The Mech Touch novel Chapter 515

"How’s it looking, doc?"

"Some of your cells are wearing out faster than when you had your previous checkup. Your body is undergoing a subtle transformation. Towards what, we can’t determine, but whether it is beneficial or not is hard to say."

In other words, the doctor knew as much as anyone. Ves exited the scanning chamber and dressed himself in his green uniform.

"Have you made any progress in your research?"

"I’m afraid not. There is much we don’t understand about your so-called Jutland organ. All we can determine is that it contains an incredible amount of biological programming in an encrypted form. The good news is that it is largely dormant. The bad news is that anything can trigger some of the programming."

Nothing changed in that regard. Ves thanked the doctor for his work and left the Shield of Hispania’s medical bay.

Ves remained compromised due to his biological gifts from Dr. Jutland. He only hoped the doctor hadn’t put anything unpleasant in the programming. "He likely didn’t anticipate that I would be able to call for rescue."

The doctor wanted him to live on the hostile underground environment of Groening IV, so the Jutland organ probably wasn’t out to kill him. At least he hoped so. The madman might have included a failsafe in the energy organ’s programming that only its originator could resolve.

"I’ve got to get rid of this organ or at least decypher its programming."

This wouldn’t be easy. While the CFA took samples and cloned his body, Ves didn’t expect to hear from them again. He needed to solve this problem on his own initiative.

"I’ll need to enlist the help of a biomedical institution from the Friday Coalition at a minimum."

Not just anyone could knock on the doors of these prestigious institutions. Perhaps he could ask Master Olson for an introduction, but Ves preferred to solve his problems through his own means. As long as he progressed to Journeyman, a lot of doors would open for him in the Friday Coalition and in the Clifford Society.

"My best ticket to solve this problem is to earn lots of merits in the Society. As long as I have merits, I can spend them on exclusive services that aren’t open to regular people."

The more he saw of the galaxy, the more he understood the importance of relationships and networks. For example, the Flagrant Vandals could have never pulled off the Detemen Operation without cultivating an alliance with the Vesian Revolutionary Front.

Each of them excelled at something that the opposite party wanted to make use of. Recognizing this fact opened up an opportunity for mutual cooperation.

Ves needed to do the same with regards to puzzling out the secrets locked inside his body. The energy cycle quietly circulated within his chest without fail. Though his questionable ghost of a mother alleviated some of the pressure early on, it had already returned to its old level, and actually began to compress more energy in the cycle.

He was worried that the pressure would be too much one day and blow his entire body up.

While he didn’t know how much time he had left, he figured that he still had a good decade to go before some serious side effects cropped up.

"How did Dr. Jutland deal with this problem?"

The internal energy cycle must have been a deliberate design choice. Ves had the feeling he was missing something important. His body was basically an incomplete product.

To compare his current state to a mech, Ves imagined himself as a strengthened mech with a supercharged power reactor that constantly ran at full capacity. He didn’t possess any weapons or systems where he could drain all of his excess energy.

"Still, it’s dangerous to make too many assumptions about something I have no idea about."

For now, he pushed the issue to the back of his mind and turned back to the problems that fell within his area of expertise. After meeting the team that maintained Venerable O’Callahan’s Parallax Star, Ves mentally wrote them off as potential allies.

"Miss Lisbeth is a total cook and Chief Leo is a firm believer."

Ves heard about how people would go crazy around expert pilots from his family. In the Age of Mechs, the popularity of mechs was at an all-time high. The norms worshipped the mech pilots, and the mech pilots worshipped the expert pilots.

It was almost impossible for an advanced mech pilot to succeed in breaking through an expert pilot. Their rarity and miraculous circumstances turned every expert pilot in an object of envy. Some people equated them to demigods for their amazing skill and mythical abilities.

When Ves returned to his office, he greeted Iris and looked at her with appreciation. He found her presence to be remarkably helpful. She stopped being annoying once she saw that her attempts to get him to waver in his loyalties only made him more suspicious.

Now that she became the perfect assistant to him, Ves truly appreciated the benefit of having a second mech designer at his beck and call. He could tell her to relay his instructions to others and take care of all manner of trivial tasks. He could talk advantage of her connections and friendships within the Vandals and the VRF.

Most importantly, she was a pretty decent mech designer as well, so Ves often used her as a sounding board for some of his ideas.

"I’m at my wits end with the Venerable’s design team." Ves sighed. "Do you have any suggestions on how to restore their sanity? If I can just adjust their budget, I can allocate a lot more resources to where they are needed, such as strengthening the fragile Inheritor mechs. I’ve estimated that I can strengthen every Inheritor mech by five percent if I halve the Parallax Star’s budget!"