The Mech Touch

Ves found the sketch to be beautiful.

The tentacled, two-headed organic defensive mech was a living machine in the truest sense of the word.

It not only represented a break from his previous work, but also an evolution on his quest to make his mech more alive.

Ves became affected by a sense of purpose as he worked to refine the sketch.

He initially wanted to stick to designing a simple landbound mech, as that would bring the least amount of complications to the design project, but he changed his mind halfway.

"This design concept is far too promising to remain unused. My clan deserves to benefit from its features!"

He decided to alter the initial draft design and incorporated a serviceable organic flight system to the rear.

In order to fit the theme and aesthetics that he wanted to impart in his mech design, Ves spent more time than necessary to expand the organic components of the flight system.

He shaped the extra mass into light but impressive-looking wings.

As Ves colored the wings in a particular shade, the biomech gained a distinctive appearance that satisfied his need to make his mech unique and recognizable.

No one would be able to mistake his biomech for anything else!

After applying a few refinements, Ves took a step back and evaluated his work in a holistic sense.

"Beautiful."

The cosmetic refinements he made to his draft design reinforced the notion that it depicted a space knight that was thick and robust enough to withstand the rigors of battle.

Different from his metallic mechs, Ves actively made changes to his visual style in order to emphasize and complement the organic nature of his upcoming mech design.

Ves had shaded the bone scales that served as the organic space knight's armor system in a maroon tint. It was a darkish sort of red that deliberately harkened back to human blood.

If that wasn't enough, Ves also shaded the beautiful feathers of the bioknight's wings in a different shade of red.

The entire biomech looked as if it had been drenched in a vat of blood to the point where the color had seeped throughout its entire organic frame.

While Ves had added touches of black to break the monotony, add more definition and make his work a little more complex, it was undeniable that the biomech was themed around blood!

This was a deliberate choice on his part.

It even extended to the two heads of his space knight. One of the armored-looking heads largely portrayed a human expression.

Although its life-like appearance caused the entire mech to look disturbingly like a humanoid giant alien rather than a biomech, there was nothing special about it other than the third eye that served as Ves' signature look.

It was the other head that signified that something might be horribly wrong about the mech.

Ves had taken inspiration from the vampire myth that occasionally experienced a resurgence in pop culture.

The second head looked like a more feral version of a human head. Ves had shaped and angled the facial features in order to make it look savage and feral.

If that wasn't enough, he also added a set of fangs to its mouth in order to complete the look!

In the end, Ves had sketched a biomech that ended up with a lot more depth than he had set out to portray from the start.

He got caught up in his excitement and went a little overboard. He simply couldn't hold himself back when he began to come up with all kinds of new and brilliant ideas.

The end result was an organic space knight that was characterized by two major themes: blood and duality.

The blood part was obvious, but it went even deeper than its look.

"Blood is the central ingredient of this biomech!"

Every biomech was a living organism for the most part. Unlike conventional mechs that used pipes or lines to transfer electrical energy and other resources from one place to another place, biomechs used veins and nerves to perform the same functions.

Most biomechs tended to incorporate body systems that adapted the biologies of strong organic species.

There was even a faction within the biomech industry that solely worked on highly modified human biotissue!

Although the differences were so big that the flesh utilized by biomechs performed drastically better from baseline human flesh, they were still 'human' in at least some sense of the word.

Ves had opted to base his new organic space knight out of a human body system rather than an alternative based on a more powerful organism.

He had ready access to the biotissue of the Titania, which was harder, tougher, richer and more superior in many other ways.

However, it was not what he was looking for. Not only was it a finite resource that would eventually get used up, Ves also didn't want to make use of biotissue that was fundamentally incompatible with the human body.

The organic space knight that Ves had designed might be a little softer and weaker than it should be, but one of the advantages of using modified human biotissue was that it was extremely easy to regenerate and maintain.

"Humans understand their own bodies the best." Ves recalled one of the lessons that he had learned. "Biomechs based on human biology are cheaper and much easier to work with than biomechs based on more complicated alien biologies."

Ves did not solely make this choice because he wanted to turn his work into an affordable and easygoing machine.

He did it because of the blood that flowed through its veins.

Considering that biomechs mimicked large organisms to a high degree, they also relied on blood to transfer nutrients to different parts of a biomech.

While there were some organic body systems that were entirely bloodless due to relying on other means to transfer nutrients, his biomech concept was the opposite.

If Ves had his way, then his biomech design would be filled with blood!

Blood played such an important role to his biomech that he even intended to incorporate aspects of a Scarlet Oak Tree into its design!

"My space bioknight can produce its own blood to regenerate itself!"

This was one of the most important functions of his biomech!

One of the distinctive advantages of organic mechs was that most of them were capable of regenerating at least a part of their biocomponents in the field.

Of course, the regeneration ability was subject to a lot of limitations.

First, a biomech could not regenerate missing tissue out of nothing. It had to have access to a large reserve of energy and spare biomass.

This was why certain biomechs usually built up a generous reserve of 'fat'. Not only did the fat tissue serve as an additional buffer against damage, but it could also be used as ingredients to help a biomech regrow a muscle.

Sadly, biomechs were limited to how much fat they could carry on the battlefield. This was especially the case for organic machines with a hard exoskeleton.

Second, the regeneration ability could not regrow every biocomponent. More complex ones as well as certain hard and dense tissue such as the external bone scales that covered Ves' draft design could only be grown in industrial biofacilities.

While it was possible to design a biomech that could regrow all of these specialized biocomponents by itself, the production speed would be so low that it would take months if not years for the organic machine to be done with healing its wounds!

"A biomech is a combat machine, not a production machine."

Nonetheless, Ves was quite happy with the projected regeneration ability of his upcoming new biomech design.

It might not be impressive compared to the better biomech designs, but it was quite adequate for a biomech of this caliber.

There was an important reason why Ves wanted blood to play such a great role in his design.

Blood was his justification for branching out into biomechs.

If Ves did not come up with a good reason why he should bother with biomechs, then he could not explain why he should even bother with organic machines that were radically different from conventional machines.

At most, he might dabble with them in order to broaden his horizons and understand biomechs to a greater degree, but that was not enough to satisfy his needs.

Blood was the driving factor of his exploration into biomechs.

By absorbing the knowledge contained within the last enlightenment fruit, Ves had learned so much about the wonders of blood.

He could even pass off as a disciple of the Blood Cult given everything he had learned about the hidden potential of the liquid that flowed through every person's veins!

"The problem is that most biomechs completely ignore all of the additional uses of blood!"

The vast majority of biomech designers were ignorant to the Blood Cult and its extensive research on blood.

They ignorantly designed their biomechs in a way that neglected the possibilities of one of their most important components!

Ves was different.

He was determined to make his biomechs stand out by utilizing blood as more than just a simple medium for transferring nutrients!

"There is a spiritual component to blood that I can take advantage of. For example, what if… the mech and the mech pilot share the same blood?"

Ves envisioned an interfacing attempt where the mech pilot not only connected his mind to a biomech, but also his body!

For example, the cockpit might have a mechanism where it attached a tentacle to the body of the mech pilot.

Once the physical connections were made, the blood of the mech pilot would get drawn out and begin to circulate throughout the enormous body of the biomech.

At the same time, those same tentacles would also circulate the blood that was inherent to the biomech into the veins of the mech pilot!

Ves recognized that this was an extremely dangerous procedure, but his insights into biotechnology told him that there were plenty of measures he could take to reduce the danger of adverse reactions.

For example, he could design additional filtering organs that took away all of the heavy metals and other poisonous substances that were inherent to biomech blood.

Once all of these problematic elements were filtered out, the purified blood that was left should theoretically be compatible with a human body, especially if the biomech had modulated its blood type and other characteristics to a specific pilot!

"If I want my new biomech design to work, then it has to be grown and attuned to a specific mech pilot. This is the only way to ensure maximum compatibility and minimal rejection!"

There was a great purpose to all of this. Ves did not come up with this harebrained scheme to allow the biomech and mech pilot to share each other's blood in order to generate shock value.

His ultimate goal was to achieve an unprecedented deep physical, mental and spiritual integration between the mech pilot and his living battle partner!

He wanted to go beyond the synergy attainable by his conventional mechs, and believed that the use of biomechs served as a possible vessel to attain deeper integration!

"It's just like the strong spiritual bonds forged by the Geminis!"

Ves had taken a lot of inspiration from the unusual family practices of the Gemini Family.

The way the Gemini Saints were able to lower each other's guards to the point where their Saint Kingdoms were interchangeable had given him a lot of inspiration.

What if he could form a similar relationship between a biomech and a mech pilot?

"What if… I can turn a biomech and a mech pilot into the equivalent of an incestuous married couple?"

He was no longer satisfied with turning a living mech and a mech pilot into battle partners and comrades in arms.

He wanted to deepen their relationship in the hopes of generating more powerful synergies, and he believed that turning them into a close approximation of 'twin siblings' might produce a powerful result!

"What better way to bind two different organisms closer together by having them share each other's blood?" Ves grinned as he became increasingly more obsessed with this extreme design concept. "In fact, if I can make it so that the genes of the biomech are partially derived from the genes of its intended mech pilot, then it is not wrong to claim that the two are blood related to each other!"

Ves had always considered his living mechs to be somewhat equivalent to human beings, but if he was able to realize this unprecedented biomech concept, then he would take his principle to an entirely new level!

"My Blood Knight Project shall be the first biomech to derive its power from the blood of its own mech pilot! It will be magnificent, hahahaha!"

"Hahahahaha!"

"HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"