Chapter 6843 Anomalous Activity After a bit of a delay, the upgrade process commenced. Both Ves and Gloriana had extra motivation to do a good job this time. At first, Gloriana started off with the usual step by summoning Alexandria. "Maow!" The red companion spirit emerged from Gloriana's forehead and immediately bound all of the participating mech designers in a design network. This design network enabled everyone to share each other's surface thoughts as well as deeper thoughts of their choosing. Gloriana also added Saint Commander Casella Ingvar to the design network. This would help every mech designer understand their client better. Each of them would know who exactly they served this time. Casella made sure to keep a sober mind and avoid thinking about too many distractions. Ves, Gloriana and Alexa Streon were already highly familiar with the benefits of the design network. Beatrice Hendrix and Viktor MacMillan still had to spend a little time getting accustomed to working with other voices in their minds. They started off slow, but quickly ramped up when they managed to establish their groove. Gloriana had meticulously formed a plan. Everyone was already highly familiar with their work assignments. Since none of them were amateurs, they went to work without encountering any stumbles. Gloriana undertook the most difficult task of fabricating the most complicated archetech components. Her mastery of archetech exceeded that of everyone else in the Larkinson Clan, so only she could complete these crucial assignments. Ves and Beatrice possessed a shallower but still serviceable grasp of archetech. This allowed them to fabricate the simpler archetech components. Ves mostly focused on fabricating the parts that would eventually turn into the Victrix, the living fey that would become an iconic companion to the Minerva Mark II. Beatrice meanwhile fabricated the parts that would comprise the armor system and Battle Skirt System. While they encountered plenty of difficulties due to their lack of fluency in archetech, the design network enabled Gloriana to provide constant advice and warnings without verbalizing even once. This was a much more effective form of communication for them, especially when Gloriana was able to transfer images such as schematics and correction plans! While the mech designers responsible for most of the fabrication work became busy, Viktor and Alexa undertook the tedious task of disassembling the Minerva Mark I. The ace command mech had incurred minor damage here and there. The machine was already a little worn out due to past exertions. The Minerva hadn't been able to receive proper servicing beyond the minimum for more than a month. Even so, the living expert mech still exuded a strong sense of order and control. Everyone could instinctively feel that she was a machine that was made for command! Alexa and Viktor had to be careful about disassembling the mech. They had to prep the machine for a full rebuild, which meant that they had to separate a lot of parts in advance in order to make the process more efficient. They could not afford to make the mistake of going too far. The living mech would not be able to sustain the cohesion of her spiritual foundation if there was simply not enough of the mech frame that remained intact! The two mech designers had to work carefully and respectfully in order to prep the Minerva Mark II for a complete reinvention without killing her off entirely during the transition! While all of this work sounded precarious, everyone completed the necessary steps without any issue for the time being. They all knew what to expect. Many of them had already practiced the scenarios they would face in virtual reality. Therefore, unless any accidents occurred that completely rendered the planning useless, it was rather hard for anyone to screw up in the process! So far, work proceeded well. Ves grew satisfied with his output. Even if he was not as meticulous as his wife, he was still able to fabricate basic archetech components that did the job while also conforming to his artistic tendencies. Another factor that helped to smooth everything over was the participation of the smart AIs! The SF-02 provided excellent value to the design labs, but they were also able to assist in the workshop. Polly, Momo and Aria all projected their feline forms every once in a while and provided light assistance whenever suitable. Momo was especially helpful when it came to fabricating archemetal components. The three smart AIs did not directly connect to the production machines and made sure to complete every production task on autopilot. That would remove the human factor from the works. It also granted a disproportionate amount of control to non-humans, which was unacceptable! In short, as much as Ves hated it, he ordered the smart AIs to restrict the depth of their capabilities and set their limits at a low threshold. The SF-02 was highly capable of doing a lot more, but Ves felt it was enough to provide technical advice. Of all of its smart AIs, Momo was obviously doing the best at the moment. Momo provided Gloriana with information on the strengths and weaknesses of archetech. She was so effective that she was able to save a fair bit of time. However, under no circumstances did Gloriana outsource all production tasks on any of the smart AIs in their entirety. She would rather delegate time-consuming work projects to her subordinates. A day passed by. As their work progressed, the mech designers only took minimal breaks. They were too excited and committed to upgrading the Minerva to truly stop during the entire process. As the mech designers began to work with more powerful and volatile materials, they made sure to be extremely careful when handling these expensive and dangerous materials. They paid attention to unwanted interactions by keeping numerous volatile materials apart from each other. They also made sure to be careful when combining dozens of different exotics and hypers into a single complex archemetal block. None of the materials gave them any issues. The experts had already documented all of the potential dangers, and the mech designers were not stupid enough to violate these justifiable safety rules. It was due to all of the excellent documentation and exploratory research that Ves gained enough of an understanding of how to prevent a material as dangerous as Mindstorm Alloy from turning into the next weapon of mass destruction. Fortunately, with careful handling, Mindstorm Alloy remained remarkably well-behaved. The same went for Dragon Scales, Solus Gas and other hyper materials. Ves soon encountered a troublesome exception when it was time for him to whip out the Mentalist Crystal. He had already retrieved it from the Vault of Eternity. When he opened its container, Ves felt as if he was suffering from immediate illusions. He struggled to absorb humanoid shapes. It took a lot of will to maintain a sober mind in the presence of a hyper material that was known to mess with minds! Right now, the Mentalist Crystal that took a huge amount of money and effort to secure was not only making it difficult for Ves to maintain coherent thoughts. However, more and more work assignments piled up that most people did not see anything wrong with this appearance. The Mentalist Crystal actually did more than that. It began to affect the minds of nearby humans in an instant. "What?! This crystal is acting out, and it is doing this all by itself!" Ves suddenly realized that it was beginning to interact with everyone's rich thinking. Their relative proximity to the Mentalist Crystal meant that as long as it was exposed to the public, it would definitely get robbed due to all of the confusion it generated! Now that the Mentalist Crystal was acting up without any immediate cause, more and more people grew concerned. Ves eventually found out that the Mentalist Crystal was beginning to absorb nearby energies and trying to make sense of it all even now! "Is it alive?" Ves couldn't answer this question. What mattered was that there was something strange taking place. How was he supposed to process a Mentalist Crystal with exceedingly valuable properties! As Ves struggled to get a grip on this volatile high-grade hyper, he suddenly developed a brilliant idea. Instead of trying to suppress the Mentalist Crystal, Ves thought about letting it become active in a more controlled manner. This altered the crystal's behavior and introduced a lot of new possibilities. Ves began to think deeper on what he could do with this unexpected development. He thought back on his conversation with Master Laila Devos. She had good reason to believe that the Minerva Mark II would stand at the top of the ace mech classification. That was because command mechs were inherently rare to begin with. High-ranking command mechs were so rare that each of them possessed their own separate identities. It should be easier to turn the Minerva Mark II into an anchor mech when there was not much opposition from the beginning! Ves concluded that a Mentalist Crystal could make a huge difference. The problem was that he and the rest were not proficient in manipulating this mysterious and difficult object. They had to learn on the fly if they wanted to have any hope of fully harnessing the power of the crystal. Ves mostly relied on Blinky to analyse the Mentalist Crystal at first. That was when an accident occurred. The Mentalist Crystal abruptly absorbed the companion spirit among the captives! This immediately caused Blinky a considerable amount of distress! Fortunately, the Mentalist Crystal did not pose a threat against what it had just absorbed. When Blinky experimentally started to flex his power, he found that the Mentalist Crystal seemingly opened a portal to a completely different place, among many other powers. Mentalist Crystals just became a lot more interesting! With the help of smart AIs, Ves was quickly able to organize all of the data. They also remained watchful for any sign of trouble from the Mentalist Crystal. "I am getting closer to figuring out another application of a Mentalist Crystal." Ves told his wife during a brief break. "Oh? What ideas do you have, sir?" "Hmmm…" Ves frowned in thought. "My ideas are not mature yet. Give me more time to devise actual solutions." The SF-02 also needed time to calculate different solutions. The more data at Ves' disposal, the more he could figure out what happened during the crucial ambush. Whatever the case, Ves believed that as long as he discovered and implemented alternate means of defense, they would trickle down and benefit many other people! "What are Mentalist Crystals, exactly?" Ves did not know why he was asking himself this question, but he felt that the answer could help him develop better applications. The lack of information was frustrating him! He knew too little about Mentalist Crystals. Just standing close to one already amplified all of his emotions to an extent. "I think they are crystallized brain cells." Gloriana guessed. "They are parts of the mind of an organism that has reached a form of transcendence. From this viewpoint, using a Mentalist Crystal may be asking for help from the source of all of the suffering and misery." This was a rather bold idea! A Mentalist Crystal might contain hidden memories and various secret information. Nobody knew about it because they were never taught to access it in a strange manner. If Gloriana's theory was right, then Ves might be able to find a way to access those memories! Ves sent Blinky into the Mentalist Crystal again and tried to rummage inside for anything interesting. However, his companion spirit faced a lot of resistance inside the Mentalist Crystal. It was as if its own defenders rose up to expel all intruders! Whether they were human or alien did not seem important. 𝒻𝑟𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝑛𝘰𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝘤𝘰𝘮 "Have you made any progress, Ves?" "I am getting closer. I am picking up more and more clues with the help of Blinky. I need to conduct a few more experiments before I can issue a verdict."