The Mech Touch

Out of ail the flags that his golden boat could bump into, it had to bump into an orange flag that depicted a flute of all objects!

It would have been better if he deliberately crashed his boat towards one of the blue flags that were situated closer to him. Even if the prizes were lower in value, they at least aligned with his current goals.

Instead, he drew a prize that might very well end up teaching him how to play a musical instrument!

This was completely undesirable to him. He was not a musician or practiced the art of music as a hobby.

None of his incarnations had any relations to playing the flute. Perhaps the most he could do with an enlightenment fruit that granted him a music skill was to pass it off to Aurelia!

His oldest daughter had learned how to sing and was able to make good use of her cute and charming voice. It wouldn't be too strange if she started to play the flute as well...

"This is stupid."

Ves felt incredibly sour about this suboptimal outcome even as the Wishing Fountain withdrew all of the other flagpoles.

The golden boat that was responsible for selecting his prize capsized and sank into the waters.

Only a single flag remained above the surface. It began to glow brighter and brighter!

Ves felt no enjoyment at this time. Even though a radiant lottery ticket should never present anything that was truly worthless, he still blamed himself for losing control over the trajectory of the boat.

He underestimated the difficulty of this challenge and overestimated his ability to control the water energy at a distance.

While he couldn't have predicted that the Wishing Fountain would present this kind of test to him, he should have made a more accurate assessment on his chances to lead the boat all the way to the sea dragon flag at the other end.

If he had been humbler and more honest about his lacking control, then he would have formed a more appropriate plan where he aimed to lead his golden boat towards an easier destination!

In the end, one of the root causes behind this failure was that he was unable to make use of Blinky.

He roughly understood the intentions behind this prohibition. Blinky was an inherently spiritual existence. He was born with the talent and the ability to control spiritual energy to an exquisite degree. The Star Cat relied entirely on his innate talent and endowments to become so good in this aspect.

However, Blinky actually spent little to no time on practicing his ability to control E energy. It simply didn't seem necessary in the past.

Ves was even worse. He had completely ceased to waste any of his own time on an activity that he felt was redundant. Why should he work hard to improve his own ability to manipulate E energy when Blinky could already do the same job at least 10 times better?

The System had essentially used this vulnerability to teach him a painful lesson about how he had grown complacent in this aspect!

"If I truly want to tap into the potential of the water element, I need to be more honest and invest more time into playing with it." He concluded.

He had learned plenty of basic spells related to the water element, but never really made use of them because he thought they were completely redundant.

He no longer held this view anymore. The Beginner Five Elements Spells Manual became a lot more valuable in his eyes because it not only taught him a lot of useful theories, but also enabled him to gain proficiency in a lot of different techniques that allowed him to get in touch with many distinctive aspects of all five elements!

If Ves wanted to deepen his comprehension of the water element, he had to put in the work and play with it. He would not be able to advance his control over it fast enough if he always stuck theory all of the time.

While he was already working with the water element in practice by incorporating it into his mech designs, this was obviously not good enough.

Perhaps he should act more like a qi cultivator and spend more time on manipulating water energy in a direct fashion.

Even if he was a creation cultivator at heart, he still needed to learn how to control E energy in a more precise fashion in order to craft powerful artifacts.

Woosh!

At this time, the Wishing Fountain had presented the prize that Ves had ultimately obtained by using up a precious radiant lottery ticket!

The silvery flute depicted on the tiny flag actually started to separate from the surface.

Once it had left its former home, the two-dimensional image steadily gained more depth and realism as it transformed into a physical flute.

At the same time, it started to expand in size until it had gained the proportions of a typical human flute!

Ves grew astonished as the flute not only turned into a real object, but gently floated in his direction until it ultimately fell into his hands.

He looked down on the flute with a numb expression.

"Where is my enlightenment fruit?"

There was no enlightenment fruit! The Wishing Fountain had screwed him over!

Instead of sending him an enlightenment fruit that contained valuable information and skills that may be useful to him or one of his trusted subordinates, he instead received a physical flute!

This was not what he desired because he would much rather gain the skills needed to fabricate a powerful object than to acquire the end product directly!

He had developed a distance for acquiring ready-made products from the System. They were only useful to him for a limited amount of time, while any valuable knowledge would likely remain relevant for the rest of his life!

Ves used to cherish certain objects granted by the System such as the Vulcaneye, the OdinEye and the Amastendira.

However, he had outgrown all of them to the point where he just left them to rot inside the Vault of Eternity. He could easily use his regular channels to obtain scanners and weapons that were much more powerful than these outdated artifacts!

Would this flute become the latest artifact that might only be relevant to him for a couple of years?

"My luck and judgment are not good today."

Even though it was an irrational thought, he regretted the fact that he decided to use up his radiant lottery ticket on this particular day.

If he used it a day later, his luck might have been a lot better, enabling him to push his boat towards one of the more acceptable flags!

There was no use lamenting over past events. He could not change the outcome no matter how much he complained. He could only accept this result and move on from this point.

"Let's see what I have gained."

The flute did not look remarkable at first, but its quality was rather high despite not being a masterwork.

A remarkable craftsman had definitely put a lot of effort into making it. The design was rather bland and neutral, but that just made it more difficult to turn such an unassuming object into a piece of art.

Ves appreciated all of the little touches that subtly added a bit of personality to the musical instrument.

The material was also extraordinary in nature. It was made entirely of an unfamiliar hyper metal that possessed a surprisingly strong sensitivity towards water-attributed E energy.

"Wait, it's not related to the fire element?"

He had been misled by the orange flag. It turned out that the color did not represent the elemental affinity of the prize.

Ves' lips curled into a smile when he understood that he managed to make a gain that was relevant to his current goals.

[Oceancaller]

This is a reproduction of an ancient relic that once belonged to a True God. The Mistress of the Oceans was a harbinger of misfortune and disaster and drowned many lives over the course of her existence. Whether on a planet or in space, this feared and mighty deity terrorized entire civilizations by performing her most feared dirges to her intended victims.

This replica artifact does not inherit the death and misery that the Mistress of the Oceans has infused in her iconic artifact. It is a blank instrument and can be turned into an artifact that bestows blessings or retread the steps of its original and drown an uncountable amount of lives.

The replica Oceancaller has become drawn to you. It will unlock more power and become more responsive to you if you are able to earn its approval.

"What...?"

His entire outlook on this flute had changed as he read the System description.

He held the flute more reverently as his estimation of its value had shot up as soon as he learned that it was associated with an ancient True God!

Titles had power. Anyone who became known as the Mistress of the Oceans had to be a bigshot in her era!

Even if the Oceancaller in his hands was just a replica of the original, the fact that it shared much of the same DNA of that ancient relic meant its potential was extremely high!

However, Ves quickly grew a little more vigilant towards the flute when he learned about the infamous deeds of this powerful 'deity'.

"Not all True Gods are good-natured." He reminded himself.

His mother was not the nicest woman either, but this Mistress of the Oceans sounded a thousand times worse!

The original Oceancaller belonged to a mass murderer, a genocidal maniac and a power-hungry despot!

How could Ves not feel nervous about obtaining an object that shared a relation with such a dangerous cultivator?!

Though the Mistress of the Oceans had probably died many ages ago, who knew whether a remnant of her had persisted to this day.

If Ves played around with his new Oceancaller without enough care, he might accidentally bring this dangerous True God back from the dead!

A part of him immediately wanted to throw this cursed artifact away.

However, he couldn't bring himself to discard such an exceedingly precious object.

Not only was it made out of extremely high-grade hyper metals that could only be produced in a high-energy environment, but it was also a high-level artifact!

"You're alive, aren't you?" He whispered towards the flute. "I can't feel you right now, but I am sure there's an artifact spirit inside your physical form."

Ves was surprisingly unable to study what was hiding beneath the exterior of the flute. His spiritual senses encountered an invisible barrier that prevented him from learning how it was made.

This was probably a form of ancient copy protection. Divine Blacksmiths had to protect their secrets well if they wanted to suppress their competition.

Ves actually felt this ancient form of protection may be useful in itself. If he could study the flute and learn how to reproduce this protective barrier, he could apply it to all kinds of works, making it much more difficult for his rivals and his enemies to decipher his works!

"Well, let's see what you can do. Please forgive me. The last time I played a flute was when I was still an elementary school student. I never practiced with a flute of this type either. Please allow me to play a few simple notes."

He awkwardly raised the flute and pressed his lips against the lip plate.

He did not press any of his fingers on the keys, but simply blew his voice through the hole.

An unexpectedly loud sound erupted from the musical artifact!

Its silvery surface became more active and started to light up hundreds of small blue runes, each of which began to draw in the water energies around the clearing!

As the flute produced a monotonous high tone, the water of the Wishing Fountain practically exploded from the pool and launched in the opposite direction of Ves with the force and the momentum of a hurricane!

Ves quickly pulled the flute away from his lips and looked at the glowing instrument with astonishment.

Even though he had only blown a single note, he briefly experienced a rush of power as the flute somehow amplified his control and reach over the surrounding water energies by at least an order of magnitude!

This was the most powerful artifact that had fallen into his hands!

Its power might not come close to the Heavensword, but Ves had a feeling that his Oceancaller may be able to grow just as powerful one day!