The Mech Touch

Made out of precious Unending alloy, the 5 Demon Mixers stood proudly in their crude, fat and ugly forms.

Ordinary mechs easily towered over the demimech-sized contraptions.

To even call the Demon Mixers a mech was an insult to the entire mech community!

Despite the complete lack of combat capabilities, Veronica still felt proud that she was able to improvise a viable solution together in so little time.

She had a good feeling about them. Even if they failed to produce a Middle Demon in the first attempt, Veronica could always tweak the mech design or the other variables in order to dial in the right settings.

The most important part was that the living mechs possessed enough vitality to fulfill their functions.

The structure of the jar-shaped torso was also specially designed to contain a large amount of Minor Demons.

Even if they attacked the inner lining of the jar all at once, there was no chance for them to be able to break through in a short amount of time!

While they could theoretically breach their cage if they persisted in their breakout attempts, there was no way these irrational and unruly Minor Demons would leave each other alone.

They were all violent and murderous to the extreme!

When stuffed together in a small and confined space, they would definitely turn their claws against each other first long before thinking about attacking anything else!

If the battle royale proceeded according to plan, then the final winner received enough tempering from all of the fighting and absorbed enough nutrients from its defeated foes to evolve into a Middle Demon.

Veronica was not confident that her Demon Mixer would be able to contain a Middle Demon.

The quality of the demimech was poor, and she did not use optimal materials to construct the container. There was a good chance that a Middle Demon may be able to breach the cage.

However, Veronica already prepared another solution to this problem.

One of the peculiar traits about the Demon Mixer was that it was a post-living mech!

Veronica decided not to impart a conscious living personality into the demimech. Since it was a machine that was never actually meant to host a mech pilot, she felt it would be pure torture for the Demon Mixer to live out a miserable existence.

There was also another reason why she deliberately turned the Demon Mixer into a second skin mech.

She hoped that once the Middle Demon successfully managed to emerge through the demon gu cultivation process, it would immediately merge with the Demon Mixer, thereby causing it to get demonized but at the same time fix the demonic entity in place!

Once the Middle Demon fused with the most useless demimech that Veronica had ever designed, the combat power of the transformed machine should not be too high! Discover exclusive content at empire

It would be easy to suppress and contain the demimech through mundane means. This saved Veronica a lot of resources and allowed her to lighten his burdens.

The only questionable part was whether she could successfully separate the demon from the Demon Mixer.

For that purpose, she deliberately designed the demimech to 'eject' its spiritual foundation on command.

This should hopefully work on Middle Demon as well!

If not, then the Cyborg Cat might have to use cruder means to separate the two from each other. The Middle Demon would likely incur significant damage and lead to reduction in quality.

She currently had no idea if these clever mechanisms were sound enough to work. She therefore looked more and more forward to putting the Demon Mixers to the test!

Now that the Helcat saw in person that her little sister had successfully completed the 'demon gu containers' before the deadline, she proceeded to deliver her own results.

"I have tried my best to gather a sufficient amount of fairly strong souls and whip them all into Minor Demons. This was not simple. You should be lucky that I can reliably harvest qualified souls from the star sectors around the Nyxian Gap. They are so highly populated that there are many Journeyman Mech Designers and Senior Mech Designers. Many of them are dying on a daily basis. There are also a small number of expert pilots who died as well, either through normal warfare or by running out of lifespan. I found that the souls from these powerful soldiers take a lot longer to demonize. If I hadn't improved and transformed your Soul Whip technique into a much more effective version, I would have failed to transform them before the deadline."

Veronica looked intrigued. "You improved the Soul Whip that much? Can you demonstrate to me, sister?"

"Sure. I will give you a taste of my latest torture instrument. It will be painful, but I think you can handle a single application."

"Wait, what are you—MYAAAOOW!" Veronica jumped in surprise! "That is so freaky! How can the touch of a feather make me feel as if my life is about to get drained?!"

Although Veronica would not get caught off guard to such an extent the second time, she was still shocked at how much Helena's modified technique could elicit such a strong reaction!

The effect on purely intangible beings such as souls and Minor Demons should be a lot stronger!

The Helcat smugly grinned as a dark feather floated above her feline head. "I have been trying to figure out how to drive the souls into despair much faster by exposing them to death energy. Even if they have already died once, the souls still instinctively fear the threat of complete annihilation. Death energy has the potential to do that, so it is one of the universal means to scare them out of their wits. The problem is that I do not actually want to kill them. I just want them to become terrorized to the point of triggering the demonization process. This is why I eventually decided to concentrate a large amount of death energy into the Soul Whip, but lighten its application so that the contact is very light and soft. This turned out to be the right direction, so I continued to optimize it until I abandoned the whip structure in favor of a feather."

This was an ingenious solution. Veronica was already thinking about whether she should copy a page out of her eldest sister's book.

The theory was rather simple. Souls possessed a limited degree of perception as well. If they were placed next to a threatening True God, then they would definitely become a lot more frightened than if they were placed next to an ordinary person.

The feather manifested by Helena might look like a soft and gentle object, but it actually concentrated so much death energy that a baseline human might be able to lose much of his life if he touched it for a period of time!

It may even annihilate souls upon prolonged contact!

"What is it called?"

"I am calling it the Death Feather for now. It sounds adequate enough. The secret to using the Death Feather is to make no contact to very brief contact at a time. I want the feeling of certain death to lightly caress the frightened souls. They should still be able to withstand the damage of faint contact, but they will definitely feel much more threatened than if they are struck by a regular Soul Whip."

"I see." Veronica looked enlightened. "The Soul Whip technique is originally designed to function as a pure punishment and torture solution. It is never specifically designed to promote demonization. This Death Feather of yours is much more suitable to promote this development because it produces an enormous amount of psychological torment. Repeatedly making souls feel as if they are one step away from complete annihilation is definitely effective at making them feel as if they have no hope anymore."

The Cyborg Cat was surprised at how quickly Helena managed to devise such an effective solution.

However, another part of her felt that it was only right for the daughter of Cynthia Larkinson to be so good at devising her own improved techniques.

"Anyway, I take it that the successfully development of your Death Feather technique means that you can reliably mass produce Minor Demons."

"I can." The Helcat nodded in conformation. "However, do not forget what I told you before. Transferring them from the Milky Way to the Red Ocean costs a large amount of energy. It is still better to wait until you have found an effective way to consolidate them into Middle Demons before attempting a costly transfer."

"I haven't forgotten, sister. There are plenty of humans and aliens being killed across the frontline. The Hexers have fielded a huge amount of Valkyrie mechs in the Middle Zones, so you should still have plenty of opportunities to harvest souls on the frontlines."

"That is true, but most of them are not good enough." Helena frowned. "Most of the casualties consist of ordinary humans or aliens. Exposure to E energy radiation and limited cultivation has already made them stronger, but the vast majority have yet to enter the first major cultivation rank. That may change over time, but for now, do not expect me to harvest too many souls that are strong enough. Expert pilots are so good that very little of them die on the battlefield. There also aren't enough Journeymen and Seniors stationed in the frontlines for me to harvest."

This limitation was beginning to annoy Veronica more and more. It would be best if there was a way to obtain Minor Demons from weaker souls.

She could think about this problem later. It was best if she focused on the immediate task at hand.

"How many Minor Demons have you produced?"

"213. They vary considerably in strength, abilities, temperament and more. Most of them are derived from mech designers, so I am not too impressed with their demonized combat capabilities. The only ones worth my appreciation are those converted from expert pilots. They should be the favorites to win the battle royales inside the Demon Mixers."

Veronica nodded. "I am inclined to agree as well, but don't count out the others so quickly. Who knows whether any of the other Minor Demons developed any weird talents or techniques. Still, let's do our best to spread them out so that they can attempt to defeat everyone else without having to compete against their closest peers."

"That is a good idea. How would you like to distribute the Minor Demons?"

"I already formed a plan for this. There is one indication that leads me to believe that 1 Middle Demon is worth 20 Minor Demons. This may be a clue that this is the minimum ratio to make this demon gu cultivation attempt work. The First Demon Mixer should therefore store 20 Minor Demons. Can you transfer them right away?"

"I can."

When Helena carefully injected the prepared Minor Demons into the Demon Mixer, the two felines waited for any of the Minor Demons to slip through an unnoticed crack and escape.

That did not happen.

"Well, the first test is a success." Veronica declared as she closely monitored the demimech. "The Demon Mixer has proven that it can successfully contain 20 Minor Demons. I can even begin to feel that they have initiated hostilities against each other."

Veronica did not attempt to peek inside to see what was happening in real time. This form of gu cultivation was a ritual that had to be treated with respect. Outsiders should not attempt to peek what was happening inside the jar. That might break a taboo and ruin the ritualistic process.

"How many Minor Demons do you want to insert into the next Demon Mixers?"

"The second machine should contain 40 Minor Demons. The third machine should contain 80 Minor Demons. The fourth machine should contain 20 Minor Demons with the addition of 10,000 uncorrupted souls. The fifth machine should contain 40 Minor Demons with the addition of 100,000 uncorrupted souls."

The Helcat lazily nodded when Veronica mentioned the numbers for the second and third Demon Mixer, but she became a lot more surprised when she heard the figures for the last two machines!

"Why do you want to mix in additional souls in the gu containers?"

"I want to see whether the addition of additional nutrients will increase the success rate of producing Middle Demons. I also want to see if the resulting Middle Demon will become a lot stronger after absorbing so many additional souls."