The Mech Touch

"Our mother is too old school to change her stance regarding the wisdom of relying on external tools to fight our battles." The design spirit regretfully spoke.

Ves snorted. "The entire reason why humans and the vast majority of sentient alien races in the Milky Way and the Red Ocean were able to rise to power was because they relied on ever more powerful tools. Hardly any alien race relies on their own natural strengths to defeat their opponents."

"I agree with you, but I also see where our mother is coming from." Helena replied. "You don\'t have to worry too much about me. I am not so set in my ways. I have taken a liking for the first gift that you have made for me, so I know what you are capable of. You are much better at creation than destruction, so it makes sense that you orient your defenses by relying on your strengths. You should make another weapon like the Gray Lotus that you have made available to your mechs. I would be happy to lend my power to your defense."

"That\'s… a bit of a problem. I was only able to make the Gray Lotus because I \'found\' a batch of special materials that happened to be compatible with you. I haven\'t found any other sympathetic materials that are aligned towards your death attribute."

"Oh." She frowned while lifting her Death Lotus. "Does that mean you can\'t make another gun to fend off powerful gods?"

"No. Not until I find the right materials. Do you happen to have any suggestions?"

Helena rubbed her smooth chin. "Hmmm. My cult within the Oblivion Empire has managed to salvage powerful materials to build idols in my image."

Ves sat up straighter. "Are you talking about Unending alloy?!"

"What is Unending alloy?"

"It\'s what I call the alloy that I have used to make products like this." He said while patting the chestplate of his Unending Regalia.

"Oh that? We have lots of these materials lying around, Ves. There are an awful lot of relics and statues of the dark gods that are made with this handy alloy. Our men have taken to melting it all down so that they can make more proper gods. They help a lot with spreading around our awareness. We can drop in any time a detached fleet has encountered trouble."

Ves became disappointed. The Nyxian Gap was too far away to make importing Unending alloy viable, and he already decided to transition away from this material.

Unending alloy was not a sympathetic material. It was decent at containing many varieties of spiritual energy, but it could not be used as the basis of a powerful blessed weapon.

"In any case, my options are fairly limited for the time being. The only sympathetic material I have access to is phasewater, which allows me to borrow the power of the Phase King in battle. In fact, I just managed to swindle over a hundred kilograms of phasewater from different parties. This gives me a lot of leeway in using this exotic for my personal projects."

Helena spent enough time around Ves to grow familiar with phasewater. Though the substance was pretty much nonexistent in the Nyxian Gap, this might change in the future once more and more phasewater flowed into the old galaxy.

"Phasewater is weird." She said.

"Oh?" Ves raised his eyebrow. He grew curious about what a self-professed death goddess had to say about this topic. "What is your impression of phasewater?"

The design spirit frowned. "I don\'t really understand it. To me, it looks like ordinary water but with extra power for some reason. There shouldn\'t be anything about phasewater that is relevant to me, but a part of me doesn\'t agree with that logic."

"Is phasewater alive?!"

"No. I wouldn\'t describe it like that. It is better to describe it as a facilitator of life. It can make a being stronger, though I can\'t describe in what way."

"Wait for a moment."

Ves concentrated hard and used his expanded control over his body to squeeze out a drop of blood from his body.

He coughed and spat out the drop until it floated in front of his face.

"Can you examine my blood and tell me your thoughts?"

She did so. Her eyes quickly widened.

"Well, well, well. Your evolution is more extensive than I initially expected. You\'ve outdone yourself, Ves. I have no idea how you managed to do it, but you have truly succeeded in blending a small amount of phasewater in your blood."

"I already know that, Helena. Can you tell me anything new that I haven\'t been able to figure out by myself?"

"My opinion hasn\'t changed. The phasewater in your blood isn\'t inherently alive, but now that it has blended into your body, is enhancing and empowering your blood components, though I haven\'t the faintest idea why. Our mother can probably give you a better explanation. I imagine that this effect will grow stronger once you managed to stuff more phasewater into your bloodstream."

That was an insightful remark. It had a lot of implications for his upcoming biomech projects.

"Do you think that I can leverage phasewater and the power of the Phase King to defend myself against threats of your caliber?" Ves asked.

His sister laughed. "Hahaha! I\'m sorry, little brother, but I don\'t think it will be that easy."

"Not even after the Phase King has just devoured the spirituality of the unclean whale?"

Helena threw a critical glance in his direction. "The native gods over here are just as strange as phasewater. Our mother would call them body refiners if she sees one in the flesh. These phase whales and so on are strong in body. I think their strongest gods can even put up a good fight against the dark gods that I have fought against by virtue of their impossibly strong physiques."

"What\'s the problem, then?"

"The growth of their bodies also helps them grow the invisible parts of themselves, but it is clearly not their focus. Their defenses against immaterial gods is good enough to keep themselves alive, but their offensive ability leaves much to be desired. They are mainly good at breaking phasewater-enhanced physiques that are all rooted the physical dimensions."

"I see." Ves frowned for a moment. "Well at least I\'m not as fragile as before. It will take a lot of effort for a hostile spiritual entity to kill me in my current state. That won\'t necessarily get me out of trouble, though. I need a weapon that can kill these kinds of threats. For now, I can count on Blinky to help with hurting them, but he has an obvious shortcoming."

Helena nodded in agreement. "Blinky will do well against more primitive gods who know nothing else but to harness their energy like a club, but the more sophisticated ones that have access to a heritage are much trickier to defeat. The latter category of opponents will know better than to get close enough for Blinky to devour their energy. They will stay out of his range and attack you from a distance."

That was a worst case scenario for Ves. If he wasn\'t surrounded by his expert mechs and if his design spirits couldn\'t channel a powerful enough manifestation of themselves, then he would be in big trouble!

His eyes rested on her Death Lotus. "I need a ranged weapon."

"It\'s a start, I guess." Helena shrugged. "Do you have any ideas on how to make one that is powerful enough to defend yourself against predators who are eager to devour your vitality?"

"Hmm… as a matter of fact, I do. Look at this." He said as he summoned the Amastendira from the System Space. "I have always relied on this weapon to defend my life in the early stages of my career. I didn\'t have as many guards and expert mechs were still a distant dream for me at the time. This gun has served me well, but it has become redundant nowadays. Anything it can defeat, my guards can defeat as well. It has become a bit tasteless, actually."

"What do you have in mind then, Ves?"

"I planned to upgrade it so that I have an answer to powerful material and spiritual opponents. I already had a few ideas in mind, but recent changes have caused me to revise my original plan. I need to conduct further research and see how I can upgrade this weapon without breaking its existing advantages."

His sister did not really take the weapon that seriously. "Please keep me in the loop. It will be interesting for me to know whether you can succeed. This is not enough, though. There are enemies that can harm you behind solid obstacles or far away. You won\'t always be able to gain line of sight on your opponents. What will you do then, Ves?"

"I… don\'t now. I will need to think about that. You just introduced this problem to me. I need more time to think about these scenarios and what I can do with the resources in my possession. Hopefully, all of the loot that our clan has plundered from the battlefield will give me additional options."

"Good luck with that, then."

They talked a bit more. Both of them brainstormed on various different ideas, but Ves either didn\'t possess the right expertise or lacked the resources to turn them into a reality.

The former was not a big issue. Ves was used to solving problems and he could always mess around until he developed a viable product.

It was the latter that truly hampered his efforts. His clan had access to more materials than ever. Phasewater wasn\'t even an issue anymore considering how he managed to expand his clan\'s reserves by a huge amount.

His biggest problem was that there were simply too few spiritually reactive materials within his reach.

Lack of resources meant a lack of output. This was beyond frustrating to a mech designer who was accustomed to realizing his completed mech designs!

"It\'s hard to build a castle out of nothing." He sighed. "While I have recently come up with a few potential research directions that might allow me to produce my own spiritually reactive materials, it will only partially mitigate my shortages. Part of the reason why I can design so many mechs is because I have an endless variety of materials at my disposal. That doesn\'t apply to my other works."

His sister paused for a moment.

"Maybe it is because you haven\'t been looking as hard." She said. "I think you are being limited by geography. There are certain regions of any galaxy that contain much more exotics than elsewhere. I think your best bet is to search for suitable materials in these wealthy areas."

Ves grimaced and shook his head. "I can\'t. It is too dangerous for me to enter an upper zone of the new frontier without the ability to defeat first-class forces. I suppose I can find a way to put myself under the protection of a powerful party, but I have too many bad experiences with that. I think it is better for me to keep my distance and wait until my clan has become strong enough to travel through the upper zones without getting challenged."

"That will take too long."

"I know that, Helena. I can\'t do anything about it in the short term. I am much safer if I stick to the less prominent regions of the Red Ocean."

"Hmm… if that is the case, then why not send out your insurance policy instead?" Helena proposed with a grin. She lifted up the cyborg cat with her arms. "Don\'t you think this lovely kitty would make for a fantastic pet for a pampered first-class princess?!"

Ves looked intrigued. "That\'s actually not a bad idea. I can kill multiple birds with one stone!"