The Mech Touch

The duel between Patriarch Reginald Cross and Saint Jeremiah Gauge had attracted an immense amount of viewers who tuned in on the many broadcasts over the galactic net.

Though fights that involved ace mechs were not uncommon due to the immense size of human civilization, they weren't exactly ubiquitous either.

Each ace pilot and ace mech represented a new and unique combination of pilot and mech. Watching them perform their amazing feats against other comparable halfgods was much more interesting than viewing ordinary mech arena matches!

"Have you heard about the ace mech duel that is going on in a port system called Pima Prime? You need to watch it right away!"

"I don't know who these guys are or what they are fighting for, but I hope they don't stop too quickly."

"How can these stupid neanderthals think about fighting and killing each other when they should actually be directing their firepower against the aliens? It's a complete travesty for ace pilots to risk their lives due to pointless fights over ancient grudges!"

A lot of people developed a lot of different opinions about the ongoing duel, but regardless of what they thought, the word of mouth they produced continued to pull in more and more friends and family to the spectacle.

Billions if not trillions of people throughout the Red Ocean as well as the Milky Way Galaxy became engrossed in the intense and dramatic battle between the two powerful ace pilots and ace mechs!

This was a crazy amount of people! Not only did this bring a lot of fame and recognition to the parties involved in the overall battle, but also earned the ace pilots and the ace mechs a lot of fans!

For example, many Fridaymen rooted for Saint Jeremiah Gauge. Though the Gauge Dynasty wasn't exactly popular among the other coalition partners, the vast majority of ordinary citizens didn't have a strong understanding of the underlying tensions within the Friday Coalition.

They just wanted their state to prove its might and defeat the evil Hexers who sought to destroy their livelihoods!

The Hexers automatically put their hopes on Patriarch Reginald Cross. Despite the fact that he was the epitome of the sort of 'boy' that every Hexer feared, as long as this violent and battle-hungry fought on the side of the Hex Federation, everything was okay!

As for those that did not have a direct stake in the Battle of Pima Prime, their support split evenly between the two combatants.

Swordsmen and swordsman mech enthusiasts, even those hailing from the Heavensword Association, overwhelmingly wanted the Neo Amadeus to showcase the superiority of swordsmanship and expand its popularity.

Those that sympathized with the 'innocent' party that got brutally attacked by foreign invaders wanted Saint Jeremiah Gauge to mete out justice by punishing the wicked!

Patriarch Reginald and the Mars appealed to different audiences.

Those that favored ranged mechs and hybrid mechs thought that the Mars was a dream mech!

Even though first-class multipurpose mechs tended to be a lot more advanced and powerful in many ways, second-class mech pilots had no chance of piloting them in their lifetimes. In contrast, an ace mech comparable to the Mars was still attainable to them as long as they were talented and managed to make successive breakthroughs.

There were also those who just liked mechs that possessed a huge amount of firepower and wasn't afraid to use it. The domineering posture of the Mars along with its abundant attacks brought out the primal side within people!

No matter which combatant these people supported, as long as they held more than a passing interest in this battle, the thoughts and emotions they directed towards the ace pilots and ace mechs did not entirely go to waste.

Ves or maybe Blinky possessed the greatest sensitivity towards these fluctuations. In fact, ever since the Mech Designer System followed the Spiritual Ascension Upgrade Track, he already noticed that his senses became a little bit more aware of the movement of faith, belief and other related phenomena.

Though he hadn't consciously paid attention to this variable since he had mostly directed his thoughts towards Patriarch Reginald's outrageous act of murder against his ace mech, now that Gloriana pointed it out, Ves indeed noticed that both combatants were harvesting a growing wave of spiritual feedback!

"What… is going on?" Ves became puzzled.

He had never explicitly obtained any source that high-ranking mech pilots needed to rely on faith and belief to advance. From his own understanding, willpower was highly exclusionary towards any other influences, and could not be blended with other forms of power.

That was also the reason why high-ranking mech pilots posed such a great threat against other spiritual entities. Their willpower and true resonance were too strong and naturally countered other spiritual phenomena!

When Ves studied the Neo Amadeus, he found that the growing movement of faith did not affect it in the slightest, which aligned with his theories.

It was as if high-ranking mech pilots were weirdos among transcendents. Though they shared some resemblances to other spiritually powerful individuals, they took a huge detour and followed their path!

According to his theoretical framework, Patriarch Reginald Cross should be in the same position. The man was obviously self-centered to the extreme, or else he wouldn't have killed off the personality of his own living mech!

"Let's see what is going on with him and his ace mech."

When Ves carefully observed the Mars, he noticed an immediate difference from the Neo Amadeus.

The spiritual feedback that was pouring in from every corner of the old galaxy and the new frontier were not being repelled!

This was strange because Patriarch Reginald didn't appear to absorb these incoming energies directly. In fact, his strengthened Saint Kingdom actively seemed to repel these unwanted influences.

The reason why some of it got through anyway was because the Mars acted like a black hole that actively sucked in the spiritual feedback!

It was no wonder why Gloriana became incredibly ecstatic about what she had been able to witness today.

The god body method that she had painstakingly applied to the entire frame of the Mars had never displayed any impressive results since the mech initially came into existence.

The requirements to apply this method to the Mars were harsh. Each and every single component had to be stamped with a physical 'divine marker' that was based off Ves' totems.

Essentially, Gloriana came up with a scheme to turn every physical mech part into a totem. The goal of doing all of this was to ultimately imbue the Mars with some of the powers of a deity, the most important of which was to be able to absorb spiritual feedback that it could use to upgrade its quality!

Though Gloriana's idea sounded incredibly whacky to say the least, the fact that the Mars was not only absorbing a lot of spiritual feedback, but actively converted all of this income into real improvements of its parts and systems offered conclusive proof that her ambitious idea actually worked!

"The Mars is actively climbing up Senfovon's Ladder of Craftsmanship!" Ves gasped!

The distance between the second rung and third rung of the craftsmanship ladder was unimaginably great, so Ves did not expect to see any immediate results.

Besides, Ves did not think that it was that simple to turn a mech into an exceedingly rare and exemplary grand work. There had to be more profound requirements that couldn't be met by piling up a lot of incremental improvements.

Even so, Gloriana's successful implementation was a massive leap to her work and design philosophy!

As the Mars gradually strengthened itself, its performance became less and less detached from its original technical processes and specifications.

Ace mechs already performed a lot better than their base parameters due to the amplification of true resonance, but this was starting to get ridiculous!

The Mars was actually undergoing a double improvement.

Patriarch Reginald's strengthened bond with his ace mech had baptized the machine with his powerful force of will, thereby improving the machine in ways that reminded Ves a lot of Lucky's gems.

Ves even speculated that the willpower baptism might actually be overriding the effects of the Rage of Ayef gem that he had attached to the Mars!

When this willpower baptism was combined with the activated god body method, the Mars changed in ways that made a lot of mech designers and other people with vision take a deeper look at this ace mech!

"This… did Gloriana open up an entirely new way of empowering ace pilots?" Ves wondered.

He used to think that Gloriana's insistence on treating living mechs as proto-gods or deities in the making was utter nonsense and claptrap.

However, the design solutions she came up with actually allowed her to realize her insane vision!

Ves felt sickened by the progress that his wife had made.

He did not object to Gloriana achieving success in her work. She was his wife, and the stronger she became, the more benefits she provided to him and his organization.

He just didn't want her to succeed in turning mechs into god-like entities. It felt wrong for mechs to turn into objects of worship. The implications were too massive for him to think about at the moment.

A strong sense of urgency welled up in his mind. When he glanced at Gloriana's projection and saw that his wife had become more energetic than any other moment in her life, Ves felt as if he was getting more and more behind.

Gloriana was on track of advancing to Senior first.

Not only that, she would probably advance based on a premise that was antithetical to his own design philosophy.

According to her, an ideal living mech was not necessarily a machine that possessed an independent personality, but one that offered an empty shell that the mech pilot could completely mold and adapt to his own needs!

The Mars was the strongest representative of this so-called second skin approach. The greater its success, the more validation it provided to his wife!

Patriarch Reginald's actions had essentially cut off most of Ves' ownership of the Mars!

Ves felt more of a loser because of this. His wife had made a strong stride towards becoming a Senior while he was still mucking about with many different miscellaneous design solutions.

Though he had developed a lot of useful innovations over the years, many of them were rather scattered and did not really form a cohesive system of improvement.

Ves wanted to change this inadequacy more than ever.

"I've been too complacent over the years."

He had been too scatter-brained and did not work hard enough to develop a design solution that comprehensively pushed his design philosophy to a higher level.

A fire lit up inside his heart. The threat of Gloriana's impending breakthrough drove him to change his plans and allocate a lot more attention to speeding up his own advancement to Senior.

"I just need one good idea to make the crucial step!"

Though Ves did not have any concrete suggestions on what that idea should be, he already determined an overall direction for himself.

"I need to prove that my principles and ideals aren't invalid. If the Mars provides legitimacy to Gloriana's premise that the strongest mechs are those that are completely attuned towards their mech pilots, then I need to design a mech that clearly proves that the power of synergy and cooperation is just as strong!"

Ves needed to rethink the relationship between living mechs and their mech pilots and invent a meaningful way for it to produce greater results on the battlefield!

He glanced towards the projections showing off what was taking place across the entire battlefield.

If Ves wanted to find a clue on how he should progress his design philosophy, he wouldn't be able to find it by watching the duel between the two ace mechs.

He would have much better luck if he observed the performance of his other living mechs. The reason for that was because they represented his ideals much more faithfully!