Chapter 7352: Sentient Inorganic Components Ves felt disappointed when he learned that Gloriana could not create a compact central willpower chamber. An excessively large substitute for the Mentalist Crystal imposed many design limitations. It was practically impossible to make anything practical for individual mechs, let alone humans. Aside from using Mentalist Crystals or possibly Mentalist Crystal fragments, there was no easy way to overcome this scale restriction. However, his wife came up with a possible idea on how to circumvent this hard limitation. "What if we construct the CWC out of superdimensional alloy?" She proposed one day. "Superdimensional technology has advanced to the point where we have just begun to develop products that are ultra-dense to the point of possessing impossible features if we do not account for the spatial warping. Just as how a phase lord such as yourself is able to fold your massive true body into the size of a normal human, we should theoretically be able to develop a central willpower chamber that is actually the size of a heavy mech but occupies the space of a heavily armored trooper." That... actually sounded like a viable idea! Ves quickly calmed himself down before he got too excited about this proposal. "It sounds viable, but I think the gap between idea and realization is much bigger than you think. Superdimensional technology is by no means simple. From what I have observed from your work so far, the CWC is bound to become a complicated piece of engineering in both the material realm and the imaginary realm. When you spatially compress all of that stuff into a volume that is at least a hundred times smaller, a lot of funky physics takes place. Everything will get out of whack. We will have to do a lot of work to untangle the knots and troubleshoot all of the bugs. In the worst case scenario, it might require the lives of phase lords to overcome the restrictions imposed by all of the spatial shenanigans." All of that sounded vague and dubious, but Ves tried to account for the worst-case scenarios. He did not want his wife and everyone else to think that superdimensional technology was their jail-out-of-free card. Nothing came for free. His wife grew more composed after he set her straight. "Hmm, regardless of whether we can shrink the size of the most essential part by utilizing superdimensional alloys, the cost is bound to be excessive. Superdimensional matter is just as scarce as Mentalist Crystals for most parties. We are an exception to this rule due to controlling the supply of this critical resource, but... that may not be enough to justify the effort of developing this special solution." The Larkinson Clan could pursue many different research directions. That did not mean that its researchers should pursue every shiny idea. The clan’s R&D capacity remained limited. Ves and the others could not afford to waste their time on trying to realize overly niche and impractical ideas. "We can conduct a viability study when we have enough time later on." Ves told his wife. "The idea still has merit, but we need to know more on how much it will cost and how much work we need to do in order to make this possible." For now, it was best to shelve the notion of developing a superdimensional central willpower chamber. They absolutely could not afford to add more variables and introduce more complications in their studies. Gloriana therefore resumed her work on developing a large and unwieldy CWC despite her personal dislikes. Ves meanwhile spent his time on developing the sentient inorganic components. At this stage, all of the researchers had accepted his definitions for the large number of sub-units tasked with producing the mental activity required to stimulate the CWC. The original Ixith Goliath was largely made up of sentient organic components. These were very small lifeforms that could easily fit in the palm of a person’s hand. While they looked and acted like static blobs of alien flesh, they were actually living and thinking organisms. Many of the samples taken from the Goliath in stasis had definitely proven the sapience of these SOC. Even if they were extremely stupid and simple-minded, there was no doubt that they could generate just enough thoughts and emotions to satisfy one of the conditions of generating stolen resonance. There were many different wonders related to SOCs. What concerned most of the researchers was how to increase the scale of stolen willpower manifestations. The Ixith Goliath broke the rules as far as expert pilot-level true resonance was concerned. The massive creature was able to empower a body with the volume of a large city with stolen resonance. The reach, consistency, strength and abundance of stolen resonance far exceeded what any individual expert pilot could generate under the same circumstances! Therefore, the most crucial demand was to figure out how to scale up resonance manifestations. As long as they deciphered this crucial secret, it may be possible to apply principles of this tech to mechs, thereby allowing expert pilots to empower much larger mechs with true resonance! It even gave birth to an outrageous idea! What if an expert pilot interfaced with a ’mech’ that just happened to be designed and built like a warship in almost every other aspect? This warship that happened to be made out of lots of sentient components and incorporate a neural interface may just qualify as a ’mech’ just enough for an expert pilot to empower with true resonance! Of course, this was another advanced application on the level of a superdimensional willpower chamber. The Larkinson Clan could not afford to engage in such research, but the story was different for the Red Fleet. As long as the fleeters believed that this crazy concept could be realized, they should easily be able to assign a research institution to study its viability. That was the advantage of large and well-established superorganizations. The RF may have suffered a lot of setbacks after the Great Severing, but its foundation was still solid. It was still a giant that could rival the RA in most aspects. Ves did not think about these possibilities yet. He would just be making it harder for himself if he tried to develop a product that could readily be used. For now, he focused on developing a proof of concept and nothing more. He needed to learn how to walk before he could learn how to run. His only indulgence was to substitute sentient organic components with sentient inorganic components. All of the other research teams made use of SOCs. These sentient organic components either consisted of authentic samples taken from the crippled body of the Ixith Goliath or lightly altered clones. This was hardly ideal for them, but they had no better choice at the moment. It was by no means easy to develop small organisms that were stable, controllable and still possess enough of a capacity for sentience. Of course, it was not impossible for red humanity to grow large amounts of small sentient creatures. Ves looked at Clixie who was currently playing with Andraste during one of his rest breaks. "What if we can grow a large batch of sentient cats and fuse them all together around a CWC somehow?" He idly wondered. "Miaow!?" Clixie immediately felt threatened. She jumped from Andraste’s lap and looked vigilantly in every direction. Though the idea had promise, Ves quickly discarded this idea. Cats were too cute to be utilized this way! "There is no need to shape the SOCs into animalistic shapes. A simple organic block will do." He concluded. This was not his business anyway. Ves had a better option than all of those other researchers. From the beginning, he was convinced that he could substitute SOCs with SICs. He just needed to produce a lot of identical or nearly identical inorganic units that were large and ’strong’ enough to carry individual spiritualities. Ves had already read the research reports related to the SOCs. He also took a sample and studied it in person. The Ixith Goliath’s SOCs were very weak. Ves did not become impressed by their level of intelligence and their capacity to generate strong emotions. As far as he was concerned, the mutated voribugs heavily prioritized haste and efficiency to come up with these SOCs. This was good news, because that meant that Ves did not have to impose heavy demands on his own SICs. Ves believed he could develop sentient inorganic components that were much smaller than the SOCs but still contain a comparable amount of spirituality. Even if the magnitude was not as large, the differences shouldn’t be significant enough to massively distort the outcome. This was why Ves experimented with smart metal. Ves initially experimented with individual nanomachines, but quickly encountered a lot of hurdles. He quickly concluded that he was not ready to tackle this particular challenge. "I will come back to it when I have become a Master Mech Designer." Instead of trying to instill spirituality into every single individual nanomachine, Ves tried to do so on a larger scale. He continuously combined nanomachines together into larger constructs. These amalgamations of nanomachines were still very small, especially at the start. A machine that measured several micrometers was too small for people to observe with the naked eye, but it could still be made out of a large number of nanomachines! Ves basically engaged in limit testing when it came to his personal ability to instill life into objects. How large did they need to be before they could stably contain their own spiritualities? He never conducted this experiment in the past, and he felt regretful about that. He gained numerous important insights and gained a better idea on what was needed to carry spirituality. Individual nanomachines lacked this capability because they could not fit a strong spirit, at least at the start. Their spiritual capacity was limited by their miniscule material forms. When Ves forcibly tried to bring them to life, their spiritualities dissipated almost instantly because they were too weak to sustain themselves. Ves theorized that every spirit needed to surpass a threshold in order to maintain their own existence in the imaginary realm. That made sense. Whenever he observed the imaginary realm, he noticed that it was filled with strange corrosive winds. Those winds constantly battered against every spiritual existence that occupied a place in the realm. Without a certain degree of strength, those spiritualities could not withstand the winds for long. What was also important was that they needed to be anchored to living creatures, because only then would they be able to replenish the energy that was being expended to resist the eroding forces. In any case, Ves continually increased the size of his constructs until he managed to create a block the size of his thumb. "Finally." Once he reached this stage, Ves finally managed to instill it with spirituality that did not immediately disappear. Though it still deteriorated at a slow and steady rate, Ves finally obtained hope that he would not have to make his constructs much larger in order to satisfy his goal! He temporarily suspended his repetitive work and studied his latest SIC in fascination. While it was still made out of smart metal, he underestimated how much he needed to bring together in order to create an SIC. "Is there still a point to using nanotechnology?" Perhaps not. Smart metal still provided a lot of conveniences, but it also produced a lot of complications. The cost was much greater and the nanomachines were also more vulnerable to exploits. If this was the smallest possible size of a SIC, then Ves believed it was better to switch to conventional technology. Perhaps it might make more sense to create SICs out of nanomachines when he advanced to the rank of Master Mech Designer and drastically increased the strength of his Spirituality. "My work is still heavily dependent on my personal capacities." He frowned. "I need to become a lot stronger if I want to accomplish more."