The Mech Touch

Chapter 6618 The Winning Demons

?Chapter 6618 The Winning Demons

After Ves and Ketis successfully restrained the two demonized demimechs with the help of the facilities of the Workshop of Creation, they successfully contained the threat without much risk or effort.

As for Demon Mixer 3, Ves personally examined it and tentatively confirmed that it had remained in its original state. Its spiritual foundation had not undergone any secretive changes and no form of corruption marred its physical frame.

"It seems like putting 80 Minor Demons together will take longer to yield a result." Ves concluded with a frown. "That is... disappointing, but not surprising"

He believed the outcome would be worth the additional wait. No matter what, the demon that emerged at the end of all of the culling was bound to absorb the strength of all other 79 Minor Demons!

It would have been nice to know how many more days he needed to wait in order to obtain a result.

Once Demon Mixer 3 had finally assimilated with the final surviving demon, Ves would be able to gain a broad estimate on how long it took for 80 Minor Demons to finish their death tournament.

That would make it easier for him to plan ahead and calculate his yearly output in advance.

All of that could wait for later as Ves first needed to confirm whether his initial experiments yielded the right results.

"The entire point of mixing these low-value Minor Demons together inside these strange jar-shaped demimechs is to produce Middle Demons." Ves reminded Ketis. "If I fail to obtain the latter, then this experiment has failed, and I will need to try again. If I succeed, then I should be able to mass produce Middle Demons as long as I invest in the right setup and wait for it to complete the gu cultivation process on a large scale"

It could be argued that Ves could obtain similar results by introducing his seventh generation living mechs and enabling the artifact industry to obtain a steady supply of filled hyper keystones.

However, Ves believed that there were still significant differences between regular high-level artifacts and D-arms.

Sure, right now the Maiden Knife, the only D-arms that Ves made so far, was practically a toy in the hands of Gloriana. It was in no way comparable to the Oceancaller or even the Flower Parasol.

However, these were not not fair comparisons as the Maiden Knife was an extremely poor first attempt at Demoncasting.

Once Ves learned the ropes of Demoncasting and learned how to increase the

utilization of a demon's power, he believed that his D-arms and D-mechs would definitely be able to produce superior results compared to conventional high-level artifacts at the same level!

The Maiden Knife already hinted at this as its effects were utterly bizarre, but also worth the price of a first-class fleet carrier to the right people!

Compared to empowering an artifact with a regular artifact spirit, Ves found it much more interesting to cram a powerful but unwilling demon into it after beating it into a specific shape!

The entire premise of it was already enough to cause his heart to beat faster. Repurposing destructive demons into engines of power had the potential to break the game and dominate the battlefield!

Now, Ves was on the cusp of discovering whether his attempts to produce the most vital ingredients bore fruit.

He and Ketis carefully approached Demon Mixer 2.

"Do you think that mixing up 40 Minor Demons in a confined space is enough to produce a Middle Demon?" Ves asked.

"I don't know, I have no reference to base my judgment. Let's just take a look and find out the answer ourselves."

They did just that. Demon Mixer 2 did not like it very much as its spiked and mutated form pressed against the heavy metal restraints.

Unfortunately, the Workshop of Creation made use of the best equipment available in human space.

The mech restraints were rated to contain the movements of powerful first-class ace mechs!

There was no way the extremely weak second-class demimechs could cause a single vibration, especially since they had been lifted off the ground!

The absence of a solid surface caused the armless and flightless mechs to completely lose the ability to exert any leverage!

Ves therefore found the futile attempts to break out of the restraints to be rather amusing.

That said, he did not dare to underestimate the Demon Mixers too much. He still exhibited the necessary caution and tried to watch out for the sudden growth of spikes.

He examined the demon that had emerged from the jar and merged with the spiritual foundation of the living mech. He carefully made use of Blinky's senses to get an impression of the power and rank of the demon inside the small mech frame.

It helped that he could already make comparisons with the admittedly defective Middle Demon contained in one of Lucky's gems.

"There is a difference, but... it is not as great as I hoped." Ves said with a tinge of disappointment in his voice. "There is a gap between this demon and the one that is occupying the Maiden Knife. This one gives me the impression that it is strong for his rank, but has yet to surpass a threshold and become a Domain Shaper. The clearest indication of this is the absence of anything resembling a domain."

This was a bummer. He had loosely calculated based on the price list of the Demon Summoning Circle that a Middle Demon was worth 20 Minor Demons.

This may indicate that it took 20 Minor Demons or even less to produce a single Middle

Demon!

However, Demon Mixer 2 brought together a whopping 40 Minor Demons, and all Ves got at the end was a single strong and battle-hardened Minor Demon! Perhaps the other notable change despite a considerable boost of strength was the increase in rationality.

Ves was able to sense that the Minor Demon inside Demon Mixer 2 had lost a lot of his irrational rage that previously drove him towards indiscriminately attacking everything.

Why was this the case?

"Did the Minor Demon absorb a little bit of intelligence from every defeated opponent until he obtained all of it?" Ves wondered. "Or is it because he assimilated the calm and rational spiritual foundation of the living mech? It could also be because he has merged with a mech, which is inherently dependent on logic and data."

Ketis shrugged. "It could be all of those reasons at the same time. You can't know unless you create a Demon Mixer that refuses to merge with the winning demon."

"You're right. We can explore that question later. For now, it is enough to take any of

those possibilities into account."

Whether a Minor Demon accidentally grew smart and rational due to an as-of-yet-undetermined factor was not too relevant to Ves at the moment.

A somewhat rational Minor Demon was nearly useless!

If Ves wanted to perform Demoncasting with a Minor Demon, then he would have done

so with one of the basic ones produced by Helena.

Perhaps the results wouldn't be as good, but the differences should be so great as it remained in the same rank.

What Ves really wanted was a Middle Demon of the second major cultivation rank.

"Damnit." He cursed. "I don't know why putting 40 Minor Demons together is not enough to yield a successful result. It could be because the gu container that I have designed is too flawed and rudimentary to run an efficient gu cultivation process. It could also be because it is impossible to birth a single Major Demon with so few Minor Demons" "I think your earlier guess is the most likely reason for the failed result. Ketis

commented. "These Demon Mixer demimechs do not look reliable at all before they got mutated. Since this gu cultivation business is an entirely separate discipline that possesses a lot of depth and expertise, it is unrealistic for you to be able to reach the same degree of efficiency as those who have mastered this unorthodox method. You are like a Novice Mech Designer thinking that you can produce a work that is on par with that of a Master Mech Designer. Your expectations are too unrealistic." "You're right, I suppose. I was dreaming too much. At least this attempt is not a total failure. The fact that it took 9 months or less for a single Minor Demon to emerge that is stronger, smarter and a lot more in control of himself represents progress. It at least proves the validity of gu cultivation and that I can reproduce it to a lesser degree. All I need to do to obtain better results is to analyze the data, conduct targeted research and improve upon the Demon Mixer design."

Ves guessed that the current Demon Mixer design was functionally able to serve as a gu container, but not a good one.

This gave him enough reasons to continue to iterate on the Demon Mixer design rather than write it off as a failed work and start over from scratch.

He was heading in the right direction. He only needed to move forward in order to

realize more gains.

Ves did not bother to take out the stronger and smarter Minor Demon from Demon

Mixer 2.

There was no place else to store the strengthened demon aside from the prison supplied

by the System Space.

Instead of bothering with that, Ves might as well keep it in its current form, as it wouldn't be able to go anywhere. He could still conduct further tests and examinations on 'naturally' demonized living mechs by using Demon Mixer 2 as a test subject. When Ves and Ketis moved to Demon Mixer 5 and began to examine it, they quickly found a qualitative difference.

"This demon... is on another level compared to the last one." Ketis said. "I can already feel

it through my sword aura. This demon... has a domain. A weak one, but it exists. If it is given time and energy to develop, it can one day grow to a strong state!"

Ves made the same conclusion. His lips curled into a grin as he finally obtained a positive

result! "It's true. The fifth demimech has truly managed to produce a Middle Demon! All it took was 40 Minor Demons as well as an additional injection of 100,000 souls!"

He carefully did not mention the origin of all of those souls. "Still, despite devouring so many extra souls, this Middle Demon feels like he is even weaker than the ancient maiden that you have Demoncasted into the Maiden Knife." The swordmaster noted with a frown. "There is a huge world of difference between an ordinary soul and a Minor Demon produced from a stronger alien soul. It may take

millions more to bring this Middle Demon to a more respectable state."

The recently evolved Middle Demon that had merged with Demon Mixer 5 came across

as a weak and malnourished example of his kind.

He was truly looking like he was begging for sustenance. The Middle Demon made for a pathetic sight, which explained why it fell so quickly.

However, Ves did not mind this too much because surpassing the threshold was the hardest part.

It probably wasn't necessary to resort to a difficult and time-consuming process such as gu cultivation to quickly improve the strength of the malnourished Middle Demon! Perhaps the requirement of feeding the Middle Demon with millions of souls may sound onerous to most people, but this was not a problem to him! Helena could supply him with all of the juicy souls he needed in the near term!

Ves began to record his experimental results. "My tentative conclusion for the time being is that it is definitely possible to produce a single Middle Demon out of 40 Minor Demons. I think that energy is the principal reason why Demon Mixer 2 failed and Demon Mixer 5 succeeded. The former did not contain any souls that could bolster the strength of the Minor Demons and feed more juice to the ultimate winner. The latter just

happened to contain enough souls to give the eventual winner enough of a push to break past his bottleneck."

If this was true, then solving it was incredibly simple. If inserting additional souls was what it took to produce Middle Demons, then he would attempt to do so in abundance!