The Mech Touch novel Chapter 3100

Chapter 3100: Sharing Talents

Ves had leveraged Blinky's design network enough times to grow familiar with its effects and limitations.

As far as he was aware, the fragment of Aisling Curver's design philosophy that he incorporated into Blinky's composition was responsible for this effect. No other ingredient could explain how the spiritual cat was able to tie the minds of different mech designers together as if he had formed an alternative version of Master Huron's neural network.

Of course, due to his spiritual nature, the network that Blinky formed had more in common with the other spiritual networks that Ves created. The connections were purely spiritual in nature and their range was limited.

What distinguished the design network from the other variety of spiritual networks was how well it transferred mech design-related thoughts, emotions, instincts, sentiments and so on. A normal spiritual network did not form connections that were as deep.

Ves theorized that the fact that this capability originated from a Journeyman Mech Designer caused the design network to excel in sharing mech design insights. The benefits that everyone in the network gained while it was active was so beneficial that it was practically a game changer to the Design Department!

"What would it be like if I merged Master Huron's fragment into Blinky?"

For a moment, an intense greed overtook his mind. He felt tempted to turn his fleet around and head straight back to the Komodo Star Sector, hunt down Master Huron and harvest his potent spirituality to upgrade Blinky's design networking capabilities to a higher level!

Ves quickly shook his head. "Damn, what am I thinking?! This is not the time for me to indulge in unrealistic fantasies."

He purged this silly idea from his mind right away. Master Mech Designers were immensely powerful and would never put themselves in a position where he and his clan could hunt one down. Even if he caught one, the repercussions of doing so were so massive that the mech industry would probably brand him a pariah!

Besides, his fleet had already crossed over into the Bardo Star Cluster and was well on its way to the nearest beyonder gate. It would be an enormous waste of time for him to turn around.

Though Ves was attracted by the potential of design networks, it was not a substitute to being good at mech design. Its effectiveness was only as good as the strongest mech designer connected to the network. Developing his own ability and overcoming challenges by himself was the most reliable way for him to advance to Master.

That said, forming a design network conveyed a lot of advantages beyond the moment. Ves felt as if he was exchanging insights whenever he formed a network with him and his peers. By gaining a more direct first-hand perspective on how they approach the same craft, Ves and the others were able to broaden their vision and understood their own position relative to other mech designers.

The problem of contamination was also much less of a concern when the design network only encompassed higher-ranking mech designers. Journeymen would have never been able to reach their current height if they did not strongly believe in their own ambitions and goals.

All in all, Ves felt compelled to employ his design network this time. Several hours had passed since the start of the fabrication run and already the Journeymen were bumping into numerous difficult issues.

Everyone underestimated the complexity of fabricating powerful expert mech components. The parts which incorporated resonating exotics were especially difficult to make because they combined several highly-energetic materials together that tended to interact in unpredictable ways when not handled with precision.

Of the four mech designers, only Gloriana possessed the knowledge, precision and intuition to fabricate the parts that incorporated the substance known as Perfidious Steel.

The reasons for this were twofold. Aside from the aforementioned energy interactions, the inherent attributes of this artificial alloy also interfered with the operation of their instruments.

Even if Perfidious Steel was in its dormant and inactive state, it could still cause a sensor to misjudge the size or position of a portion of this material. It was already bad enough if this happened once, but if the distorted readings kept resulting in more misalignments and misshapen parts, then the overall integrity of a larger system would definitely take a considerable hit!

As soon as he settled on this decision, he carefully approached Gloriana and waited until she was done with fabricating a particularly delicate subcomponent.

"Ves, you're supposed to be reshaping the Unending alloy plates that we have cannibalized from the Piranha Prime. What are you doing here?"

He did not answer immediately. Instead, he decided to convey his intent by summoning Blinky from his mind.

Mrow~

The purple companion spirit floated in midair and glanced curiously around him. His black-tipped tail flicked with curiosity as the cat became immersed with all of the mech-related activity taking place in the workshop.

Gloriana only took an instant to comprehend her husband's message. Her eyes shone with eagerness as she reached out and carefully petted Blinky's head.

Mrow mrow~

"Can Blinky truly facilitate our work during our fabrication run?"

Ves nodded. "Yes, but you already know about his limitations. He can maintain this state for two hours or so. Maybe it is longer now that he doesn't have to form so many connections, but eventually the exertion takes a toll on his mental fortitude. He will need at least twice as much time to rest and recuperate."

A boost that lasted two hours could be extremely helpful, but Gloriana obviously wanted to enjoy this state longer.

"Is there any way for you to shorten this recovery period? Have you tried feeding him with more energy?"

"It's not that simple. Blinky is not a machine that you can refuel whenever he runs out of juice. He's a living construct and his abilities wear him down on a mental level."

This was one of the downsides to working with living constructs as opposed to lifeless and static ones. The latter only existed to serve their purpose and nothing more. Since normal machines weren't sentient and didn't think, mental exhaustion simply didn't apply to them. Instead, their wear and tear came in different forms.

Eventually, Gloriana had no choice but to abide by Blinky's restrictions. The wheels already started to turn in her head and she briefly interrupted her work in order to pull out the work schedule and shift around the work tasks.

It took several minutes for her to hastily move around the different tasks so that the more difficult ones were all concentrated in two-hour blocks while the less critical ones were shoved in the longer four-hour blocks.

It would have been a lot harder for her to reconfigure the schedule if she insisted on keeping to her original detailed schedule. Fortunately, Ves succeeded in persuading her to exhibit more flexibility.

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