The Mech Touch

He had never performed this combination of actions before. Leaving out the totem animal portion of his mental superimposition technique seemed like he was only creating a half-finished image, but he didn't feel that way.

"The meaning I instilled in the image of the base model and Axelar's excellent piloting skill should be enough to fill in the gaps. A hero mech is a very simple machine to pilot for someone like him. His instincts don't require any reinforcement."

A mech pilot as talented as Relia Foster also possessed a highly intuitive approach to piloting mechs.

Once Ves finalized the shape of his two images, he mashed them together.

As expected, they didn't come into conflict. The base model of the hero mech and the human myth of a future Axelar didn't possess any inherent conflicts with each other. In fact, it was quite the opposite. They complimented each other very well!

Without a hostile factor like the image of an aggressive and primal totem animal in the mix, the base model and the human myth didn't put up a hostile front.

As Ves witnessed the two images blending into each other to form a single amalgamation that combined both of their traits, a strange feeling crept up his consciousness.

The base model carried his imprint while the human myth carried Axelar's imprint. Both of them danced in each other's presence before they started merging.

For some reason, Ves had the impression that he was making love with Axelar by proxy!

"Blegh! What a disgusting idea!"

The repulsion that radiated from his thoughts almost derailed the merging process. Ves hastily concentrated his mind again to avoid disturbing the process any further.

Fortunately, it seemed that one of the benefits of his design seed was that he could extend less than his total concentration to perform his design-related techniques.

"That's convenient."

While he still preferred to dedicate his total concentration to his design work, Ves couldn't exactly do that while maintaining control over Axelar's body. Ves constantly had to split off his attention to allow his consciousness to remain in control.

The process didn't take too much time. If Ves was honest, he predisposed the images to merge with each other from the moment he made them. After all, one image consisted of a mech, while the other image consisted of a mech pilot. How could they not get along with each other?

The merged image that resulted from the fusion process was a lively hero mech that possessed real presence!

Ves was very satisfied with the result. While it wasn't the strongest amalgamated image he conceived of, it was one he felt very strong ownership towards!

It was as if it was his child with Axelar!

"Urgh!"

Ves quickly erased that thought from existence.

"Ahem, in any case, I've finished all of my preparations to design Axelar's hero mech."

Now that Ves formed a complete vision and spiritual image for his mech, he was ready to start putting the hero mech together.

From an outside perspective, Axelar's body spent more than an entire hour doing nothing but spacing out. Benny had been growing rather concerned, but not too much since he witnessed his charge spacing out all the time.

The only difference was that Axelar hadn't taken any stimulants this time.

As Benny was wondering if Axelar enjoyed so many stimulants that he developed the ability to get himself high from memory alone, the body finally came back to life.

"Aha! I've come up with the perfect mech!" Axelar's body gloated as his fingers slowly danced across the projected interface of the auto designer. "Just watch me design the perfect mech to beat the arrogant Haspel Asps!"

Although Ves quickly became frustrated at his lack of fine control of Axelar's limbs, the auto designer wasn't so finicky about precision. Even a six-year old child could design a completely functional mech with the sheer amount of assistance and automation the auto designer provided!

What a cheat! Ves had the illusion that he could perform months of work in a matter of minutes!

It was easy to come up with a functional mech, but it took a lot more effort to make it good enough for sale. Ves did not trust the auto designer AIs to come up with the most optimal solution to every problem. Instead, the AIs tended to skew towards safe and widely-applicable solutions instead.

Ves first started with selecting the components of his mech. He didn't spend too much time differentiating between the countless possible selections. Instead, he used the search and filtering functions to select parts that met his criteria.

"Positron rifle, Destroyer Sword, armor system, power reactor, energy cells, heat sinks…"

As part of his deliberate strategy to design a hero mech that only depended on two weapon system, Ves didn't want to overcomplicate his mech design in other areas.

The Terrans developed countless gimmicks to spice up a mech, from adding the capability to phase them out of existence for a brief time to disturbing the gravity all around them. A lot of these gimmicks resembled the manifestations of resonance from expert mechs.

"Looks like the Terrans have taken inspiration from resonance in their research." Ves mentally noted.

In any case, aside from adding a powerful shield generator to his list of parts, Ves deliberately rejected the use of any other auxiliary modules!

Oh, he felt tempted to add some extra features to his mech. The trend towards multipurpose mechs led to an incredible drive towards miniaturization among Terran component designers.

Every part came in a small and compact package by default. Any Terran mech designer could easily licence these compact modules and slot them into their mech designs no matter how little space they had left!

Yet overburdening his hero mech design with technological gizmos only detracted from the purity of its vision.

His goal was to design a hero mech that mainly depended on two weapon systems to fight!

To that end, rather than enhancing the design of his hero mech with numerous gizmos that possessed a small footprint, Ves would rather use up the internal volume of his mech to shore up its fundamental attributes.

All of this meant that all of the internal components he selected were larger and more powerful than the ones normally utilized in multipurpose mechs!

Having a flight system that took up twice as much space didn't necessarily mean the mech's mobility had doubled!

A mech engine that was twice as big as normal did not mean that the mech was able to exert twice as much force from its limbs!

The truth was that the increase in performance depended on many factors.

In some cases, the law of diminishing returns applied. A part that was twice as big only resulted in a modest thirty percent boost in performance.

The opposite also happened sometimes. A part that was twice as big performed three times better than a standard-sized equivalent!

However, no matter to what degree the larger parts improved upon their smaller versions, they all elevated the fundamental attributes of his hero mech to a very significant degree!

His mech would be tougher, faster, more flexible and more enduring than a multipurpose mech of the same size!

Still, whether a hero mech with strong fundamentals but few options available would be able to beat a multipurpose mech in battle was still in question.

It depended heavily on chance whether the two weapon systems that Ves had selected for Axelar would be effective against the mech that the team leader of the Haspel Asps intended to bring to the arena tomorrow.

"There are ways to mitigate positron rifles and Destroyer Weapons to a point where they are rendered ineffective."

Axelar would be in big trouble if his opponent tomorrow happened to include such solutions!

"Well, I can only accept that this possibility exists." Ves mentally shrugged.

It wasn't his life or reputation he was gambling with anyway. All of the consequences of winning or losing the duel would be borne by Axelar instead of him.

Ves only needed to make sure that Axelar possessed the tools he needed to put up a lengthy fight. He wouldn't be able to glean much insights if Axelar was defeated in a single minute!

With the help of the automation functionality of the auto designer, Ves rapidly put the parts together and integrated them into a coherent and synergistic hole.

Due to the pressing time concerns, Ves did not bother to make too many fine adjustments. Instead, he decided to manually override wherever he could make the most major gains in as little time as possible.

Some of the design choices the AIs came up with really made Ves want to scratch his head. The lack of human logic led to many solutions that technically made sense, but was completely wrong from the perspective of a human mech designer.

"It seems these AIs still have a long way to go before they become indistinguishable from their human counterparts."

Part of the problem was that the mech he was trying to design was a hero mech, which was a very rare mech type. The auto designer was optimized to design multipurpose mechs that were standard in the Terran Confederation.

This resulted in many instances where the auto designer unnecessarily squeezed the amount of space taken up by the components or internal architecture! The auto designer presumed that Ves intended to fill up the mech with additional modules!

It took a lot of digging through the settings and many manual overrides in order to rid the auto designer of this annoying tendency.

Still, Ves wanted to make so many adjustments to the mech generated by the auto designer that he kept Axelar's body up all night and throughout the next morning.

Fortunately, Axelar's augmented body barely became affected by the all-nighter. While his biological enhancements hadn't removed his need for sleep entirely, it was no problem for him to go without rest for a few days.

A procedure as extreme as removing the need for sleep entirely as Benny had undergone was a step too far for most Terrans!

There was something undeniably human about requiring sleep. Even if their bodies didn't require it, their minds still yearned for some downtime in order to rest and recuperate. Only those with strong and disciplined minds could endure the side effects of never letting their minds go to rest!

Even so, Benny never witnessed his charge staying up all night.

One of the most pleasurable moments for Axelar was when he slept under the influence of mellow recreational stimulants! The wild dreams and visions he experienced during his sleep never ceased to excite him! It was as if he traveled to a different alternate universe each night!

Another issue that Benny began to grow worried about was the very abnormal mech that Axelar designed.

It wasn't so obvious at the start, but after an entire night of design work, the mech that Axelar came up with started to look less and less like a normal multipurpose mech!

"Pardon me, Master Axelar." Benny interrupted Ves from his latest adjustment work. "While I don't wish to question your august design abilities, is it wise to add so few weapons and other systems to your dueling mech?"

Axelar's body grinned at his bodyguard. "I don't think so! Two weapons are enough! I don't need anything more than that to trounce the Haspel Asps! How better to show that the mech pilots of the Tyon System are superior than fighting with one of my arms tied behind my back!"

This logic made Benny speechless. "Master Axelar, You don't need to resort to handicaps to prove your superiority to the Haspel Asps. It is more than sufficient for you to duel against the Asps under fair circumstances. Might I remind you that the clan won't be happy if you lose!"

"Hah! The clan should prepare their congratulations for my impending victory! There's no way I'll lose the duel while piloting such a fantastic mech! Trust my design skills, Benny. I'm the best mech designer in the galaxy!"