The Mech Touch

5964 Advanced Hyper Module

The development of the Dark Zephyr Mark III consumed much of Ves and Gloriana's attention.

Ves had not made life easier for himself after he took it upon himself to add destructive phasing to the Dark Zephyr's capabilities.

He did not mind. He relished the additional challenge. It was precisely because no one had managed to pull it off that he became so passionate about trying to turn it into reality.

Destructive phasing was a form of hyper technology that went beyond the more basic applications. It was a way of manipulating E energy to produce a result that affected reality a lot more than enhancing the defenses of a transphasic energy shield or increasing the damage of a laser beam.

This time, Ves not only wanted to create a condition where the Dark Zephyr was able to phase his entire frame, but also leave a wake of corrupting energies behind his passage that weakened everything it touched!

Neither of these effects were easy to realize. Ves knew he needed to involve multiple disciplines in order to make it all possible. Aside from that, he needed to make serious gains in deepening the application of hyper technology in relation to the darkness attribute.

Ves could only count on himself for this! Very few mech designers and researchers conducted any academic research on this ominous element, and the few R&D institutions that explored it for the purpose of developing better stealth technology often hoarded their findings to deny their enemies and rivals the same advantages.

"This is going to be a test of my own ingenuity and mastery of hyper technology."

Ves needed to leverage his newly obtained affinity in darkness really hard in order to generate useful gains. The harsh deadline meant that he needed to make constant progress in doing so. He could not afford to make the wrong guesses and waste much of his time on experiments that ended up in failure.

He already ordered a large batch of medium and high-grade darkness hypers. Once they got delivered to Diandi Base, he intended to explore and experiment on them right away in order to make progress on the hardware front.

However, Ves never considered the hardware aspect of the speculative Destructive Phasing Module to pose the greatest hindrance.

They were merely the building blocks. The true challenge lay in combining them together into a functional device and programming it to perform the right functions

This was where the entire setup strayed into E-technology, or spiritual engineering as he used to call it. Despite specializing in this field, much of his design applications only indirectly affected the material realm.

The imaginary realm was the imaginary realm.

The material realm was the material realm.

Stuff that happened in one realm rarely affected the other realm. Even if it did, the effects were usually rather slight.

This rule became increasingly looser and less relevant when powerful cultivators got involved in a battle.

This was why it mattered so much whether Venerable Tusa was a high-ranking expert pilot or a junior ace pilot.

The two ranks may be adjacent to each other, but there were massive differences in how extensively they could employ their willpower!

This job would have been a lot easier if Tusa had already become a Saint.

That was unlikely to happen in the short term. Under normal circumstances, he should have been a mid-tier expert pilot by this time.

It was only because Ves managed to wrangle a lot of general cultivation elixirs out of the Red Association that Tusa along with all of the other Larkinson expert pilots were able to grow their resonance strengths at least an order of magnitude faster than normal.

They were worth all of the expense!

However, Ves also understood that expert pilots who did not grow stronger on a gradual basis possessed weaker foundations than before.

They were unaccustomed to their newfound strength. Their boost in power had come so quickly that they needed to spend years of adaptation before they could truly master their strength as ace mech candidates.

In addition to these shortcomings, their mental growth and polishing had also fallen behind. The elixirs might do weird stuff that exerted a heavy load on their willpower, but that was no substitute for introspection, self-discovery and other activities that exerted a formative effect on their willingness to fight.

It was not impossible for less experienced high-tier expert pilots to spontaneously complete all of these necessary steps and break through on the spot, but this only happened under exceptional circumstances.

Given what Ves knew about Tusa, he feared that the light skirmisher specialist became so obsessed with the promised upgrade of his Dark Zephyr that he had fallen into the same trap that afflicted the likes of Patriarch Reginald Cross and General Ark Larkinson.

Ace pilot candidates often struggled to break through their bottlenecks throughout their entire careers. It was agonizing for them to remain stuck in the same place when they previously made a lot of progress in growing their resonance strength.

The lack of feedback from continued growth caused a lot of expert pilots to gradually doubt themselves. This was in itself a fatal blow to their chances of triggering their second apotheosis.

Peak expert pilots who continually failed to break their limits came up with all sorts of rationalizations to excuse their lack of forward progress.

Blaming their inability to break through on their inadequate expert mechs was a common excuse. It also happened to be true in many cases.

Venerable Tusa's situation was therefore salvageable so long as the Larkinson Clan worked to upgrade his machine to a much higher standard.

The trap was not even a detriment if handled correctly. Delivering the Mars induced so much euphoria in Patriarch Reginald that he broke through right after receiving his precious Mars!

The fact that General Ark Larkinson failed to break through after he received the Lionheart and piloted his new battle partner for a while was a disconcerting sign.

Either his talent was not as good as Ves expected, or it was simply because he still lacked sufficient tempering.

Even if the rate of breakthroughs had started to increase ever since exotic radiation came into the picture, mech pilots still had to endure a lot of hardships in order to fight their way upwards.

A powerful masterwork mech alone was not a guarantee for a breakthrough. It just lowered the threshold to a more attainable level. The cold hard truth was that Uncle Ark did not deserve to become an ace pilot in his current state.

"It makes sense more or less." Ves murmured. "Patriarch Reginald was a lot older when he became an ace pilot. He also led his Cross Clan through a time of betrayal and extinction, all while grieving for the loss of his powerful father."

Ves did not like Patriarch Reginald's personality at all, but it was exactly due to his stubbornness and his strong urge to stick to his own views that he took another major step in his path to godhood.

According to his current understanding of the mech piloting profession, Ves deduced that the main quality that a mech pilot needed in order to accomplish the impossible feat of becoming a god pilot was to unswervingly stick to their sense of self when the entire cosmos sought to turn them into something different!

This was why Venerable Tusa did not actually develop all that much when he started to practice the Shadow Dance. Eating the enlightenment fruit may have contaminated the expert pilot with the power of darkness, but it was not an element that resonated with him particularly well.

His developing domain was largely based on the freedom attribute, which could be considered a subclassification of the wind attribute.

"If that is all there is to Venerable Tusa, then it would do him a great amount of harm by forcing him to embrace the power of darkness."

Mech pilots were always capable of change and growth. It was not impossible for them to acquire new specializations and develop a liking for new elements.

Ves had already heard that Venerable Jannzi had already built up a great affinity for gravity, for example.

It was much worse than Tusa, who actively resisted the embrace of darkness. The pilot was too upright and honorable to stomach the idea of skulking about in the shadows. He was much different from Venerable Zimro Belson in this regard.

This was exactly why companion spirits mattered so much!

Though Ves did not create them with this specific application in mind, Tusa was able to make use of the power of shadows without compromising on his personality and principles because it was his companion spirit that embodied this element!

It sounded rather absurd when a companion spirit was just an extension of a person that had been seeded with a split personality.

Yet the separation between a person and a companion spirit was just enough for them to count as two separate individuals in certain cases, and the same person in other cases!

"It's just like the wave-particle duality of quantum mechanics!"

Light was neither a wave or a particle. It was something else that exhibited the traits of either of them in different situations.

Companion spirits worked in a similar vein. It behaved in a way that made the most sense in a specific context.

"It's essentially a cheat! Tusa can have his cake and eat it too! How brilliant!"

Ves couldn't help but mentally pat his own back for creating such a miraculous invention. The fact that the Destroyer of Worlds relied so heavily on Emma was a powerful example of how extensively his companion spirits could augment the power of every mech pilot!

This was also why the Red Association accepted the existence of companion spirits despite how subversive they were and tried to propagate them as much as possible.

What mattered now was that Ves believed that the existence of Blackwing played a pivotal role in making the Destructive Phasing Module work under the current conditions.

In a situation where neither Tusa nor Blackwing reached the second major cultivation rank, the latter needed to imbue the aforementioned module and channel all of his power into it to produce a strong enough effect.

"I can make this work."

The design of the advanced hyper module was critical. It not only needed to combine all of the hyper materials in an efficient and functional manner, but also had to align perfectly with Blackwing.

"I need to design and shape the module so that it is the most favorite possession target for Blackwing."

One of the reasons why Sharpie inhabited the Bloodsinger all of the time was because the greatsword truly served as an excellent abode for Ketis' companion spirit. The two matched so well with each other that it was as if they were an ideal match between body and soul.

Ves needed to recreate this effect on a larger and much more complicated scale. The Destructive Phasing Module would test his design skills, his research skills as well as his problem-

solving skills.

"It is crazy for me to get all of this done in a matter of months."

Yet… Ves did not even consider the notion of planning for delays. He grew more and more excited about the prospect of successfully creating this advanced hyper module in record time!

"This is much more exciting than the Geist System!"

The Geist System was probably his first advanced hyper module, though it could barely be considered as such. Its creation was partially accidental, as Ves did not have the confidence that he could reproduce it again.

The Destructive Phasing Module would be different. Ves intended to conduct proper research and build up proper theories in order to develop it on a systematic basis.

The workload was much greater and more difficult, but the main advantage was that once he mastered this new method, the next time would be much easier than before!

"As long as I can independently design and make one advanced hyper module, I can do so again for all of my high-ranking mechs!"

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