The Mech Touch

Zanthar Larkinson began to explain his invention in simple terms.

"As you know, I have been researching for a way to make EEE Munitions useful and appropriate in the current times." He said. "I could have used more expensive materials and better tech to design a better ballistic round, but that would never get accepted by the market. I had to design a round that produces a good effect while also being cheap."

"Cheap and good usually don't belong in the same sentence." Ves voiced as he stared at his student with interest.

"I know. I went into this with the knowledge that I had to go above and beyond in order to create a type of munitions that is among the few exceptions. Since that was the case, I decided to aim high. There are many possible munitions that I could have developed, but I chose one that is most needed among second-raters and third-raters. I wanted to develop an affordable round that can damage a shielded enemy."

"I see. Your ambition is not small. You took a considerable risk by going in this direction. You may have worked yourself into a dead end. That you somehow found a way to reach the light at the end of a tunnel is nothing short of a miracle."

Zanthar responded with a rueful smile. "In truth, my research hit a bottleneck. I could have remained stuck for many years if not for a recent turn of events. I will explain that a bit later. I should first explain the idea I came up with to produce the result you saw in the test footage."

This should be interesting. Ves leaned forward in a clear sign of interest.

The younger mech designer raised his arm and projected a very familiar looking model.

"Ever since Messier 87 began to shine its exotic radiation onto the Red Ocean, we all gained access to a new source of cosmic energy that comes with its own rules and quirks. Many researchers and mech designers have conducted extensive research on the attributes that differentiate E energy. The most common attributes that people are studying belong to the five elements. I chose to base my research on the five elements as well."

"Why?" Ves curiously asked.

"Several reasons. Many researchers who are much smarter than I have discovered and published a lot of useful information on the five elements. Every academic journal release always contains a bundle of useful lessons on hyper materials and E technology, and much of that is related to the same elements. By absorbing all of this knowledge, I did not have to start from scratch, but try to combine what I have learned to create a new design application."

He chose correctly. It was too difficult to follow Ves' example and pioneer a completely new field from scratch.

Most mech designers worked like Zanthar. They extensively studied existing knowledge and tried to combine different pieces together to produce a new combination that would hopefully be useful.

"So what did you learn about the five elements that caused you to have the idea that you could develop a means of attack that can partially bypass energy shields?"

"I had an idea that if I created an explosion with E energy, it would somehow become violent enough to cross from one realm to another realm." Zanthar explained his reasoning. "I had no proof whether this is possible and whether I can realize it, but I was so taken by this premise that I had to commit to it. This made me search for an E energy attribute that is most likely to produce a powerful explosion. This is why I first settled on the fire attribute."
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"I imagine that was not enough for you." Ves said. "The fire element can potentially produce a powerful explosion, but it is much more effective if it is used with another element to produce a dramatic interaction."

Zanthar nodded. "I found that out as well after conducting a lot of experiments. Fire energy mostly wants to burn. This is why I tried to find an E energy attribute that can produce a violent reaction. I tried my best to stick with the 5 elements because anything else would make my product more expensive and difficult to mass produce."

"Let me guess. You settled on the water element."

"Yes, teacher. Fire and water do not mix well. There is lots of research that describes how different proportions of fire energy and water energy could produce something akin to explosions. I used up many samples of hyper materials of these two attributes to see if I could reproduce that effect. It was… harder than I thought."

"This must have been the first bottleneck in your research." Ves knowingly saaid. "How did you solve this challenge?"

Zanthar lowered his head in disappointment.

"My solution is anything but perfect. I initially tried to mash different proportions of fire and water hyper materials together, but the results I got were either too gentle or violently inconsistent. I never managed to find the right ratios and shapes to produce the effect I wanted. I eventually became so upset that I decided to give up on working with two hyper materials. After a lot of thinking, I decided to add a third material to see if I could add a measure of control. I chose wind energy."

"Reasoning?"

"Well, I did not conduct all of the failed experiments in vain. They taught me how fire and water energy interacted with each other in different proportions. I noticed that if you expose a small quantity of water energy to a large quantity of fire energy, the former will behave like real water and turn into steam that violently ejects in different directions. I noticed that this 'spiritual steam ejection' had quite a respectable amount of force behind it. I could easily imagine using it as a weapon. Yet when I tried to develop this angle further, I found that no matter how precise I made my work, it always produced different spiritual steam ejections with every attempt."

The idea sounded strange to Ves, but Zanthar obviously thought it had merit. This caused him to persist in his research.

"It was not until I read a treatise on fire energy that I discovered that it was inherently volatile in nature." Zanthar continued to speak. "It never maintained the same shape and was always changing. Fire is an element that embodies change. Burning is just one of many chemical reactions. I concluded that if fire energy alone would not be able to act in a predictable fashion, I sought out a third E energy attribute that could impose control."

"The wind attribute."

"Yes. I worked so hard that I eventually found a way to design a round where the triggered activation of a hyper material would cause wind energy to blow onto fire energy. The two synergise each other due to unknown reasons that caused a consistent and unchanging cone of fire energy to hit the nearby collection of water energy. The rapid contact causes water energy to get agitated and blow in a single direction."

This explained why the new FadeBurst Round relied on fire, water and wind hypers. It was not possible to produce the same kind of ammunition without access to any of these materials.

It did not explain how an E energy attack could produce physical damage.

Under ordinary circumstances, only high-ranking mech pilots had the ability to turn a virtual attack into a physical attack. The use of willpower could ignore many laws of reality!

Zanthar did not have the luxury of working under those conditions. The vast majority of his customer base for his product should encompass the poor and average citizens. They needed a solution that they could readily use to increase their combat effectiveness.

"So I found a good combination of hyper materials to inflict damage with E energy. Now I had to make it damaging to solid matter while also bypassing energy shields. I conducted a lot of random experiments and read a lot of academic articles. I was trying to force myself to read 50 articles a day. That was a nightmare considering most of the literature is written for Seniors, Masters and high-level researchers."

"You're not supposed to read that kind of material." Ves said with a frown. "I grant the mech designers of the Design Department access to those databases because I trust you guys to exercise good judgment and self-restraint. If you read too many articles written by Masters, you will inevitably get contaminated by their design philosophies."

Zanthar's expression grew complex. "I think… that is one of the reasons why I succeeded."

"What?!"

"I didn't know what I was doing, okay!? I read a lot of articles and conducted a lot of random experiments in between. As the days continued to pass, the two started to blend into each other. I began to devise strange theories by combining all of the overcomplicated research that I have read, and I wanted to verify what I came up with by messing around in my design lab. For a long time, I never managed to produce any solid results, but all of the trial and error allowed me to get closer to the right answer. Then, my progress stalled."

"Another bottleneck?"

Zanthar nodded. "I couldn't make any further progress because I had to balance too many variables. If I change one parameter, something else goes wrong. If I change that other parameter, fifteen things become misaligned. It was a nightmare for me to find a configuration that made everything right. If I wasn't able to grasp any rules, I thought it would take years to make any significant progress. That was when you brought in the SF-02."

"Are you saying that the new processor cluster has helped you achieve a breakthrough?"

"I guess so, teacher. I initially did not think it could help all that much, but when I talked to Polly about how to solve my problem, she helped me figure out what sort of calculations and simulations needed to be performed. She even suggested the help of Aria for one reason or another. After the two smart AIs went to work, I only had to wait for a couple of days before she gave me the results. It. Changed. Everything."

Zanthar pointed at the projected rounds. "When I saw the results, it was as if everything in my mind clicked. Multiple different theories that I picked up from those academic articles started to make a lot more sense when used in combination with each other."

"Can you explain the working principle of this shield-bypassing effect to me in simple terms?" Ves requested.

"Well, in short, I think that you and everyone else must have noticed that E energy radiation pretty much goes through everything. Aside from a few materials that can naturally block E energy, everything is permeable to E energy. The radiation just passes straight through energy shields, alloy plating and even our bodies. While some of the E energy might stick due to hyper materials or qi cultivation, the rest will continue to pass through."

Ves widened his eyes. "I see now! The FadeBurst Round is only meant to create a burst of water energy in a single direction. As long as it retains the properties of E energy, most of it will pass right through the azure energy shield! The defensive measure doesn't even identify the intrusion as a hostile attack!"

This was a clever way to circumvent defenses!

However, Ves quickly frowned when he still did not gain an answer to the most important question.

"Wait, if the directional burst of water energy passes right through the azure energy shield, logic dictates that it should pass through the armor of a mech or the hull of a starship as well. The only exception is if the E energy comes into contact with one of the few materials that can block the passage of E energy, but that is almost never used. What is your secret?"

"That is the most interesting part." Zanthar grinned.