"Well, now we know how it got to this state. Where do we take it from here?" Jean asked, placing his empty bowl on the table and gulping down the last of his juice.
Rennick leaned back with a soft sigh, the remnants of grilled fish still on his plate. "Hmm… I'll need to ask Freddy what kind of mech he actually wants. Most of the internals are outdated, fried, or just plain irreparable. No point restoring something if we don't know the end goal."
Jean gave him a sidelong glance, one brow arching. "You mean to say you forgot to ask the most important question?"
Rennick averted his gaze. "...It slipped my mind." He said remembering his little outburst earlier. He'd ended up lecturing Freddy instead of listening to him. "I'll ask him tomorrow," he said, rubbing the back of his neck. "Anyway, you should head home. Your parents are probably waiting for you."
Jean stood up with a stretch, rolling his shoulders. "If you say so, boss. See you tomorrow." He waved and stepped out of the workshop into the cool night air.
"Yeah," Rennick said, watching him go. "Tomorrow."
Silence fell in the workshop once the door clicked shut. Only the soft hum of idle equipment and the quiet stillness of the Westhaven remained.
Rennick sat in silence for a while, his mind lingering on the Westhaven Guardian's combat footage—the difference in skill between the enemy rifleman mech and their allies, the clear disparity in equipment, tactics, and piloting discipline. Most of the allied mechs in the video had been outdated frontier models—cheap, easy to mass-produce, and easier to pilot, but worthless when it came to improving skill. Swapping humanoid arms for fixed rifle mounts, replacing articulation with blocky armor. They were easy to use… but they taught the pilot nothing.
No wonder their pilots were outmatched. They were never given a chance to improve.
He sighed and stood, gathering the dishes and walking over to clean them. His hands moved automatically, but his mind drifted far from the sink. By the time he finished and made his way to bed, the moon was already high, casting pale light across the floor through the balcony doors.
Later that night, Rennick lay in bed, moonlight filtering in through the balcony doors and window, casting long shadows over his room.
He lay there quietly in the dark, staring up at the ceiling, thoughts spiralling inward remembering the confusion of waking in this world. For weeks, he'd tried to grasp at the edges of his previous life—who he was, how he died—but nothing ever came clearly. No names. No face. Just fragmented memories of a life in another world much less technologically advanced than his current one.
This was the world of The Mech Touch.
It took him until age seven to confirm it. At first, it was just familiarity—place names, tech levels, mech classifications. But when he learned the Protectorate was a third-rate frontier state in the Komodo Star Sector, his suspicions grew. And when he looked up the Larkinson Family, and found records from the Bright Republic…
That was when he knew.
He was inside The Mech Touch.
Or some version of it.
He remembered reading the early chapters of the story in his past life, though the details beyond the 1000s blurred together. By the time of his death, the novel had passed six thousand chapters and was still ongoing.
He didn't remember everything. But he did remember Ves Larkinson—the original protagonist—and how spirituality had eventually become the cornerstone of his design method. At first, Ves had merely used stories, images, and concepts to subtly enhance his mechs. Later, with the help of a mysterious Crystal Alien's body and the so-called Mech Designer System, he began directly creating design spirits. From there, it became less about lore, and more about spiritual constructs. Summoning. Spirits. Gods. Even devils. By the end, Ves was practically doing magic.
Rennick grimaced.
That wasn't the part he admired.
Ves had gone far. Too far, perhaps.
Magic, devils, summoning rituals… Rennick frowned. It had stopped being about mechs and started becoming something else entirely.
"I liked it better when it was about meaning," he thought. "When mechs carried stories, and the story changed the pilot, and the pilot changed the machine. How Young Blood and Old Soul helped rookie pilots grow in confidence or stay grounded."
The image method Ves had once used was abandoned—left behind like a stepping stone.
But Rennick? He still saw potential in that forgotten path.
That stuck with him.
He turned on his side, gazing at the silhouette of the Westhaven Guardian, its armored form bathed in moonlight. A battered knight mech. Outdated. Slow. But it had stood tall against impossible odds—and fought like hell.
"Maybe this mech… maybe this is where it starts."
If he could find a way to infuse a concept—an ideal—into a mech, something a pilot could feel and respond to... and if the mech could grow, not through divine miracles but through smart upgrades and long-term bonding…
Maybe that could replace the shortcut Ves took.
"I don't have a system. I don't want one," he reminded himself. "I'll build mechs that grow with their pilots."
His goal wasn't glory or godhood. He didn't have the System Ves had. He didn't want it. He didn't want shortcuts.
No, what he wanted was more subtle and simpler. A spiritual echo, tied to a story and a design, that resonated more strongly as the bond between machine and pilot deepened.
He wanted to design mechs that trained the pilot while being trained in turn. That grew together. That developed a mutual bond—not spiritual domination like Ves's design spirits, but mutual evolution.
He whispered into the quiet room, "Not every mech needs a god living inside it."
He looked again at the Westhaven Guardian. A broken frame. But maybe, with the right story and careful design, it could become a prototype for something greater.
A mech that grows with the pilot.
A mech that makes the pilot grow.
He smiled faintly, closing his eyes to the gentle hum of the night.