The Mech Touch

As a Journeyman, her right to speak in front of the MTA was practically nil. Even her peculiarities that set her apart were merely curiosities that did not translate into any real power.

Just like Joshua, Ketis experienced the helplessness of trying to oppose one of the most powerful organizations of humanity. Not even a sword god could cut an enormous trans-galactic organization in half!

She eventually sighed in defeat. "Okay, then. Have it your way. What do you suggest?"

"As I've mentioned earlier, the pakklatons are obstacles that provide no meaningful benefit to humanity. The only way to change that is by making them valuable enough to humanity that keeping them alive is more beneficial than killing them off right away. Our options are limited, but I think we can make a good case to the MTA if we propose to use them as our test subjects for our breakthrough and advancement-related research projects. They are not human, but possess enough commonalities with our race to make this viable."

"This… how will you treat them, Ves?"

This was the difficult part of this proposal. Ves leaned forward on his chair and adopted a serious expression.

"If we leave the pakklatons be, then they will be regarded as burdens at best and latent threats at worst. If we want to change this evaluation, we need to convert them into assets, and the only way I can think of that qualifies is to turn them into test subjects. The good news is that we don't have to experiment on all of them. We can leave at least half of their population alone so that we can use them as a control group to make comparisons and as a reserve pool if we ever need to draw upon more test subjects."

Ves essentially guaranteed to Ketis that half of the pakklatons under their control wouldn't be subjected to depraved experiments. That was already a great development that made Ketis feel more relieved.

Saving half of a population of harmless alien refugees was not as good as saving all of them, but at this point she would take what she could get. Just like Joshua, she could not possibly push the boundaries set by the MTA in an open manner.

Ves hadn't even detailed his experiments as of yet. As a mech designer and researcher herself, Ketis was aware that there was a huge leeway in how dangerous experiments could be. If haste was no concern, then they could easily drag out the studies across many decades, thereby reducing the potential dangers to a minimum.

Ves activated a projection that displayed a document that outlined his preliminary plan.

"I have been working on this ever since you 'requested' that we preserve as many pakklatons as we can. I already figured out from the beginning that we need to make them more useful alive than dead to humanity. Although there is no time for us to form any complete research proposals, I often daydream about exploring new phenomena by conducting different experiments."

This was one of his past times whenever he had an idle moment. He never stopped thinking about ways to improve his design philosophy and the strength of his clan.

If he ceased to do all of this, he would inevitably stagnate as a mech designer!

Ves turned his head and glanced at his document.

"Ah, it's a little outdated. The stuff we talked about has given me a lot of new ideas. Let me revise this plan."

He utilized his implant to directly transcribe his thoughts into additional text which he added to the document. It only took a dozen seconds for his research outline to look a lot more ambitious and comprehensive!

"The… T Institute?" Ketis raised her eyebrow.

"Yes. That's the name that I have chosen for the special research group that I have just mentioned." Ves answered. "It's a bland name that doesn't convey much meaning, but that's deliberate. I originally wanted to call it the 'Transcendence Institute' but that is too revealing. Once I have set it up, it will become the umbrella organization that is responsible for conducting all of the ongoing research related to facilitating human breakthroughs and improvements. RIght now, I have come up with four broad research divisions that each attempt to discover new and better ways of facilitating human development."

The revised document mentioned four research divisions in total.

The Mech Guidance Research Division encompassed any research project related to providing guidance through living mechs. Mechs such as the Chiron model, the Quint, the Enlightened Warrior model and even the upcoming Monster Slayer model fell into this category.

This was currently the most advanced and practical research direction. The Chiron and the Quint had already yielded good results while the Enlightened Warrior mechs were already starting to work on their mech pilots.

With the addition of the Monster Slayer, the Mech Guidance Research Division would be able to make a lot more comparisons since the mech was designed by Ketis as opposed to Ves!

The Enlightenment Research Division encompassed any non-mech means of gradual improvement and achieving minor breakthroughs.

What Ketis had recently done and suggested to Ves fell into the scope of this research division.

Although Ves had not yet performed any studies in this area, he already possessed enough clues to believe that this was a promising research direction!

The process of human development always required a lot of accumulation. The road to advancing to the next rank was long and torturous. The aim of the Enlightenment Research Division was to make this journey as straight and smooth as possible so that people did not waste their time on detours and dead ends.

This was especially relevant to mech pilots because they were like athletes whose conditions only allowed them to compete in a limited age range.

Due to the inherent nature of their careers, mech pilots needed to advance to expert pilot before they reached 80 years old if they wanted to obtain hope of going any further.

The sooner they broke through, the better! This was why it was so crucial for mech pilots to overcome their hurdles quickly and gain strength as fast as possible. They were literally working against their biological clocks!

"Why set up this Enlightenment Research Division when you already have the Mech Guidance Research Division?" Ketis asked. "They both attempt to improve people through similar means."

"That's true, but one research direction is exclusive to mech pilots while the other is open to people of other professions. You and I can't benefit from any advancements related to mech piloting."

"Ah. That makes sense."

Aside from the two divisions, there was also the Breakthrough Research Division. It encompassed all of the research related to triggering apotheosis and achieving major breakthroughs.

This was where Ves put much of his effort into the past. Though it was by far the most dangerous and extreme research division that he came up with, he still had confidence that it could yield incredible results.

Ultimately, Ves hoped that the Breakthrough Research Division could help him figure out how to artificially induce breakthroughs of every rank!

Mech pilot to expert candidate. Expert candidate to expert pilot. Expert pilot to ace pilot.

If Ves was able to grasp the secrets of each of these transitions, he would never have to worry about running out of high-ranking pilots again!

The Companion Research Division was the fourth and final one under the T Institute. It centered around the propagation and improvement of companion spirits.

Having created a bunch of them and seeing them flourish under different circumstances had given Ves a lot of confidence in their value and potential.

He no longer wanted to work on them on his own but form an entire research division that could perform dedicated studies on every conceivable aspect of companion spirits!

Unfortunately, this was also by far the most demanding research division because the requirements to create, manipulate and study companion spirits were extremely strict!

Ves did not want to give up on it, though. The more he thought about it, the more he saw potential in how companion spirits granted new capabilities to people who did not possess them before!

Alexandria formally introduced Gloriana to spiritual engineering. Since her companion spirit was made out of spiritual energy, she was able to manipulate it to a limited degree as well by borrowing the help of the Queen Cat!

Sharpie allowed Ketis to adopt a second profession. Without her companion spirit, Ketis would have little choice but to become an average Journeyman with a relatively boring specialty.

These were just two of the examples that proved to Ves that his companion spirits could improve human development in another manner. Whether it was improving one's existing capabilities or giving them entirely new capabilities, humans could always accomplish a lot more as long as they enjoyed this benefit!

Still, there were way too many problems with companion spirits. Not only did Ves barely know what he was doing, he also found it tedious to invest a lot of time and effort to grant companion spirits to individual people.

It was the same as how Gloriana was only able to provide a handful of mech pilots with custom mechs. There was no way she could equip thousands of soldiers with mechs in a timely manner!

This was why setting up the Companion Research Division was so important to Ves. He needed help to understand companion spirits better and find a way to 'mass produce' them without requiring his personal input.

It did not matter if the quality, capabilities and potential of the mass-produced companion spirits fell behind. As long as he was able to bestow companion spirits to thousands of people at a time, the sheer quantity of them would overwhelm any other group of people!

His ultimate ambition was to find a way to bestow a companion spirit to every clansman!

With this additional source of strength, his Larkinsons would become a lot more productive, thereby enabling them to contribute a lot more to the clan!

There was also an even greater reason why Ves placed so much emphasis on companion spirits.

If his assumptions were correct, the concept of companion spirits might provide him with the key to bestowing spiritual potential to norms who did not possess this quality!

Ves theorized that this could potentially be accomplished through two possible methods.

The first one was to activate a person's spiritual potential. Someone who's potential was dim and dull like Melkor could be activated through special means.

The second one was to transplant someone else's spiritual potential in the target's mind. This was a much more precarious and dangerous procedure, but Ves recalled he had already produced a partial success when he helped Silent William advance.

If Ves was able to follow up on this accomplishment and perform follow-up experiments, perhaps he would have been able to crack the secret by now. It would have been easy for him to turn Melkor into someone who had hope of becoming an expert pilot in his lifetime!

He silently shook his head. He was ultimately a mech designer. His passion always centered around mechs. His research on mech pilots was merely incidental due to his increasing proficiency in spiritual engineering, but he could never allow it to consume all of his attention.

Hence the need to set up the T Institute and delegate much of the research to other people.

That ultimately brought Ves and Ketis back to the most important requirement to setting up this new research institution.

"All of this sounds nice, Ves, but it is useless if you can't find the personnel to staff this institute." Ketis seriously pointed out. "You and I are the most qualified to lead it, but we don't have the time to babysit research projects that don't improve our ability to design mechs in the slightest."

Ves grimaced. "I know, I know. I don't intend to give up on the T Institute, though. I am done with performing all of this research on my own. I have come far enough that I am ready to shift this responsibility to a dedicated organization. Give me a few minutes. Let me think about who I can appoint to lead my new institute."