[1-200] THE MECH TOUCH

Chapter 19: Reborn

Ves revisited the CA-1A Nero. He was never proud of the mech, even if he learned a lot about the Caesar Augustus when working on it. The small solutions he implemented in the Nero only helped him fabricate a less horrible Caesar Augustus. In that regard, he succeeded modestly. When Ves checked his sales again, he saw that the Nero had already been sold once for a whole 60,000 credits.

"At least I don't have to worry about paying for the raw materials of my next model."

The Nero always felt like a half-finished job to Ves. Now that he came back with a lot of new ideas, he wanted to revisit its design and see whether he could transform it into a mech that enables pilots to reach the X-Factor.

Ves opened up the Mech Designer System and switched to the Designer page. The Designer stored all of his old designs, so he pulled up the Nero effortlessly.

When he modified the CA-1's design, he made changes based revolving around reducing its cost and increasing its efficiency. He treated the Caesar Augustus as a robot and rearranged its internals without any regards to its presumably non-existent feelings.

Ves wasn't sure working like that was the right approach. In his beliefs about the X-Factor, emotions played an important role. While he still wasn't certain how to engender these emotions in a giant machine, he had some guesses he could try.

First, he theorized a mech designer's emotions and intentions played an enabling role. In other words, his own feelings bled over into the design and fabrication of a new mech. The clues to this idea came from remembering the circumstances of designing the Seraphim.

Ice-cold designers who barely put any passion in their designs could never spark a semblance of life in these mechs. When Ves worked on the Phantasm, Nomad and Nero, he constantly tried to maximize his gains while minimizing his losses. Though he was upbeat, he didn't put in an excessive amount of passion in his work.

Despite being overburdened with toys, the Seraphim had been designed in a fit of passion. Ves vaguely remembered the emotions he experienced back then. He became elated at his first sale, and the completion of his second ever tutorial missions. He received a windfall of resources and also got drunk on purchasing a lot of virtual component licenses. With such an affected mind, he got straight to work at designing a colorful mech that embodied extreme joy and passion.

"These all happened to be the same emotions TheSeventhSnake felt when he performed at his best."

Ves formed a bold idea. The alignment of the emotions expressed by the designer, mech and pilot determined whether they could produce the X-Factor. Almost every speculation about the X-Factor Ves had read on the galactic net only focused on the mech and its pilot. It almost never included the designer. Even if they did, they focused on the designer's physical objectives, not his emotional demands.

How can a sword in the hands of a warrior shine bright when the blacksmith forged it casually?

There was no proof for Ves' assertion that the craftsman mattered. As far as humanity knew, emotions weren't bundles of energy that had a definable existence in he material universe. It certainly sounded highly unlikely that when Ves designed and fabricated the Seraphim, he somehow embedded it with some sort of voodoo mental energy.

No. Perhaps the mystery lay in purpose and intent. The strong emotions of the mech designer sharpened his intent. A mech designed to break through fortifications would not only possess the physical qualities that enabled it to perform such a task, it would also be built carrying the designer's intent to succeed. Paired with a pilot who carries the same wish, such a mech crystallized the intent of all three entities in a single machine.

In order to gift the new Nero with a purpose, Ves first had to look back on the intent of its base model.

"The Caesar Augustus is a product of a young, spoiled mech designer's desire to show off." Ves concluded as he recalled the debut of Jason Kozlowski. "At the time, it was built to be the best all-rounder currentgen mech."