Ketis watched from the sidelines along with the rest of the assistants. This time, Lucky approached her position, causing her to hold him in a hug.
"What do you think, Lucky?"
"Meow."
"I don't even know why I ask." She ruefully smiled. "I don't even know what you're saying."
Clixie soon padded over as well. She looked up to Ketis and Lucky with a curious expression.
"Miaow?"
"Do you want me to hug you as well?"
"Miaow."
Since Clixie didn't seem to refuse her suggestion, Ketis picked up the organic cat.
"Wow, you're so soft! Your fur is so fluffy! No wonder Gloriana likes to carry you around a lot!"
Both cats were incredibly adorable in their own way! For a moment, Ketis wanted to obtain her own cat!
"Stupid Ves." She grumbled. "You never did get me a pet."
"Meow."
"Miaow."
"Oh, you lovelies. At least I can cuddle with you! The two of you are so warm!"
While Ketis fooled around with the two cats, Ves temporarily withdrew himself to a private office with Gloriana and Nitaa and activated his signal jammer.
He held out his hand and accepted the Larkinson Mandate from Nitaa. The Golden Cat who resided inside looked curiously at the clan patriarch.
"I might need your help." He spoke to Goldie. "What I'm about to do is very experimental and likely very dangerous. I may have to depend on your abilities to contain the possible fallout. Can you do that?"
Nyaaaaa.
The Golden Cat eagerly nodded. She had finally stabilized her strength after the Larkinson Clan had ballooned in size. Not only that, but the constant development of clan culture and clan cohesion constantly shaped her as well. Her horizons constantly expanded due to all of the diverse people that joined the clan.
With the guidance she received from Qilanxo, she was far from simple these days!
With Goldie's reassuring aura suffusing his body, Ves felt as confident as ever in the experiment he was about to perform!
His goal? To stuff two spiritual entities of equal strengths into a single mech!
This was something that he had never really done. He vaguely did something similar with his images, but that was a different case.
His original plan for his striker mech project was to designate Zeigra as its design spirit.
This was a simple and cheap solution that cost almost no effort on his part. The reason why he settled on this choice was because he believed that Zeigra's predatory intimidation should be enough to impart his striker mech with a reasonable amount of deterrence power!
Yet when he failed to solve the capacity problem, he no longer thought that was enough. Making the striker mech's flames a little more frightening was not sufficient anymore!
In order to truly raise the value of his product, Ves concluded that he needed to amp up the fear factor of his mech!
Of all of the fearsome spiritual entities at his disposal, he could only turn on the only remaining entity that had the power to frighten everyone out of their wits as long as they came close!
For this reason, Ves turned his attention to a couple of boxes placed on the desk.
He first opened up a box containing his precious F-stone. He wanted it to be ready and within his reach should anything go wrong.
He next inspected the P-stone he retrieved from the vault that contained a reserve of spiritual energy. While he didn't anticipate expending a lot of energy this time, it was still prudent to have an extra supply within reach.
After that, he took a brief glance at the P-stone which held the spiritual entity known as Zeigra. Though the former Crown Cat hated Ves with a vengeance, it knew better than to leave its confines. Zeigra would almost certainly die if he attempted to brave the corrosive winds of the imaginary realm!
After making sure that everything was in order, he finally proceeded with the most important step. He approached the B-stone lockbox and carefully opened it up, revealing a P-stone containing a very ominous spiritual fragment!
He picked it up with his hand and tried his best not to become affected by the spiritual fragment's unsettling attributes.
Ves had already purified the fragment he carved out of Nyxie beforehand. Through a ruthless cutting process, he spiritually isolated and amputated many of the spiritual attributes that had nothing to do with what he wanted.
As a result, the fragment rapidly dropped in strength while at the same time becoming less muddled!
The final version was a spiritual fragment that contained a reasonable amount of spiritual attributes that Ves found creepy.
Ever since he opened the B-stone lockbox, the fragment's disconcerting aura already started to bleed out into the office. Both Gloriana and Nitaa paled as they sensed as if something very powerful was looking down on their existences like they were bugs that needed to be squashed!
"Goldie!"
Nyaaaa!
The Golden Cat soon began to intensify her glow. The Larkinson Mandate began to unleash an aura that spiritually counteracted the purified fragment's influence!
The altered fragment backed down a bit, but still seemed determined to scare everyone within reach!
"Is this.. what you plan to put inside our mech?" Gloriana asked with worry. "This is way too much! What stops our customers from dying from fright?!"
Though he understood her concerns, the fragment wasn't representative of the end result.
"I have a plan, Gloriana. Please be patient. The glow of our mech design will be substantially different."
Actually, Ves didn't really have a good estimate on how it will end up. This was because he was doing something new. Though he formulated a range of possibilities, even he couldn't control the process!
As he held the P-stone with the suppressed fragment, he took a deep breath.
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