What's Junk? (The Mech Touch)

[lost star]

It's really showing the Cultivation world stuff, isn't it.

You just had to slip it in, didn't you, @lost star!

Click to shrink...

It's both showing an alien tech base and a nod to the universe.

 

[lost star]

"There's a surprising amount of personal memories in the slips." Bolt noted as he looked over the list they'd ended with. Technical information, history, some tutorials on strange things, and so on.

Several days had passed since they'd basically stolen the small fortification. Mostly leisurely. Aside from the whispers tapping at their minds, the place had been quiet. Disabling one of the production facilities had made a hole in the defenses and given them a good place to fortify up to boot. Remodeling the fortress for occupation had been relatively simple. Adding some insulation and heating elements had let everyone relax and recover from the constant tension some. It was still there, just a bit muted. They'd had a small victory.

Cable snorted at the statement. "You ain't done looting like this before. Just be glad we found so little porn." He gestured at the pile.

"I'll defer to your expertise and be sure those are properly labeled. Did we find burial rights?" Bolt asked before flipping through the sparse data they'd digitized.

"Entombed in stone." The older man said. "We found one of the unoccupied buildings, put the bodies in, and then poured concrete over it."

Bolt nodded. Rats were used to death. The policy was, loot, pillage, and then bury the poor saps if you could. Or do what they considered their final rights. Which was actually cremate them a lot of the time. No one wanted angry ghosts, and here the ghosts felt more angry than was normal.

"So, the next step is to find where to go next." Bolt said.

Cable gave a grunt. "Found a map in the mess thankfully. The language barrier hit us there though. Got a few places ta go. Thinking we go to the one the pilots described with two words. Valuable and ascension."

Bolt nodded and rummaged through the Slips until he found the one that had the map in question. Connecting to it was easier than it had been, but was still tension inducing. He had to agree with the interpretation. The name didn't translate. The concepts of valuable ascension did.

"After that?" The young man asked as he set down the slip.

"Depends on how Lilly's holding up." Cable responded.

Bolt winced. She was feeling tired no matter how much she slept at this point. It wasn't a critical exhaustion, but it was becoming noticeable. She'd taken to sleeping in Dowry because it helped keep the pressure away according to her.

"Based on that look we don't got much time left. We'll hit this ascension whatever and bugger out." The old man said with a grunt.

"How's our loot going?" The designer asked.

Cable shook his head and didn't sugar coat his words. "Not the best. We're covering the trip with the loot here. We found raw exotics in the manufacturing area. It's a decent payout, but we'll get gypped when we try to sell them."

Then the ascension thing was their best chance for actual profit. Though even if they found nothing that wasn't that large a problem. Lilly, despite her abilities, was still pretty young and untested as an expert. She lacked endurance. They had no idea how long she could have lasted, so they'd planned for something like this. Breaking even was mostly fine. It was not a failure, which was important. They could spin this fairly easily, especially due to the lack of casualties so far.

Bolt crossed his fingers as they began to travel once more. The ascension area wasn't close, but it wasn't far away either. The twisted paths and changes directions would have made it nearly impossible to find without a map. Now that they had one, the trip was almost pleasant.

Their destination was less so. The place had no room for mechs. The entrance was a locked double doorway hidden in the large halls. Unlike the obviously neglected and upended production facility, this place had been carefully closed up and sealed. This meant potentially valuable, and dangerous.

Fortunately most traps weren't meant to deal with a mech. Dowry might have been a bit slow because Lilly was exhausted, but she could easily rip a door open with her fingers still. The damage the traps did was absolutely negligible to mech grade armor. (It still damaged her, which was more than a little terrifying to imagine on a person.)

The rat cars caught the rest of the traps, of which there were more than a few. It was only when they could send a car all the way in and out that they sent in people to explore. Bolt was almost immediately called in again.

He couldn't even blame them this time. The manufacturing area had been alien but understandable in the end. This place had diagrams on the walls with circles and alien anatomy, things hovering in the air, and far too much glow. It made his head buzz a little bit.

The configuration of a few side rooms was interesting too. Bolt turned to one of them and examined them with a critical eye. They were barren except for a mat. The door locked from the inside.

"You see squiggles on the door right?" Bolt asked.

"Yep." One of the techs took out a magnifying camera and looked them over. "Laced with something. Looks like an exotic. Want us to pull it out?"

"No." The young man muttered and traced the lines. "Look at how they go over the entire room."

"Is it me or are the walls sound insulated too?" Another guy asked before stepping into the room and clapping his hands and listening to the sound. "Huh, I know this configuration! It's one of those fancy sensory deprivation rooms!"

"Then what do the squiggles do?" Bolt stepped in himself and closed the door.

Both him and the tech watched the writing carefully, but noticed no changes. Just as Bolt was about to open the door the tech held up a hand. He waited a moment as the tech breathed in and out through his mask.

"Holy shit, I can't hear the whispers at all." He said.

Bolt felt his eyebrows raise. He then opened the door and gestured to one of the techs. "Get Lilly here! They block the whispers!" He ordered with excitement.

Those words got the expert into one of the rooms before she could even ask what was going on. It was a testament to her exhaustion that she didn't protest much, and once she figured out what the rooms did she immediately flopped down in one of them. They had to provide a few blankets and make sure that the girl didn't suffocate in case it didn't let air through, but a place for her to recover was a godsend.

"We'll see if we can pull out another room whole." One of the techs said and pointed to one on the opposite wall. "If it just needs the little art projects we can cut out the room and test it. I'm sure a lotta people would love having a place insulated like that."

Bolt eyed the walls and the area. "X-ray it and test how the rock breaks first. Then wait until Lilly's recovered. We don't want ta risk destroying it yet. What else is there?"

"Side from the floaty things, there's a big door with some o' those slips next to it." Another man offered.

With a hum the designer moved to that area. There, as described, was a very prominent set of Slips right next to the door entrance. He pressed a thinly gloved hand to the slips and concentrated. The connection was fairly easy. The information was alarming.

"Shit. This place is running out of power." Bolt muttered.

"How long?" Was the immediate question from his fellows. "And what will it impact?" Was the other question.

"Few hours, and not much. I meant this room specifically. It runs off something with a fancy name and it started drawing power on entry." Bolt grumbled. "The floating things are some sort of training tool. Ya touch em and they help with something something sight." The concepts did not translate well at all. "This big thing is where most o' the power goes and it's about ta go out."

With a sigh the designer opened the door and peered in. He then gave a signal for the other techs to stand back. This had to be done quickly.

"I'm going to try to get something out of it. Give me a few!" He called back.

 

[Golgotha]

Ooh. Guess it makes sense for a race that uses psy based tech to need an established way to teach psy abilities.

 

[Negation]

Cable snorted at the statement. "You ain't done looting like this before. Just be glad we found so little porn." He gestured at the pile.

Click to shrink...

In Xianxia, those would be in silk scrolls and either project 3D holograms with illusion spells or projected directly to the mind for the full sensory experience depending on grade and price.

 

[lost star]

The room he ducked into was strange. In their exploration of the planet they'd found plenty of unusual things. This room topped it somehow. On the surface of it, it looked surprisingly normal. It was simply a room that had a slight slope to it. There was series of circles on the floor and a stalactite like structure in the center of it. If you discounted the glow, it would have been a strange curiosity. With the glow, it looked both wonderous and ominous.

Knowing the purpose of the room didn't detract from the aura it had. The aliens had a long word for it. Bolt termed it the 'ascension chamber' in his head. It was considered a 'safe' way to ascend for them in the documentation he'd found. Expensive, hard to power, but safe. The subject sat in the center and they were subjected to challenges of some nature on a spiritual level. The challenge would theoretically advance them, or simply fail if they couldn't advance. According to the aliens it was a cumulation of their study and the pinnacle of their work.

This sort of thing was invaluable. It was also nearly broken and almost out of power. There was enough for one anemic use according to the storage gauges. Putting Lilly in it wouldn't achieve anything, which was his first thought. The power requirements scaled beyond belief. Putting someone else in was iffy. Based on how things seemed to work with these aliens, just him and Lilly had the special sauce to connect, so to speak. Also, he could trust his fellows, but not with this.

If it hadn't been about to break he would have sold it, no question. Even with all the unknowns, this was an invaluable discovery. But he didn't know what fuel it used and couldn't fix it. He barely knew how to activate it. If it was going to be used, it had to be used now. This was very risky. He judged it worth it. The young man stepped forward, seated himself under the stalactite and closed his eyes. Mentally he connected to the device, and activated it. Everything blurred as his consciousness was pulled elsewhere.

"Welcome, welcome, guests and contests ladies and other beings. Welcome one and all to the ascension trials!" A voice immediately spoke. "Here we test the latest and greatest, or the least and worst, who am I to judge?! Oh, wait, I am the judge!"

A literal shadow man stood in front of Bolt now. He stood on a white and non-descript plane. Bolt looked down at his hands and saw nothing but shadow as well. He wasn't sure what he expected, but it wasn't this.

"Joking and kidding aside, we are here to have fun and entertain our audience, not to quibble about nothings!" The shadow man winked to something in the distance somehow. "And what a better way to do so than to have our trial takers make mechs!"

Bolt tried to speak, but found nothing coming out of his mouth. He was just a shadow here. Did he make a mistake here?

"Oh, but they aren't just making mechs! They're making mechs of their dreams! No assembly required. Special sauce included. Unliiiimited budget! Once they're designed, we then make two! And smash them together!!!" The host laughed. "To make things extra fun, they're all going to be piloted based off one of our grand contestant's memories. One expert candidate times two. So assume a spectacular show!"

The designer had so many questions. That wasn't nearly enough of an explanation. Then something hammered into his head and he winced as the rules made themselves apparent.

Two versus two. He'd have two rounds. Once against one opponent. Once against another. He had to design a mech for that. The arena was going to be a flat open arena with four massive pillars large enough to block cover and perch on if the mechs were so inclined.

It was a tricky thing because he needed to make a mech that would work well with a copy of itself. Also, the unlimited bit was a bit of a lie. He was sticking to third rate mechs, which was probably a good thing. If he wanted to try to make a first rate mech he'd make a hash of it.

As far as scenarios went it was intriguing. Especially because he'd pick up something from the mechs he was fighting after the battle. The opponents were 'imitations of blessed,' whatever that meant. He'd be able to determine more once he examined them. Bolt wasn't sure how this was going to help him advance, but he wasn't inclined to abort this. It did feel like a fun challenge that would at least help him develop.

So, he needed a mech that worked well in a duo when duplicated. This was actually very hard thought process. Usually when you made a mech for teamwork, you made a complimentary one. This was making a mech complimentary with itself. Or making it work well alone and just duplicating it. That felt a bit like it was ignoring the spirit of the challenge though.

A few ideas came to him. Some old legends. Ideas about partners. It kept coming back to the problem that these was going to be a mech duplicated, not individual. Bolt hit that stumbling block with each idea and found nothing seemed to fit.

So he discarded that ideal. He went with just making a mech that would work on a line battle. One that'd work with as many as needed.

He had a design he'd been working on consistently. Lilly's second expert mech. One meant to counter the things that would counter her normally, and one that could function where her other one couldn't. Dowry was good, but specialized.

Since this dream world could do anything, he could implement some of it to test it all out. He wouldn't do it all. That mech was supposed to be special. This one couldn't be an expert anyway. No resonating materials to give it the extra boost. This was just going to be a premium mech.

The design began with one wing. Very technically it wasn't a wing. It was a shield set into the back with a few manipulators to make it mobile. This was a poor choice structurally for a variety of reasons. It was actually a horrible choice unless you had specialized materials, or did things differently.

Bolt essentially cannibalized an arm to make it work. The wing draped over one arm and that arm provided the bracing. It wasn't much bracing, but it would make the intent work. This was a mech he was dreaming up. Designing it was surprisingly simple. The parts came together. He didn't need hours worth of simulations. He just needed the concept and it would click together as quick as thought. It was like he had a supercomputer aiding him at all times. The finicky parts were non-existent.

Back to the mech. One shield wing. The wing was custom armor, with special feathers. There'd been one part that Bolt had been working on what felt like forever now. The 'laser sword' from the laser company. The part had never worked. It burned out after less than a second. It provided none of the sword part. It'd been placed in the experimental and unfinished parts of the licenses and left to rot. Bolt had picked it up and been utterly fascinated with it for some strange reason. He finally felt like he could use it now.

He didn't want a sword. He'd just fixated on the part because of the failed dreams associated with it he guessed. Tweaking it every now and again and experimenting had been a relatively cheap process to do in his spare time. He'd spent days just fiddling with the various configurations. The part itself hadn't needed many exotics. It had been easy to sculpt it to look like feathers. He'd just missed something that made them more than cosmetic.

In this dream realm he could get it working. The wing was a shield. The feathers had specialized emitters that created laser feathers. Those feathers would explode on impact, deflecting or incinerating the attacking object. The shield was thin, it was weak, but with the feathers it'd deflect and annihilate attackers.

Here was where the rest of the mech came into play. Physics demanded that each force had an equal and opposite reaction. The feathers exploding didn't necessarily stop the damage completely. They would just change it. They would turn it into part energy and part kinetic force. The mech's frame and wing would have to absorb the kinetic force and redistribute it. His dream design for Lilly was designed to move gracefully. Each hit on this child of that ideal would therefore be absorbed by moving along with it.

In practice it would look like this: An impact would come in, like a sword. The wing would intercept it, there'd be an explosion of light, and the mech would ride that explosion back. Anything kinetic would cause that as it disrupted the containment field. Energy weapons would need another option, and one that he'd try to address for the expert version. Bolt was just happy to be able to get the part working finally.

The weapon was almost an afterthought after all of this. It was a bit of a departure from his normal pattern as well. Bolt was adding two weapons. One was a kinetic shotgun. The other a laser rifle. They would be stored on the back and could be switched rapidly. The shotgun was going to be a pain in the rear to aim and firing it would cause the mech to fly backwards some, but the frame was designed for that. The rifle just needed power and a steady hand, which Bolt could easily implement. One hand was free. The other was meant to brace the shield. It could use the rifle too.

Bolt dubbed the Mech a Guardian Angel.

Design wise, it looked like a mech with a single wing. The aesthetics were white and grey. Behavior wise, it had three modes. One was a shield mode, where it moved it's wing in front of itself to protect itself. The shield would last for one or two big hits before it had to be recharged. While it was doing that, it could switch to a shotgun or the rifle. The rifle would be long range and the shotgun close range. The mech was best described as a rifleman in function. The shotgun was more of a way to get range than a proper deterrent, and the design itself meant that kiting would be the best option.

To be honest, Bolt was so happy he'd finally fixed that damned part he didn't even care if he won or lost!

 

[Golgotha]

I did not expect tournament game show.
Also, I now have Sephiroph theme song stuck in my head


View: https://youtu.be/nNms5rOaGlk?si=EO2eRcKARZxobvYc

 

[Negation]

A literal shadow man stood in front of Bolt now. He stood on a white and non-descript plane. Bolt looked down at his hands and saw nothing but shadow as well. He wasn't sure what he expected, but it wasn't this.

Click to shrink...

Not enough power to run at ideal graphics requirements, currently operating on Safe Mode.

Bolt dubbed the Mech a Guardian Angel.

Design wise, it looked like a mech with a single wing.

Click to shrink...

View: https://youtu.be/nNms5rOaGlk

Also, I now have Sephiroph theme song stuck in my head

Click to shrink...

Exactly why it does not have a physical nodachi.

Bolt can always come back and add the Shrine Maiden's heat sink hair to the head.

 

[Eniotna]

Please make a melee version called Sephiroph. And have the MC's wife's aura farm in it.

 

[lost star]

AN: Thank Storybookknight for the mech idea in this chapter.
--

Battle began without fanfare or announcement, as if the dream decided that the emphasis would be on the fight rather than any sort of pageantry. Bolt's angelic looking mech settled on the field and duplicated itself. One became two and two mechs hefted their rifles and aimed towards their opponents.

Those opponents in turn roared in. Pure aggression wafted off their form as the approached. Flames flowed behind them and Bolt had a few moments to just boggle at the design. It was like seeing a train crossed with a mech.

Massive and almost twice the weight of Bolt's angelic riflemen, the heavies had stylized helmets grill like helmets that brought to mind a train's front. They were immensely armored, with heavy and deadly looking gauntlets over their bulky arms. The back bristled with missiles, but the most prominent feature was the feet. They had wheels on them. It was a unique configuration that shouldn't have worked, but did because this area was completely flat. The weight distribution had to be absolutely insanely balanced for this to work.

Bolt couldn't do more analysis before the battle began in earnest. His creations led, focusing on the leading heavy with clinical precision. High powered lasers blasted against the armor and melted off parts of it. It continued on without a care. Midway to its opponents the mech slowed slightly, letting it's compatriot take the lead and using it as a cover.

In reply the angels split apart, bouncing away with short and graceful jumps while firing continuously. Their one wing flapped almost pointlessly as they moved, making it look as if they were almost flying. Their aim shifted here and there almost chaotically as they fired at weak points with precision. Shot by shot the enemy's armor was ground down.

It wasn't enough to stop the oncoming trains. Their boosters stopped but their momentum continued using those almost impractical skates. Then in an instant they split apart and fired something from their waists. Cables flew through the air and embedded themselves into the ground. The heavy mechs shifted in almost impossible angles as they grabbed at the cables and used that leverage to skid in a tight arch, letting them close the gap in an instant.

Those deadly looking arms visibly cocked back. Pistons inside hissed as they compressed. Fire erupted from the elaborate looking gauntlets and the weapon screamed forward in a titanic cacophony. The wings came down to intercept. There was such an explosion of light and fire that Bolt could see nothing, even in this dream realm. When it resolved the wings of both angels were utterly obliterated. White feathers drifted through the air before extinguishing themselves.

It was a costly exchange in truth. The shield had worked as Bolt designed them to. The wings were gone, but so were most of the heavies arms. Both of them were missing most of the gauntlet on their arms now. More importantly, the angels had used the impact to gain distance. Bolt had designed his mechs to absorb kinetic force with their entire body. The medium mechs had skidded away with minimal damage to their chassis. The damage was still not even.

Unfortunate for Bolt's creations, they no longer had defenses against the missiles the train-like mechs were carrying. As the heavies bled off momentum they fired in tandem. Missiles flew through the air and while the angels managed to dodge most of them enough hit to shake and rattle them. Each hit was far more impactful to their movement than it should have been thanks to their innate design.

These were memories of Lilly though. She'd fight to the end without a trace of hesitation. The angels switched weapons smoothly and began to fire off shotgun blasts as they jockeyed for space with the heavies. Without the utterly insane forward momentum the wheel using mechs were far less able to keep up with the more nimble mechs. Each shotgun blast stripped more and more armor off their opponents.

Heavy mechs were used for a reason though. These things could endure the damage they were taking. The match had devolved into two one versus ones. This favored the heavies more in that they could avoid the riflemen focusing one down.

What followed next was a dizzying display of movement and counter movement. The train-like heavies still had those cables. They fired off them again and again, just barely missing the angels. Each miss was used as leverage to give them further movement options and limit their opponents. Bolt's creations had the advantage though. So long as they avoided the cables paths and circled sharply they could avoid most of the damage. The only threat was the missiles and the heavies had less missiles than there were shotgun shots. So long as the angels could avoid most of the shots, they would win.

By this point the two groups had become distant enough that even the rifles were out of the range. The angels had deliberately tried to circle away from obstacles and each other. While the one versus one made it so that they couldn't focus fire, it also made it so that the heavies couldn't aid one another. Bolt had to assume that the pilots considered this a good trade off. Had the heavies not had another trick it might have been.

Battle at higher levels was typically a matter of discovering your opponents options and eliminating or avoiding them. Without the shielding and mitigation an expert's resonance gave, one trick used in a proper area could be lethal. (Even with the shielding it could be lethal, just not immediately.) Here it was displayed again.

It happened quickly. The cable shot out as had been done several times already. The heavy fired off their missiles in the arch where the cable was not. The angel threaded through the missiles and away from the cable. This pattern had already happened. Even the undamaged hand shifting as it readied itself for another devastating punch was completely normal. This time though, the gauntlet ignited and fire flew out as it punched forward, filling the area the angel was dodging in with fire. This made three obstacles that Bolt's creations had to dodge.

The heavy had displayed this fire part before, it'd just never flung the flame. Bolt could see the reason immediately. It wasn't particularly high ranged, just a short ranged area of effect that the heavy had very carefully maneuvered its opponent into. A short lived flamethrower in other words

One angel got caught up in it. The fires burned it just enough for the joints to lock up. A critical second's worth of stuttering that let the heavy get closer and then use another fire punch to further damage it and restrict its mobility such that it was finished in short order.

However, as identical as these pilots were, they were not in complete synch. The second the other angel saw the trick it had already compensated for it. Pulling further back and out of the range of the flamer let it continue to use it's shotgun and then switch to its rifle. Heavy armor or not, the opposing mech could only take so much. The damage eventually reached critical and it failed.

This left it as a one versus one with the two opposing mechs a great distance away. One was a rifleman, the other a pseudo lancer that was already significantly damaged. The conclusion here was very obvious. Victory for Bolt's creation.

The designer wasn't sure what to think about it. While it was true he'd won, it felt more like he'd achieved victory because the matchup was bad rather than his design being bad. Why had this simulation / dream thrown this scenario at him?

"Oooh, victory for the challenger!" The annoying announcer was back now. "Such a close match too! Let's hear a round of applause for our contestants!"

Bolt stared at the shadow figure in complete silence. If there was any clapping he heard none of it. A few moments later the announcer gave a bow and a gesture. The train-mech appeared next to the designer without a sound. He stared up at the heave with a frown. This was possible in reality?

"I can assure you this is something that could be made by you." The announcer winked somehow, despite being a shadow. "Well, if you had the knowledge and the special sauce required."

The young man refrained from rolling his eyes. Not that it'd come through her. Instead he tried to figure out how he could examine it. After a moment the mech started to come apart and parts of it floated by him.

It was an unconventional way of learning how a mech was designed, but he could work with it. Bolt looked the thing over piece by piece. It was foreign. That was the best word for it. Human construction, but foreign. The arms were crude and primitive, even by his standards. They had titanic force though. It was a deliberate choice.

The train impression wasn't that out there. This mech was designed to run over an opponent. A single fist strike, even without the gauntlets would cause damage. With the gauntlets and the fire, it was absolutely deadly. The wheels were a bit of a gimmick in that they'd only work in an arena or on flat terrain, but in those areas it gave the mech some smooth and surprisingly potent mobility.

More interesting was the waist things. Bolt wasn't going to use them, but the cables were an interesting idea that brought the mobility part together. You couldn't sidestep this mech easily. It could corner fast if it needed, and those spears at the tips of the cables would be lethal if they pierced a mech.

He also could feel a small aura around the thing. It was different and yet similar to things he'd felt already. A sort of desire for speed.

What was he supposed to take from this he wondered? Was is just a test of his design abilities?

 

[Golgotha]

AN: Thank Storybookknight for the mech idea in this chapter.

Click to shrink...

Thanks Storybookknight, your nightmare grappling hook flame punch skating trains will forever live on in my memories.

 

[Negation]

The wheels were a bit of a gimmick in that they'd only work in an arena or on flat terrain, but in those areas it gave the mech some smooth and surprisingly potent mobility.

Click to shrink...

Prototype Landspinners?

More interesting was the waist things. Bolt wasn't going to use them, but the cables were an interesting idea that brought the mobility part together. You couldn't sidestep this mech easily. It could corner fast if it needed, and those spears at the tips of the cables would be lethal if they pierced a mech.

Click to shrink...

Slash Harkens?

He also could feel a small aura around the thing. It was different and yet similar to things he'd felt already. A sort of desire for speed.

Click to shrink...

Knightmare Frame design philosophy?

What was he supposed to take from this he wondered? Was is just a test of his design abilities?

Click to shrink...

Always look at design from the opposite angle? Yin-Yang mirror?

 

[lost star]

AN: Thank Seras for the mech in this chapter.
---

Bolt's second fight began differently. His mechs were reformed and rearmed as if they'd never been damaged. Then the opponent strode in. Two knights. Two knights ready to fight. Noble knights. Perfect knights. He smacked himself before he could continue on the vein mentally. What the hell?

He recognized it now that he'd broken himself out of the strange enthrallment. This was that aura he'd seen twice now. The swordsman mech in front of him was a product using that technique, brought to another level. He still couldn't see the use aside from the strange and forceful impression he was getting. Even now he had trouble analyzing the mech as a mech rather than thinking of it as a knight.

So far as mechs went it was a focused thing. Pure swordsman, nothing else. No other weapons. Just a mech with blue and silver armor. The head looked feminine with a golden hairstyle. The weapon was the most unique thing about it. Somehow the designer had made an invisible sword. Was that even possible outside a dream?

Possible or not the simulation / dream didn't care. The battle began and the knights sprinted towards his one-winged angels. The angels in turn slowly backpedaled as they shouldered their rifles and began to fire. Lasers lit up the battlefield and the knights juked and jerked to avoid them. These were light mechs in speed, though the focus on just the sword made it so that their armor could take the shots, somewhat. The lead knight was rapidly degrading even as she dodged half the shots. Even with pilots equal in skill it was hard to hit a dodging mech.

Midway through the approach the mech pilot decided she wasn't going to get further before taking an unacceptable amount of shots. The sword came up and interposed itself as the next laser blasted out. Bolt had assumed that the pilot was attempting to sacrifice the blade for the approach. The focused light hit the sword, and then bent.

Bolt stared a moment as the knight parried another shot of light. In retrospect it made a twisted sort of sense. The blade was invisible because it deflected light. Why couldn't the mech parry it? In reality he had no idea how it was managing. There was a big difference between standard light and the focused destruction behind a laser.

The hows of it didn't matter. The only thing that mattered was the result. The sword swung and the lasers were deflected. It wasn't a perfect defense. Several hits got through, but it was a defense that allowed the knights to approach with less damage than was optimal.

Of course they didn't have it easy. Once it became apparent that the lasers weren't working out well, the angels switched to shotguns. Splitting slightly apart, they blasted out with their weapons once the enemy got into range. Here the cruel calculus of why shotguns were useful became apparent. The knights had no answer to that. You couldn't deflect anti-mech shotgun blast. All you could do was endure it.

The lead knight did so. Charging headfirst into fire it took all the damage from two separate riflemen and kept going. That invisible sword could not help here. All it could do was trust in its armor. The mech charged into the rain of fire and endured until it could not anymore.

Yet that sacrifice allowed its partner to continue. The mech burned everything to continue forward around and then the angel was in reach. The weapon swung, and mid swing something changed. Where before the weapon was invisible, now it was inevitable. Instead of bending light it drank it in. This weapon declared its intention. It stated to reality it would bring victory. It moved forward under that knight's grip and it tore through the wing with that inevitability inherent. The wing exploded as designed, yet the sword wasn't damaged. It couldn't be damaged in this instant. It couldn't be stopped. It would only achieve its victory in that one, critical moment.

The angle was sliced in two. A dedicated and focused mech with a sword was a nightmare in close combat. There was a reason Swordsmen were a dedicated role. With that impossible empowerment the only thing Bolt's creation could have done was keep away. This was a tall order against a light mech's speed.

That perfect, glorious, inevitable sword was also done though. Now it was just a crystal sword. Whatever magic had performed its purpose was used up. Bolt had to blink away the after effects. Was the knight lesser too? It was hard to say. It felt that way.

The copy of his wife didn't much care. The angel charged forward rather than backpedal after its comrade fell. For a moment Bolt was confused as to why, but it became apparent. She didn't want the knight to pick up the sword of the fallen mech.

Naturally the knight meant to do just that. It hefted its crystal sword into a guard position and charged forward. Shotgun blasts rocked its body, but the construction was both sturdy and designed to deal with damage like this. It would not die quickly. The sword lashed out again and the angel stepped into it, deliberately, wing first.

This time the wing worked as designed. Light and kinetic energy were both unleashed from the defensive structure. It obscured vision for a brief second. The result was a ruined sword and a severed wing. About half of the shield was gone, but Bolt's damage containment was enough that some of it would still work. The shield was meant to absorb damage like this. It just couldn't really handle big things like swords without being ruined.

A shotgun shot went off pointblank as the angel capitalized on the close range. The angel drifted back with the blast, and the knight moved to the side, gracefully dropping the ruined sword and continuing to the downed knight. It had a few steps more to go.

What followed next was almost a dance. The graceful angel tried to bodily block the knight and the knight showed off it's own grace in turn. She was both fast and maneuverable, which unfortunately made it so that the angel couldn't pin her down hard enough to keep her from getting her fallen comrade's weapon.

Once it became apparent that the angel couldn't stop her it boosted away harshly. The thrusters fired with all power and the mech rose into the air as it red-lined itself. It switched to the rifle and fired, again, and again. The knight in turn reached down and grabbed at the sword. The head was nearly removed. One arm was blasted off as the mech sacrificed her own limb to lift the weapon.

Inevitable victory, the sword declared as it was activated. It would win despite everything. It flared with light, and then the knight's armor finally gave out as a shot penetrated the armor and through the chest. The mech stepped forward, again, and again despite this. It moved trailing parts. Faster and stronger than it should have been losing power and missing critical infrastructure. It threw the weapon.

Bolt growled internally. It should not have possible. The sword had no balance for this. The mech lacked the force for it. The sword still flew through the air like a laser and impaled the angel. Inevitable victory, of a sort. The knight dropped to the ground, power drained and damaged beyond repair.

"Ooooh, a stunning loss!" The announcer shouted out. "Another round of applause though. Both contestants gave their all!"

The designer huffed as best he could as a shadow. He wasn't that broken up about it. That had been physically impossible in many ways. Was this simulation thing broken?

"Let us watch our designer! When confronted by a dream of impossibility will he buckle like so many others or rise above?" The shadow man asked. "Lovely challenger, what do you see? Nothing of course. You cannot touch it, you cannot see it, so it does not exist no?"

Looking at the knight in front of him, Bolt knew the answer. There'd be nothing mechanically different to the mech. The crystalline sword was obviously made of something exotic. Here and now all he saw was a knight with some sort of mental presence to it. If he took the thing apart he'd break it.

"You've seen this before. The mystery stumps your superiors!" The shadow man laughed. "Better hurry though. We don't have much time left. Oh to be in a world where you can ponder forever, but alas!"

This was a design philosophy in a nascent state. It was something just at the cusp of journeyman. A strong philosophy based off something intangible. Bolt stared at the mech and frowned. Then with a gesture took it apart.

As the sword broke, it became less. As the knight fell into pieces, the perfection became a lie. These were metal parts less than the sum of the whole.

Behind him were the parts of his previous competitor. Bolt examined them, and his own ruined creations. This felt nostalgic. He was in a mech graveyard again. He'd learned in a place like this. Spent months and years in battlefields and junk yards. He could almost smell the coolant spilled on the ground. The fuel and burnt parts.

Why was the dream showing him this? No. This was him showing it himself. This was his core. Where he was forged. In his desire to advance he'd tried to leave it, but he never really had.

The parts flew together. One wing, two wings. The armor flowed. The crystal sword broke apart and fed into the wings. The gauntlets were torn apart and remade. Pushing and pulling. Converting.

Bolt was a scavenger was he not? He took the failed and fallen dreams and remade them. His ethos wasn't some pretty little thing in a lab. It wasn't a beautiful dream of wonder. It was clawing things out of graves. It was using dirty fuel because you didn't have anything better. It was a vulture.

It was a ghoul.

The young man laughed to himself as the simulation destabilized. He'd been a bit of a moron hadn't he? The answer to his questions had been staring right at his face.

 

[lurkingkraken]

The king is dead!

Long Live the Dead King!

 

[Negation]

The weapon was the most unique thing about it. Somehow the designer had made an invisible sword.

Click to shrink...

Imagine Blade? Invisible Air?

 

[lost star]

Imagine Blade? Invisible Air?

Click to shrink...

Yep!

 

[lost star]

Bolt found he had only spent a few minutes in the ascension chamber when he came to. The room felt far less mysterious now. The power was gone and he was just sitting in a room with some circles on the ground. He was fairly sure that the thing was completely inert now. No human could make it work once more. Probably none of the makers could either. Something about the configuration and the power sources had been unique. That didn't mean he couldn't use it still. He got to his feet and flexed his back with a crack and began to explore the area with new eyes.

He was stronger in some undiscernible way. More of something. His mind felt more clear and he could see how things were connected. He pondered about what he'd decided in that dream. He was a scavenger eh?

It wasn't that simple. Travis had called his talent little things into big results. His was scavenging. Neither words really encompassed what their skills were. Bolt knew for a fact he didn't need to take dead things. He could call his specialty conversion too. Like with Vermillion, he could hone a design by taking parts of it away. Or like that wing shield. He could convert the incoming damage into other things. He knew instinctually how to do that, and was sure he could math it out and refine it. It was a circle of endless refining. Taking things, improving them, destroying them, and then doing it all over again.

The designer would have to define it better later. That and pushing his limits would probably be core to his advancement. Right now he would be best served by identifying and ripping this apart here. This area was a training area for alien ascension. Many of the funny floating tools were used to hone various senses. Only a few would be useful for humans. The aliens had different senses and anatomy. Bolt could still steal ideas from their work.

Exploring the place with new eyes gave him quite a few insights. This was a place to hone psionic / spiritual skills, whichever terminology you preferred. It was an isolated and restricted area. Many of the tools were meant for elites and elites in training. Most of them didn't make sense to him. Humans just seemed mostly incompatible with all of this. Bolt labeled the useless ones, sketched out how they were made, and requested one of each type preserved in storage if they weren't too big. The rest would be broken apart for the exotic components if it was worth the time to break them down.

All told there were four devices worth anything. The fabricator that made Jade Slips. The device that helped hone one's spiritual focus. The isolation rooms. And a tool designed to assist in visualizing spiritual things.

It was last one was the one Bolt decided to use after exploring. The training tool itself was a floating sphere and the table under it. It functioned like a game of matching cards. It would project things in the spiritual spectrum and then in the visual spectrum. It would the shuffle them. Your job was to match symbols using the spiritual signature.

The aliens had a strange sort of half and half design they favored. About half of their creations were in the physical realm. The other half was in the spiritual realm. They then linked together in a mesh. Bolt would never be able to match their abilities. Even this little almost toy had likely taken years of training to make. There was cultural context that he would never get. It was still useful. Like watching a laser light put a red dot on the table, he could observe the mechanics and derive something from it all.

Here the largest thing to observe was the communication back and forth. The spiritual side communed with standard and known light projection techniques. Bolt could sort of crib that technique to create his own take on something. In this case he took one of the large shoulder mounted cameras they had in their blueprints and adjusted it. Adding different sensors, using a trace amount of exotics to give it a wider range of view, and then carefully cannibalizing one of the more useless tools for spiritual 'parts' to create an unholy amalgamation of parts.

As an aside, the young man wasn't doing this for fun. He was doing it to see if he could manipulate the substance. In the dream he'd seen mechs that did things that were impossible physically. This was his exploration into that concept. Was it possible for a human to make a spiritual construct? If so, how hard was it, how much precision could he use? And so on. Right now the answers were he could, it was very hard, and he was using a stone hammer compared to a high powered precision tool. Practice or tools could hopefully help with a lot of this.

"Why a camera though?" One of the techs asked as Bolt hefted the monstrosity.

"These guys loved to mark important things with their strange psionic stuff. About half their things have markers." Bolt could sense some of it with his new senses if he tried. "Also, this is really me just trying out things." If it worked, he'd done his first spiritual construct. "Starting it up."

With a grin of discovery the young man looked through the camera. To his great joy it looked like it was working. He could see people, which was expected. This was a modified camera. What was better was that he could see other things. The room had some very interesting decorations and labels only visible through this. Also there were strange and fuzzy outlines around the people. The resolution was horrible, but it was better than nothing.

Humming into himself Bolt turned it this way and that way. Then something floated in front of it. The designer paused and slowly panned the camera back. A bloody looking and stained figure moved through the air and draped itself over one of the techs. It almost looked like it was trying to eat him.

Bolt slowly lowered the camera and looked at the tech in question. The man looked rather oblivious, though it was hard to say through the mask. He raised up the camera again and looked. Still there, still gnawing at the totally oblivious man.

"Is it not working?" One of the techs asked.

"Er." Bolt had no idea what to say. "Screwy, are you hearing some whispers?"

The man with the thing draped off him turned to him. "Who hasn't? If you mean have they gotten worse. Yeah. That thing see something then?"

"You could say that." The young man trailed off. "Let's go with me seeing something and leaving it at that." He concluded after a moment. "Let me try something." He moved forward and waved his hand next to the shoulder of the man.

To his mild surprise the spirit floated away from his limb as if scared. Screwy twitched before exhaling. "Hey, whatever you did made it less loud."

"That's good." The designer muttered. "Excuse me while I try to a few things."

Well used to their designer being strange, the other scavengers left him to things. With a grunt Bolt hefted his large device and wandered off, looking at this and that. The bloody and stained things did frequently float by. Some of them latched onto people. Some were already on others. It was more than a little disturbing to view really. It also didn't change much in the end. When Lilly cleared things, this was what she was clearing. Better for people not to know exactly what was causing it at the moment.

They did seem to be avoiding him as well. He wasn't sure if that was because of something new with him or because they always had been. Bolt could wander close to them and they'd float away when they could. Attempting to grab them was hard in that he had to rush and lunge, but they weren't that fast really. He didn't feel anything grabbing them and spiritually they were pretty weak according to his mental senses. The constructions in the device were more vibrant. Based off the accumulation, Bolt assumed it would take a good dozen or more to really cause a person to become effected.

Some further examination led him to see that the spirits did latch onto the mechs too for some reason. Bolt had to assume it was because they were 'solid' for lack of a better word. The mechs had spiritual presence, and he was pretty sure that was where Lilly's warm feelings came about. Dowry in particular was very vibrant and the spirits were actively circling around the thing but not trying to grab her. Perhaps they were avoiding strong things?

Bolt moved to the Jade Slips they'd gathered once his observations were finished. He couldn't do anything about those spirits right now, but he was certain that he could later. There were a lot of blueprints and other technical manuals inside these things. Now that he knew what was possible, he could break down the basics and go from there.

He also handed the camera off to someone trusted, after briefing them about their spooky attackers. The thing was still useful in identifying things and ghosts were something all rats had dealt with before. That these were more visible and louder was just another thing to deal with. So long as the camera man kept quiet everything would be fine. Even if the secret got out it wasn't that large a deal. There'd be a bit of shouting until Lilly cleared things.

 

[Simonbob]

He's really speedrunning the discovery process, isn't he?

Growing fast, in interesting ways. Or, should that be Ways?

 

[RandolphWill]

He should really patent all these things.