The Mech Touch



Ves bent down and picked up a large shard from a broken purple crystal. "I didn't feel confident in restoring this crystal, but retooling it into a luminar crystal should be doable as long as I know what I am doing."

"Didn't you just tell me that you don't have the right production equipment to produce a proper luminar crystal?" His sister skeptically asked.

"That is right. I don't have the right facilities in this chamber. My minifab is not comprehensive enough. I still have other options, though. Give me a second."

Ves opened up a couple of gaps in his Unending Regalia and used the same glue trick to physically attach multiple purple crystals onto his armor. 

His body and his equipment flickered all of a sudden. His posture had abruptly changed and instead of carrying multiple broken purple crystal shards, he only carried a single whole piece this time!

"Ugh, I thought I could get away with only spending a single point, but I had to spend 5 of them because this crystal is more complicated to reengineer than I thought. I also had to buy a supplementary material to help fuse all of the gaps together."

Helena widened her intangible eyes at his abrupt change. Though their mother informed her that Ves possessed his own advantages, this went beyond storing precious goods in a hidden pocket space!

A lot of time had passed for Ves and Ves alone. As far as everyone else was concerned, they had remained frozen while he had taken his time to thoroughly reshape the broken remains of a purple alien crystal into an intact luminar crystal!

From the moment he 'came back' from wherever he went, David's skull began to light up more as the Illustrious One inspected and resonated with the newly-made luminar crystal.

Even though it wasn't connected to any power source, the purple luminar crystal immediately lit up as if it had become active!

When Helena leaned closer in order to see what Ves had done to it, she became surprised when she detected that it had acquired another quality that shouldn't have been there in the first place.

"This luminar crystal… is alive!"

"Yep." Ves grinned. "I worked on it long enough for me to make it alive and turn it into a totem of the Illustrious One."

"Why would you do that? Won't that complicate your attempts to gain access?"

"I don't believe so. What you are describing is definitely a risk, but I have thought a long time about this problem. This crystal here is much more special than is apparent on the surface. I have thought about many potential problems and preempted them with my preparations. Now I just need to finalize my tweaks after the Illustrious One has inspected my work."

One of the disadvantages to entering the System Space was that he had to rely on himself. He could not work together with a design spirit in order to borrow from another entity's expertise during the design and fabrication process.

Nonetheless, Ves already built up a sufficiently thorough theoretical framework to handle most of the work on his own. He just needed to make sure that his living product successfully established a connection to the Illustrious One and that its alien circuitry and programming were up to the task.

Ves extended a cable from a port built inside his Unending Regalia and connected it to the slot that he had purposefully built on the top of the purple crystal.

Helena found this to be a highly incongruous sight. The alien crystals in this chamber clearly weren't designed to interface with human computer systems, but Ves did not pay any attention to this rule!

He was able to tweak the programming and correct a few bugs with the help of the Illustrious One. The design spirit even took more direct action and added a few programming lines himself!

This reflected the Illustrious One's advantage as an alien design spirit. Composed of both an ancient crystal builder leader as well as the spiritual remnant of the Blinding One, the amalgamated design spirit possessed a lot of expertise in luminar crystal technology, though his scattered heritage meant that much of his understanding was instinctive in nature.

Still, Ves trusted the Illustrious One enough to double-check his work and propose more profound corrections.

Once Ves and his design spirit completed their last-minute inspection, the purple luminar crystal immediately entered the center slot.

"I think the most central slot is the most important one of all." Ves stated. "It conforms to the logic of this design approach."

"Is that what your mech designer experience is telling you? How can you know for sure?"

"I am a mech designer as well as an engineer, sister. Every creator adopts a similar perspective towards our vocation. Even aliens have to consider issues such as ease of use, effective communication, usability, universality and so on. This is especially the case if this facility was designed to be crewed by a coalition of races which I think is definitely the case."

The more species a group consisted of, the more a design team had to adopt universal and foolproof design mechanisms. So far, everything that Ves had observed from the crystalline control interface conformed to this basic truth.

"Nothing is happening after you have slotted your new crystal." Helena notified her brother.

"I know. Just putting it in doesn't necessarily do anything. The entire control interface needs to be switched on, and I don't know whether this stuff can still be powered after staying dormant all of this time. Theoretically, there should be a way to make it work, but I am still figuring out the details."

He stepped closer and took a close look at the interface, taking particular note of anything that resembled buttons or switches.

The console clearly used to possess an obvious means of turning it online, but he guessed that whoever wrecked this interface had completely demolished it to the point where there were no traces left.

However, there should always be a backup option in case the main switch became inoperable.

"Aha! Here it is! I knew I would find an alternative way to get this to work."

He eventually found a small control mechanism at the bottom of the main console. It was a rather clever location.

Once he pulled at a strange lever device, the surroundings lit up as the crystals slowly but surely started to light up as they finally received power for the first time in so many years.

A few crystals started to flicker, though. Ves could easily tell that they came from the crystals that looked to be in the worst shape. They needed to be repaired more thoroughly, but there was little he could do without possessing more specific expertise on this variety of crystal tech.

Ves narrowed his eyes and paid close attention to the luminar crystal that he painstakingly made. He had put so much effort into adding all kinds of functions to it. Now was the time to see whether his efforts to subvert the prison facility's control system would work out the way he hoped!

His sister hovered silently next to him, but did not speak out this time. She could not play a useful role at this junction. No matter how powerful she had become in the Nyxian Gap, it was hard for her to extend her power in the Red Ocean and far away from any living mechs and powerful totems.

She could only burn her own energy to maintain a weak and pale presence in Ves' presence. Though she had been able to offer her expertise and make useful discoveries such as uncovering the true nature of David's skeleton, she had no expertise at all in terms of technology.

As Helena continued to observe Ves working quietly with the Illustrious One to operate and monitor the activity of the newly made luminar crystal, she felt a lot more useless than she should.

She suddenly felt a lot more inadequate than before. Even though there were many factors that prevented her from providing more material aid to her little brother, her complete lack of understanding of technology exacerbated the problem.

Gods did not need to understand technology. They relied on their own power to affect reality and create favorable outcomes by force.

If there was ever a situation where Helena was incapable of solving an issue, then that meant she just wasn't powerful enough!

At most, she studied how to manipulate her divine power and develop her own divine abilities under the tutelage of her mother. Gods and beings that aspired to become gods must always work on cultivating their own power before anything else. A strong foundation was the basis of everything.

Yet as Helena quietly plucked the Dark Lotus from her hair again and turned it into its Pistol Form, she began to admire its craftsmanship and the power it conveyed to her. She had utilized the weapon that was perfectly tailored to her domain to excellent effect in the battles of the Nyxian Gap.

She understood a little more deeply than before that technology acted like a multiplier to both the weak and the strong.

A small and individually weak race like modern day humans had managed to conquer half of the Milky Way by relying on their excellent attainments in technology.

To humanity, using technology was essential to keep up with the other powerhouses in the cosmos.

To gods like her, it was not essential to rely on too many external objects to gain supreme power.

Yet when Helena thought of the Five Scrolls Compact, she understood that the cultists ultimately got beaten because they had been overtaken by technology that directly targeted their strengths.

It was one of the many instances where the 'weak' overcame the 'strong' with the help of clever thinking as well as the use of technology.

Perhaps it was time for Helena to utilize her considerable intellect and learning capability to master certain forms of technology as well.

If other fellow 'design spirits' such as the Illustrious One could gain a large proficiency in luminar crystal technology, what stopped her from learning how circuitry worked?

She was certain that she could learn basic science subjects and become proficient in a few more advanced subjects.

The problem was that technology was not a part of her nature. Unlike entities such as Vulcan, Helena had no inherent affinity with tech and could never master it to the point of giving Ves a run for his money.

Gods were rather pitiful in that sense. For all of Helena's potential in becoming one with the fundamental concept of death, it was hard for entities like her to become any good in matters outside of her narrow specialization.

If this was not the case, then the strongest practitioners of the Five Scrolls Compact did not need to rely on so many subordinates and daughter organizations to fulfill their technical needs!

For all of her mother's criticism towards the Five Scrolls Compact for refusing to keep up with the times, wasn't she repeating the same mistakes?

Helena found that her mother still maintained an aloof attitude towards technology.

No matter whether it was mechs or starships, neither of them interested her mother that much. She didn't even possess a good understanding of the current version of the Devil Tiger, which had been upgraded far beyond its original specifications.

Neither Helena, Cynthia or Ryncol knew what kind of tech powered it these days!

Just as the Daughter of Death increased her resolve to become more familiar with technology, the shaky and incomplete control interface suddenly started to produce a series of sounds!

"What is it doing?!"

"These are sound notifications." Ves responded as he continued to control the functioning of the luminar crystal through the cable connected to his armor. "I think we have just managed to get past the initial checks that are required to boot up the main system. I don't think we are in the clear yet, though. If my suspicions are correct, we should be greeted with a more robust security system soon enough."