The Mech Touch

Nobody living on the surface of New Constantinople VIII had any idea of what was happening inside an mech workshop situated underneath a fairly small and remote base. Aurelia and the other children attended another eventful day in school.

Despite growing up in a radically different environment from the locals, the Larkinson children got along well with the young descendants of the Terran elites.

No one who worked or studied at the Joan Devos Elementary School were stupid. Even the youngest of children had been told to never look down on the son and daughters of the youngest tier 3 galactic citizens in the new frontier!

Fortunately, the Larkinson children managed to prove their abilities well enough since they enrolled at school.

In the late afternoon, their classes had already ended. Most of the children stayed on the elementary school's expansive campus in order to take part in different extracurricular activities.

Over a hundred girls crowded around a podium. Their eyes displayed varying degrees of admiration as they watched a lone girl weave movement after movement in line with a song that evoked the tragedy and loss of the dark days of the Age of Conquest.

As Aurelia continued to perform her dance, she made slow and sweeping movements that conveyed her depth of emotion. Pure passion empowered her every move, making it seem as if her extraordinary body glowed with divine radiance.

She danced like a woman far beyond her years. It was impressive how much empathy she conveyed without saying a single word. A few of the younger and more sensitive girls had even begun to shed tears as they became overtaken by the tale conveyed by this radiant girl.

The ambient E energy in the environment stirred with her dance routine. Her extraordinary mind, spirit and body were so much more integrated with these hidden energies that it appeared as if the heavens applauded her performance.

Elsewhere, a three-dimensional sports field became packed with energy as two teams of girls competed against each other in a much more brutal fashion!

None of the boys and girls demonstrated any elegance or beauty in their movements. They instead used their antigrav boosters to dash through the air in an effort to wrangle a shiny blue ball into a goal!

"Pass the ball to Jack!"

"Which Jack?!"

"The short one!"

"Okay!"

Before the boy wearing a black outfit could do so, a girl came up and used her own hockey stick to block her opponent's own stick.

"Not again!"

Though the boy attempted to use his larger body to shove the girl aside, she skillfully used her antigrav booster to move sideways just enough for her to wrench her adversary's hockey stick from his hands!

"No!"

"It's mine!"

Andraste grinned as she spun her body around in the air before whacking the other end of her hockey stick against the floating ball with enough force to launch it all the way to the other side!

After that, she planted her foot against the body of the boy who lost hold of his stick. An energy shield prevented her foot from harming the other playing, but conveniently gave her a launching pad that allowed her to dash upwards at a considerably greater speed than if she relied on her antigrav booster.

"Byebye!"

As the practice game progressed, none of the children participating in this multifaceted sport exhibited signs of nausea or dizziness.

Zero-g hockey had become popular among potentates and those who yearned to become a mech pilot.

Many of the skills and experiences that children accrued over the course of practicing this sport translated well into mech piloting. The more proficient they became in zero-g hockey, the faster they acclimated to operating mechs in a spaceborn environment.

Sadly, a lot of children tended to drop out of the sport once they reached 10 years old. Once they found out that their genetic aptitude could not support their piloting ambitions, they lost all of their drive and motivation to do anything else related to a profession that proved to be unattainable.

The children playing in the zero-g field were still a few years away from receiving the verdict that would dictate the rest of their lives.

It would be a shame for these players to be forced away from pursuing their dreams. Many of them were designer babies that had been explicitly raised to excel in piloting mechs. Although there was more to soldiering than piloting mechs, it just wouldn't be the same for them if they settled for becoming a naval officer or an elite infantry commando.

The Age of Mechs may have come to an end in the Red Ocean, but the glory of the mech piloting profession had not diminished in the slightest! In fact, its popularity had actually grown ever since the god pilots showed their dominance to the public.

Months after the battles of the Operation Night Jazz took place, the astonishing events still remained in everyone's consciousness.

Andraste and many other hopeful children constantly dreamed about what they had seen. The more they envisioned the impressive god mechs, the more they yearned to pilot their own powerful machine one day!

The girl gripped her hockey stick tighter. Even though there was no proof that playing zero-g hockey would promote the formation of suitable genetic aptitudes, Andraste wanted to believe that her efforts and her devotion to her goal might make a crucial difference in the future!

Even as she paid attention to the ball, she actually allocated a part of her attention to cultivating the relatively simple cultivation method supplied by her father.

A small quantity of ambient E energy swirled around her before getting absorbed by her body and spirit.

Andraste could not tell whether this effort made any difference to her goal, but at least she felt she was trying to make progress.

"I will not allow myself to be defeated by my own body. I have the best papa in the galaxy. His genes will make sure I will become a talented pilot!"

Under that strong and unflinching belief, Andraste began to display more fighting spirit, causing her to jump into the zero-g hockey match with greater fervor and aggression! Meanwhile, the youngest of the three Larkinson children was still too young to engage in any fixed extra-curricular activities.

He instead spent time in the local equivalent of daycare. Marvaine had a fantastic time as he was able to play with lots of Terran children.

"Cats are cool."

"Nuh-uh. Dogs are better."

"No way! Cats are much nicer!"

"Dogs are smarter and more loyal!"

"You two are both wrong! The best pet is a roxhaw bird."

"Roxhaw birds are too big and alien. They are disgusting!"

As Marvaine argued in favor of cats with his new friends, he suddenly paused and turned his head in another direction.

"Huh? What is the matter with you, Marvaine?"

"Can you feel it, Barney?"

"Feel what?"

"Something is happening... something big." "I do not know what you are talking about." "It's happening somewhere far away..."

Marvaine had access to more senses than his little friends. His spirituality and his companion spirit both bestowed him with the ability to observe and feel the flow of E energy. Right now, those senses had begun to warn him about a distant buildup of extraordinary energies.

Because it was happening many kilometers away from the city of Sandan, Marvaine had only managed to detect the escalating buildup when it had already become powerful enough to pose a danger to a large area!

"Wait!" Marvaine stood up in shock! "My home is over there! I need to go back!"

A short time before the young Larkinson deduced that a potential calamity was unfolding at the place he called home, a certain mech workshop had become charged with more and more unstable energies.

The five elements were difficult to tame!

As the Fey Project was nearing completion with each passing second, the ambient E energies that usually existed in a state of calm had become more concentrated and agitated. This was because the living mech and its fey had already begun to attract and absorb the elemental E energies!

This was not a bad phenomenon if it happened in isolation.

What made this situation different was that the five elements did not always get along with each other.

Due to the relatively close proximities of all of the living objects, the elemental E energies all started to bump into each other.

This produced many different reactions depending on various conditions.

For example, when wood energy came into contact with fire energy, the former started to get consumed by the latter, causing the power of fire to grow!

The growing fire energy started to react violently with water energy, causing the latter to evaporate in most cases.

These were but a handful of the many simultaneous interactions between all of the different energies.

No matter whether the energies increased or decreased in quantity, the net outcome was that the five elements became more and more concentrated in the mech workshop, crowding out all of the other attributes that could have played regulating or isolating roles!

This was not good news as the magnitude of reactions escalated rapidly over time!

Though Ves banked on his special mech to use the reinforcement cycle of the five elements to wield unsurpassed power, the incomplete machine was unable to exert enough control over the process!

Without sufficient control, the E energies would continue to interact with each other without any form of restraint, making it so that the likelihood of an explosion chain reaction grew ever greater!

Ves and Vulcan already felt that they had embarked on a course that could not be stopped!

They had to see this fabrication run to the end no matter the consequences!

Ves and his incarnation clearly sensed the destructive escalation of energies in the environment and tried to speed up their work to the utmost!

Once they finally affixed the final part into the only remaining fey, they released a lot of tension and backed off from their work.

"It's done!"

Those words acted like a signal that caused the Fey Project to truly come to life!

Even without a mech pilot in the cockpit, the recently completed machine already woke up and gained an immediate consciousness as a third order living mech.

"Welcome to your new life. Before you do anything, try and rein in the energies that are building up in and around your brand new mech frame. You need to act quickly before you explode!" Ves quickly urged his new creation.

The authority of its creator weighed heavily on the completed Fey Project.

Even though the newly born living mech had not yet acclimated to its new existence, the drone mech quickly tried to stabilize the surrounding energies by engaging its cultivation method.

The Larkinson Metal Guardian Mantra was most suited to absorbing and harnessing the power of metal.

The concentration of metal energy slowly started to diminish as the new living mech eagerly strengthened and fortified its new spiritual foundation.

The fey did not remain idle as well! Each of them possessed independent personalities and were able to cultivate slightly different methods that enabled them to attract different elemental E energies.

For a moment, it looked as if the new mech had begun to tame the five elements.

However, the initial absorptions created a void that attracted even more elemental E energies from the environment!

This not only negated the effort to make the mech workshop safer, but also caused it to become even more dangerous as practicing five elemental variations of the Larkinson Metal Guardian Mantra increased the concentration of dangerous E energies even further!

Ves grew alarmed by what was happening! "Damn! Stop cultivating! You are not helping matters here! You need to employ another method to tame these energies!" The living mech would love to do so, but it was starting to grapple with another problem.

The elemental E energies absorbed by the living mech caused the relationships between the main body and its four fey to grow less stable.

It looked as if their mech frames had become subjected to the same volatile elemental interactions as was happening in the rest of the mech workshop! The situation was growing even more dangerous!