The Mech Touch novel Chapter 365

Ves tried hard to keep his mind on track. No matter what her mother claimed to be, she still remained a potential threat. "You haven’t answered my question! Why are you here!?"

The ghost definitely had a purpose in revealing her presence to him at this time. Indeed, his mother smirked and materialized a familiar object in her grasp.

"You’ve been bumbling around like an idiot with this toy for over a week. As your mother, it’s my duty to set you back onto the right path."

"What?"

Ves recognized the object in her palm. It was the crystalline remains of the leader he found in the crystal gardens. Ever since he started on developing the gimmick for his upcoming design, he continually studied the intricacies of the corpse.

All the organic parts had decayed away, leaving only pure crystals behind. Ves discovered that the quality of the miniature crystals surpassed those that made up the ruins the alien race had left behind.

He even figured out some of the rudimentary principles of the crystal augmentations. The tiny corpse that could fit in the palm of his hands possessed a lot of powerful cybernetic prowess in its crystal circuits.

Last he remembered, he left the corpse behind in his lab equipment.

"I know what you intend to do." His mother continued as she waved around the crystal leader’s corpse. "You are doing it wrong. Do you realize the enormity of pulling back a vestige of the past? How arrogant to believe you can take what you want."

Ves temporarily ignored his mother’s identity and the fact that she held one of his precious artifacts. For more than a week, he attempted to connect with the remains and attempted to trace some sort of spiritual presence that had been left behind.

So far, he completely failed to grasp a single useful thing. Thus, despite facing a ghost, Ves couldn’t help but grow curious.

"What do you suggest?"

"There are many ways of accomplishing your goals, but most of them will result in fruitless outcomes. You are too weak and ignorant to know what you are doing. There is only one method that is suitable for a human with your strength."

Ves practically stood on his toes. He eagerly wanted to hear his mother’s solution. "What method is that?"

"You must beseech the individual from beyond the grave. Resonate with his life, and let it borrow from your strength. A price must be paid."

Resonate with a dead person’s life?

She demonstrated the method in front of him. Her milky-white ghost-like form flickered as she concentrated on the object in her hand. "The sentient being who inhabited this corpse has left behind a lot of regrets. His race is dead. His legacy is gone. Too much time has passed. What remains is only traces of his former self. Yet it is exactly those traces that are the strongest and most enduring parts. You only need to gather the most suitable one for your purposes."

Ves saw the light. He previously believed that the alien leader’s spirituality might have drifted somewhere in some distant dimension. He hadn’t realized that it might have been split up.

"How do I attract a portion of its spirituality?"

"As I said, you resonate with its desires. For example..." His mother looked down on the small but incredibly durable crystal corpse. "This individual is part of a long-dead race. What stands out for you?"

"Uhm, it’s exquisite and small."

"Indeed, it’s small. His entire race is small. You can fit an entire crowd of these aliens in your hands. Now ask yourself, how do their stature compare to the average sentient alien beings in the galaxy?"

"Leaving out the weirder forms of life like the silicate sandmen, they’re really tiny. You can hardly find any smaller humanoid aliens out there."

"In the perspective of these aliens, the rest of the galaxy is a frightening place. It is filled with monstrous giants who can easily crush them beneath their feet if they will it so. Their bodies, their weapons and their ships are tens or hundreds times larger than those of this diminutive race."

Ves started to understand what the crystal leader felt. "The tragedy of the small."

"Indeed, the tragedy of the small! Their race held a lot of potential, but the scale in which they worked with has crippled their development as soon as they met other space-faring races."

Ves could easily imagine what others races thought of the tiny aliens. At first contact, those aliens with normal body sizes compared to humans must have treated the crystal builders with contempt.

"It is this alien’s eternal regret that their race has been born so small. No matter which alien race they tried to engage, they were never taken seriously. It has even led to their eventual downfall."

"How did you know all of this?"

"Because the fragment that holds this regret has told me so."

Her other palm flickered and a tiny silvery flame hovered over it. Ves became shocked when he sensed his sixth sense pinging at the flame.

It was another form of life!

"Is that...?"

"Indeed, this is a fragment."

Ves worked so hard to summon something like this. A small part of his mind believed that it couldn’t be done because it sounded so fantastical. Was there really life beyond death?

His mother thrust out her palm, which pushed the flame away from her. It gently drifted over to Ves, who tried to take hold of the flame.

He failed. The flickering flame pushed right past his hand and went through his body! If he couldn’t stop it from traveling forward, it would certainly disappear into the earth!