The Mech Touch novel Chapter 1404

The hunting team rested only for a short period after taking down the huge panther. As mechs started to remain on guard, Ves and a handful of mech technicians exited their legged transports and performed perfunctory maintenance and repairs on the mechs engaged in battle.

Only the knight mech that faced the brunt of the panther’s charges required some minor fixes. The mech had been designed to absorb a lot of shock, and it had properly braced and angled itself to redirect a large portion of the forces slamming into its shield.

\"Alright, it’s done!\" Ves shouted as he recalled the mech technicians who replaced a few minor broken subcomponents.

The work they performed amounted to nothing but an emergency patch. Only after they rested for the night would the maintenance crew be able to perform more thorough maintenance.

Right now, the carcass bleeding and stinking all over the place made this location a very poor resting spot! Who knew how many hungry cats would converge on the site!

The hunting team departed within an hour. Lady Miralix declined to take any trophies from the corpse of the brightly-colored panther. The noblewoman and her hunters considered the huge cat to be too young, juvenile, stupid and unworthy to celebrate its death!

Back inside the legged transport, Ves harbored mixed feelings about the attitudes expressed by the hunting consultants and other people on the team.

Their callous treatment of huge cats like the panther made it clear that they saw every huge cat in the hunting zones as prey and only prey.

The only value the huge cats offered to the hunters was how much bragging rights they provided to the hunters. It was as if every huge cat wandered around with a floating label on top of their heads which signified how much reputation and prestige they provided!

The panther they just defeated evidently provided so little value that the hunters outright dismissed the kill.

\"What do the geneticists and exobiologists who designed this ugly panther think about their creation?\"

They likely care little to nothing about their own creations. They cooked up so many different species of huge cats and dumped them onto the Asco Continent in order to collect experimental data.

The more successful species that grew into Crown Cats received the bulk of their attention. The lesser ones who fared less well against the hunters were probably regarded as genetic trash that needed to be cleaned up to make room for deadlier and more successful prey.

Normally, Ves cared little for the methods and machinations of biotech researchers. The crazy specialists constantly played around with genes sampled from newly-discovered exobeasts or synthesized entirely from their labs. The type of work they did differed significantly from the work of a typical mech designer.

One played god, while the other designed machines.

\"Yet the difference isn’t so clear now in my case.\" He whispered to himself.

He cast his eyes down his firm and dexterous hands. For now, he designed mechs with his hands.

In the future, he might be able to shape more than mechs with his limbs. Perhaps he might directly create a new lifeform with a few gestures of his hands one day!

Having read the research data and files that Lucky had once lifted from a hidden research outpost, Ves knew that the attitudes held by the hunters were also shared among the specialists

who created the cats.

\"There are very few people who actually respect the huge cats.\"

Only the hardcore, professional hunters who lived by the hunter’s creed respected every creature they felled. Sadly, Lady Miralix declined to hire any of them on her hunting team.

To her, rigid traditions had no place in her current mission. All she cared about was hunting down a notable Crown Cat to provide a powerful boost to her career.

\"In a way, the huge cats are fulfilling their purpose. Why should I pity their existences?\"

No matter how much he tried to dismiss the issue, his doubts continued to come back to haunt him. This was because his recent experimentation drew obvious parallels with the work of House Laterna’s biotech researchers.

Both of them created new forms of life. While their methods and their products diverged, the implications of their work were remarkably similar.

\"What is the responsibility of a creator to their work?\"

Ves struggled with this question ever since he became a mech designer.

Sometimes he washed his hands of them as soon as they fell into the hands of his customers. This applied the most to his mass-market products.

Sometimes he cared a lot about how they were being utilized. This only applied to some of his custom mechs and gold label mechs.

The somewhat inconsistent approach made it clear that Ves had never really come up with a good answer to this difficult question.

On top of that now came the consideration of how he should approach the creation of spiritual products.

Even though he called them products, they were just as alive as the diverse species of cats created and spread throughout Felixia.

It was easy to abuse a lifeless object. If Ves held a nutrient pack for example, he had no qualms about throwing it on the ground and trampling it with his foot.

If he instead wanted to do the same with a cuddly house cat, he wouldn’t be able to bring himself to exhibit such cruelty!

\"Well, it’s different if it’s a nasty bug, but whatever!\"

The point was that living and potentially sentient lifeforms possessed intrinsic rights! They deserved better treatment!

Ves constantly thought back on his first spiritual product and how he should regard it during every stage of its existence.

\"A product is created to fulfill a specific purpose. Yet does life have a purpose?\"

\"Meow.\"

He scratched Lucky’s ears. \"Heh. Even pets like you have a purpose, you know.\"

Even if Lucky had been designed to eat minerals and convert them to gems, Ves thought of his cat as something more than a production machine.

Lucky was his friend and companion. His liveliness and his capacity to exhibit emotions such as love, hate, irritation and amusement made him part of the family.