The Mech Touch (Web Novel)

With the increasing proliferation of LMC mechs, more and more expert candidates and expert pilots emerged from those who utilized the machines.

Their breakthroughs were different from that of other people.

Elmer Conta, Josephine Isa and many other warriors were shaped by the mechs they piloted.

In the mech community, everyone knew that a lot of factors determined the extraordinary character of a high-ranking mech pilot.

Their parents, their upbringing, their education, their work environment, their friends, their colleagues and their individual views all influenced their guiding principles.

While state militaries invested a considerable amount of effort into steering the views of their expert candidates and expert pilots, they were only able to shape them within a broad range of ideologies.

For example, it was easy enough for the Friday Coalition or the Hexadric Hegemony to prevent their future expert pilots from developing any sympathy towards their enemies or turning against their own state.

Yet that still left a lot of options. How these mech pilots eventually developed was largely out of anyone's control. Not even the mech pilots themselves could consciously choose their own convictions.

Mech pilots derived strength from their hearts, not their minds. The former was a lot harder to control than the latter.

Fortunately, their specialization and the mechs they piloted exerted a moderate influence in the formation of their guiding principles.

Knight mech pilots tended to dedicate themselves to protecting others. Light skirmisher pilots leaned towards attaining greater speed. Lancer mechs often strove to exceed their attack power.

Yet even then, there was a lot of variance in how they ended up exactly.

For example, Venerable Tusa Billingsley-Larkinson was a light mech specialist. It would have been normal if his force of will was dedicated towards pursuing greater speeds or assassinating the most powerful mechs.

Instead, his force of will strayed towards an unusual direction. Venerable Tusa longed for freedom, both literal and figurative. While he was fine with staying in the Larkinson Clan, he was not as attached to it as other Larkinsons.

This was why Ves knew he had to offer solid benefits to Tusa in order to keep him in the clan.

Naturally, Ves hated expert pilots like Venerable Tusa. He also hated sanctimonious, self-righteous expert pilots like Venerable Jannzi. Both of them developed force of wills that were oriented around principles that weren't entirely compatible with what Ves had in mind.

It would have been great if Ves was able to shape their progression in a more harmless direction.

This was why Ves took in the news conveyed by Gavin very seriously.

"Are you certain about this news, Benny? I have never heard of mechs that were able to produce expert candidates and expert pilots with such a high degree of uniformity."

His assistant nodded. "While we are still in the process of gathering more data, the details of the known cases are very clear. When mech pilots break through while piloting our products, their guiding principles largely align with their mechs to a much greater degree than usual.

Gavin transmitted a report to Ves. It contained all of the cases that the LMC was aware of and performed some analyses in order to prove or disprove some relationships.

What immediately stood out was that out of the hundreds, many of them embodied their mechs.

"Since the Desolate Soldier is our oldest bestseller, the data on its mech pilots is very rigorous." Gavin explained. "Over the past couple of years, we have surveyed hundreds of mech pilots who have broken through while piloting this machine. Over half of them live and breathe duty. Whenever they pilot a Desolate Soldier, their immersion in their mechs shoot up and they are able to harness the glows of their mechs to a remarkably finer degree than ordinary mech pilots."

Ves let out a rueful smile. "That sounds useful, but only if their mechs can keep up with their strength. A budget rifleman mech model like the Desolate Soldier is only fit for cannon fodder. It is completely inappropriate to assign an expert candidate or expert pilot to such a flimsy machine."

The value of an expert candidate far surpassed that of a single Desolate Soldier!

The value of an expert pilot was even greater!

It made no sense for them to continue to pilot the Desolate Soldier despite their amazing compatibility with this trust old mech model. It was simply too weak to keep up with their newfound strength.

According to the report, every Desolate Soldier pilot who broke through were no longer allowed to pilot their old mechs. Their superiors assigned higher-quality mechs to them so that they could express much more skill.

While all of this made sense, it was a pity to the mech pilots. Without piloting the LMC mechs that shaped their convictions, Ves didn't know how many benefits they were missing.

This was why only regular mech pilots broke through while piloting the Desolate Soldier. No one was willing to allow valuable expert candidates to pilot a fragile mech. It was not that difficult for enemy mechs to breach the cockpit of a Desolate Soldier!

For a long time, the LMC lacked enough data on breakthroughs of expert candidates to expert pilots. Too few employers were willing to let their precious expert candidates pilot a regular commercial mech.

"That has changed as our products became more popular." Gavin noted. "In the last half year, we have begun to output newer mech models. Your Hexer commissions are especially noteworthy. Even though it has only been a short time since the Hex Army embraced the Valkyrie Redeemer and its variants, the early data paints a surprising trend."

Ves continued to read through the report and eventually arrived at the incidents of expert candidates breaking through to expert pilots.

With excellent LMC mechs such as the Valkyrie Avenger and the Valkyrie Brunhild, the Hex Army wasn't shy about letting their precious expert candidates pilot these superior variants.

When some of the first Hexer expert candidates finally broke through while piloting these Valkyrie mechs, the outcome was very shocking.

Almost each and every expert pilot aligned with the Valkyrie mechs!

While the sample size was very small, the fact that every expert pilot dedicated their hearts and souls to the Superior Mother was very extreme.

Not just that, but the new expert pilots also became aligned with the death phase of existence. This caused them to utilize the glows and triggered abilities of their Valkyrie mechs to a much greater degree!

Unfortunately, these new Hexer expert pilots faced a common problem shared by every LMC mech pilot.

They outgrew their mechs.

"The Hex Army is in the process of arranging expert mechs for them. Without a machine that can resonate with them, the new expert pilots don't stand a chance against their Fridayman equivalent."

"What happens to their older machines?"

"Their Valkyrie mechs are reassigned to other Hexer mech pilots."

"Try and keep an eye on what happens to the new recipients of these mechs." Ves commanded.

"That's going to be difficult, boss. The Hexers are only sending us a limited amount of data that they think is necessary to design better Hexer mechs. It's a bit difficult to justify why we need these specific data points."

Ves frowned. "I see. Well, just find a way without giving too much information away. It's quite important for me to see how these specific mechs interact with their new pilots."

According to his theories, every Valkyrie mech that hosted a mech pilot that managed to advance should have received a lot of high-quality spiritual feedback. This meant that their spiritual foundations might have been enhanced to the point of reaching the cap of 25 Ves.

This was a rather low level of saturation, but Ves was still interested in how other Hexer mech pilots fared in these machines.

His thoughts went back to the expert candidates and expert pilots that were shaped by their LMC mechs.

He wasn't the only one who pondered over this issue.

"We might be attracting a lot more attention soon." Gavin warned. "Previously, there wasn't enough data to make any solid guesses, but it's different now. There is enough data to infer some patterns. The Hegemony and an increasing number of customers are inquiring about how LMC mechs are able to shape the orientation of high-ranking mech pilots."

Ves attempted to puzzle out why his mechs produced this pattern.

It didn't take much effort to develop another hypothesis.

Each LMC mech contained two vital spiritual elements that allowed them to stand out from the competition.

The spiritual foundation formed the root of their identity and character. While mechs designed and made by other people were able to gain a spiritual foundation as well, they were usually muddled due to lack of focus.

Due to his design philosophy, Ves consciously cultivated the spiritual foundation of his mechs. Their foundation grew stronger and purer than the products of other mech designers.

This was the most essential quality of his products. Even though a strong spiritual foundation did not necessarily do very much by itself, it breathed a lot of life in his products. It also made for excellent building blocks that Ves could shape into spiritual constructs.

The second spiritual element was the design spirit. Though it was an external property instead of an internal one, the design spirit was responsible for bestowing his products with their most defining property, their glow.

Glows acted on the minds of people in a passive but irresistible way. Unlike other spiritual interactions, glows were a manifestation of auras. As Ves utilized it more in his products, he began to develop some theories why they worked so well on mech pilots when other spiritual attacks had to pass through the man-machine connection.

One of his more radical theories was that mechs were just as susceptible to glows as living entities. Therefore, a glow acting on both the man and machine would not provide much inherent advantages.

Another theory he developed stated that glows were not active phenomena. Instead, the interaction happened in reverse.

In other words, powerful spiritual entities such as the Golden Cat did not actively output energy. What happened instead was that mech pilots and other living entities possessed an intrinsic sense of beings of greater power.

This meant that a glow could not be blocked unless the mech pilot in question developed a method to halt this instinctive spiritual sensing ability!

While Ves favored this theory, he had no proof to back it up. He could only leave it in the growing pile of other unconfirmed ideas.

In any case, understanding the spiritual nature of his products gave Ves a framework that was able to explain the phenomena described by his personal assistant.

Of course, he couldn't expose too many sensitive details. In order to keep his trade secrets secure, Ves spun out a vague story.

"Our living mechs are different." He confidently grinned as he leaned back on his floating office chair. "Every other mech piloted by someone who has broken through is as dead as a piece of rock. From my own understanding of breakthroughs, these remarkable events are very mysterious. Expert candidates and expert pilots are not just shaped by their own beliefs, but also the mechs they are interfacing with. An ordinary mech might not be able to react to their breakthroughs, but that does not necessarily apply to living mechs. I can't say anything further than that as I have not performed any in-depth studies on this topic. Anyway, these are my thoughts. Please convey them to the Hex Army and any other curious customer."

"Will do, boss. I don't think that will stop them from asking other questions."

Ves dismissively waved his hand. "Just tell them that this is a confidential matter. Master Moira Willix of the MTA is already investigating this phenomenon in greater detail."

"Okay. That works I guess."

The best part about this excuse was that it was probably true. Master Willix was so interested in his design philosophy that she never passed up on an opportunity to gather more unusual data related to his products.

As Ves dealt with this issue, he began to think about how he should make use of what he learned. If LMC mechs truly exerted a powerful influence on the progression of mech pilots, what did that mean for the Larkinson Clan?