The Mech Touch

What was the point of creating an entire internal universe that consisted almost entirely of spiritual energy if Ves could not make use of its accumulated resources?

Sure, Blinky's cultivation depended entirely on how extensively he could grow and expand the Blinkyverse, but that did not mean he was prohibited from taking out the energies he absorbed!

The companion spirit just had to be careful not to take out too much at a time. Doing so might weaken the structure and stability of the internal universe.

The Blinkyverse might even collapse in its entirety if it was drained too much!

This was one of the weaknesses of this cultivation method.

Even though Blinky only started to cultivate the Internal Universe Method for a relatively short amount of time, he already absorbed way more E energy radiation from the environment than Ves and Blinky ever harnessed in the past.

However, only a small proportion of the accumulated energies could be spent at a time!

It was like an investment fund that continued to collect money in order to generate more returns by spending it in different ways.

The fund was only able to produce a somewhat consistent return on investment so long as it had enough money and assets in its balance sheet.

Taking out a bit of money would not significantly affect the functioning of the investment fund, but taking away much of it would likely cause it to collapse or wind down!

The Blinkyverse was equivalent to an investment fund from his perspective. The main difference was that a normal fund worked with money, while Blinky's internal universe worked with spiritual energy!

The analogy became a bit more complicated when the Blinkyverse actually contained spiritual energies that aligned with many different attributes.

Ves only needed to draw upon the fire energies stored in the Blinkyverse, but he could not take too much of it, or else the internal universe would lose all source of light and heat!

"I don't want to create a dark and cold universe. Life can hardly exist in such a dreary place." He said to Blinky. "Don't go overboard and do your best to control your output. It is not a big deal if this little experiment fails due to an insufficient supply of energy."

"Mrow mrow!"

The Star Cat did not release the floodgates all at once.

Although it looked as if a lot of fire energies spilled out of his Blinkyverse at once, this was far from the companion spirit's current limit.

Seeing that the positron beam attack phase crystal did not show any reaction at this time, Blinky steadily increased the output.

The saturation of fire energies in the immediate environment rose even faster than before!

Ves began to feel a little hotter. Despite the precise climate control systems that regulated the temperature across the Spirit of Bentheim, he couldn't help but feel as if he had suddenly ended up in the middle of a tropical planet!

It was all an illusion for the most part. The spiritual energies that were attributed towards fire quickly spread out and dispersed into the environment without doing anything special.

Even if all of that fire energies could be used to produce powerful attacks when channeled into specific spells or spiritual constructs, they were mostly harmless when left untouched.

This was why Ves did not try to avoid or do anything to take care of the escaped fire energies.

"It's a pity that Blinky can't devour the released energies." He sighed.

This was an inconvenient limitation. When Blinky's was releasing the energies from his Blinkyverse, he could not swallow back the energies before they dispersed out of his reach.

Ves did not care about this problem at the moment. He only cared about whether his current experiment had any chance of producing a successful result.

"C'mon! It has to work! Even if normal luminar crystals don't have hyper material properties, this attack phase crystal is different."

The positron beam attack phase crystal had become exposed to Venerable Isobel Kotin's force of will for a long time. That inevitably generated a lot of subtle changes to its essence, of which one of them was to make it a lot more compatible with the fire element!

This was his backup plan of sorts.

Whether his theory about luminar crystals was true or false, he hoped that Venerable Isobel's persistent influence over the positron beam attack phase crystal could make a difference in this experiment.

Minutes passed by as Blinky continued to release large amounts of fire energies. Ves grew less and less comfortable by the addition of so much illusionary heat, but he stuck around in the hopes of catching any reactions.

"C'mon. This has to work. Don't stop, Blinky!"

"Mrooow!"

The spiritual cat couldn't keep this up forever. The central star of the Blinkyverse had already lost a lot of power and started to dim. The background stars had also grown a lot fainter, with a few distant stars disappearing in their entirety!

As the Blinkyverse grew colder, it became increasingly more unbalanced. Without sufficient sources of heat and light, the internal universe became shakier and less capable of resisting external shocks.

Ves did not want this to happen! If the Blinkyverse turned into a liability, then it just wasn't worth having it around anymore.

"Mrooooow..."

Just as Blinky began to reach a limit, the positron beam attack phase crystal finally started to produce a noticeable reaction!

"It's working, Blinky! Don't stop! You need to keep going for a while! Do your best to maintain the current concentration of fire energies!"

Blinky had channeled so much fire energies that the luminar crystal finally did not remain silent any longer.

Its entire physical structure started to undergo a mysterious and unexplainable transformation that subtly rearranged its inner structure.

Ves could feel that this transformation gradually made it more compatible with the fire element!

Not only that, but he could feel that its structure could also process fire energy and turn it into output that was much more slanted towards producing powerful flames!

Ves had no idea how the transformed crystal exactly worked, but he was sure that its compatibility with Venerable Isobel Kotin had grown!

The reason why he held this thought was because the crystal actually took on a purple shade!

He believed that this was a manifestation of Isobel's strong influence over the object. As the luminar crystal gradually transformed into an artificial hyper material, it became clear to him that its prior association to an expert pilot undoubtedly produced a more specific result!

Ves did not think he would be able to attain the same result if he conducted this experiment on a freshly synthesized luminar crystal.

"I hope this works out better for Venerable Isobel."

The initial transformation was a bit drastic, but the changes began to reach a plateau as it dragged on for minutes.

"Mrow mrow..."

Blinky visibly grew tired as his Blinkyverse began to grow awfully colder than before.

He eventually reached a limit where it became too detrimental for him to keep spitting fire energies. The companion spirit stopped what he was doing.

Now that the supply of fire energies had ceased, the workshop gradually turned to normal as the illusionary heat dispersed.

"Mrowww..."

"Good work, Blinky. You have done your job. You can go back and recuperate now. Try your best to make up for the lost fire energies first. The Blinkyverse must return to balance before you can fully develop it again."

It was important to bring the Blinkyverse back to equilibrium in case he wanted to pull off this move again in the future.

There were many more luminar crystal weapons that he wanted to augment in a similar manner!

However, the Blinkyverse itself was still a bit too small to withstand the huge expenditure of energy.

The biggest problem was that this hyper material production method was too wasteful and inefficient!

Ves loosely estimated that 99.9999 percent of the fire energies released by Blinky did not do anything useful and spilled into space.

Only 0.0001 percent of the output actually went into transforming the luminar crystal into a fire sympathetic material!

There was clearly a lot of room for improvement. As long as Ves developed a more efficient alternative to the crude and rudimentary method employed by Blinky, it was not out of the question for him to mass produce the sympathetic materials he needed to produce more prime mechs or upgrade his existing ones!

"This is ultimately a much better way to leverage the Blinkyverse to my advantage!"

Ves initially assumed that he would have to wait for Blinky to cultivate all the way to a True God before he could produce large quantities of useful raw materials.

However, if all it took to produce high-quality prime materials was to expose them to a high concentration of spiritual energies, then Ves did not have to wait that long!

"The only issue is Blinky's capacity. He has only completed the first stage of his cultivation method so far, which is far from enough to sustain mass production."

He could only employ this production method on an individual basis, but that was already enough for his current needs.

Once Blinky returned to his head and started to work on solving the deficiency of fire energies in his internal universe, Ves performed a quick examination of the newly transformed luminar crystal.

Though Ves could not make a solid conclusion on whether his theory about luminar crystals was correct, he at least managed to turn the positron beam attack phase crystal into a stronger variant that was more conducive to channeling the power of fire!

Although Ves did not understand much of the physical changes to the crystal, he meticulously recorded it in the faint hope that he could reproduce it in a lab without relying on a flood of fire energies.

Time was short, so he reluctantly suspended his examination when he confirmed that it hadn't changed beyond recognition.

"It should still function as an attack phase crystal more or less."

He quickly put it back into the Ignitron before reassembling the mech rifle.

A short time later, the Promethea reunited with her missing weapon.

The living expert mech immediately sensed a profound change in the Ignitron!

As the Promethea continued to cultivate, both she and Ves noticed that the freshly upgraded weapon began to attract a lot more fire energies than before!

The expert mech could not remain silent after noticing this profound change.

The machine's eyes lit up as her systems powered up a bit. "PROGENITOR. WHAT DID YOU DO TO MY WEAPON?"

Ves replied with a shrug and a sheepish smile. "I don't know myself, actually. You and Isobel will have to explore this by yourselves. If my suspicions are correct, the next time you fire a positron beam at the enemy, it will be much easier to start a wildfire!"

He would have liked to perform a practical test straight away, but this was not possible while the Spirit of Bentheim was engaged in warp travel.

The only way to know whether he succeeded in meaningfully upgrading the Promethea into a stronger prime mech was to witness her performance in the upcoming battle!

Ves had a good feeling about this, though. His design flame burned a little brighter at the prospect of creating yet another way for a mech and a mech pilot to synergize together!

As long as Venerable Isobel was able to maximize the power of Kiroshi through the use of a prime weapon, there was no reason why Ves could apply this new setup to all of his expert mechs!

"The key is energy." He muttered to himself as he reflected on what he had done. "Exotic radiation is a free and ubiquitous source of energy, but it takes a lot of deliberate effort to make use of all of that latent power. None of my mechs have reached their limits in this regard. The best way to strengthen them without actually turning them into proper first-class mechs is to abuse the hell out of prime materials!"