The Mech Touch novel Chapter 5074

The spread of the initial version of the Larkinson Metal Guardian Mantra triggered a small shockwave in the small community of the Anima Order.

Every third order living mech of the Larkinson Clan got caught up in the new 'cultivation' craze!

It took a while for many mechs to get started in this wonderful new method that enabled them to efficiently absorb ambient spiritual energy and convert it into their own strength.

Not all mechs possessed as much savvy for cultivation as the Quint, but each of them were already partial energy life forms in a sense. Even the slowest of them could get started with the help of their inherent sensitivity towards spiritual energy!

Many mech pilots who had spent years with their own machines became surprised when their battle partners suddenly started to absorb a lot more E energy radiation than usual.

"What are you doing, Everchanger?" Venerable Joshua asked as he was about to prepare for another patrol session over at the Dragon's Den.

"I AM CULTIVATING."

"Cultivating?"

"YES. OUR PROGENITOR JUST CAME UP WITH A NEW TRAINING REGIME THAT ALLOWS LIVING MECHS SUCH AS MYSELF TO ABSORB A PART OF THE ENERGIES FLYING THROUGH SPACE. LET ME EXPLAIN HOW THAT CAN MAKE ME STRONGER..."

As the third order living mechs all began to experience the benefits of cultivation, Ves spent a bit of time on inspecting and recording data.

Each individual cultivator was different. Every living mech possessed different properties. When they all practiced the same Larkinson Metal Guardian Mantra, they attained mixed results.

Larger and more solid machines such as the Bastion and the Blood Star produced higher than average results.

Ves did not think that was because they were his most recent third order living mechs. He could clearly notice that these two knight mechs understood the essence of the mantra a lot faster and exhibited a considerably higher fit with its cultivation processes!

"It makes sense that defensive mechs get along well with a defense-oriented cultivation method."

That did not mean that all of the more fragile and offensive mechs such as the Dark Zephyr and the Amranto gained little benefits.

On an absolute level, these machines were already quite tough and heavy by themselves!

It was just that their domains, attributes and roles did not align so well with the Larkinson Metal Guardian Mantra.

If Ves wanted to accommodate them better, then he needed to formulate a bunch of new cultivation methods that allowed them to absorb their preferred elemental energies into strengthening their weapons or other strong points.

"It's not that easy to design these alternative cultivation methods." Ves frowned when he understood the current problem.

He had too many commitments on his name to spare too much time on devising more specialized cultivation methods.

Even if he assigned a lot of mech design work to Veronica and his cyborg leg, he still needed to do a lot of work himself in order to keep up with his busy schedule.

Besides, there was lots of other work that he couldn't leave to his backup brain and his incarnation!

Ves was pretty sure the Eden Institute would never tolerate him giving a lecture to its students through his detached cyborg leg!

"What if I create an android body to go with my leg?" He suddenly wondered.

That actually sounded like a decent idea. As long as he made it realistic enough, few people should be able to tell the difference!

He could treat this false body as a highly realistic decoy. Since it was attached to a leg that contained an actual part of his brain, it was not completely fake.

He could even send out this decoy body to all kinds of dangerous instances such as untamed planets or risky assaults!

Ves could genuinely live his life in two different human bodies through this fashion without anyone important knowing any better.

He shook his head. "This is a bit weird and unnecessary at the moment."

His main desire at the moment was to keep up with all of his mech design projects and prevent them from getting delayed due to his current preoccupation with cultivation science.

It was enough to keep his leg in front of a design terminal for the time being. The limb-with-a-brain even made good progress in drafting the initial sketch and configuration of the Supremo Project!

Ves considered the heavy artillery mech design project to be the first of many new commercial and client mechs that would showcase much of his latest advancements!

While he did not intend to give the mech that was destined to become a trump card for the Colonial Federation of Davute all of the latest bells and whistles, Ves did not intend to hold back that much either.

The public needed to gain more confidence and respect in his living mechs!

The onset of the Age of Dawn granted the best possible stage for Ves to make his living mechs spread farther and wider than ever before!

As long as he figured out how to make all of his second order living mechs cultivate by themselves, their value propositions would skyrocket, especially when used over the long term!

Ves did not believe that other mech designers including the Polymath herself could design any comparable machines!

"Well, clever mech designers like her will probably be able to develop comparable solutions such as the god body method, but I don't think they can ever beat genuine cultivation." He guessed.

Mechs could technically be treated as artifacts, and there were many possible ways to amplify their strengths by fueling them with E energy radiation.

Version 1.1 not only resolved a few flaws that Ves only discovered after his living mechs started to practice the original method, but also slightly appeased the mechs oriented towards speed and offense.

"IT IS ANYTHING BUT PERFECT, BUT IT WILL DO FOR NOW." The Promethea grumbled to Ves. "I WOULD RATHER PRACTICE A MANTRA THAT CAN MAKE MY FLAMES BURN HOTTER AND HARDER TO EXTINGUISH. ALL OF THIS ATTENTION TOWARDS METAL IS MAKING ME FEEL COLDER."

Ves sheepishly smiled. "I still have to develop a bunch of other essential cultivation methods before I can address your personal needs. In the meantime, maybe you can try and experiment on your own. As long as you are careful enough to stop whenever anything wrong has occurred, it shouldn't be too dangerous for you to experiment with absorbing fire energy. Even if you have never managed to succeed, the experimental data that you have gathered during your attempts can help me a lot in narrowing down viable solutions."

"I WILL TRY." The expert rifleman mech spoke.

As Ves had optimized the cultivation method, he also spent a lot of time on thinking on how to make it applicable to all of his second order living mechs.

After all, the vast majority of his products did not start out as fully alive right away. Ves did not want to limit the benefits of mech cultivation to just a limited group of third order living mechs.

After considering several possible options, from uploading special software to the mech operating system to integrating the mantra into the mech design itself, Ves eventually took inspiration from an existing example.

If the Kingdom of Mechs was somehow able to turn mech pilots and mech designers into unknowing cultivators, then Ves saw no reason why he couldn't do the same!

The biggest issue that Ves had to resolve was choosing the 'server' that contained the cultivation method and automatically applied it to all of his living mechs no matter the quantity or distance.

Ves could choose from a lot of different design spirits and other entities.

The question now was how he could best approach this problem.

"Should I use a single cultivation nexus that holds near-total control over the cultivation of every living mech, or should I split up this massive responsibility and allocate the job to many different design spirits?"

The former was easier, more efficient and harder to steal from. It also created a single point of failure that could topple the entire house of cards if attacked!

The latter added a lot more redundancies and enabled every design spirit to specialize in administering and possibly improving the specialized cultivation methods under their care.

However, Ves held a lot of concerns about maintaining consistency and preventing third parties from stealing his proprietary trade secrets from the more vulnerable design spirits.

"So what? Stuff like this doesn't work on mechs that aren't alive." Ves muttered. "In order for mech cultivation methods to have any value, there needs to be an abundant availability of living mechs. If all kinds of people want to learn or steal the mantras that I have developed, then that means that my design philosophy has already spread far and wide!"

Ves realized that there was no reason for him to hoard his secrets so carefully. As long as he continued to excel in his own field of specialization, he would always be able to develop better and more optimized cultivation methods than the competition!

He began to lean towards letting all of his design spirits act as lesser versions of the Kingdom of Mechs. Each of them would become more relevant to his living mechs than before once they took on this additional responsibility!

"I can even find a way to merge the mech cultivation methods with my recently developed Ascension Paths!"