The Mech Touch

Work proceeded slowly but steadily. While nobody understood the principles behind the lithic mech parts, that didnʼt stop them from figuring them out step by step.

One of the biggest breakthroughs they accomplished was when a couple of mech designers managed to get the cockpit systems online. While the screens were full of gibberish alien symbols, the interface at least gave the software specialist a lot of areas to explore.

The small amount of gains they obtained from the cockpit interface gave the other mech designers a better idea of what they were dealing with. It turned out that the lithic mechs werenʼt not so different from human mechs after all.

”Itʼs as if some alien race saw humans playing around with mechs and tried to make their own version of it by using their own tech base.” The software specialist said. ”They probably obtained some human mechs and plagiarized their design elements to come up with these mechs.”

Tristan lit up at that. ”So other than the strange materials and unusual tech, they are built just like human mechs!”

Everyone perked up at that. If that was true, then figuring out how this mech worked would be a lot easier!

Ves got the idea that these lithic mechs must have existed for real. The principles they worked on were very sound. He could even imagine human mech designers trying to adapt mechs to lithic technology in case there was a need to deploy mechs in anomalous areas where regular mechs faltered.

Still, even if they shared the same roots with orthodox human mechs, the mech designers still needed to employ all of their smarts in order to come up with various solutions.

Hours passed as they slowly began to come up with a plan of action. They first separated every mech part from the junk pile by lifting them off one by one. After that, they inspected the parts and marked out which ones looked sound enough to be used and which ones should be scrapped.

For the parts destined to be scrapped, Ves and the others turned them into various crude tools.

”Itʼs not much, but this is all we can manage.”

After continuous study, Tristan finally made a second breakthrough that vastly increased their chances of restoring the mechs.

”These stone parts can merge and restore themselves in the right conditions!”

That was important, because they didnʼt possess any tools or machines that could fuse the parts together. Although the organic repair ability of the stone parts werenʼt very strong, it at least removed the largest stumbling block to their ambition to restore four complete mechs.

Time slowly went by as the mechs began to take shape. With Tristanʼs help, they started to piece together the parts. The work went slowly though as they all needed to exert their full physical might to move some the parts together.

Ves had the sense that they would have never been able to accomplish this if they faced the real thing instead of physical projections. Not only would the parts be much heavier, but Ves was pretty certain that they didnʼt originally possess the ability to organically repair themselves.

Still, he wasnʼt complaining. The artificial conveniences massively sped up their repair efforts. After almost an entire day of working, throughout which they took frequent pauses as food and some other amenities were occasionally made available, the mechs slowly took shape.

Of course, they needed to move a lot of heavy parts around. As the most ʼuselessʼ mech designer of the group, Ves had been relegated to a mule. He was involved with moving nearly every part. Even if he didnʼt want to, the collective pressure from the other mech designers gave him no choice but to go along with this arrangement.

Ves actually didnʼt exert himself that much, as he had plenty more strength to spare. He still pretended to be winded though, as he suspected that was what the others wanted to see from him. As long as all of the exertions tired him out at the end, he wouldnʼt have the energy to contest for ownership of the mechs.

The different mech designers already started jostling for ownership of some of the mechs.

For example, Tristan had taken a liking for a machine that appeared to be built as a knight mech. It possessed the most solid structure and gave the most room for his specialty to come into play.

Goz Zoza preferred the only light mech instead. While it seemed smaller and weaker than the other mech frames, it weighed substantially less as well and that made it very fast and agile.

The other two mechs consisted of a frontline mech with energy cannon barrels taking the place of its forearms and a fairly plain rifleman mech.

Ves found the latter two mechs to be fairly interesting because he observed a lot of familiar aspects in the crystal tech at the heart of their weapon systems.

The mech designer who specialized in laser weapons still couldnʼt get them to work yet. Even though her specialty was quite deep, she never dealt with crystal tech before and had to waste valuable time trying to reinvent the wheel.

Despite this minor snag, the mech frames eventually formed into cohesive mechs. They even manage to activate them all and test whether the mech had connected to all of its parts and limbs. They didnʼt dare do more than that. None of them had a mech pilot on hand, and even if they did, they were wary of connecting a human to an alien mech.

While everyone still needed to do some work, particularly in getting the laser weapons to work, all six of them slowed down.

The cooperative spirit between them all had slowly faded the closer they neared completion. At this stage, everyone was already starting to jostle for possession of one of the four mechs. They were convinced that the Rim Guardians would only allow four of them to pass this trial, meaning that two among their ranks would have to give up the opportunity to earn the fraternityʼs friendship!

”I donʼt care what the rest of you are doing, but this mech is mine.” Goz suddenly declared and patted the mostly-complete light mechʼs frame.

Tristan quickly followed suit. ”If you think you can compete with me for this knight mech, feel free to do so if you think you can bear the consequences.”

That left three other mech designers and Ves competing over the frontline mech and the rifleman mech. None of them wanted to compete against the two mech designers. Just their background was alone to suppress them. Rather than offend mech designers who already earned at least a hundred times more than themselves, they would rather pick on someone their own size.

Ves found it funny that the three of them automatically dismissed Ves. They put all of their attention on each other, completely missing the fact that Ves stopped pretending that he was exhausted from lifting all of those parts.

As much as he wanted to sit back and let the remaining three mech designers decide who needed to go, their pathetic standoff kept dragging on. None of them had the guts to make a move!

Ves looked at the two women and the sole man before deciding on his target. He didnʼt want to catch any flack from Goza, so Ves began to approach the man.

The mech designer noticed Vesʼ approached and frowned. ”Why are you coming here? Stay back!”

Ves ignored the manʼs blabbering as the other mech designers looked on from the sides.

”Hey! I donʼt like your approach! Can you please back off! Youʼre already out of contention! No one will give you a mech!”

The distance between the two quickly shrank as Ves adopted a slightly faster pace. Although he didnʼt put on any airs, his confident demeanor already shook the other mech designerʼs courage.

”Stay back, you loser! Your specialty is garbage! You contributed the least to our restoration efforts!”

Even though the mewling mech designers stepped backwards, his back quickly bumped against the leg of the frontline mech.

With his targetʼs retreat blocked, Ves sped up his pace into a brisk jog that quickly closed the remaining distance!

Once the other mech designer came within reach, Ves quickly overpowered the manʼs pathetic slaps and punched him in the gut!

Although he didnʼt put his full strength into it, the punch nevertheless caused the other mech designer to heave!

Ves had thought of multiple ways to incapacitate his target. He didnʼt want to give his opponent any opportunity to make a comeback, but neither did he want to leave any dangerous or permanent injuries.

For this reason, Ves ruled out knocking out the man by punching his head. If he wasnʼt careful, he could kill the Journeyman!

”Iʼll just have to immobilize you, then.” Ves whispered as he pushed his opponent onto the ground.

The mech designer still hadnʼt recovered from the punch from earlier. Despite any enhancements that he might have received, none had augmented his body!

Ves faced no hindrance when he lifted up his leg and firmly stomped the mech designerʼs knee!

”AAAAHHH!”

The scream that escaped the victimʼs mouth rang throughout the entire chamber! Everyone else who initially felt dismissive about Ves had never expected that he would resort to such a brutish action!

Was he even a mech designer?!

Ves wasnʼt sure whether he broke the knee or not, so he stomped a few times more. Each stomp elicited another pained cry from the victim.

When he was sure he broke the limb, he did the same thing with the other knee in order to be certain. Who knew if the mech designer tried to support himself on one leg and tried to fight back! Plenty of mechs continued to fight back even when one of their legs no longer worked!

Sufficed to say, by the time Ves completely incapacitated the other mech designer, the victim turned into a broken mess. It became so bad that the floor underneath his body parted away, revealing a portal that swallowed up the injured man.

That was one mech designer out of contention!

Ves watched his victim disappear and turned back to the others with a gentle smile. ”Sorry about that unpleasantness. That guy was in my way. In any case, Iʼll be claiming this frontline mech, if you donʼt mind. If you happen to object, Iʼm certain we can talk it out like civilized mech designers.”

The two women who hadnʼt claimed a mech both shuddered. There was no way they were going to compete against this wolf in mech designerʼs clothing!

The two of them were the only mech designers left who hadnʼt claimed a mech. Three lithic mechs had already been claimed, leaving only the rifleman mech to themselves.

To everyoneʼs surprise, the women didnʼt get into a catfight or anything. Having been cowed by Vesʼ brutal display, neither of them wanted to lower themselves to his level.

Instead, they calmly if tersely negotiated for ownership of the remaining mech. A lot of heavy concessions were being thrown around. While the opportunity to grow closer to the Rim Guardians was valuable, it was not an indispensable prize.

This was especially the case when both Tristan and Goz appear to be the most likely ones to win the trials! Rather than face near-certain defeat, one of the women looked much more amenable to cash out some of her winnings now rather than risk returning home without any gains.

In order to give the deal more weight, the women solicited both Tristan and Goz as witnesses to their verbal contract.

”Alright. Itʼs agreed. You promise to give me all of these concessions in exchange for my withdrawal.”

The two women shook hands and cordially parted. As soon as they concluded their deal, the woman who accepted the concessions fell into a portal that formed underneath her feet.

Only four of them remained.

Suddenly, the entire floor started to shake and rumble! Everyone tried to balance themselves as their footing became unstable!

”Look at the walls! The torches are getting lower!”

”The floor is rising! Weʼre moving up!”

The floor slowly rose from ground level. The ceiling slowly parted to make way for the rising floor.

Complete darkness greeted them above! No one had any idea what was in store in those unknown depths! Tristan, Goz, Ves and the remaining female mech designer all prepared themselves for whatever was to come.

The next trial would likely be their last one!