Chapter 366. New Developmen (1/2)
The departure of the ghost that pretended to be his mother left Ves in a morose mood. His ambivalence towards her identity deepened with each subsequent meeting.
Even with his superhuman Intelligence, he still couldn't determine whether the ghost spoke the truth. She moved exactly like he remembered from his childhood, but her attitude had turned ten times worse. Even though she helped him out, she wrapped up her benevolence with thorns.
Her unilateral appropriation of the crystal leader's corpse particularly set back his future plans. Without a live sample to of crystals to study, Ves wouldn't be able to delve into its secrets and progress his understanding of the alien technology. Even though he took plenty of scans, they only offered a finite amount of data.
”Scans won't be able to substitute for the real thing.”
More disturbing than his mother's lack of sensitivity regarding the ownership of his property, she also showed competence in areas which she shouldn't know.
”It's like she's some sort of highly-trained soldier or mech pilot.”
As far as Ves was aware of, his mother lived a completely normal life. Ves inherited a small portion of his artistic sense from her. In her spare time, she enthusiastically played with recorders and snapped a lot of images of their family. She made a small business out of recorded some of the weddings in Freslin.
Even though a couple of recorder bots and some automated software could do the job, they would never be able to convey the emotional impact if a human stood at the helm. His mother truly stood out in that area.
”My mother spent her lifetime developing those skills. It's impossible for her to be good at fighting.”
Ves came up with three different answers to this discrepancy. Either she gained a lot of new skills after her death, or she was never the person she pretended to be when she still lived.
As for the final answer, the ghost used to be someone else, but for some reason or another assumed his mother's identity.
”This is far too complicated.”
He could speculate all day, but from the evidence at hand, he failed to make up his mind. If the ghost assumed any other identity, then he may have been able to look at this conundrum in an objective manner.
Yet when it came to his mother, his judgement became clouded with emotion. He was not a bot who could strictly look at a situation and spit out a yes or no. Bots had the luxury of ignoring everything that fell out of their consideration.
Ves enjoyed no such luxury.
”At least she didn't suck out the life of me this time.”
He faintly sensed that she became more formidable each time she paid a visit to him. Previously, she seemed more primal and ephemeral, as if she was one step away from oblivion. Now, she behaved much like a living human being, as if she had truly been resurrected from the grave.
Obviously, the ghost constantly sought to strengthen herself. Otherwise she wouldn't go through the trouble of stealing his high-grade Rorach's Bone and his crystal artifact.
”Even if we're related, that's no reason for taking away my stuff!”
Sadly, the ghost was nowhere to be found. She came and went according to her own whims. Even if she hovered right next to him, as long as she exerted her utmost in hiding her presence, Ves wouldn't know he was being spied upon.
His glowering mood turned even gloomier at that realization. The only reason why he didn't panic was because his mother wouldn't expose his secrets to anyone else.
She was just like his father, who offended a dangerous trans-galactic secret society in order to deliver the Mech Designer System to him. ”If she's truly my mother, she only wants the best for me.”
He turned his attention to the fragment that hovered before him. Ves carefully treated the flickering silvery spirit with care. He slowly drew it from the mess hall and brought it back to the labs.
”Let's see what makes you tick.”
Ves proceeded to subject the fragment to all manner of tests and scans. Unfortunately, most of the machines failed to make sense of the fragment. It was as if it didn't exist. Similar to Lucky in his intangible state, the fragment could only be seen, not touched. He could forget about trying to manipulate it with the help of any tools.
Even the Vulcaneye had to admit defeat in front of the fragment. While the multiscanner spat out a few more observations, it hardly told him anything he didn't know.
”In the end, a spiritual fragment only responds to spiritual stimuli.”
He gently manipulated the fragment between his hands. He became more proficient in tugging it back and forth. He found that he didn't need to employ his full focus to direct the fragment. As long as Ves revealed a hint of emotion, the spiritual fragment eventually reacted.
It had to be the right set of emotions and thought in order to work, however. The fragment yearned to be big. So long as Ves intimated that he would put the fragment into a mech, the silvery flame became as docile as a pet.
Ves couldn't experiment too much with the fragment. As fascinating as its existence implied, he still had a lot of work to do. His research on finding a more economic composition of crystal was almost done. He only needed to solve the problem of producing larger crystals without flaws.
”Let's finish up the images.”
He sat down and relaxed while keeping the fragment in his view. The Triple Division technique called for superimposing three different images, but they didn't need to be of equal strength.
Yet Ves had never worked with an existing spiritual fragment. Even though it looked like anyone could snuff it out with a pinch of his fingers, it held a surprising amount of spiritual power.
Over millions of years of drifting about in the imaginary realms, the fragment lost everything redundant, leaving only the purest thoughts and emotions.
Whenever Ves brushed his senses close to the fragment, he countered unyielding will. It lacked much of the context that he wanted to know. He knew nothing about the crystal leader's history. This made it difficult for him to construct a backstory around the fragment.