The Mech Touch novel Chapter 353

Ves employed a number of different orders, but it hadn’t worked. Even if he started from right to left, the crystal city treated him like he was an intruder.

Not willing to give up, Ves began to employ more creative methods of reading out the runes. After more than a score of different combinations, he finally achieved a different result. This time, he started from the center, and radiated outwards in a counterclockwise circle.

The crystal spirals began to focus their energies upwards and generated another portal.

This time, he came across a very welcome sight. A familiar asteroid with a very familiar cave beckoned him back home.

"Yes! That should lead back to the Joe System!"

His exuberance quickly died down once he noticed the portal hadn’t grown wider than his head. Same as the other portals, the current one only allowed someone like Lucky to pass through.

"These stupid midgets!"

How would he be able to squeeze through this tiny portal?!

The problem caught him in his throat. He let the portal expire while he furiously churned his mind for a solution for his problem. How could he make the portal large enough to fit his body?

"Wait a minute. What about my semi-corporeality?"

Even if he passed through the portal, if he remained a ghost, it was nothing different than being dead. Imagining himself as a specter who haunted people for their energies scared him to death!

"This son isn’t going to follow in his mother’s footsteps!"

In order to stave off a panic, Ves forced himself to think in a logical manner. "First I should break down the problem."

He currently had to achieve two essential goals. The first one should be to regain his corporeal state and the second one was to find a way to return to the asteroid in the Joe System.

Both problems presented seemingly insurmountable obstacles to Ves. He had no clue how to go about the first problem while the second problem was within reach if only if he could master the crystal city’s technology.

Ves looked at himself and his somewhat transparent body. He couldn’t pick up any object or interact with this alien world in his current state. The botched teleportation had turned him into some kind of energy being that existed in a higher dimension. It was already remarkable enough that he hadn’t been torn to pieces or ended up into a dimension of nihility.

His eyes happened to have gazed over at Lucky, who had woken up after some time. His cat currently played with some rocks on the light-burned ground. Lucky’s paws glowed with spirituality as he effortlessly crossed the line between tangibility and intangibility.

"Lucky isn’t the only one with spirituality here."

Ever since his last eureka moment, the System had updated his Status to reflect his current strengths. It explicitly added Spirituality to his Attribute tab. Although a score of 0.4 looked pathetic, it was already better than most other humans.

"Spirituality and semi-corporeality are related. One should be able to affect the other."

Could he manipulate his intangible state into a solid state? And could he go back to being a ghost?

He began to speculate that energy beings might be holding their intangible bodies using spirituality. It might also even be the reason why Ves and Lucky had survived the initial teleportation process.

If they hadn’t possessed this special quality, they might have been phased out of existence!

"This is frightening!"

The thought that he unknowingly dodged an unfortunate fate did not help with calming his mind. His thoughts also spun into several tangents. He recalled the energy beings he encountered before, from the massive devourers to his mother’s ghost.

"Is she truly even dead?"

A mix of emotions pressed upon his heart. Ves did not dare continue to follow this train of thought and centered his mind back to his own state.

Right now, he strongly believed he should be able to exert some control over his intangible body.

"Energy beings hold themselves together with their thoughts rather than their flesh. Their flesh doesn’t exist in this state. It’s all in the mind."

He believed if he brainwashed himself into believing that he was a dog, his intangible body would turn into a dog as well. Not that he had any interest in trying out this particular experiment.

"Let’s start with something simple."

His transformation hadn’t encompassed his body alone. His hazard suit and his gear had also transformed along with him. This provided him with a convenient way to test his latest thoughts. He retrieved a compact nutrient bar from his toolbelt and stared at it with the same intensity as when he designed a mech.

"Turn solid. Turn solid. Turn solid."

He repeated the same mantra over and over again. He knew that as a fairly logical person, he would have a lot of trouble trying to trick his mind into believing falsehoods. The best method he came up with was to think of nothing else but the same set of words. Essentially, he tried to override his conscious thoughts with a faulty statement so that it had the chance to become true.

It took more than ten minutes for something to go into effect. The nutrient bar glowed before losing its opacity.

It quickly fell between his intangible fingers.

"It worked!"

His thoughts had hit the mark! Spirituality formed the core of manipulating an intangible object.

Ves gazed down at the nutrient bar that had returned to the material dimensions and waited for something to happen. More than fifteen minutes went by until Ves tentatively became assured that the nutrient bar wouldn’t return to its intangible state on its own.