Ves didn't want to raise average ch designers.
Anyone who received his tutelage should follow a unique and exciting path. This was why he tried his best to help his students develop in more creative directions.
Ketis was a good example of soone who managed to do that. Though Ves wasn't directly responsible for her ascension to swordmaster, he had succeeded in laying the foundation to her successful rise.
As Ves listened to Maikel and Zanthar elaborate on how they had narrowed down their studies to their chosen specialties, he felt that the young n weren't quite there yet. Their ambitions weren't small, but they were still a distance away from setting unique and original goals.
Well, it wasn't as if he could expect anything more out of students who had yet to graduate. They still needed to learn how to walk before they could run.
For a mont, Ves thought about granting them companion spirits as a little experint. Would he be able to turn them into the next versions of Ketis if he granted them a little spiritual assistance?
It was a viable idea. While he didn't want to accelerate the growth of their companion spirit seeds by using up a portion of potent universal life energy, it wasn't necessary to go that far. The two adolescents still needed years before they beca ready to do so actual design work. This gave them plenty of ti for them to grow alongside their companion spirits.
Perhaps this was a better way for them to develop the companion spirits that were most suitable to their specialties. Accelerated growth might provide instant power and allow a companion spirit to beco imdiately useful, but Ves was not ignorant of the downsides of this approach.
The bond between him and Blinky wasn't quite comparable to the bond between Ketis and Sharpie. Whenever he saw the pair, he noticed that they were a lot more in tune with each other.
Sharpie automatically assisted Ketis in whatever task she did in the most appropriate manner.
In comparison, Blinky spent most of his ti sleeping in his mind, trying and failing to defeat Lucky in violent scuffles and trying to deepen his bond with Goldie instead of Ves. He was too much of a playful cat to provide any serious assistance to Ves during his design work!
"At least he's able to supply with energy on demand." He muttered.
Ves knew that Blinky had a lot of untapped potential. Just his ability to manipulate the Worclaw energy in his body was extrely important to his future health.
Yet because Blinky grew so rapidly without learning any lessons in between, the Star Cat was like a newly-graduated ch pilot who just entered the cockpit of a Valkyrie Brunhild. The disparity was too big!
Though this was a serious problem, Ves knew he had to be patient. He could already feel Blinky growing more and more familiar with his new abilities. It would only be a matter of ti before Blinky mastered his potential to the sa degree as Sharpie.
As for granting companion spirits to his students, Ves decided to flesh out this idea later. He still had to find and combine so good ingredients in order to provide Maikel and Zanthar with spiritual assistants that fully complented their future design philosophies.
This was the best way to transform them into exceptional ch designers!
If the pair managed to bloom under his tutelage, then he would enjoy a very stellar record as a teacher. By that ti, Ves predicted that a lot of people would clamor to beco his student!
"Sir, when will we be obtaining our cranial implants?" Maikel impatiently asked. "All of the assistant ch designers are already starting to get theirs. Once they recovered from their surgery, their learning speeds increased by multiple tis! When will we get to enjoy this enhancent?"
Ves snapped out of his contemplations. He directed a disapproving glance at Maikel.
"You little brats. Are you that impatient to improve yourselves?"
The pair nodded like chicks.
"Well tough luck, because you're not getting any yet if I have anything to say about it." Ves grinned.
"What? Why?!"
"Because you already have enough augnts! Look, the basic courses that you still have to go through aren't that difficult. It is worth slowing down a bit in order to go over them with plenty of attention to thought. Piling up a cranial implant on top of your already-formidable genetic augnts is completely overboard for ch design students like you. I'm afraid that you'll just rush through the basics without experiencing the gradual revelations that any future ch designer enjoys. It is by thinking about and questioning the theory that design philosophies are born."
The two dummies didn't get it. They just thought that Ves wanted to make them suffer by denying them a powerful study aid.
As soone who possessed a cranial implant himself, Ves knew how it could distort the mind of soone who depended on knowledge to achieve success. While it was truly worth it to obtain one, it was better to wait until the recipient in question had matured to an extent.
Every student who aid to reach Journeyman had to develop an intimate appreciation of the boundless field of ch design. At the sa ti, they needed to respect the knowledge that their predecessors had accumulated and made available to those that ca after.
Knowledge had a price, and only those who worked hard to expand their understanding would have a better idea on how to forge their own path into uncharted territory.
Of course, this was all his own opinion on the learning process. It might be that he was just pulling guesses out of his butt without knowing whether they reflected reality. He based most of his theories out of his own personal journey into ch design, and that was hardly representative of what other ch designers had to go through.
Ves seriously doubted they possessed the System!
He finished the little session by handing over so long-term howork assignnts to the pair. He was already preoccupied with several different projects and had no ti to guide his students as closely as he liked.
It wasn't all that bad, though. Despite their complaints, Maikel and Zanthar ingested enough candy to turn themselves into formidable learning machines. They could navigate his library on their own. If they really needed clarification, they could always approach one of the Apprentices in the Design Departnt if necessary.
When Ves finally dismissed them, he contemplated whether he should bind them more closely to him in the future.
The alternative was to let them develop on their own without trying to push them into a direction of his choosing.
If he chose the forr, then Maikel and Zanthar would very likely beco eligible to join his inner circle in the future.
Ves turned his attention back to his various projects. Aside from spending ti on fleshing out the Chira Project and the Sentry Project further, he spent several hours trying to synthesize better luminar crystals.
His progress in the latter was rather inconsistent, but he was slowly learning how to get better at synthesizing luminar crystals through the process of trial and error.
Basically, he made a lot of mistakes and screwed up more tis than he could count!
Fortunately, his workshop was so well-equipped that he could easily synthesize hundreds of modest-sized crystals a day, especially when he was just out to create samples instead of full-sized products.
"Damn. The hardness of this crystal has dropped by 27 percent compared to my current best." Ves muttered as he tossed another finger-sized crystal over his shoulder.
A pile of hundreds of crystals of different shapes, sizes and colors rested haphazardly on the deck. No cleaning bots had cleaned up this ss as of yet as Ves may needed to scan or revisit them afterwards.
After experiencing yet another failure, Ves started anew and studied the formulas that were heading in the right direction.
"Blinky, how do you think I can increase the hardness of my crystals?"
Mrow mrow mrow.
"Okay, let's try this then."
Ves reached across the work table and picked up three different samples of special materials that he recently received.
"Out of these three materials, which one will increase the hardness of the crystal when added to the formula?"
Blinky pointed at the sample in the middle.
Mrow!
"You sure?"
Mrow mrow!
In fact, Ves didn't need to ask. By focusing his attention on what his companion spirit was feeling and thinking, Ves would easily be able to notice a subtle affinity towards one of the materials.
"What about the Illustrious One? What does he think?"
When Ves briefly channeled the luminar design spirit, he temporarily viewed reality in a different fashion.
It was hard to describe how certain elents stood out more while other elents receded in importance.
Yet just because his senses beca more freaky didn't an he could easily piece together the formula to synthesize second-class luminar crystals.
"What is the damn ratio?! How should I balance out the different materials?!"
It wasn't enough to know the right materials. In order to create a truly superior product, he had to process them and combine them in nurous sophisticated ways. Only by following the right steps would he be able to synthesize crystals that were tough enough to survive the rigors of expert ch combat.
Yet in order to get closer to the correct proportions and processing thod, Ves could not completely rely on Blinky and the Illustrious One to achieve a better result. The most they could do was to give him so hints and give him so sporadic warnings whenever he was doing sothing wrong.
Hency why he had to create a lot of different iterations and perform live tests on what he made. The more data he generated, the more prompts he received from Blinky and the Illustrious One.
His hand tapped on top of the crystal cube. "It would be nice if you ca with an instruction manual."
This was the downside of working with alien technology. The crystal cube could strengthen many crystals by processing them in a way that caused them to acquire a lot of internal circuits.
These alien circuits were completely unfathomable and indecipherable to Ves. Yet they were also the primary reason why the crystals were able to exert additional power or impart different effects.
At the end of his session, Ves looked at the five new crystals that he deed the best of the bunch.
He picked up a specially-fabricated laser rifle that he had specifically designed for testing purposes. He then proceeded to slot in the first crystal into a chamber that was also designed to accommodate the experintal products.
He didn't fire the rifle himself. That was too dangerous. Who knew if the crystal overloaded and caused the entire weapon to blow up in his face?
Instead, he handed the rifle over to one of his honor guards. The soldier moved to a shielded firing range further back that Ves had set up for this purpose.
When the guard fired the rifle, an invisible beam struck a tal dummy bot. Bubbles appeared across the poor target. Soon, the bot shattered as all of its tal surfaces were torn apart by strange bubbles!
Ves could only scratch his head at this result.
"Next one."
The second crystal slotted in the test rifle fired a purple beam that caused the target to erupt in corrosive fire. The fus were so toxic that portions of the platform underneath started to get covered by holes!
"Next."
The third crystal fired an ordinary white beam that did not consist entirely of photons. Though the light beam traveled considerably slower than light, it was able to inflict a small but noticeable degree of physical damage towards the target dummy, causing it to get knocked back by a few ters!
"Next."
The fourth crystal produced a more esoteric effect. Whatever Ves put into it caused the energy beam to follow a spiralling trajectory towards its target. Other than that, it behaved like a normal laser beam, which ant the spirals were almost completely pointless.
"Useless. Next."
Ves perked up a bit after his honor guard slotted in the last crystal. The soldier carefully took aim and pulled the trigger.
PVOOMPH!
A surprisingly loud noise echoed across the firing range as a blinding white beam almost blinded the visual sensors in the space.
Ves couldn't even see the light beam that had slamd into the latest dummy bot and blasted it into lots of tiny pieces!
The power of this last crystal was the most formidable that he had ever witnessed so far, but it ca with a very troubleso downside.
The honor guard had already let go of the rifle. Its entire middle section had lted from the excess heat released by the disintegrating crystal!
Ves could only sigh at this mixed result. "How the hell did you luminars co up with this weird tech?!"
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