Chapter 2386: Growing Products The idea of 'creating' complicated spiritual constructs and products via growth rather than fabrication and assembly was perhaps the most radical and innovative idea he came up with! Its potential was enormous as it allowed him to sidestep the more traditional development path of spiritual engineering! Certainly, what Ves imagined as 'traditional' spiritual engineering was incredibly powerful and versatile. Though the requirements were very difficult to meet, once someone became a master at spiritual engineering, they could produce any spiritual product imaginable with complete understanding how it worked because they understood and controlled every single detail. This was what Ves yearned to achieve himself. As a mech designer, he always pursued this aspiration, and with the help of the Skills bought from the System, he had become very proficient in the finer details of mech design. He hoped to approach spiritual engineering with the same degree of precision, control and understanding. Unfortunately, his lack of heritage, tutoring and learning resources left him as blind as a bat. Unless he was willing to invest thousands of years to reinvent several million different wheels, he would never be able to attain the level required to reproduce the Grand Dynamo he obtained from the System! "Mech designers don't pop up out of nowhere. They are trained and educated by well-run educational institutions. They are mentored and tutored by the Seniors and Masters of their profession. If nothing else, then someone can always become a mech designer through self-study and e-learning if they have a few books and learning apps at their disposal." The tragedy of Ves was that he lacked even the latter. His deadbeat mother didn't even give him a single booklet! For this reason, when faced with a sophisticated spiritual design, Ves could either pass it over to someone who knew what to do with it, or use his own ingenuity to solve the problem in a creative fashion. The proper course of action was to leave it to an expert. Yet if Ves forcefully woke up the Superior Mother, he feared he might interrupt some sort of delicate growth phase. The damage might not be serious, but Ves did not want to risk kneecapping the ancestral spirit's fantastic potential. She had the potential of attracting the worship of trillions of Hexers. With the Superior Mother's connection to Cynthia, this might be a way for his mother to stop leeching his spiritual energy and sustain herself on a more independent basis. "The construct itself also requires a lot of energy to shape into being. Does my mother have to pay for that?" There were certain special components in the spiritual construct design that looked very special. Even by themselves, Ves was unable to create something so high in quality, precision and complexity. Just like fabricating high-performance physical parts, anyone who attempted to make these special spiritual components would have to pay a hefty price. Therefore, unless it was truly necessary, Ves did not want to upset this vital arrangement! This led him to his second solution. Though he hadn't tested it at all, Ves was very confident in his theories and projections. According to his existing understanding of spirituality, implementing a growth-based production method should be viable. Even if Ves was very fuzzy on the mechanics, his earlier experiments in spiritual engineering taught him that this was not a crippling downside. As long as he was willing to surrender control to the whims of nature, fortune and other external factors, he would roughly be able to get what he wanted. Of course, that didn't mean he didn't have to expend any effort at all. Just like the peculiar biomech designers, he needed to develop a different methodology of production. "That's okay." Different from traditional spiritual engineering, Ves possessed a significantly greater talent and foundation in the production of 'living' entities. His life domain not only enhanced his intuition in this area, but also smoothed over a lot of difficult procedures. Someone without a life domain would make a lot more mistakes because their spiritual energy did not offer any assistance in the growth process. In short, this production method suited him perfectly! He immediately began to outline the method needed to accomplish this ambitious goal. He pooled all of his knowledge that was relevant and applied his judgement, logic and intuition to put together a blueprint of his new spiritual production method. He needed to take two broad requirements into account. First was what he called the 'initial seed'. Like a real plant seed, this was the starting state of a complete spiritual product. The seed not only contained the design of its end state, but also contained all of the essential spiritual ingredients that were necessary to kickstart the growth process. 𝕗𝗿𝕖𝐞𝐰𝗲𝕓𝐧𝕠𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝐨𝚖 "Every seed needs access to good soil or other favorable conditions to grow into a healthy and vigorous plant." This was the second requirement. The incubation conditions encompassed every positive and negative variable that could influence the growth of the initial seed. These external circumstances not only provided the necessary spiritual nutrients, but also directed the growth process! Ves paid a lot of attention to the latter because that was his only safeguard to get the product he wanted. While it was impossible to guarantee exact precision, as long as the end product did not exceed the boundaries he set, he would be happy with what he obtained. As Ves slowly built an elaborate plan, he found out that as long as it worked according to his design, he could indeed skip a lot of difficult steps. "Just let the growth process take care of everything." Even so, a couple of thorny aspects still remained. First, he wasn't sure he was able to obtain all of the specific spiritual attributes needed to make some of the special spiritual components. Ves could only throw up his hands at this difficult request. "Well, the growth process will just have to work with what's available. If it can't obtain the required spiritual attribute, then it can always substitute it with another attribute." Certainly, a steel sword was a lot more effective at cutting bodies than a wooden sword. However, they were both swords and they were both capable of harming people, and that ought to be enough. "Ketis might disagree, but she's not here!" This was not the time for perfection. With just a couple of days to go before the Larkinsons confronted the Allidus Alliance, Ves had to set this process up quickly, forgoing the usual need for rigor. Still, Ves remained confident. To make sure this production method was not a figment of his imagination, he tested it out on a smaller scale. He designed a slightly obtuse and difficult spiritual construct and began to fulfill the two requirements. He formed the initial seed with some of his spare spiritual energy and blended in a spiritual image that contained the design and visualization of his desired end product. He then prepared the incubation conditions. He used a P-stone as the incubating chamber and began to insert some loose spiritual energy from himself, Goldie and some other sources. Ves then threw in the initial seed and took a step back. He observed what happened carefully. "It's starting. The initial seed is following its programming." When the initial seed recognized its favorable conditions, it immediately began to absorb the nutrients and grow out of its shell. Ves smiled wider and wider when he recognized that the seed largely followed his programming. The growing spiritual construct began to grow taller and develop some branches. He chose a spiritual tree as his first product with this new method because it offered him an easy way to judge how its formation differed from the design he specified. "Hmm, there's indeed some variability." He observed a lot of variance in how its branches and leaves matured. When the spiritual tree he had grown reached its programmed end state, the final result ultimately deviated from his design by as much as fifteen percent! Ves smiled. "To be honest, that is a lot better than I anticipated." If the deviation reached as far as fifty percent, then it was impossible to ensure the end product would be able to fulfill the same role as the original. He pulled the just-matured spiritual tree from the P-stone and stuffed it into the so-called Prosperity Tree that was drooping so bad that it looked as if it was on the verge of death! The shape of the spiritual tree roughly corresponded with the structure of the physical Prosperity Tree. This was because he used the latter as the basis of the design of the former! "C'mon, revitalize already!" The tree only looked a bit more revitalized than before, but Ves did not feel disappointed. He knew that trees were slow to change. The reason why he was happy was because the physical Prosperity Tree seamlessly accepted the artificial spiritual product he had grown from a seed. If the tree was truly doomed, it wouldn't have done this! The fact that the spiritual tree settled in nicely signified that his scheme to revitalize the physical tree might actually work! Ves laughed. "Hahahaha! Take that, you stupid tree! You want to die? Not on my watch! I'll pump you up with life no matter how much doom you want to portend!" While he disdained superstition, he couldn't help but remained bothered by his Prosperity Tree's malaise. His grandfather claimed that its state directly reflected his fortune, but Ves couldn't believe in this nonsense. Even so, he still felt disturbed when his tree was doing awful. Instead of letting the tree increase his doubts, Ves preferred to take matters in his own hands! The success of this little experiment provided the critical proof he needed to bet all of his chips in his plan to produce his mother's work through this new method. Even if the scale and complexity weren't comparable at all, Ves still had faith that it had the potential to work! He spent the rest of the day setting his plan in motion. He requested, begged or coerced his various design spirits to pass over their spiritual fragments and formed a large and complex initial seed by combining them together. The initial seed was already a living spiritual product in itself, but Ves deliberately kept it in a preliminary state. During the creation of the seed, Ves made sure to imprint his mother's design as much as possible. He also sacrificed a few drops of life-prolonging treatment serum to pack the seed with a lot of necessary nutrients. Still, the seed could only accommodate so much nutrients and still retain its nature as a growing entity rather than a mature entity. Perhaps Ves might be able to raise this limit as he became more proficient with this method, but for now he could only do so much. He turned his attention to setting up the incubation conditions. He stuffed the seed into a P-stone and began to gather some additional spiritual energy to provide the seed with fertile 'soil'. Ves soon encountered a very significant problem. "I don't have enough nutrients!" His mother's design not only depicted a complex spiritual machine, but a very strong and demanding one as well! He couldn't keep milking himself and his design spirits for spiritual energy. Ves needed a lot more. He grabbed the vial of precious high-grade life-prolonging treatment serum from his pocket and studied his contents. He already used up quite a number of drops to fuel some of his potent endeavors. While he still possessed plenty of drops, he was very reluctant to use up so much serum for a single purpose. Due to their universal compatibility and high energy density, it was best to use a single drop or a few drops at a time. Did he have access to another abundant energy that could provide the initial seed with all of the spiritual energy required to fuel its entire growth? A few ideas came to mind…