The Mech Touch

Ves smiled when he witnessed her fascination. Delighting her always warmed his heart and gave him a sense of fulfillment.

"Only now has our project come to an end. My mech designs aren\'t finalized until I breathe life into them. Can you feel the difference?"

Gloriana nodded as she continued to admire the mech designs. Though nothing appeared to have changed about their physical makeup, the trick that Ves just pulled somehow changed her entire perception of them! If the Desolate Soldier and its variant were already noteworthy before, now they had become incredibly remarkable!

"Did you just put a proto-god into a design?"

Ves grimaced a bit. "I keep telling you, they\'re not gods. They\'re... spirits, I like to call them. You can refer to the ones I put inside mech designs like earlier as design spirits."

"Where do the proto-gods come from?" She asked, as if she completely hadn\'t heard about his umpteenth complaint about her terminology.

His girlfriend could be incredibly thick-headed about certain matters!

Still, he felt very good about trusting her right now, so he decided to tell her a little more.

"They don\'t come from nothing. The weakest ones are formed from nothing but my imagination, but they tend to be rather weak. The stronger ones all come from the exceptional minds of sentient human or alien minds, whether dead or alive. Smart exobeasts are also great sources. I can either take pieces of their spirits or capture them entirely, though their physical bodies will die if I resort to the latter."

Gloriana looked up at him with increasing admiration. "You can capture gods as they are being formed from the phases of life and death!"

His spiritual techniques had nothing to do with hexism! His girlfriend was just slotting his explanation in the framework of her beliefs!

"Whether it\'s expert pilots of exceptional exobeasts, each of my recent mech designs carry at least a portion of their spirits. The design spirits essentially function as a spiritual component that is invisible to everyone except me. Only I am fully aware of the spiritual components imparted to each of my mech designs, and in turn the mechs derived from them. I\'ve never told any other mech designer this much, so I hope you can keep it a secret."

"Ves... thank you for revealing this to me." She happily leaned into him. "Learning about this divine component you add to your mech designs has been an extraordinary revelation to me! I never viewed your specialty in this way, but now that you have opened my eyes, I\'ve realized that all of my previous mech designs have always lacked this essential component! They had never been as close to perfect as I thought!"

Though it sounded as if she suffered a mental crisis, the glee on her face signified that she was anything but unhappy.

To a mech designer, discovering a shortcoming was not necessarily damaging to their development. Instead, they became more aware of what they lacked, allowing them to come up with a way to remedy the flaws in their previous methods!

Ves sensed a storm raging through Gloriana\'s mind. This time, it was far greater than anything he sensed before!

Though Ves became incredibly concerned at what kind of mental shift was taking place in her mind, her will proved to be exceptionally strong! She quickly gained control over the storm and made sure that it only changed the parts of her that she wanted to change!

The storm only subsided once she fully incorporated the new insights she gained. From now on, her idea of the perfect vessel could no longer be devoid of a spiritual component!

Having witnessed much from his spiritual fragment stuck in her mind, Ves looked at his girlfriend with shock! Even if he didn\'t possess a glimpse into her mind, he could still deduce that Gloriana readily shifted the direction of her design philosophy in light of his revelation!

"Gloriana! What have you done?!"

"Ves.. I told you that I love you. I always believed your design philosophy perfectly complements mine, and you\'ve just proved me right! Before I met you, I\'ve always believed the most perfect vessels I could design and make for my customers would merely take the form of exquisitely-crafted shells. Now that I know that it is possible to imbue them with gods, the perfect vessel in my eyes must always include a divine component!"

"But.. you won\'t be able to make these perfect vessels yourself. If you follow this direction, you\'ll become dependent on me! Think of what it will do to your future progression!"

She hugged him tighter. "I know! I don\'t care! I already told you that I can\'t imagine living without you. No matter what my mother or anyone else thinks, you are the man I wish to spend the rest of my life with. Binding my design philosophy to yours is not a heavy to price pay if I already enjoy your company. I simply can\'t ignore this option if it means I will forever be resigned to designing incomplete mechs!"

Though Ves collected abundant proof that Gloriana did not possess any ulterior motives towards him, not a single shred of doubt remained in his mind!

As a mech designer and as a woman, Gloriana decisively bound herself to him to the point where she could no longer realize her design philosophy without him by her side!

Ves couldn\'t imagine the sheer level of dedication required to make such a decision at the spur of the moment! He already thought he formed a measure of her adoration towards him, but this recent development showed him that he still underestimated her love!

As Ves and Gloriana both stared in each other\'s eyes, he voiced his deepest, heartfelt emotion.

"I love you, Gloriana." He whispered to her with affection.

A brilliant smile appeared on her. "I have waited so long for you to say those words. I love you too!"

The two instantly crashed their lips against each other! They fell onto the bed and started making out with incredible passion! His comm automatically switched off due to the movements, removing the two recently-empowered designs from view.

"AHEM! Stop this instant! Don\'t go too far!"

It took an enormous amount of physical effort for Melody to physically pry Gloriana off Ves! So passionate were they about their affection to each other that Melody almost resorted to calling in the guards of the Glory Battalion.

Even though Melody interrupted their intimate moment, they still smiled and laughed at each other. Both of them felt so connected to each other that merely being in each other\'s presence was enough.

"Meow."

"Miaow."

Even their cats responded happily to their affection towards each other!

The coming days proceeded smoothly. Now that they both completed their project, Ves transmitted the final design schematics and documents to the LMC.

"Fabricate the best copies that you can of the Desolate Soldier and the Holy Soldier and send them to the MTA for validation." He ordered Calsie over the comm. "Try and see if you can hurry up the process."

"Don\'t worry, Ves. Due to the recent changes, many mech designers have stopped flooding the MTA\'s branch on Bentheim with irrelevant mech designs. Their testers are much less busier now. They\'ve already explicitly stated that they will fast track the validation of any mech design that fares well against the sandmen! They\'ve also curtained much of their certification processes to the absolute minimum!"

He became a little reassured at her response. "That doesn\'t sound like the MTA."

"They have no choice, really. If the MTA puts up too many administrative delays on the release of mechs the Bright Republic and other states solely need, the mech industry will simply bypass the onerous steps entirely. No one really cared whether a mech is technically sound or not as long as they can be built and put to use immediately."

"Good. Even if the validation process is shortened, don\'t wait for the MTA to make their judgement. Get the Mech Nursery to start churning out as many Desolate Soldiers as possible. Included in the documents I\'ve sent you is a full step-by-step plan on how to optimally fabricate the Desolate Soldiers with our current equipment. Send this plan to our chief technicians. My latest product is already easy to produce, but we don\'t have any time to spare on ascending the learning curve."

"What about our current production orders?"

"They\'re not important." Ves waved his hand. "Halt or cancel as much as you can without getting the LMC in trouble. Right now, producing as many Desolate Soldiers is a huge priority because the sandmen invasion will reach the Bright Republic any day now. It\'ll be too late if we just start to roll out the Desolate Soldiers when the initial battles are already in full swing!"

His priority was obvious. He wanted at least some of his Desolate Soldiers to be present in the footage of the opening battles. As long as his mech was recognizably present in the footage broadcasted by the news, then his new product essentially enjoyed an enormous degree of free publicity!

It was not just about boosting the profile of his Desolate Soldier model. He also wanted to take away the space reserved for competing mech models!

As the caretaker of the LMC, Calsie keenly understood this dynamic.

"We\'ll do as you say. It is not as if we intended to do anything different. We have more than enough fixed customers to ensure that we won\'t be lacking in demand."

"Remember to focus solely on the Desolate Soldier. The LMYC in the Ylvaine Protectorate will handle the production and sale of the Holy Soldier. In fact, if demand happens to exceed supply for any reason, then I\'ll allow you to approach third-party manufacturers to produce additional copies. Achieving volume should be our overarching priority!"

"That.. is different from what you usually prioritize, Ves." Calsie looked confused. "What about quality?"

"Times are different. We all have to lower our standards when our state is at stake. Unlike my previous works, the Desolate Soldier is not a premium mech model. Not only that, it\'s far easier to produce, so even dysfunctional workshops can make adequate copies. As long as they aren\'t too shabby, they\'re good enough to resist the sandmen!"

"I\'ll see what I can do. There are many mech manufacturers that are under threat because their usual products are no longer in demand. They\'ll be easy enough to persuade to produce your Desolate Soldiers, but..."

"What are you concerned about?" Ves asked.

"If we resort to this method to boost our production, it\'s doubtful we can earn adequate profits. The third-party mech manufacturers will still insist on getting a cut, which means our margins for the Desolate Soldiers will shrink even further!"

Ves did not expect much profit to begin with, which meant that allowing third-party manufacturers in on the action would barely put them above break-even territory.

"It\'s fine." he said. "Why should we worry about profits when the survival of the Bright Republic is not a sure thing? We should do our duty and support the mech pilots sent into battle as best we can by supplying them with decent mechs. Besides, the performance of our Desolate Soldiers will lay the groundwork for the LMC\'s resurgence in the mech market!"

As long as the mech market embraced the Desolate Soldiers, it would certainly embrace his other products! The stigma the LMC acquired would naturally start to fade once everyone realized the benefits of using his products!

A day after Ves spoke with Calsie, he found out about the wildly successful raids conducted by the Ylvainans on their Starrer rivals.

The notable appearance of his Transcendent Messengers and the widespread use of the LMC\'s comercial mechs had temporarily supplanted the news on the sandman invasion in the Bright Republic!

"Ves!" Gavin called him the moment he received the news. "Have you heard what those religious nutjobs have just done!? They\'ve gone crazy!"