The Mech Touch (Web Novel)

It should have been unnerving to see the new William. His old personality and consciousness had died the moment Ves shattered his spiritual potential.

Ves truly killed him at that time. The fact that he managed to bring William's spirit back to life did not discount the reality that the old William was gone!

Neither his original existence nor the contamination from Nyxie survived the transition intact. Instead, they had been broken up into shards and merged back into an entirely new whole along with some other ingredients.

The result was a new entity that resembled William Urbesh but actually bore only a partial relation to his old self!

Yet it was exactly because of this new start that Ves became reassured by how William ended up. While he may behave taciturn and anti-social in the presence of others, that was actually something good.

Ves designed many aspects about William's new personality! To see them come to fruition proved that it was actually possible to program a living entity through spirituality!

Not only that, but Ves could also employ his rudimentary understanding of spiritual engineering to induce someone with spiritual potential to develop a force of will!

This news alone was enough to upend the entire galaxy!

The implications were staggering, and so were the ethical concerns!

Though he was immensely pleased that he finally managed to turn William into an expert candidate, the price the beneficiary paid was significant.

A lot of mech pilots yearned to become expert pilots. Some would even be willing to kill their entire families just to experience apotheosis!

Yet even the most selfish bastard would never contemplate killing themselves in order to reach this strength!

Even if they had the chance to become famous and renowned throughout the star sector after gaining this strength, they wouldn't be alive to enjoy their success!

This was because other entities steered their bodies!

With such a hefty price, Ves would never allow his own people to undergo this process!

"It's a pity." He sighed.

"Meow." Lucky morosely replied right afterwards as he hung on his shoulder like a piece of laundry.

Ves, Gloriana and their cats currently visited a training ground the Larkinson Clan leased from the local government of Kesseling VIII. They moved to a well-fortified underground control center which projected and displayed numerous live training sessions. Both the Avatars and Sentinels spent a decent amount of time at this training ground.

To confirm whether Silent William still retained his ability to pilot mechs, Ves assigned him a spare Crystal Lord. Though its X-Factor and design quality was no match for his most recent works, that also allowed Ves to obtain results that weren't tainted by the abnormal properties of his more exaggerated mechs!

The original William Urbesh specialized in piloting axeman mechs. He branched out to piloting the Resentful Soldier due to the Sand War, but not a lot of time had passed for him to gain true mastery in this domain.

By all accounts, Silent William's ranged combat skills should have been mediocre. A couple of months of intensive battle may have stimulated him to improve quickly, but he shouldn't have been a match to someone who truly specialized in marksmanship such as Melkor!

It therefore came as a shock that the results from the current training session completely reversed the rankings. Silent William's Crystal Lord weaved through various obstacles and mounds of dirt while skillfully shooting down target drone after target drone with pinpoint accuracy!

The mech had seemingly come alive under his control. Not only did the premium laser rifleman mech maintain optimal speed throughout its run, the machine also became a conduit for Silent William's lethal attacks!

The mock battles against the flying target drones showed that the mech pilot improved massively in terms of marksmanship.

However, it was his battle against a projected target mech that proved his expert candidate chops!

The dogfight that ensued between the Crystal Lord and a substantially more superior simulated opponent quickly turned into stomp!

Silent William's Crystal Lord always managed to weave and move around enemy shots by taking maximum advantage of its agility and range motion.

The rifle in the Crystal Lord's hands continually spat our laser beams that always hit the same set of spots with hardly any deviations! The Crystal Lord quickly dismantled the projected mech with surgical precision with hardly any drop in efficiency!

"I'm very satisfied." Ves smiled. "It seems like William has not only managed to retain his piloting skill, but managed to improve far beyond the level I expected!"

He kept an eye towards Silent William's force of will throughout the entire practice session! The power-hungry force of will had been infused with a substantial amount of spiritual energy, empowering it beyond the standard of ordinary expert candidates!

The headstart provided by Ves and Cassandra Breyer had immediately propelled Silent William to the upper end of expert candidates! In fact, William might be enjoying some other boons that Ves wasn't aware of. It was difficult to know for sure considering how little Ves actually understood what he had done.

The only concern that could mar his joy was whatever Cassandra Breyer managed to do. The spiritual product that came to inhabit William's mind and body had been contaminated by her mummified touch.

Though her influence was relatively minor compared to his own, Ves was still a bit wary about the consequences.

"Well, it's not like I'll be hosting him much longer." He muttered. "Soon, he's not my problem anymore."

"Meow."

Once William finished his practice session, Ves made sure to send him back before making arrangements for his pickup.

Due to the current state of the star sector, it was highly unwise to escort him back to the Centerpoint System!

The sector headquarters of the MTA was situated in the middle of the border between the Friday Coalition and the Hexadric Hegemony!

Though neither side dared to interfere with traffic to and from this pivotal star system, this only guaranteed the safety of ships affiliated with the MTA and vessels belonging to enormous trans-sector shipping companies!

Fortunately, after a quick inquiry, Ves found out that he didn't have to be responsible for sending William back to Centerpoint. He only had to drop his charge off the closest MTA branch office or outpost.

Kesseling VIII happened to be a moderate industrial planet, so it hosted its own MTA branch in order to regulate the local mech industry.

Ves therefore assigned the Battle Criers to take Silent William and escort him to the doorstep of the MTA branch.

Once William crossed into the premises, Ves was no longer responsible for his life!

After Ves issued the orders, he found out that it would take some time for William to transfer to the nearest Rim Guardian presence. Only until the fraternity confirmed that William was truly him and not some impostor or clone would Ves be finished with this affair!

Ves wasn't worried that the Rim Guardians would declare William to be a fake. Even if his entire psyche and personality changed enormously, there was still enough of him left to carry forth his identity!

At least Ves hoped so. He needed to prepare a good story if the Rim Guardians started asking some uncomfortable questions.

"You look glad, Ves. Are you so eager to see William go?" Gloriana prodded him the next day at the design lab.

"It's a relief. This was an impossible mission for anyone. I don't really know why the Rim Guardians came up with this demand in the first place. I think they'll be quite surprised when they see a hopeless case return stronger than they had ever conceived!"

He wasn't worried that the Rim Guardians suspected that Ves mastered some secret technique that could turn mech pilots into expert pilots. This was such an outlandish idea that it shouldn't even be on their minds!

It was already quite clear that Ves forced Silent William to participate in the Sand War. By defending the Bright Republic against the sandman onslaught over many battles, the amount of pressure exerted on him was enormous!

Every mech pilot that fought so many harrowing battles against the sandmen came out different. Melkor matured a lot and grew into his role as the Avatar Commander. Many other mech pilots shed their innocence. Why shouldn't William be any different?

Granted, his personality shift was the most extreme that Ves had ever seen, but it should still be believable, right?

"Hopefully they'll focus more on the results rather than the process." He whispered.

In any case, Ves believed he would soon be able to access the guest portal of the Rim Guardians. There, he could purchase exclusive goods and services, get in touch with other mech designers who proved themselves, accept various missions and encounter other opportunities!

With the support of the Rim Guardians, Ves could finally expand his reach outside the Komodo Star Sector!

It finally became possible for him to extend his influence to Vicious Mountain and Majestic Teal!

Of course, all of that came at a price. The Rim Guardians definitely did not provide these kinds of benefits for free.

With William out of the way, Ves devoted his full attention to his design projects.

He soon turned to upgrading the Shield of Samar. The minor revision passed all of the simulated tests, just as he predicted.

He decided to take this job seriously and brought Gloriana and both of his design teams to a workshop. The Shield of Samar was already locked in place, ready to be disassembled.

Jannzi was present as well. Since the Shield of Samar was her most possession, she couldn't bear to be absent when her mech was being worked upon! She wanted to witness every change with her own eyes!

"How long will this take?"

"Three to five days." Ves estimated. "We'll be careful with your mech. Don't worry. It's in good hands."

He wanted to work on the mech in person this time to ensure that nothing was botched. He brought his designs teams to the workshop in order to provide them with some hands-on experience in mechs.

He soon found out that many of his mech designers never fabricated a mech outside of their mandatory classes back when they were studying mech design!

Ves palmed his face when he saw how clueless his subordinates acted. Compared to seasoned mech technicians, people like Cherie Tovar and Mayer Torto acted like babies!

Fortunately, at least some of his subordinate mech designers knew the right end of a multitool. The two team leaders showed why they deserved their positions. Miles Tovar and Oscar DiMartin soon directed their team members and showed them how to perform their tasks.

One mech designer that particularly impressed him was Merrill Truman! The former pirate designer that Ves added to his employ on a whim turned out to be a veritable grease monkey!

She knew her way around with tools and possessed a very good sense on the most optimal way to fabricate a part or assemble it into place!

"I spent more time repairing mechs than anything else in the frontier." She explained. "The mech market there isn't very active. Pirates are much more eager to restore their broken mechs rather than spend their precious K-coins on buying new ones!"

That made sense to Ves. "I see. You had to become very good at making the most out of suboptimal conditions."

She smiled grimly at him. "Sometimes, my mech workshop for the day was literally a junkyard. Try restoring a mech under those conditions. I had to build my own rudimentary assembly system in order to build a mech out of a collection of parts!"

Her circumstances in the frontier were much worse than Ves had ever experienced! While he had access to a considerable amount of supplies and infrastructure from the Flagrant Vandals, Merrill could only work with whatever the depraved pirates could supply!

Perhaps Ves should pay more attention to Merrill.