to pay attention to the method as well as the result. If it took too much effort to transform a part into something compatible to the new frame, then Ves had no choice but to discard it due to lack of time.

He needed to achieve the maximum amount of results from the least amount of work. Only then would he be able to complete the mech within the time limit.

Fortunately, his understanding of all of the parts was high. This enabled him to cut things out or change things up without significantly impacting their performance.

Piecing them onto a single mech was more complex though. Ves needed to complete this improvised design fast, so he inevitably skipped some corners.

"This frankenstein mech must be fit for a champion in the dueling ring."

At the same time he puzzled together his design, he also began to form its spiritual identity. He decided to form a single image this time. While he was very partial to his Triple Division Technique, it worked best when he designed a mech from the ground up. Applying it to a machine composed of parts of existing mechs might not be appropriate.

"A frankenstein mech will certainly possess a fractured identity. The mech won’t perform seamlessly in that case."

A vision took shape in his mind as his design came ever-closer to completion. Even though he hadn’t finished the final touches, he already completed the final vision in his mind.

"Not a Pointed Sentinel, but something that looks similar to it. A reborn Sentinel that is not a Sentinel. Fast, agile, lots of reach and most importantly sturdy enough to keep up with high-stress movements. This goes far beyond the range of a Sentinel."

His new creation broke the mold of a budget mech and stepped into a higher level. Though it wouldn’t be easy to achieve this height, Ves was already on the right track.

"The only downside is that I have to make some steep tradeoffs. Prioritizing speed and internal integrity above all else means that this reformed Sentinel will be rather lacking in terms of offensive and defensive power."

His current ability didn’t allow him to plug these gaps. Every choice came with a price. Ves simply didn’t have the time to work on the armor. As for the dip in offensive power, Ves wasn’t too worried about it because Avid Serpent’s Rogue Breaker didn’t excel in defense.

Now that he fixed a vision, he could start on shaping its X-Factor. Ves intended for the X-Factor to be the glue that fused the different parts into an entirely new whole.

In constructing the new imagine in his mind, Ves had two choices available. He could choose to build up a primal or a cognitive image. The former comprised of a totem animal that would massively strengthen the instincts of his mech. The latter took the shape of a human myth that provided more sophisticated aid.

"Considering that Captain Orfan already possesses strong instincts, a human myth is more useful to her. However, she doesn’t seem like the sort who thinks a lot during battle. If she won’t listen to her own brains, then she won’t be inclined to listen to someone else’s brains."

This left him with the choice of going for a totem animal. Images that fell under this category had the ability to fire up a mech pilot and granted them beastly instincts that could save their lives at crucial moments. Adding the strengths of the totem animal to Captain Orfan would mean that he doubled down on her excellent instincts.

Even Ves didn’t know how scary Captain Orfan would become when piloting a mech under such a spell.

"What a champion needs is a steed. A heavenly warhorse."

Ves imagined a godly horse that could sweep an entire plain within seconds. Everywhere it ran, the wake that followed behind it could pull an entire forest from the ground. Fast! The horse had to be fast!

As soon as he came up with the idea, the heavenly warhorse started to spring from his imagination. It came to life in his mind and began to look at the design that Ves worked on with impatience. The liveliness of its behavior astounded Ves.

"Good!"

The stronger his Spirituality, the more real his imaginary creations became. All of this was very abstruse right now, but Ves could definitely tell this heavenly warhorse already started off strong. Usually, his creations needed more accumulation before they reached this point.

With the heavenly warhorse taking shape, its influence started seeping into the design. As Ves finished the rough jobs and started zooming in to perform adjustments, the heavenly warhorse shifted in response. It was as if the design and the image already shared a connection from birth. Before the image took up residence in the design, it underwent ceaseless changes in order to increase its compatibility.

This was a very vital process. Usually, Ves took months to design an original mech, but he only had hours this time.

As the mech technicians completed their tasks one by one, Ves had to put an end to his design work. Though it looked horribly unoptimized in its eyes, its theoretical performance had already reached a higher level than the base model of the Pointed Sentinel! Optimized or not, even a rough utilization of its strength should be sufficient enough to compete against Avid Serpent!

Once he decided to finalize the design, the heavenly warhorse immediately left his mind and took up residence in the new design. Even though Ves hadn’t done justice to the design, the heavenly warhorse appeared very pleased!

"Alright, gather around, everybody! It’s time for you to take a look at my design."

Most mech technicians finished their assignments by now. They eagerly sat up and walked towards Ves, who showed off his new design. In order to align them to his thoughts and turn them into channels of his will, it was important for Ves to explain his new mech.

"This is the design I’ve come up with after selecting all of those parts. Its purpose is to fuse the strengths of all of those separate parts to construct a mid-range mech from low-end parts!"

Though the mech technicians already knew what Ves intended to do, to speak it out like that impacted them nonetheless. It was simply too ambitious for them to comprehend! Wouldn’t mid-range mechs require mid-range components?