Chapter 600: Vessel

After getting his jokes out of the way, Grey finally started thinking seriously about what Prometheus had actually asked of him, and almost immediately he realized that the first requirement alone was fucking ridiculous.

He needed to reach Command Class with a Vessel housing Prometheus, which effectively meant crafting a Command Class Vessel specifically capable of carrying the little red-gold bastard. That sounded straightforward when written in a notification, right up until Grey remembered that Prometheus technically wasn’t even Proving Class right now.

Grey almost never thought about Prometheus’ actual Class anymore, mostly since the thing broke so many normal rules that trying to categorize it felt pointless, but there was still a reason it had remained unclassified all this time.

Every Vessel Grey had placed Prometheus into had started as someone else’s blueprint, designed around someone else’s Spirit and someone else’s intentions, then Grey had shoved Prometheus inside and hoped the compatibility wasn’t complete dogshit.

Even his best results had depended heavily on outside circumstances, which meant he had never actually built Prometheus a home that belonged to it.

That was probably why the quest started there.

If Grey couldn’t complete the first two requirements, then he had absolutely no business trying to rob an Ascendant or fight a true Dominus, and Prometheus wasn’t screwing with him nearly as much as the little flame wanted him to think.

A proper Vessel would finally let Grey see what Prometheus could really do, then constructing a Dominus Class mech afterward would prove that his own crafting ability had caught up enough to take advantage of it.

There was another benefit too.

The Mechanical Jaw Spirit finally had a proper Vessel waiting for it as well, or at least Grey already knew where to find one. Any sufficiently high-level blueprint within the Tome of the Mechanical Jaw Lineage should naturally fit the Spirit so long as Grey didn’t fuck up the construction, which meant he was practically guaranteed to eventually reach 100% compatibility.

Once both were finished, Grey wouldn’t have one perfectly matched mech and Spirit combination, he would have two. That thought alone made his fingers itch.

The Mechanical Jaw Spirit was the easy half, though, while Prometheus remained an enormous question mark.

Grey had no lineage tome telling him what shape Prometheus wanted, no ancient blueprint, no convenient instructions, and not even a vague description of what kind of mech was supposed to house it. Still, there were a few things Grey could work out on his own, and one of them felt almost certain.

Prometheus needed a Prosthetic Mech.

Not necessarily in the traditional sense, but something operating according to the same principles. A normal mech communicated with the Neural Frame, drawing instructions from it and transmitting information back, while a Prosthetic went much further and became part of that system itself, replacing damaged or absent branches so completely that the mech essentially functioned as an artificial extension of the Neural Frame.

That was also why Prosthetic Mechs were such a pain in the ass to construct and couldn’t simply be pulled off whenever someone felt like changing their outfit.

If Grey wanted a Vessel capable of truly displaying Prometheus’ power, then simple communication wasn’t good enough.

The mech itself needed to think with him.

Once Grey accepted that point, several other conclusions followed almost immediately, and the first was scale. There was no chance something as absurd as Prometheus could reach its full potential inside another jaw, gauntlet, pauldron, or random piece of jewelry, especially when Grey already knew that even tiny increases in Sync Rate caused enormous changes in what the Spirit could accomplish.

Whatever he built would need enough structure to imitate an entire Neural Frame rather than just one small branch.

Grey slowly looked down at his body.

"Full armor..."

That made the most sense.

A suit from head to toe could spread artificial Neural pathways across his entire body, giving Prometheus space to act as the central brain while still communicating directly with Grey’s natural Frame beneath it.

The Vessel wouldn’t merely receive signals when Grey wanted to use an ability, it could potentially interpret his intentions as quickly as his own body did, then respond through Prometheus before Grey consciously realized he had given an order.

That sounded fucking amazing. There was just one tiny issue.

Prosthetic Mechs were designed to replace something.

Grey stared at his hand, flexed his fingers, then looked down at his legs. Everything was still attached, everything worked perfectly fine, and even after the amount of shit he had gone through recently, Grey wasn’t particularly interested in chopping his arms and legs off so he could replace them with shiny robot versions.

"My harem would riot."

The angel lady’s expression went flat somewhere inside his head.

Grey ignored her and kept thinking, tracing an imaginary network across his skin while he tried to work out where a second Neural Frame could even fit. A Prosthetic normally latched onto the remaining healthy branches and filled an absence, which gave it a natural position within the Neural Frame hierarchy, but Grey didn’t have an absence for Prometheus to occupy.

Trying to force another structure into the exact same position as his natural Frame might interfere with his abilities at best, while at worst he might actually cook his nervous system and end up drooling into a cup.

So that wasn’t the answer. He needed all the benefits of a Prosthetic without actually replacing anything.

Grey’s eyes narrowed as he considered his existing mechs one by one, searching for something that already interacted with his Neural Frame in an unusual way. The Bringer of Light gloves didn’t fit, The Virtueless was too specialized, and his Helm Frame was technically closer to what he wanted but still sat on top of his natural structure rather than truly becoming part of it.

Then Grey’s gaze drifted toward his wrist.

The Infernal Temper Band sat there innocently.

Grey stopped moving.

A Fire Elemental with a living Neural Frame had been compressed into a tiny portable Vessel without losing the ability to express that Frame outside of the mech. More importantly, when Grey used Veyrath, he wasn’t replacing his own fire-related pathways or grafting a new limb onto himself, he was carrying a second functioning Neural structure alongside his own and letting the two communicate.

Grey’s lips slowly curled upward.

What if a Prosthetic didn’t have to replace his Neural Frame at all? What if he built a second one around it?

Grey stared at the bracelet for another few seconds, then his grin stretched ear to ear.

"Oh, you beautiful little portable oven."

Veyrath immediately began radiating murderous heat.