The Mech Touch

Chapter 7106: Elf Desire

Now that Ves had completed his daughter’s birthday gift, he had met all of his obligations for his daughter’s birthday party.

The evening before the big event was scheduled to begin, the kids all exhibited a lot of excitement.

They had changed into their pajamas and sat on the floor while being surrounded by plushies, toys and cats. The girls and boy frequently giggled as they speculated on what sort of birthday gifts their eldest would receive.

"I bet that you will get a Carmine mech from papa." Andraste said. "Though only in case your genetic aptitude is not good enough. If it is, he probably has a different gift in mind."

Marvaine shook his head. "I don’t think so. Aurelia doesn’t want to pilot mechs as badly as you. I think it will be a new cat, a cat of her own. Lucky and Clixie are nice and all, but Lucky belongs to papa and Clixie belongs to mama."

"Miaow!"

The Rubarthan Sentinel Cat objected to this description! Her original owner had abandoned her because of the perception that she was not good enough anymore.

Clixie wanted nothing to do with Gloriana anymore!

"Meow meow." Lucky leaned over and nuzzled his head against Clixie’s agitated body.

The two cats soon settled down and began to lick each other’s bodies.

"What do you think you will get, big sis?" Little Marvaine asked.

Aurelia cutely scrunched her face as she hugged a large green bear. "I have no idea, but that is what makes this fun. Papa and mama will definitely prepare an unforgettable gift. My birthday party has become a big event. They have invited so many people that we are not acquainted with but hold important positions in society. We will only be embarrassing ourselves if we do not let them go back with a stellar impression of our clan. As for what my gift will be, I do not really care."

"Huh? Why not, sis?"

"Because having mama and papa’s love is the best gift that we could ever have, hehe."

The children continued to talk with each other as their parents held a very different discussion in a different room.

Gloriana looked down at the floating golden-eyed girl with utter perplexment.

"Are you saying... that you made her?" She asked in a slightly dangerous tone.

Ves immediately raised his hands. "It’s not what you think! I created her by accident!"

"THAT MAKES IT WORSE!"

Marigold looked curiously at her progenitor and his wife. She was already familiar with the two, but she had never appeared in front of the latter in this particular form.

Before Ves could make this any worse, the humanized artifact chose to intervene.

Without prompting, she instantly switched over to her new umbrella form.

This immediately interrupted Gloriana’s tirade and caused her to look at Marigold’s current form with considerable shock.

"Is that... the new Flower Parasol?"

"That was what I was trying to tell you all along!" Ves said with an aggrieved voice. "I tinkered around with new and not-quite-tested methods and accidentally produced an artifact that can change into a human form. Do not be fooled by her human facade. She is not actually a human. She just looks like one on the surface. She is still an object, just... one that can walk and talk like us if she wants."

His wife completely froze at this time. She clearly had trouble processing this immense revelation.

Ves had already gotten over his shock, but the same did not apply to Gloriana. Ves actually felt a little satisfaction at seeing her react in this manner.

"H-How?"

"It’s a bit of a story. It started out with a gift that I received from the Cybers."

Ves quickly summarized the sequence of events, making sure to convey much of the information he had about the frozen wood elf, which was not a lot.

She instantly latched on to its importance.

"What a waste!" she cried! "Why did you use up this priceless treasure in a hurry? Why did you not do the sensible thing and conduct an exhausting examination of its properties before you decided to feed it to an umbrella of all choices? No offence, Marigold, but there are many other choices that can exploit this ability to turn into a human much better. Why did you not save it up for one of your Woodsap mechs that you are working on? It would have been easy for us to smuggle a mech indoors and in places where their entry was prohibited!"

This was just one of many possible cases where the ability to humanize a construct could be useful.

Ves actually wondered whether there was a limit between the size of the humanized form and the size of the actual object in question.

For example, what would happen if he tried to merge a wood elf with a wooden bioship?

It seemed ridiculous that a warship that measured several hundred meters long could shrink to the size of a little girl, but who knew whether this fell within the scope of the wood elf’s capabilities?

Ves truly did not know the limits, and that was why he agreed with his wife. He had been way too careless about making use of the frozen wood elf so quickly after it had fallen into his possession.

His ignorance about its capabilities would remain because he hadn’t taken the time to conduct an exhaustive study on this rare and priceless specimen!

"I know I screwed up." Ves said in contrition. "If I knew that a wood elf could impart the ability for an object to turn into a human, I would have definitely reserved it for a mech. It is just that I did not think that such a possibility could exist. The wood elf had a special story behind it, but it was so small and weak that it didn’t give out any clues of its true capabilities."

"That is why you must always conduct thorough and exhaustive investigation, Ves. Only you of all people would disregard common sense and use up a gift that the Cybers had painstakingly won at a grand auction. Even if the previous owners had little idea of what they acquired, they most definitely had the intention of examining it for a number of years before they can even think about using it up in a project. Its rarity is too high to be wasted on a premature experiment."

Ves sighed. "You do not need to lecture me about this, Gloriana. I will do better next time."

"Will there be a next time? From what you have told me, these wood elves are exceedingly rare."

"That is right. From the scattered information that I have obtained, these wood elves are apparently a manifestation of wood-attributed E energy radiation. Due to randomness or a confluence of coincidences, a large amount of wood energy may pool into a single coordinate and ultimately coalesce into a spontaneous life form. Such incidents have happened very infrequently. There are only a handful of reported sightings and probably a dozen or more unreported sightings of this phenomenon, though not always a wood elf. This phenomenon can also result in the birth of fire elves and water elves apparently. There is not enough data to provide an estimate how often these elf birth events take place across the Red Ocean, but it should be quite numerous when taken as a whole."

The problem was that it could occur anywhere in a dwarf galaxy. Even if the Red Ocean was far smaller than the Milky Way, it still represented thousands of light-years of mostly empty void!

It was impossible to catch all of the ’elves’ that continued to emerge in the Red Ocean because red humanity simply couldn’t’ cover so much territory.

In fact, the native aliens had a better chance of capturing them because they were still in control of much of the new frontier!

Gloriana could figure out at least that much. "So the probability that we can obtain a second wood elf or other sort of elf is abysmally low."

He nodded. "When we unveil our birthday gift to our daughter, I do not intend to hide this feature. We will have to offer an explanation to the public, and we owe it to the Cybers and the others to tell them the reason why Marigold has gained her latest capabilities. This will start a frenzy on elves and make other parties much less reluctant to trade them away."

"Why would we disclose this information? Shouldn’t we keep it for ourselves?"

"No. That will not work. I reshaped the Flower Parasol into her current form by making use of the workshops loaned to us by the Red Association. Do you truly believe the mechers are ignorant of our every move? Yernstall IV is one of their most important strongholds! I am very sure that the essential information has already fallen into the hands of their leaders. That will mean that the other groups will soon find out as well, as there is no way an organization as large as the RA is able to prevent leaks."

Gloriana’s expression soured further. Being able to keep this secret was the best chance for them to potentially hoard these mysterious elves.

Alas, it was not to be. Once the major players all understood what an elf could offer to them, they would never trade their captured specimens to others!

The female mech designer gazed at Marigold with a thoughtful expression.

"There is no use crying over spilt milk. We need to do better next time. Compared to most other groups, we still have all of the data collected from your scans, correct?"

Ves nodded. "Yes. Alexa and I made sure to do so. I am not that stupid."

She looked at him as if she did not entirely believe in that last statement.

"Can we use the data that you have collected from the frozen specimen to develop a specialized scanning device that can search for other organisms that share many of the same traits as the wood elf?"

Ves put a bit of thought into this proposal.

"It is not impossible, but... there are several problems. First, the data may allow us to find other wood elves, but it would be much harder to detect fire elves or water elves if they exist. We do not know which properties are common to all elves and which ones are exclusive to the wooden kind. Second, the range of this scanner will likely be disappointing. Even if we can extend its effective range to several light-seconds, that only covers a fraction of the Red Ocean. The only way we can realistically find another elf is to mass produce these new scanning devices and distribute them to as many places as possible. Our starships and the planetary branches of our clan can help monitor the space around different locations, but even then their coverage will remain relatively minor."

She understood his arguments and did not have a good answer for them. "It is better than doing nothing. I need these elves. Just one is enough. I want to know once and for all whether they can be used to impart a human form to a mech."

Now that Gloriana understood the true value of Marigold, her attitude towards the humanized artifact visibly improved.

She even bent forward and reached out to take Marigold’s delicate pale hands into her own as if she was a nice aunty.

"Wow, you truly do feel like a human. You are so incredible, Marigold. I do not understand the magic that has resulted in your current form, but do not worry. Once I obtain additional elves, you will be joined by multiple brothers and sisters. Is there any possible way you can help us find more elves?"

Marigold slowly nodded. "I cannot help as much as you would like, but I can tell you that I have inherited at least part of the abilities of the wood elf. It will take a large amount of time for me to explore them and train them into usable abilities, but for now, I should be able to detect the presence of other elves as long as they are close enough. I should be able to look past most forms of deception."