The Mech Touch

The large number of mechs and mech pilots supplied by the Larkinson Clan and the Cross Clan provided the mech division with a strong core to build around.

The presence of heroes such as General Ark Larkinson and Patriarch Reginald Cross not only raised the morale of this new elite mech unit to the peak, but also raised its priority within the military hierarchy to the top within the External Group!

In addition, the Warborn’s strong association with Ves Larkinson meant that nobody in the colonial state's administration dared to oppose its momentum without valid causes!

All of this meant that Davute had given General Ark the best possible stage for him to demonstrate his leadership capabilities and shape the Warborn into a spear that could pierce through Karlach's strongest defenses!

Not a day went by where the servicemen hailing from the Warborn did not train or prepare for Davute's coming war with Karlach.

Yet ever since the dramatic events of yesterday, none of the Warborn spent any thought on Karlach anymore.

A new dawn had arisen over the Red Ocean, and its overpowering light and energies changed everything!

The Colonial Federation of Davute had mobilized almost all of the military assets that it could summon in a short amount of time.

Few soldiers of the new mech division could have imagined that they would have sortie in the defense of Kotor City and its surroundings yet again!

The mech division's temporary headquarters located in the outskirts of the capital had become a hive of activity.

Hundreds of mechs poured in and out at regular intervals. Powerful assault-oriented mechs that were designed and configured for shock tactics were forced into roles that they were never really designed to perform, such as standing guard and rescue operations.

Though the Warborn may have a lot of complaints about their current deployments, none of them complained about their necessity.

The colonial state needed to be stabilized as much as possible.

Normally, it was not permissible for outsiders to casually enter a military base in a time of emergency.

The Larkinson Clan was special, though. Not a single force stationed on Davute VII attempted to stop or intercept any shuttle that bore the distinctive golden cat head emblem.

Besides, this particular shuttle happened to be escorted by two entire mech companies as well as the Everchanger!

The expert hero mech actually played a substantial role in suppressing the worst of the riots yesterday.

When the living mech switched its design spirit to Lufa and amplified the range of its glow to the point where it could stretch across half of an entire city district, entire crowds became pacified at once!

Davute actually owed the Larkinson Clan a substantial amount of gratitude for putting the Everchanger on pacification duty.

The emergency services in Kotor City and the surrounding major population centers on the planet did not get overwhelmed, thereby contributing substantially to the relative calm on the second day.

Even though the worst had passed, the authorities did not lower their guard. The Warborn still had to keep sending mechs on patrol.

Relying on the tranquility glow to keep the people calm was not an acceptable long-term solution. It did not resolve the root causes of the unrest. It was unethical to forcibly mind control so many people outside of an immediate crisis situation.

In any case, Ves felt reassured to have the Everchanger by his side. He would have wanted to add the Bastion to his escort lineup as well, but as a freshly built unit that had yet to undergo any proper testing, it was not a good idea to deploy the powerful new living mech in public.

As his shuttle reached its destination, Ves exited the vehicle and entered a hangar bay that was reserved for high-ranking mechs.

Both the C-Man and the Mars had been stashed inside at the moment.

The main reason why they had been held back at this time was because two different mech designers were slobbering all over their work at this time!

Both Gloriana and Master Benedict seemed to have gone crazy at this time.

Considering the findings that Ves made on his own work, this should not be too much of a surprise.

Every mech designer cared about the effectiveness of his own work!

They dedicated their entire lives to designing stronger and more effective mechs. The progression of their design philosophies literally depended on how much of a difference they could make to the mech industry.

Now that Ves thought about it, his own reaction was a bit too subdued. Perhaps this was because he realized that the best was yet to come. "Gloriana." He greeted as he floated in the air and stopped next to his wife.

Bravo's glow had grown stronger and even more masculine than Ves last remembered.

"Ves." She greeted as she continued to lock her gaze on the scanning data on a sample of TESMAS incorporated in the C-Man. "Take a look."

Ves briefly glanced at the readings. It had been a while since he last worked on the C-Man, but he knew enough about the design and its high-quality smart metal that they were not supposed to work this well!

"This data only reflects a part of the story." Gloriana explained as Alexandria emerged from his head and started to examine the C-Man through her own senses. "Take a look at how much energy this mech frame is absorbing at the moment."

He already noticed it when he hovered closer to the expert brawler mech. As soon as he engaged his spiritual senses, he could observe a lot more clearly how the C-Man's god body was functioning a lot stronger than before!

"This... is more than I expected." Ves uttered as he observed several new interactions that he did not anticipate before!

He already guessed that the C-Man's god body was somehow able to fuel its own physical growth by absorbing compatible elements from the ambient spiritual energies.

While the C-Man indeed drew strength from the environment, the rate of absorption was not particularly high. The concentration of spiritual energies was too low, and even if it became a little higher in the future, it still would not warrant Gloriana's excitement.

What was truly crucial was that the volume of spiritual feedback had increased by a noticeable margin!

Ves knew that Gloriana's god body solution was her attempt to turn all of her works into self-evolving deities.

If she couldn't fabricate the perfect vessel in a single go, then she would lay the groundwork to allow them to evolve into mechanical gods by relying on the power of growth!

Her idea definitely had a lot of promise, especially when she drew her inspiration from her husband.

However, her god bodies had two major flaws.

The first major flaw her new solution imposed a lot of additional demands to the physical design of a mech. The need to insert her so-called 'divine markers' onto as many mech components as possible added a lot of extra work and made it exponentially harder to mass produce her designs!

It may be possible to substantially reduce the difficulty of mass producing god bodies by removing a lot of divine markers, but then the absorption rate would drop so much that it would take centuries for a normal quality mech to evolve into a masterwork!

As it was, the only way to properly fabricate a god body mech was for Gloriana or Ves to fabricate its parts. Only they had the skill and the capability to channel the right design philosophy to embed working divine markers into so many components. They also needed the help of expensive, high-quality production machines to do their jobs.

This was already a major shortcoming that limited the applicability of her design application, but Gloriana's proudest also suffered from a second major limitation.

God bodies demanded an immense amount of worship in order to make substantial progress!

Without the spiritual feedback from millions of people, it was a dream for a mech to transform into a masterwork within a single generation!

Only the most prominent high-end mechs such as the Mars could satisfy this demanding requirement.

Even then, for an ace mech that had already turned into a masterwork, the requirements to become a grand work were so excessive that Ves did not think that the current version of the god body was up to the task!

Ves did not expect Gloriana to make any substantial progress on her god bodies in the short term, but the changing environment had upended all of his predictions!

As Ves not only observed the C-Man's god body in action, but also swept his gaze towards the surrounding personnel, he understood why Gloriana claimed that Vincent's expert mech would probably complete its transformation to masterwork within a year.

"M87... is making everyone stronger." He uttered with dawning realization in his voice. "When ordinary people become exposed to greater concentrations of ambient spiritual energies, their spiritualities are bound to become stronger. Perhaps they won't benefit as much as more talented people, but it only takes a modest amount of growth to double or triple the feedback that can be derived from even the most spiritually dull individuals!"

What Ves was witnessing was one of the consequences of raising the average spiritual strength of an entire human society!

Ves did not know whether people without spiritual potential would be able to surpass the extraordinary threshold without putting any special effort.

He guessed that this was unlikely to happen unless they moved a lot closer to Messier 87.

However, even a relatively light degree of exposure to M87's background radiation should be enough to multiply the quantity of spiritual feedback that a population could provide by several times!

Where was the limit? Would the increase stop at 3 times? What about 5 times?

If exposure to M87 happened to be strong enough to impart spiritual potential in every single human in the Red Ocean, then that would completely change the meaning of Gloriana's god body solution!

This was because the quantity of spiritual feedback that a spiritually active individual was at least a hundred times greater than a person that was completely spiritually dull!

While this sounded a bit ludicrous, this was only possible because the latter was too weak. They fully deserved to be called defective by Cynthia Larkinson and the Polymath.

Ves fell deep into thought. The implications of his latest findings went far beyond amplifying the value of Gloriana's design solution.

This was a matter that would probably affect all of human society in the Red Ocean!

The Big Two would definitely be able to detect this change as well! Ves felt it was better to wait until the MTA and CFA completed their public address.

Ves talked a bit more with Gloriana. His wife had become so excited by the increased effectiveness of her god body solution that she became extra motivated to complete her next design solution!

"I think I will need a few more weeks to complete the Bloodripper Project and Greenaxe Project." She told her husband. "Exposure to M87 is changing so many variables that many new possibilities have emerged. Solutions that were previously impractical in our old galactic region have suddenly become much more viable in this new and more supportive environment. I already have a powerful new idea in mind that should increase the combat effectiveness of our next two expert mechs by a significant margin!"

She was far from the only mech designer who intended to take advantage of the changes to the environment.

Many more mech designers had begun to make similar realizations and were frantically digging' up old plans in order to see whether they had become practical in the light of the new dawn!

Ves began to get the impression that the galactic displacement event was not entirely a tragedy to the mech industry.

It was a gift that invigorated every mech designer!