The Mech Touch

The five elements mech had just come to life.

The highly unusual variant of the Fey Project initially looked like everything that Ves had hoped to build after he had entered an inspired state.

The modifications made to the design of the base model successfully enabled the machine to interact with all five classical elements at the same time!

With the main body developing an affinity for the metal attribute and the four separate fey acquiring an affinity for the other four attributes, Ves had successfully brought a machine to life that was technically able to harness the power of all five elements!

However, Ves quickly noticed that all was not well with his latest creation. Its current state was highly volatile as the large quantities of elemental E energies that had built up in the mech workshop over the last half day did not show any signs of weakening.

Instead, the inherent properties combined with the initial cultivation attempts of the five elements mech had caused the energy concentration in the mech workshop to increase even more!

This was bad as any accident that might occur under these circumstances were bound to cause greater damage!

"C'mon! Try and control the elements. You were born to reign over them. Do not let them take control over you. I know you can do it. I expressly designed you to harness all five elements. Now is the time for you to begin with fulfilling your purpose!"

Ves continued to encourage and provide advice to his living mech. He did not know for certain whether his words made any difference, but he could see and feel the mech starting to take more concrete action.

He had withdrawn his Living Workshop ability at this time. Now that the five elements mech came to life, the glow and life energies no longer helped anymore.

Vulcan still remained close at hand in order to monitor the situation and take steps if necessary.

There was little that Ves and Vulcan could do to make the situation less charged and volatile.

They could reduce the dangerous buildup of E energies by disassembling the five elements or bringing its various fey far apart from each other. However, neither of these options were acceptable to Ves!

This was because despite putting in the last part that was supposed to bring his experimental mech to completion, his latest creation had not actually triggered a masterwork transformation at this time!

This was perplexing to Ves because he was too percent convinced that the overall quality of his five elements mech had most definitely surpassed the masterwork mech at a comfortable margin.

"It's not complete!" He concluded with an astonished voice. "My new mech is still in the process of taking shape."

This was unprecedented and completely unfamiliar to him. Although he desired novelty, he did not ask for his attempt to fabricate a powerful masterwork to get stalled at this time.

Ves couldn't help but worry more about his latest creation. Everything had gone off-track as he had inadvertently caused a new situation that put his new work through an unknown process.

"What is happening?"

This was supposed to be one of his best and most exquisite mechs that he had built up to this point in his career!

None of the other masterwork mechs that he had fabricated in the past few years could match the depth of passion, ingenuity and personality he put into this seemingly unassuming standard mech.

The Fey Project that integrated five different types of hyper materials and came with five separate personalities vastly exceeded the potential of any other quasi-first-class standard mech!

It might even be one of the rare standard mechs that had actually become so powerful that its combat effectiveness had actually reached the level of a first-class mech!

That was one of the dream goals of every mech designer. There was no challenge involved with designing second-class mechs that could fight on an equal level against other second-class mechs.

The true difficulty lay in designing a second-class mech that could actually give a first-class mech a run for its money!

Even if the modified Fey Project was a quasi-first-class mech that pushed against the upper limits that defined a second-class machine, there was still a huge gap that should have separated it from real first-class units.

The main factor that distinguished the mech classes from each other was their energy supply.

The more powerful the power reactor, the more powerful their functions.

The five elements mech possessed the same quasi-first-class power reactor of the Elite Edition of the Fey Project.

It was costlier than the power reactors used by products such as the Pacifier and the Ferocious Piranha mech lines, but it was still far outmatched by the cheapest first-class power reactors!

The fundamental reason why the five elements mech was able to bridge this crucial gap was because it was meant to use the power of heaven to make up for its power deficiency! In that sense, Ves had clearly succeeded because his new mech showed greater and greater signs of imposing more control over the elemental E energies.

It first started with the mech and fey themselves. The conflicts that took place from within gradually started to get sorted as the living entities filtered and separated anything that was not in the right place.

Ves gained more and more hope that his new mech would be able to deescalate the volatile situation.

However, that hope did not last long.

While the new living mech became preoccupied with putting its insides into order, the external environment did not grow any calmer.

In fact, they started to get more and more concentrated as the multiple reinforcement reactions continually promoted the emergence of more elemental E energies. The internal problem became less acute, but the external problem had grown even worse!

It even started to affect the stability of the newly created mech. The growing pressure from the environment was causing the young mech to grow even less stable. Both Ves and Alexa started to grow increasingly more concerned about this pattern.

"We should transport your new mech away from this mech workshop!" Alexa urgently proposed. "Once your new machine has been brought to a stabler location, the buildup will no longer happen."

"I am not so sure about that." Ves frowned. "While you are partially correct, my mech will always be at risk of building up a cascading energy cycle whenever it attracts too much elemental E energies. Bringing it away won't solve its own inability to prevent its internals from exploding. What my living mech truly needs to do right now is to learn how to tame the violent energies from the onset."

"Can't your mech do that later after we have relocated it to a different venue?"

Ves immediately shook his head as his instincts issued a stern warning. "Your idea has merit, but... it is not that simple. I have a feeling that my five elements mech will become severely deficient if that happens. I am not sure why, but I think it is best if we wait and let it sort its current situation. I am willing to risk an explosion for this opportunity. Besides, just because we cannot move it does not mean we can help in other ways."

"Mrow!"

Blinky flew forward and began to devour the energies around him. The energy concentration started to drop as the companion spirit took the opportunity to compensate for all of the energies that he had released from his Blinkyverse these past few days.

However, the absorption of E energies soon started to produce other accidents!

Small explosions occurred in front of Blinky as the indiscriminate devouring of E energies caused the different elements to collide against each other, thereby producing all sorts of chaotic reactions!

"Damn!"

"Mrow mrow!"

Blinky quickly stopped what he was doing and started to absorb a single element instead.

The local energy concentration continued to decrease, but Blinky no longer created as much instability as before. In fact, the Star Cat was actively helping to defuse the dangerous situation!

The metal element was the most dominant one in the mech workshop, and it was what the main body relied upon to keep the other elements in line.

The problem was that the quantity and concentration of fire, water, wood and earth energies had grown too strong for the metal element to restrain them any further. Blinky helped to ease the situation by draining the strongest of those four remaining elemental energies.

Fire energy happened to be particularly abundant at the moment, so that was what Blinky focused on absorbing.

The ancestral star that shone inside the internal universe slowly started to grow larger, hotter and brighter.

However, Blinky's devouring rate did not make a significant dent in the situation.

This was what made the five elements so difficult to work with. As long as they all came into contact with each other, many of their interactions caused the different elemental energies to reinforce and egg each other on without any apparent limit.

Though the five elements mech had begun to assert its control over the volatile E energies in the environment, it still a bit short despite its growing proficiency.

If this went on, the energy concentration in the mech workshop would rise past a point where it became hopeless for the mech to control the situation!

In the end, as much as Ves had attempted to make his new mech as strong and alive as possible, it was still too young, immature and weak to properly harness all of these powers at once!

Perhaps that was one of the reasons why his mech had not yet reached completion.

Ves needed to make up for this major deficiency in order to complete a mech that was fully capable of sustaining itself! "How can I do that, though?"

The five elements mech had already transitioned into a living mech with multiple personalities. Its spiritual foundation had become fixed, which meant that Ves was unable to improve it as directly as before.

This was incredibly inconvenient to Ves as it meant that he could not employ his usual tricks to tweak with the spiritual foundation of the five elements mech without restriction. There were not many other ways for Ves to take action to solve his creation's weaknesses.

"Myah myah myah." Maia expressed her concern as she acted as Alexa's spiritual eyes.

Ves abruptly turned to his discipline's companion spirit. "Wait a second."

He just recalled Maia's inherent capabilities. Even though the new companion spirit was relatively young and weak, one of her starting abilities might mean the difference between a complete success and a partial success!

"Alexa!"

"What do you require, sir?"

"I need you to bring Maia forth and use her ability to promote the growth of any living entity on my new living mech. If you can make it grow fast enough, my work may actually be able to tame all of the unstable energies."

His suggestion surprised Alexa. "You are asking much of my companion spirit. She is only a few months old."

"Maia is not a baby. She is already pretty decent. Just try out and see if it works."

"Very well..."

Though Alexa was afraid of exposing Maia to danger and forcing her to exhaust herself in favor of an unstable living mech, the companion spirit still flew forward until she was close enough to touch the exterior of the five elements mech.

"Myah..."

Once the cat extended her paw and made contact with the hard-working five elements mech, Maia began to inject a steady stream of gentle and helpful life-attributed E energy into the living machine.

The modified Fey Project eagerly absorbed the donated E energy. It even began to display a growing mastery over its ability to tame the violent energies.

"It is working!" Alexa happily explained!

"Good job!"

A huge weight lifted off his shoulders. Ves started to grin as the situation started to look more optimistic. The mech workshop was steadily becoming less and less dangerous with every pasing second.

However, just as it appeared that his mech was starting to gain the strength and control it needed to assert more control over the surrounding elemental energies, a growing sense of danger started to loom over the mech workshop.

Ves grew increasingly more uneasy as his instincts detected that his living mech was about to become subjected to an even greater threat. Even Alexa started to frown and look concerned at times.

"What is going on? Shouldn't the problem be resolved?" His comm suddenly chimed an emergency alert.

This was not normal, as Ves was sure that he had muted the device so that he could fabricate his mech without interruption.

"Why have you called, Gavin?"

"Uhm, I hate to interrupt your work, boss, but we are observing highly abnormal weather patterns outside. It used to be fairly clear a few minutes ago, but a large amount of dark clouds have spontaneously formed above Diandi Base. We are even detecting a rapid buildup of lightning, so much so that the power of this thunderstorm is looking to break a record on this planet! There is no obvious explanation for what is happening. Can I ask if your work has anything to do with the rapidly changing weather."

Ves widened his eyes when he heard the news.