The Mech Touch novel Chapter 1924

Chapter 1924 Showmanship

As much as Ves could keep droning nonsense to the crowd of dwarves, he knew it wasn't enough to secure his command over the rebel group.

To put force into his words and convince the most jaded among them that Ves was an actual god, he needed to demonstrate his divine might!

He had to impress the dwarves by doing something so far out of their reach that they were unable to rationalize what they witnessed.

In other words, Ves had to hoodwink the rebels into believing that he was performing a miracle!

As Ves calmly used Rion's senses to inspect the shabby tools and stock of low-quality parts and materials at hand, he tried to figure out the best way to convert the dwarves into his believers.

He thought back on his interactions with religion. In particular, his thoughts strayed in the direction of the myth built around Prophet Ylvaine.

Of all the religions he came into contact with, he was most familiar with the Ylvainan Faith. While his knowledge of the scripture and tenets of the faith was not that extensive, he still knew enough about its founder that he was a good showman!

Naturally, some people preferred to use the less charitable description of a conman to describe Prophet Ylvaine. The ease in which he seemed to convert decent, rational people into fanatical believers was too unreal!

How could the so-called prophet amass a following of trillions if he didn't possess a talent for scamming people?

Whether the Prophet acted in good faith or bad faith, Ves had no doubt that this historical figure excelled in showmanship!

It was not enough to convert people to a new belief than dropping some religious scripture in front of their faces. People needed to be persuaded in a more visceral way.

As a designer and seller of mechs, Ves knew all about how necessary it was to impress his customers with his product offering.

He treated this opportunity in a similar fashion to his product reveal events. His goal was to turn his audience into his customers or supporters.

As long as he managed to dazzle them with his show, Ves would succeed in solidifying Vulcan's place as their god!

Of course, because Ves aimed to perform a good show, he couldn't take too long to demonstrate his divine might. The dwarves might be a patient folk, but they probably weren't willing to wait for hours until Ves produced a great tool!

He needed to do something that would impress the dwarves without taking too much time. He had to make an immediate impact so that they were much less likely to question the truth behind his inexplicable appearance!

As Ves finished his brief survey of the tools and resources he had at hand, he couldn't help but feel a little disappointed.

The dwarves obtained most of their tools and resources from junkyards and discarded piles.

House Kantis didn't bother to invest too much in trash disposal on this planet. Valuable salvage would be shipped out of Desala X when the next transport ship arrived.

Scrap that was too poor in value would cost House Kantis more to recycle than dumping them into the nearest pit.

Evidently, the overseers failed to take into account that their slaves managed to find a way to smuggle all kinds of goodies from these junk pits.

The upside to this was that the dwarves managed to salvage all kinds of goods, both intact and broken.

The downside was that the goods they appropriated for themselves were inevitably awful. Their quality ranged from poor to abysmal.

What grated Ves the most was that the dwarves failed to establish a proper recycling operation. Their limited technical competence and lack of proper equipment meant that their attempts to break down scrap and separate its constituent materials was half-hearted as best.

Every bar of metal and alloy contained a substantial amount of impurities.

Not only did this weaken the properties of the materials, the varying proportions of materials in each poorly-refined bar of alloy also caused them to be highly inconsistent!

This was a massive no-no in the mech industry and many other industries. If one bar of steel was weaker than the other bar of steel, the resulting product built with these materials would inevitably be riddled with weak points.

Ves imagined that Gloriana would go berserk if she saw the state of this workplace. Nothing was proper and everything was wrong in some way.

Fortunately, this wasn't the first time he worked under awful conditions.

Right now, Ves wasn't trying to impress a crowd of knowledgeable mech insiders. He only needed to exhibit enough flashiness to impress the dwarves. It didn't matter if his creations failed to pass muster if he presented it to Gloriana or someone who actually knew something about real craftsmanship!

As Ves contemplated many possibilities, he decided to opt for an expedient but very impactful creation. His choice would also make the Desala Resistance Movement a little stronger!

He started off by grabbing a hefty plasma cutter the size of Rion's current legs. Plasma cutters were common enough tools, but they devoured a lot of energy to operate, so the dwarves only used them if they had no other choice.

Another downside to plasma cutters was the myriad of precautions built into the hardware of software of the heavy devices. They were never supposed to be used as weapons and would forcibly shut its systems down if it detected any flesh or organic materials in their way!

With all of the knowledge that Ves had at his disposal, this was an easy problem to solve.

It also happened that the plasma cutter was a very outdated model from his modern perspective. He easy managed to gain access to the core of its programming by hooking it up with an interface and exploiting one of the known security exploits that had long been patched in the present time.

After fiddling a bit with the programming, he managed to override the software locks and tweak many different settings to the point where the plasma cutter operated completely different from the norm!

"This isn't enough." He mentally concluded.

To truly impress the dwarves, he needed to reengineer its hardware as well!

With the clock continuing to click, Ves tried to move faster. As his control over Rion's body continued to improve, Ves began to disassemble portions of the plasma cutter in order to remove or modify the parts.

He wasn't able to implement a better version of what he wanted to create due to the lack of proper facilities, but he was still inventive enough to craft a lesser version.

His knowledge of jury rigging and extensive familiarity with hands on work served him well. Despite the lack of options, he managed to make do with what he had in order to effect substantial changes.

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