Chapter 6526 Deep Research Mode Ves entered a period where he drastically increased his productivity. He enacted all of the measures that he proposed to his wife and started to stay awake for several days at a time. Just as stated in the literature, Ves began to experience the side effects of this risky decision pretty quickly. In fact, he became surprised by how quickly he was able to enter this alternate state of mind. It was as if phase lords were naturally predisposed to experiencing time as if he was a god drifting through an entire timeline. His perception of time began to blur as the monotony of design work began to occupy a disproportionate share of his attention span, It became more difficult for him to keep track of current events. Ves was still able to register the information passed on through his briefings, but he was not able to bring himself to care about matters that he usually found important. The biggest issue was that he became 'out of sync' with the people around him. He found that he worked best if he isolated himself in his design lab and continued to work on assignments that did not depend too heavily on teamwork and coordination. He also found it difficult to connect with his friends and family. His loss of humanity became a lot more obvious when he found it difficult to muster up his love for his children. Naturally, his perceptive son and daughters noticed his abnormal behavior straight away. When they started to cry, Ves tried harder to resist the apathy that had shrouded his mind and spirit. Fortunately, he was able to use the drastically different perspectives of his incarnations to break out of this spell. "I'm sorry, kids. I am having a bad time as of late." While Ves tried his best to restore his mental composure whenever he returned home from work in order to spend a few precious hours with his children, his inhuman side still bled through to an extent. It was as if the differences between himself and the people around him became incredibly pronounced. Ves felt an innate sense of superiority towards the weak and frail mortals around him. His true body was much bigger than theirs, and could easily survive hazards that would shred other people's bodies. 𝑓𝘳𝑒𝑒𝓌𝘦𝘣𝘯ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝑚 His lifespan was vastly superior to most humans even if they made attainments in qi cultivation merely because he was a phase lord. The phasewater flowing through his veins and the phasewater organs integrated in his body caused him to become a powerful superhuman that could fight against other mechs and win! Although Ves had always been aware of these differences, he never really developed a god complex because he clung so strongly to his humanity. He was unable to do so anymore due to his altered state of mind. His mental transformation brought so many disadvantages that he felt tempted to snap out of it and work on his mech designs the old-fashioned way. He resisted this choice. The benefits were too important to him. His focus and attention became sharper. Was this how all phase whales and phase lords felt whenever they decided to shut themselves in their own pocket spaces and settled down to conduct R&D activities that could span many years, decades, centuries or even millenia? It was no wonder that all of those phase leaders eventually grew into arrogant and conceited bastards whose minds weren't always able to focus on the present! When Ves understood how serious his mental condition had become, he was still rational enough to convey his condition to the Phase Lord Department of the Red Collective. Suffice to say, the biotech researchers over there had expressed great interest in his altered characteristics! "We have not encountered this phenomenon in any of our human phase lords, upper councilor. What you have described is highly unusual, but would explain much of the behavior of alien phase whales and phase lords. When we conveyed your details to the Ur-Titans, they tried but failed to enter into a similar state of mind. We do not know why they cannot replicate your condition. Whether it is because there is a threshold of R&D that a phase lord has to meet or because the phasewater concentration is still too low, we cannot be certain. Please stay in touch with us. The more data you are able to transfer to us, the more likely we will be able to decipher this fascinating condition." Ves didn't really care about what the collies were doing with all of the data on his physiological and mental parameters and agreed to cooperate with their observation study. Of course, the Phase Lord Department made sure to generously compensate Ves for agreeing to become their giant-sized lab mouse. He immediately obtained an advance reward of 500 million RC merits, with a potential to earn additional bonuses amounting to hundreds of millions of RC merits if he managed to make a major discovery about his current mental state! These were no small sums. He could purchase the right to read a lot of high-value cultivation tomes and secure the right to practice a high-grade qi cultivation method for himself or his children. He could also spend his RC merits on more material goods such as cultivation elixirs and rare reagents. These could play a huge role in accelerating the cultivation of mech pilots, mech designers, qi cultivators or body cultivators depending on their practice. Another benefit promised by the Phase Lord Department was that it would 'grease the wheels' and expedite the transfer of the Mentalist Crystal that he had selfishly reserved for his own use. The annual quota of Mentalist Crystals supplied by the Hunting Association had become a hot commodity. They continued to grow in value as more and more people learned about their exceptional benefits. Too many researchers and high officials wanted to get their hands on a Mentalist Crystal that the competition for the limited quotas had intensified in the weeks after the founding of the Red Collective. Far too many wanted the crystals whole, but there were also a lot of collies who became satisfied if they could get their hands on a single fragment. This actually caused the RC to break apart more Mentalist Crystals, thereby causing the destruction of an extremely high-value hyper material just to create a lot of mid-value fragments of the same hyper material. Ves felt this was a huge shame, as whole Mentalist Crystals were qualitatively better. They possessed strong properties that could not be replicated by mashing a lot of fragments together. Due to his rational decision to cooperate with the Phase Lord Department, he accidentally managed to withstand the pressure of fragmenting 'his' Mentalist Crystal just so that the Red Collective could satisfy the demands of other greedy parties. If everything went right, a Mentalist Crystal should arrive in New Constantinople well before the completion of the Amaranto Mark III Project. His wife grew happy when she heard the news. "Good! The sooner I obtain the Mentalist Crystal, the sooner I can start with conducting experiments on how to integrate it into the Minerva Mark II design. We can work on it next after we complete the Amaranto Mark III!" In any case, Ves continued to maintain his altered mind state regardless of rewards. Just the ability of being able to shake off all of the distractions that used to draw him away from the design lab and waste precious time on other affairs was extremely precious to a mech designer like Ves! He knew exactly what kind of person he was. He could not hold in his curiosity and often grew bored if he worked on a single project for a long stretch of time. Not even the more diligent mech designers could maintain a one-track mind for such an extended period of time as well as Ves in his current mental state! He even kept track of his work process and roughly calculated that his productivity had risen by around 20 percent. This meant that Ves was able to complete roughly 20 percent more work on average! Nobody knew that this was even possible, so the Amaranto Mark III Project actually began to progress slightly ahead of schedule! This 'Deep Research Mode' as Ves eventually decided to name it was a fantastic ability. It might not have much value to the Ur-Titans, but it was a wonderful benefit for researchers! It helped many phase whales endure many years of loneliness while they conducted solitary research on developing new and improved phasewater organs. The more time Gloriana spent around Ves in his weird mental state, the more Gloriana became accustomed to his altered traits. She found ways to work around his severe deficiencies and take advantage of his strengths. One of the more welcome discoveries she made was that Ves was able to absorb theories and grasp their essence considerably faster than usual! He was also able to tackle more complicated subjects that he used to struggle with outside of the Deep Research Mode! Gloriana eagerly made use of this discovery by forcing her husband to attend more private tutoring sessions. She intensified her lessons on archetech and help Ves master the more basic principles and applications of archetech according to her current understanding. The time that both invested in these tutoring sessions caused the Amaranto Mark III Project to progress slower until it had returned to its original schedule. Neither Ves nor Gloriana had any complaints as the benefits of learning more about archetech would pay off in subsequent high-ranking mech design projects. "My work has become so much easier now that I can delegate the less critical archetech design problems to you." Gloriana said with satisfaction as she petted a certain gem cat on her lap. "None of the other mech designers in our Design Department has been able to learn archetech as effectively as you. It is so exhausting for me to do all of the hard work related to this alien tech by myself." "Meow." Lucky agreed with the woman while letting out a lazy yawn. An awkward silence stretched for several seconds as Ves was slow to register her words and formulate a response. The two had already grown used to this clumsy manner of speaking to each other. "Oh...? Didn't you... put Maisie-Ann and Rennie under your wing... a long time ago? I haven't kept track of them as of late. How... are they doing these days?" "My students are doing almost as good as yours." She said. "Unlike you, I have been more active in guiding them. They have not gone astray and devoted their time to exploring odd tangents such as yours, but... perhaps I have been hovering too much over their heads. Witnessing the Red Association absorbing Maikel in its ranks has lit a fire within the two girls. I expect for both of them to produce meaningful results quite soon." "...What.... specializations... have they chosen?" Gloriana smiled with pride. "Maisie-Ann has set her sights on realizing the dust phase of existence of hexism. This is a broad goal as there are many ways to interpret 'dust! She did herself no favors by making this choice before spending years exploring many different branches of technology to find a connection with the concept of dust. However, her extensive research and exploration has broadened her foundation and set her up for success. Now that she is actually motivated to move forward, I think it is impossible for her to remain stuck as an Apprentice." "That sounds... good. What about... Rennie?" "Rennie has also decided upon an ambitious goal. She has decided to work out a design philosophy based on the death phase of existence of hexism. Her challenges are greater as death is much more abstract and difficult to apply to mechs. It is only after the beginning the Age of Dawn that she has been able to make concrete progress. Helena has also provided her with meaningful assistance."