The Mech Touch

Cultivation was largely useless to humanity back in the Milky Way. The absence of the power of heaven meant that spiritual energy was too scarce for most methods to play any significant role.

The most viable source of spiritual energy that people could gain access to was by generating it themselves through their own thoughts and emotions.

It made a lot of sense that mech pilots and mech designers still managed to do well in this galactic energy desert.

Mech pilots fueled their own progression by pushing themselves beyond their limits and generating extreme emotions in the heat of battle.

Mech designers advanced by getting immersed in the creation of unprecedented works and receiving the validation of their clients and customers.

Yet as exotic radiation continued to enrich the Red Ocean Dwarf Galaxy, traditional cultivation that ancient humans abandoned a long time ago suddenly became viable again.

Ves predicted that a lot of dusty old cultivation methods that certain groups with long heritages kept in their vaults might make a resurgence again.

The Aduc Family that had long practiced the Annals of Terra Vita without any apparent results for a long time would definitely be able to notice the changes.

It was extremely likely that other families and inheritors of secret cultivation traditions had already begun to exploit cultivation once again!

It was already bad enough if all of these forgotten offshoots of the Five Scrolls Compact utilized cultivation to secretly get ahead of the competition.

Ves found it even worse if random people recklessly engaged in cultivation without knowing the full risks and dangers of the method they employed!

The Red Two had to step up their regulation on this front. In fact, Ves predicted that the Transhumanist Faction were already on the job. The faction was not only monitoring the current situation, but had also begun to formulate a complete response in order to shape red humanity's relationship with cultivation.

"The longer they take, the more elaborate their plan."

A quick and hasty response might be able to plug the immediate gap, but a slower and more elaborate plan would lead to fewer fault lines in the future.

"Hopefully the Survivalists that I will meet next week will know a thing or two about this plan."

Ves set aside his concerns about cultivation for the time being. Though he had promised to work on a possible way to help his second daughter increase her chances of developing the right genetic aptitude, this matter was way too complicated for him to tackle by himself.

He needed to consult a lot more with his mother and he also had to find out what the mechers were up to. Only then did it make sense for him to tackle this dubious project.

Still, as Ves thought back on the contents of the experimental meditation methods spread across the galactic net, he personally did not have much hope that this approach would actually work.

Cultivation had limits. If anyone could become a fire-breathing dragon or an invulnerable multi-armed goddess just by wishing for it really hard, there wouldn't be any point to designing mechs anymore!

Humanity did not fully understand all of the variables that determined one's genetic aptitude, so anyone who attempted to base a cultivation method around it would never be able to get it completely right.

"It would be great if it can actually be done, but I'm not getting my hopes up." Ves murmured under his breath.

The difficulty of developing a viable cultivation method to promote genetic aptitude was as difficult as trying to produce a modern mech with the use of primitive ancient blacksmithing tools.

Perhaps it might be possible to forge the larger and simpler parts with an old-fashioned forge, but it was impossible to fabricate the complicated circuitry, the incredibly difficult alloys and the huge amount of tiny parts that all needed to meet tight tolerances!

The best that Ves could do in this situation was to design and forge a highly simplified mech that was lacking in a lot of features and was only a fraction as strong.

Ves already took into account that he may not be able to make Andraste's dream come true. He hated the thought of disappointing his little girl, but sooner or later his children all had to make the realization that not every gift was destined to fall into their hands.

Genetic aptitude was not a phenomenon that was intrinsically related to cultivation to begin with. It was mainly a biological requirement to effectively control large and complicated machines through the use of a neural interface.

The only individual who was probably closest to understanding it was Divine Hussain Albedo, the leader of the Transhumanist Faction.

Unfortunately for Ves and many people in the Red Ocean, the Chosen Human was still stationed in the Milky Way as far as everyone knew!

The esteemed hero was not among the 8 known god pilots who stood up for red humanity.

This was an enormous regret for Ves. If the Chosen Human was stuck on this side of the greater beyonder gate when the Great Severing occurred, then he would have definitely become as accessible as the Polymath!

So long as Ves made enough contributions to the Transhumanist Faction and quickly gained the appreciation of the higher ups, there would have been a good chance that he would get to meet with this legendary god pilot in person!

Unfortunately, it was not to be. A lot of brilliant Star Designers and god pilots that could each play a useful role in the Red Ocean had all been left behind.

Ves shrugged. "Oh well."

He left this matter behind and spent his time on other matters.

He took care of a lot of important business for the rest of the day.

He made sure to transfer a sufficient amount of living puelmer and yurzen captives to the Dragon's Den in order to increase his supply of test subjects.

He presided over a meeting to formally finalize the division of all of the loot. The Larkinson Clan got what it wanted and was able to lay claim to 50 percent of all of the spoils.

This expressly included ownership over half of the archeship as well as total ownership of Stingray 2!

Deciding what to do with all of this advanced alien tech became the next headache.

The other alliance partners agreed to transfer the archeship to a first-class research group so long as the deal was not too sketchy.

It was not practical to keep Stingray 2 close at hand. The hull had suffered a lot of damage and had lost much of her essential functionality.

"Let's send her back to the Davute System." Vivian Tsai proposed. "Our branch in the colonial state can keep her safe and employ its own researchers to study the alien vessel. Depending on our goals, we can either disassemble her to obtain the greatest amount of research results, or we can convert her into a human warship if you are confident that we can win an appropriate Warship Token."

Ves snorted at that last suggestion. "Given the mass and volume of Stingray 2, only a Heavy Cruiser Token will grant us permission to use her in the field. According to the current bounties, we must find a way to kill a phase whale or a greater phase lord in order to earn this reward."

"Did we not manage to defeat not one, but several phase whales over the course of our stay in the Red Ocean?" Vivian innocently asked.

"...Let's keep our options open. Are you sure Stingray 2 can be converted to human use? Her ceilings are so goddamn low that no human can crew her, let alone get past their tiny hatches!"

The shipwright was well aware of this issue. "This is why this project is not a refit but a reinvention. It is never a good idea to rely too much on alien tech. We will have to rip out most of her ship systems and put human equivalents in their place, so the interior will be completely different anyway. The reason why we are not starting completely from scratch is because we require more extensive drydock facilities to construct a strong outer hull that can fully withstand the ravages of war. Keeping the current hull and essential structural elements will save us a lot of work."

"I see." Ves understood what she was talking about due to his background as a mech designer. "You can order the Larkinson Branch to do what you want. Don't be in a hurry to transform Stingray 2 as it is unlikely that we'll be able to earn that Heavy Cruiser Token anytime soon. Technology is constantly advancing. Perhaps we'll be able to master the production and use of archemetal in a few years. Make sure that the hull is empty enough to accommodate the latest advancements."

The woman nodded. "Understood. We will take care of it. If you don't want to wait for a token, we can also choose to convert Stingray 2's hull into a first-class combat carrier. Her mech capacity won't be optimal due to her sleeker and more narrow structure, but her defenses and mobility will be more than satisfactory. We can use the converted carrier as the perfect chaser of fleeing alien warships and phase lords as long as we fill her up with expert mechs or extremely powerful ranged mechs."

That was actually a good alternative. The Battle of Corellix exposed a lot of inadequacies, one of which was an inability to effectively pursue fleeing starships.

During the end of the Battle of Ramage Repulsor, the Trampier of Stars easily made a getaway when he saw that his battleship was bound to fall into the hands of his human attackers.

Ves still felt pained about this. Who knew whether other phase lords such as the Eminence of Torment would be able to flee the reach of the Golden Skull Alliance just as effectively.

"Your suggestion is good. Please prepare the hull of Stingray 2 that we have the option to choose."

Once he took care of this matter, Ves temporarily separated with most of his clansmen and boarded a stealth shuttle in order to complete another chore that had to be kept secret at all cost.

This was because he wanted to retrieve the hidden weapons of mass destruction that the Phobos had quietly parked beyond the range of most sensors!

The weapons were all rather sizable, so it would cost Ves a hefty amount of Ascension Points to free up enough space in the Vault of Eternity.

Due to his recent spending spree, Ves was only left with 135 Ascension Points. He was extremely reluctant to spend a dozen or more AP to accommodate these sizable weapons on a long-term basis.

"Wait, 1 don't need to store them in their entirety."

It took a bit of effort to study the powerful superweapons while keeping everything as hidden as possible, but Ves eventually discovered that the bombs and missiles could be partially disassembled.

The arche had constructed them in a semi-modular fashion. The warheads were largely self-contained and could be placed inside different containers and delivery vessels.

What this meant was that Ves could get away with using up a small amount of storage space inside the Vault of Eternity to store the only forbidden parts about the anti-matter bombs and transphasic fusion missiles!

The only downside to doing this was that it would be rather inconvenient to make quick use of them from the moment he pulled them out of his System Space again.

Ves did not mind this shortcoming.

It took a bit of time and effort to take out the warheads one by one and deposit them into the Vault of Eternity.

He had already freed up as much space as possible by dumping out all of the remaining stores of phasewater that he kept in his private storage.

This left him with a small collection of empty archemetal shells. Ves eventually decided to secretly transfer them over to the Blinding Banshee for safekeeping. Who knew when he might have a use for them again in the future.