Chapter 3143: A Good Parent
Ever since he made a huge discovery about what he could do to his unborn child, Ves had spent an entire day in a daze.
Though Gloriana was also affected by the realization that a new life was growing inside her body, she did not let that pull her attention away from her work while she was on duty.
"Ves!" A small hand smacked the back of his head, causing him to pull his attention away from his daydreams. "Stop fooling around and finish your work on the Sentry Project's energy transmission systems. Make sure it is capable of feeding enough power to its crystal luminar rifle when it is operating at its peak!"
"Uhm, I'm on it!" He quickly replied.
"You should have been on it three hours ago, but from what I can tell, you only worked on it for ten minutes at most. This is pathetic!"
"Hey, can't I have a moment of time to enjoy the prospect of becoming a dad?"
Gloriana's expression grew terser. "Look, I'm looking forward to raising my first baby as well, but that means we have to get as much work done as possible while we still can. Once my daughter is born, we'll inevitably have to cut back on the amount of time we spend in this design lab. I love my work, but I won't ever forsake my responsibilities as a mother. So before we start this new phase of our lives, I at least want to complete the development of all of our expert mechs. Besides, the faster they come online, the safer our fleet and our family will be. No one must threaten our baby!"
Ves fully agreed with sentiment. He didn't want his children to experience the same dangers and be compelled to take the same risks as him. Much of the reason why he had to go through so many ordeals was because he lacked better opportunities.
If he was born in a second-rate state, it would have been much easier for him to become a second-class mech designer.
If he was born in a first-rate state, then even if he didn't enjoy as many luxuries as Axelar, he would have still gained access to fantastic opportunities that would make any second-rater green with envy.
If he was Master Willix's grandson, then he would have truly won the jackpot! His family would probably provide him with the best augmentations that humanity had developed at that point. As long as he wasn't incompetent, his 'grandmother' would probably ready him for a promising career in the MTA. At a minimum, he would likely turn into someone similar to Jovy Armalon.
Yet the plain reality was that he lacked all of those opportunities. Instead, he was born in a small and inconsequential third-rate state and spent most of his time growing up on a rural planet with his somewhat normal father.
The only element that completely threw his normal life out of whack was his mother.
The gifts that his mother passed on to him opened up a radically different set of opportunities to him. While they were all associated with danger, the rewards were truly rich, as evidenced by his current success!
Did he want his daughter and subsequent children to become at least as successful as him? Certainly! Would he want to subject them to the same life-threatening crises that he had lived through? No!
Even though the motto of the Larkinson Clan was about overcoming hardships, Ves did not want to subject his children to any significant risks. Perhaps it was fine to give them a scare every now and then, but putting them in the line of fire was absolutely unacceptable!
Well… perhaps he might make some allowances if they possessed the right genetic aptitude and chose to become mech pilots. At least Ves and his wife would be able to do their best to design the safest and most powerful mechs for their babies.
Whatever the case, the point was that his children didn't have to go through so many dangerous ordeals in order to become successful in their lives. As their father, Ves could provide them with much safer futures.
In fact, Gloriana was already many steps ahead of him. His wife wanted to groom her firstborn daughter into a leader. While Ves did not object to her desire to pave a road of success for her child, the problem was she was making far too many decisions in advance!
Their unborn daughter hadn't even grown up in her womb yet and already Gloriana had completed a comprehensive plan that started from birth all the way to graduating from university and beyond!
This degree of determinism felt profoundly wrong to Ves. Though he knew that his daughter's genes were already geared towards leadership roles, he abhorred Gloriana's approach and didn't want to go down the same road.
However their daughter turned out, Ves vowed to raise her in his own way according to his own principles. Much of them were based around the rather casual but also purposeful way the old Larkinson Family raised its own descendants.
From what he could recall of the time, the Larkinsons didn't put that much pressure on the children when they were young. A lot of family members were veterans who had come back from the frontlines after experiencing a lot of death and killing. The last thing they wanted to do was to pass any of that on to their innocent kids.
Things changed when the children reached ten. Once they were tested for their genetic aptitudes, the kids split up into two groups.
Those without genetic aptitudes were treated as casually as before. The only change was that they would receive slight support for any careers they wished to pursue. The choice was completely up to the children themselves, though their parents might nudge them in one direction or another.
Ves was grateful for receiving his father's support. When he decided to study to become a mech designer, his dad probably knew that the likelihood of breaking into the industry was small.
Yet his father not only approved his career choice, he even dug up the System from wherever his mother had stashed it and gifted it to Ves without any reserve.
Ves couldn't have asked for better support from his father. He did everything within his means to help his son, up to and including departing for the Nyxian Gap in order to divert the original owners of the System!
"My father is a good model for a parent."
While his upbringing was nowhere near as extravagant as that of his wife, Ves had fond memories of those simpler times. If possible, he wanted his children to grow up in a similar fashion.
All of these thoughts and considerations slowly shaped his own approach towards raising and helping his daughter.
As someone who possessed unique talents in creating and strengthening different forms of life, he could not refuse the temptation to employ his abilities on his own daughter.
Though there were definitely ways that this could go wrong, he felt rather confident in his abilities despite embarking on something completely new and unprecedented. The initial signs were encouraging and his intuition hadn't steered him wrong so far.
After all, the developing embryo was just another product from the perspective of his domain. The only distinguishing factor was that his unborn daughter was probably exceptionally compatible with his spiritual energy due to their blood relationship.
"It's similar to how my mother can harness my energy without a problem." He muttered.
Family mattered and the closer the ties, the greater the compatibility.
In fact, Ves had the suspicion that the compatibility between mother and child was even stronger! After all, there was no closer family bond than to literally grow your offspring inside your own body.
This indicated that Gloriana's spirituality might spill over in her baby over the course of her pregnancy. Though this effect probably wasn't as strong as the direct influence that Ves was able to exert, his wife had the advantage of being in constant close contact with the life growing within her belly.
What this exactly meant for the future of their daughter, Ves wasn't exactly sure.
"I should focus on doing what I can on my own end."
This caused him to arrive at an important question. How should he employ his spiritual engineering capabilities on his future daughter?
"Well, one thing's for sure. I'm not going to do anything that will narrow her future choices!"
This was simply antithetical to his design philosophy. Though he was in the business of designing specialized mechs that were already geared to perform certain tasks well, that was because this was the fundamental purpose of mechs.
No one bought mechs without aim. If they weren't good at fighting in a specific way, then they didn't have much value.
Even so, Ves still managed to add some leeway to his mechs by infusing them with life but leaving their future development up to their own experiences.
Every living mech had the potential to be great. Even if they didn't reach the heights of the Devil Tiger or the Ouroboros, the lesser machines still had the opportunity to develop their own unique identities based on their mech pilots and their own experiences.
Ves could just drop by the hangar bay and study the older living mechs to see examples of this growth.
"In fact, a better example are my spiritual products."
His design spirits and companion spirits may have been created with specific goals and capabilities in mind, but once they were born, they were free to direct their own growth.
Nothing had gone wrong as far as he was aware of. Existences such as the Golden Cat and the Superior Mother had all grown far beyond their initial states.
He eventually decided to adopt a looser approach for his children.
"The differences between my products and my children is that the latter aren't created to fulfill specific jobs."
His wife might have something to say about that, but he didn't have to listen to her on this as she wasn't capable of interfering in any of his spiritual actions.
Ves began to develop a tentative framework for augmenting his daughter. His goal was to make her stronger and more capable of overcoming any challenges or difficulties she might face in the future, whether it was leading the clan, designing a mech, piloting a machine or simply teaching a class of schoolchildren.
His priority in preserving the choices of his child meant that he couldn't go too specific on how to improve his daughter. Any spiritual upgrades he applied to the growing embryo had to help his future child in a more universal manner.
This was why he never attempted to inject any spiritual energy related to mechs in her body. Though he would love it if she followed in her father and mother's footsteps and developed a passion for mechs, he did not have the right to impose this decision.
"If I want to inject her with spiritual energy, then I have to make sure that their attributes are versatile and widely applicable." He decided.
If possible, he wanted to inject spiritual energy from other sources. Just like how he was able to create better and more diverse spiritual products by mixing different ingredients, he intended to do something similar to his child in order to achieve a stronger result.
"After all, just mindlessly dumping my spiritual energy in her body is too primitive."
He didn't even know how this affected his daughter. Would her body become more compatible and susceptible to spiritual energy? Would her chances of developing spiritual potential be maximized? Would she become something more than human when she was born?
Ves didn't know, and that was what made this situation so exciting. He didn't want to leave everything to chance, though. He wanted to provide her with at least some solid spiritual advantages.
"Hmmm. How can I do this?"
He soon turned his thoughts to Blinky.
Mrow?
Ves slowly grinned. "Maybe… a companion spirit is a good vector."