1690 Circling Shadows
After a one-sided lecture, Ves dismissed Silent William as if he was just a regular mech pilot.
Whether Silent William believed in him or not, Ves would make sure that his guest would develop a conviction sooner or later.
As William stepped outside of the office distanced himself from Ves, his facial expressions twitched and jerked in an uncontrollable manner. His entire mind and spirituality fluctuated considerably.
Eventually, his inner turmoil ended, and William quickly restored his impassive expression before resuming his journey back to the Avatar base.
As for Ves, he contemplated William's unusual spiritual state even further. He had never seen anything like it. The thought of being responsible for such an odd and unnatural condition made him feel as if he was playing god.
"Gods are nothing but masters of creation and designers of life." He whispered.
"Meow."
"Haha!" He chuckled. "Too bad I can't conjure up exotics from nothing to feed your insatiable appetite. Besides, isn't Gloriana spoiling you rotten already?"
"Meow."
Lucky still hadn't forgotten about being tossed into the air. He landed on Ves' head and ruffled some hair.
"Hey! Don't mess with my hair! Gloriana will hate me when she sees any sloppiness!"
Ves grabbed Lucky's bone-metallic body and tossed the cat aside yet again. He then activated a command on his terminal that caused a beauty bot to emerge from the side and float to his head in order to fix his hairstyle.
Ever since Gloriana got into his life, he couldn't show up as uncaring for his appearance as before. He had gotten used to activating bots to fix up his looks.
Once his hair became impeccable again, he turned to Nitaa. "You've been following me around for a while now. You know many of my decisions and witnessed many things I have hid from others. Aside from Lucky, you probably know me best. I'm curious to hear your thoughts."
The tall woman frowned. "I'm just your guard, sir. It is not my place to offer advice or question your decisions."
"Well, you're one of my only confidantes." He smiled sardonically at her. "It's funny, isn't it? I'm surrounded by people and I'm constantly recruiting more. Yet I still don't dare to trust them completely."
"I believe Miss Gloriana is worthy of your trust. She has always always reciprocated the trust you have extended to her. I suggest you confide in her if you require someone to share your burdens."
Ves lowered his head as he contemplated this idea again. "Not yet. Although we are close, I'm still not sure whether we'll be together in a permanent capacity. There are too many uncertainties for me to feel relieved with extending my trust towards her. Do you understand?"
"I do not entirely agree." Nitaa. "I have seen you accomplish many things and shape many wonders. I am privileged to pledge my service to a great man such as you. However, you are still human no matter how different you are inside. Every human needs companionship."
He frowned. "I admit that you have a point, but.. I can't guarantee my own security at this point. A great enemy is on the way to our star sector, and many existing organizations would love nothing more than to capture me and cough up my secrets if they become aware of what I really am. I'm surrounded by threats that are too great for me to resist by myself. I can only survive by hiding among the people who are beneath their notice."
He always resorted to hiding himself to protect himself. He was so paranoid about it that he only recently decided to loosen up and expose some of his peculiar abilities.
Acknowledging and naming the auras of his mechs as glows was a way to accelerate his progression and business success. If not for the lack of time and great need to develop himself, he would have never risked this much exposure.
Fortunately, his worst fears hadn't come true. The MTA was way too busy with the invasion of the Red Ocean to bother with investigating a peculiar Class IX design philosophy. Even the Komodo branch of the MTA which was far away from any beyonder gate was oddly quiet.
The lack of reaction encouraged Ves to take the next step and introduce the concept of special features to his mechs.
These special features, while esoteric, were very similar to the abilities built into higher-quality mechs.
Many second-class mechs possessed an enhanced gimmick or two that used fake resonance to inspire all kinds of strange abilities.
The only difference between the two was that other mech designers had to resort to adding expensive resonating exotics to their mechs while Ves could make do by borrowing the power of a design spirit.
While the latter was definitely not as reliable, it didn't really cost anything for Ves to add them to his mechs aside from the effort of creating or obtaining the design spirit.
Perhaps the biggest advantage was that the special features derived from design spirits didn't increase the production cost of his mechs.
If Ves wanted to add some resonating abilities to his mechs, then he probably would have been forced to multiply the production cost by at least a hundred times!
This illustrated the enormous expense required to build a mech with a resonating ability. Many third-rate states therefore limit these applications to expert mechs only, because expert pilots were able to arouse true resonance, which was much more powerful than what ordinary mech pilots could manage.
"There has been a lot of strangeness recently, sir." Nitaa suddenly spoke up. "I've been keeping in touch with Crindon, who has been tracking all of the unfriendly intrusions that have taken place in the last month."
"What's the problem?"
"More and more unknown individuals have attempted to infiltrate the Mech Nursery or Cloud Estate. We even started finding them on some of our ships or cargo transports."
Ves narrowed his eyes. "Have they succeeded?"
"For now. The quality of these infiltrators is inconsistent. As far as we know, no one has ever succeeded in sneaking onto our premises."
"This doesn't help much against spies and informers within our own ranks."
"We have tightened recruitment in order to make sure that we are not inviting any trouble."
"It sounds to me like we have the problem handled." Ves stated.
"We must look beyond the immediate. Someone is expending a lot of men in the hopes of infiltrating our premises. We don't know their goals or who they work for. Despite the many failures and deaths, people are still trying to trespass onto your property."
Though all of this admittedly sounded concerning, Ves had faith in his security arrangements. With hundreds of mechs and a lot of guards patrolling the premises, someone would have to be crazy to think they could get in undetected.
Not only were the Avatars and Sentinels on-guard, Ves could also rely on some other helpers such as Nitaa and Lucky for protection.
Of course, he wasn't easy to take down himself. Even if he was garbage in combat, his excellent gear forcibly elevated his personal strength.
Yet even as he wanted to dismiss Nitaa's concerns, his inner paranoia made him pause.
While he had ample grounds to feel confident in himself, it was not within his nature to dismiss a credible threat.
"If you believe that something must be done, then go ahead and coordinate with Crindon and the Living Sentinels." He instructed. "I'm too busy with other priorities to attend to this matter in person."
"I will take care of this issue on your behalf, sir." Nitaa bowed.
"Good. Don't hesitate to speak up if you have any other concerns. I trust your judgement."
After his brief talk with Nitaa, he left his office and descended all the way down to the lab and workshop floor.
There, he met with Gloriana and the Tovar mech designers as they stood in front of a finished mech.
"So this is our prototype." Ves uttered. "It feels Ylvainan, alright. Good job."
"We.. didn't expect to fabricate a mech like this." Miles Tovar admitted. He appeared conflicted. "The closer we got to finishing it, the more we started to feel as if ignorance was gnawing at our minds. This mech is too insidious!"
It didn't surprise Ves to hear this. The Deliverer prototype standing dormant before him exuded a weak but undeniable glow from its core.
A sense of sacredness emanated from the mech. Any Ylvainan within the range of his glow would inevitably rouse their faiths.
The strength of the prototype's glow was just as strong as the auras of the Transcendent Messengers!
The two were different from the Holy Soldier. Whereas the latter only possessed a mote of Ylvaine's spirituality, the Transcendent Messenger and Deliverer both contained the complete fragment!
Ves had already managed to induce Ylvaine's spiritual fragment to occupy the Deliverer design.
How it could do that while simultaneously occupying the Transcendent Messenger design wasn't clear. Ves had long figured out that some of the rules of reality didn't apply to spirituality.
Whatever the case, the Deliverer managed to embody Prophet Ylvaine in a way that would surely send the Protectorate in a frenzy!
While the Transcendent Messenger possessed an identical glow, there were only six of them in existence.
Well, technically there were seven copies in existence, but Ves already discounted the stolen prototype.
The point was that unlike the Holy Soldiers, the Deliverers conveyed the full might of Ylvaine's fragment.
In a standard mech, this was extremely scary. The Ylvaine Protectorate could purchase as many Deliverers as the LMC produced and spread them all over in order to meet the spiritual needs of its citizens.
Even if the LMC stopped selling them, the government would just purchase the license and continue their production.
So Ves was very sure that the Deliverer would cause a lot of waves in the religious state.
"I can't care about that now. Not when we need its strength."
The design was too important for him to suppress. He truly had faith in its ability to snipe the sandman admirals.
"What do you think about your first time fabricating an Ylvainan mech?"
Miles Tovar grimaced. "As I've said, it's unsettling. This is not a mech that should be built by Brighter hands."
The bias against religion was too strong within Miles and the other Tovar mech designers. They were highly-educated Brighters born in one of the most powerful families of the Bright Republic. There was no way that any of them would ever look at religion in a good light.
Though Ves was disappointed, he did not bother himself too much on this issue. He made an attempt to widen the minds of his students and failed. It was no big deal. He had plenty of other lessons in store.
"You won't look down on this mech once it saves the Bright Republic."
None of the Tovars took this boast seriously. Even if they respected Ves, they still didn't buy into the Deliverer's special features. It sounded too strange. Having built the prototype from the ground up, they detected no materials or components which could accomplish anything notable.
In their eyes, the Deliverer was just a spaceborn marksman mech with an Ylvainan coat.
"You don't need to believe." Ves told them. "You just have to cooperate. We can't test the prototype like we test our other mechs."
"What must we do, sir?"
"For one, we need to test our mech with a variety of mech pilots. I've already invited some Ylvainan marksman mech pilots to act as our primary test pilots. In order to find out if the Deliverer works for non-believers as well, I'll be assigning some Brighter mech pilots to act as a control group."
He began to lay out a modified testing plan. He wasn't really interested in the Deliverer's ordinary performance parameters. He wanted his subordinates to rush through the ordinary tests. Only the Deliverer's extraordinary aspects deserved his attention!