The Mech Touch novel Chapter 7352

Chapter 7352: Sentient Inorganic Components

Ves felt disappointed when he learned that Gloriana could not create a compact central willpower chamber.

An excessively large substitute for the Mentalist Crystal imposed many design limitations. It was practically impossible to make anything practical for individual mechs, let alone humans.

Aside from using Mentalist Crystals or possibly Mentalist Crystal fragments, there was no easy way to overcome this scale restriction.

However, his wife came up with a possible idea on how to circumvent this hard limitation.

"What if we construct the CWC out of superdimensional alloy?" She proposed one day. "Superdimensional technology has advanced to the point where we have just begun to develop products that are ultra-dense to the point of possessing impossible features if we do not account for the spatial warping. Just as how a phase lord such as yourself is able to fold your massive true body into the size of a normal human, we should theoretically be able to develop a central willpower chamber that is actually the size of a heavy mech but occupies the space of a heavily armored trooper."

That... actually sounded like a viable idea!

Ves quickly calmed himself down before he got too excited about this proposal. "It sounds viable, but I think the gap between idea and realization is much bigger than you think. Superdimensional technology is by no means simple. From what I have observed from your work so far, the CWC is bound to become a complicated piece of engineering in both the material realm and the imaginary realm. When you spatially compress all of that stuff into a volume that is at least a hundred times smaller, a lot of funky physics takes place. Everything will get out of whack. We will have to do a lot of work to untangle the knots and troubleshoot all of the bugs. In the worst case scenario, it might require the lives of phase lords to overcome the restrictions imposed by all of the spatial shenanigans."

All of that sounded vague and dubious, but Ves tried to account for the worst-case scenarios.

He did not want his wife and everyone else to think that superdimensional technology was their jail-out-of-free card. Nothing came for free.

His wife grew more composed after he set her straight.

"Hmm, regardless of whether we can shrink the size of the most essential part by utilizing superdimensional alloys, the cost is bound to be excessive. Superdimensional matter is just as scarce as Mentalist Crystals for most parties. We are an exception to this rule due to controlling the supply of this critical resource, but... that may not be enough to justify the effort of developing this special solution."

The Larkinson Clan could pursue many different research directions. That did not mean that its researchers should pursue every shiny idea.

The clan’s R&D capacity remained limited. Ves and the others could not afford to waste their time on trying to realize overly niche and impractical ideas.

"We can conduct a viability study when we have enough time later on." Ves told his wife. "The idea still has merit, but we need to know more on how much it will cost and how much work we need to do in order to make this possible."

For now, it was best to shelve the notion of developing a superdimensional central willpower chamber. They absolutely could not afford to add more variables and introduce more complications in their studies.

Gloriana therefore resumed her work on developing a large and unwieldy CWC despite her personal dislikes.

Ves meanwhile spent his time on developing the sentient inorganic components.

At this stage, all of the researchers had accepted his definitions for the large number of sub-units tasked with producing the mental activity required to stimulate the CWC.

The original Ixith Goliath was largely made up of sentient organic components.

These were very small lifeforms that could easily fit in the palm of a person’s hand.

While they looked and acted like static blobs of alien flesh, they were actually living and thinking organisms.

Many of the samples taken from the Goliath in stasis had definitely proven the sapience of these SOC.

Even if they were extremely stupid and simple-minded, there was no doubt that they could generate just enough thoughts and emotions to satisfy one of the conditions of generating stolen resonance.

There were many different wonders related to SOCs. What concerned most of the researchers was how to increase the scale of stolen willpower manifestations.

The Ixith Goliath broke the rules as far as expert pilot-level true resonance was concerned.

The massive creature was able to empower a body with the volume of a large city with stolen resonance.

The reach, consistency, strength and abundance of stolen resonance far exceeded what any individual expert pilot could generate under the same circumstances!

Therefore, the most crucial demand was to figure out how to scale up resonance manifestations.

As long as they deciphered this crucial secret, it may be possible to apply principles of this tech to mechs, thereby allowing expert pilots to empower much larger mechs with true resonance!

It even gave birth to an outrageous idea!

What if an expert pilot interfaced with a ’mech’ that just happened to be designed and built like a warship in almost every other aspect?

This warship that happened to be made out of lots of sentient components and incorporate a neural interface may just qualify as a ’mech’ just enough for an expert pilot to empower with true resonance!

Of course, this was another advanced application on the level of a superdimensional willpower chamber.

The Larkinson Clan could not afford to engage in such research, but the story was different for the Red Fleet.

As long as the fleeters believed that this crazy concept could be realized, they should easily be able to assign a research institution to study its viability.

That was the advantage of large and well-established superorganizations.

The RF may have suffered a lot of setbacks after the Great Severing, but its foundation was still solid. It was still a giant that could rival the RA in most aspects.

Ves did not think about these possibilities yet. He would just be making it harder for himself if he tried to develop a product that could readily be used.

For now, he focused on developing a proof of concept and nothing more. He needed to learn how to walk before he could learn how to run.

His only indulgence was to substitute sentient organic components with sentient inorganic components.

All of the other research teams made use of SOCs.

These sentient organic components either consisted of authentic samples taken from the crippled body of the Ixith Goliath or lightly altered clones.

This was hardly ideal for them, but they had no better choice at the moment. It was by no means easy to develop small organisms that were stable, controllable and still possess enough of a capacity for sentience.

Of course, it was not impossible for red humanity to grow large amounts of small sentient creatures.

Ves looked at Clixie who was currently playing with Andraste during one of his rest breaks.

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