The Mech Touch

As Ves returned to Lady Miralix's compound, he sought out a break room in the mech workshop and began to think about a way to deal with his spiritual salvage.

Its damaged and incomplete state likely rendered it useless in its current state. Trying to instill it into a mech or mech design as a design spirit would probably lead to chaotic and erratic behavior.

Ves predicted that if he idiotically tried to infuse it in the Kinslayer for example, the incoherent instincts and impulses of the spiritual remnant would probably make the mech go out of control at times! At the very least, Lady Miralix might be forced to work against her own mech in the middle of a battle, which was the exact opposite of what he wanted to happen!

In order to shape the X-Factor of a mech into something beneficial, the design spirit had to be alive.

An incomplete collection of spiritual body parts that missed the spiritual equivalent of the head and brains was not what he considered alive.

\"Can the dead be brought back alive?\"

Perhaps not when it came to biological forms of life, but weirder things had happened with spirituality.

For example, back in the Ylvaine Protectorate, the spiritual fragment he refined out of a miniscule portion of Prophet Ylvaine's spiritual remnant started out weak and as clever as a newborn baby.

Yet as time continued to pass, the spiritual fragment started to grow. Its liveliness grew more active and its intelligent consciousness started to become increasingly sophisticated.

Now that so much time had passed, Ves scarcely dared to imagine how far the spiritual fragment developed, especially now that it housed a fantastic mech design!

This precious experience with spiritual remnants gave Ves some ideas on how to make use of his spiritual salvage.

\"First, I need to find a purpose for it. Which project fits it better?\"

Right now, Ves involved himself in two different projects. The existing Kinslayer mech and his unfinished Devil Tiger designs were both based on the tiger mech archetype.

This meant that the Dragon Cat's spirituality could be applied to both of them if he wished.

After a bit of thinking, he decided to apply his gains to Kinslayer. As the more immediate project, Ves could quickly make use of his spiritual salvage before it deteriorated further. Though Ves had taken it out of the imaginary realm and its corrosive winds, that did not mean the remains stopped deteriorating!

Its condition was so awful that Ves didn't trust its integrity to hold up for long.

Its instability also made it unviable for Ves to use it as a design spirit right away. He needed to do something about the damage before he could take the next step.

Aside from its deteriorating state, the other reason why Ves declined to apply the spiritual remnant to his Devil Tiger design was because too much had been lost.

\"It's not worthy enough to be applied to my own designs.\"

Ves cared less about the Kinslayer than his Devil Tiger design. The latter was his own work, while the former was just a mech he agreed to modify. His emotional investment in the Kinslayer was so low that he regarded it as a good platform to do some experiments!

\"Let's see if I can put my salvage to use on this mech!\"

Though the consequences were fairly awful if Ves failed to make effective use of the spiritual remnant, Ves didn't care right now. He couldn't wait to play around with what he obtained!

As Ves thought of ways to convert the spiritual remnant into something usable, he began to look at it from a salvager's perspective.

Salvagers made their living searching through trash belts in space or on forgotten battlefields on the grounds.

Mech wrecks were still worth quite a lot of money!

Most outfits knew that too and tried to retrieve the fallen wrecks as much as possible, but sometimes this wasn't viable. Salvagers swooped in to obtain the lesser value wrecks.

Sometimes, all they managed to pick up was a bunch of loose parts separated from the frame of a broken mech!

Even so, salvaging incomplete wrecks and disparate parts was still worth it. The savvier salvagers even found ways to repair the damage and piece the parts back together onto a working mech frame!

Of course, the quality of those restored mechs left much to be desired. If the salvagers were unable to obtain or reproduce all of the original parts of a mech, their resident mech designers usually designed the missing parts on the fly.

This led to the creation of mechs made out of a mix of salvaged and freshly-fabricated parts.

\"Some of them are real abominations!\"

This was how most frankenstein mechs came to be. The salvagers completely perverted the original designs and the intentions behind them in their quest to cobble together mechs on the cheap!

As much as Ves hated the practice, he had to admit it was an efficient use of trash. Right now, Ves contemplated doing something similar to the spiritual remnant of the Dragon Cat.

\"So what if it's incomplete? I'll just fill up its holes with something else!\"

Of course, that 'something else' had to be something substantial and compatible.

To be honest, Ves was dealing with something completely new here. He didn't have the guidance of Qilanxo's spiritual fragment or any existing example to draw upon. The risk of messing up was quite significant!

Solving this problem fell into the domain of the path of life. If he wanted to come up with a viable way to turn his salvage into something useful, he had to delve deeper into the mysteries and potential of life.

Right now, the answer he came up with substituting the missing spiritual parts with other parts.

Nonetheless, it wasn't as simple as obtaining a random chunk of spiritual energy and throwing it at the hole-ridden spiritual remnant of the Dragon Cat.

That sounded as idiotic as trying to plug the gaps of a damaged mech by pouring water into its holes!

If he wanted to turn his salvage into something useful, he had to encourage a transformation, something which didn't happen normally.

Usually, spiritual energy with different attributes and imprints repelled or clashed against each other. Rarely would they merge or meld together into a greater whole.

As Ves thought about how he could overcome this problem, he came up with three important points.

First, the spiritual remnant was rather weak. Weaker than his own Spirituality. Combined with its lack of consciousness and liveliness made it extraordinarily malleable to manipulation.

Second, since Ves intended to use it on the Kinslayer in order to give its X-Factor a big boost, why not make use of the spirituality of its mech pilot while he was at it? Perhaps something surprising might happen if he tried to blend the spirituality of Lady Miralix with the Dragon Cat's spiritual remnant.

\"The only problem is.. Lady Miralix doesn't have what I need!\"

Just like most mech pilots in the galaxy, Lady Miralix may have the genetic aptitude to become a mech pilot, but she lacked the spiritual potential to break through the extraordinary threshold!

Ves did not understand much about spiritual potential. He didn't know whether it was something that a tiny proportion of humanity was born with it, or if certain lucky people developed it after undergoing an unusual event in their lives that caused their minds to produce significant amounts of spiritual energy.

Even if the latter was possible, Ves did not know how to spark this process.

Still… what if he tried something?

\"Hehe..\"

He grinned as he started to come up with a radical experiment. He made a lot of assumptions as he tried to come up with a way to make the spiritual remnant more compatible with Lady Miralix.

What if he inserted the spiritual remnant in Lady Miralix's mind?

Ves had a feeling that dumping the spiritual remnant in her mind was a very bad idea! Since their attributes were fundamentally different, there was no way her mind would be able to accommodate something alien!

\"However, storing it there isn't the point.\"

Her mind may be almost devoid of spiritual energy, but it was still suffused with her presence.

Her mind contained all of her thoughts and emotions. Most of it was intangible to Ves as they possessed neither a material or spiritual presence. They existed in another undefined plane that Ves couldn't manipulate for the time being.

However, Ves guessed that those thoughts and emotions wouldn't sit still if he shoved a foreign spiritual remnant into Lady Miralix's mind!

\"This is going to be a very delicate process!\"

There were so many ways this could go wrong!

Yet despite the risks, Ves still wanted to go through with this experiment!

The plan he came up with sounded pretty crazy, even to him! Yet he also believed it had a chance of working!

\"Even if there's a lot of side effects, it's worth a try!\"

The possibilities he came up with intrigued him to such an extent that he threw caution to the wind. He just had to try it out!

\"Hehehehe!\" He rubbed his hands in excitement. \"I've never done this before, but let's see how it goes!\"

Ves began to tamper some of his glee in order to focus his mind. He began to undergo another spiritual excursion. As soon as he sensed he shifted over in the realm he had just explored a short while ago, he carefully explored his surroundings.

Right now, he wanted to find Lady Miralix's spiritual presence in this strange void.

\"This is going to take some effort.\" He muttered. \"It's worse than finding a needle in a haystack!\"

People who crossed the extraordinary threshold such as expert pilots and Journeyman Mech Designers occupied a very strong presence in the imaginary realm. They maintained outposts or fortifications that were strong enough to repel intruders and defend their spiritual energy against the corrosive winds that flowed throughout this intangible plane of existence.

What about normal people? What about those who didn't even exhibit a sliver of spiritual potential?

Ves initially believed they were completely cut off from the imaginary realm, but now he began to doubt that conclusion. His insight into the imaginary realm led him to suspect that all forms of life possessed a presence in this place.

They were just too weak for him to take note.

Ves began the boring process of exploring the seemingly empty surroundings from his emergence point. Though the corrosive wind was seemingly the only thing that occupied his surroundings, he refused to believe that normal people left no trace at all in this realm.

\"Lady Miralix should be in her office, so she's physically close.\"

That usually meant that her spiritual presence ought to be close as well in the imaginary realm. Ves cast his senses in an expanding sphere around his emergence point until he finally found a tiny pinprick that faintly tasted like Lady Miralix to his spiritual senses!

\"This is the place!\"

Though the hole in the imaginary realm looked extraordinarily tiny, size didn't always matter when it came to the imaginary realm.

Ves extended a tiny portion of his spiritual projection and compressed it as much as possible.

Though its strength was nothing to speak of, Ves managed to squeeze it small enough to barely fit through the tiny opening.

As expected, his semi-detached spiritual projection entered into the mindscape of Lady Miralix!

\"However.. as expected, something weird is going on.\"

His spiritual projection didn't exist in the same phase as Lady Miralix's mind! This meant that his spiritual projection could fly right out of her mind without bumping into anything, because they were completely unable to touch each other!

However, as Ves scrutinized the condition of his spiritual projection further, he found that this wasn't entirely the case. His Spirituality was so potent that it exerted some kind of force around it that resembled gravity in its working.

The thoughts and emotions that flowed through Lady Miralix's mind bent around his presence!

\"Good! So there's some interaction after all!\"

With a bit of finicking with his own thoughts, he managed to pull the Dragon Cat's spiritual remnant from his mind and deposit it at the site of his spiritual projection.

He managed to dump the remnant straight into Lady Miralix's mind!

Same as his own piece of Spirituality, Lady Miralix's mind barely reacted to the introduction of the spiritual remnant of an exobeast.

Both of them also existed in a different phase!

\"Damnit, what is going on?\"