The Mech Touch

The Hanlin #6 Hunting Ground might not be the most exciting region on Ocanon VI, but Ves found the terrain to be oddly calming.

The flora and fauna looked off compared to Old Earth-derived organisms, but their convergent evolution still made Ves feel as if he was on a peaceful human-occupied planet.

The abundance of trees, shrubs and occasionally more exotic plant growths caused the environment to become rich with the wood element.

"Mrow."

Blinky floated atop his head while gently absorbing the surrounding E energies.

All of the plants in the forest had become irradiated by E energy for roughly a year.

Day and night, these trees and shrubs came into contact with a lot of passing energies, causing them to change and mutate in many subtle ways.

Only a few plants proved to be more sensitive towards E energy radiation than others, and they quickly began to flourish at a much faster pace than normal!

It was easy to recognize these mutated plants. They were clearly the largest of their kind in a given area. Their trunks grew taller and their branches grew thicker and wider.

Other plants in the vicinity that had 'lost' the evolutionary race all started to wilt and die as their mutated counterparts monopolized all of the available resources that could be extracted from the immediate environment.

Ves even saw a few cases where the mutated trees resorted to cannibalism and directly sunk their roots and branches into these lesser growths!

He couldn't help but think back on the concept of predation

Both his mother and the Huntsman were extremely successful cultivators. In an environment where E energy radiation had dried up a long time ago, these exceptional figures managed to surpass all of their peers and become one among many countless humans to evolve into True Gods!

While their individual strengths and capabilities vastly differed from each other, they both stood out for their willingness to fuel their growth by feeding onto others.

The philosophical differences between them were not small, but when it came to the core of their domains, they were pretty much two sides of the same coin.

Their carnivorous outlook on cultivation and the universe caused them to constantly look for bigger prey to hunt.

When Ves watched the live broadcast of Operation Night Jazz, he carefully observed the performance of each god pilot.

The Huntsman stood out for his eagerness to confront the ancient phase whales. The sense of excitement along with his burning desire to fell another formidable prey radiated across many electronic signals and directly impacted Ves' psyche and Spirituality to a small extent!

From what Ves recalled at the time, he was vaguely able to sense the Huntsman's greater ambition.

The ancient phase whale that he was in the process of impaling with his penetrating spears was just the start.

The Huntsman did not make it clear to everyone else, but Ves knew that this thrill-seeking god pilot clearly looked forward to hunting down the much more formidable prey of Messier Sy!

Was there no end to his bloodlust?

Though it was rather good for red humanity that the Huntsman was working hard to prepare for fights against the most powerful alien adversaries to come, Ves did not feel entirely comfortable with this philosophy.

He felt the same unease whenever he talked about anything related to cultivation science with his mother.

Ves hadn't been able to fully describe the source of his unease, but now that he had entered a natural environment, he understood the cause of this problem.

As Ves looked around the alien forest and felt how much life was brewing within the trees, he felt comfortable and at peace.

"Mrow..."

Blinky squinted in pleasure has joyfully absorbed a small portion of all of the life and vitality produced by this gentle alien forest.

Ves was a mech designer. His life centered around designing and creating mechs.

Regardless of what his clients and customers did with his machines, Ves had always considered himself to be a creator at heart. He transformed lower value materials into higher value products, thereby contributing to a positive development of human civilization!

Industry was civilization. The more stuff people produced, the greater the development of a society.

Human life had the potential to bloom even further with the assistance of all of the useful tech produced by creators such as Ves!

Another way to describe his place in the cosmos was that he was a negative contributor to entropy.

It was an inevitability for the current universe to move towards entropy.

Yet within the lifetimes of a civilization, it was still possible for a society of people to create order out of chaos.

Ves felt in tune with order. His contribution to human society might lead to the death and disorder of outsiders, but he had always sought to promote the order of the humans who made use of his products!

The forest of the Hanlin #6 Hunting Ground was nothing special. It was just an ordinary environment that had been carefully trimmed and culled of any significant threats. Hardly any visitor had any reason to find greater meaning in this environment.

Ves was different.

The forest was an emblematic symbol of the fusion between nature and order.

This aligned extremely well with his domain. His design philosophy caused him to develop strong affinities with both mechs and life.

Mechs was a technological derivative of the high-level metal attribute. It was a symbol of order, civilization, war-making potential and other complicated concepts.

Life had connections to many other high-level attributes, and could serve as one by itself. The variation that Ves had formed within his Spirituality was mostly aligned with the concept of Mutual Growth, which had a very strong relationship to the wood attribute.

Wood was associated with a lot of positive concepts. It was flexible. It stood for the cycle of life and death. It possessed a rejuvenating quality. It promoted cooperation between different entities. It embodied growth in the most natural fashion.

Ves had benefited enormously from the traits of his two dominant attributes.

His ability to understand and work with mechs improved to a superhuman degree.

He was able to understand metal materials in a way that enabled him to exploit them in completely new ways.

He was able to imbue the property of growth into objects that should not have this capability.

He had been able to understand and cooperate with all manner of alien and inhuman entities.

These were his fundamental strengths as a mech designer, and he thrived when he engaged in any of them. These were all value-generating activities that always contributed to increasing the order of human civilization.

"I can't exactly say the same for the others." Ves briefly frowned.

The Huntsman and his mother did not possess the mentality of a creation cultivators.

While their actions might contribute to rising order for their own organizations and civilizations, their philosophies were fundamentally more destructive in nature.

For example, the Hunting Association may be working hard to preserve the ecosystems of many hunting planets, but the Huntsman probably wouldn't have any qualms about exterminating entire races so long as he could absorb their strength!

His mother was the same. She might act gentle and motherly around Veronica, but Cynthia Larkinson's domain possessed a much more ruthless quality.

Neither of them were harmless!

As Ves continued to supervise his children as they tried to approach the small and cute critters in the forest, his thoughts strayed towards the Hunter's Code.

He did not entirely agree with the philosophy espoused by it. He simply couldn't bring himself to center his entire life around killing and creating more entropy.

However, he saw the value of this philosophy in his living mechs.

In the past, Ves had applied his design philosophy in a largely gentle fashion.

To him, the concept of Mutual Growth translated into designing living mechs that could grow on their own, but also advanced the growth of their mech pilots. In turn, these humans contributed their own feedback to their machines, thereby enabling the living mechs to grow in ways that they could not accomplish by themselves.

This was a harmonious growth scheme.

Even if the living mechs and mech pilots dedicated their entire existences towards killing life and unleashing destruction, what they did with their power was not a core component of their growth aspects.

To put it in simple terms, his living mechs were akin to herbivores. They grew in a more passive and gentle manner. It was difficult to speed up their growth, but at least they were able to become stronger at a steady rate.

The philosophy espoused by the Hunter's Code taught him a different approach towards growth.

It opened up the idea of granting his living mechs the benefits of becoming a carnivore.

While they did not have to give up their current methods of growth, Ves envisioned a possibility where he could upgrade their designs with a 'carnivore module'.

This brand-new addition to their spiritual foundations would enable them to actively feed off the energies of their defeated opponents!

Though Ves had yet to work out all of the theories and mechanisms, he believed that he was able to set up with the knowledge and resources that he currently had at his disposal.

The real question was not whether he could do it or not. What really troubled him was whether he should do it all. Was it right for him to turn his mechs into hunters or predators that constantly yearned to feed off their kills?

This issue bothered him so much that he actually called Helena to his side.

Though nobody around him was able to see her, Helena had subtly sent down an energy manifestation that was weak to the point where only Ves and Blinky could perceive her presence at close range.

None of the invisible bodyguards or the many hidden technological monitoring equipment could pick up her presence!

"Are you familiar with the Hunter's Code?" Ves asked with his spiritual voice as opposed to his normal one.

Helena crossed her arms. "Of course I am. It is not particularly secret. There are hunters among the citizens of the Hex Federation that have started to dabble with it. The Valkyrie mechs happen to be highly compatible with this brilliant new cultivation method."

"The Hunter's Code was made for humans, but... I think I can adapt some of its components to my living mechs. It won't be easy, but I will just have to spend a bit of time. What is truly troubling me is the part about sacrificing prey to the Huntsman in exchange for a power that can cleanse the impurities that accrue by rashly absorbing the energies of resentful prey. I really do not want to infringe upon the Huntsman's territory or become reliant on his power."

His eldest sister looked thoughtful. "Let me guess. You think I can serve as an adequate substitute given that I am the Daughter of Death and all. Your logic is not wrong, but..."

"Are you incapable of fulfilling this role?"

"You are expecting too much from me, brother. I am death. I represent the ending of life, the cessation of activity, the transition from warm to cold. I am good at taking, but not good at giving. What you ask of me requires me to be good at both."

"You are not an entity that is completely composed of the power of death." Ves retorted. "You wouldn't have been able to exist and take on such a lively personality if that is the case. There is a spark of life within you. Didn't you talk to me about yin and yang in one of our past discussions? You are unlikely to comprehend death too deeply if you interact with it in isolation. It is only when you work with its opposite that you can form contrasts between the two, thereby enabling you to harvest a lot of new insights. Shouldn't my request be helpful in promoting your understanding of both life and death?"

He had made a profound suggestion!

Helena became stunned by what she heard. She instantly fell silent as she contemplated whether his brother's proposal had any merit.