The Mech Touch

Sometimes, spirituality left an echo behind. Ves likened it to a space where a spiritual energy dwelled for so long that its sudden absence left a gaping hole and some lingering ripple effects.

The echo he sensed within the Dragon Cat's heart was like the start of a thread that led off far away and into the imaginary realm.

This was what he sought!

As long as he found a trail, he might be able to find her remnant spirituality!

What happened after an entity with spiritual potential died?

He was about to find out!

He ignored Lucky and Nitaa. He ignored the chill and the stench of dead flesh and blood. He simply closed his eyes and extended his Spirituality in a tentacle that slowly crawled its way towards the site of the echo.

Once his Spirituality reached that point, he began to explore the indentation that the Dragon Cat's spiritual energy left behind.

What he found was largely a void that was difficult to describe. Though Ves figured he might learn something useful if his Spirituality dwelled here for a while, he suspected he was on a time limit.

The more he dawdled, the more the spiritual remnant of the Dragon Cat degraded!

He had to find its location in the imaginary realm right away!

After a bit of vague exploration, he finally found a tunnel, for lack of a better world. Ves sent his Spirituality through the tunnel, fearless of what might lay ahead. If worse came to worst, he could just cut off the spiritual energy he invested through the portal.

Fortunately, he encountered no imaginary space beasts or spiritual eldritch horrors or the like. As his Spirituality entered a plane that did not exist in reality, he instantly felt he entered familiar turf.

The imaginary realm's corrosive winds caressed his tendril of spirituality, attempting to wear it out and break it down into ownerness spiritual energy that would add their strength to the wind!

Fortunately, the quality of his Spirituality easily held against the docile winds. As long as he didn't encounter a spiritual hurricane or something, he could easily persist for a long while.

Now where was the spiritual remnant he sought for? He found nothing in the immediate vicinity of his emergence point in the spiritual realm.

\"Damnit.. don't tell me it's gone with the wind?\"

The way the imaginary realm worked was kind of fuzzy to Ves. Still, if the spiritual wind acted like regular wind, then it might have whisked away the spiritual remnant!

\"How does anchoring even work in this kind of place?\"

He didn't know, and right now he didn't care. All he wanted was to find the drifting spiritual remnant before the chaotic turbulence in the wind threw it far off course!

\"Follow the wind!\"

Out of every direction the spiritual remnant could have drifted, following the overall direction of the wind was his best bet. Right now, the wind blowed into one broad direction, and Ves started to coast on it before accelerating even further.

He had to outrun the wind if he wanted to catch up to the spiritual remnant!

A lot of time passed. To be honest, Ves lost all track of time as he continued to stand and close his eyes right next to the humongous carcass of the Dragon Cat.

Lucky grew bored and played with bits and pieces of the carcass while Nitaa vigilantly remained on guard.

Even if absolutely nothing happened, she never grew bored or complacent!

As for Ves, his travels through the spiritual realm was an unimaginably uneventful journey. Much of the spiritual realm was empty, giving him the illusion that he wasn't progressing at all!

All around, a white-like fog extended in each direction. Carried by the wind, the spiritually corrosive fog blew aimlessly from one point in the imaginary realm to another point.

Despite the incredible dullness and the lack of progress, Ves persisted in his search. He could last for days or even weeks if he had to, though he couldn't afford to waste too much time in this cooling chamber.

He still had a job to do! Lady Miralix expected him to soup up her Kinslayer and the mechs of her subordinates, and quickly at that! Ves also had to hurry up considering that he was on a fairly short timetable.

Nonetheless, the tranquility of the imaginary realm lulled him into a very serene mood. With all the happenings going on in the material realm, he enjoyed this period of quiet as an escape from both his worries and responsibilities.

Of course, the paranoid part of his mind did its best to keep Ves from becoming too immersed in this idyllic imaginary environment.

\"I can't fall asleep! Who knows when or if I'll wake up!\"

He tried to pepper himself up occasionally in order to keep his mind on his primary task. Yet as an indeterminate time went by, Ves started to doubt whether he was still on course to find the missing spiritual remnant.

If he had a better impression of its flavor, then Ves would have probably been able to hone in on it through some other method. An echo was not enough for him to sample the flavor of the Dragon Cat's spirituality.

\"I don't even know if I can identify it if I get close.\"

He could only continue with the gamble he had made and hope the wind hadn't changed direction too much.

Fortunately, his persistence eventually yielded a result, as he started to sense a vague spiritual presence in a different direction than he thought.

He immediately woke from his state of half-focus and began to hone in on the direction of what he sensed.

The emanation in the distance grew stronger, causing him to become encouraged.

He found something!

Time passed, and before he knew it, his spiritual presence in the imaginary realm had reached the side of what appeared to be a very chaotic cloud of spiritual energy!

\"This!\"

Ves had a very strong feeling that he had found his goal!

Yet despite succeeding in tracking down the errant spiritual remnant, he had yet to rejoice.

That was because there was a very big problem with what he found!

\"It's degraded to an awful state! It's deteriorating further even now!\"

The spiritual remnant's size led Ves to believe it hadn't been very strong when it used to be whole and healthy. It's heavily-damaged and bleeding state weakened the Dragon Cat's spirituality even further, putting it close to the brink of complete deconstruction!

Ves couldn't think that much at this moment. If he wanted to salvage anything out of the Dragon's Cat spirituality, then he had to act quickly! The more he dawdled, the more the corrosive spiritual wind submerged the former exobeast's precious spiritual energy!

\"What should I do? How can I maximize his gains?\"

In ordinary circumstances, Ves would opt to carve out a small chunk of spiritual energy out of a greater entity. In previous cases, he succeeded in doing so to a couple of unalert expert pilots.

He could do so here as well. In fact, it was probably even easier because the heavily-damaged spiritual remnant didn't show signs of conscious guidance. That, and the holes and tears riddled throughout the spiritual remnant made it extraordinary easily for him to swoop in and grab a bunch of alien spiritual energy.

Yet.. why go for just a small fragment of a small entity when he could grab the whole thing instead?

Was it viable for him to gulp the entire spiritual remnant with a single bite?

Ves had the impression that he was a snake trying to swallow a mouse. It would probably strain him a bit if he attempted such, but it wouldn't break his limits. The spiritual remnant was already so weak that it might be viable for him to grab the whole thing!

\"Let's do it! What could go wrong?\"

He acted on his impulse and his intuition and boldly tried to grab the weakened spiritual remnant.

While the remnant exhibited a pronounced lack of conscious resistance, parts of it still tried to fight against the foreign spiritual energy.

As someone who broke through the extraordinary threshold and grew substantially in Spirituality ever since, Ves managed to exert enough strength to keep it under control.

It was working!

As his Spirituality tried to take a firm and all-encompassing grip over the spiritual remnant, the corrosive spiritual wind from the imaginary realm stopped battering the weakening entity.

In exchange, the increased surface area of his own spiritual energy caused him to receive a lot more battering from the imaginary environment!

He had to leave the imaginary realm as soon as possible! Even now, his stretched Spirituality was losing grip on his prize! It was as if the imaginary realm really didn't want anyone to make off with one of its prizes!

\"Return! I have to return!\"

A lot of aspects about the imaginary realm still confused him, but he was pretty sure he didn't have to go all the way back to the hole he initially emerged from. In fact, leaving the imaginary realm with his prize turned out to be as easy as concentrating on the idea.

One moment, his consciousness stretched all the way to the imaginary realm.

In the next moment, his consciousness returned to his mind, but this time he brought back a guest!

Ves opened his eyes and gasped. \"Wow! Is it really so easy?\"

The only reason why he encountered less hindrances than he expected was due to the awful state of his spiritual salvage.

Even now, in a cavity within his mind, the spiritual remnant looked more dead than alive!

The sight of this sad cloud of barely-coherent spiritual energy made him feel.. disappointed.

Was this what hours worth of exploration in the imaginary realm yielded? Was this the extent of what remained of the Dragon Cat?

Not only had the spiritual winds of the imaginary realm ravaged the remnant, Ves also had the feeling that even in its intact state, it was still incomplete. He suspected that some of its spiritual energy must have lingered in the head of the Dragon Cat, though he wasn't quite sure of this guess!

\"There's too many things I don't know!\"

He could leave those mysteries for later. Right now, Ves wanted to inspect the state of his salvaged spiritual remnant in greater detail in order to see whether it could be used in one of his ongoing projects.

His attention fully returned to the material realm. He glanced at Nitaa and gestured with his arms. \"I'm done here. Let's go back to the compound housing the Catstrikers.\"

He picked up Lucky who was chewing on a scale of the Dragon Cat and left the cooling chamber.

Soon enough, he boarded an aircar and began to inspect the new entity in his mind during the short flight.

As he inspected the spiritual remnant in greater detail, he managed to make several notable observations.

First, the spiritual remnant was more than a fragment, but less than a fully-functional entity.

In fact, unlike living spiritual entities, the remnant he retrieved was as lively as his cat ear attachments. Aside from some instinctive reactions, it exhibited no consciousness at all!

Did he retrieve the spiritual equivalent of a mutilated carcass from the graveyard of the imaginary realm?

He cursed a bit. \"Damnit! What use is this barely-coherent collection of junk!\"

As he inspected the spiritual remnant in greater detail, he realized that it was missing far too much of its former existence. Instead of retrieving a 'complete' spiritual carcass, he felt as if he only retrieved a forelimb, a rear limb, a chewed-up torso and perhaps part of the Dragon Cat's tail!

This was not a good foundation for an image! Such a mangled and incomplete spiritual remnant was worse than a spiritual fragment because the latter at least enjoyed conscious guidance from its source!

\"What can I even do with a bunch of incomplete salvage?\" He muttered and pressed his face against his palms.