The Mech Touch novel Chapter 206

Ves brought him images into reality by visualizing their life cycle. The more details he added, the more vivid they behaved.

At some point, they started thinking on their own. His creativity ran out of control and filled in some of the gaps that Ves had unconsciously left behind.

For example, the knight mech yearned to increase its defense. Even as an offensive-oriented mech, it expressed its dissatisfaction with the current design’s inadequate armor cover. Ves skimmed off a bit more off its armor plating than usual in order to keep the weight down.

The totem animal on the other hand didn’t care so much about the armor. Instead, it yearned for a much more effective offensive kit. Hexapod kings proved their strength not by acting like a turtle, but by threatening its rivals with overwhelming might.

The human myth component of the Triple Division also grew more discordant. The Leading Edge’s objection to the design mainly revolved around the staying power of the design. Ves chose to go for a high-impact operation mode in order to make the piloting experience as exhilarating as possible. However, choosing this road obviously used up more energy.

Compounding the problem was that the totem animal showed signs of overpowering the other two images. Ves had unconsciously inflated the hexapod king’s tyrannical greed and cruelty to the point where the image almost became capable of contending against the other two images.

While making his images come to life had always been a goal to Ves, their unexpected conflict left him with a dilemma.

Should he stay detached and let them battle it out? Should he forcibly stop the struggle by separating the images? Or would it be best to maintain a tentative equilibrium by manipulating the images behind the scenes?

Ves began his design process with a vision. To allow his images to evolve in an unknown direction meant that he’d be abandoning his initial goals in favor of an uncertain outcome. The X-Factor would transform in a direction that might have a beneficial or detrimental effect to the design.

As much as he wanted to experiment with this new development, Ves decided to stifle it as best he could. His current circumstances didn’t allow for too many unexpected surprises.

"It’s fine if this happens when I design a virtual mech, but right now I can’t risk ruining this design."

Ves proceeded to turn his substantial amount of mental power to bear on his images. Since he lacked the time to figure out a way to solve the problem with finesse, he utilized brute force instead.

He forcibly separated the images until clear barriers came into being between the three. This forced the integration of the images in the design to take a step back, but at least they didn’t argue with each other anymore.

Next, he adjusted the traits of his totem animal in order to rein in its exaggerated behavior. He lessened the ferocity of the beast and granted it a small amount of cunning.

When Ves finished his adjustments, he took a mental step backwards and regarded his images again. He succeeded in stabilizing the images, though he failed to preserve their strengths.

In essence, his crude intervention solved nothing but prevented the situation from devolving into an unstable mess. Ves had in fact robbed his images of some of their life. This was especially the case with his totem animal.

He learned some very important lessons after this ordeal. Images that had been granted with life developed in an unpredictable direction, sometimes going against his intended vision.

"This is life."

True life embraced the limitless potential of chaos. Life was never comfortable if it behaved according to a predetermined plan. A life shackled down by too many rules and restrictions lost much of the vivid traits that made it precious.

Even though Ves applied the wrong solution, the overall X-Factor shouldn’t have suffered too much from his previous norm. He simply missed a small opportunity to evolve his current application of the X-Factor.

"Now that this is done with, let’s go back to designing."

While Ves spent precious minutes suppressing the unrest in his mind, Oleg started assembling his mech from the pieces he fabricated in record time. He easily slotted the components in their places, which proved that all of his components had come into existence without any noticeable deviations.

The amount of precision he was able to maintain when he swiftly printed out the parts would have astounded a crowd of mech designers. Hardly anyone could insure their components were without flaws if they adopted the same speed. While much of the miracle could be attributed to the excellent machines in the Apprentice Workshop, Oleg’s comprehensive mastery over the fabrication process also played a decisive role.

Ves felt the pinch as Oleg comfortably moved to the last phase of his design process. He required a lot more time to refine his design due to his desire to adhere to his vision. Many times, his tweaks lowered the performance of his design, or introduced new flaws that only became apparent when Ves made further changes.

Normally, this happened all the time. Ves could easily draw back his changes and puzzle out a better solution over many iterations. However, Ves had already spent a day on this repetitive process. His snail-like progress could never match the efficiency of Oleg’s own approach.

In the end, Ves stuck to his method and accepted that he’d never be able to optimize his design as well as Oleg. He focused mainly on eliminating the flaws that already existed in his design while leaving aside the many tricks he could use to enhance its performance.

At the end of his thirty-two hour design phase, Ves smiled in satisfaction. Regardless of the many optimizations that he had yet to perform, his design had come together in a way that all of his images found acceptable, if barely.

"It’s time to move on to fabrication."