The Mech Touch

Chapter 6627 An Extension to the Demoncasting Process

From the moment that Ves fished out the partially refined Middle Demon and stuffed him into the Attack Enhancement Demoncasting Mold, his personal involvement in the process had come to an end.

Ves disliked that about the Demoncasting process. He would have been able to feel a bit of agency at this point if he was the one that made the Demoncasting Mold that was being used, but this was not the case.

His fellow mech designer held the same opinion.

"Demoncasting is more suited for mass production." Ketis opined. "The lack of control and agency is both a blessing and a curse. It automates much of the process of merging the demon into the object. Craftsmen who don't know any better have very few opportunities to botch the process. This way, you can delegate this task to less experienced producers. You just need to supply the demons and the target objects and they can do the rest without worrying that they will fail. However, if you want to apply more control and achieve a better fit between the demon and the object, manual forging is the best approach."

He agreed with her. He fully intended to get started on Demonforging when an opportunity arose.

For now, he was relatively happy with Demoncasting as he cared more about.

establishing reliable production than aiming for anything ambitious.

That was not to say that the Bitter Scimitar lacked ambition. Aside from the main Demoncasting process, Ves and Ketis had invested a lot of care, effort and high-quality resources into developing the base weapon.

To be honest, the Bitter Scimitar in its naked and pristine form already possessed the qualifications to serve as a good anti-phasewater tech weapon!

As long as Venerable Joshua activated the command to burn a quantity of phasewater, its edge would gain drastically penetration power, thereby allowing him to slice through most small opponents and rapidly breach the defenses of larger targets!

Expensive or not, Ves believed it was already worth it to boost Joshua and the Everchanger's combat performance. The pair may not be the strongest in the Larkinson Army, but their characteristics represented his design philosophy the best.

Ves had a vested interest in boosting their growth as he could apply a range of life-based solutions to the Everchanger.

As Ves mused whether he should build a phasewater-charged weapon for his own use, the Demoncasting process finally reached a critical junction.

The Demoncasting mold forcibly reshaped the Middle Demon in a form that was more conducive to enhancing the attack power of an object.

The Bitter Swordsman suffered a great amount of torment throughout this phase as he had been pulled out of the demonic flames too soon!

While doing this preserved a greater proportion of his strength, it also made him a bit too rigid to squeeze into the mold.

The demon was undercooked!

This meant that he was not quite malleable enough to fit the mold as effectively as he could have. This should slightly reduce the power of the outcome, but Ves was fine this setback.

The most important outcome to him was that the Bitter Swordsman had not been refined to the point of losing most of his memories and his strength as a Middle Demon!

As for remaining intact enough to be able to put up a more serious fight against its future wielder, Ves saw that as an advantage rather than a disadvantage!

The more the Bitter Swordsman was able to put up a mean fight, the more powerful the D-arm became!

Only by enduring continuous threats from his new weapon would Joshua be able to receive the tempering he needed to unlock his greater potential!

Just as Ves was dreaming about how much more powerful the Everchanger could become when he was piloted by an ace pilot, the transfer phase had finally begun.

Once the reshaped Middle Demon got injected into the masterwork weapon, the giant weapon immediately began to transform!

The weapon grew larger and heavier. The scimitar originally featured a blue-ish tint on much of the blade due its alloy composition. Now, the blue coloration grew brighter and more reflective as it exuded a lot more threat than before!

The technological components that were responsible for augmenting the edge at the cost of burning phasewater also began to experience mutations. They grew in size and

soon became covered in irregularly spaced spherical blue balls.

Ves really hoped that the weapon would retain the ability to augmented its edge through burning phasewater, or else he would grow really upset!

Different from his first attempt at Demoncasting, this time the mutations were not so excessive.

While the weapon did grow out additional spikes that pointed threateningly towards the wielder, they were not as proportionately long or numerous as the ones adorning the Maiden Knife.

Perhaps the masterwork weapon had made a huge difference. Perhaps Ves' provocating statements to the Bitter Swordsman helped to control the distribution of power. Perhaps the much better fit between the different factors reduced the wasted effort.

Whatever the case, the Bitter Scimitar's demonized form still resembled its original form for the most part!

While it had grown a little longer and more massive, these outward changes did not surpass his tolerance for mutations.

What remained uncertain were the changes that weren't visible to the naked eye. He could feel the molded Bitter Swordsman settle into the weapon and infusing it with his demonic power, but how did that improve the performance of the weapon? How much sharper and tougher did it become, and what kind of special abilities did it gain? Unlike the Maiden Knife, Ves did not think the Bitter Scimitar would produce an effect as banal as making the wielder prettier than normal!

Ves could definitely sense that the weapon had become more threatening than before! "This Demoncasting attempt is indeed a lot more successful than your first attempt." Ketis said with a touch of awe. "The differences between the base weapon and the D-arm are significant. I can scarcely imagine how much more powerful the latter has become. If my guess is right, then the Demoncasting may have elevated a first-class weapon into a D-arm that is close to reaching the standards of a super-class weapon!"

That was high praise from Ketis!

Ves owned a few pieces of super-class tech. He had studied the gadgets supplied by the Red Three during his free time, and was not able to decipher much from them. What little he did found out suggested that there were definitely reasons why super-class products existed on an entirely different level compared to regular first-class products. Although he still was not able to examine the new D-arm in detail, Ves made the preliminary judgment that it had not yet reached that supreme level that made it worthy to be wielded by senior ace mechs.

However, this was just the start. The Bitter Scimitar had gained much stronger growth prospects than before.

In any case, it still remained a powerful weapon that could outclass other ones such as the much-celebrated Decapitator and the Instrument of Vengeance.

The latter was a rifle of remarkable design and engineering, but its extraordinary

qualities were not too great.

It was different for the Bitter Scimitar!

This was a weapon that was much more defined by its extraordinary qualities!

Without the Middle Demon corrupting and distorting the freshly forged masterwork weapon, the Bitter Scimitar would not be able to keep Ves in the dark about its mysterious enhancements!

When the Demoncasting Mold lifted up and out of the way, the process had finally come

to an end.

Ves and Ketis waited for a moment to see whether the demonization process produced

any further mutations.

The only other change that took place was that the pommel morphed into the form of a

demonic head.

The head was grinning in an ominous fashion.

Thankfully, it remained static and unmoving, but whether it would remain that way was

still uncertain.

Just as Ves was about to command the bots to lift the Bitter Scimitar out of the Demoncasting Forge and bring it over to a testing facility, an unexpected situation took

place.

The pristine blue skies with idyllic white clouds above their heads abruptly began to darken.

Ves grew slack jawed as he witnessed the classical formation of tribulation clouds!

"Oh, come on! Why do this when you let off the Maiden Knife?! What is it about the Bitter Scimitar that merits this response?!"

One the one hand, triggering a lightning tribulation event was a badge of honor to a craftsman. His work had become 'good' enough to merit a test from the heavens! On the other hand, provoking the wrath of the heavens was dangerous and could ultimately cause his second ever D-arm to crumble into ash and dust!n/ô/vel/b//jn dot c//om

It all depended on the severity of the lightning tribulation. Ves continued to look up and tried to estimate from the size and energy readings of all of the storm clouds how many lightning bolts would rain down onto the D-arm.

"The good news is that the storm does not look as big or threatening as the last ones I have provoked." Ves ultimately said. "It will probably produce a single-modal lightning tribulation. The only question is how many rounds the heavens will send. It could be one round or two. There is a huge difference between withstanding 9 lightning strikes and 18 lightning strikes."

Ketis looked puzzled. "That does not sound so bad. These lightning strikes start out weak and ramp up after every strike, correct? By the time the 18th strike has landed, our work should still be able to survive. Don't forget that the scimitar will grow a little stronger after withstanding a lightning strike. It will become much stronger and more solid if it manages to survive until the end."

"That is true, Ketis, but you are overlooking one important factor. The heavenly authorities that govern the galaxies and send out lightning tribulations are especially hostile and repellant towards demons. Tribulation lightning is one of the most powerful forms of positive energy. When it strikes a target that is saturated with negative energies, the latter will undergo a painful round of cleansing!"

"Ah, I forgot about that. You are right. This is a serious problem!" Lightning punished evil. This was true in the past, and it would definitely remain true in

the present.

Ves thought about whether he should pick up the Bitter Scimitar and wield it himself in order to help the weapon survive the coming onslaught.

However, he eventually chose not to and allowed the D-arm to withstand the lightning

tribulation while resting on the spot.

So long as the tribulation event did not turn multi-modal and spawned all kinds of simulated opponents, Ves believed that the heavens would only rain down regular lightning bolts from the skies.

If this was the case, then Ketis words still had merit despite her faulty assumption.

Ves stared carefully at the D-arm. The Middle Demon may suffer greatly from the lightning tribulation, but the physical structure of the transformed weapon would definitely undergo a comprehensive round of improvements.

That should help the Middle Demon shelter from the storm clouds hovering above his

head.

The stronger the physical form, the more extensively the Middle Demon could use the

mech frame as a shield against raw exposure to all of the tribulation lightning energy!

CRACK!

The first lightning bolt already rained down from above!

The Bitter Scimitar suffered very little signs of damage. Only a portion of its blade

became scorched, but it was already being repaired by the injection of high-quality

creation energies.

CRACK!

The second lightning bolt inflicted more serious damage, but the excellent physical qualities of the weapon again prevented more serious consequences.

Ves relaxed a bit. If the rest of the lightning bolts followed this pattern, then his Bitter

Scimitar may be able to withstand this entire test without being held by the hand of a strong enough warrior!

"This may actually turn out to be a blessing"

Only the worthy deserved to survive a lightning tribulation.

Ves was confident that his latest collaboration work with Ketis met this standard!