The Mech Touch Chapter 7547 Old Approach

Alexa's feedback might not provide any direct assistance, but it nonetheless served as a breaking point in their development.

Ves took inspiration from her tale and latched on to the metaphor of a farmer participating in the cycle of creation and destruction.

"I think… your grandfather made effective use of symbolism to enable new applications of power." He analyzed. "Whether he knew about it or not, his actions align with the Myth Reproduction Theory."

Alexa looked thoughtful after he mentioned this theory. "Are you thinking of adopting a similar approach to our problem in order to overe the difficulties in realizing my proposal?"

Ves nodded. "While I am not a full-time ritualist, I have exchanged enough ideas with them to understand the gist of their approach. I have also dabbled with rituals in the past, so I am not totally inexperienced in this kind of stuff. While my methods were crude and inefficient, they occasionally worked. In fact, I used to rely a lot more on rituals and symbolism in the earlier years of my career. In hindsight, these methods allowed me to paper over the worst shortings of my immature works. The fact that I do not rely as much on these fanciful techniques anymore is a sign that I have bee skilled enough to do without them for the most part. It is only now that we are faced with near-insurmountable problems that I may have to go back to digging out my old toolbox."

This realization prompted Ves to do a lot of reflecting on his evolving approach towards mech design.

Back in the early days, he had been filled with dreams and imagination. His foundation as a mech designer was a lot shallower back then. His experience also was not as rich at the time.

While most people would treat these circumstances as limiting factors, Ves interpreted it differently.

He did not possess clear boundaries at the time. He did not know what was possible and what was impossible. If he had a crazy idea, he felt a bit more inclined to experiment with it because he truly did not know what to expect.

As he grew older, his mech catalog grew in leaps and bounds. He had tried out many ideas and developed a more distinct and thorough work style. He still possessed a lot of imagination, but it became increasingly more constrained by solid theories and empirical findings.

This was the natural evolution of a mech designer. He knew that as people of this profession grew older, they gradually lost the ignorance and spontaneity that defined the early stages of their career.

Mech designers grew more rigorous, professional and formulaic. Known solutions began to crowd out whimsical experimentation.

While their works became increasingly stronger and more defined, they also started to incorporate less whimsical or risky features.

Ves always considered himself to be a remarkably inventive and creative mech designer.

Yet now he realized that he had progressed further up this evolutionary trajectory than he initially thought.

He felt… disappointed in himself.

Although many mech designers possessed a lot of different perspectives on this subject, the general consensus was that they should try their best to slow down as much as possible.

If they evolved too quickly and became too rigid in their actions and thinking, they no longer possessed the spark of brilliance that could enable them to break past their barriers and develop truly transcendent works!

Was Ves afraid that he would crash against this wall too soon?

Not necessarily.

Yet he still felt that the passage of time had begun to exert an increasing amount of pressure on his shoulders.

He could not afford to mess around for too long. He needed to make the most out of the period when he still possessed enough of his 'immaturity' to milk it for all it was worth!

"Ves? Are you paying attention?"

"Ah, I apologize. I got distracted by something. Anyway, now that you have reminded me of how I used to design my mechs, I think it is worth a try to go back to old habits and reimagine my Woodsap mechs."

"Reimagine your Woodsap mechs?" Alexa looked mildly surprised. "Are you thinking of overhauling your entire design when it is already plete?"

He shook his head. "Not to this extent. We don't have time for a full rebuild. We need to do this quick and dirty, so we can only change the surface details at most. It will be like changing into a different skin. Do you understand?"

"I understand." The Journeyman nodded. "So what do you have in mind?"

Ves leaned forward and began to manipulate the projected interface. "We need to find a theme that will allow us to grant our Woodsap mechs the ability to manipulate the power of life and death, and the best one that I can think of at the moment is farming. This will be the key to allowing my works to borrow from the established myths of the cosmic landscape. Farming is universal. Countless sentient species have risen up by engaging in one form of agriculture or another. It is one the foundational building blocks of civilization. As long as I successfully implant the image of a farmer or something similar into a Woodsap mech, it should theoretically be able to transform death into life, if only to a limited extent."

This was an ambitious outlook!

Alexa assumed a critical expression.

"Farming is… a fitting theme when you want to leverage the concepts of life and death at the same time. However, I believe it will be challenging to apply it effectively to your existing works. Your Woodsap mechs are designed to function as pure bat mechs. You and your collaborators have treated them as organic bat machines from beginning to end. You have never put anything related to productive pursuits into your designs. For this reason, I believe that rashly trying to force the image of a farmer into the vessel of a soldier will result in patibility problems. You have often warned me to avoid this whenever possible."

"I did." He remembered. "You have a point. This will not be easy. That is for certain. We will have to refine the image in order to reduce the patibility problems."

They spent a bit of time brainstorming. They began to swap numerous ideas at a fast pace in order to find the best theme for the issue at hand.

Ves started with the most obvious suggestion. "The classical image of a farmer won't work. If I redesign my Woodsap mechs so that it wears a straw-like hat and a bag of seeds, its exterior manifestation will clash too much with its original nature as a soldier. We need to find an image that ties the process of farming to bat a lot better."

"Hmmm…" Alexa remained silent for a few seconds before she gained an idea. "Agriculture is not confined to farming crops. There is also animal husbandry. What if we reshape the Woodsap mechs into herders or shepherds? We can design them with the intention of 'herding' the deathborn for the purpose of extracting nutrients from them. Unlike farming crops, pastoralism better aligns with what we are trying to acplish. The cycle of life and death still applies. I would even argue that it is a better fit."

Though her suggestion sounded a lot better than the previous suggestions, Ves still shook his head. "Not bative enough. A herder is associated with managing relatively docile animals such as sheep and cows. There is no real bat edge to this association. I am not saying your idea is bad, but it won't do enough to remove the patibility issue. We need an image that preserves this aspect a little better."

They swapped a few more suggestions before one of them came up with another inspired idea.

"A reaper of souls? Adding a scythe would not only look cool, but also fit the classical idea of a grim reaper."

"That is the problem, sir. It is too skewed towards the concept of death. This image is far too removed from both farming and the cycle of life."

"I guess you're right." Ves shrugged.

Alexa proposed an idea of her own. "Woodsap mechs are based on the Emperor Tree. What if we reinterpret them as evil trees that seek to lure the unwitting deathborn into fertilizer? After all, the concept of farming does not necessarily have to be expressed in an explicitly human form. I think that this image sufficiently blends the role of farming and bat into one. From the perspective of the evil tree, the act of poisoning its victims for the purposes of devouring their energies can be regarded as a form of bat as well as a form of farming."

"It sounds more like a slightly convoluted form of predation to me, but other than that I kind of see where you are ing from." Ves said as he thought about it further. "This may be the best idea yet. Let's put it in reserve and go back to it if we haven't figured out anything better."