The Mech Touch novel Chapter 1495

Despite his many hopes for using artificial spiritual products as design spirits for his mechs, he did not consider them to be the ultimate solution to every problem.

His previous mech designs which utilized natural spiritual fragments or entities were very powerful. As long as their inclinations matched their mech designs, then the resulting combination was very powerful.

"The main advantage to resorting to products of nature is that they are already mature!"

A Sacred God like Qilanxo who grew up on Aeon Corona VII and went through countless experiences was not something an artificial spiritual product could match.

The difference between the former and the latter was that a spiritual product was completely newborn at the moment of creation. In fact, as a purely spiritual lifeform, it never enjoyed an opportunity to live a long and impactful physical existence.

This decreased their overall value compared to natural products. Having studied Vescas multiple times, Ves concluded that it was rather dimwitted and impressionable at first, so much so that he believed that it was better suited to be utilized in custom mechs rather than commercial mechs.

While he still believed that this was the case, Ves believed this problem wasn’t insurmountable.

"It’s still better to obtain a natural product that matches the vision of my mech design. There will always be problems if I attempt to twist something incompatible into something that barely matches my intention."

The main advantage of resorting to spiritual products rather than existing spiritual entities was that he could wipe the slate clean. Even if the spiritual entity hated his guts, as long as Ves broke it apart and reconstructed it in something new, the resulting newborn was ripe for indoctrination.

"This is the key."

Rather than immediately insert a new spiritual product into a mech design, he needed to raise and educate it beforehand. The longer he shaped its personality and inclinations, the less susceptible it would be once it took on its role and became exposed to the chaotic thoughts of thousands of mech pilots!

What this basically meant was that Ves had to create a spiritual product in the early phases of a mech design project and needed to divert a lot of effort into educating it. Even then, it would still be rather impressionable because it simply lacked too much life experience to know what was right or wrong.

In essence, that meant that his spiritual products would still be subject to change depending on the feedback it received from the earliest customers of his new mech model.

Ves predicted that only the earliest customers mattered, because exposure to more mech pilots would rapidly mature the design spirit over time.

This gave Ves a measure of control over the evolution of his spiritual products. He just had to selectively release the first copies of his new mech models to exemplary customers.

"The first mech pilots who interface with my new mechs will essentially act as teachers and role models!"

In this way, Ves believed he could successfully address one of the most troubling aspects in his attempts to utilize spiritual products in mass-market mechs.

He left out another method of influencing his spiritual products. The problem was that it was a bit more controversial.

"If my current raw ingredients aren’t sufficient, then I can always blend in an additional ingredient that contains the properties I want!"

Ves believed that he could improve the compatibility of his spiritual products if he stole a spiritual fragment from a matching expert pilot!

As long as the expert pilot specialized in the same mech type as his design project, Ves would be able to better match the spiritual attributes of the spiritual product to a particular mech design.

In fact, Ves already blended in his own spiritual energy into his spiritual products to make them more compatible to mechs. The problem though was that his spiritual attributes addressed mechs as a whole rather than specific mech archetypes.

He needed a more targeted way to influence the initial state of his spiritual products!

Ves remembered that he matched his first spiritual product, Vescas, with the Kinslayer.

Vescas happened to be formed as a result of combining the spiritual remnants of a huge cat and a tiny portion of his own spiritual energy.

The result was a spiritual product which already started off with a high degree of fit towards a tiger mech!

"This won’t be the case next time!"

If the initial mix of raw ingredients wasn’t enough, then Ves had to throw in something extra in order to make up for the lack of fit.

One solution he came up with was to revive his plans to borrow the strength of expert pilots!

Ves knew that stealing a spiritual fragment from an expert pilot was risky and not entirely opportune. To ensure the best result, he needed to be in fairly close proximity to the expert pilot in question or find some way to track down their spiritual presence in the imaginary realm.

However, these challenges weren’t insurmountable or even very troubling. It was easy enough for Ves to divert to the known locations of expert pilots in order to accomplish his heists.

"The bigger question is whether it’s even a good idea for me to resort to this solution."

Ves knew that carving out a piece of spirituality from another person could be a damaging or traumatic experience. He wasn’t really sure of the consequences of his actions, but at the very least he had set back their growth and progression for some time as their damaged spiritualities needed a lot of time to heal from their wounds.

Since expert pilots were weaker than ace pilot-like entities like Qilanxo and Nyxie, it would take a lot more time for them to recover from their losses.

"However, it doesn’t have to be a lot. Just a tiny fragment is sufficient."

The spiritual fragments he obtained from Nyxie would serve as the base of his spiritual products. Their level of strength was already sufficient to form a strong design spirit, so Ves did not have to rely on other sources to bolster this aspect.