The Mech Touch

Chapter 6625 The Challenges of First-Class Weapon Production

After completing the design for the Bitter Scimitar, Ves and Ketis immediately prepared to forge the weapon.

They planned to utilize the excellent facilities of the Workshop of Creation to make this happen.

Though Ketis was relatively new to the Mech Designer System, she had already made use of the equipment multiple times throughout the marathon. By completing several Missions related to production, the swordmaster gradually became familiar with the high-end equipment and tools.

Ves and Ketis had no idea who developed all of these instruments and tools. Whoever was responsible certainly knew their business. Any mech designer, engineer or craftsman could configure them exactly to their liking. Much of the equipment offered a high degree of control over their operations.

The excessive amount of control parameters could easily overwhelm a less knowledgeable and experienced creator, but those of a higher level could easily leverage extra options to finetune their work processes and increase the quality and consistency of their output!

As a swordmaster and a Journeyman Mech Designer, Ketis also happened to minor in traditional blacksmithing, or rather the sword making part of it. Her heritage was relatively basic, but Ves had supplied her with enough documentation and manuals to forge a minor artifact by herself.

"It is important that we create the Bitter Artifact in the form of a minor artifact. It would be better if we can elevate it to a masterwork as well." Ves explained to Ketis. "From what I have learned about Demoncasting, it is much easier to merge a demon into an object if it is already set up to host an artifact spirit. Less energy will be wasted on opening up space. It will also decrease the severity of unproductive mutations. They tend to occur when the demon is forced to mash himself into an object that is inherently unsuited to accommodate his presence."

The female mech designer raised her eyebrow. "How did you manage to learn all of that? Did you exchange an enlightenment fruit without my notice?"

"I pieced the clues together by studying the Demoncasting Forge, analyzing the data on the Maiden Knife and reviewing my prior understanding on artifacts and creation cultivation. It is all connected, you see." Ves confidently smiled at her. "From my understanding, Demoncasting will produce much better results if we pave the way as much as possible. The process will follow the path of least resistance. Think of it like this. If we dig up a channel where water can flow through a route that we have optimized in advance, the Bitter Swordsman will more likely than not obediently follow our arrangements rather than expend additional energy into digging his own channel." That analogy allowed Ketis to understand the gist of his explanation,

"I see. If that is the case, we should ideally create a high-level artifact, as that is the closest to matching the properties of a D-arm. Creating a masterwork should suffice. The newly birthed artifact spirit will start off so weak and without any personality that I will not feel bad if it gets subsumed by the Bitter Swordsman."

Technically speaking, this was like birthing a baby in the form of a sword artifact, only to allow a demon to possess and assimilate the infant's body and soul!

If Ves literally attempted to do this to a human baby, then Ketis would never stand for it. A purpose-built mech weapon was a different case, however. She could still tolerate this treatment because she did not truly treat a newly forged artifact as a true living being. In any case, Ves and Ketis had a clear idea on how they should approach this forging run. Ketis naturally took the lead. She had already forged a masterwork mech sword in the form of the Decapitator in the past.

She accumulated a lot more knowledge and experience since then, but she had only worked on the design of the Bitter Scimitar for a short amount of time.

The use of more powerful materials made it more challenging to combine them into a sword as they were more energetic in general. This meant that they were prone to releasing unexpected bursts of energy and might even produce strange reactions when they came into contact with other volatile materials.

This made it important for her to understand the properties of all of the hypers and exotics and anticipate how they would react if they were put together during the forging process.

Exposure to heat, pressure, liquids and so on could all set off the materials before they were combined into stable alloys.

The inclusion of phasewater alone added another dimension of difficulty to the forging process. Until it was fully integrated into the metal alloys, it would definitely generate a lot of unstable and disruptive spatial activity around it. The higher the concentration of phasewater, the greater the difficulty of containing the reactions!

Fortunately, the Workshop of Creation also included advanced devices that could suppress the spatial activity.

The downside was that they couldn't remain active at all times because a few steps of the production process partially relied on these spatial shenanigans to combine incompatible materials together in a much more powerful alloy!

Ketis actually struggled to understand and plan how to safely handle and utilize every high-end material.

If she erred on the side of caution, she would not be able to combine the materials as well as they should, thereby causing the resulting alloys and end product to fail to live up to their potential.

If she tried to push too close to the limit and beyond, then she was liable to create an accident, thereby ruining the entire forging attempt!

"I have more respect for first-class mech designers and craftsmen now." She commented. "They have to understand a lot more advanced theories in metallurgy and materials science just to figure out how to prevent their own workshop from blowing up. It is so easy to produce an accidental bomb by mixing different volatile materials

togethers."

Ves nodded. "Creating first-class artifacts is not easy. The threshold is much higher, but that makes it all the more satisfying if you can do it. It is okay if you are not adept with handling these high-end materials. I can handle it in your stead. My external incarnation Vulcan is familiar with most of the exotics and hypers that we have included in the design. I can also use my own foundation in craftsmanship to figure out how to handle the unfamiliar materials. I am more concerned about fabricating and putting together the components for the phasewater-charged tech. These are purely technological components that have to be fabricated with more modern processes. Making them fit seamlessly with the forged scimitar will be another challenge."

All of this made it more difficult to turn the weapon into a masterwork.

Even so, their chances of success were not small.

Ves was an experienced masterwork mech designer and had developed his own style to an extensive degree over the course of many past projects. Vulcan was also able to provide increasingly better assistance, especially if the work had any relations to

traditional craftsmanship.

Ketis knew swords like no one else in the Larkinson Clan. She attained well-developed masteries in both the production and use of the sword. It was already rare enough to find a single human individual who possessed one such mastery. To be so proficient in both areas at the same time was much rarer and much more precious as a result! Aside from that, Ketis was much more invested in this forging run.

Ves only wanted to make a proper D-arm in order to validate his assumptions about Demoncasting.

The swordmaster on the other hand wanted to gift her husband an excellent sword that could increase his performance on the battlefield and restore his confidence!

After revising, optimizing and double-checking their plan one last time, the two finally decided to proceed with forging the base artifact for the Demoncasting attempt.

"Let us begin."

The Workshop of Creation became busy with activity as both mech designers began to work with a focused mindset.

Ves had offered to bonk Ketis' head with his Hammer of Brilliance, but she instantly declined.

"No thanks, Ves. I have a clear idea of what I want to do this time. I do not want to get assaulted by random inspiration and make radical changes on the spot. I don't want to innovate any further. I just want to produce the most solid result."

"Then at least enter into a two-person design network with me. We can keep tabs on

each other's work a lot better."

"Alright."

"Mrow."

Alexandria was much more adept at this, but Blinky possessed the capacity to form a

design network as well.

As the two became connected in mind, they were able to ensure that they both remained up to date if they encountered any deviations from the plan.n/ô/vel/b//jn dot c//om

Such incidents happened more often than not. The two may have made a lot of hasty preparations in advance, but the lack of time invested in the project and their lack of real experience in handling much of the volatile materials inevitably led to faults and slight deviations that exceeded the set tolerance levels.

Gloriana would have torn her hair out if she witnessed such mistakes. She would have disqualified the component and started all over again until the work was within her

exacting tolerances.

Ves on the other hand maintained a more adaptive mindset and just decided to roll with the changes. Minor deviations and accidents were of little concern to him as long as they did not compromise the performance of the end product to a significant degree.

He instead felt that they added a touch of color and personality to the product. From his perspective, every handmade product had to attain its own unique identity in order to

become a masterwork.

Through controlled chaos, Ves converted any deviations into traits that added character

to the end product.

The essence of his crafting style was to transform negative factors into positive factors

whenever possible.

He was not always able to do this all of the time. Part of the challenge in making the

Bitter Scimitar was to judge whether to keep a faulty component or discard

again.

and try

When Ves paid attention to Ketis' approach towards her work, he noted that she was still in the process of developing and maturing her own production style.

So far, her approach towards forging the Bitter Scimitar leaned closer to Ves rather than

Gloriana.

Through the design network, Ves found out that Ketis valued heart and intention over technical accuracy.

She was able to tolerate unplanned deviations from the designs so long as her strong

instincts and her emotions agreed with the changes.

An additional unexpected factor that influenced her work was the Heavensword.

The weapon did not actively advise Ketis or take action if she made any mistakes.

It instead generated a soft aura that helped to increase her focus and clear a few distractions from her mind.

The effect was not as drastic as entering into a real or false inspired state, but it was enough for the swordmaster.

She was better able to set aside her fears, her concerns and other distractions. The Journeyman Mech Designer also felt more in tune with swords and other bladed

weapons.

She practically felt the scimitar slowly coming to life. With every action she took, she

increasingly shaped and defined the weapon on a physical as well as metaphysical level. When they moved on to the final phases where they assembled the technological parts

into the forged blade and hilt, the two mech designers finally took a step back and beheld their latest creation.

"It's a masterwork." Ketis said with a tired but relieved breath. "Now we just need to Demoncast it. I wonder if the Bitter Scimitar will retain anything of its transcendent quality."

"It should... I think. Actually, I am not sure. Even if it stops being a masterwork, a D-arm should be superior since it is much stronger on many levels."