The Mech Touch

5932 Gloriana's New Ambition

Ves was not the only mech designer who managed to make a lot of gains in the last few months.

His wife had clearly made a lot of strides in her quest to understand archetech. The risks she took and the discoveries she made while Ves remained out of reach had allowed her to move out of her husband's shadow, if only slightly.

Gloriana had plenty of grounds to be proud of herself. She had gone above and beyond what an ordinary mech designer would have done and got rewarded for her efforts.

Though Ves was anything but pleased that she went through with her risky plan to neurally interface with the mind of a hostile arche, it would be hypocritical for him to blame her for subjecting herself to dangers.

At the very least, Ves reminded himself that Gloriana was not as helpless as most mech designers.

Not only did she possess a companion spirit that turned out to be a lot more useful than they thought, but she also enjoyed the protection of several ancestral spirits.

Ves suspected that if Alexandria did not manage to step in and help Gloriana gain the upper hand in her invisible contest against the arche captive, the Golden Cat or the Supreme Mother would have done so on her behalf.

The only downsides were that Gloriana wouldn't gain a boost in self-esteem and that she might end up harvesting less from the arche than if she won this contest by herself.

What happened was the best possible outcome. Ves could tell that Gloriana's neural interface attempt had changed her in ways that she might not consciously be aware of. She had grown in a way that caused him to suspect that the arche had managed to contaminate her spirituality!

Of course, not all forms of contaminations were detrimental. There were certainly cases where Ves derived advantages from exposure to different extraordinary phenomena.

"What doesn't kill you, makes you stronger." Ves said.

His wife grinned and raised her pretty Archglove. "That is an apt description. If I did not muster up the courage to meld my mind with an arche, I would have never been able to gather the insights and knowledge needed to construct this primitive archetech interface. I realize more and more why you have become so addicted to taking risks. The success that you can gain from crossing the threshold of what is reasonable is exhilarating. I might not be able to catch up to you in the short term, but I have every reason to feel confident that I will be able to surpass you in the long run!"

That was a big claim, especially since Ves just returned from a business trip where he not only produced the impetus for the formation of the Red Collective, but also masterminded the creation of the first god ship!

Ves looked critically at his wife. He had already noticed plenty of signs of growth. Confidence oozed from her body. She no longer felt as insecure as before. Her spirituality had grown from her ordeal and her mentality became a little less restrained than before.

Her design seed had not changed, though. It was roughly the same as before, which signified that his wife had yet to bridge the gap between Journeyman and Senior.

It seemed that aside from achieving a breakthrough that allowed her to understand the essence of archetech, she had yet to trigger a significant evolution in her design philosophy.

That did not mean that her prior efforts yielded insufficient gains. She had definitely made progress.

More importantly, Ves detected numerous traits that looked familiar to him. That was because he exhibited similar traits whenever he became struck by inspiration.

Gloriana looked like a mech designer who had finally seen the light at the end of the tunnel.

She had found her direction forward.

Understanding the fundamentals of archetech was just the first step. So long as Gloriana proceeded down the route that she had discovered, she had great confidence that she would be able to realize her design philosophy!

"You found it, right?" Ves asked in a knowing voice.

His wife nodded. "I have a solid idea on what I must do in order to advance to Senior. The revision to the Dark Zephyr will serve as my first attempt. Mastering archetech is the first step. If I cannot implement a very early proof of concept of what I have envisioned as of late, then there is no purpose in trying to deliver the unattainable. Only when I manage to upgrade the expert mech into a work that more closely matches my vision will I know for certain that I have a chance of realizing my new ambition."

"What is your ambition, exactly?"

Gloriana responded with a coy smile. "My studies into archetech has been slower than I would have liked. Many mech designers and other scholars have fared much worse than me. Only a very small minority of people have managed to get started in archetech. The majority of them are Master Mech Designers, which shows that you literally need to be superhuman in order to properly understand this convoluted alien tech base."

"There are many forms of alien signature tech that humanity has yet to decipher in full, Gloriana. This is not a rare circumstance. Luminar crystal technology is another obscure field that has remained a mystery for a long time. It also doesn't help that archetech is currently not a high priority to the top researchers of our society. Most Star Designers and other bright minds are primarily working to expand our understanding of phasewater technology and hyper technology. These are the techs that defined two whole mech generations."

"I am aware of where most people's priorities lie." Gloriana calmly responded. "I do not blame them for prioritizing those fields. Archetech is much less suitable for immediate mass adoption. It is too alien, too convoluted and too divergent from human technology. However, that is not a reason for me to give up on exploiting it. I see greater promise in it than most people, but I also realized that its flaws are too great for human adoption."

"So that's your plan, honey? Are you trying to make archetech more practical by solving some of its flaws?"

His wife grinned and spread her arms! "I intend to do far more than that, Ves! You see, after I have grasped the essence of this alien and attempted to interface with examples of archetech with the help of Hekkel, I have been thinking day and night on how to adapt it for human usage. Do you want to know the conclusion that I have reached?"

"Well?"

"It is impossible for humans to adopt archetech! No matter whether we try to achieve mass adoption or limit it to high-

end products, archetech is too alien for us all. The arche are far too different from humans. They are not comparable to the orvens or the puelmers, whose technologies share enough common ground with human technologies for us to understand after putting in a small amount of effort. Do you understand the point I am trying to make? The fit between archetech and red humanity is so poor that it would be a mistake to force them together!"

She made a surprisingly good point! Ves and Gloriana had long become fixated by the incredible promise of archetech. However, obsessing too much over the end goal had caused them to overlook the significance of all of the challenges they needed to overcome to gain the qualifications to work with this alien tech.

It was only when Gloriana put archetech in the context of her design philosophy that she was able to take a step back and realize how impractical it was to force others to understand archetech.

"Is this not just a matter of pioneering?" Ves curiously inquired. "We have only just begun to familiarize ourselves with archetech. I am sure that you and plenty of other clever minds will be able to decipher and reverse engineer archetech step by step. The same process is already taking place with phasewater technology."

"This is different." Gloriana shook her head. "Phasewater technology used to be unfamiliar to us, but we have managed to make great strides in just a single decade. This is because you do not need to be a phase lord in order to learn and apply phasewater technology. Mech designers as well as other scientists have managed to gain so much proficiency in it that they can already rival alien scientists in this field."

"And you think that archetech cannot be treated this way because the barrier to entry is too high?"

She nodded. "Archetech is fundamentally different. The vast majority of our scientists and engineers simply cannot master it to the fullest extent. Their inability to interface directly with products derived from this obtuse alien tech will always serve as a fundamental hindrance. It is similar to how most people around you have little chance of getting started with E-technology."

That was an apt comparison. Ves knew extremely well that it was unlikely that a lot of people would be able to master E-

technology.

Those who aspired to create their own spiritual constructs needed to learn both conventional science while also becoming an accomplished creation cultivator.

"So what does this have to do with your new ambition?"

Gloriana grinned at Ves again. "I was getting to that, Ves. You see, acknowledging the incompatibility between archetech and red humanity is a necessary step for me. It is a recognition that if existing alien tech does not meet my demands, the logical answer to this problem is to develop my own version of archetech! My current goal is not to master archetech so that I can design vastly superior mechs by myself, but to extract its essence and use that as the basis of a more compatible tech base! If my efforts achieve the desired results, my work will enable every mech designer to master a variation of archetech that they can readily learn and apply to their own products!"

Ves widened his eyes.

This was a much more ambitious goal than he expected from his wife!

Mastering archetech was in reach now that she managed figure out a unique method to interface with archetech.

Yet instead of feeling satisfied with her latest specialization, Gloriana was already thinking about the distant future!

"This is not going to be easy." Ves commented.

"When is our work ever not? If you can chase after a seemingly impossible goal, then so can I."

"There are good reasons why humans are grappling with archetech." Ves pressed onwards. "If you try to dumb down this tech too much, you will lose too much of the charm that makes it so special and powerful."

"I have already taken this into consideration. Do you want to hear my solution to this problem, Ves? It is indeed true that it will be necessary for me to remove the most alien and unworkable elements of archetech in order to increase its compatibility with our race. That will leave many holes that have weakened its structure to the point of becoming unusable, but it does not have to stay that way. I intend to fill up these gaps with substitutes based on different tech!"

That… actually sounded rather brilliant!

The concept made a lot of sense, but Ves knew that it was incredibly difficult for Gloriana to pull it off in a reasonable timeframe.

It was incredibly difficult for anyone to blend multiple different technologies of different origins and principles!

"From the look in your eyes, I take it that you already have an idea on what sort of tech you intend to use to plug the gaps in your stripped version of archetech."

"Hehehe. You know me too well, Ves. What you have to remember is that the arche developed their archetech in a time long before the Age of Dawn. This means that it is not optimized for the latest era. I think that there is great progress in extracting the best components of archetech and combining them with the principles of hyper technology!"

"That!"

What a bold plan!

Gloriana stood and proudly declared her ambition!

"If my foresight is accurate, then the combination between these two bases will produce fantastic synergies while also maintaining full compatibility with existing human technologies! The differences will be so great that my end result deserves a name of its own! I call it Glorianatech!"

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