The Mech Touch

Chapter 7228: For the Mech that Defies Reality

If Gloriana thought that she could rein her husband in by appealing to his professionalism, then she was sorely mistaken.

Ves could bend any rule as long as he was driven by his passion!

He only had a bottom line so long as it served his interests.

When it turned into an obstacle, then he would grasp onto any excuse that gave him an opportunity to circumvent the rules!

Ves smirked and crossed his arms as he leaned against the cell of the Prophet’s Bane.

The creepy Middle Demon seemed oblivious to the pair of mech designers standing outside.

The dark and ominous cloud continued to hover senselessly like a turbulent storm cloud without lighting bolts.

“What is my design philosophy?”

“As far as I know, you prefer to define it as Mutual Growth In Adversity.”

Ves waved his hand towards the direction of the Demoncasting Forge. “Is the Riot Mark III not the epitome of my design philosophy? Out of all of the living mechs that I have made so far, this particular machine is the first one that aligns much closer to the latest evolution of my design philosophy. Instead of designing a living mech that is purposefully made to be as friendly and facilitating to its mech pilot as possible, I have reversed this relationship.”

“No offense, Ves, but that sounds backwards to me. It is as if you have taken a cart that already works as intended, but replace its perfectly round wheels with square blocks. You may claim that you are giving the poor horses a better workout, but what you are actually doing is purposefully hindering their work.”

“That is a flawed analogy, Gloriana. It only holds up so long as Venerable Rosa Orfan is still stalled by her bottleneck. What if those horses work so hard to drag their carts forward that they break past their limits and evolve into pegasi? Once they have transcended into a more superior form of steed, those evolved draft animals will find it much easier to haul a cart with square wheels. That is the goal that I am aiming for. Venerable Joshua’s contentious relationship with the Bitter Scimitar has already provided preliminary proof that this kind of adversarial relationship can stimulate the growth and evolution of a mech pilot. The Riot Mark III is the logical progression of this experimental approach.”

His wife still looked disapproving.

“The fact that you admit that this is an experiment indicates that you are aware that the outcome may not turn out as well as you hope. The worst outcome is a ruined expert mech and a dead expert pilot. The second-worst outcome is an accident that causes Venerable Orfan to become severely injured and put into a long-term coma. The third-worst outcome is another accident that causes the expert pilot to suffer such severe contamination that no trace of her original personality is left.”

“Gloriana…”

“Have you ever thought about what would happen if the Prophet’s Bane manages to resist her willpower and wins the contest? The fact that you have also turned the Riot Mark III into a Carmine mech will allow the demonic entity to inflict even greater damage to the vulnerable expert pilot.”

Her fears were not entirely unfounded. Ves had conducted a similar experiment a long time ago that had led to a permanently altered mech pilot.

He wondered what happened to that fellow. Ves had lost track of his test subject a long time ago. The changed pilot should still be struggling somewhere in the old galaxy.

Anyway, he was not ignorant of the consequences of failure, whether partial or complete.

That did not mean he had any intentions to stop at this point.

“I acknowledge the risks, Gloriana, but do you know what? I believe in my vision. What is more important is that Venerable Orfan also believes in my work. I have warned her about the risks and danger multiple times, including just before. You have heard her answers. Her intuition is not a joke. She is always aware of how much of a risk she is taking, but she is not as risk-averse as you. She is a soldier. She is a champion. It is her job to overcome challenges. In her mind, if she isn’t able to defeat her own mech, then she isn’t qualified to defeat the enemy powerhouses that she is truly hungering to defeat. Giving her a conventional living mech will not help her all that much. What I offer is a more fitting solution.”

His wife shook her head in disapproval. “Not every mech pilot’s desire should be met. Our clients and customers often make unrealistic or outright counterproductive demands. It is our responsibility as mech designers to filter out the dangerous and give them what they can make use of without endangering themselves. What you are doing puts the entire mech industry under threat.”

“Enough.” Ves finally told her. “You can keep arguing with me, but you will not change anything. My mind is set. I am going through with my plan. Please stay silent and let me finish the final step without interruption. I need total concentration for what comes next.”

Listening to his wife did not dissuade him at all. She only strengthened his determination as he sought to prove her wrong.

He began to make the arrangements. The Demon Prison helpfully allowed a user to transfer any captive demon to the Demoncasting Forge without giving it any chance to escape.

The Prophet’s Bane had no choice but to be prepped for transformation by the merciless claws of the forge.

Ves and his silent but judgmental wife entered the side chamber where the Demoncasting Molds rested.

Ideally, the best way to perform Demoncasting was to create a custom mold based on every individual case, but Ves had yet to reach that level.

He had made a lot of strides since the first time he tried out Demoncasting.

Of the molds that he had used most often and grown familiar with, the Attack Enhancement Demoncasting Mold held a favored status in his mind.

It was simple but broadly applicable. It could enhance the lethality of any weapon in a direct and unambiguous fashion.

However, Ves had also developed a distaste for it due to its inefficiency and its lack of depth.

He regarded it as a fallback option if he failed to come up with a more suitable selection.

He considered the Defense Enhancement Demoncasting Mold to function in a similar manner.

They took any demon and crudely casted it into a device to make it tougher and stronger in the most direct possible fashion.

Ves did not want to choose this mold to create his first D-mech.

He knew that the chances were greater that he would gain a stable result if he used the Defense Enhancement Demoncasting Mold, but he would never forgive himself for forgoing a superior option that might have been able to produce a superior result.

The Riot Mark III was not lacking in hard defenses. He already possessed a new and unprecedented superdimensional archemetal energized armor system.

Even if all of these technological boons was not enough to make the latest iteration of the Riot invincible, then Venerable Orfan’s willpower could easily amplify the defensive power of the armor system to another level!

The amplification would become even more exaggerated if she managed to become a saint!

No. Ves did not design the Riot Mark III to function as a purely defensive mech. The Bastion already existed for that purpose.

The expert spearman mech needed to become a force of chaos and disruption.

He had to wield offense as a form of defense, and defense as a form of offense.

The Riot Mark III needed to become a machine that defied classification, defied calculations, defied predictions and above all else, defied expectations.

In other words, Ves aspired to create a machine that ran counter to logic rather than abide by its cold numbers.

It needed to do the impossible every second it existed and behave as if it was another tuesday.

What Ves wanted was to create a machine that spat in the face of the Polymath’s predictive models and surpassed his mother’s elusive plans.

A part of Ves even dreamed of becoming the Riot.

Only then would he truly be able to unmoor himself from the shackles of fate and the machinations of others.

Perhaps that may explain why he was so eager to push this experiment to such an extreme.

The project had become a shuttle where the pilot constantly held up the acceleration lever.

He had not slowed down for anything and kept speeding forward to the point where the vehicle could crash as soon as it encountered a single obstacle in its route.

Ves grinned. That was exactly the way he liked it. If he wanted to go big, then he should do it all the way.

“Which mold will you choose?” Gloriana finally broke her silence. “As far as I know, there is no pre-made mold here that aligns with the attributes of the Riot Mark III.”

“You’re right.” He told her. “That is why we need to select a mold that comes close enough. The fit doesn’t have to be perfect. What matters more is that it can best channel the properties of the Prophet’s Bane into the Riot Mark III.”

Should he pick darkness and turn the Riot Mark III into an even more malevolent entity?

Ves developed quite a strong affinity towards the darkness attribute. While he had no way of mastering all of its facets, he possessed a slightly greater comprehension of a handful of related concepts such as corruption, weakening and most recently negation.

However, he did not think this was a suitable choice. The coating of the Riot Mark III was striped orange and loud, turning him into a dazzling presence that oozed presence. The machine craved attention, and performed best when he was in the light.

What about the death attribute?

That was also a rather poor fit. The Riot Mark III was not designed to reap lives en masse, or harness the power of death to enhance the lethality of his strikes. Using a mold based on the death element would just muddle up his creation.

Ves’ eyes continued to rake across the rows and rows of molds. Each of them presented very different ways of channeling the power of a captive demon into an object.

The essence of Demoncasting was not demons. It was the molds.

The former consisted of raw ingredients, while the latter represented technology.

It was only through developing understanding of certain phenomena before using that to create devices that could bend them to one’s will that humans ascended to the stars.

Ves hungered for knowledge on how to create his own molds, but since he was not able to do so, he would settle for studying them and using them to figure out their working principles.

After contemplating his choices for another minute, his eyes finally settled on a certain mold.

“This one will do.” He said with a determined expression.

His wife raised a single eyebrow. “Out of all of the choices you could make, you want to make use of the Prophecy Imbuement Demoncasting Mold. I… did not even know the System supplied this mold. This is… an incomprehensible choice.”

“It makes perfect sense!” Ves grinned. “Prophet’s Bane is originally based on a failed prophet. I don’t know how much of that is left in the Middle Demon, but it shouldn’t have forgotten its roots. I have a feeling that focusing on channeling its flawed power of prophecy into an expert mech that exists to defy this phenomenon will lead to a very interesting contradiction. Sparks will fly. Conflicts will occur. I have no way of predicting the results, but what I hope to gain from this collision is an expert mech that becomes even more effective at upending probabilities!”

What Ves sought was to strengthen the Riot Mark III’s existing metaphysical properties to the greatest possible extent!

He was willing to forgo further enhancements into offense, defense, speed or other hard properties in order to strengthen the mystery of his latest creation!

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