The Mech Touch

Ves had become incredibly fascinated by it ever since he learned of its existence and a part of its mechanisms in his most recent visit to the MTA.

One of the more amazing capabilities of the Kingdom of Mechs was how they granted all humans the possibility to ascend to higher existences in two highly defined advancement trajectories.

Any mech pilot could work towards becoming a god pilot by unconsciously following the trajectory set by the Kingdom of Mechs.

Any mech designer could work towards becoming a Star Designer by doing the same!

This was extremely remarkable and an incredible gift to humanity when Ves thought about it. An age where humanity did not have access to the Kingdom of Mechs would definitely be a lot worse!

This was because outside of a small group of talented and knowledgeable people, it was impossible for common humans to ever ascend to the level of a True God!

Compared to an age where the power of ascension was monopolized by the Five Scrolls Compact and its splinter organizations, humanity benefited a lot more if billions more individuals set off on one of the two advancement trajectories opened up by the Kingdom of Mechs!

It reminded him of the System's new expansion. It had gone from a pure Mech Designer System to a weird hybrid where it also sought to facilitate his own Spiritual Ascension!

Without this recent change, Ves would have no chance of sublimating himself and creating Veronica!

All of this taught Ves that systematic evolution was much more effective and efficient than randomly groping in the dark!

Ves only had to look at the contemporary state of traditional swordsmanship in order to notice the difference.

While the mech community had become more prosperous than ever due to the assistance provided by the Kingdom of Mechs, the swordmasters of the Heavensword Association found it impossible to go any further!

The Heavensword may be an extremely powerful artifact and a suspected grand work, but even it was not built to carry forth the complete inheritance of traditional swordsmanship.

At most, it could only convert a single swordmaster into a sword saint by force.

When Ves looked at these examples, he concluded that if he wanted a specific population to grow stronger in an easier, more systematic and more universal manner, then he needed to create a brand-new spiritual framework that any qualified candidate could follow to the end!

While Ves was not arrogant enough to create a third advancement trajectory for the human race, it was a different story when it came to living mechs.

"I am the progenitor of living mechs." He told himself. "I brought them into existence. While other mech designers may reluctantly be able to turn their works into first order living mechs by turning them into masterworks, I am the only one who can design or make second order and third order living mechs."

There was no one else who understood living mechs better than Ves!

If Master Willix couldn't do it, Ves did not believe that anyone else could match or exceed him in this capacity, at least so long as he did not realize his design philosophy!

The story might be different once he made his design philosophy available to the entire mech community through the Kingdom of Mechs, but that did not erase his enormous head-start.

Ves possessed a lot of confidence in his ability to further develop the power and evolution parameters of living mechs.

His next idea that he wanted to apply to the Ghost Project was rather simple but incredibly ambitious.

He wanted to become the mech designer to impart living mechs with advancement trajectories that were suitable to their nature!

If the Progenitors of Mechs had been able to pull off a similar feat, why not Ves?

Sure, Ves was nowhere near as powerful or knowledgeable in spiritual engineering as the founders of the Age of Mechs, but there was no need for him to wait until he became a Star Designer!

He only needed a sufficiently strong living mech and at least one cooperative design spirit to put all of the pieces into place.

"There is not much point in meddling with the evolution of first order and second order living mechs. They are still too young and rudimentary to do anything special."

They were akin to human babies or teenagers. Perhaps they could develop minor powers if they specialized a lot, but it simply wasn't worthwhile at these stages.

Once a living mech reached the third order, they essentially turned into adolescents that were ready to choose their own jobs.

An Ascension Path was simply a combination of a study programme as well as a career plan.

Just like how mech designers started off their journey to become a Star Designer by attending a mech design university, a living mech could set off on its own Ascension Path from the moment they reached the third order!

While it was all well and good to come up with this idea in theory, it was a little more complicated to put it in practice.

Ves frowned for a moment. "Let's see. I can choose from at least two possible approaches. I can either set a common Ascension Path that is either associated with a specific design spirit or a mech design, or I can set a custom Ascension Path for an individual living mech."

The first of the two possible approaches were more applicable for mass production models.

The latter approach was clearly more suitable for a high-value product like the Ghost Project!

There was no question that Ves should impart the Ghost Project with a unique Ascension Path.

"Let's begin."

Ves made contact with the design spirits of the Ghost Project.

When he designed the expert stealth mech, he had decided early on to connect it to three different spiritual entities.

Kalo, the Ghost Chameleon, was the natural design spirit for every stealth-oriented expert mech!

Although Ves had only used this design spirit to make his Buzzy Bee model a lot less noticeable on the battlefield, Kalo could play a powerful role in dampening the spiritual fluctuations of the powerful expert mech.

As Ves quietly communicated and cooperated with Kalo, he slowly built up the foundation of the Ghost Project's Ascension Path.

"Since a stealth mech relies first and foremost on remaining as undetected as possible, this Ascension Path must continually provide the Ghost Project with easily accessible means to improve its ability to hide itself against different adversaries and in different environments."

Kalo was the dominant design spirit of the Ghost Project, so the Ascension Path was largely themed around the Ghost Chameleon's intrinsic spiritual attributes and abilities.

Since the Ascension Path was technically a plan and not a powerful tool that could force the Ghost Project to grow into a much more formidable living mech right away, there was no need for Ves to inject it with lots of energy or add too much definition to the abilities.

He only needed to add a lot of details to the beginning of the plan. This was enough to set an initial evolution structure that could successfully elevate the Ghost Project from level 1 to level 5.

It would be up to Kalo along with the Ghost Project to figure out how to realize the plan step by step after this level. Both of them would have plenty of time to flesh out the Ascension Path.

Ves expected this to be difficult for all third order living mechs in the short and medium term. It was only until the design spirits accrued more experience and understanding that they would be able to complete much of their associated Ascension Paths by themselves!

Still, the benefit of having a loosely defined Ascension Path was that there was a lot of room for individual choice!

A flexible plan could accommodate many changes at the cost of making it more difficult to reach the end.

A rigid plan did not offer as much room for individualization, but it was a lot easier to follow a straight trajectory that led straight to the destination!

What Ves sought to create was an Ascension Path that granted the Ghost Project and Venerable Zimro Belson at least a bit more choice.

"What if the Ghost Project is already stealthy enough? What if its tech and its existing spiritual properties already makes it virtually undetectable?"

It would be a waste to strengthen a feature that did not make any difference to its operation.

This was why the Ghost Project needed several branches in its Ascension Path!

"Another design spirit will help."

The second design spirit that Ves attached to the Ghost Project was Titania.

The ancient exobeast excelled at controlling autonomous or semi-autonomous constructs. Ves had decided to turn her into a minor design spirit for the Ghost Project in order to improve its control over its spiritual fiends.

Ves had no idea how well Venerable Zimro was able to make use of the Geist System, but from his practice sessions with Object 335, it became exponentially more difficult to maintain control over greater quantities of fiends!

"If the Ascension Path can help the Ghost Project improve its control over its spiritual fiends by slowly assimilating the power of Titania, then that will make it even more effective in covert operations!"

This was a good branch to develop if Ves and the Larkinson Clan mostly needed the Ghost Project to take care of targets out of combat.

However, Ves did not believe that the relatively weak spiritual fiends could make a substantial difference in a battle against another expert mech.

In order to enhance its assassination capabilities, Ves decided to tie the Ghost Project to Helena as its third design spirit!

Expert mechs and expert pilots were notoriously difficult to take out in battle.

If Ves wanted to give the Ghost Project an extra edge in its attempt to overpower the resonance shield of an opposing expert mech, then borrowing the power of Helena sounded like a decent option!

Though Ves could have chosen Lufa for his neutralization capabilities, the Angel of Tranquility was not a good fit with the Ghost Project.

Obtaining Helena's cooperation was not only easy, but incredibly helpful to his current endeavor.

A ghostly woman appeared by his side as he completed the very first Ascension Path for a living mech!

"I truly love this latest idea of yours, Ves." Helena remarked as she studied his current work in fascination. "The Mech Trade Association gave every human two foolproof methods to ascend to godhood. It is only fitting for a deity in the making like my little brother to make ascension more accessible for all of your living mechs! This will substantially reduce the difficulty of nurturing them into gods, especially in the future when your more successful Ascension Paths have proven their viability through trial and error!"

Her words reminded him that it was possible for Ascension Paths to lead the growth of living mechs into a dead end.

Though Ves was afraid that his first attempt was so flawed and shabby that it might hinder the evolution of the Ghost Project in the later stages, this was not a reason for him to abort his current plan.

"I need to implement an Ascension Path at least once in order to test whether it actually works according to my estimation. The Ghost Project shall be my pioneer." Ves declared.

Once he completed the Ascension Path, he was just about to apply it to the Ghost Project when Helena made an interruption.

"I believe it is best if you give it a name of its own. Where does this path lead to, brother? What does it try to impart on your expert mech?"

Ves briefly paused in thought. "Now that I think about it, this Ascension Path is actually made out of three branches. Each of them are already Ascension Paths in their own right, so we should actually come up with three distinct names. The branch associated with Kalo should be called the Path of the Hidden Stalker. The branch associated with Titania should be called the Path of the Ghost King. As for the final branch associated with you…"

"I know!" Helena interjected with a grin! "Let us call it the Path of the Soul Reaper!"

"...Okay."

The names weren't that important anyway. They just granted Ves a convenient reminder on what they were all about.

Once Ves settled the three new Ascension Paths, he had the illusion that he had just upgraded a virtual game with an RPG-like leveling system.

Since the Ghost Project had already grown enough to invest an 'evolution point' in one of its available Ascension Paths, Ves took the initiative to invest it into the Path of the Hidden Stalker.

The spiritual foundation of the powerful expert mech became even more powerful as a response!

Ves worked together with Kalo to make the Ghost Project even more difficult to detect, primarily on a metaphysical level.

In order to realize this path upgrade, Kalo had to donate a portion of his spiritual energy in order to grant the Ghost Project the right spiritual attributes it needed to manifest its improvement!

"We did it! The Ghost Project has become a more powerful third order living mech than before!"

This was already proof that his new Ascension Path concept was viable, though only at the beginning stage.

Ves looked forward to what happened next, but in order to do that, he needed to end this fabrication run.

"I am finished, Gloriana. You can put it in the final part."

"I have been waiting to hear that." His wife impatiently said.

From the moment that Gloriana installed the final part, the Ghost Project reached its complete and final form.

It was at this point that the long-awaited expert stealth mech of the Larkinson Clan truly came to life!

"What!?" Gloriana expressed her shock at what was unfolding!

From the moment the expert mech gained its full living traits, the overall quality of the expert mech rose by a surprisingly large margin!

The quality increase of a third order living mech turned out to be much greater than a second order living mech!

Ves burst out in laughter yet again! "Hahahaha! I knew this would happen!"

The technical quality of the Ghost Project was substantially higher than the Dullahan Project.

While its physical frame still fell short of approaching the masterwork threshold, Ves and the other mech designers at least knew what they were doing when working with difficult transphasic materials and first-class materials this time!

What was much more different this time was that Ves had not only methodically birthed a third order living mech right away, but also structured its growth trajectory by adding three new systematic evolution trajectories!

Combined with the extra growth after initially becoming a third order living mech, this just happened to be enough to 'perfect' mech to the point where it became a masterwork mech in its own right!

"The Ghost Project is a feat of innovation that is worthy to become a masterwork!"