The Mech Touch (Web Novel)

Ves looked exasperated at his gear. After performing dozens of hasty experiments, he failed to accomplish anything productive.

By now, the high-end elemental energy locked inside the Unending Regalia and the Hammer of Brilliance had dropped by more than 40 percent. The metal energy was as powerful if not more than universal life energy, but possessed much harsher properties.

Whereas universal life energy got along with anything and was extremely easy to merge with other forms of spiritual energy, metal energy was the opposite.

It was like a raging bull and could not be controlled at all. Whether it was because of Ves and Blinky's insufficient strength or lack of familiarity, the metal energy siphoned from Cassandra Breyer acted like a prisoner who would rather die than submit!

"How the hell can humans even harness this powerful and unruly energy?" Ves wondered.

He never took a good rest after confronting Cassandra Breyer, so his mental and spiritual condition had not yet restored to their peak. This limited his possible choices and forced him to perform rather tame experiments.

He first tried to prevent the metal energy from decaying. He put a portion of it into different containers such as P-stones, luminar crystals and even his own mind.

Nothing worked. The metal energy was so energetic that it required a powerful environment to support its existence. A highly evolved transcendent such as Cassandra Breyer was able to maintain not just one, but five different types of high-end energies at once, which spoke volumes about how powerful she was back when she was in her prime.

It was unfortunate that she had not only turned into a decrepit corpse, but also bumped into a thief like Ves. Who told her to harass him and put up such a spooky act? She got exactly what she deserved!

Now, she was completely dead and gone while Ves managed to salvage a portion of her bounty.

Although Ves still felt uncomfortable about skipping the opportunity to speak to her and decipher her mysterious and profound background, it would have been extremely stupid for him to take the chance.

Just the fact that Cassandra wielded the five elements so proficiently signified that she was definitely a bigshot from the Five Scrolls Compact! Given his hostile relations to this crazy cult, Ves simply couldn't take the risk of letting her regain her full strength.

He shook his head. "I've made the right choice. I enjoy a gamble every now and then, but it is the height of foolishness to play around with anyone who wields so much personal might."

Power was the foundation of survival. If Ves was the stronger party, he would have been more open to hearing what Cassandra had to say. Since he was the weaker party in this instance, he simply did not feel secure enough to maintain his own safety.

Given such a circumstance, it was far more prudent for him to set aside his curiosity and be happy that he managed to get away with his life intact.

The metal energy that he managed to steal from her was just a bonus, and a temporary one at that. There was no need for him to feel distressed about its passing.

As his mood stabilized a bit, he thought about what he could do to get at least something useful out of the metal energy before it dissipated.

He already tried to absorb it several times without yielding any useful results. Vulcan was in a similar position as he had already reached his limits after absorbing a trace amount of high-end energy at the start.

Blinky's special nature allowed him to endure and even digest the powerful metal energy, but he wasn't a storage container. Any metal energy stored inside his body continued to decay without interruption.

Seeing that Ves couldn't keep the metal energy anywhere, his thoughts went towards using it up in a useful fashion.

"I've already tried to merge it with my design spirits, but none of them can handle this powerful and exclusionary energy. It's too violent to absorb and no one else aside from Vulcan possesses a high compatibility with metal."

Surprisingly enough, Zeigra came fairly close. The former Crown Cat and the embodiment of anger among the design spirits used to be famed for crunching and devouring mechs.

As such, when he was exposed to metal energy, his tolerance was considerably greater.

Unfortunately, his foundation was too weak to contain even a pinch of high-end metal energy.

Ves even tried to feed it to Lucky.

"C'mon, you're a cat who likes eating metallic exotics, right? Try to take a nibble of this. It's like taking a sip of an energy drink!"

"Meow!"

The gem cat didn't want anything to do with metal spiritual energy. When Ves forced Lucky to try out a tiny sample, his pet exhibited the same violent rejection reaction!

"MEOWWWW!"

"Okay, okay, I'll stop it! Sheesh! How can your compatibility with metal energy be so poor when metal is practically your only diet?"

"Meow…" Lucky looked aggrieved as he floated away.

Out of desperation, Ves tried several ways to create a new spiritual product, but he simply couldn't come close to creating a new metal-based life form due to several hindrances.

First, he couldn't compact metal energy into a stable spiritual fragment. He lacked the strength to compress it and transform it into a more controllable state.

Second, metal energy attacked and destroyed other forms of spiritual energy, especially when they were weaker. This prevented Ves from using his own life-oriented spiritual energy to infuse life into Cassandra's elemental energy.

Third,

"It's like an incorrigibly poorly-behaved teenager." Ves let out his frustration. "You simply won't do as I ask!"

Throughout his life and career, he had become exposed to many different kinds of spiritual energy and spiritual applications. No matter what kind of weirdness he encountered, he slowly managed to figure them out and harness them for his own use. He even created new possibilities where none existed before.

Inventions such as kinship networks, battle networks, companion spirits, totems and most notably high order living mechs fully showcased his competence in harnessing the phenomenon known as spiritual power!

Yet for all of his prior successes, Ves had little choice but to admit defeat this time. Even if his entire being hungered to absorb and harness this upgraded and expanded version of mech-attributed spiritual energy, he could not do anything about the fact that he was just a low-level mech designer at this time.

Ves eventually sighed and shook his head. "Forget it. I'll just use the remainder of the time on getting a better feel for this metal energy."

Ultimately, he decided to sit down and cautiously extend his spiritual senses towards his dwindling prize.

Now that he wasn't trying to squeeze ideas out of his mind, was able to appreciate the metal energy in a different fashion.

Just getting exposed to it for an instant was invaluable to a mech designer and spiritual engineer like Ves. Ever since he guessed that Star Designers all converted their lower-level mech domains into higher-level metal domains, he believed that generating this powerful energy type was the key to his own future breakthrough!

"This is what I'll be working towards!" Ves grinned as he deepened his familiarity with the flavor and properties of this potent energy type. "It might take a century or two, but once I can directly embark on the road to Star Designer, I'll enjoy an advantage over my peers because I already know where my journey ends!"

Even if all of this metal energy dissipated, it was not a great loss. Vulcan still managed to integrate a minute amount of metal energy. As long as the design spirit expended a bit of effort, that metal energy remained stable enough to prevent it from decaying. This was enough for Ves to revisit it and deepen his familiarity with this powerful spiritual energy attribute for a long time!

The only downside was that Vulcan only took in a small amount, which made it a lot more difficult to study this metal energy, especially when there was so much other activity taking place inside the design spirit.

Ves was much better able to perceive the metal energy's character and traits when it was concentrated and isolated from other influences. This was why this opportunity to study a larger quantity of purified metal energy was so precious.

As the hours went by, Ves only managed to obtain a couple of subtle gains.

His increased familiarity towards metal energy would allow him to detect its presence immediately as long as even a little bit leaked into the environment.

He also learned a bit of its character and what kind of traits were associated with metal energy. Ves knew what he had to work towards in order to become more compatible with it. He understood a little more why his incarnation spirit was able to harness a minute portion of this energy while his original self exhibited a stronger rejection reaction.

"It's not just the difference in strength." Ves muttered. "Vulcan is a powerful design spirit but there are also others who are comparable in strength. What makes him different from the likes of the Superior Mother is that his character and traits are more compatible with metal-attributed spiritual energy!"

This was actually a significant discovery! Ves noted that Vulcan's mech domain wasn't the only reason why the design spirit was reluctantly able to get along with metal energy.

The design spirit's craftsmanship domain also played a significant role!

Craftsmanship came in many forms and was not exclusive to metal shaping. Yet craftsmanship-attributed spiritual attributes happened to possess a high compatibility towards metal energy. The two acted as if they were distantly related to each other.

"Craftsmanship is like a nephew and metal is like an uncle. They're not particularly close, but the uncle won't reject the presence of family."

It helped that Vulcan's interpretation of craftsmanship was heavily grounded towards mechs and metal products. This was a limitation that originated from his creator. As a mech designer, Ves didn't know much about other forms of craftsmanship such as woodworking or flesh sculpting.

Yet this close relationship also built a bridge where Vulcan gained enough tolerance for metal energy that he was able to host a bit of it without getting burned from within!

"Interesting."

Ves began to develop numerous theories after learning about this relationship.

One of his boldest and most speculative theories was that a Master might be able to form a high-level metal domain by combining several lower-level domains, most notably ones centered around mechs and craftsmanship!

Metal energy was broad, profound and encompassed many different aspects. Mastering these aspects separately before combining them together made a lot of sense!

"Perhaps this is the way for weak humans to work towards becoming a Star Designer step by step. There is no need to harness metal energy right away."

If this was the case, Ves had just deduced an unimaginably valuable secret!

Although knowing about these matters didn't provide him with an immediate boost in capabilities, his future road might become a lot smoother now that he gained a better sense of his direction.

The value of knowing about these secrets in advance would fully play out once he became a Master!

Ves already felt a lot more satisfied than before. He was more than satisfied with his profits today. Cassandra Breyer was truly a generous spiritual witch for donating a portion of her strength to smooth out his future progression.

It was a major pity that he wasn't able to make use of her other high-end elemental energies.

What insights could he have derived from studying Cassandra's wood energy, water energy, earth energy or fire energy?

"Maybe I missed an opportunity to evolve my life domain."

Ves did not feel much loss, though. Metal energy was much more closely related to his profession. It most likely served as the key to his ultimate ascension.

He could find other ways to advance his life domain. As someone who was passionate about his work, he did not lack the confidence to develop this aspect of his power by himself!

"I don't need Cassandra Breyer to school me about something that I'm already good at! I'm practically a pioneer in my own field of expertise!"