Chapter 351

It was only a matter of time before he made these discoveries, but it certainly helped to grasp this concept early. Most importantly, Ves had gathered more clues to break through his perennial bottleneck in achieving a B-graded X-Factor.

"Spirituality is a lot more intertwined in our society than I thought." Ves concluded.

Humans ruled over half of the galaxy with the might of its warships, but they competed against each other with the use of mechs. Every state made it a priority to cultivate talented mech pilots into experts and aces.

That they managed to convert a fraction of mech pilots into the realm of the elites could be attributed to their occasional successes amid countless failures. In the early days of the Age of Mechs, a lot of horror stories emerged that revealed the extent that people went through to enhance their military force.

"I can consider these matters at a later time." Ves shook his head. He still had an alien ruin to excavate.

With the help of his spirituality, Lucky had managed to pry apart the roof of the tiny hexagonal palace. His cat resembled a bear trying to break open a honeycomb in order to steal some honey.

Bits and pieces of tiny crystal furniture dotted the rooms inside. Neither Ves nor Lucky paid any interest in them after figuring out they served as tables and chairs.

Lucky continued to dig through the upper floors, but encountered a lot of resistance from the blue crystals.

At least they weren't indestructible like the transparent crystals. Their slightly lower grade gave them hope that they could uncover something valuable.

"This must be a lesser side influence in the alien society."

The longer he interacted with the alien ruins, the more he understood their society. Ves guessed that the crystal city acted as a capital or a final refuge of some sorts. It would explain the existence of the rune monuments and the effort the aliens had made in creating a portal system.

Ves found it regretful that they hadn't left anything behind in the crystal city. At some point, they evacuated it, taking away anything that hadn't been affixed to the city.

"The aliens sure built them to be tough. They couldn't even dismantle them in their haste to evacuate the city."

He was certain the crystals possessed extremely remarkable properties. Ves had succeeded in deriving their composition and structure with his Vulcaneye. As long as he figured out a way to reproduce it, he'd be able to create an extremely powerful substance that could act as both an armor system and laser propagator.

Even if he lacked the capabilities to reproduce the exact formula, he could still attempt to derive a lesser version if he substituted the rarer exotics with less valuable ones. Such experiments happen all the time.

"I recall that Master Katzenberg from Leemar is a specialist in this area."

Perhaps if he submitted his readings to Katzenberg, she'd be able to come up with a host of different substitutions. However, Ves did not possess a direct channel to the prestigious Master Mech Designer.

"I can always attempt to fumble around on my own. If I haven't achieved any results, I can always pass on the data to someone else."

Data that he couldn't use held no value to him. He might as well sell it or exchange it for something useful, although he would only receive a fraction of its true value.

"Lucky! Go dig the left compartment! I think there's a storeroom there!"

The palace appeared to house an affluent household. It contained a lot of rooms, but contained very little furniture in each. Lucky loomed over the tiny palace like a giant tiger about to engulf the inhabitants. Ves found the dichotomy in scale amusing.

It took Lucky a lot of effort to get past the subsequent layers. Ves even had to call back Lucky before the portal closed before he opened it again. Although he faintly guessed that there should have been a way to sustain the portal, Ves didn't wish to waste any time to figure out the exact mechanics.

Lucky finally broke in what looked like a vault after a few more minutes of anxious digging. The vault room contained a lot of miniscule hexagonal blocks that formed the alien race's version of a resource bar. They were so small in fact that Ves had to employ the magnification function of his hazard suit in order to observe them with his eyes.

"That's it! They should be treasures! Bring it back!"

Before Lucky could do anything, a number of crystals floated from their perches at the sides of the vault. So the palace still retained some defenses after all!

They angrily blinked and hovered around Lucky before unleashing thin beams of light at what they perceived to be an intruder.

Naturally, the noodle-thin light beams passed straight through Lucky's semi-corporeal body and blinked away into space.

Lucky stared at the defense drones with a playful gaze. His tail swished back and forth as he took little notice of the light beams passing through his body.

"Stop wasting time! Take care of them quickly before bringing back those treasures!"

The drones might have been able to threaten a tiny alien, but even Lucky would scoff at them. The substantial difference in size had turned everything made by the aliens into a joke.

Lucky took care of the drones by swatting them from the air. The drones bounced against the walls and floor of the crystal palace before regaining their balance. They continued to fire at Lucky despite their bumps.

This time, Lucky employed a different method. He opened his maw and ate all the drones. The gem cat didn't even chew before swallowing the helpless drones into his matter-converting stomach.

Ves looked at Lucky with a crooked gaze. "Are you alright in your head?"

Lucky ate minerals and excreted gems. If Lucky happened to eat a crystal, would that be considering eating his own...

Thankfully, his cat showed no signs of being aware of what his owner thought. Lucky opened his maw again and gulped the stacks of materials.

"Uhh, Lucky. What are you doing?"

His cat disregarded his transmissions and continued to eat the vault room bare. With a satisfied squint in his eyes, Lucky flew up from the crystal palace and passed through the portal before flying back to Ves. His cat hacked and coughed a little and dropped only a couple hexagonal blocks.

The pinprick-sized materials fell onto his palm. They seemed so tiny that Ves would easily loose track of them if he dropped them onto the ground.

Ves stared at Lucky with a scornful gaze. "You could have left a bit more for me."

"Meow."

Lucky started grooming his body as if Ves didn't exist.

"Forget about it."

Ves retrieved a container on his toolbelt and deposited the remaining blocks before returning his attention to the crystal palace.

He waited until the portal winked shut before opening it again by shooting the exact same sequence. After a lot of nagging, Ves managed to get his lazy cat to return to the crystal palace again and finish his excavation of the abandoned structure.

This time, Lucky failed to uncover anything of value. They hadn't found any books, resources or machines that Ves could use to uncover any benefits.

Overall, besides the vault, the crystal palace contained nothing of value. It was another sign that pointed towards a hasty evacuation.

"Even the aliens that inhabited the crystal palace had to leave in a hurry. Why else leave their vault filled with valuable materials?"

The aliens evidently hadn't been able to empty the vault in time before they had to flee. A vault the crystal builders considered to be almost impregnable turned out to be fairly tedious for Lucky to break into.

It sure felt good to be the giant this time.

"Well, let's try again this time."

Ves took a brief break before he resumed his random activation of the runes. The crystal spires kept being roused and they always attempted to shoot down Ves and Lucky without fail. The ground became so charred and cratered that Ves had to keep moving in order to maintain a stable footing.

Hundreds of combinations passed by without a diverging result. The aliens really hadn't programmed many destinations in their portal system. Ves wished he could stay here for years and try out each and every combination, but his obligations to the Republic pushed him to cut this trip short.

"The Barracuda is currently hiding in another part of the Joe System. She's scheduled to fly back to my asteroid and check in with me after three more days."

That meant that Ves had to return to the Joe System before then if he wished to avoid a panic among his crew. His disappearance and all of the recent turbulence in the surrounding asteroids could lead to alarming conclusions that would be hard to explain.

Ves practically shot the runes on autopilot while his mind drifted off. He continued to refine his theories on Spirituality. He came up with a lot of interesting questions that needed to be answered.

"What if I can induce spirituality into a mech pilot? Can I turn Melkor into an expert pilot?"

With an expert pilot leading the Avatars of Myth, Ves would have no more concerns about his safety. The power of an expert pilot vastly outpaced their lesser counterparts if paired with a suitable mech.

Ves frowned a bit at that last detail. "Even if I can turn Melkor into an expert pilot, I can't pair him up with a mech that can bring out his strengths. I still have a short way to go before I can advance to a Journeyman Mech Designer."

Still, now that he gained a rudimentary grip on spirituality, he shouldn't encounter any obstacles in his next advancement.

The crystal city abruptly responded differently after Ves shot fifteen different runes for the umpteenth time. The spirals channeled their energies into another portal.

"It's about time, you stupid city! Bring me close to something good this time!"

The portal actually emerged in some kind of peaceful garden estate. The alien aesthetics conformed to an entirely different standard. The crystal city loved to utilize spirals while the crystal palace incorporated a lot of hexagons.

The garden didn't make use of any geometric shapes. Instead, the crystals looked like they'd been dug out of the ground. They took on rough and natural shapes, exactly like the natural unprocessed crystals that anyone could mine from a planet.

Ves called the site a garden due to the abundance of native indigenous flora. Weirdly enough, the plant-like growths looked like they'd been crossed with animals. Their surface was dotted with purple flesh that rhythmically moved according to an unknown pattern. They intertwined the purple crystal houses and structures as if they had married the ruins.

"This might be dangerous."

Ves hesitated on whether he should send out Lucky. The growths creeped him out, but he smelled the whiff of treasure inside the houses.

"The alien who lived here must be very powerful."

The crystal city wouldn't have programmed a portal to this destination if someone on average lived in this garden. It would have been too much of a waste if the portals led to aliens holding statuses equivalent to gardeners or plumbers.

The more he thought about it, the more Ves hungered to crack open those abandoned houses.

He decided to shoot the growths first and see what happened. He extended the Amastendira and aimed at one of the largest purple growth.

He shot it with a low-powered beam.

The growth immediately went wild. Its tentacle-leafed branches flailed in every direction as they tried to smack the source that threatened it. One of the branches reached the portal and smacked it from the sides.

The branch parted in half. The tip of the branch fell away while the rest of the growth pulled back its branches in fear. Getting one of its limbs cut off resulted in a lot more damage than being hit by a laser.

In fact, the growth hadn't sustained any damage from the low-powered laser beam at all!

Could the aliens have cultivated the growths with their crystals? How could they be immune to lasers?

"If a laser doesn't, what about a cat?"

Ves sent out Lucky through the portal and ordered him to slice apart the growths. His cat did so reluctantly. Evidently, the growths didn't look very appetizing to the pet.

The sheer disparity in size and power had turned the hybrid growth into shredded plantmeat. This time, they uncovered something surprising underneath the growth.

They found the corpse of an alien.

Chapter 352

The aliens that built the crystal ruins always fascinated Ves. Through his continued proximity to the crystal city, he imagined an increasingly detailed picture of their race.

The crystal builders very likely evolved from a terrestrial planet not too divergent from the terran standard. This meant they likely looked like organisms from the terran animal kingdom. Throughout the galaxy, nature often led to the same solutions to the same problems. That was also why humanoid-looking aliens were remarkably common in the galaxy.

Some radical scientists even believed that some outside force had artificially inflated the prevalence of sexually dimorphic humanoids with two arms, two legs and a head. Of course, no one believed them. The most predominant theory was that the shift from walking on four limbs to walking on two limbs freed up the forelimbs for the usage of tools, which subsequently led to the birth of civilization.

These kinds of humanoid aliens made up a substantial amount of species in the galaxy.

The crystal builders happened to be a variant of the standard humanoid form. As Ves peered over the remarkably preserved corpse through the portal, he noted that it was as small as he imagined.

The tiny corpse possessed a weird face with cavities all around its uneven ball-like shape. Ves couldn't figure out which senses corresponded with any of the cavities. One hole might turn out to be the mouth while the other could be an ear.

Its torso possessed a natural hunch, which meant the alien likely walked around while holding a naturally bent posture akin to primates. Nevertheless, their arms were remarkably short and stubby even for their stature, as if they had atrophied through long generations of neglect. Their legs looked lean and normal, with much wider soles and more bend into them in order to stabilize their hunched posture.

"They look like little puppets."

Another amusing thought sprang into his mind. He imagined a kid playing around with living crystal builders. The kid grabbed two of them with each hand and smashed them against each other, not caring at all how much he hurt the aliens.

Ves shook his head. He couldn't help but belittle these tiny aliens despite their impressive technological achievements. It was human instinct to treat any creature smaller than themselves as toys or pets.

Such assumptions could be dangerously negligent, as some species of small aliens possessed a lot of might.

"Lucky, don't eat the corpse. Bring it back to me!"

Fortunately, Lucky appeared to obey him without any fudging this time. As a gem cat, his favorite food consisted of mundane and exotic minerals. Actual flesh and blood hardly whetted his appetite. Lucky carefully grasped the corpse with his maw and flew back through the portal before depositing it onto his outstretched gauntlet.

"Curious."

Ves had no idea how much time had passed since the alien had died, but it must have been millions of years at the very least. Why hadn't it decomposed?

Ves whipped up his trusty Vulcaneye and meticulously scanned the alien.

He quickly found out why the corpse hadn't broken down all these years. The alien had actually replaced his flesh with a flexible crystal substance. Certain cavities within the body must have hosted the brains and other vitally important organs. They had long been broken down into dust, leaving only an empty shell behind.

"Even for the crystal builders, this must be an extravagant procedure."

He imagined this alien once held a very high status among his race. He might even be the master of the crystal garden.

While Ves would never in a million years wish to replace his body with a mechanical equivalent, he still found this corpse to be of utmost importance. It was a potential treasure in the eyes of those who pursued immortality through mechanizing their bodily functions.

The supple, flexible crystals that bent when he lightly squeezed them with his gauntlet also held a lot of value. If Ves could derive its composition and reproduce it in his labs, he might be able to invent a new substance that would be ideal in armoring the joints and other parts of a mech that needed flexibility.

"It's likely to be extraordinarily expensive."

From what Ves could gather from the readings of his Vulcaneye, the exotics used in the flexible crystal exceeded the ones used in the solid crystal ruins. Thus, any attempt to derive some value out of the flexible crystal could only be put off until his career had advanced.

Ves put away the crystal builder's corpse and ordered Lucky to dig up the crystal garden for any other treasures.

The portal opened and closed several times. For safety's sake, Ves always called back Lucky to his side of the portal before it closed. Although the crystal city's portal generator worked fine so far, Ves would be a fool to assume that ancient alien technology worked flawlessly after countless eons of neglect.

The crystal garden suffered a very different outcome from the crystal city and the crystal palace. The aliens abandoned the latter two, but the former still held a single powerful occupant. Perhaps a retinue of servants and bodyguards had accompanied the crystal cyborg to their deaths, but nothing of their existence remained in the ruined garden.

As Lucky dug out the uneven crystal structures in the garden, Ves studied the sample of the plantmeat that Lucky had also brought back. The Vulcaneye read out a bunch of data that only exobiologists would understand.

All he knew for certain was that it was actually still alive and that it possessed both plant-like and flesh-like traits. Considering that it had grown over the crystal garden and survived for who knew how long, Ves suspected that it might be some kind of bioweapon.

"A clash between two different alien civilizations perhaps?"

Besides the sample of plantmeat, Ves hadn't found any traces of the threat the crystal builders faced. All of their history was lost to time, and only their most enduring creations remained to prove their existence. So many races rose and fell in the galaxy that Ves hardly shed a tear to the passing of another race.

Humanity was a practical race. They only cared about the benefits. Most of the time, that meant exterminating any aliens they came across and looting the best parts of their technology for humanity's own use.

Ves merely thought of himself as someone who followed that trend as he instructed Lucky to crack open the crystal structures, which held a lot of cultural significance.

The crystal structures of the garden contained a lot more furniture, but none of them interested Ves. It wasn't until Lucky dug into the basement levels of the largest crystal structure that he managed to come across something remarkable.

It was a circular plate the size of his palm. To the aliens, it must have been a large table or piece of art. To Ves, its shape hardly roused his interest. Instead, he focused on the tiny crystals embedded onto its surface.

"Is that the galaxy?"

The embedded crystals on the table depicted the Milky Way Galaxy in a very accurate depiction. It hardly differed from the modern appearance of the galaxy. Ves could actually use the differences between the two to date the table's construction, though he wasn't particularly interested in doing so.

What Ves focused on instead was that the map highlighted a couple of stars with crystals of different colors. They were so small that Ves had to magnify his helmet's visor in order to see them clearly. He realized that the outermost one corresponded to the location of the Komodo StarSector.

"That should stand for this planet or where is the Joe System."

The other miniscule gems spread out over the rest of the Milky Way Galaxy, though most of the colored gems had been affixed in roughly the same 'slice' of the galaxy. This likely meant that the crystal builder's civilization had stretched from the galactic center to the galactic rim!

"Had they once been the dominant race of the galaxy as well?"

The significance of these ruins went up if that happened to be true. Had those portals stretched over thousands of light-years? Was the crystal garden actually located in the galactic center?

That would be a mind-blowing fact if that was true!

Sweat started to trickle down his back as Ves realized the implications of his discoveries. Perhaps he misinterpreted the map, or perhaps the crystal builders liked to exaggerate their accomplishments, but Ves became more determined than ever to keep this secret to himself. He ordered Lucky to retrieve the table.

The crystal garden hadn't turned up any other treasures. Lucky dug up a lot of furniture, but in his eyes it might as well be junk. Still, the table potentially held a lot of value, because when Ves scanned it with the Vulcaneye, he found out that it held a dense amount of circuits.

He intended to decipher their contents later once his abilities progressed.

"Well, that's two ruins down. Hopefully, there's more."

The galaxy map fostered some hope in Ves. It contained a score of colored gems, and Ves hoped that they corresponded to all of the destinations of the portal generator. As long as he played the lottery long enough, he should eventually be able to open a portal to all of those locations.

"Sadly, I'm running out of time." He sighed.

Much of the value derived from these ruins consisted of things that weren't immediately useful to him. He would have to improve his knowledge base by a substantial amount and put in a lot of research before he could profit from his gains.

A potentially massive payoff twenty or so years from now wasn't very useful compared to what he could earn when he went back to designing mechs.

"I'm a mech designer. I design mechs. Researching alien remnants is only useful if it helps me build better mechs."

It only made sense for him to moonlight as a treasure hunter so long as it benefited his designs. If he could readily decipher the crystal builder's technology, then he didn't mind being stranded here for years, although he would likely be forced to subsist on clawed worm meat.

His face crinkled into a disgusted expression. "No thanks."

Over the next two days, Ves resumed his endless lottery draw. He continued to shoot the alien rune monuments like a monkey banging at a keyboard.

If the monkey continued to type a random mash of letters, he'd eventually be able to reproduce an exact copy of Old Earth's classics.

Ves indeed felt like a monkey as he continued to persist in this monotonous task with hardly any rest. He forcibly kept himself awake as sleep would eat a precious amount of time that he could have used to gamble for another successful combination.

His luck turned out to be awful as Ves failed to hit a successful combination in the remaining amount of time. Every single time he hit a different combination of fifteen runes, the crystal spires would shoot out their light beams at him without fail.

"Seems like I won't be harvesting anymore harvests this time." He sighed at the end of his time limit.

His mind had practically become fossilized at the excruciatingly boring routine. Even Lucky hadn't bothered to do anything but sleep at the same spot. Even if a light beam passed through his intangible body, the disturbance wasn't enough to wake him out of his rest.

Ves was ready to go home.

He retrieved the alloy key monument and wondered why the crystal builders had used metals instead of crystals. He also wondered why they made it relatively easy to open a portal to the location of this monument.

"Will it actually be able to bring me back home, or is it some kind of trap?"

No matter the truth, Ves owed it to himself to try the combination. He had already fixated on the runes in question and began to shoot at them in the order depicted by the keys. He chose to read out the runes from left to right and top to bottom.

A bunch of light beams hit him right through the head.

"Okay then. These aliens aren't fans of reading from left to right."

Chapter 353

Ves employed a number of different orders, but it hadn't worked. Even if he started from right to left, the crystal city treated him like he was an intruder.

Not willing to give up, Ves began to employ more creative methods of reading out the runes. After more than a score of different combinations, he finally achieved a different result. This time, he started from the center, and radiated outwards in a counterclockwise circle.

The crystal spirals began to focus their energies upwards and generated another portal.

This time, he came across a very welcome sight. A familiar asteroid with a very familiar cave beckoned him back home.

"Yes! That should lead back to the Joe System!"

His exuberance quickly died down once he noticed the portal hadn't grown wider than his head. Same as the other portals, the current one only allowed someone like Lucky to pass through.

"These stupid midgets!"

How would he be able to squeeze through this tiny portal?!

The problem caught him in his throat. He let the portal expire while he furiously churned his mind for a solution for his problem. How could he make the portal large enough to fit his body?

"Wait a minute. What about my semi-corporeality?"

Even if he passed through the portal, if he remained a ghost, it was nothing different than being dead. Imagining himself as a specter who haunted people for their energies scared him to death!

"This son isn't going to follow in his mother's footsteps!"

In order to stave off a panic, Ves forced himself to think in a logical manner. "First I should break down the problem."

He currently had to achieve two essential goals. The first one should be to regain his corporeal state and the second one was to find a way to return to the asteroid in the Joe System.

Both problems presented seemingly insurmountable obstacles to Ves. He had no clue how to go about the first problem while the second problem was within reach if only he could master the crystal city's technology.

Ves looked at himself and his somewhat transparent body. He couldn't pick up any object or interact with this alien world in his current state. The botched teleportation had turned him into some kind of energy being that existed in a higher dimension. It was already remarkable enough that he hadn't been torn to pieces or ended up into a dimension of nihility.

His eyes happened to have gazed over at Lucky, who had woken up after some time. His cat currently played with some rocks on the light-burned ground. Lucky's paws glowed with spirituality as he effortlessly crossed the line between tangibility and intangibility.

"Lucky isn't the only one with spirituality here."

Ever since his last eureka moment, the System had updated his Status to reflect his current strengths. It explicitly added Spirituality to his Attribute tab. Although a score of 0.4 looked pathetic, it was already better than most other humans.

"Spirituality and semi-corporeality are related. One should be able to affect the other."

Could he manipulate his intangible state into a solid state? And could he go back to being a ghost?

He began to speculate that energy beings might be holding their intangible bodies using spirituality. It might also even be the reason why Ves and Lucky had survived the initial teleportation process.

If they hadn't possessed this special quality, they might have been phased out of existence!

"This is frightening!"

The thought that he unknowingly dodged an unfortunate fate did not help with calming his mind. His thoughts also spun into several tangents. He recalled the energy beings he encountered before, from the massive devourers to his mother's ghost.

"Is she truly even dead?"

A mix of emotions pressed upon his heart. Ves did not dare continue to follow this train of thought and centered his mind back to his own state.

Right now, he strongly believed he should be able to exert some control over his intangible body.

"Energy beings hold themselves together with their thoughts rather than their flesh. Their flesh doesn't exist in this state. It's all in the mind."

He believed if he brainwashed himself into believing that he was a dog, his intangible body would turn into a dog as well. Not that he had any interest in trying out this particular experiment.

"Let's start with something simple."

His transformation hadn't encompassed his body alone. His hazard suit and his gear had also transformed along with him. This provided him with a convenient way to test his latest thoughts. He retrieved a compact nutrient bar from his toolbelt and stared at it with the same intensity as when he designed a mech.

"Turn solid. Turn solid. Turn solid."

He repeated the same mantra over and over again. He knew that as a fairly logical person, he would have a lot of trouble trying to trick his mind into believing falsehoods. The best method he came up with was to think of nothing else but the same set of words. Essentially, he tried to override his conscious thoughts with a faulty statement so that it had the chance to become true.

It took more than ten minutes for something to go into effect. The nutrient bar glowed before losing its opacity.

It quickly fell between his intangible fingers.

"It worked!"

His thoughts had hit the mark! Spirituality formed the core of manipulating an intangible object.

Ves gazed down at the nutrient bar that had returned to the material dimensions and waited for something to happen. More than fifteen minutes went by until Ves tentatively became assured that the nutrient bar wouldn't return to its intangible state on its own.

He saw hope now.

Now that he confirmed his train of thought and proved that he possessed the same capabilities as Lucky, Ves tried to perform a bolder experiment.

He wanted to turn his own body back to solid.

However, he stopped his experiment before he began. What if he couldn't reverse the process? That wasn't an issue if he returned to the Joe System, but as long as he stayed on this unknown planet, that would be the death knell for him. By forsaking his special state, he lost any chance of squeezing through the tiny portal.

"I can figure this out later. First, I have to find out if I can manipulate my own size."

He believed that if he could turn his body from a ghost back to normal, that it should also be possible to change the shape of his ghost form.

This attempt took a lot longer to produce a result. Ves patiently wished for his body to grow smaller without fail. It was a lot harder to do so because humans weren't supposed to be so small. It went against everything he learned from birth.

Still, as long as he brainwashed himself long enough, he was able to accomplish the impossible. His body eventually flickered before growing smaller and smaller. Lucky stopped playing with his rocks and stared at the shrinking Ves with alarm.

Was his owner trying to turn into a cat?!

"It worked!"

He succeeded in shrinking his body to the size of a doll, but it came at a heavy burden. Almost all his concentration had been allocated to believing the lie he told to himself. If he became distracted in any way, he might not be able to hold his current state.

"It's time to go, Lucky!"

Ves wanted to leave this barren place and return home. He retrieved his miniaturized Amastendira and shot at the correct sequence of runes. Despite its shrunken state, the Amastendira's output hadn't diminished at all.

When the crystal city generated the portal back to the Joe System, Ves didn't hesitate and flew up to the portal over the crystal city. Lucky followed behind him with a fascinated gaze. The cat couldn't get used to seeing a human of this size.

The downside of having shrinked himself was that it took a bit longer than he thought to traverse the distance. Unlike the Amastendira, his hazard suit's output had scaled according to its size. Ves felt as if he tried to fly out of the atmosphere of a habitable planet. It took an agonizingly long time before he reached the portal.

"Hurry up! The portal will almost close!"

Ves dove through the portal just as Lucky went through as well. The portal winked out twenty seconds later but Ves had already sprawled himself against the asteroid. His intangible form had also returned to its normal size.

"I'm back! Haha!" He celebrated even as fatigue swept over him. The change in stature had really expended an enormous amount of mental energy. Ves had to take a long time before he could contemplate his next problem.

Right now, he remains stuck as a ghost. If he ever wanted to return to normal, he had to find a method to turn his body back to solid.

"It shouldn't be too different from turning that nutrient bar back to solid."

He employed the same method of hypnotizing himself into believing his body was corporeal. It actually went a lot easier than he thought, because he essentially didn't lie to himself. He always possessed a fully material body. He just had to reinforce this truth in order to effect a change.

"My body and gear are solid. My body and gear are solid. My body and gear are solid."

The only issue that complicated his efforts was that he also wanted to turn his gear into solid at the same time. It wouldn't do for him to turn his body back to normal, only to die in vacuum as his hazard suit still remained intangible.

Eventually, he succeeded. His body along with his hazard suit and other possessions suddenly blinked back to a solid form. Ves had succeeded in turning back to normal!

Despite his success, he still remained cautious and stood still while he waited for his body to flicker back into ghost form.

One minute. FIve minutes. Fifteen minutes. Thirty minutes.

Only after one full hour did Ves become assured that his transformation had been permanent. He sighed in relief and let down his guard. Hopefully nothing strange will happen in the next couple of days.

Meanwhile, Lucky played and floated around the asteroid as if Ves had nothing to do with him. The cat stubbornly remained intangible.

"Lucky! Turn back to normal!"

Lucky pointedly turned his butt at Ves and continued to play with the rocks that had been shaken loose from the asteroid. Ves sighed to himself and gave up trying to persuade his pet to stop fooling around.

Lucky's intangible state didn't come with any downsides as far as he knew.

Ves looked back to the cave entrance and thought about the graser rifle design he had to get back to. It was such a long time ago since he last worked on it that he forgot about some of the details.

"With the insights I've learned from the crystal ruins, I should be able to design a much better rifle."

Even without applying any of the alien innovations, Ves still gained a lot from the Skills and Sub-Skills he acquired from the Skill Tree. They corresponded closely with the inner workings of a laser weapon, and Ves immediately thought of a number of ways to enhance his old design.

The difference between the old design and the improved one would be like night and day. When Ves returned to the cave and studied the design, he shook his head.

"It's so simplistic."

The design became so rudimentary in his eyes that he quickly overhauled the entire schematic. He couldn't bear to fabricate the old design as it possessed a large number of flaws that grated his perfectionist sensibilities.

A mech designer should have more pride in his work!

He vastly improved the graser rifle design in several areas, increasing its endurance while cutting down its weight. It would be able to output a lot more power as well while generating a bit less heat. Its capabilities more closely matched the graser rifle design outlined in the research notes.

Chapter 354

Before Ves could finish the design on his reimagined graser rifle, the Barracuda arrived at his asteroid. Captain Silvestra came as scheduled, but this time she brought a disconcerting message to Ves.

"Did something happen here?" She asked as soon as she established a communication channel with Ves.

Ves knew that the initial teleportation process had been too conspicuous to hide. "An accident happened with some alien relics that had been laying around here."

"I see." Silvestra sounded like she wanted to know more, but her employer had been acting secretly all this while. She refrained from questioning him more. "There's a problem. Whatever happened here has pinged all of our sensors, and if we can pick it up, so can the monitoring equipment scattered all over this star system."

"Has anyone arrived yet?"

"As far as we know, no one has transitioned into the system as of yet, but that might change in the next couple of days. The only reason why a ship hasn't arrived yet is because the Joe System is based around a red dwarf."

The smaller and more pathetic the star, the harder it was to navigate towards it in FTL. Only a couple of exceptions like port systems disregarded this rule.

Ves mentally calculated how much work he had to do before he finished his errand. "I won't be staying here for long. Return the Barracuda to her hideout and come back in seventy-two hours. I'll be ready to pack up and go home by then."

Although Captain Silvestra revealed some misgivings, Ves did not wish to go through the trouble of delaying the completion of his mission. It would be a hassle to find some other desolated star system for him to resume his work in peace.

Once his corvette turned around and left Ves alone on his rock, he thought about his timetable for the next three days.

"It's going to be tight." His face pinched up. "Yet I'm going to have to wrap up this design."

In truth, he set a hard deadline for himself so he wouldn't keep adding more features on his graser rifle. It had already evolved from a rudimentary proof of concept into a formidable weapon of radioactive destruction.

In designing the weapon, he had become much more proficient and familiar with working around laser weapons. The difference between before he embarked to the Joe System and after he returned from the crystal city couldn't be more stark.

His proficiency with regards to light, lasers and crystals had reached an unprecedented level to him. His gains regarding these fields almost rivaled his recent gains in the field of spirituality.

"It's like learning to run before learning to walk. It's the wrong order, but it makes learning how to walk a trivial problem."

After finishing this side trip, Ves gained a lot of confidence in being able to design a workable laser rifle. He also planned to apply some of his preliminary research gains from his studies of the alien remains. This would certainly push the quality of his laser rifle closer to those wielded by mainstream mechs.

In the next two days, he raced to finalize his design. He stopped adding any major features but instead optimized the graser rifle's existing configuration. Ves caught several major flaws that could have led to a bad outcome this way. He also slightly increased the graser rifle's efficiency by a minor step.

Once he finished his final design work, he stood back and sighed. "For a taboo weapon, it sure doesn't look like it now."

He cut down on the bulk considerably. With his increased proficiency in lasers, he found he didn't have to compensate for his inadequacies with the use of buffers.

"Buffers are a sign of inefficiency. An excessive amount of moderating components only add to the bulk while taking up space for more essential components." Ves remembered from his classes back when he studied at Rittersberg. "Buffers also encourage more sloppiness because there is a higher tolerance for errors."

In short, only those who lacked the confidence to design a good weapon added a lot of buffers. Bigger wasn't always better. This rule especially applied to laser rifles. Their mean appeal to mech pilots was that they were light, slim, accurate and low maintenance.

While his graser rifle design hadn't met all of those criteria, it still functioned as a practical weapon that wouldn't fall apart after receiving a few bumps. Ves possessed a lot of skill in increasing the robustness of everything he designed, so he had spent some extra effort into toughening up the rifle's frame.

Once he beheld the entire design, Ves thought that it deserved a weapon even if he hadn't put his full efforts into designing the rifle. He refused to infuse his Spirituality into the design, but that did not mean it deserved to be nameless.

"Let's call you the Tainted Sun."

The Tainted Sun sounded a bit more poetic than he meant to, but Ves cared little of the opinions of others. He wouldn't publish the weapon to anyone to comment on his naming choice, after all.

After wrapping up his design, he proceeded to his 3D printer and began to fabricate the components. Ves brought a handful of old bots to assist him with the work. The lack of gravity on the asteroid helped a lot with handling some of the heavier materials. He processed them all and churned out rifle part after rifle part.

Despite fabricating the graser rifle for the first time, Ves did not encounter any challenge in this phase. He already completed the hardest portion of this mission. With his ample fabrication abilities, he ensured that each and every part came out well within the tolerances necessary to ensure a tight assembly.

Once he finished fabricating all of the parts, he didn't immediately move to assemble them into a rifle. Instead, he inserted an extra step in his fabrication process by scanning the parts with his Vulcaneye.

"This thing's more useful than scanning alien components."

Now that he bought an expensive gadget, he might as well make the best of it. The multiscanner possessed far more power than the hulking scanning machines back at his workshop. It was able to detect if his parts had come out crooked or if some of their structure contained cracks or faults.

His prudence paid off as his multiscanner detected a minor structural weakness in the casing of the battery. If the graser rifle fired a lot of gamma laser beams in quick succession, the battery might heat up and exacerbate this fault. It could have blown up the battery in the worst case.

"Phew. Good thing I caught this problem in time."

Ves went back to his 3D printer and used some spare materials to fabricate a replacement casing for the battery. Once he finished that chore, he proceeded with the final step of his fabrication process.

While he hadn't brought any assembly machines with him, the zero-G environment along with the bots allowed him to assemble the rifle manually. It likely wouldn't have been possible to do so with mechs as some of their components required a lot of force to budge into place, but the largest component of the rifle consisted of its barrel, which was still manageable for him and his bots to move.

It took less than a day to complete the final assembly. Once the last part clicked into place, Ves felt as if he completed a mighty task.

He created a true forbidden weapon.

The thought that he outright flaunted the rules that kept humanity from destroying themselves from within had sunk in deep at that moment. His mentality experienced a subtle change. It was as if the Tainted Sun had marked his soul.

The mark saddled him with an inescapable guilt. His fear of the MTA increased. He would always step on his toes in their presence for fear of being found out.

Yet this ordeal also liberated him from the shackles imposed by human society. He had already stepped out of the box that the MTA had painstakingly constructed around him. From this point on, his perspective on mech design encompassed unconventional solutions.

If Ves had to break a rule to achieve a goal, then he wouldn't hesitate as long as he could get away with it. The important part was the latter half. Everything could come crashing down as long as a single person found out and revealed his misdeeds to the public.

"I have to destroy the evidence."

That included the graser rifle as well as the 3D printer, the terminal and the remaining spare parts. None of them should exist in this galaxy.

Ves retrieved his Amastendira and was about to fire at them before reconsidering. "It's not safe to destroy them with my laser pistol. It also won't disintegrate the remains. Who knows if someone can reconstruct what I've just created from the slag that's left behind."

In addition, he felt that melting the weapon down with his Amastendira was a disgraceful fate for a weapon that he personally brought into reality. He couldn't bring himself to shoot his own creation.

He quickly came up with an alternative plan and proceeded to fabricate a composite fabric with sensor-blocking properties before wrapping it up around the only copy of the Tainted Sun. After that, he packed up his workplace and waited for the scheduled arrival of the Barracuda.

In the meantime, he checked up on Lucky. Ves walked outside the cave and spotted Lucky floating around with a handful of rocks orbiting his form. Lucky resembled a sage as he expertly manipulated the rocks with his gravity manipulation. Sometimes, the rocks passed straight through his form, indicating that Lucky hadn't bothered to turn his body back to normal.

Ves sighed at his pet. "Lucky, it's time to stop fooling around. Who knows if its safe for your to remain in that state!"

Lucky briefly glanced at his owner before turning back to his rocks. Ever since Ves turned back to solid, Lucky acted like he shouldn't have to listen to Ves anymore. After all, what could he do?

Ves looked at his gauntlets and willed them with spirituality. After five minutes of concentration, he activated his hazard suit's antigrav modules and flew towards Lucky. He swiped his gauntlets towards his cat, only for them to pass straight through his target and knock some rocks aside.

The interruption pissed Lucky off. He yowled at Ves through the communication channel and darted off to the other side of the asteroid.

"Damn cat."

Just like any other major Attribute, Spirituality could be applied in many different ways. His own Spirituality leaned towards observation and the creation of the imaginary. He possessed little experience in other areas such as manipulating semi-corporeality. Lucky was a lot stronger in this area.

Both Lucky and the System benefited hugely from the Glowing Planet. Lucky gorged himself with a priceless amount of Rorach's Bone while the System absorbed the mysterious jewel hidden within the skull of a giant humanoid.

While these fantastic exotics possessed remarkable effects, Ves believed their main value lay in their ability to strengthen the spirituality of an artificial life form like Lucky and the System.

He had to remind himself that they started off as machines. Through accompanying him in his career, they slowly gained the opportunity to become more lifelike. What was the goal of the System? Where did Lucky originally come from, and who designed him in the first place?

"Every machine has its creator. They are all meant to serve a purpose."

The Amastendira came with a brief but informative back story. Its origin story made it clear that the System didn't invent its items out of nowhere. Almost every item that Ves could obtain from the Store or the Lottery already existed in this reality.

Anyone in the galaxy could potentially gather all of these valuable items. Yet that would never happen. Every faction had their secrets. No one wished to expose their trump cards and the secrets to their success.

The true value in the System lay in its ability to gather these wondrous inventions regardless of their ownership and offer them to its user. It directly converged the collective strength of humanity into a single interface.

"How scary."

Some organizations must have mastered the production of attribute candies, while another may have unlocked the secret to creating self-resonating gems.

However, despite the System's all-encompassing nature, it very much explicitly lacked things related to Spirituality. This meant that a study into this field had never become systematic enough to be passed around from generation to generation.

This should be his own unique strength.

Chapter 355

The Barracuda quietly traversed the asteroid cloud and reached Ves after a couple of hours. The corvette turned around and positioned her rear cargo hatch next to the cave. A number of bots began to retrieve everything from the cave, including the thickly-wrapped Tainted Sun.

Ves kept an eye on his freshly fabricated graser rifle. He was unwilling to let it out of his sight for a single second. Even though he trusted the women he hired to crew the Barracuda, he couldn't account for their curiosity. It was better to forestall any problems by maintaining his vigilance.

A handful of crew members such as Jenn and Ushra helped with securing the cargo. While they locked the containers, they noticed Lucky flying straight through solid matter as if it didn't exist.

"What the?!"

"Intruder alert!"

"Hold on, false alarm girls!" Ves quickly interposed when they attempted to draw their pistols. "That's still Lucky. He's just a little special now."

He quickly came up with a sloppy excuse for Lucky's current state. He spun a tall tale about obtaining a special exotic during the Glowing Planet campaign. Since he was already lying about it, he conveniently added that the whole reason for this trip was to figure out a way to incorporate this mysterious material into Lucky.

"So you turned your mechanical pet into an energy being this way?" Ushra replied in a baffled tone. As the ship's engineer, she possessed a lot more expertise in technical matters, so she wouldn't be fooled so easily. "This is amazing. How did you do it?"

"Trade secret." Ves simply replied.

He figured that Ushra still held some reservations, but he didn't need to say anything more. What mattered was that Ves could use the same excuse to anyone else and they wouldn't be able to refute it to his face. After all, the Glowing Planet yielded a bewildering variety of exotics.

Once the crew finished storing all of the goods, the Barracuda turned to head to the edge of the system. Just before she could fire up her thrusters, Ves called a halt.

"What is it you want, sir?" Captain Silvestra asked as she appeared in the cargo bay as a projection.

"Don't leave the Joe System yet. Head towards the red dwarf in the center of the system. Get as close to it as possible without damaging the ship. I want to dump a bunch of cargo into the sun."

The woman looked oddly at Ves before she acknowledged his order. Her projection winked out, leaving Ves alone in the cargo bay. Lucky had already passed through the upper deck and played elsewhere.

Since the asteroid with the cave already orbited fairly close to the sun, it didn't take too long to approach the red dwarf. The corvette still took more than half a day to navigate between the asteroids, though the asteroid cloud had become increasingly sparse the closer they neared the sun.

Nowadays, suns serve as the ultimate garbage dumps. It only took a brief trip close to the scorching sun at the center of any star system to dump all manner of garbage that needed to disappear.

However, with the current advances in recycling used materials, only low value bulk materials got dumped this way. The cost of transforming worthless junk into usable materials exceeded the cost of shipping them straight into the sun.

The only reason why someone went through the trouble of dumping valuable materials in the sun was if they had something to hide. Ves did not hide his intention to the crew, but he misdirected them by hinting that Ves had employed a very unique procedure on his cat instead of violating a taboo.

As the Barracuda neared the sun, she started encountering some issues. Even though red dwarfs was one of the weakest suns in the galaxy, it still radiated enough energy to scorch a planet as long as it received all of the energy it pumped out in a single second. Proximity to any star entailed a lot of risks.

Captain Silvestra's projection returned to the cargo bay. "Sir, we've almost reached the threshold. Do you wish to begin the dumping process?"

Even Ves could feel the heat creeping into the cargo bay. He nodded. "Let's proceed as soon as we get the cargo."

Ves waited for the Barracuda to turn around. She still continued her approach towards the center of the star system with the momentum she had built up, but this time she pointed the stern towards the sun.

Once she finished her maneuver, Ves began to remove the collars and safeties preventing the cargo from being shaken around in the event of a change in momentum. After that, he quickly left the cargo bay and climbed the decks until he reached the bridge.

"Sir." Silvestra tipped her hat at him when he sat in the observer's seat. "Shall we begin the dumping process?"

"Go ahead." Then Ves remembered something crucial. "Ah, wait a bit. Can you check where Lucky is hanging out right now? I don't want him to get sucked out of the cargo bay."

A projection appeared which displayed Lucky's current location. Right now, his lazy cat had broken into the lab and raided some of the spare materials he locked up in the cabinets. Bits and pieces of minerals lay strewn over the deck next to his dozing form.

Ves palmed his face. "Urgh. Even my pet is taking up after my thieving mother."

"What was that, sir?"

"Oh nothing. Please check one more time that nothing is out of place in the cargo bay. After that, you may proceed with dumping the entire cargo bay."

"The entire cargo bay? Including the 3D printer?"

"Including the printer."

He'd been ready to say goodbye to his first 3D printer ever since he reconstructed Dortmund. The capabilities of this generic second-hand model couldn't catch up with his ambitions anymore. Even as a spare device that could be used to fabricate replacement parts, its imprecise mechanisms and terrible output prevented it from remaining relevant to the LMC.

He might as well throw it away in that case.

Ordinarily, Ves would have sought to sell it to a desperate mech designer who wasn't too picky about buying third-hand goods, but now that he used it to fabricate the Tainted Sun, he couldn't risk letting someone else get their hands on it. Even if Ves had removed every possible bug and recording routine, he wasn't confident enough he caught everything.

Thus, Ves would rather miss out on the fifty to hundred million credits that he could have earned if he sold it on.

"Goodbye, old companion."

The printer deserved better. It had accompanied him in his first steps on his road to becoming a mech designer. He fabricated the Marc Antony Mark I and II with this machine. It was a piece of company history that would certainly become a priceless artifact if he became someone influential a couple of decades from now.

Yet his paranoia forced him to put aside his sentiments and prioritize his safety. The rest of the galaxy couldn't find out about the Tainted Sun. It would destroy his career and ruin the Larkinson name in the process.

The Barracuda used its reverse thrusters to continue accelerating towards the sun. Then, the captain ordered the cargo bay hatch to be opened. A bit of air had been left inside the bay, which leaked out into space in an instant. The decompression caused some of the cargo to begin moving towards the edge.

Simultaneously, the antigrav modules in the cargo bay removed the artificial gravity that kept the cargo in place. They then exerted a horizontal repelling force on the cargo, pushing them away from the ship at a moderate speed.

Once everything inside left through the hatch, the Barracuda ceased to power her reverse thrusters and began to fire up her main thrusters again. This slowly halted the Barracuda's descent into the sun and pushed her back from the threshold.

Even though the antigrav modules in the cargo bay hadn't exerted that much pushing force onto the cargo, the ship had been accelerating towards the sun at a brisk pace. The ejected cargo had inherited this momentum which sent them soaring towards the embrace of the sun. They'd be burning up within the hour.

Ves lamented the waste, but hardly felt pained by the loss. As the Barracuda turned to leave the Joe System, Ves remained at his seat and kept watching the spinning cargo as they slowly neared the furnace of the red dwarf. He only left the bridge once he personally saw them burning up.

"Alright, you can head back to Cloudy Curtain now. Make sure that no one finds out we've been here."

They might have to skulk through the asteroid cloud and make some detours in their route, but Ves could never take enough precautions.

He left the crew to their jobs and left for his stateroom. Once he entered it, he sat behind his terminal but didn't activate it yet. Instead, he held up his comm and activated his Privacy Shield before running the System.

[Congratulations for completing the Upgrade Mission! A mech designer must strive forth and use any means to improve his designs. A mech designer reveres their own abilities and nothing else. Possessing the means to design a special mech but lacking the will to make it into fruition is a sign of weakness. The ultimate mech designer must be free and unrestrained!]

"That's easy for you to say." Ves snorted.

He was glad he finished the mission to the System's satisfaction. Even if it carried a moderate difficulty, Ves was still afraid he had fallen short of the System's standards. Good thing he passed.

[Please stand by.]

"Stand by for what?"

A mass of knowledge suddenly thrust into his mind. His calm and serene mindscape instantly fell into disorder as an incredibly dense amount of knowledge poured into its midst. Ves held back his screams as more knowledge than he could ever imagine assimilated within his mind in the most straightforward method possible.

Ves thought his mind had improved to a point where he wouldn't feel any pain from acquiring a new Skill. He was wrong. The Senior-level Physics he waited so long to acquire was so much more significant than he thought. It carried much of humanity's recent advancements in the field of theoretical physics, with a bias in areas directly related to mechs.

Many of the theories directly or indirectly touched upon the wonders made possible by exotics. Their ability to bend the laws of reality allowed for much more extensive observation and experimentation. This led to many conclusions that shook his conception of reality.

Hundreds, thousands of different opinions happened within seconds of each other.

"The higher dimensions are countless, and they're not as unreachable as I thought!"

"I made so many fundamental mistakes in designing the Tainted Sun. Stupid, stupid, stupid!"

"So that is why the crystal builders are proficient in manipulating light and portals. It's their unique crystals that are at the heart of their technology!"

"I see! This is why those materials are prohibited! They're too dangerous to be circulated. They can annihilate an entire star!"

"So this is how a modern battery works! I understand why they use these materials!"

What was a Senior Mech Designer? As someone who surpassed the level of Journeyman, such a person would have an august status everywhere he went. Even the first-rate superstates respected Seniors due to the wealth of knowledge they earnestly accumulated over many decades.

Ves had to compress all that lifetime of knowledge in a single sitting. It took over twelve hours before the System stopped pouring in a transport's worth of knowledge into his mind. It took a lot more time to digest these gains. Ves only fully mastered one percent of what he gained, and those merely consisted of the easier parts.

"It's going to take a bit longer for me to master this knowledge." He frowned. His face revealed his fatigue. Unlike the last times, his mind simply couldn't handle the profoundness of what he gained. The System did as much as it could to help him digest the materials, but it wasn't a god. "I'm being limited by my mental capacity."

Ves thought about hurrying up the process by ingesting a Transcendence Pill. Without enhancing his Intelligence, it might take months before he could fully utilize his Senior-level Physics.

He thought about how the war went so far and calculated whether he could delay his upcoming design project. He had no doubt the war would heat up in the next couple of months. By then, the MTA would certainly call him up to contribute to the Republic.

Did he have enough time to ingest the Transcendence Pill and complete another original design?

"It's going to be another gamble."

Chapter 356

He decided to go through with the gamble, even though he might not obtain the intended result.

The Transcendence Pill he received from the System as a reward from the Glowing Planet campaign came with a very powerful benefit. It could directly break the attribute limit of any of his mental Attributes.

There were two major problems. One of them was that it hadn't mentioned any way to control the outcome. Ideally, Ves hoped to boost his Intelligence, because it would directly help the speed in which he mastered his new and overwhelming Senior-level Physics Skill.

The other problem related to the amount of time he'd be indisposed. The Pill's description offered a very wide range of time, from just a single day to eighty-eight days of adjustment. In the meantime, Ves would fall into a coma as the Pill did its magic.

"I can't afford to be down for three months. The Bright Republic's situation will certainly deteriorate in that time."

Ves thought about it and figured the main reason it might take so long to unlock his genetic limit. The Pill would be facing an uphill struggle if the person who ingested it possessed a weak foundation.

Most of his mental Attributes scored 1.7 and higher, so Ves had no concerns in that area. However, just to be safe, he spent the last dregs of his DP to round his Attributes out to its current maximum limit. At his state, Ves had no excuse for leaving his Attributes so low.

[Intelligence Attribute Candy]: 1800 DP

[Intelligence Attribute Candy]: 1900 DP

[Creativity Attribute Candy]: 1900 DP

[Concentration Attribute Candy]: 1700 DP

[Concentration Attribute Candy]: 1800 DP

[Concentration Attribute Candy]: 1900 DP

"Too bad the Store doesn't offer any Spirituality candies."

If his conjecture about the source of the Store items was correct, then Ves shouldn't get his hopes up. After all, not a single human in the galaxy possessed a deeper systematic understanding of Spirituality.

The candies worked their magic in his body and Ves could feel his mind grow in minute ways. The boost in strength had not been as large as crossing past 1.0, but it definitely brought other benefits. It appeared the closer a human got to 2.0, the more their mental prowess quickened and became more steady.

"It's actually an increase in stability!"

A small weight had been lifted from his mind, and strange enough, the internal energy cycle within his body had also grown a little lighter. Ves rubbed his stomach and chest with a deep expression.

"So this thing that Dr. Jutland has implanted within me isn't purely a physiological matter. It's strongly related to my mentality. Perhaps it's even directly related to Spirituality."

He always suspected something like that might be true, but he subconsciously dismissed it all of this time because of Dr. Jutland's crazy ravings. His constant rants about the importance of developing the mind over the body sounded crazy back at the time, but now, Ves couldn't help but reconsider his words.

Has the mysterious and rebellious Five Scrolls Compact been on the right track? Why had they fallen out with the CFA and MTA?

A chilling dread ran through his spine. Dr. Jutland appeared to be an outcast of the heretical organization. If the higher ups of the Compact took him a little more seriously, they might have been able to master the phenomenon of Spirituality.

Fortunately, from Jutland's resentment, Ves gathered that the Five Scroll Compact focused most of their efforts on enhancing their physical bodies. They pursued a completely different direction.

"It's not like they can help it. Human science is still biased against things they can't observe."

As long as no one could sense or measure spirituality directly, even the most radical scientists in the Compact possessed no clue.

Still, Ves did not underestimate the ingenuity of the human mind. Like Dr. Jutland, there must be several other hermits and outcasts who might be on the right track, if only coincidentally.

At some point, the secret wouldn't be a secret anymore.

"At least I have a head-start in this field."

The benefit of being a pioneer was that he could reap the benefits first. Ves became more determined to develop his mental Attributes and find a way to grow his Spirituality to even greater heights.

He took the rest of the trip back to Cloudy Curtain to rest his mind. He cleansed his mind of any distractions and attempted to bring it to its peak state.

He shoved aside any concerns about designing a rifleman mech for later. He also halted his attempts to integrate the influx of Physics knowledge.

The Barracuda took a little longer than necessary to return to Cloudy Curtain. Even though she possessed enough capability to hop directly from the Joe System to the Bentheim System, such a straight and obvious trajectory could easily be traced back to Ves.

Thus, Captain Silvestra chose to obfuscate their presence by transitioning to a number of uninhabited star systems before they finally approached Cloudy Curtain without passing through Bentheim.

The monitoring equipment in the Cloudy Curtain System was extremely rudimentary. The captain believed that it wouldn't be able to pinpoint the exact star system the ship had made their final transition.

"Good work, captain." Ves nodded to Silvestra as he stood on the bridge while the corvette made her final descent onto his home planet. "I won't be needing the Barracuda for a couple of months I think, so she should get back to regular duty."

"Understood, sir."

The Barracuda had become something of a status symbol to the executives who needed to commute between Cloudy Curtain and Bentheim. Her sleek appearance and impeccable Coalition pedigree always impressed their business partners.

Once they reached the spaceport, Ves left for his old workshop with his intangible pet in tow. At first, the security escort dispatched by Sanyal-Ablin looked nonplussed at Lucky's casual ability to pass through the plating of the armored shuttle.

"Hahaha, don't mind my pet. He recently received a couple of upgrades." Ves quickly attempted to defuse their suspicions while trying to grab on to his lawless cat. Unfortunately, he utterly failed at grasping onto Lucky as he floated through people and fixtures with no regard.

The journey back to the old workshop therefore became a little tense. Ves had no doubt the security officers would report their sightings back to Sanyal-Ablin's office, which would then pass on the intelligence back to the Konsu Clan.

Ves had made no attempts to hide Lucky's new state. Even if he could get his cat to obey him, the benefits decisively outweighed the risks.

He had done some studies of Lucky's intangible state with the help of his Vulcaneye. It turned out that Lucky had become as elusive as if he entered the field emitted by the Privacy Shield. Although optical sensors could still detect the mechanical cat, many other sensors ceased to work entirely.

This turned Lucky into a great spy and thief. Ves had become well aware of the implications as Lucky had raided the Barracuda's stores of spare materials bare with impunity.

Thinking about his losses prompted Ves to stare at his pet with a vigilant expression. Lucky had better not try to break into the storerooms of the LMC.

"I'm keeping my eye on you."

"Meow?" Lucky responded back, and tried to act cute. He floated down to Ves and partially solidified on his owner's lap. "Meow!"

Ves couldn't help but take the invitation and stroke Lucky's back. He chuckled. He couldn't stay angry at his pet.

A couple of hours later, the armed escort arrived at the outskirts of Freslin. The old workshop looked a little bit less lively since he last visited the place. When Ves exited the shuttle, he met with Carlos who waited on him at the front entrance.

"Carlos, how's it going here?"

"It's largely empty here at the moment. We've already moved most of our operations to the new complex. By the way, you forgot to name it. Everyone's calling it the Complex or the Place. It gets confusing sometimes."

"Let me think about it on the way. First, I want to take a stroll through this workshop one last time."

Before Ves left for the Joe System, he ordered the LMC to pack up and move their operations to the new complex with haste. Even if the construction project hadn't been finished yet, Ves wanted to hurry up with the move because it was already a lot safer to work from there.

As Ves entered the halls, he instantly noticed the lack of furniture and people moving around. Previously, the office areas of the workshop had been packed with workers. Now, their absence left a gaping void that could never be plugged again.

The old workshop already attained a touch of history in its empty halls. Almost everything from the desks to the monitoring equipment had been removed. Only the old cleaning bots still moved within these halls. The old machines had been left behind because the manufacturing complex possessed a better suite of bots.

After glancing at his old personal office, Ves wandered over to the yard, the empty storerooms and the fabrication hall.

The mech technicians had already packed up the Dortmund and the rest of the main production line and moved them away. The absence of all the large machinery had turned the hall into an empty cavern.

"Just think about it." Carlos prompted. "Almost two years ago, you began your business with a single old printer and assembly machine. I doubt you had more than a couple of million credits to your name. Now, your net worth must have ballooned into the billions."

With his enhanced mind, Ves sensed the subtle thread of envy in the voice of his friend. "It's all thanks to my designs. Without my work, the LMC would have never grown so big at this point. As the first person who joined me, I won't mistreat you."

He felt the need to reinforce Carlos' loyalty. Ves casually handed him a bonus of a couple of million credits, but they both knew that such an amount of money wouldn't change anything.

"You've already been more than generous to me, Ves." He responded as he looked at Ves with a despondent expression. "The money is great, but it's the practice and the books that's truly useful for me. I've been studying under you for all this time."

"How far have you come along?"

"Further than when I started. I've even designed some variants of the Blackbeak in my spare time. Would you like to take a look at them?"

"If you wish."

This time, Ves gazed with interest as Carlos transferred some files to his comm. He projected the design schematics and studied them with his full professional attention.

He knew why Carlos opted to design a variant of the newer Blackbeak instead of the older Mark Antony Mark II design. The latter was an extremely complex hybrid knight while the Blackbeak was one of the simplest mech types in existence.

However, just because the Blackbeak appeared relatively simple didn't mean it contained a lot of complexity. Ves incorporated a lot of subtlety and nuances into the Blackbeak. Those who failed to see through these secrets would never be able to trump his original vision.

Ves only took a minute to determine that Carlos had missed the most essential points. His variants all increased the Blackbeak's power at the cost of endurance.

That didn't sound so bad on the surface, but many of the Blackbeak's components specialized in lasting power. To turn that around and force them to perform past their shallow peaks meant that they'd be worn out within months at worst. For a design that Ves intended to last for at least a decade, that was blasphemous.

If that wasn't bad enough, Carlos had also botched the tradeoffs. He traded far too much endurance to squeeze out just a little bit more peak performance out of his variant. If Ves made a casual effort, he could easily double the gains, not that he would ever want to. Carlos opted to pursue a vision that was diametrically opposite to the original intention of the Blackbeak.

As for the X-Factor, Ves generously didn't include that factor in his evaluation. Carlos hadn't been clued into that particular secret anyway.

When Ves wiped away the projection of the design schematic, he turned his eyes towards his friends. "I don't know how to say it, but your work could use a little more maturing."

"That bad, huh?" Carlos replied with a low voice. It was as if he already accepted that he botched his designs. "Can you tell me what I should work on?"

Ves quietly sighed in relief. At least his friend hadn't been in denial and accepted his shortcomings. There was hope for him yet. "Before you design a variant, it helps if you set a vision for it that's compatible with the base model. You can't turn a marathon runner into a sprinter in a single go. Figure out a set of criteria that your variant has to meet that's also not too different from the parameters of the base model."

"Won't that defeat the point of my work? If my variant performs too similar to the original work, what's the point of publishing a variant in the first place?"

"That's not exactly wrong, but it's better to err on the side of caution. Get some practice in first before you begin to deviate further. Try to figure out a way to add a new capability without sacrificing too much performance. For example, the Blackbeak has always been a little bit poor in terms of heat management. If you can come up with a solution with regards to that area, then you can save me a lot of trouble."

Hope sprung in Carlos' eyes. "You can count on me, Ves!"

Chapter 357

In truth, Ves didn't think that Carlos could come up with a solution that the LMC could accept. His friend's foundation was still too lacking, and his talent and learning ability was decidedly average. He would never amount to anything in the mech industry unless he ate a lot of attribute candies.

That put Ves to thought. Would Carlos be able to benefit from the attribute candies as well? If that was true, then Ves might be able to nurture Carlos into a welcome and much-needed assistant.

Right now, the LMC depended too much on Ves to do all of the essential design work. If he could offload some of the more trivial tasks such as designing variants of his own designs to Carlos, then the company might be a lot better off in the long term.

"Carlos." He began. "What do you see yourself doing ten years from now?"

"I see myself working alongside you as always." His friend replied with an aspirational tone. "I know it's going to be difficult catching up with your growth, but I'm a hard worker. I know I can do it. Don't forget that I helped build the LMC to its present height as well. It's my baby as well, so I'll work as hard as I can to make it into an ever greater company!"

This reassured Ves. If the LMC ever grew to the point where it needed to bolster its design capabilities with a team of designers, then Carlos would certainly play an important role. His shallow foundation and average talent could always be amended with the help of the System.

Still, Ves wasn't in a hurry to do so. Besides having a lot of matters on his plate, he also had to figure out a way to prevent exposure.

After finishing his tour of the old workshop, Ves boarded the armored shuttle and flew towards the manufacturing complex. An hour later, they had arrived at the immense site, which looked a lot more finished than before.

Jake waited for him outside the landing pads. "Ves! I hope you'll stick around longer this time!"

"If nothing unexpected happens, then you'll certainly get your wish." Ves chuckled back. "Fill me in on how the LMC is doing these last couple of weeks. Has anything changed?"

"There's a spike in orders. The entire mech industry is getting swamped with customers. Every outfit that has earned a killing in the Glowing Planet is eagerly trying to bolster their capabilities. Some of the smaller gangs that participated in the event have already been robbed and killed by rivals who missed out."

Ves nodded when he heard what had happened. The influx of the nouveau riche had turned the entire Bright Republic on its head. Too many outfits gained an abundance of money, but sustained severe losses as well. They turned into the best kind of targets to vultures looking for an easy score.

"How has the market responded?"

"These newly enriched outfits generally adopt two different buying patterns. The smaller ones with less capabilities are prioritizing delivery speed over quality. They want to take immediate ownership of their purchase and aren't willing to wait for more than a day. Quality doesn't matter too much, so the smaller players of the market with readily available stock are having a field day at this moment."

"That sounds great, but it probably doesn't have anything to do with us. We've never been able to build up an inventory of mechs."

The LMC fabricated mechs as fast as they shipped out, so the news hadn't been relevant to Ves. His company had long grown past the definition of 'small player'.

"That's where the second type of customers come in. These are the big players like the major mercenary corps and the Blood Claws. They've all placed a big batch of orders for our products. The waiting list has practically doubled in the last couple of weeks, and it's only growing longer by the day."

He smiled at that. He had anticipated that this would happen. That was why he agreed to take out a major loan in order to finance an expansion in the company's production capability.

"Are the two new production lines up and running yet?"

"It was shipped a week ago. Chief Cyril took charge and brought them down to the fabrication floor. Last I heard, the chief and his men are still in the process of setting up the production lines, but I'm not an expert in this matter."

"That's fine. I'll go down and help out in person. I know more about the production equipment than anyone else in the company."

"Before you go, Ves, the manufacturing complex needs a name. It's a multi-billion dollar project and it will one day house thousands of employees. It's a great start to a major undertaking of the LMC. It's destined to become one of this planet's most iconic landmarks."

"Landmark, huh?" Ves uttered as his mind drifted off. "Let me think of a name."

When Ves initially planned the construction of the manufacturing complex, he hadn't fixated on a name. He figured he could casually come up with something on the spot, but now he thought that the complex deserved a more considerate name.

The future of the Living Mech Corporation rested on this massive company site. This was the exclusive domain of his company, and everyone who stepped foot here day by day would put their hopes on its prosperity.

Besides serving as a production site for mechs, the complex also featured a lot of fortifications. The walls, turrets, mech patrols and other security features ensured that anyone who attempted to attack the complex had to pay a price.

The LMC had signed a more extensive contract with Sanyal-Ablin to insure that the site would not receive any disturbances, either from sabotage or overt attacks. The beefed up contract added to the company's expenses, but with the impending addition of two production lines, it should be able to shoulder the extra burden.

"Since this complex is the center of the LMC, it needs a name that reflects the ideals of the company. How about... the Mech Nursery?"

Jake was absolutely floored at the name. The old man tested the words in his mind for a little bit. "It's an unconventional name. I don't know if it will fit the complex."

Although his COO still held some reservations on the name, Ves didn't change his mind. The more he thought about it, the more the name fit the aspirations of the company.

He wanted to create mechs with life, and what better than to call their place of origin as the Mech Nursery?

Even if it sounded weird, it reinforced the impression that Ves wanted to convey to the mech industry and his customers. His products carried the spark of life, and they deserved to be treated that way.

Right now, Jake reluctantly registered the name through his comm. After signing some paperwork, the complex would officially be known as the Mech nursery. It already churned the old man's stomach.

"Haha, let's go inside now. I want to see what you've done to the place!"

Under the company of Jake and Carlos, Ves proceeded to tour the complex from top to bottom. He visited the aboveground offices first. Most of the floors hadn't been put to use as of yet, but Ves envisioned a time when these empty white halls would be brimming with people.

Modeled after Marcella's office, Ves enjoyed the top floor to himself. The wide open spaces, the gold and brown furnishings and the exquisite furniture all added to his prestige. He would definitely be able to imitate the likes of Marcella and Mr. Chandler of the MTA if he sat behind his imposing desk.

Ves tested the padding of his desk chair and realized that it hid a large number of features that added to his comfort. Lucky also perched at the top of the chair and partially materialized to test out its functions as well. The seat had evidently been designed to accomodate pets.

"I'm very glad with the look and feel of my office. It makes me feel like a successful CEO."

"That's good. We've especially hired a number of renowned interior designers to decorate the offices."

As pleasant as his new office looked, the real work was done below. They left the top office and took the elevator that brought them straight underground.

Ves only briefly toured the underground floors. He already visited them a few weeks ago and besides some additions, they largely remained empty due to a lack of capacity.

Only the manufacturing floor possessed a lot of liveliness. The Dortmund production line had been moved to the first production hall. A number of mech technicians could be seen working on fabricating another silver label Blackbeak.

Ves left the workers to it and visited another hall. A larger number of mech technicians gathered around the brand-new production line.

It consisted of a full set of 3D printer, alloy compressor, chemical treatment machine and assembly machine. They all came from the same company called Benson Industrial Machinery.

Benson enjoyed a significant amount of renown in the Bright Republic for producing lines of fairly excellent mech manufacturing equipment. Chief Cyril had evidently been a fan of them, since he chose to purchase two of their upscale production lines in a single go.

"Chief!"

"Come over here, Ves! Help me with the configuration of this Benson printer!"

Ves figuratively pulled up his sleeves and stepped close to the 3D printer that formed the core of the production line. "What's wrong?"

"I don't know if we missed something, but the printer refuses to work. It spits out a bunch of error codes but the manual only provides us with a brief description."

"Have you called for support?"

"Hah! BIM's support lines are swamped with calls for help. The LMC isn't the only company who decided to expand their production. Our competitors are joining in the race as well, since there's a lot of money going around these days."

Without the influx of customers who had recently gotten wealthy off the Glowing Planet, Ves wouldn't have pulled the trigger and taken out a loan to finance the Benson production lines. The other mech manufacturers must have performed the same calculus and accelerated their expansion plans as well.

"Looks like we need to fix this ourselves. Let me take a look at it."

Ves had bought a fair number of Assembly Skills from the System, so he quickly figured out the root of the problem. The 3D printer and the rest of the machines functioned normally, but they required a lot of connections in between. Without effective communication between the different machines, the production line lost a lot of efficiency.

With the help of Ves, the chief and the rest of the technicians became enlightened about the problem. Once the source of the problem became known, the technicians could fix it on their own. Ves left the mech technicians to their jobs but pulled Chief Cyril aside for a private talk.

"How effective do you think the Benson production line will perform?"

The chief scratched his stubby chin. "Compared to the Dortmund line? It's a lot more automated, so it's bound to be faster. However, the Dortmund you've retrieved is unparalleled in precision and quality control. I'd say there's going to be a little more waste if we utilize the Benson machines at their full capacity. If you want to achieve the same level of quality as the Dortmunds, then we'll have to cut our production speed by at least thirty percent."

"That's unacceptable." Ves shook his head. Even though he constantly emphasized the importance of maintaining a high level of quality, it didn't come at the cost of common sense. "The silver label Blackbeaks will be fine with a small drop in quality. We can catch the worst faults in time if we scan and double-check each part that comes out of the 3D printer."

"That will slow down our production process as well. Scanning each and every part as they come out is a laborious process, although it's faster than slowing down our overall rate of production."

"Then we'll do so. It's very important to scan our parts for their integrity. I don't want to hear about any cases where our customers died because we haven't been prudent enough to check our own parts."

The chief nodded in acknowledgement. He agreed with the sentiment. "That's a good choice. It will cut into our earnings, but it will give our customers some peace of mind."

After questioning Cyril about how other matters, Ves finally left the manufacturing floor. Once they stepped into the elevator, he decided to go down to the lab floor.

Jake frowned as he stood besides Ves. "Why do you want to enter the lab? We've already visited it."

"I'm about to conduct a very important experiment. I'm sorry about the short notice, but I'll be indisposed for up to three months. I won't be coming out and I won't be accepting any interruptions during this time."

"What?!"

Chapter 358

Ves thought about it carefully. The value of the Transcendence Pill lay in its ability to overcome the human limit without any side effects. It only cost him time, while precious, would never be short in stock.

Therefore, even if the Bright Republic faced tumultuous times, the benefits of the Pill absolutely outweighed the cost. Even if Ves ultimately couldn't finish his second original design in time, he would still be able to use his increased capabilities in other ways.

A special elevator slowly descended many kilometers deep into the earth. It passed through a number of checkpoints and defenses that surrounded the sensitive lab and private workshop floor.

When the elevator doors finally opened, Ves stepped into the lab with Lucky floating behind him. The cat quickly darted away, passing through a number of walls without encountering any hindrance.

Besides Lucky, nothing should have been able to penetrate the thick defenses of the lab.

An uncountable amount of defenses and security measures hid behind the alloy-paneled walls. Advanced electronic defense systems thwarted the intrusion of any bugs and jammed any form of signalling or transmission. A secure but expensive quantum entanglement node formed the only method of communication with the outside galaxy.

Closed air circulation and filtration systems ensured that the entire floor was completely sterile and free of contaminants. A storeroom filled with water and nutrient packs as well as an excellent organic recycling system ensured that Ves would easily be able to last inside the floor for more than a decade.

The way the security systems had been set up made it difficult for Sanyal-Ablin to snoop in on him. A thick layer of signal-blocking material enveloped the entire floor. The only way that they'd be able to receive telemetry was if some kind of miniature bug hitch-hiked on his body or inside his comm.

"Good luck with that."

The System practically monopolized his comm and didn't allow any form of malware or spyware to invest in his most important electronic device. As for external bugs, Lucky often snacked on them every day.

Ves even went to the trouble of hiring several other security companies and consultants to supervise the construction of this floor. He even asked the Larkinson Estate to send their own specialist to keep an eye on the supervisors.

All of this had ballooned his expenses, but Ves wasn't short on money these days.

"From now on, this is my temple."

Ves became inspired to construct a private workshop after Oleg invited him into Master Olson's workshop in Leemar. Despite her absence, her workshop carried a majestic air that made it clear that miracles emerged from that place.

Right now, his own workshop was half-empty and rather barren. Much of the fancy machines cost much more than ten times the total worth of the LMC. Ves had no choice but to set aside his intentions of purchasing all of those expensive machines and settle for the basics.

"It's sufficient for now."

He planned to make full use of what he got once he started designing his rifleman mech. Right now, he had a pill to ingest. He left the working area and entered the attached living space.

After freshening himself up yet again, Ves called out to Lucky. "Come over here!"

Lucky floated through the walls and stopped in the air in front of Ves. "Meow?"

"I'm going to be out cold for a time. I don't know how long it lasts, but make sure nobody enters this floor, okay?"

"Meow."

"Hey, don't argue with me. I left a whole batch of high-value minerals inside the storerooms. Feel free to munch on them while you guard over me."

"Meow!"

This time, Lucky appeared to comply with his orders. If nothing else, Ves could always bribe his cat with food.

Once he finished making his final preparations, he took out the Transcendence Pill he received as a reward at the end of the Glowing Planet campaign. The thumb-sized pill carried an organic gold luster, as if it had been condensed by the blood of a god.

"If the System is able to bring out a Transcendence Pill, then someone in the galaxy is able to produce them. How difficult is it to make such a wondrous pill?"

Gene boosts already cost a fortune to produce, and they only provided marginal effects compared to the Transcendence Pill. This tiny object had the potential of transforming the life of anyone who ingested it. The price for this pill must certainly be horrible for any single person to bear.

The depths of the galaxy hid an uncountable amount of powerhouses. Master Mech Designers emigrated from the galactic rim and the galactic heartland all the time in order towards the galactic center

Besides competing for the best technologies and the most miraculous exotics, Ves guessed they also struggled to obtain the favor of organizations that grasped the production of these precious pills.

"There's nothing in the galactic rim and galactic heartland that can keep these Master Mech Designers interested."

The Komodo Star Sector especially had it bad. As one of the most backward star sectors in the galaxy, over two-thirds of the Masters that emerged from this region had eventually said goodbye to their old states and journeyed to the center of the galaxy in order to join the Terrans or the Rubarthans.

Would Master Olson choose to go for greener pastures as well some day?

"She only advanced to the rank of Master a fairly short time ago. She's still too young at a hundred years old."

With a sufficient amount of life-prolonging treatments, a wealthy individual could easily push up to six-hundred years. Many fossils that experienced the violent transition from the Age of Conquest to the Age of Mechs still clung to their lives to this day.

He estimated that Master Olson should take at least another hundred years to shore up her foundation before she made her play.

Once that happened, everything would change. Ves knew that if he tried hard enough, Master Olson would certainly extend an invitation for him to join her expedition to the center of the galaxy.

If Ves was a normal mech designer, he'd certainly look forward to it. But with the System, who knew if he would still be Master Olson's apprentice in a hundred years. Perhaps he'd be able to treat her as his equal by that time.

"If Master Olson is a genius who can advance to Master in a hundred years, then I'll certainly be able to accomplish the same!"

Advancing to Master in a hundred years, how ambitious! Ves even harbored ambitions of reaching such a height well before he turned a hundred years old!

The renowned Star Designer who held the title of Polymath held the record for the youngest advancement to Master. She took less than fifty years to rocket straight to Master, astounding the entire galaxy in a single feat!

"All of that is still too far away." He sighed and turned his attention back to the Transcendence Pill. "This shall be the next step in my road to ascension."

Ves carefully laid down on his bed and popped the pill into his mouth. He didn't require any water to swallow down the pill. In fact, it had turned into liquid as soon as it entered his mouth.

A rush of energy emerged from his stomach and shot straight to his brains. Before he could even contemplate the feeling, an invisible pillow smothered his consciousness.

An unknown amount of time went by as Ves slumbered on his bed. He completely fell into dormancy, and wouldn't wake up even if he grew hungry or needed to relieve himself. Naturally, he already prepared some bots to take care of those issues beforehand, but strangely enough, his body remained in a state of stasis.

Besides his respiration, almost every other bodily function had paused.

Sometimes, Lucky emerged from the walls and landed atop Ves. His mastery over his intangible state allowed him to materialize completely for short moments of time by now, and he often did so in order to bump Ves from his sleep.

"Meow."

Unfortunately, nothing he did managed to wake Ves up. Sensing the futility of his actions, Lucky gave up on the idea and instead spent most of his time sleeping atop his owner.

As for Ves, his mind had been cast far away from the Komodo StarSector. The Transcendence Pill had a marvelous effect on his mind. He felt as if he experienced an out-of-body moment yet again, but instead of being brought into someone else's body, his mind and soul had reached an immeasurable height above the galaxy.

His incorporeal senses gazed down at the splendid disk of the Milky Way. The galaxy spun much faster according to reality. Thousands of years went by with each second that passed by. It clued him in that he was looking at an illusion.

Still, real or fake, the unfiltered sight of the revolving galaxy had impressed him beyond belief.

"It's so beautiful. The galaxy is much more vast than I can imagine."

Red dwarfs, blue giants, black holes and more made up the fabric of the constantly spinning galaxy. At the center of it all lay the supermassive black hole that kept the stellar objects together.

Witnessing the wealth and breath of the galaxy through his soul affected him more than he thought. As he gazed down at the galaxy, the galaxy gazed up at him. An immense, primordial energy that spun with the galaxy quietly seeped a tiny portion of its being into his soul.

As soon as that happened, Ves received a mighty shock to his mind that instantly catapulted him out of the illusion.

Back at the underground private workshop, Ves woke up with sweat streaking down his body. His breath became disorderly as his mind and body momentarily fell out of sync.

"It hurts!"

His brains heated up as it experienced an inexplicable transformation. Ves groaned and squirmed on his bed as he tried to endure the pain.

He blacked out once again.

The next time he woke up, he found to his surprise that the pain had subsided. His sweat-stained body had also been cleaned up by the bots that stood by. After Ves tentatively prodded his head, he sighed in relief as he didn't appear to be suffering from any further side effects.

"That was one hell of a trip."

Moments later, Lucky passed straight through the door and solidified his body in order to cuddle against Ves.

"Meow!"

"Hahaha! I missed you too."

From Lucky's urgency, Ves deduced that the Transcendence Pill had eaten up a fair amount of time. He quickly activated his comm and looked at the date.

"Thirty-three days went by!"

That was better than he feared, but worse than he hoped. Just over a month went by, which meant that anything could have happened in between. Before he inspected his changes, he first wanted to contact Jake and hear from him if anything had happened during his coma.

Since the quantum entanglement node on this floor had been confined to a closed system, Ves couldn't use his own comm to contact the outside world. Ves slowly slid from his bed and shakily walked out of the apartment.

He approached a closed chamber which held a solitary terminal that connected directly to the quantum entanglement node buried just underneath. He connected to the galactic net and entered his mailbox.

"Hm, nothing serious happened."

He arranged for Jake, Melkor, Marcella, Calsie and Gavin to send him weekly reports. Although plenty of notable events took place in the past month, nothing directly affected the LMC in any detrimental way.

"A few raids on Bentheim and the surrounding systems... price inflation... shortage of rare exotics... Ah, Melkor finally finished recruiting his cadre for the Avatars of Myth!"

With an abundance of money and authority from Ves, Melkor eventually succeeded in hiring eight capable mech pilots. He also spent much of his allowance on purchasing mechs for them to begin their live training, although the two knight pilots still waited to receive their gold label Blackbeaks.

"That can still wait."

Once he reassured himself that nothing critical demanded his presence, Ves shut down the terminal. RIght now, he mentally stimulated his mind and tried to figure out if anything had changed. He resumed the long-stagnant process of integrating the Senior-level Physics knowledge that he succeeded in obtaining.

"It's faster!"

The integration of knowledge happened at least ten times faster! The difference between before and after couldn't be compared. His processing speed had sped up by an entire order of magnitude.

"Yes! My gamble succeeded! My Intelligence has broken through the human limit!"

What did that mean? From now on, Ves would rapidly be able to learn and process all kinds of esoteric knowledge. He could even branch out into fields that shared no relations with mechs, though he didn't plan to do so.

"How high is my Intelligence right now?"

Chapter 359

His mouth gaped open as he called up his Status page. Much of it remained the same so he skimmed over them entirely. Instead, his eyes narrowed down on his Intelligence score.

Intelligence: 2.1

"Just 2.1?"

The difference of 0.1 at this level actually produced a sea of change. Obviously, the Attribute scores didn't follow a linear pattern of growth.

For example, someone with an Intelligence of 2.0 wasn't twice as smart as someone with an Intelligence of 1.0. Each increment of 0.1 provided a different amount of improvement.

Reaching a score of 2.1 was a vast gulf of difference, especially when it had reached a stable state. Ves once reached a height of 2.2 in Endurance, and that had transformed his body in many ways.

It was a pity that he gained such strength from Dr. Jutland's insane experiments. Jutland hadn't actually been able to break the human limit, so the abnormally high Endurance actually started to break down his body. If the CFA hadn't reverted some of the changes, he would have died when he reached fifty years old.

"It's far too soon for me to die at fifty years!"

Let alone fifty years, Ves believed he could easily last more than five-hundred years!

Once Ves understood his changes, he didn't hesitate to integrate the immense amount of knowledge provided by Senior-level Physics. What previously took months to digest now took up just a week.

For the next week, Ves did nothing but sit behind a desk while casting his mind inward. An extreme amount of theories with regards to fundamental Physics became understandable over time.

Much of the knowledge enabled him to understand and work with various types of exotics. Before mastering this level of knowledge, the only way that Ves could integrate exotics into his own design was if he obtained a readily available license.

For example, the Veltrex armor system with its three layers of armor plating that withstood different damage types came with several ingenious formulas. The research institution poured a lot of resources into developing these formulas that combined several exotics into special alloys that provided a wondrous effect.

Previously, Ves was purely a consumer of these formulas. Now, he gained the minimum qualifications to produce his own formulas.

"Still, it's not that simple."

The Senior-level Physics only provided him with a broad but fairly shallow foundation. If he wanted to develop an actual formula, then he needed to supplement his Main Skill with several Sub-Skills raised to a certain height.

Right now, Ves didn't hold any ambition of developing his own component designs. Even though it cost him a lot of money or merits, making use of existing licenses saved him a lot of time and energy.

"A mech pilot doesn't have to know how to build a mech. A ship captain doesn't have to know how to build a ship. A doctor doesn't have to refine his own medicine."

Ves believed that it should be enough to focus on his core job of designing new mechs. Even if the System easily allowed him to unlock a myriad of specialties, he did not have any intentions of imitating the Polymath.

"I have my own way of making mechs come to life."

Even without the relevant Sub-Skills, the Main Skill alone provided a lot of benefits to Ves. He easily understood the heart of each phenomenon and became more proficient in handling advanced technology.

In particular, he gained a comprehensive boost in understanding laser weapons. If before he could only design an average gamma laser rifle design, now he would easily be able to improve the Tainted Sun by more than twenty percent!

Once a week went by, Ves fully integrated his long-awaited boost. Now, he directly met one of the criteria to advance to Journeyman Mech Designer. According to the demands set by the MTA, he only needed to formulate his design philosophy and pass some tests before he could officially leave his Apprentice days behind.

"I still have to design a number of original mechs."

The MTA set a strict bar for anyone who wanted to be acknowledged as a Journeyman Mech Designer. They had to design five original mechs. Naturally, the designs also had to meet a minimum performance standard. In that regard, the Blackbeak already passed the test, so Ves wasn't worried about failing to meet the standard.

Ves first checked his messages again on the isolated terminal. Nothing special had happened although the amount of raids by the Vesians had increased. He figured that the LMC could last a little longer without his presence.

"I've been delaying my next project for too long. It's time for me to take the first step."

He finally felt ready to embark on his next design project. His inadvertent adventure with the crystal ruins had given him a lot of inspiration on how his next design should look like, and he was eager to turn his ideas into reality.

Immediately, he faced an important choice. First, should he collaborate with someone on this project, and second, should he log his every action in detail?

Different from designing his first original mech, Ves faced a lot less constraints this time. He already went through his debut and proved that he could design an original mech without any outside assistance. Now that he gained the mech industry's acknowledgement, he enjoyed a lot more freedom this time.

Ves thought about his gains from the crystal ruins. Once he began to design his mech, it would become obvious that he incorporated alien insights into his work.

"When the MTA checks the logs, they won't care about these matters."

To a behemoth like the MTA, they wouldn't lift their brows if Ves applied some of the principles that powered the alien ruins. His recent upgrade in Intelligence and his acquisition of Senior-level Physics had vastly improved his understanding of the crystal builder's technology. Even if he still couldn't unlock the secret behind the circuits, he still harvested in many other ways.

While Ves had a lot to hide, he didn't mind being stared at by the MTA. Logging his design process would instead insure his claim on his own design and prevent others from accusing him that he stole his design from someone else. That happened more often than anyone thought.

Still, Ves did not entirely wish to rely on himself this time. He knew the challenges of competing directly against the mainstream models and their variants. The market for rifleman mechs was too competitive for Ves to make an impact even with all of his recent gifts.

Ves gently stroked his comm. When the time was right, he'd disable the logs and activate his Super Publish function. He hoped that he could elevate the quality of his design just enough to break into the market.

As for how to explain the jump in quality, Ves could just hand out an excuse that he let an unknown expert make a pass on his own design.

Mech designers with a lot of connections often invited experts to elevate their designs to another level. Most of the time, these experts insisted on being credited by their works, but sometimes they wished to remain anonymous.

In this regard, Ves could easily explain his Superpublish function by crediting an anonymous contributor.

"The only downside to the Superpublish function is that I won't earn any DP from its sales."

This was a very steep price. However, as long as he captured a small chunk of the market for rifleman mechs, the profits would be immense and his prestige would rise well above his fellow Apprentices.

Right now, Ves desperately needed to enhance his prestige and reputation. Otherwise, the Mech Corps wouldn't value him when they eventually called him up to serve the Republic.

Ves moved back to his design project. "Alright, a good design starts with a solid vision."

He aimed to pin down a vision and complete a draft design within a week. After that, he would solicit everyone's opinions before he moved on to turning his draft into a full design.

"I already have a great idea for a vision."

Through his first-hand experiences in the Glowing Planet campaign, Ves acquired a rich perspective on rifleman mechs. As the mainstay of any mech force, they would often be fielded in great numbers.

"Rifleman mechs are rarely sold one at a time to any single customer."

A small-scale buyer like a single-squad mech corps might only ever purchase one knight. As for rifleman mechs, they wouldn't hesitate to buy at least two to four of them in a single instant.

"The market for rifleman mechs is big and profitable. The high volume of sales alone is enough to fight over."

Under these highly competitive circumstances, Ves had to carve out a place for his own design. He set his sights on the upper-premium segment of 60 to 70 million credit mechs.

In the Bright Republic, the vast majority of rifleman mechs sold for fifty million credits or less. The mainstream mechs were no exception, which also made them so attractive in the first place. It wasn't enough that they delivered a higher level of performance, but their pricing also bankrupted many aspiring local mech designers.

Still, the Republic wasn't completely clueless and imposed a number of tariffs and other barriers that made it slightly less attractive to purchase a foreign mech. The Bright Republic wouldn't be able to host such a lively mech industry if they let the trans-galactic corporations operate with impunity.

"The most expensive mainstream mech still costs only fifty million credits." Ves shook his head. "It's hopeless for me to compete directly against them at this price point."

The Blackbeak managed to be successful due to his decision to design a rarely-seen offensive knight. Ves purposefully avoided the crowded market for defensive knights and thereby avoided direct comparisons between the Blackbeak and the mainstream knight models.

He intended to do the same with his second original design, only this time he wanted to differentiate his product through its price category.

"With my existing licenses, I can easily clad my rifleman mech with compressed armor. With the help of my improved Skills, I can also beef up the capability of its primary weapon."

As long as Ves managed to control his costs, he believed he could design a very strong rifleman mech that performed a notch above the mainstream models. Perhaps it would lose out in terms of optimization and refinement, but the boost in raw performance would easily make up for that disparity.

"A rifleman mech that costs at least 60 million credits is absolutely a mech fit for a leader."

With a powerful laser rifle and an ample amount of armor, only the best could make full use of these capabilities. It had to offer a certain level of rounded performance in order to appeal to highly-skilled mech pilots.

"I can take some inspiration from the modifications I made for Fadah's mech. Speed and mobility is essential to a modern rifleman mech. This should be my first priority. I can't skimp on this area."

Firepower was a close second, followed by endurance and staying power. Since he intended to reuse most of the licenses he acquired to design the Blackbeak, his next design should also be able to last an entire war.

"Armor is only the fourth priority, but that doesn't mean I should neglect it entirely."

It had to be good enough that his buyers would willingly stomach forking over at least 60 million mechs. That meant that Ves wouldn't be able to cover his mech only partially with compressed armor. He had to give his mech the full treatment without weighing it down too much.

"That's going to be a major challenge."

Even assuming he succeeded in balancing the speed and armor of his rifleman mech, he also had to distinguish his mech from the competition in other ways.

"I need a gimmick."

Chapter 360

Ves already worked with gimmicks before. Back when he designed the 3-star virtual variant of the Hoplite, he adapted one of the spear-wielding knight's gimmicks to the Young Blood.

The gimmick consisted of various enhancements to the shield of the Young Blood so that it would be able to bash its shield with greater speed and momentum.

The implementation came with a number of flaws. The Young Blood could only enhance its shield bash for a limited number of times, because the batteries embedded into the shield carried only so much charge. In addition, the components lacked sufficient sturdiness and could easily be rendered inoperable.

"Still, it doesn't matter if the actual implementation is disappointing. It's an attention grabber."

The mere existence of the gimmick attracted a lot of attention. The Young Blood became known as the ultimate shield-bashing knight mech and its existence had been imprinted on countless Iron Spirit players.

The best gimmicks bestowed otherwise normal mechs with seemingly inconceivable superpowers. Meanwhile, the worst gimmicks actually turned out to be a detriment on the battlefield.

No matter the case, a gimmick always attracted a lot of attention, thereby making them the perfect marketing material.

Ves knew that purist mech designers disdained the use of gimmicks. They would rather focus their efforts on maximizing the core performance of a mech. The more a mech designer emphasizes a gimmick, the worse the overall performance of the design in question.

Adding a gimmick to a mech always came at the cost of weight, space, power or heat management. It also raised the price of the mech and disproportionately increased the maintenance burden.

"A good gimmick justifies its existence. A bad gimmick becomes a weight that drags down the design."

Ves did not even have to browse the galactic net to come across countless failed implementations.

For example, one iconic example often bandied about in the mech industry was the Grenadier. Nominally, the designer designed the Grenadier as a Skirmisher. However, it carried a bandolier of high-explosive shells on its torso.

The purpose of the Grenadier was to sneak behind enemy lines and inflict severe disruption with minimal footprint. Compared to missiles, grenades took up a lot less space and weight, and didn't require any launchers either. The grenades also didn't cost a lot of time and money to produce.

Alas, the actual implementation fared much worse than the designer had intended. Almost every Grenadier that got caught got blown up when its opponents focused their fire on the bandolier. The Grenadier might be carrying around a lot of explosive might, but compared to missiles, they lacked much of the preventive measures against premature detonations.

"I also can't forget about the Adaptris."

The Adaptris was a so-called multi-environmental mech. It was a heavy mech that was simultaneously an aquatic mech, a landbound mech, an aerial mech and a spaceborn mech.

The mech designer of the Adaptris piled his mech up with so many systems that it could adapt in almost every circumstance. The logic of the Adatris was that since it could be fielded in almost every situation, it could be produced and fielded en masse. The advantages of scale would eventually outweigh the inherent inefficiencies in the design.

Heavy mechs always strained the resources and industrial capacity of a state. If the Adaptris could be produced in enough numbers, then the heavy mech component of its military force would become ten times deadlier.

Sadly, the designer had a few screws loose in his head. He somehow succeeded in pitching the idea to a handful of third-rate states, which allocated a huge portion of their limited industrial capacity in producing these gimmicky heavy mechs.

For all their adaptability and theoretical performance, the mech designer hadn't actually designed a good mech. The heavy mechs came laden with flaws due to the excess of different systems stuffed inside their frames. The most fatal flaw was that they ran out of power up to seventy percent faster than a normal heavy mech!

With countless more examples just like this, the mech industry adopted a wary stance towards gimmicks. If a mech designer wanted to add something special to their mechs, they should better restrain themselves and keep their implementation modest.

Ves did not intend to flaunt that rule. "The only mech designers who resort to gimmicks are those who can't compete the normal way."

Why did crazy designs like the Grenadier and the Adaptris come into existence in the first place? It was because their mech designers faced too much competition!

They couldn't compete against the market with their normal capabilities!

"It's too difficult to compete directly against mainstream mechs!"

The dominant trans-galactic corporations ruled over the galactic mech industry from their headquarters in the galactic center. Design teams numbering dozens Masters and hundreds of Seniors focused all of their immense expertise into perfecting a single standard design at a time.

How could any average mech designer compete against the best that humanity had to offer? Even though the galactic center was tens of thousands of light years away from the galactic rim, any newly published design from the center would instantly reach the rim through the galactic net.

Within a single week, mech manufacturers around the galaxy would instantly produce at least a billion copies of the new design. Within a single month, the number of copies might surpass a trillion.

The amount of demand for the latest mainstream mechs from the most reputable trans-galactic corporation could make any single mech designer die from envy!

Fortunately, many states wouldn't allow these trans-galactic corporations unrestricted access to their mech markets. They adopted a variety of measures, from tariffs to quotas to give their domestic mech industry a chance to survive.

States had to be careful in implementing these trade policies.

If they acted against foreign mechs with a heavy hand, they risked coddling their mech industry into complacency. Without the pressure of outside competition, the state's domestic mech designers faced little incentive to exert their full efforts into maximizing the performance of their mechs.

The difference might not become evident in a couple of years, but this sort of change always took its time to seep into the vitality of a state. After twenty years or more of continued decline, the strength of the domestic mech industry would be a shadow of its former self.

The mechs that proliferated in this state that closed its market to outsiders wouldn't be able to measure up against the mechs of their rivals. Many states ended up grinded beneath the feet of their neighboring states because they disregarded outside advancements.

On the other hand, if a state treated foreign mechs too leniently, then their domestic mech industry would eventually atrophy, crippling its ability to design purpose-built mechs for their mech forces.

This indirectly weakened the state's ability to wage war, because mainstream mechs would always be analyzed to death by the entire galaxy. Their strengths and weaknesses would quickly become clear to all, including any possible opponents. It would be trivially easy to exploit these traits if an entire mech force consisted of the same handful of mainstream mech models.

"The Bright Republic is in a difficult spot. I can't blame them for opening up their market to mainstream mechs."

The Bright Republic had to square off against the Vesia Kingdom, a larger and more populous third-rate state. It couldn't afford to put too many restrictions on the high-performing mainstream designs that constantly proliferated from the galactic center.

These extremely well-designed mechs provided the Mech Corps and the various private forces that operated within its borders with a readily available supply of high-quality mechs.

Naturally, the Vesians often exploited the well-known weaknesses of these mainstream mechs, but that couldn't be helped. Much more importantly, the pressure of galactic competition separated the wheat from the chaff. Incompetent mech designers had no place in the Republic. Only the best and most resilient mech designers continued to survive under these circumstances.

"Still, I'm far away from competing against the mainstream mechs in an upright clash. I can only resort to tricks."

Ves already had something interesting in mind. Before his latest trip to the Joe System, he agonized over the problem, but after he explored the crystal ruins, he quietly formed some ideas.

The key to his gimmick lay in the composition of the crystal structures. Even if he didn't understand the circuits embedded into the crystals, he would still be able to attempt to reproduce a copy of the naked crystals.

All of this became possible due to his timely purchase of the Vulcaneye. The crystals bared all of its secrets against the powerful multiscanner.

As Ves studied a projection of the crystal's composition, he put his formidable knowledge and enhanced mind to use. Could he fabricate the crystals by himself?

"It's not possible." He shook his head. "It's too costly."

Coincidence or not, the composition of the crystals from the crystal city utilized exotics available in the Komodo StarSector. Perhaps that might be why the crystal builders left behind a presence in the Joe System.

However, an unimaginable amount of time had passed since the passing of the tiny alien species. The Komodo StarSector back then looked a lot different than today. Several of the core ingredients could only be found in the center of the star sector, smack dab in the middle of the Friday Coalition.

"Now that the Friday Coalition is clashing directly against the Hexadric Hegemony over the Glowing Planet, they'll keep all of their high-value exotics to themselves."

Ves also couldn't forget about the drying imports. The surrounding star sectors also became engulfed in war. Few shipments of rare exotics made it all the way to the Komodo Star Sector these days.

"If I can't use the original composition, what about using substitutes?"

Substituting an expensive or scarce material for a more readily available one happened all the time. Ves was no Master Katzenberg, but his breadth and depth of Skills and Sub-Skills gave him the basic qualifications to figure something out.

"If labs contain samples of pretty much every exotic available in the Republic. As long as Lucky hasn't emptied them all, I'll have a good chance of creating an inferior copy."

Ves fixated on the crystals because they formed the key to lowering the bulk of his laser rifle. He already applied some of the insights he learned from the crystal ruins into cutting down the bulk of the Tainted Sun. However, he could have done a much better job if he had some actual crystals to work with. The gamma laser rifle eventually failed to live up to its potential.

"My next laser rifle will be a far cry from the Tainted Sun."

He already gained a lot of experience designing the laser rifle's big brother. Graser rifles demanded the utmost in terms of integrity, tolerance, power supply and heat management. Ves faced a lot less pressure if he designed a regular laser rifle.

"The first gimmick will be to implement as many crystals as possible in the laser rifle."

Ves already envisioned the laser rifle being smaller and slimmer than a standard model. Combined with the reduced weight of his rifleman mech design, the entire package would allow mech pilots to move faster and nimbler on the battlefield. At the very least, its mobility could compete head-on against the swiftest mainstream mechs in the same weight class.

"Still, this isn't enough."

A better laser rifle only scratched the surface. Ves intended to embed a crystal in the frame of his design as well.

A bold idea surfaced in his mind. He imagined a large crystal embedded in the head or the chest of a mech. It would accumulate energy over time, perhaps even absorbing enemy laser beams to charge itself faster. Once its energy accumulated up to a critical point, it disgorged its entire charge in a single powerful light beam.

The idea sounded very fanciful and unrealistic. At the very least, Ves couldn't recall any mech that had used such a gimmick. While many designs did in fact embed laser projectors directly onto the frame of a mech, only the most expensive second-class or first-class mechs employed such a gimmick.

"Laser projectors are vulnerable and present potential weak points. I'll have to find a way to reproduce a crystal that's both resilient and affordable enough."

Ves turned to his lab and eyed the handful of high quality equipment. This would be the first time he put the capabilities of his lab to test.

Chapter 361

The work put his new capabilities to the test. If he hadn't pushed his Intelligence and Physics to the next level, Ves wouldn't dream about reverse engineering the alien crystals.

However, he long stepped out of the confines of what an Apprentice Mech Designer should be capable of. His leapfrogging into Senior-level Physics provided Ves with a rudimentary ability to play around with exotics.

Naturally, he wouldn't be able to match the capabilities of a seasoned Journeyman or newly-advanced Senior. The main reason why Ves maintained his confidence was because he could reference his detailed scanner readings as well as a live sample.

He carefully opened the box that held the corpse of the crystal builder he found in the crystal garden. As the supposed leader of the crystal garden, his cyborg corpse incorporated the highest quality of crystals. It varied only minutely with the composition of the crystal city, which in itself served as some sort of capital or refuge for the alien race.

Ves treated the undecayed remains with reverence and respect. "I can't imagine how many millions of years it rested beneath that strange mass of plantmeat."

He tried to date the remains, but failed to do so. His lab equipment didn't come with this kind of capability. After all, why would a mech designer need to figure out the age of an alien artifact? He wasn't an exobiologist nor a treasure hunter.

All of the organic bits in the crystal-laden corpse had long decomposed into nothing, leaving only the resilient crystals that served as the body's armor and mechanisms.

Ves couldn't imagine what kind of powers these augmentations bestowed to the leader. He must have been a formidable alien when he was still alive.

He continually speculated on the alien leader's story as he studied the crystal remains. He didn't do so on a whim or because he was bored, but because he had a use for it later on. While he worked on deciphering and decomposing the exact nature of the alien crystals, he already branched out a part of his mind on the next phase of his design project.

Now that he set a vision for his rifleman mech, he was ready to proceed with the construction of the images that powered its X-Factor.

"It's been a long time since I last worked on the X-Factor."

His stint with the Whalers in the Glowing Planet campaign exposed him to a lot of mechs, but he didn't get to design or produce any new ones. He mostly spent his efforts on repairs and modifications. These situations didn't allow him to bestow any spirituality to the mechs he worked, except for maybe the Blackbeak he gifted to the Whalers.

"I wonder how my first production model is faring."

The potentially historic and priceless mech could have been saved up and sold for a massive fortune, but he gave it away without hesitation. It was a shame to part with such a valuable treasure, but Ves needed to prove his sincerity to the Whalers and couldn't bring out any other mech at the time.

He thought about asking Walter's Whalers to hand back the first production model, but didn't do so in the end. Now that the Whalers became one of the few small-scale gangs that earned a handsome reward for their efforts, they would soon grow in power and influence.

Ordinarily, such a small but obscenely wealthy gang wouldn't be capable of holding on to its assets. However, their previously-hidden relations with the Blood Claws scared away the vultures eying all of their wealth.

From the latest weekly reports sent by his subordinates, Ves remained apprised of the gang's current situation. It was no secret that they recruited a whole bunch of mech pilots and issued large amounts of purchase orders for mechs as well.

Strangely enough, this time they set their sights higher. Instead of buying bargain bin mechs valued at 3-5 million mechs, they started buying more expensive mainstay mechs with an average value of 30 million credits.

Furthermore, they also ordered a handful of advanced mechs for their veteran pilots. They even placed a generous order for a handful of silver label Blackbeaks at the LMC. Ves sent back a message to prioritize the fabrication and delivery of the Blackbeaks to the Whalers.

At this point in time, the interests of the LMC and the Whalers intersected with each other. They both occupied a vital position on the sleepy planet of Cloudy Curtain.

Ves had even broken his rare isolation and initiated a call of Calsie through the isolated terminal to apprise himself of the latest news.

"Calsie, what are the Whalers up to right now?"

"They're doing a lot of things at once. The Whalers are continuously expanding their numbers. They're also upgrading their bases into highly defensive fortifications. I can tell that once they've finished their expansion, they'll start to swallow some of the neighboring rural star systems."

"That's an ambitious plan! They sure have a big appetite!"

In a time of war, the Whalers opted to spread their wings and expand their influence. It was a bold and risky action, but if they succeeded, they would no longer be putting all of their eggs in a single basket. If the Cloudy Curtain System fell, they still had a number of escape routes available to themselves.

"How is the rest of Cloudy Curtain faring under these changes?"

"Support for the Whalers has never been higher. The increased recruitments means that a lot of locals are joining up with the Whalers. Even if they aren't very good mech pilots, the Whalers have hired a large number of trainers to shore up their new recruits. Right now, they only have numbers on their side, but after a couple of years of training, their strength will enter a whole new level."

This meant that the Whalers would transition from a small and inconsequential rural collection of thugs into a true interstellar gang. Such a shift in scope brought a lot of prosperity to the Whalers, but only if they successfully pushed out their surrounding rivals.

Ves turned to another topic once he finished asking about the Whalers. "Has anything changed in the political landscape? I don't believe the farming consortiums are resigned to let the LMC and the Whalers take over their home planet."

"I'm afraid you're correct." Calsie regretfully sighed. "The farming consortiums along with the White Doves and the Greens have been collaborating quietly behind the scenes. It's hard to keep track of their movements when the LMC and the Whalers make so much noise. Once they sprung their plan, it's too late for the Pioneers to intervene."

That sounded serious. Ves began to frown. "What happened?"

"Our opposition pulled back their influence from Freslin and concentrated all of their strengths in Orinoco. Politically, they've abandoned Freslin to the mech fanatics and the supporters of the Pioneers in favor of turning Orinoco into their bulwark. It's become impossible for us to penetrate the capital."

Ves was taken aback at this news. With the onset of war and the increased prominence of mechs, he never imagined the ossified elites who long ruled over Cloudy Curtain like their own fief to stop the bleeding in this fashion.

The more he thought about it, the more he admired whoever came up with this plan. By relocating their headquarters, businesses and supporters to the capital city, they maintained an impregnable position that couldn't be assailed.

Their decision had split Cloudy Curtain in half.

"So right now, our influence is near absolute in Freslin, right?"

"That's correct, but that's not as valuable as holding the capital. They still control the spaceport. They can implement any number of rules or collect any number of fees for every shipment that comes in and out of Cloudy Curtain."

Ves scratched his chin in consternation. "It's unlikely they'll do so immediately. They'll face a backlash if they purposefully hinder the LMC."

"That's what the Pioneers think as well. They're keeping the White Doves and the Greens in check for now, but that's no guarantee for the future."

Calsie looked at Ves as if she hoped he would relent on his stance of maintaining his neutrality. The young law graduate had always made her allegiance to the business-friendly group very clear. Ves indeed continued to retain her for her connections. That didn't mean he was inclined to change his mind.

"Monitor the situation for now and inform me of any changes."

Ves cut off the conversation and threw the local situation from his mind. Right now, what happened on the surface had little bearing on his work in the labs.

His studies into the crystals had progressed to formulating different compositions of crystals. Using the machines in the lab, he produced more than a dozen attempts to reproduce the essence of the alien technology.

He didn't have any high-value exotics on hand, but the lab did come stocked with all manner of regular exotics in regular supply. All of his attempts so far resulted in outright failures. Every crystal he cultivated so far ended up as brittle as glass. If they possessed the strength to propagate a laser beam, then they only emitted enough energy to light a closet.

"Difficult! Difficult! Difficult!"

Ves did not expect to succeed in a single day, but he hoped to make an early breakthrough. The more time he wasted on trying to get this gimmick to work, the more he delayed to completion of his second original design.

He set a solid deadline for himself. If he couldn't produce a satisfactory result in two weeks, he would abandon any plans on implementing this gimmick in his design.

In the meantime, he continued to ponder on the construction of the images.

The Triple Division technique lay at the root of his current methodology in fostering the X-Factor in his designs. The strongest result he had ever achieved only scored into the C's. Ves had always strived for breaking through the invisible barrier that held him back from scoring a B.

Right now, his recent breakthroughs in spirituality showed him a light in the dark. It remained a possibility for now, but the idea in his mind presented a possible way to finally break through that persistent barrier.

"The Triple Division technique is a way to superimpose three distinct images into a single amalgamation that's stronger than the sum of its parts. Although it's not possible to stuff three material objects into one, the rules in the imaginary dimensions are much less strict."

The three images consisted of the base model, the totem animal and the human myth. Up until now, Ves treated the latter two as something completely within his mind. He could invent any number of imaginary creatures or persons with the traits he desired.

However, their strengths remained largely in his mind.

He only deviated from his pattern when he used the Triple Division technique on the Blackbeak. For the human myth, he took inspiration from Jackknife Jake, the deceased captain of the Velton Myrmidons of Moira's Paradise.

The aquatic planet's lively mech scene and intense underwater mech duels had a profound effect on Ves, and Jackknife Jake's tragic ending inspired Ves to incorporate the captain's dauntless courage into the Blackbeak's human myth.

Ves hadn't thought about it at the time, but now he realized he missed a precious opportunity to elevate the human myth.

"The realm of the imaginary is powered by thoughts and emotion. Something which only exists in my mind can only hold so much strength. What if I use an image that's shared by many, or carries the weight of history?"

Ves eyed the miniature husk of the crystal leader that had endured a countless number of years. How many aliens looked up to this leader? How much influence did this alien wield in his lifetime?

When Ves focused his sixth sense on the corpse, he could faintly sense a desolate flavor. The ancient alien corpse carried a unique strength that Ves hoped to borrow for his upcoming design.

What would a rifleman mech look like if it carried some of the spirit of a long-dead alien leader?

Chapter 362

At the opening of the Komodo Star Sector, a fair number of colonists descended upon the far-flung region. Barren as it may be, its official recognition as a star sector under the collective rule and protection of the CFA and MTA turned it from a lawless frontier into a safe tract of stars.

Right around the same time of the founding of the Bright Republic, another sovereign entity came into being. Founded by a wealthy individual with delusions of grandeur, the Vesia Kingdom came into being.

The two newly-founded states butted heads almost immediately. The Bentheim port system formed the main sticking point. While the Vesians already occupied two other port systems, the greed and ambition of the newly inaugurated Vesian King knew no bounds.

The fairly pacifistic Bright Republic had no choice but to stand their ground, or be engulfed by the Vesians over time. A third-rate state with control over three strategic port systems would certainly grow into a regional bully.

If the Republic possessed no port system at all, it would never be able to match the growth of their neighboring rival.

A war ensued almost immediately.

As the Komodo Star Sector had been opened fairly early in the Age of Mechs, the two states mostly fumbled around with the new technology. The ancestor of the Larkinsons took part in the war on behalf of the Republic as a mercenary and distinguished himself against the unending aggression of the Vesians.

Ever since then, the Vesians declared war and brazenly invaded the Bright Republic almost every single generation. As much as the Brighters wished to counterattack and deter the Vesians from lusting after their stars, they couldn't match their lifelong opponents in population and industrial capacity.

As the perennial underdogs of the conflict, the Bright Republic had no choice but to endure and take up a defensive posture.

Months into the war, the Vesians took full control over the nominal border between the Kingdom and the Republic. The aggressors only considered this takeover as an appetizer. The main course had yet to be served.

On the expansive command center of a majestic Vesian fleet carrier, an extravagant number of bridge officers tirelessly worked to prepare their fleet for the upcoming operation.

An officer clad in a dark brown uniform slowly hovered up to the floating circular platform that looked down on the command center. A young woman barely in her thirties sat upon an ornate throne-like chair with her back as straight as steel. Her brilliantly coiffed blond hair framed a charmingly delicate face, which unfortunately took on an iron-willed expression.

Her purple uniform stood out from the rest. In addition, a distinctive golden epaulet adorned her left shoulder. It depicted a hand holding aloft a notched sword with 5 blazing silver stars on top.

Anyone in the Bright Republic and the Vesia Kingdom knew what this image represented.

The Kingdom adopted the hand with the notched sword as their national symbol. It represented the nobility of their polity, and only a fraction of the population earned the right to wear this symbol.

Those who carried the hand with the notched sword on their epaulet served in the Mech Legion. Practically every officer in the Mech Legion was invariably a noble.

With the five silver stars shining down on the hand with the notched sword, The lady in purple stood above the rest. The Vesian Kingdom adopted a condensed version of the standard human ranks of nobility. The number of stars reflected the rank, while their color hinted at their relation to the rank.

The lowest and only non-hereditary rank was knight. It only shone with a single star. Most often, those who earned the rank of knight distinguished themselves in battle. The rank of knight opened up a lot of avenues to these warriors. They were always addressed as Sirs.

The next rank was baron, and it was the first true rank of nobility. Not only was it hereditary, it also came attached with a fief. Their Houses often formed the backbone of the middle ranks of the Mech Legion. The rank of baron shone with two stars.

The rank after that was count. Anyone who inherited the rank of count was a true mover and shaker within the Kingdom. Many higher officers carried the rank of count, and they also had a say in how the Kingdom should be run. The rank of count shone with three illustrious stars.

Arguably the most powerful rank was duke. A small number of dukes and duchesses carved up the Vesia Kingdom into several dukedoms, over which their Houses ruled with near-absolute impunity. Even the Vesian royals only exerted a limited amount of influence in the core stars ruled by the dukes. This powerful rank shone with five blazing stars.

The second-to-last rank was the rank of prince. Only a member of the Vesian royal family carried this rank. They wielded a vast amount of power, but simultaneously held very little authority. The rank of prince shone with seven fiery stars.

As for the monarch who ruled over them all, only the king carried the right to bear the nine majestic suns. The symbol incomparably outshone the rest.

Besides the royal ranks, the symbols could further be distinguished from the color of the stars.

Those who carried stars in bronze only shared peripheral relations with the noble in question. These would often be members of branch families or those who had been adopted in the family of the noble.

Those with silver stars consisted of the direct descendants of the noble that ruled over their lineage. They possessed the right to inherit the title and properties of their parents.

Only the true holders of the rank carried golden stars. They ruled over their noble Houses with a tyrannical amount of power. Only they earned the right to be addressed by their ranks.

Besides knights, the other members of their House could only be addressed by Lord or Lady.

In that regard, the Vesia Kingdom hadn't deviated too much from the standard pattern of neo-feudalism in human space.

Currently, the woman possessed an immense amount of power. Her epaulet directly indicated that she stood a chance of inheriting the Imodris Dukedom. She carried as much authority as the Duchess of Imodris herself, who ruled over the dukedom with an iron fist.

The noble lady looked over the expansive projection engulfing the entire front portion of the command center. Hundreds of fleet carriers, combat carriers and transports awaited her command. The amount of power at her fingertips would intoxicate any individual, but the woman treated it as normal as breathing air.

Once the officer arrived at the throne, he thumped his chest with his fist. "Reporting, ma'am! Every regiment of the 3rd Imodris Legion has reported in. The fleet is ready to transition into FTL."

"Has the destination been set, Sir Jameson?"

The knight nodded submissively at the woman he had served since the start of her career in the Mech Legion. "The fleet will arrive at the uninhabited Coxer System in approximately seven days."

The woman frowned. "That is too slow. This is only the first of seven hops. The Duchess has commanded me to reach the Bentheim region within two months. The entire strategic deployment of the Imodris Mech Army rests on the timing of our operation."

"My apologies, Lady Amalia." Sir Jameson bent her head. "I shall convey your wishes to the admiral and exhort him to make more haste."

"That is good. I do not wish to hear any further excuses. Dismissed."

Half an hour went by as a handful of engineers across the fleet prepared their ships for a distant transition.

The further their destination, the riskier the hop, especially if they wanted to travel to a smaller star. If they failed to navigate the gravitic waves in the higher dimensions during FTL, they might get thrown off-course and emerge hundreds or even thousands of light-years away. Oftentimes, they ended up in a completely random position in space as well.

Many wayward ships that encountered mishaps in FTL ended up several star sectors away. They lucked out compared to the rest, as over sixty percent of the ships that went off course would never be heard again.

People used to believe they disappeared somewhere else, until extensive investigation revealed that they'd been sucked into a major gravity well. That almost always meant they crashed into a sun or a black hole.

Thus, the coordinated jump into FTL had to be done with care and precision. The transports that carried the supplies and provisions of the fleet required extra attention in this regard. Their engineers poured every bit of energy into pushing the transports to keep up with the rest.

Once Lady Amalia received another notice that the fleet would arrive at their initial destination a little faster, she stood up from her throne.

Hidden recorders flared to life. The massive viewscreen in front of the command center switched to project the commanding officer of the 3rd Imodris Legion. Almost every single projector aboard every ship relayed the same event to the rest of the fleet.

"Citizens of Imodris. On this day, my mother the Duchess of Imodris has given me a command. Within six months, the pathetic Republic's precious Bentheim region must burn and quake! The 3rd Imodris Legion will be the vanguard of their doom! As the tip of the spear, we shall drive the Brighters to tears!"

"Imodris!"

Every serviceman of the 3rd Imodris Legion had stood up and held their fists to their chest. Whether they served as spacers or mech pilots, they respected Lady Amalia from the depths of their hearts. She carried the will of the Duchess of Imodris.

"Fight well, hold nothing back, and kill as many Brighters as you can. Their Republic is soft and ripe for the picking! We have devastated them time and time again, rendering them helpless and mewling for peace. Vesians! Shall we grant them mercy?"

"No!" The entire bridge thundered. The same word echoed throughout the rest of the fleet as the servicemen of the 3rd Imodris Legion collectively stood behind their leader.

"In the coming operation, we will transition deep into Republican space. I hope to see the 3rd Imodris Legion smash aside their feeble in-system defenses and stomp their precious industries to the ground! The perils of fighting behind enemy lines are great, but we are doing Imodris and the rest of the Kingdom an important service! Does the 3rd Imodris Legion lack any courage? No! Because we are fearless! We are dauntless! We are invincible!"

"Imodris! Imodris! Imodris!"

The entire legion became invigorated by her speech. Their hunger for glory and their duty to Imodris drove them to a state of hysteria. Every subject of the Kingdom had been brought up to hate the Bright Republic since birth.

The Kingdom's conflict with the Republic was deep seethed and irreconcilable. Conflicts of territory turned into an accumulation of grudges and a never-ending cycle of revenge. The Vesians would never rest until they ground the Republic beneath the heel of their boots.

"Imodris shies away from battle! The other dukedoms may be dragging their feet and continue to cautiously probe the Mech Corps, but Imodris is different! We shall take the bull by the horns and teach our enemies a lesson they won't forget! Once the history books speak of this war, it will be the 3rd Imodris Legion who will shine the brightest!"

"For the Third!"

"For Imodris!"

"For the Kingdom!"

Lady Amalia maintained her impassioned posture and kept on grinning before the recorders. She only dropped her performance once the transmission cut off. Once she returned to her throne, she seated herself in a languid manner and resumed her next calculations.

She turned back to Sir Jameson, who had been quietly standing by her side. "Major, what are the odds of success? Tell me the truth."

"Our analysts aren't optimistic about our current plans." Jameson minutely frowned. "Her Grace the Duchess of Imodris expects much from the Third. Too much, perhaps."

Lady Amalia smiled coyly. "That just indicates my mother's regard for me. It is true that we are about to enter head-long into the jaws of the decrepit beast that stands for the Republic, but this is a role that I volunteered for myself. If we succeed, the 3rd Imodris Legion shall be known throughout the Kingdom as the legion that has struck the first true blow."

The major nodded at her words, but refrained from voicing his misgivings. As a veteran of the previous war, Jameson knew that the Bright Republic wouldn't roll over for the Mech Legion without a fight.

Perhaps Lady Amalia knew that herself, but she desperately needed to distinguish herself on the battlefield. As the sixth-born of the Duchess of Imodriss, the fight to inherit the dukedom was not in her favor. Her older siblings had decades ahead of her and built up a vast network of nobles.

No one in the noble circles favored the tragic Lady Amalia, who had been born too late.

She wanted to prove them all wrong.

Chapter 363

Back in the underground labs of the newly-christened Mech Nursery, Ves continued to develop new iterations of crystals. He minutely adjusted their composition and patterns, gaining more data by the day.

Most of the time, the crystals turned out to be outright failures. Ves had never eliminated the odds of producing brittle and opaque pieces of crystal. Let alone being embedded into the chest of a mech, they wouldn't even qualify as laser pointers.

"Why is this so difficult?!"

A depressing week marked with constant failures had already gone by. Ves kept trying to discover suitable substitutes to the original composition of the alien crystals with unerring persistence, but even his upgraded Intelligence and Physics hadn't been able to guarantee a quick success.

The unending setbacks taught Ves that he underestimated the enormity of working around exotics. Properly speaking, Ves should have delegated this work to a team of specialists. Lately, he started to consider if it might be a good idea to get some people on board this project.

After weighing the pros and cons, he decided not to do so at this time. "The LMC hasn't grown to the point of justifying a dedicated research team."

Ves could easily hire a horde of average researchers who graduated from regular institutions like the Rittersberg University of Technology. However, average wouldn't cut it. His Senior-level Physics vastly outshone almost every other physicist in the Republic.

An accumulation of the highest mech-related physics knowledge over several decades was nothing to scoff at. Only other older mech designers or true talents in the field of physics could match his intellectual acumen.

"It's useless to take on a bunch of dummies when I can do everything better myself. If I have to form a dedicated research department, then I'll have to find a way to hire the best."

Only true talents and leaders in their fields entered his discernment. However, it was exactly because of their competitiveness that everyone else already valued them highly.

Major companies, institutes and governments had already hooked their claws in them even before they graduated. As long as any student revealed some talents, they'd be recruited on the spot and received extensive training from their organizations upon graduation.

These talents would quietly disappear from the public and henceforth dedicate their entire being for the organization that coddled them like precious treasures.

Ves wouldn't be able to hire anyone with actual skill from the job market for this reason. "I can't form a design team the conventional way."

The LMC had only just begun to transform into a medium mech manufacturer. It still fell behind a true medium manufacturer in many other ways, from production capacity to research and development. In a way, it hadn't completely shaken off the trappings of a small mech manufacturer.

"Well, I still have one more week to go. I refuse to give up now that I've generated all of this data."

Each failure brought him closer to success. He continued to rule out the wrong directions, leaving only a handful of narrow paths which might bring him to his desired outcome as long as he didn't stumble upon a dead end.

In the meantime, Ves mentally tried to construct an elaborate set of images for his upcoming design.

This time, he planned to incorporate an alien into the 'human' myth. Actually calling this type of image the human myth was just an expedient way for Ves to describe its purpose.

"The base role sets the foundation while the totem animal strengthens the primal instincts. The so-called human myth is needed to insert higher thought into the gestalt that influences the X-Factor."

Ves was no exobiologist, but he believed the crystal builders had developed their own form of civilization. Their ruins provided no evidence that they acted like savages that acted solely on their baser instincts.

Thus, even if he knew almost nothing about the crystal builders, he still wished to draw upon the existence of the deceased crystal leader as an image.

In order to build up an accurate image and take advantage of the crystal leader's immense potential, Ves tried to commune with its remains, in a sense. He constantly attempted to prod and poke the crystal leader's crystalline corpse with his severely underdeveloped spirituality while he continued to work on forming new crystals.

He mainly relied on a set of assumptions to drive his current action. No human in the galaxy knew how spirituality worked, let alone Ves, but believed his original design would gain a lot of strength if he succeeded in roping in the spirit of the crystal builder.

"Whether it's the alien's actual spirit or merely an imprint that he left behind in the fabric of history is still a question."

What happened when someone died? Humanity developed all kinds of fanciful theories, and Ves developed his own idea. If someone's spirituality became detached from their bodies due to death or other reasons, Ves believed that he could reel it in and make use of it in his designs.

Ves tried hard not to refer to the spiritual remnants as souls, because it carried a lot of theological implications. Religions around the galaxy would go nuts if they heard a description of what he planned to do. In their perspective, what was attempting to do might be considered necromancy or an attempt to play god!

He had to stifle his chuckle. "It's not like I'm trying to resurrect the dead. If some spiritual remnants are floating around in the imaginary realms for eons, then I might as well repurpose them for something useful."

Spoken like a true rationalist. He did not consider his actions as desecrating the dead and felt absolutely no guilt about his actions. All that talk about reincarnation, purgatory, redemption had nothing to do with him. Well water didn't interfere with river water.

In general, citizens of non-religious states always held a bias against any form of religion. The Bright Republic valued rationality very highly, so it was the strongest adherent to this unspoken rule.

Ves never stopped giving up his attempt to trace the spiritual remnant of the crystal leader, although his hopes started to dim as a few more days went by.

In contrast, his constant experimentation with the crystals started to bear fruit. They stopped being easy to break and they became capable of projecting a significant amount of power.

"Looks like I finally grasped the right direction. Right now, I need to strengthen the formula."

He only created a nail-sized piece of crystal. This was barely large enough for a toy laser pistol.

A laser crystal suitable enough for a mech-sized rifle should at least be the size of a chair. As for the crystal that Ves planned to embed in the chest or head, it should be at least twice or thrice as large.

Whenever he attempted to synthesize anything larger, cracks and faults started to appear. Ves believed that he would eventually be able to minimize the incidence of faults as long as he became more proficient. Still, the process demanded the utmost of his capabilities and his extensive familiarity with the nature of the crystals.

No one else would be able to replicate his feats even if they got a hold of the blueprints. While Seniors and Masters should be able to crack the secret, they had better things to do than to pay attention to a trivial Apprentice Mech Designer.

At the very least, none of his direct competitors would be able to imitate his gimmick.

While it gratified him to achieve a significant amount of progress in this area, his search to grasp the spiritual remnant still remained empty-handed. Eventually, Ves stopped his lab work and took a break.

He entered a small kitchen area and pressed a button on the large automatic cooking machine. The advanced device recombined the stored nutrient packs into a close imitation of sausage and mash.

Ves grabbed his plate and set it down on a nearby table and began to dig in.

A few minutes later, Lucky floated through the walls and brushed against Ves in a familiar greeting. When Ves attempted to scratch Lucky's face, the mischievous cat quickly turned intangible again.

"Meow!"

"Oh come on, little buddy. You can't avoid my touch forever!"

Lucky swirled around Ves in a playful gesture before landing atop the kitchen machine to rest. In the past few weeks, Lucky continued to break inside the highly secured storerooms that secured a precious stock of expensive exotics. Not a single security measure proved capable of hindering Lucky's thieving claws.

At the very least, the cat didn't abuse his powers too much. He only nibbled a few bites before he contently left the storerooms. Ves still had plenty of inventory left to continue his experimentation on the crystals.

As he ate his meal, he looked at his contented cat with a thoughtful expression. "How well can you control your intangible state, Lucky?"

"Meow." Lucky lazily shifted from tangibility and intangibility and back several times over, demonstrating a complete level of control over the strange phenomenon.

Ves looked down on his own hand and willed his mind to turn the limb intangible.

He failed.

"Damnit, why doesn't it work for me? Is my Spirituality Attribute not high enough?"

Ves experienced a lot of crazy things ever since he embarked on his career as a mech designer. He discovered the X-Factor, ate a strange heavenly flower in Groening IV and met a ghost that looked and acted a lot like his mother on the Glowing Planet.

In his latest adventure, he even peeled back the veil on spirituality and unified a lot of related theories and assumptions. Nevertheless, spirituality remained a marginal buzzword so long he couldn't make use of this knowledge.

"I'm missing something important. Why can't I extend my reach into the imaginary dimensions? Why am I unable to turn my body intangible?"

Perhaps an individual could only specialize in a narrow application of spirituality.

For example, Ves excelled in creating images from nothing and imprinting them onto a design.

Lucky took to intangibility like a fish to water.

Elite mech pilots specialized in drawing out the hidden potential of exotics through resonance.

High-ranked mech designers fitted different configurations of exotics together and bestowed new strengths onto their designs as if they performed magic.

"Can someone only do one of these things at a time?"

Ves did not believe that was the case. Perhaps elite mech pilots were the ones who monopolized the ability to resonate with exotics, but every other ability should be within his fingertips.

If only he had some sort of guide in this endeavor. From the start of his exploration into spirituality, he worked completely by himself. He could trust no one else with his advancements.

He had no qualms in admitting his selfishness. If he discovered something good, would he share it with the rest of the galaxy like a good samaritan?

Nope.

He wanted to keep his secrets to himself and take advantage of everyone else's ignorance. Why shouldn't he profit from his own work? The rest of humanity fared well enough on its own, and besides, everyone withheld their own secrets.

"The MTA,the CFA, the first-rate superstates and the heretical organizations like the Five Scrolls Compact all hold their own secrets. If they aren't sharing anything, why would I?"

Therefore, as much as Ves wanted to bring in others to help him with his research, he persisted in charting his course alone.

Perhaps the only people he would make an exception for were his parents. "Father, where are you?"

Last he heard, his father still mixed with the dark mercenaries in the lawless region of the Nyxian Gap. Ves hoped his father kept his head down there. He had no doubt his father would be able to avoid his pursuers and eke out an existence among the endless asteroid fields of the Gap.

As for his mother, Ves tried hard not to think about her. He always believed she had died quietly in her bed when he was young, but recent events kept prompting him to reconsider his beliefs.

"Are you still alive?"

As much as he wanted to move on from his mother's death, Ves still couldn't get over his hopes.

Too bad Ves had left the ghost behind on the Glowing Planet. With the Hegemony and the Coalition fighting over the resource-rich planet, it shouldn't last very long. Once the planet broke into pieces, any hopes of meeting the ghost of his mother would fade away.

Just then, a slim, pale hand reached out from behind and placed a juicy apple in front of his empty plate.

"You shouldn't eat those foods assembled from nutrient packs all the time. It's not as healthy as organically grown food."

Ves yelped and jumped from his chair like a scalded cat. He threw aside the table with the plate and apple and rolled forward in panic. He fumbled inside his pockets until he retrieved the Amastendira.

He pointed the laser pistol straight at the floating white specter that had crept up behind him. "Mother!"

Chapter 364

"Mama! Papa!"

"Come here, Vessie boy!"

A cute, black-haired toddler waddled over to his parents, who looked down on their son with eager grins. Ryncol Larkinson, a mech pilot of the Mech Corps, and Cynthia Larkinson, a wedding photographer and graphic artist, waited until their boy stumbled out of their house with his little legs.

Cynthia picked the boy up and gave him a loving smooch. "Who do you love more? Mama or papa?"

Little Vessie gazed at his mother and father with a confused expression. He put his thumb in his mouth and sucked on it. "Hmmm... mommy! I love mommy the best!"

The two began to cuddle affectionately while their father Ryncol ruefully looked on. "But you love daddy too, right!"

"Daddy!"

The little boy, now a little bit older, felt warm all over as his mother tucked him into his bed. She kissed him more than a dozen times on the cheek, making him feel as if the scary night had faded away.

"Mommy?"

"Yes, honey?"

"I want a sister. Can you give me a sister?"

"Oh, Vessie." His mother kissed him yet again. "Just wait a couple of years. It's not time yet."

"Please hurry. All my other friends have sisters but I don't have any."

"I promise you, Ves. You will have lots of brothers and sisters to play with in the future."

His mother stroked his cheek and couldn't resist giving Ves another kiss. After making sure the little nightlight stayed on, she left his room, allowing the little boy to enter a blissful state of rest.

"Mommy! Look at what daddy got me!"

The little boy, having grown up a little bit more, scampered over the grass towards his mother. He held a toy rifleman mech in one hand which he showed with childish glee.

A slim dark-haired woman sat next to a tree under the murky clouds of Cloudy Curtain. Despite the grim-looking skies, the woman smiled as if nothing in the galaxy could ruin her day. She picked the little boy up and held him on her lap.

"Oh, what's this, Vessie?"

"It's the latest Oncalix Systems GTNVC-39BE! It even has the underbarrel grenade launcher attachment! Look at how cool it is!"

Cynthia indulgently stroked her son's head. "Vessie boy, your father has given you enough mechs for toys. Isn't it enough? How about a stuffed tiger?"

"Noooooooooo! I want more! I never have enough mechs!"

The boy kept nagging his mother for more toy mechs. He wanted to play with the entire collection of Oncalix Systems. Ves only had their rifleman and skirmisher mech models. His friend Joey who lived down the streets in the suburbs of Freslin constantly bragged about owning all nine toy models.

"I'll promise you another toy if you've been good. If you make mommy happy, I'll buy you another toy next month!"

"Moooom! That's too long! The Oncalyx Systems mechs will grow old by then!"

His mother sighed. She understood nothing about his son's fascination for mechs, yet she knew that every other boy was just the same.

"Get back, I've got a gun!"

Ves, now a full adult, pointed the resplendent-looking Amastendira at the apparition that suddenly appeared behind him without warning.

It should have been impossible for anyone to sneak into his private workshop floor! Several meters of pure alloy walls engulfed the floor, which was several kilometers underground. State-of-the-art sensors monitored any disturbances in the soil around the exterior of the floor.

As long as anyone tried to penetrate the vicinity of the Mech Nursery, they would undoubtedly get caught!

At least, that was the intention. Yet he made a massive oversight! Ves had not considered defending against energy beings that could turn their entire bodies intangible!

The trivial manner in which Lucky passed through high-security walls and vaults with contemptuous ease should have triggered some warning bells in his head!

The ghost looked much more formidable this time. Last time, the energy being that pretended to be his mother had casually stolen the high-grade Rorach's Bone that should have been his reward. Thankfully, he excavated another sample of high-grade ore on his own, but he always wondered why his mother took it away.

Now he knew. The ghost obviously used up the Rorach's Bone to her own benefit. Her exterior shone with milky white radiance that closely matched Lucky's own appearance.

The resemblance was uncanny. Nothing except high-grade Rorach's Bone could have caused the two to look so similar.

His mother dismissed his pistol-brandishing form with a wave of her dainty hand. "Ves, put that toy away. You're no soldier. It's dangerous to play around with guns."

The way she commanded him to put away his weapon sounded extremely familiar to Ves. She used to adopt the same motherly tone of voice when Ves stayed up too late while playing with his miniature mechs.

Some instinct buried deep within his bones moved his body before his mind could process the request. His arm automatically lowered the pistol before he sobered up.

"Your tricks won't work on me!" An angry frown appeared on his face as he raised his pistol and aligned the barrel to his mother's figure. "Stay back! I'll really shoot you if you come close!"

The ghost tutted as she slowly hovered forward. The closer she neared, the more Ves felt pressured. An invisible cloying miasma surrounded his mother that brushed against his sixth sense.

Strangely enough, this time his mother didn't leech off his internal energy cycle. His mother seemed much more complete. Perhaps she had grown stronger to the point where she didn't have to rely on outside sustenance for the moment.

Ves did not let down his guard in any case. This deceptive energy being certainly had an agenda of some sorts. Her intentions would certainly be detrimental to him. His attitude remained harsh and he even dialed up the power of his laser pistol.

"Stop! Don't come any closer! Lucky, help me!"

"Meow?"

Lucky kept lounging on top of the kitchen machine. The abrupt presence of another intangible presence hadn't alarmed him in any way. He completely treated the ghost that wore his mother's face as family.

His mother smirked and held out a hand. An unknown piece of glowing mineral materialized in her palm. Once it became solid, she threw it towards the cat.

"Lucky, is that what Vessie named you? Be a dear and play outside. I need some time alone with my son."

"Meow!"

Lucky jumped up to catch the mineral in his jaws, having partially materialized his upper body to manage the feat. Once he secured his snack, he eagerly floated away, leaving Ves to fend off his mother without any backup.

Even though he expected the betrayal, he still looked disappointed. "This stupid cat."

"As I said, my dear, don't forget who gifted you these toys. You have no idea where he comes from. Only your father and I are aware of his origins."

"Stop it! Just stop it!" Ves couldn't take it any longer. "My mother is dead! You are just some wraith who somehow managed to escape from the Glowing Planet! I don't know how you got out, but don't think you can act with impunity in my presence! This time I can hit you back!"

His mother dropped her smirk. She closed her eyes in exasperation. "Vessie, while I am not happy that you've clung to mechs in your adulthood, at least you haven't become a soldier. I'm proud to see you grow up to become a successful man, but you should at least recognize that you have no business pointing a gun at your mother."

As she spoke, she slowly floated closer. She completely disregarded the threat of the Amastendira, as if she treated him like he was a five year old holding up a toy gun to her body.

Ves struggled against the competing impulses of his instincts, his fear and his rational mind. The ghost had crossed the halfway point by the time he resolved his internal contradictions.

No matter the truth, he couldn't allow the ghost to get close. Before he ascertained the threat, he should keep it well away from his vicinity.

"Stop! If you come closer, I'll really shoot. This is your last warning!"

Again, his mother didn't look deterred. She calmly floated closer as if she wanted to bait him into action.

After several seconds of second-guessing, Ves steeled his heart and pulled the trigger.

A bright and thick laser beam emerged from the Amastendira and pierced straight through his mother's intangible form. The beam continued to strike the wall behind and bore a hole straight through the thick layers of alloy, ceramics and composites.

Against the might of a fully-powered laser beam from the Amastendira, everything in its way devolved into non-existence. The beam carved out over five hundred meters of solid walls and bedrock before its energy ran out.

Such a mighty laser beam could have threatened a mech or carved open the belly of a transport ship.

Even more remarkable, the laser beam also carried a hint of spirituality. It was one of the mastercrafted pistol's most cherished features, and allowed the wielder to fend off all manner of energy beings that roamed the galaxy.

It should have annihilated his mother, or at least inflicted grievous wounds on her intangible form.

Instead, the instant before he pulled the trigger, a hole had already emerged in his mother's intangible form. It lined up exactly with the trajectory of the beam. Thus, his mother evaded damage entirely. The peripheral heat that bloomed around the laser beam posed no threat to intangible forms at all.

The hand that held the Amastendira started to shake. Ves had never expected the ghost to pull off this kind of move. Such an insane reaction speed akin to precognition wouldn't have been out of place if he faced an expert mech pilot, but this was his mother! When she was still alive, she was a photographer!

The quick reaction further reinforced the idea in his mind that he faced an impostor.

Ves attempted to pull the trigger again, but held off at the last second. His mother would likely react in the same manner. The first laser beam had already inflicted a large amount of collateral damage. The containment of his private workshop floor had been breached, and it was extremely expensive and troublesome to fix all of the damage.

He instead walked back, trying to keep his distance from his mother. He started to circle in order to avoid cornering himself like last time. His mother followed suit, and they slowly spun around the kitchen area as if he was a giggling young boy running around in circles while his mother playfully chased after her son.

Naturally, Ves did not feel any amusement at the tense standoff. "Tell me why you're here! How did you escape the Glowing Planet?"

The woman shook her head. "The so-called Glowing Planet was never my home. I do have to thank the Republic, though. Without their intervention, I would have never gotten past the monsters that you've called the devourers."

Obviously, his mother took advantage of the vacuum that ensued when Gregarious Wrath met and killed off the devourers and devourer king.

"What does that have to do with your presence here? Why can't you bother some other schmuck?!"

"Because I only have a single son. You are my only child, and nothing will stop me from meeting you again."

Her mother spoke those words with such a sweet tone that Ves mentally admired her performance. She truly performed her role to perfection. Even Ves couldn't spot any flaws.

"I suppose you stowed away aboard one of the ships that evacuated from the Glowing Planet. An energy being like you can probably make yourself undetectable if you wanted to. Am I right?"

"Correct, but that is not the entire story. You see, you are sorely mistaken if you believe I am some indigenous life form from the Glowing Planet."

Ves widened his eyes.

"The Glowing Planet is merely an opportunity. I've always been there. Only now am I able to appear before you in this form."

Deceptive witch! Her words muddled up his judgment until he became completely confused whether he should treat the ghost as his enemy or his mother.

Chapter 365

Ves tried hard to keep his mind on track. No matter what her mother claimed to be, she still remained a potential threat. "You haven't answered my question! Why are you here!?"

The ghost definitely had a purpose in revealing her presence to him at this time. Indeed, his mother smirked and materialized a familiar object in her grasp.

"You've been bumbling around like an idiot with this toy for over a week. As your mother, it's my duty to set you back onto the right path."

"What?"

Ves recognized the object in her palm. It was the crystalline remains of the leader he found in the crystal gardens. Ever since he started on developing the gimmick for his upcoming design, he continually studied the intricacies of the corpse.

All the organic parts had decayed away, leaving only pure crystals behind. Ves discovered that the quality of the miniature crystals surpassed those that made up the ruins the alien race had left behind.

He even figured out some of the rudimentary principles of the crystal augmentations. The tiny corpse that could fit in the palm of his hands possessed a lot of powerful cybernetic prowess in its crystal circuits.

Last he remembered, he left the corpse behind in his lab equipment.

"I know what you intend to do." His mother continued as she waved around the crystal leader's corpse. "You are doing it wrong. Do you realize the enormity of pulling back a vestige of the past? How arrogant to believe you can take what you want."

Ves temporarily ignored his mother's identity and the fact that she held one of his precious artifacts. For more than a week, he attempted to connect with the remains and attempted to trace some sort of spiritual presence that had been left behind.

So far, he completely failed to grasp a single useful thing. Thus, despite facing a ghost, Ves couldn't help but grow curious.

"What do you suggest?"

"There are many ways of accomplishing your goals, but most of them will result in fruitless outcomes. You are too weak and ignorant to know what you are doing. There is only one method that is suitable for a human with your strength."

Ves practically stood on his toes. He eagerly wanted to hear his mother's solution. "What method is that?"

"You must beseech the individual from beyond the grave. Resonate with his life, and let it borrow from your strength. A price must be paid."

Resonate with a dead person's life?

She demonstrated the method in front of him. Her milky-white ghost-like form flickered as she concentrated on the object in her hand. "The sentient being who inhabited this corpse has left behind a lot of regrets. His race is dead. His legacy is gone. Too much time has passed. What remains is only traces of his former self. Yet it is exactly those traces that are the strongest and most enduring parts. You only need to gather the most suitable one for your purposes."

Ves saw the light. He previously believed that the alien leader's spirituality might have drifted somewhere in some distant dimension. He hadn't realized that it might have been split up.

"How do I attract a portion of its spirituality?"

"As I said, you resonate with its desires. For example..." His mother looked down on the small but incredibly durable crystal corpse. "This individual is part of a long-dead race. What stands out for you?"

"Uhm, it's exquisite and small."

"Indeed, it's small. His entire race is small. You can fit an entire crowd of these aliens in your hands. Now ask yourself, how do their stature compare to the average sentient alien beings in the galaxy?"

"Leaving out the weirder forms of life like the silicate sandmen, they're really tiny. You can hardly find any smaller humanoid aliens out there."

"In the perspective of these aliens, the rest of the galaxy is a frightening place. It is filled with monstrous giants who can easily crush them beneath their feet if they do so. Their bodies, their weapons and their ships are tens or hundreds times larger than those of this diminutive race."

Ves started to understand what the crystal leader felt. "The tragedy of the small."

"Indeed, the tragedy of the small! Their race held a lot of potential, but the scale in which they worked with has crippled their development as soon as they met other space-faring races."

Ves could easily imagine what other races thought of the tiny aliens. At first contact, those aliens with normal body sizes compared to humans must have treated the crystal builders with contempt.

"It is this alien's eternal regret that their race has been born so small. No matter which alien race they tried to engage, they were never taken seriously. It has even led to their eventual downfall."

"How did you know all of this?"

"Because the fragment that holds this regret has told me so."

Her other palm flickered and a tiny silvery flame hovered over it. Ves became shocked when he sensed his sixth sense pinging at the flame.

It was another form of life!

"Is that...?"

"Indeed, this is a fragment."

Ves worked so hard to summon something like this. A small part of his mind believed that it couldn't be done because it sounded so fantastical. Was there really life beyond death?

His mother thrust out her palm, which pushed the flame away from her. It gently drifted over to Ves, who tried to take hold of the flame.

He failed. The flickering flame pushed right past his hand and went through his body! If he couldn't stop it from traveling forward, it would certainly disappear into the earth!

"Use your gifts, Vessie. I know you can do it!"

Driven by panic, Ves hastily focused his mind on his free hand. He still held onto the Amastendira, but he threw all thoughts of shooting his mother to the side. Compared to her foreboding presence, he eagerly wished to obtain her insights.

Ves eventually managed to halt the flame from submerging into the walls. It took a very special kind of focus to affect the silvery fragment. His mother had been right in that he needed to understand their perspective.

He didn't actually stop it with his hands. Instead, he reached out with his mind and tried to connect with it with a sympathetic viewpoint.

The fragment acted much like a bot who responded to only certain commands. With his mother's help, Ves finally cracked the secret.

"I understand. The fragment is a remnant of a sentient life, but it isn't actually capable of independent thought. The only way to influence it is if I send out thoughts that drive the fragment to action."

Just then, Ves resonated with the fragment by plainly showing it an image of a rifleman mech. His rich creativity painted a detailed scene which compared the mech to the scale of the crystal garden.

The mech practically towered over the collection of crystals like a monolithic giant loomed over a bunch of ants.

The sheer difference in size might have scared away the fragment, but Ves communicated a desire to implant the spiritual fragment into the mech.

In essence, he wanted to solve the fragment's lifelong regrets by granting it a body that towered over many other alien races. The sheer might at its fingertips would turn about its racial inferiority complex and give the fragment a taste of what it was like to own a towering body.

There was no question whether the flame would respond. It instantly turned docile and patiently hovered above his palm.

"Uh, what do I do with it?"

"You cherish it and feed it until you have constructed a mental lattice in which it can rest." His mother responded patiently with a smile as she toyed with the crystal leader's corpse. "The fragment looks frail, but as long as you give it hope, it will continue to persist until you need it. Do not worry about its health."

Indeed. Through his sixth sense, Ves could feel a strengthening conviction in the fragment. It wanted Ves to deliver his promise of integrating the fragment with a mech. So long as that remained a possibility, the fragment would do everything in its power to remain in the material dimensions.

His mother had pointed out the light in the dark. Now that she gave him direction, Ves could figure out the rest on his own. His animosity towards the ghost had dropped to the point where he could tolerate her existence.

He still felt highly uncomfortable about her presence, though. An awkward silence ensued where Ves wasn't sure about holding his mother at bay with the Amastendira.

Even this wondrous weapon came with limits. Against a foe who could easily manipulate her intangible body around a laser beam, the Amastendira offered very little countermeasures.

Ves had studied the weapon for a time, so he knew it came with a wide-area light projector. Basically, the light projector mode turned the straight and narrow laser beam into a cone of light that spread out quickly.

Ordinarily, such a mode would quickly diffuse the energy to the point where it hardly inflicted any damage. However, with sufficient power, it would still be able to cook an armored man within a distance of up to ten meters.

Maybe he could still exorcise this ghost this way, yet the collateral damage would be huge. Without an armored suit of his own, the heat would affect his body as well.

Even then, he wouldn't be able to guarantee that his mother would pull off another trick. She seemed incredibly capable of avoiding a light projector.

His mother smirked at him, as if she guessed what was on his mind. "I must take my leave now. You are old enough to stand on your own, and you don't need your mother to tell you what to do."

"Mom!"

Before she left, she focused on the crystal leader's corpse. Slowly, her humanoid form flickered, as if it lost some stability. Her form behaved as if it reflected off a pond which rippled from a stone.

Then, something drastic happened.

Her intangible bone-white substance got pulled into the crystal leader's tiny corpse. It was as if some kind of hole sucked her inside!

The crystal leader's corpse continued to hover in the air despite no one holding it aloft. It started to shake a few times before the crystals that made up its limbs started to glow in white. Some of the cavities in the strange alien's head started to glow, as if all of its eyes had turned to life.

A sound emerged from the corpse. "Ah, that was harder than I thought. This body is older than I anticipated."

The crystals embedded into the corpse started to reconfigure themselves into different orientations. The hunched posture of the tiny alien straightened up, and the body started to resemble a human female.

The cavities that dotted its entire head closed up. Instead, two symmetrical eyes opened up, adorning the faceless head with a touch of humanity.

Ves was taken aback. He stood there with his mouth wide open as his mother intricately molded the cyborg body to her tastes. Ves never knew such a thing was possible! Had the corpse always contained this function, or was it something she forced with her own powers?

Whatever the case, it didn't change the fact that his mother had taken possession of a body! Even though she looked like a doll, Ves knew better than to underestimate its capabilities. The crystals possessed remarkable capabilities that could wreck havoc!

He was certain that his mother was up to no good!

After she finished her adjustment, she smiled again at Ves and turned intangible. Once she made sure she retained the capability to pass through walls, she turned to go.

"Wait! That artifact is mine! I still need it for my research!"

"I've seen your work. You are almost done with your research project. What's yours is mine, and what's mine is yours."

His mother disappeared before Ves could get another word out.

She stole his artifact! Ves could have continued to perform more research on the corpse and figure out more applications of the crystals! Now it is gone!

Chapter 366

The departure of the ghost that pretended to be his mother left Ves in a morose mood. His ambivalence towards her identity deepened with each subsequent meeting.

Even with his superhuman Intelligence, he still couldn't determine whether the ghost spoke the truth. She moved exactly like he remembered from his childhood, but her attitude had turned ten times worse. Even though she helped him out, she wrapped up her benevolence with thorns.

Her unilateral appropriation of the crystal leader's corpse particularly set back his future plans. Without a live sample of crystals to study, Ves wouldn't be able to delve into its secrets and progress his understanding of the alien technology. Even though he took plenty of scans, they only offered a finite amount of data.

"Scans won't be able to substitute for the real thing."

More disturbing than his mother's lack of sensitivity regarding the ownership of his property, she also showed competence in areas which she shouldn't know.

"It's like she's some sort of highly-trained soldier or mech pilot."

As far as Ves was aware of, his mother lived a completely normal life. Ves inherited a small portion of his artistic sense from her. In her spare time, she enthusiastically played with recorders and snapped a lot of images of their family. She made a small business out of recording some of the weddings in Freslin.

Even though a couple of recorder bots and some automated software could do the job, they would never be able to convey the emotional impact if a human stood at the helm. His mother truly stood out in that area.

"My mother spent her lifetime developing those skills. It's impossible for her to be good at fighting."

Ves came up with three different answers to this discrepancy. Either she gained a lot of new skills after her death, or she was never the person she pretended to be when she still lived.

As for the final answer, the ghost used to be someone else, but for some reason or another assumed his mother's identity.

"This is far too complicated."

He could speculate all day, but from the evidence at hand, he failed to make up his mind. If the ghost assumed any other identity, then he may have been able to look at this conundrum in an objective manner.

Yet when it came to his mother, his judgment became clouded with emotion. He was not a bot who could strictly look at a situation and spit out a yes or no. Bots had the luxury of ignoring everything that fell out of their consideration.

Ves enjoyed no such luxury.

"At least she didn't suck out the life of me this time."

He faintly sensed that she became more formidable each time she paid a visit to him. Previously, she seemed more primal and ephemeral, as if she was one step away from oblivion. Now, she behaved much like a living human being, as if she had truly been resurrected from the grave.

Obviously, the ghost constantly sought to strengthen herself. Otherwise she wouldn't go through the trouble of stealing his high-grade Rorach's Bone and his crystal artifact.

"Even if we're related, that's no reason for taking away my stuff!"

Sadly, the ghost was nowhere to be found. She came and went according to her own whims. Even if she hovered right next to him, as long as she exerted her utmost in hiding her presence, Ves wouldn't know he was being spied upon.

His glowering mood turned even gloomier at that realization. The only reason why he didn't panic was because his mother wouldn't expose his secrets to anyone else.

She was just like his father, who offended a dangerous trans-galactic secret society in order to deliver the Mech Designer System to him. "If she's truly my mother, she only wants the best for me."

He turned his attention to the fragment that hovered before him. Ves carefully treated the flickering silvery spirit with care. He slowly drew it from the mess hall and brought it back to the labs.

"Let's see what makes you tick."

Ves proceeded to subject the fragment to all manner of tests and scans. Unfortunately, most of the machines failed to make sense of the fragment. It was as if it didn't exist. Similar to Lucky in his intangible state, the fragment could only be seen, not touched. He could forget about trying to manipulate it with the help of any tools.

Even the Vulcaneye had to admit defeat in front of the fragment. While the multiscanner spat out a few more observations, it hardly told him anything he didn't know.

"In the end, a spiritual fragment only responds to spiritual stimuli."

He gently manipulated the fragment between his hands. He became more proficient in tugging it back and forth. He found that he didn't need to employ his full focus to direct the fragment. As long as Ves revealed a hint of emotion, the spiritual fragment eventually reacted.

It had to be the right set of emotions and thoughts in order to work, however. The fragment yearned to be big. So long as Ves intimated that he would put the fragment into a mech, the silvery flame became as docile as a pet.

Ves couldn't experiment too much with the fragment. As fascinating as its existence implied, he still had a lot of work to do. His research on finding a more economic composition of crystal was almost done. He only needed to solve the problem of producing larger crystals without flaws.

"Let's finish up the images."

He sat down and relaxed while keeping the fragment in his view. The Triple Division technique called for superimposing three different images, but they didn't need to be of equal strength.

Yet Ves had never worked with an existing spiritual fragment. Even though it looked like anyone could snuff it out with a pinch of his fingers, it held a surprising amount of spiritual power.

Over millions of years of drifting about in the imaginary realms, the fragment lost everything redundant, leaving only the purest thoughts and emotions.

Whenever Ves brushed his senses close to the fragment, he countered unyielding will. It lacked much of the context that he wanted to know. He knew nothing about the crystal leader's history. This made it difficult for him to construct a backstory around the fragment.

"Maybe it doesn't need anything more."

Anything he added to the spiritual fragment wouldn't stick. Its unyielding will worked against Ves whenever he wanted to alter its makeup. Unlike most of his other images, the fragment had already endured for eons.

He set the fragment aside and focused his mind on constructing the other two images. Ves already put a lot of thought into them, so he easily constructed the images in his mind.

The base model consisted of a fast and nimble rifleman mech. It possessed the same defining traits as the mech in his vision, although in a more idealized way. The rifleman mech took up a starring role no matter if it fought alongside other rifleman mechs or operated at the head of a squad.

Ves even added a little flamboyance to its performance. This would be a mech meant to be piloted by the skilled. It catered to mech pilots who demanded a high amount of mobility while simultaneously wanting enough armor to triumph against enemy marksmen.

"My mech has to be fast, accurate, enduring and tough."

That was a very tall order, but Ves possessed enough confidence that he could deliver the goods.

The base model required little else. Ves only strengthened its core traits as much as possible in order to put up a decent fight against the spiritual fragment. He also imagined its performance becoming better over time. Age didn't degrade its performance, but rather strengthened it to a higher level.

"Now for the totem animal."

The totem animal had to fit the archetype. He needed to construct a mythical animal that fought with speed and finesse.

Rather than scouring the galactic net over an existing example, Ves conjured up an animal from scratch.

After several weeks of thought, he came up with a skinny fire ape. Unlike most primate species which relied on their brute strength to fight, this animal relied on his supernatural ability to shoot out concentrated fire from its eyes.

The fire ape began as a small and weak member of its tribe. Its differences and lack of physical prowess quickly forced it out of its tribe. As a young ape, it survived in the jungle by itself. It barely kept itself fed.

All of that changed once it manifested its power of fire. Its eyes grew red and the fury it became capable of releasing constantly became more formidable.

With increased strength came increased food. The more it ate, the stronger it grew. This cycle fueled the fire ape's growth, enabling it to range into the depths of the forest and contend with the kings that ruled over the animal kingdom.

Up to the very end, the fire ape had become the sovereign of the forest. It commanded the allegiance of all the other apes, allowing its species to become the first species under heaven.

Even then, the fire ape looked up at the skies and dreamt of breaking through the barrier that constrained it to its world.

Just like the base image, Ves made sure to incorporate a growth element in their story. His second original design shared a lot of traits with the Blackbeak design. Ves intended both of them to be enduring and resilient. They would definitely last long enough for their X-Factor to experience a lot of growth.

He already looked forward to how his mechs performed a couple of years from now.

Ves spent a lot of time on the fire ape's back story because he wanted to bestow a lot of strength to the image. If the fire ape buckled too easily against the spiritual fragment, then there wasn't any point in employing the Triple Division technique.

"I'm going to have to come up with another technique soon."

His studies into the X-Factor had only scratched the surface. He came up with the Triple Division technique after recognizing that images could be superimposed together. A lot of time has passed between now and then. He gained a lot of new knowledge, from learning that the images and X-Factor could grow, to the true nature of spirituality, to realizing he might be able to incorporate other sources of spirituality.

To make full use of these new insights, Ves required a new way of working with images. He wanted them to be strong and useful. The biggest downside to the Triple Division technique was that mutual cannibalism among the images resulted in a lot of waste.

Even if the eventual victor consumed the essence of its defeated rivals, it was a stretch if they could repurpose all of their strengths.

"It's a way of turning three weak images into a stronger one."

However, what would be the result of using two weak images and one incredibly strong one? Ves guessed that the stronger image might outright reject or annihilate the weaker images without attempting to absorb their strong points.

That was not the outcome he wanted.

When Ves looked at the fragment, he sensed an impenetrable wall. This spiritual remnant brooked no intrusion.

He wondered whether he could soften it up before he performed the final phase of the Triple Division technique. If he left it like this, then the technique would certainly result in failure.

"This image spent too much time in limbo. It has gone through hell and back and survived where many other spiritual fragments have disappeared."

However, Ves called it a fragment because it was an incomplete portion of a whole. Despite its all-encompassing defenses, it longed to be reunited with its fellow fragments.

Ves figured out a loophole. "If I can fool this fragment into recognizing the other two images as one of its own, what will happen?"

This notion went beyond the confines of the Triple Division technique. While it wasn't an entirely new technique, it deserved to be distinguished from the standard method.

Still, all of his ideas might come to nothing if he failed to fool the spiritual fragment. His brows began to furrow as he tried to figure out how he could open up a chink in the fragment's armor.

Chapter 367

Ves thought about the issue for a couple of minutes.

"If I constructed the base model and totem animal in a way that matches the spiritual fragment, then there's a good chance they'll merge."

The spiritual fragment didn't need any strengthening. Rather, it needed the traits that the other two images brought to the table. Otherwise, his X-Factor wouldn't be able to bring out a comprehensive enhancement.

While his idea sounded like it could work, it wouldn't help him out in his current situation. He already constructed the other two images and they shared little in common with the spiritual fragment that Ves wanted to employ as the human myth.

The key to the Triple Division technique was to put together three distinctly different images. If he made them too similar, then that would defeat the point of the technique.

"This won't be the first time I'll handle a spiritual fragment. I can't keep making compromises if I encounter a recalcitrant fragment."

He needed to find a different solution. When he turned his attention back to the spiritual fragment, he recalled its bot-like behavior.

Another idea sprung to mind. The fragment couldn't think for itself. After all, it was only a small portion of a formerly complete entity. What if he issued a more elaborate command? Would the fragment behave according to his will?

He needed to approach this in the right way. He didn't want the fragment to assimilate the other two images in a seamless fashion, and neither did he want the fragment to obliterate them either. Whatever the final product may look like, it had to be greater than the sum of its parts.

"It has to be akin to a complete form of life."

Every other product of his Triple Division technique resulted in living images. His recent ones also incorporated a growth element in order to make them more formidable as they experienced multiple battles.

Ves knew how to approach this problem.

He sent out a couple of mental directives to the fragment. He laid out some of the fragment's inadequacies, prompting it to strengthen its desire to become whole again.

"It's impossible for you to merge with the other fragments from the crystal leader that are left adrift."

He wanted the fragment to be a little less discerning in its demands. It didn't need to seek out its original companions. Ves could introduce it to two new friends.

Even though the fragment proved obstinate, Ves managed to lower its guard by experimenting and figuring out the right kind of logic that would pass muster.

"It's like a puzzle."

After several hours of continuous probing, Ves managed to soften the fragment up to the point where it would comply with his intentions.

This was the point where he put all of his conjectures to the test. Failure would set him back a lot, and in the worst case the spiritual fragment might sustain irreparable harm.

He coaxed the image to inhabit his mindspace. After a moment, the fragment got sucked inside his head.

Right now, Ves feels as if his brain has become a little stuffy. His thoughts flowed a little bit less fluidly as the fragment occupied a significant portion of his mindscape.

He also sensed that the fragment didn't remain inert. It interacted with the errant thoughts floating in his mind and exerted an unknown influence on his mind. He imagined drastic changes to his thinking pattern if he let the fragment occupy his mind for an extended amount of time.

"Best get to it then. I can't let it stay like this for too long."

Ves proceeded to carefully introduce the other two images to the new presence. If the fragment appeared almost solid, the other images looked as if they would break like eggs if they smashed against its surface.

The disparity was too big.

The safest approach would be to encourage the spiritual fragment to assimilate the images. Yet he didn't do so because he thought it would lead to an imperfect merger.

"There needs to be some struggle. It can't blindly incorporate the good and bad parts of the other images."

Therefore, Ves conditioned the dimwitted fragment to treat the other images as supplements that could enhance its strength and make it become whole.

In order to exert some control over the process, Ves focused his concentration and gifted the other two images with a considerable portion of his mental power. They needed to last long enough for the fragment to consume them over time.

After a bit more encouragement, the spiritual fragment went to work. It flew towards the other two images and clashed against them. Although the base model and the totem animal were much weaker than the fragment, they had the advantage of independent thought.

As living images, they possessed enough self-awareness to understand their dire situation. If they didn't band together and push back against the domineering spiritual image, they'd be swallowed whole and disappear from existence.

"Come on. Put up a fight!"

Ves continued to pump more mental power into the underdogs, yet it hardly availed them as the fragment's imposing strength overwhelmed their defenses with ease. The pushback only allowed the images to delay their foreordained deaths.

He became a little distracted by the gruesome massacre being carried out in his mind. He felt as if he corrupted an innocent child into becoming a mass murderer.

Worse, he offered his own children as its first victims. He did create the base model and totem animal out of his own imagination. As his creations, they deserved better than to be fated to die.

"Cattle are born to the slaughter every day." He shook his head. "I can't be too soft-hearted about what's happening."

As long as he achieved his desired outcome, he wouldn't let any doubts get in the way.

Ves kept his full attention on the struggle for dominance. Both the base model and the totem animal fought to the bitter end. As for the spiritual fragment, it ceaselessly broke up the portions that it managed to dislodge from the other two images and incorporated into its own existence.

The sheer disparity in strength meant the spiritual fragment hadn't grown any stronger. Instead, the additions prompted the fragment to lend some of its strength and fill them with life.

The fragment transformed inside his mind. It ceaselessly filled up the portions it lacked and ballooned into an entity that looked more complete.

Naturally, the fragment didn't restore itself to what it looked like before it was whole. That was gone, and could never be recovered.

Instead, the newly incorporated additions contained the essence of the other two images. The spiritual amalgamation slowly shook off the identity of a fragment and grew into a newly birthed spiritual entity.

Success!

When the two sacrificial images finally disappeared into the belly of the spiritual entity, Ves finally beheld the results. After a few more minutes of transformation, the spiritual entity showed off its new form.

It looked like a crystal golem. The entity's physical appearance no longer looked like a flame. Now, it turned into an imaginary crystalline life form that clearly derived its form from the appearances of the other two images.

The humanoid crystal golem released a formless pressure onto his mind. It was no longer a naive bot-like remnant that could be fooled by a couple of thoughts from Ves. It possessed its own capacity to think and decide.

It looked around his mindscape and kept up a vigilant stance. Every other image unconsciously accepted his presence. This was not so for the crystal golem.

"Hey, I didn't fool you. I made you whole, and I'm about to fulfill my other promise to you in a couple of months."

Ves got the sense that the crystal golem's patience would quickly wear thin. He had to work fast and complete his second original design fairly soon before the crystal golem did something drastic within his mind.

He sighed and leaned back in his chair. The process had taken a lot out of him. He used up almost every portion of strength in his mind.

"I could use a break."

Ves decided to take a nap and let his mental strength recover while he slept. He left the labs and entered the bedroom area on the private workshop floor. Upon reaching his private bedroom, he came across a dozing Lucky.

"So there you are, you lazy backstabbing cat."

Lucky softly purred in his slumber. The gem cat didn't even have the decency to do his bathroom business in his litter box. Ves picked up the shiny blue gem the cat deposited on his bedsheets and inspected it with his System-augmented vision.

[Zhilvenas of Swiftness]

Increases acceleration by 8% when installed on a mech.

Lately, Lucky's waste products started to come in the form of junk exotic gems. Sometimes, they even shone. This gave the gems a lot of class. Besides looking pretty, their effects also started to become more noticeable. A boost of eight percent in any parameter could not be underestimated.

"This is one of the good ones." Ves smiled and put it inside a small bag where he collected a number of other gems. "At least you're good for something, Lucky."

The cat softly purred again. Ves shook his head and picked him up and shoved him a bit further down the bed to make room for his body. He laid down on his bed and went to sleep.

The next day, Ves went through his morning ritual and resumed his work. Even though he built up the crystal golem, he still had to finalize his work on the gimmick.

He entered the labs and looked at his half-finished project. Just as he tried to figure out how to scale up the crystals without introducing cracks or other flaws, the crystal golem in his mind started to stir.

"What's going on?"

The crystal golem started conveying thoughts to Ves. Initially, he failed to interpret the stream of thoughts sent in his direction. It was only when he looked at the crystals he attempted to synthesize that the thoughts started to make sense.

"Are you telling me... I'm doing it wrong?"

The crystal golem didn't actually convey a lot of data to Ves. What it did decided to tell him only amounted to a couple of key concepts that Ves had a lot of difficulty trying to understand. The crystal builders adopted a completely different perspective on their technology, and Ves had to employ his entire upgraded Intelligence in trying to parse the alien thoughts.

Still, the things he figured out proved to be very relevant to the situation at hand. "I get it now! So that's why the crystals break! I've got to treat it as if I'm cultivating them! They're like organic growths!"

Just this lesson along with some other interpreted insights saved him a lot of time. Ves immediately put his new notions to the test and synthesized a crystal the size of his head. He had to use another lab machine to do so, and he also used up several critical raw materials that he stored up.

"It worked!"

The crystal golem hadn't let him astray. While the new solutions didn't guarantee that Ves would be able to synthesize a full-sized crystal that could be embedded in the chest of his mech, it already proved sufficient to be integrated in a laser rifle.

Even if he encountered some problems trying to produce a larger crystal, Ves could figure out the rest on his own.

"Thanks, crystal golem!"

The image didn't respond. It had only been a remnant instinct for it to lend a hand to Ves.

Now that he achieved enough progress with regards to the crystals, Ves was ready to move on to the next phase of his design project.

"I'll have to spend some time drafting up my new mech. It helps that I'm mostly going to reuse my existing component licenses."

From the Trailblazer engine to the Veltrex armor system, Ves intended to recycle as many component licenses as possible. Naturally, he wouldn't be able to incorporate every single license, but the ones he already possessed provided a solid framework to work around.

"I've got to finish this quickly. I've already wasted too much time on other diversions."

Chapter 368

The draft design took shape in a short amount of time. Even though this was the first time he put his conception of his second original mech into shape, he had always imagined its design beforehand.

In his rich imagination, Ves constantly tinkered with the design elements of his rifleman mech. Every available moment, such as when he fell to sleep or took a bath, his thoughts always flitted back to the design of his mech.

A mech designer never stopped designing mechs. Even without a design program, a mech designer would use his own imagination to define its shape.

Therefore, the design process right now actually consisted of constructing the second draft rather than the first. Ves had already pinned down most of the major design choices he thought about beforehand.

"My mech has to be fast, accurate, enduring and tough. In that order."

Juggling those priorities took a lot of finesse. Over the course of a single day, Ves drew up a three-dimensional wireframe model of what his intended design should look like. He only drew up the broad strokes of his design, but it already set a couple of factors in stone.

First, the new design looked nothing like the Blackbeak. Besides using the same type of armor system, engine and other components, the two designs had nothing in common.

"The Blackbeak's role is to attract attention. As a knight, it's inevitable that it's going to be put to use in attracting enemy firepower."

In contrast, a rifleman mech would never volunteer itself as a target dummy. Only stupid and desperate mech pilots would call out attention to their lightly armored mechs.

A rifleman mech armor carried at least half as less armor than a knight mech. It was not as if rifleman mechs couldn't pile up the armor if it wished to do so, but the costs outweigh the benefits.

One of the most important reasons why was that all of that armor impacted the accuracy and precision of a ranged mech. This problem became much worse with higher classes of mechs, because the exotics incorporated in armor plating often interfered with the precision of the limbs.

Either a mech can be light or precise, or heavy and strong.

Only heavy mechs circumvented this unspoken rule. They possessed enough space and weight for mech designers to separate the interference and implement all kinds of compensation systems.

"Heavy mechs are mostly designed and produced by states. I won't be able to get in touch with heavy mechs for a long time."

Right now, Ves had to play by the rules, so he adopted a slimmer medium mech form optimized for speed and accuracy. If he wanted to design a skirmisher mech, he would probably strengthen the arms to make it capable of fighting up close. However, a rifleman mech didn't need that much power, so he kept them fairly slim.

"It's not going to take too much strength to lift up a rifle. It's more important to make sure they're stable and precise."

The heavier the arms, the harder it became to ensure they operated precisely according to the will of the mech pilot. More mass meant more complications. Therefore, mech designers sought to cut them down to the absolute minimum, with perhaps a small allowance for armor plating.

This was why rifleman mechs made for very poor melee mechs. They wouldn't be able to wield heavier weapons such as swords and spears effectively, and they made for a pathetic sight if they had to resort to their backup knives.

This was why rifleman mechs needed mobility. An immobile mech was a sitting duck to any skirmisher, swordsman mech or knight that ran up to its face.

"As long as they can run away, they can maintain their combat effectiveness."

Modern mech combat centered around the strategic positioning of rifleman mechs. The goal of both forces would be to smash apart the rifleman mechs of their opponents. As long as one side lost its rifleman mechs, its fate would be sealed.

Ves spent more time than he thought trying to draft up a good pair of legs. Different from skirmisher mechs, they didn't need to excel in top speed. Rather, they needed to accelerate quickly and be able to halt a mech's forward momentum in an instant.

This took a fair bit of thought. Stronger legs required larger legs, but larger legs also added to weight, which in turn slowed down the mech again.

Fortunately, Ves already owned a number of high-quality component licenses, most of which he exchanged from the Clifford Society with merits. Those component licenses enabled him to make more generous tradeoffs, thereby allowing him to achieve a decent balance between speed and weight.

With a pair of fairly capable legs, the mech looked a bit unbalanced with the skinny pair of arms. Almost every medium rifleman mech looked this way, so Ves wasn't worried about the negative consequences.

The rest of the mech looked fairly slim as well. Compared to the Blackbeak, it possessed a much slimmer weight, as Ves had left out most of the excess armor. He only left a fair bit on the front torso, as rifleman mechs would often be employed against enemy rifleman mechs. Ves figured that the amount of armor he had already added should be sufficient to win an even firefight against a regular rifleman mech.

"The armor largely plays the role of a buffer. It gives the mech pilot another chance after he screws up. His mech isn't supposed to get hit in the first place."

His mech's high mobility ensured the rifleman mech wouldn't get hit nearly as often as the Blackbeak. Thus Ves didn't worry too much about the deficiency in armor.

The rest of his design followed the standard convention for rifleman mechs. Ves did not try to introduce any radical departures from the common standard for rifleman mechs. He needed a lot more skill and experience to attempt such a thing.

Ves decided to adhere to best practices in that regard. This prevented him from introducing potentially fatal flaws, but it also left out any major jumps in performance.

It was not that Ves rejected risk-taking, but he felt he wasn't ready to take that step. "I'll have to become a full-fledged Journeyman Mech Designer before I attempt such a thing."

While he designed his mech, he also continuously channeled his focus. Working with the crystal golem was a lot different than working with images he created from his own imagination.

While the crystal golem largely possesed simple thoughts due to its unusual method of birth, it possessed a much stronger mentality than anything that Ves had hosted in his mind. The crystal golem was alive, and keenly watched on as Ves drafted the mech that it would eventually inhabit.

Naturally, the crystal golem knew nothing about mechs, so it hadn't been able to offer any technical assistance besides the implementation of the crystals. Ves embedded a smaller one in the laser rifle design and a larger one in the chest.

The latter crystal was a bit special, because Ves wanted it to be charged through multiple ways. First, any energy weapon that struck the crystal or around it would have some of its energy siphoned by it. Achieving such a phenomenon wasn't easy, and Ves required a lot of help from the crystal golem to turn the idea into a feasible implementation.

Fortunately, the crystal golem might have forgotten much of its original life, but it still held a wealth of expertise concerning crystal technology. It even amazingly taught him some of its race's simplest circuits, which facilitated the process of energy siphoning.

"This is amazing!"

The torso crystal would certainly make a big impact when it would be unveiled. Perhaps initially the market would dismiss it as another overhyped gimmick that could never deliver on its promise. When the new design finally demonstrated its capabilities, those skeptics and naysayers would certainly be stunned.

Three days later, Ves finally finished his draft design. It incorporated most of what he wanted out of his second original design. The only thing he regretted was not being able to supply the rifleman mech with enough batteries. Its slimmed-down volume left a bit less space for batteries than he anticipated. Even if he utilized the same high-quality batteries as the Blackbeak, it still wouldn't last very long if it continuously shot its weapon.

"I've got no choice but to utilize a laser rifle design with external battery packs."

Laser rifleman mechs distinguished themselves from ballistic rifleman mechs by their ease of supply. Laser rifles utilized standardized formats of batteries. As long as a large force brought enough copies of a handful of battery formats, it would easily be able to supply a motly crew of rifleman mechs.

However, the use of an external battery pack came with a lot of hassle. Laser rifles that drew power directly from its wielder always provided more convenience to the mech pilot. It significantly reduced the supply burden and saved the mech pilot from fumbling around when they replaced a spent battery pack with a fresh one.

Naturally, relying on internal energy cells came with its own downsides, one of which was that the entire mech would be drained much faster. At least with external battery packs, the worst a mech pilot could do was run out of packs. As long as his mech still possessed enough energy, he could always retreat.

This was not so with a complete dependence on internal energy cells. The convenience was actually a double-edged sword. Even if Ves was willing to accept the price, he still couldn't get around the fact that his energy cells wouldn't be able to supply his laser rifle for long.

He hadn't only been drafting his mech. He also spent at least half a day on his laser rifle. In fact, it didn't look too different from the Tainted Sun which he designed before. Much of the principles used in the design of the gamma laser rifle could also be applied to a regular laser rifle.

Ves made sure to spice up its design in order to obscure the fact that he derived it from a forbidden weapon. This wasn't very hard to do. Gamma lasers demanded an insane amount of integrity and safeguards in order to handle its extremely high output.

Once Ves stripped most of the redundant features, he ended up with something that looked nothing like it could be used for anything illegal.

"Well, I think some smart people might be able to spot some clues."

They could only hold their suspicions, though. At best, someone would suspect that Ves studied under a weapons developer or mech designer who previously worked with gamma laser rifles.

Such news might be able to land Ves in hot water, but he knew very well that no such teacher existed. Who would his skeptics point at as proof that Ves had crossed a taboo?

Therefore, Ves didn't take the threat too seriously.

"Besides, the crystal integrated in the rifle mechanism will certainly attract everyone's attention."

The crystal acted as a laser propagator that substituted for a whole host of internal components. This might sound like a convenience, but in fact it added significantly to its cost. It also made the rifle harder to produce.

That last point would prove to be a major demerit. External weapons such as rifles often wore out quickly. Their lack of armor also meant they easily sustained crippling damage.

This wasn't anything to be concerned about in normal cases, as outfits often brought a bunch of spare laser rifles. Rifleman mechs also often exchanged their native weapon models with others. Some mech pilots even regarded it as natural as wearing a different set of clothes each day.

The reason why such a custom came about was because laser rifles ordinarily didn't cost a lot of credits. However, Ves would have a lot of trouble trying to get his customers to accept purchasing his more expensive laser rifle, given that it would cost at least twice as much as a normal rifle.

It was very much possible that his customers would only use the crystal laser rifle that came with his product at the start. When it inevitably breaks down, they'll just grab the nearest generic laser rifle instead of purchasing a branded one from the LMC.

"If I want to make my customers stick to my brand of weapons, I'll have to add more benefits to using them in conjunction with my mech."

This wasn't an old problem. Plenty of mech designers faced the same issue, and they developed a set of standard solutions to make the pairing between mech and weapon more attractive.

At the draft stage, it wasn't necessary for Ves to work on that aspect. He decided to leave the issue for later while he finalized the draft and made sure he hadn't missed any major design choices.

He nodded in satisfaction. "This is enough to give others a good impression of my mech. Let's see what others have to say about my work."

Chapter 369

Before he ended his isolation, Ves quickly checked the System. In the last couple of weeks, his DP had crawled up. He noted with satisfaction that ever since the Mech Nursery got their hands on the two Benson production lines, his DP started to accumulate a lot faster.

"Still, it's going to take some time before I can accumulate a decent reserve."

In order to design a competitive machine that could hold its own in the overcrowded market for rifleman mechs, Ves relied on a number of advantages.

Compared to a regular mech designer from the Bright Republic, Ves enjoyed a decisive superiority in knowledge and ability. His extensive collection of Skills and his enhanced Intelligence far outpaced a regular Apprentice Mech Designer.

His Physics Skill alone enabled him to apply the alien crystal technology to his laser weapon, which was a massive boost.

His extensive library of quality component licenses also enabled him to lift the quality of his design by several increments. Ves could never stop praising the quality of the Trailblazer engine. Oleg's casual work might look nothing special in the Friday Coalition, but in the Bright Republic it had clearly earned the Blackbeak design a lot of renown.

Even if he lacked a number of essential component licenses, he could still purchase a small number of average licenses with his own wealth or his company's wealth. If he wanted to obtain something better, then he could even break open his stash of merits and obtain something good from the Clifford Society.

Ves already considered licensing some supplemental internal component licenses from the Society. A good rifleman mech needed a comprehensive targeting system and various other aids that facilitated accuracy.

He also wasn't entirely able to design a laser rifle from scratch. He still needed a base model to work from because he wasn't about to design a whole host of special components from scratch.

Even when he designed the Tainted Sun, he relied on existing research notes to tide him over in this aspect. In essence, Ves partially plagiarized someone else's work when he designed the graser rifle.

For obvious reasons, it wouldn't be a good idea for Ves to copy the exact same work for his next weapon design. Either he should come up with something original, or leave an obvious papertrail to an existing laser rifle design.

Ves chose to do the latter, because it wouldn't cost him a lot if he wanted to obtain a generic license. He didn't place too many demands on the weapon, so he had no need to work with something expensive.

"Extensive knowledge and good component licenses only form the base of my confidence."

Although it sounded as if he stood above his peers, in fact Ves knew very well that talents could beat him in both aspects. He couldn't forget about Michael Dumont, who had been lying low all this time while ramping up production of his discounted Havalax.

Ves faintly felt as if his rivalry with Dumont hadn't ended yet. Someone was obviously propping him up, because his company certainly wasn't making any profit from selling the Havalax for 50 million credits.

No, the true reason why he felt confident was because he possessed the opportunity to develop a Mastery any time he wanted. While the price was steep, the benefits pushed him up to the same level as the direct disciples of Master Mech Designers.

Only through experiencing the perspective of mech pilots could mech designers develop a mech that fits all of their customer's needs.

Still, Ves had to wince when he saw how much he had to go. He was far too short from reaching 40,000 DP.

According to the rules of the System, he earned 1 DP for every million credits in revenue. To accumulate 40,000 DP, the LMC needed to achieve a turnover of forty billion credits!

That was an insane amount, and couldn't be done in a couple of weeks!

The last time, Ves slowly piled up his DP through a combination of virtual and physical sales of the Blackbeak model, with the former playing the main role. However, the Blackbeak had almost reached its DP cap.

Virtual mechs earned DP a lot faster, but would eventually reach an upper limit where it didn't matter how many virtual copies got sold.

The System treated physical mechs differently. It could potentially deliver Ves a lot of DP, but only if he sold them en masse. Right now, his sales hadn't reached that level where it could overtake the DP income of virtual mechs.

The delay grated on him. Until he obtained his Mastery, Ves didn't dare move on to the next phase of his design project.

"I'll figure something out after I collect some feedback. At worst, I'll design another virtual mech."

Ves thought he outgrew the necessity of designing virtual mechs, but reality proved him otherwise. It wasn't really respectable for a mech designer who owned a thriving mech company to go back to the sandbox and dabble with virtual mechs like a kid.

"Oh well, I'll take the hit in reputation so long as I earn enough DP."

After tidying up his lab, Ves exited the labs and private workshop floor and took the elevator up to the fabrication floor.

From weeks of solitude, Ves suddenly experienced a frenetic energy that could only come into being when a large number of people stayed in the same space. Even though the different halls offered plenty of space, it couldn't obscure the effort poured into the activities that took place.

This was where the LMC fabricated its mechs. Ves smiled as he toured the three fabrication halls currently in use. Each hall hosted its own production line.

The mech technicians all worked seriously around the Dortmund line. As the most advanced production line of the LMC, it required a lot of focus and competence to ensure no flaws emerged in the end products.

As for the other halls, the mech technicians treated them with a little less care, though not too much. The new Benson production lines might not be able to deliver the quality of the Dortmund lines, but they made it up with increased automation and convenience.

Ves spotted Chief Cyril berating a handful of mech technicians slipping up on the job. He quietly approached the man and let him finish his rant.

"Chief."

"Ves." He nodded. "It's about time you left your cave. You've missed a lot. We could have used your help in getting the Benson lines up to speed."

Ves looked at the machines at work and found them to be running smoothly. "You didn't need my help. It's best to train the mech technicians into solving their own problems. They can't always run up to us whenever they hit an obstacle."

"Aye. It still took a week longer than necessary to get the production lines on track."

"Are there still any problems related to production?"

"None that requires your attention. Most of my mech technicians have become familiar with working with the Benson machines, and they are already highly familiar with the Blackbeak design. They can pump out silver label Blackbeaks in their sleep."

"That's good to hear." Ves smiled.

When he returned from the Glowing Planet campaign, he relayed some of his experiences to Chief Cyril. After telling the chief technician how awful it was to work with a bunch of sad excuses of mech technicians from Walter's Whalers, he exhorted the chief to step up the training of the LMC's workforce.

Ves would rather stab himself in the chest than to supervise a crowd of lazy bums.

After discussing some routine matters, Ves brought Cyril to a private office where he showed him the draft design.

"What you are seeing now is a draft of my next design. It's a rifleman mech with a number of unique points."

Ves explained the overall parameters of the mechs as well as its special laser crystal rifle and the crystal embedded into the chest.

Chief Cyril scratched his stubble, deep in thought. "You don't go for half-measures, do you? This is a risky design. If you can deliver on your promises, I'm sure your design will be a commercial success."

The premise here was if Ves could actually bring his draft to life without compromising on any of its estimated capabilities. Still, if there was one thing Ves didn't lack, it was skill.

"I'm fairly sure I can manage. Tell me what stands out to you."

"Besides the difficulty of realizing such an ambitious design, I think you're going to have a lot of trouble with the two basic concerns of rifleman mechs. Your energy supply and heat management doesn't look very fantastic."

"My design is almost as efficient as the Blackbeak. Certainly, its top speed is nothing to scoff at, but the Trailblazer engine is able to do more with less."

"That's only the engine. There are other components that suck up a lot of power as well, for example that fancy laser rifle of yours. According to your planning, it's supposed to come with both a rapid-fire and high-energy firing modes. No matter the mode, your mech won't be able to persist very long on the battlefield."

Even if it relied on external battery packs, Ves could still not go over the fact that his mech wouldn't be able to carry too many of them. That would negate all of the advantages of slimming down the mech.

"I'm already aware of the power issues. There are no easy solutions to this problem. As long as the rest of the mech is able to deliver on its promises, I think my customers won't mind too much on this issue."

"It's your call." Chief Cyril shrugged. "The second problem is that the armor looks a little thin. Are you aware that the Veltrex armor system won't work as well when you thin down the layers?"

The Veltrex armor system consisted of three fixed layers of armor plating of different compositions. The Blackbeak enjoyed an ample thickness for each of the three layers, so it was able to make full use of the armor system.

Chief Cyril pointed out an uncomfortable truth, and that was that Ves took an armor system meant for knights and applied it to a rifleman mech design.

"It's... a less than ideal use of the Veltrex system, I admit." Ves had to concede his faults. "It's true that I'm driven by practicality when I made this design choice. If I had the option, I would have used another armor system, but I don't think the additional spending is worth it. Even though the Veltrex plating loses a bit of effectiveness when they're applied so thinly, they still perform above average compared to the local market standard."

Ves licensed the Veltrex armor system from Leemar. It couldn't compare against the regular compressed armor licenses that circulated in the Bright Republic.

However, it didn't change the fact that Ves had made a suboptimal design choice.

"Do you think it will affect the market evaluation of my design?"

"Hm. Maybe not. It's not like anyone else but other mech designers care about a slight misuse like this. The critics will torch you for this decision, but in my judgement the mech pilots won't care. It may even be of help to your fans. If they bought both your Blackbeaks and some copies of this new design, then the logistics of maintaining and repairing them will be a lot simpler."

Compressed armor was very difficult to fabricate and used up a lot of materials. A single outfit would have an extremely hard time trying to carry all of the raw materials of several different premium armor systems.

If multiple mechs used the same armor system, then that drastically lightened the footprint of any outfit. Some mech manufacturers designed a complete portfolio of mechs that shared the same materials for that reason.

"I think the Veltrex armor system has enough flexibility to be applied to any medium mech archetype." Ves concluded after the chief raised this point. "I don't plan on designing every popular archetype with the same armor system, but it's a nice benefit if I can make it work."

Chapter 370

The issue of earning DP continued to hound Ves. Right now, most of his DP came from selling physical Blackbeak copies. In this regard, his silver label Blackbeaks only earned him a trickle, while the much more abundant bronze label Blackbeaks actually drove most of his DP income.

Even then, domestic sales of the Blackbeak had started to slide now that most of the immediate demand had been met. Elemental Mech Engineering, the third party manufacturer that marketed its products in the domestic market, already informed the LMC that they had already dialed down their production.

Vaun Industrial had picked up the slack, but it wasn't easy trying to introduce a Brighter product into the markets of foreign states. Besides some modest success in the Protectorate and a couple of other states, Vaun had failed to make an impact elsewhere.

"It's going to take at least a month before my DP swells up to 40,000." He judged.

That was a fairly long time, and anything could happen in between. He did not wish to delay his project any more than necessary.

In the meantime, Ves kept collecting feedback from his friends and closest employees. He heard pretty much the same thing about power supply, heat management and the effectiveness of the armor system from everyone, although they focused on different aspects.

Different from last time, the LMC had now grown into a sizable employer. Besides asking other people's opinions in an informal setting, he also got roped into holding a meeting in front of a bunch of marketing managers he didn't even know his company hired.

While they lacked the technical background to understand the nuts and bolts of his design, their understanding of the market provided welcome comments.

"The design looks to be on the thick side when compared to other rifleman mechs. That's not a bad thing per se, but your customers are wondering if the bulk adds enough value to your mech. Rifleman mechs these days are very light."

"The specs look good enough, but I'm afraid it won't give the design enough of an edge compared to the dominant models on the market."

"The crystal projector technology looks very interesting, but most buyers will look at it with a grain of salt. You need to demonstrate this feature in a live exhibition in order to make an impact."

"Your design's appearance looks very neutral and unisex. I think it will be better if you can adjust its profile to be more masculine. That's going to project more strength and make your buyers more confident about purchasing a good product."

The more feedback he gathered, the more he gained a sense on how the market would receive his mech. Ves had to admit the HR department did a good job hiring some insightful folk.

Ever since the LMC moved to the Mech Nursery, Ves noticed that every employee gained a sense of pride and accomplishment. Trading up from the shabby old workshop and a couple of rented offices downtown to a company-owned office and manufacturing complex added a lot of weight and legitimacy to the company.

Another important event happened in between the feedback sessions. Melkor finally brought his newly acquired mechs and mech pilots home. His cousin brought the nucleus of the Avatars of Myth to the mech stables erected close to the center of the Mech Nursery next to where Sanyal-Ablin stashed their own mechs.

When Ves met with Melkor, the newly christened force commander brought along his hired men and women. Their ages trended in the upper range for mech pilots, from the upper thirties to the lower fifties. They all stood at ranks as if they had never left the Mech Corps.

"Are they former servicemen?"

"Most of them have served in the Mech Corps in some capacity as advanced mech pilots." Melkor nodded. "For one reason or another, they sought out jobs in the private sector. Don't worry, they haven't been dishonorably discharged. There are no problems in their background."

"Are they willing to stick around for a decade?"

"As long as we maintain the same level of remuneration, there's nothing to worry about. They're onboard for the long haul as they've all signed a fixed contract."

Ves nodded at his words. Every member of the Avatars of Myth received a very generous amount of compensation, well above the market average in fact. In return, the mech pilots would be obliged to keep their mouths shut and accept hazardous deployments without question.

"That's good. How are they taking their new jobs?"

"We've mostly been training our teamwork and coordination in simulations. We also performed some live-fire exercises, but it's difficult seeing as our knight mechs are supposed to be our backup models."

"I forgot about that." Ves admitted. The Avatars of Myths was meant to pilot his own designs in time once he filled out the other roles. "I'll divert some time to fabricate two exclusive gold label Blackbeaks for your knight pilots."

"We're grateful for that. The sooner you get that done, the earlier we can become a well-oiled machine."

Ves hung around the Avatars of Myth for a while and discussed some matters with Melkor while observing the other mech pilots. From what he had witnessed so far, despite his age, Melkor seemed to have earned the respect of the veteran mech pilots. They didn't treat him like a rookie who was way in over his head.

Maybe Melkor possessed a talent in administration and leadership. He looked like the type of person who was very meticulous and detail-oriented. It remained to be seen if he could keep his cool and direct the Avatars of Myth in an actual battle, however.

"After you've received the two Blackbeaks, when will the Avatars be battle ready?"

Melkor had to think carefully how to answer that question. "They are all competent mech pilots, so there is no questioning their capabilities. They can be deployed immediately in an emergency, but you shouldn't get your hopes up. Without sufficient drilling, they're liable to fight as eight separate mechs rather than a single cohesive squad."

Despite what Melkor might think, Ves knew the importance of improving coordination and building up a rapport. He still possessed some lingering memories from Barley during his first Mastery acquisition.

His evaluation of his cousin went up. No Larkinson was average. He grew more curious about why the Mech Corps let go of Melkor in the first place.

"Did you get into contact with Raella while you recruited your men at Bentheim?"

"I did."

"How is she?"

"She's irritable to me." Melkor answered as he adjusted the visor on his head. "The Larkinsons have openly cut ties with her. Every family member on Rittersberg is aghast at her decision to join the Blood Claws. It's clear she doesn't want anything to do with the Larkinsons right now."

Ves shook his head in regret. Maybe he should have paid her more attention when she'd been assigned as his bodyguard. A small part of him also blamed Dietrich for bringing her to Bentheim and introducing her to the Blood Claws.

Still, there was no use crying over spilled milk.

"Is she happy there?"

"Oh, she certainly is. I think the separation has done some good for her, as the family's expectations for her have weighed her down. Some people aren't meant to bear this kind of pressure. She's found her own lot in life now."

"Well, she can always come back to us if she wants to get out. The Blood Claws aren't exactly the friendliest bunch to hang around with. Gangs aren't exactly the most stable employers in the galaxy."

After commiserating about Raella's fate, they moved on to planning for the future.

"There's a war going on right now." Ves said with apprehension. "While Cloudy Curtain is probably too small to register in the radar of the Vesians, they might look at us as an easy target. Are you prepared to defend the Mech Nursery?"

"Not on our own." Melkor shook his head. "We'll still have to rely on Sanyal-Ablin to do the heavy lifting. Are they contracted to hold against overwhelming odds?"

"Not as of yet. It's too expensive to make them fight to the death. If they face overwhelming odds, they'll prioritize their own lives."

That was the downside of contracting a security company instead of setting up your own force. While security companies sounded more respectable than mercenaries, they essentially shared the same traits.

Just like mercenaries, security companies prioritized their own benefits over the interests of their clients. In order to secure the full backing of Sanyal-Ablin in the event of an overwhelming attack, Ves would need to pay several billions of credits each year.

Even then, they might still cut and run at the end.

Ves would rather invest in the Avatars of Myth than put his faith into Sanyal-Ablin. Although their Konsu Clan origins sufficiently deterred the small fry from pulling any mischief, the Mech Legion wouldn't hold back their punches.

It was not as if the security company stood directly for the Konsu Clan. At most, it represented a single interest group within the massive Coalition partner's political landscape. Plenty of precedents proved that well-connected security companies like SASS purely adhered to the mercenary standard and avoided greater entanglement.

It would be ugly if a group backed by someone in the Gauge Dynasty demolished a group from the Konsu Clan, and the latter followed up on the incident to the highest authority.

Proxy wars should be kept at arm's length.

In a sense, Ves enjoyed the implicit backing of the Clifford Society and Master Olson's extensive network. Standing under their shadows even if Ves wasn't a part of their inner circles saved him a lot of potential trouble.

His enemies couldn't be unscrupulous in their methods to deal with him. Otherwise, Ves would have been subjected to a lot more assassination attempts.

Still, Ves largely considered himself as an independent mech designer. Master Olson opened up a lot of doors for him, but he didn't enjoy her highest favor. That was reserved for direct disciples like Oleg, a freak so smart that Ves suspected that his intelligence had naturally broken past the human limit in his teens.

After commanding Melkor to liaison with Sanyal-Ablin concerning base defense, Ves moved back to the underground fabrication floor and commandeered the Dortmund production line.

He proceeded to spend the next three days fabricating the gold label Blackbeaks for the Avatars of Myth. He demanded to work on both mechs alone to ensure the highest quality.

The mech technicians around him didn't mind their exclusion at all. In fact, it left them free to observe his confident work methods and the exquisite way he built up the two mechs.

Even though he spent much less time on fabrication than his mech technicians, his every move and action elicited praise from his grease monkeys.

"This is how a real master works!"

"Even Carlos and the chief are left in the dust compared to our boss!"

"How wonderful it is to witness the boss at work. With his skills, he could have easily become the lead fabricator in a major mech manufacturer."

"Hah, lead fabricator? That's too small a job for our boss. Even if a bigshot company from the galactic center offered him a cushy job, he'd be a fool to give up what he built up on his own. Mech design is where his real passion lies."

Ves felt better when he heard the incidental praise, even though they hardly knew anything about the real mech industry. His Assembly Skills and Sub-Skills looked impressive, but any seasoned fabricator in the major mech manufacturers in the Republic could beat him down a notch.

Those who dedicated their entire careers in this field couldn't be underestimated.

Once Ves finished the two mechs, he personally ensured they went to the Avatars of Myth. The two knight pilots looked especially ecstatic to pilot his handcrafted work. His gold label Blackbeaks had earned an exalted reputation among the mech community, and their quality was as revered as their scarcity.

"The two machines will definitely make the men happy." Melkor remarked to Ves. "Once you supply us with other types of mechs, the Avatars of Myth will really go into business then."

They watched on as the cadre of the Avatars surrounded the two artistic machines. The reliefs and carvings that the lower labels lacked elicited a lot of admiration.

Now that Ves had finished his chores, he thought it was time to get back to the main business at hand. He already collected sufficient feedback to make some targeted adjustments to his design. He was itching to go at it, but without possession of a Mastery, the chance of going astray at some point scared him off.

"I need more Design Points." He frowned when he noted he was shy of 20,000 DP away from being able to afford his desired Mastery.

Chapter 371

His recent foray to the Joe System and his subsequent translocation to the planet that hosted crystal city drained all of his DP.

Ves did not regret the spending. Besides upgrading his Physics Skill to a ludicrous level for his age, he also cracked some of the secrets to alien technology and obtained a highly capable handheld multiscanner.

However, it didn't change the fact that his latest splurge left him in an awkward situation. Even with the help of two third party manufacturers, generating 40 billion credits in revenue could not be accomplished with a single wave of his hand.

"Do I really have to go back to designing a virtual mech?"

It would be the most expedient way to milk some quick DP, but only if he designed his virtual mech fast enough.

If he sped up his design process too much, he'd be liable to cut too many corners and publish a subpar design. All of his care and attention into building up a reputation for quality would go down the drain by then.

"A good reputation is hard to erect but easy to tear down."

He practically cornered himself in terms of delivering consistently high quality products. If he slipped up a single time, his fans and the critics would eat him alive.

The dilemma kept him paralyzed for a couple of hours as he took a break in his private office at the top floor of the headquarters.

"It's awfully empty here."

Lucky had wandered off ever since he left the labs, but he came back after a while. Still, even with the presence of his pet, the office seemed too large for the purpose. Initially, Ves was impressed by its grandiose enormity, but after time he found he missed his old office back at the now-abandoned workshop.

"How things change."

The LMC moved up and Ves had advanced as well. The changes happened a bit too quickly for him to adjust. From worrying over earning several million credits, to raking in a billion credits each month, a lot of things had changed in a matter of two years. Other mech designers needed at least a decade to grow their businesses to this extent.

A sense of alienation momentarily welled within him. He missed the days when his ambitions only encompassed running a successful mech boutique.

Instead of selling a couple of mechs a month, he sold hundreds of them if he included the third party manufacturers. Each of them sold for at least 60 million credits, well into the upper range of the local mech market, which was an incredible accomplishment for Ves.

"Yet all of this wealth and fame doesn't allow me to do what I want anymore."

Industry insiders watched his every move, waiting to see if he could go further than what he had already achieved. Ves truly couldn't afford to show any signs of weakness. Unlike Michael Dumont, he didn't enjoy strong backing who was willing to hold his hand if he somehow stumbled on his feet.

Only after he calmed his mind did he figure out an appropriate solution.

"If I can't publish a quick and sloppy design in my own identity, then I'll just use another one."

The galactic net was home to trillions of different aliases and identities. It was fairly hard to be completely anonymous on the galactic net, but it could be done as long as he paid the price. Setting up a second identity on Iron Spirit that had nothing to do with his original Chasing Clouds account required a bit more finesse.

"Iron Spirit is very strict with regards to checking the identities of its designers."

According to their regulations, it was to make sure that the virtual mech designer received the proceeds to the sales of his virtual mechs. In reality, they wanted to keep track of the designers and prevent abuse.

For Ves alone to try to circumvent these identity checks, he'd have to go through a lot of trouble. Luckily, he could turn to other sources for a more convenient solution.

Ves activated his desk terminal and logged into the Clifford Society's virtual portal. His virtual avatar emerged in the city before the mountainous landscape, and he quickly entered the shop region where he scoured for a provider of various shady services.

He eventually found the same shop which previously hacked the Dortmund's processors for him. Ves remembered that the shop offered a lot of other dubious services. He approached the bored-looking man sitting behind a shop counter.

"Hi. Can you arrange a secure second identity for me?"

"For what purposes do you wish you used your second identity?"

"To browse the galactic net and open a second account in Iron Spirit. I don't want any of it traced back to me."

The shop attendant yawned and waved his hand, summoning up a small list of relevant options. "Take your pick and pay up. You'll get your new credentials immediately."

Ves browsed the short list of options and realized that establishing a second identity came with a number of different origins.

The simplest ones consisted of completely faked identities. These would essentially be persons that some shady organization faked into existence by hacking the databases of a planet or state. Most of the time, the hacked planets or states consisted of backwaters with a poor level of monitoring, such as the Mancroft Independent Harbor.

These identities would be extremely shady and easy to mistrust. Many organizations on the galactic net even banned anyone who claimed to hail from some of these places, or implemented rigorous background checks that his new account would almost certainly fail.

The next step up would be to assume the identity of a deceased citizen of a reputable state. These individuals mostly disappeared in ship accidents. Whenever a ship's FTL drive failed or went astray, the occupants wouldn't be heard from ever again. Officially, they'd be designated as missing, and over time they would be marked as deceased.

Identity forgers paid off certain local bureaucrats to quietly remove some individuals from the list of passengers. Officially, the passengers had never boarded the ship that disappeared into nowhere. On the record, they were still alive and well. They just decided to take an extended holiday to some isolated asteroid or something.

While the shop sold even more elaborate identities, Ves didn't have a use for them. After all, he only wanted to do some business on the galactic net. He wasn't planning on selling a physical product, which normally necessitated a much more rigorous false identity.

"I'll take the deceased ID option for a mech designer." Ves said.

"There will be five merits."

The shop actually overcharged Ves for the service. Each merit held an incredible amount of value that couldn't completely be expressed in credits. He doubted that forging a false identity of a missing individual cost more than a hundred-thousand credits.

Still, Ves could at least trust the shop to deliver on its promises and be described. Otherwise, the Clifford Society would have done something about them by now.

If Ves decided to be stingy and asked for a black market referral from Dietrich, it would be a complete guess whether the forger stuck to the agreement.

A few minutes later, Ves gained the unremarkable identity of Rabant Clearwater, a novice mech designer who disappeared when the passenger ship he traveled on had been chased into FTL by pirates in pursuit a decade ago.

The identity forgers picked out his identity and made sure that no trace of his presence aboard the passenger ship remained in any databases.

The shop promised the identity was foolproof. Short of Mr. Clearwater showing up himself, Ves would not have to worry about the Republic or anyone else besides the shop getting wind of his identity.

"Does the Clifford Society know about my identity as well?"

"Of course." The bored man answered in a tone that made it clear he repeated the same words more than a thousand times. He waved his hand around the entire ship. "This entire virtual space is under constant monitoring by the Clifford Society's AIs. Every transaction is laid bare to them. If you wanted more privacy, then you should have at least visited our physical shop in the Leemar System."

Ves had no time to travel to Coalition space. "I understand. Maybe I'll pay a visit if I need a more solid identity. This one will suffice for now. Thank you for your help."

"You're welcome." The shop attendant said while closing his eyes again. Under his breath, he grumbled some words. "Why am I sitting here by myself? A bot could do the same job ten times better."

With a new identity in hand, Ves felt as if he liberated himself from an invisible cage. The weight of expectations didn't affect him as much anymore now that he could assume the identity of Rabant Clearwater.

To be sure, Ves scoured the galactic net for any traces and indeed found nothing outwardly suspicious. He studied Mr. Clearwater's past and memorized a handful of important details, such as his place of birth, his former residences and the schools he attended.

Everything looked boring and normal, exactly the way Ves liked it. "I can utilize this identity for more than publishing virtual designs."

Perhaps he could also engage in other virtual activities that would be too inconvenient for Ves to attend in his own identity.

After he set up his Rabant identity on his own comm, he went to work. He opened a second Iron Spirit account and rerouted a few million credits through an untraceable method.

Ves didn't need to resort to someone else to do that for him. Compared to falsifying an identity, sending money to another account in an untraceable way was trivial.

Once Iron Spirit finished their automated background check and came up clean, Ves received a prompt to name his account.

He only had to think for a moment before inputting something random. "Crazy War Criminal."

He half expected the name to be used already, but surprisingly enough Iron Spirit actually let Rabant take on this pseudonym.

"Huh, maybe the other mech designers are wimps."

He chose the word crazy because he wanted to use his second account to try all sorts of unconventional designs. He included the words war criminal because he had technically designed and fabricated a taboo weapon.

The others in the game would probably think of his nickname as shameless boasting. Only he knew how true those words described his singular stain in his mech design career.

Now that he took care of all of the hassle, he could finally start to design a quick and easy mech. Ves already formulated some ideas while he arranged his second identity.

"This new account doesn't enjoy any of the renown and reputation of my Chasing Clouds account."

The downside to assuming a new identity was that he couldn't use his public renown to use. His second identity came free of all of his entanglements, both good and bad. Starting over with a blank slate meant that Ves essentially returned to the bottom.

"I already knew I had to pay a price for all of this convenience."

Ves already thought about how to attract enough attention despite his second identity's lack of reputation. He would design something that was both good and crazy. As long as his design attracted enough attention, he would easily be able to sell enough mechs to earn a measly 20,000 DP.

He only cared about accumulating a set amount of DP in the fastest way possible. After he achieved his goal, he couldn't care less on how his crazy design performed in the virtual market. He would leave his second identity alone and go back to it whenever he needed to earn another batch of DP.

"Let's see. Since my real identity is involved with designing knights and rifleman mechs, I shouldn't go for these archetypes. It's probably not a good idea to stick with medium mechs either."

His first choice would be to design a light or heavy mech. Both came with their own pros and cons.

"Which one will I go for?"

Chapter 372

Ves wanted to go crazy. Over the past two years, he gained so many new Skills and experienced so many new things. His enhanced Creativity constantly overflowed his mind with interesting mech concepts.

"I can finally unleash my wildest thoughts!"

Naturally, he had to be somewhat discrete in his methods. If his products under the Crazy War Criminal account resembled his existing offerings under the Chasing Clouds account, then people would easily be able to draw the lines.

That would defeat the purpose of operating a second account.

Therefore, Ves had to adopt a different design method and avoid resorting to the same old methods.

"That won't be much of a challenge. As my Skills keep growing, so do my bag of tricks."

Deeper knowledge allowed for more elaborate branching of methods. Perhaps when he used to be poorly skilled, he could only tentatively utilize a single method to solve a specific problem. Once his knowledge widened, he became more proficient in applying that specific method, but he also became familiar with alternatives.

"It's like traveling from Cloudy Curtain to Bentheim. Previously, the only way I could travel from star system to star system was to book a second-class ticket on an average passenger ship. Now, I'm still able to travel cheaply if I want to, but I can also upgrade to a first-class ticket. Not that I need to, now that I have the Barracuda as my personal corvette."

The same principles applied to mech design. With a broadened perspective, Ves could easily disguise his work by forcing himself to adopt different methods. Though the quality of his work would decline, trying out something different was still a useful exercise.

Considering his options, he preferred to design a heavy mech rather than a light mech due to the wealth of design options available to him. Heavy mechs boasted vastly more weight and volume allowances, enabling Ves to stuff as many systems as he wanted onto a suitable frame.

"The only problem with this option is that it takes a lot of time to design a heavy mech."

Even if he designed a variant based off an existing design, he would still have to spend many hours in modifying and optimizing his frame just to achieve a basic level of quality.

"It's no joke to design a heavy mech."

Ves had never really attempted to design a heavy mech, even a virtual one. The only experience he had with working with heavy mechs was when he took part in the Young Tigers Exhibition. Charlotte Hoffmeister's Kirby made an unforgettable impression on Ves.

He also remembered that his former classmate Patricia Schneider specialized in designing heavy mechs as well. Ever since she got snapped up by Master Null in the Leemar Open Competition, Ves hadn't heard any news of her since.

It would be nice to get in touch with her again, he thought. They shared the same class back at Rittersberg and they had also been the only mech designers from the Bright Republic to have reached the finals in the Open Competition.

Ves even harbored a tentative dream to collaborate on a design.

Sadly, every message he sent to the woman disappeared into a black hole. Ves didn't know if Patricia received his message, let alone deign to send out a reply. The only thing he got out of the Clifford Society was that Patricia had never Leemar even once.

"She's likely taking her time to shore up her foundation."

If Ves was a conventional mech designer, he'd be doing the same thing. Fortunately, the Mech Designer System cut short the time it took for him to expand his knowledge, so he had no need to go to school again.

After a moment of consideration, Ves decided to make the practical choice and chose to design a light mech. Their smaller, slimmer builds left him with very little room for error, but it had the advantage that it didn't take too much time to slap a working mech together.

"It's not worth the effort if it takes more than a week for me to finish a virtual mech design."

In this brief amount of time, Ves wanted to test his capabilities to the limit by rushing together a design that would successfully make an impact in the virtual market. In order to achieve the latter, Ves had to be creative and design a sufficiently shocking mech to overcome his second account's lack of renown.

Now that he pinned down the weight class, he needed to decide on its star tier and archetype. While he was capable of designing modern 5-star mechs, Ves chose to take a step back and tackle the more modest 3-star range.

3-star mechs might be outdated by more than two-hundred years, but that also made them a lot easier to work with, thereby speeding up his design process.

"3-star mechs are also much more widely sold than 5-star mechs."

The latter may be more prestigious, but they didn't necessarily led to higher sales. Ves wanted to earn a modest sum of 20,000 DP in order to afford his next Mastery. While 5-star mechs came with higher DP caps, thereby ultimately earning Ves a lot more points, it would take months to get that far.

Ves needed immediate short-term gains instead of long-term investments.

As for the archetype, he thought about designing an aerial mech. He hadn't designed much of them, but his increased knowledge base gave him the option of working somewhat well with flight systems.

"I'll be designing an aerial production mech sooner or later, so it might be useful to get some practice."

Thus, Ves settled on an aerial light mech. As for the type, Ves previously designed the Seraphim, which utilized a long-ranged rifle. Therefore, Ves thought about going for a melee type this time.

In general, aerial melee mechs in the light weight class mostly consisted of skirmisher and scout roles. They made for ideal mechs to ambush unsuspecting rifleman mechs that fared poorly in a fight up close.

The problem with this combat method was that aerial melee mechs often got shot down before they reached their targets. Light mechs in particular only needed to be hit a couple of times before they started smoking.

Skilled pilots worked around these limitations and ambushed their prey behind obstacles. They trained their patience to a level where they would be willing to hide atop a structure for days until an enemy mech passed by.

Ves couldn't expect the kids who fooled around with 3-star mechs in Iron Spirit to do the same. They craved quick action and wouldn't put up with waiting for more than five minutes in the same spot.

He knew this because his Old Soul and the DarkSpear virtual designs didn't really sell all that well. Even with the partnerships the LMC had struck with the local game centers, not a lot of players chose to pilot these mechs, even for free.

In order to counteract his design's vulnerability to anti-air, Ves needed to come up with some sort of solution.

"Maybe a shield?"

A shield in this weight class wouldn't be of much use. The better choice would be to adopt some sort of stealth or ECM system, but aerial mechs emitted so much heat that it would be impossible to hide it from the sensors of any decent mech.

Ordinarily, a mech designer who faced this problem faced a dead end. If he went through with his choice to design an aerial melee mech, then he'd have to accept the vulnerability inherent in the type without any recourse.

Ves was not an average mech designer. His ability already brought him in the upper ten percent of mech designers, and although it was extremely hard to climb higher at this point, he still refused to be stumped by this problem.

He actually had a very crazy solution in mind.

"An aerial melee mech meant to fight up close needs some protection at the diving stage. Most often, they do so by putting their legs in the way of any incoming fire."

Aerial mechs put much less importance on legs than landbound mechs. After all, even if their legs got torn apart, they could still move around the battlefield, although their balance would be out of whack.

Therefore, the people who piloted aerial mechs had the tendency of using the legs as a disposable form of armor, to the chagrin of their mech technicians.

Medium aerial mechs even possessed enough weight to crush any landbound mech if they stomped their opponents from above. This mode of delivering death from above was highly popular in virtual games, but much less so in reality due to the enormous costs of wrecking a mech's entire pair of legs.

Ves wanted to take this concept of borrowing the falling force of a mech and adopt it to his light mech in a practical way. This would be hard, but Ves already had an idea in mind.

"A light mech can still crush any landbound mech as long as its dive is lengthy enough to build up a lot of momentum. Still, the light mech will usually come out as the loser of this exchange if it's targeting a medium mech."

In the worst case, it would be like throwing an egg against a wall. The egg would be completely demolished while the wall hardly noticed the bump.

The story would be different if Ves replaced the egg with a pick.

"A humanoid light mech that flies in the air doesn't need a conventional pair of legs."

Instead of designing a pair of redundant legs, what if Ves replaced it with a single broad spike with enough substance to make for a very sturdy lance?

It would look like a mermaid mech, but instead of replacing the lower body with a flexible tail, Ves wanted to utilize a hard and tough spike built solely to pierce through armor from above.

"This will also solve the deficiency in armor concerning my mech type."

If he added some sort of disposable armor or padding to the exterior of the spike, his light mech would be able to last even longer. Even if this disposable layer couldn't hold on for long, the spike itself consisted of enough solid mass to endure a beating.

As for the upper body, Ves planned on arming his mech with a two-handed hammer. This would be the ideal weapon to deliver the finishing blow after it had come to a stop, preferably after having impaled through an enemy mech.

"A pair of knives won't have the reach to finish off an enemy mech impaled to the ground. Swords and spears won't cut it either as the amount of power behind each blow won't impress anybody."

Light mechs possessed a lot less power than medium mechs. Against a decently-armored mech, their blows would more often than not bounce off the armor. Their mech pilots had to build up momentum or put the entire weight of their mechs behind their blows to inflict telling damage.

For his experimental spike-legged mech, such an option wouldn't be practical. It had to finish off a damaged opponent from a temporary state of mobility. Therefore, even if such a weapon would add a lot to the weight, Ves decided to settle for a light but long-handled hammer.

"This sounds like a crazy mech."

Ves leaned back in his chair behind his private workshop terminal and sighed. He decided to do his design work in the confines of his private workshop because he couldn't let anyone else find out about his second account.

With Lucky swatting every spy drone that circumvented the other security measures every hour, Ves did not have to fear any further exposure.

"Still, it's not like I'm completely anonymous. The Clifford Society knows, and so does the shop that sold me this identity."

That was why even if he had the option of incorporating technology derived from taboo weaponry, Ves purposefully chose to avoid going down this route. The 'war criminal' portion in his second handle merely represented his aspiration to break the conventional rules.

"I guess the System succeeded in corrupting some of my morals."

Chapter 373

Now that Ves finished defining his vision for his light mech, he proceeded to move on to the next phase.

"Should I even go through with the next phase for this design?"

The next step would be to come up with a suitable set of images to perform his Triple Division technique to infuse his design with life. However, if he did so, he'd leave an obvious trail of breadcrumbs from his second account back to his primary account.

He shook his head. "Maybe if I use the exact same technique, it might lead to questions. I'll just have to switch up my methods in order to fend off any suspicions."

Therefore, instead of using the Triple Division technique, Ves decided to make use of a single but extremely focused image.

"With a design like this, it can't be piloted in a conventional manner."

An aerial light mech whose primary method of dealing damage consisted of thrusting its single spiked leg from above needed a special brand of crazy to work. Common sense had no place in this half-suicidal method of attack.

Ves decided to construct a single totem animal and infuse its entire instincts into the X-Factor of his design. He had no need for rationality or balance that the base model and human myth images normally provided. Instead, he wanted to achieve a single extreme.

The more he thought about it, the more he became enthused by the prospect of such a mech. "Only crazy people are allowed!"

He didn't spend too much time on forming the image. He shaped a narrow-beaked pecker bird into being. He casually named it the Impaling Bird, which reinforced the idea he came up with for this image.

As a mythical form of life, Ves scaled up the bird to the size of a mech. The mythical bird possessed a fluorescent gray beak that was both sharp and tough. Its main mode of attack consisted of flying fast and embedding its prey with the point of its beak.

Besides delivering a devastating blow with its beak, the Impaling Bird was also capable of finishing off its opponents by slapping it with its wings.

After defining its shape and capabilities, Ves spent a couple of hours constructing a fictional history along with the world in which the bird resided. Details were sparse, but Ves included a lot of different combat situations where the Impaling Bird utilized its beak to great success time and time again.

The Impaling Bird never got tired of running its spiked beak through its prey and predators alike. The cruel and primitive bird delighted in staking its entire life in a single attack run. It was a miracle that it hadn't died already.

Once he finished the image, the extreme bird came to life within his mind. Bird immediately moved as if it wanted to cause some trouble in his mind, but when it suddenly noticed the spiritually strong existence of the crystal golem, it instantly became meek.

"You better settle down until I finish your design."

The bird might be suicidal sometimes but it never attempted to attack an opponent out of its league.

After making sure the crystal golem wouldn't come after the Impaling Bird and vica versa, Ves proceeded to move on to his design.

"I can't design a mech without parts."

Even if he chose to design an original mech, he still needed plenty of components to bring his work up to par. He quickly visited the virtual license database and bought a slew of fitting virtual licenses.

Most of his purchases consisted of average components. Ves wanted to keep his prices low to encourage sales. He only made a concession when he bought a separate armor system for the spikes. The new set of plating possessed an extreme amount of resistance against sudden shocks and impacts. It fared less well against heat and laser-based weapons, but Ves accepted this tradeoff as long as it didn't splinter apart after it impaled a mech from above.

As for the other licenses, they fitted aerial light mechs rather well. The major components all specialized in delivering a high level of peak performance. While this limited the endurance of his design, it would at least maximize its chances of success.

"The flight system also deserves some attention."

Ves needed a flight system that could keep up with the demands of his light mech. Ves left efficiency to the wayside and picked out a fairly robust system for a light mech. It was capable of surviving plenty of bumps and could bring an aerial mech back into the air in rapid tempo.

"Too bad it uses up a lot of energy if it does so."

This wasn't a problem in a duel format. Just like the Havalax, his light mech wanted to end the battle quickly and avoid a battle of attrition.

"The more its opponent encounters the move, the more they put up their guard."

Over time, people would become familiar with the tricks of a difficult design. This depressed the performance and win rates of those specialist designs. Disgruntled buyers would flood the sales pages of those mechs, discouraging others from taking the plunge.

"Even if my design will end up being a temporary fad, it's already worth it as long as I can achieve a few thousand sales."

All of the component licenses together set him back several million credits. To Ves, such an expenditure was a drop in the bucket compared to his vast private wealth. Even leaving out his seventy percent ownership in the LMC, he still received several billions credits after Walter's Whalers paid him what they owed according to their agreement.

The most expensive license consisted of the special armor formula that made up the single spiked leg.

With all the ingredients at hand, Ves proceeded to cook up his design over the next six days.

The challenge of drafting an entire frame from scratch always daunted him, but he already benefited from his previous experience. The lessons he learned from drafting the Blackbeak and his upcoming rifleman mech design helped him out a lot.

"It also helps that light mechs don't have a lot of meat on their bones."

While this didn't eliminate all of the complexity, it did cut down on the number-crunching and busywork. Ves spent more time trying to achieve synergy between the components he picked out than to force his frame to perform to a strict standard.

The only part where he encountered difficulties was when he began to design the bottom spike.

He could have made it thin or thick and broad or narrow. Ves casually tried several different configurations and threw them into a simulator which basically dropped the mech onto a target down below.

Only after he ran the design through simulated combat conditions did he realize how difficult it was to ensure the mech's survival after it had landed.

The spike always broke off if he made it skinny and narrow. While the narrow profile also helped the penetration, allowing his design to pierce through heavy mechs, it also snapped like a twig after every dive.

This gave his design no second opportunities. Ves did not wish for his design to become a useless lump of metal after it had performed a single dive, so he opted for beefier designs.

Once he broadened and deepened the spike, the mech became a lot more resilient. The extra armor sufficiently protected the mech from anti-air and also added extra oomph to every diving attack.

However, if Ves went too far in this direction, his design lost too much mobility. It could barely stay aloft and would take ages to climb up to a higher altitude.

Thus, after experimenting with many different shapes, Ves opted for a configuration that fell in between the two extremes.

The spike was fairly broad at the hips but tapered down to a wicked spike at the end where the feet of the mech normally reached.

When Ves stepped back and looked at his design from a distance, he could almost mistake its silhouette for a woman in a dress.

"Maybe it's not a bad thing if I emphasize its gender a little more."

He shifted some mass around here and there. He basically narrowed the stomach area and widened the hips and upper torso. Naturally, he wouldn't go too far to the extent of being obscene, but he definitely didn't leave any ambiguity on the gender of his design.

Now that he thought about it, a lot of light mechs adopted feminine contours. The weight class lent itself to this profile due to how narrow and light it was. As long as mech designers didn't go too far, nobody paid attention to it. Men wouldn't hesitate to pilot a feminine-looking mech as long as it delivered a solid level of performance.

It also looked kind of absurd for this feminine-looking mech to wield a long, two-handed hammer. The hammer brought a significant amount of heft to the design, and could crush the head of any mech it came in touch with. Sadly, it wouldn't be able to inflict more than a dent to undamaged armor, as Ves hadn't made it as heavy as hammers wielded by medium mechs.

"Still, this hammer will do fine if it strikes a weak point."

The logic behind this somewhat dainty hammer was that his design would strike the hammer through a tear that it opened up beforehand by performing a devastating dive attack. With the power behind such a move, it was inevitable for the stricken mech to expose some of its internals.

A couple of whacks with a powerful enough hammer should be able to wreck the insides with ease.

At the end of his six-day design spree, Ves tentatively concluded that his design made the mark. He nodded in satisfaction. "It's not that much of a challenge to design an original 3-star mech."

The technology available to him was primitive and simplistic compared to the modern standard. Ves easily managed to do the same in front of a crowd during the Leemar Open Competition, though those rushed products came with a large number of flaws and weak points.

"I probably haven't managed to eliminate every flaw in my design, but at least I've addressed all of the critical ones."

Ves had to make due with that result, as his lack of time really limited his options.

For the last couple of days, Ves thought about bringing in someone else to spread out the workload. Carlos formed the most obvious candidate. While Ves did not hold a lot of confidence in his first employee's skills, he possessed enough competence to run some models as long as he received some instruction.

In the end, Ves decided to prize his secrecy over convenience. It was not as if Ves desired to deliver a top notch product. As long as he ensured a basic level of quality, the design would surely sell.

"I think I'm about finished at this point."

He only paused his frenetic design process when he had to come up with a name. During the design process, he went through many possibilities, but all of them failed to click with the design in question.

The name of the mech shouldn't only fit his unconventional design. It also had to call out attention and make it easy for people to refer his mech to their friends.

"The name has to sound good as well."

After half an hour of brainstorming, Ves settled on the best option possible.

"Lady Death's Heel."

The name succinctly summed up the feminine nature of the mech and paired it up with its main mode of combat. Lady Death did not suffer fools gladly. Whenever she encountered an idiot, she crushed them apart beneath the heels of her feet.

Ves smiled when the Impaling Bird finally fled from his mind and took up residence in the finished design. Lady's Death's Heel instantly carried a faintly palpable threat, especially to men like him. The mech and the Impaling Bird made for a fitting pair, especially since the imaginary life form exerted a fair bit of influence on the design.

"Now, let's see how the virtual market reacts to your introduction."

Chapter 374

To finish the virtual design, Ves had to fabricate a copy personally. He quickly rushed the fabrication within half a day, which was only made possible due to the outdated technology and the state-of-the-art virtual equipment provided by the game.

Ves quickly let the System evaluate his design, but didn't pay much attention to it besides the extra DP he got from finishing the design. The parameters of Lady Death's Heel looked quite good, but it wouldn't astound anyone who came across this strange-looking aerial mech.

Most of the draw came from the design's strange and extreme mode of delivering death from above. Ves hoped that players would take a serious look at this design once they came across its distinctive profile or got wrecked by it in matches.

Unfortunately, Crazy War Criminal's lack of reputation sent his virtual design at the bottom of the heap as soon as Ves published the design. An uncountable amount of designs flooded Iron Spirit each day, and it would take an extraordinary mech to catch fire from out of nowhere.

Even with his peculiar design, Ves had to compete against even crazier eccentric designs that mech designers cooked up on their own.

Still, Ves already had an answer for this problem. He spent the remaining millions of credits in his second account for a short but intense automated ad campaign.

One of the ways in which Iron Spirit made money was to accept paid advertising for their in-game market spaces. Although people only barely paid attention to any form of advertising these days, the exposure alone helped increase the odds that someone would stumble upon it and decide to purchase his product on an impulse.

Naturally, he set the prices to the minimum possible. Ves did not seek out a profit at all, nor did he wish to cultivate a reputation for quality and class. The price range of his products indirectly indicated its status, and Ves sometimes raised his prices higher than the minimum in order to make a better impression on the crowd.

Not this time, though. He wanted to lower the purchasing barrier as much as possible in order to harvest a quick sum of DP.

"Well, now that I've published the design and spent some money on advertising, my job is done. Now it's up to the market and the player base to see whether my new design catches on."

It was an unconventional mech for sure, but Ves held a decent amount of confidence in its appeal. Even if his buyers maintained a little bit of doubt, once they hopped into the cockpit, the Impaling Bird's instincts that suffused the design's X-Factor should quickly influence their perceptions.

A wicked smile appeared on his face as he thought about the impact that would make. He would have never dared to pull off such a stunt with his physical mechs. One of the most dominant traits of humanity was that they utilized their smarts on the battlefield. Patience, guile and strategy formed the mainstays of their martial prowess.

One reason why humanity predominantly preferred humanoid mechs was because it afforded them the flexibility to employ different approaches.

Ves basically threw all of those complicated considerations away when he designed the Lady Death's Heel. It destroyed its opponents through a combination of two one-dimensional attack modes.

The first strike dealt a crippling blow from above, and the second strike delivered the coup-de-grace.

As long as something went wrong, the Heel would fall into a precarious situation. The lack of legs meant that if its flight system got crippled, it would lose all forms of mobility.

At least other aerial mechs could still use their legs to function as a downgraded landbound mech. Not so for the Heel as its pair of legs had been replaced by a single broad spike that provided the mech with no form of locomotion at all.

"Well, it's not like people care that much in a virtual setting."

What worked on a physical battlefield might not work in a virtual battlefield, and vica versa. Ves prided himself on his understanding of the mech market. Although he couldn't match the breadth and wealth of Marcella Bollinger's market pulse, he always paid attention to these sort of things.

Ves left the Lady Death's Heel to the whims of the market and went on to prepare for the next design phase. He already possessed quite a lot of knowledge, but he hadn't bought any licenses yet, nor gathered any specific knowledge on how to design a laser rifleman mech.

He proceeded to spend the next couple of days borrowing some relevant books from the Clifford Society's Moon Library. Although he valued his merits very much, the books he borrowed provided extremely valuable first-hand experiences of mech designers trying to design complete rifleman mechs from scratch.

The knowledge contained in these books would benefit each and every ranged mech he designed from this point on, so Ves considered the merits to be well-spent.

"If I'm ever short on merits, I can just do another mission."

Even though most of the Clifford Society's missions came with danger, as long as he could shore up the Avatars of Myth into a competent personal force, he could handle the risks.

Ves quietly worked for several days without checking his sales figures. He didn't wish to procrastinate over each and every sale, and decided to take the initial waiting period as a much-needed break.

When he became bored, he diverted some attention into browsing the MTA's list of component licenses. After finishing his draft design, he had a pretty good idea on what kind of component licenses he needed to acquire to round up his rifleman mech.

He especially paid a lot of attention to different laser rifle models. The weapon model had to be modular and open to extreme adjustments. He disdained the rifle models that came with all sorts of gimmicks and bells and whistles. He was content with a basic rifle with a solid design that didn't cost too much to fabricate.

After four days of placid research, Ves finally couldn't contain himself any longer. He went back to the terminal and logged in with his second identity. He then visited his Crazy War Criminal's store page and looked at the amount of sales.

"Nine-thousand sales! What?!"

To many mech designers, achieving nine-thousand virtual sales sounded nothing impressive. They could easily achieve such a feat in their sleep. These days, Ves would also be able to reach such a height with his primary identity.

However, to achieve nine-thousand sales in four days with a completely unknown account was something else. Perhaps the handful of millions of credits in advertising money achieved some results, but Ves knew very well that the Lady Death's Heel only fulfilled a tiny niche.

Ves browsed the comments of the Heel's product page and found that most of the players left extremely positive and extremely negative comments.

Those who evaluated his model positively turned out to be those that bought a virtual copy.

"DEATH TO ALL MEN!"

"This is my favorite 3-star mech of all time! It's so womanly! I feel gorgeous piloting this mech, and it feels great to stab a man's head from above, before crushing the area between their legs with the nifty hammer! I love it that it has enough reach to do so!"

"Nutcracker! Nutcracker! Nutcracker!"

"In my professional opinion as an amateur mech pundit, this is the ultimate female empowerment mech. Crazy War Criminal is obviously hell-bent on exterminating men, and has come up with this man-hating mech for the sole purpose of putting the brutes in place. I approve!"

The comments provided Ves with a very colored picture. Evidently, most of his buyers had actually been women. As for the men, they posted extremely negative comments in order to discourage anyone from buying this controversial mech.

"Don't buy this mech! It's ugly! Its legs are too tiny and its butt is too fat! Look at that chest, there's hardly any weight in them! If you want to look like an ugly pear, be my guest, but if you want to look pretty, go elsewhere!"

"I hate this mech! This is a disgrace of an aerial mech! Where is the balance?! My swordsman mech can't do anything but wait for death once this mech decides to pick me out as its target! Its opening strike alone is enough to split my mech in half!"

"Any man who pilots this mech is a disgrace to all men! You gender traitors might as well hand over your man cards and undergo a gender change operation, because you're not welcome among us anymore!"

"Ouch! My nuts! This mech is the living embodiment of an enemy of man! It's a flying war crime that seeks to impale men's behinds and crush their fronts whenever they get the chance to do so! This plague of a mech must be stopped!"

The amount of controversy his latest virtual design had sparked completely overshadowed its initial appeal. Somehow, his mech had turned into a focal point of gender conflict.

Ves scratched his head. He never anticipated such an outcome. He underestimated the frustration of the victims and the passion of its pilots.

"Let me take a look at some footage."

Ves browsed some public recordings and played them back, focusing only on the highlights. Time after time, the Lady Death's Heel dove into their victims from the air.

On the first day, the early adopters struggled to hit their targets. They often found their mechs to be difficult to control during a high-speed dive. Over time, they got the hang of it though, and when they hit their opponents, they almost always managed to cripple them. The convenient hammer that came with the mechs always ensured their targets died.

It was only from the second day onwards that the gender disparity began to widen. The female pilots turned into screeching banshees as they openly taunted their opponents on the open channel.

They even started to dive on their opponents in a shallower angle. Instead of aiming for the head or shoulders of their targets, they instead attempted to impale the lower waist whenever possible.

Front or back, it didn't matter, but it was an unprecedented humiliation for any man to allow a woman to jump their mechs in that kind of fashion.

The Lady Death's Heel quickly gained a reputation for being a man eating mech! Women began to flock to the model while the men tried to stay as far away from the mech as they could.

The local players already started keeping a vigilant eye on the skies. As soon as they spotted an aerial mech, they instantly unleashed every bit of firepower they possessed. They could not let the man eating mech come close!

Ves simply laughed when he saw the polarizing responses to the rise of his mech. All the bluster and energy surrounding his mech would quickly disappear once the fad had blown over. Behind all of the shouting and hating, Ves carefully studied the actual battle performance of the Heel.

Besides a number of talented female pilots, the rest of his buyers hadn't been able to make the most out of their purchases. The Lady Death's Heel could destroy any mech in an instant, but it was incredibly difficult to line up all of the conditions.

In fact, many of his customers actually dropped in their rankings.

Still, the design did its job. Ves easily harvested a bucket load of DP. He earned 5 DP every time he sold a 3-star virtual mech. His near-empty DP balance increased by more than 45,000 DP in a matter of days, and would reach the 50,000 DP cap on earnings before tomorrow.

Ves somewhat regretted designing a 3-star mech. 50,000 DP used to be a fortune to him, but the more he progressed, the more he needed to spend to climb even higher.

"I need millions of DP to upgrade my Vulcaneye and my comm augments."

He relied on his Privacy Shield and the Full Stealth augment for so long that he wanted to improve their capabilities. Ves only bought the entry-level versions so far, and to extend their durations, he needed to accumulate a lot more DP than he had earned up to this point.

"That's going to take a while."

In any case, Ves earned more than enough DP to embark on his next task. A shudder ran through his spine as he looked forward at what his next Mastery would bring.

Chapter 375

A handful of fanatics came across the Lady Death's Heel in a completely coincidental manner. Ves pushed the mech to the forefront of the catalog with a modest amount of spending. Every player in the Bright Republic encountered images of the mech in a handful of days, but most didn't pay attention to it at all.

They quickly regretted their neglect for this mech. Over a span of a couple of days, it had grown into the latest fad. A decent number of bold girls with plenty of credits or in-game gold to spare started to purchase the Heel by the thousands.

After that, they rained death from the skies.

One of the most successful and iconic Heel pilots was a seventeen year old girl called Irenal. As a daughter of a pair of bureaucrats on Rittersberg, she enjoyed a lot of privilege when she grew up. When the government discovered she possessed the aptitude to pilot a mech, her parents encouraged her to train her potential abilities.

Although she lacked the talent and the drive to work hard, Irenal nevertheless enjoyed so many tutoring sessions that she had reached the top ten percent of her age group. Her parent's money and influence ensured she attended one of Rittersberg's elite mech academies, and she flourished under the high-pressure learning environment.

In actual fact, she had become a little bored of the life of a potentate. She spent most of her time training for class or training according to the schedule made by her tutors. Irenal hardly spent any time with her friends.

Iron Spirit formed an important part of her training as the other simulators played like single-player games. No matter how sophisticated they tried to emulate human mech pilots, they always felt too robotic.

The sheer chaos, genius and unpredictability of fighting against humans taught Irenal to stay on her toes. People pulled off all kinds of crazy things. Since she lived a rather sheltered life among the cultured society of Rittersberg, she constantly got bullied online.

That all changed when she first saw an ad for the Lady Death's Heel. The distinctive-looking feminine mech appealed to her fashion senses. Its sharp and narrow profile along with its elegant and fashionable curves appealed to her aesthetic sense.

Its highly distinctive fighting style sounded completely different from every other mech she had seen so far. She desperately wanted to stave off her boredom, and an interesting mech like the Heel sounded just about right.

Without any further hesitation, she threw a bunch of credits at the store. "Now, you're mine."

She went over the specs of her latest purchase and understood somewhat on how to use the mech. The Lady Death's Heel excelled against melee landbound mechs. They couldn't retaliate against the aerial light mech when it started its descent.

"On the other hand, a bunch of rifleman mechs will easily be able to chew this mech apart." Irenal bit her lip.

She decided to take the mech for a spin in a massive 200v200 Wartorn Instance. Even though the mech couldn't be run for very long, the Wartorn Instances offered plenty of opportunities to replenish spent supplies. It was more important for her to maximize the chance of encountering a landbound melee mech.

"In duels, it's a complete guess whether I'll face a melee mech or not. I can only pick the largest battle I can enter and find my own targets."

After a short period of waiting, the matchmaking process finished and the players connected onto the hangar that brought all two-hundred mechs in a single place.

Irenal ignored the bickering armchair generals trying to organize the players into following their chosen strategies. She had her own game plan in mind, and it did not entail working together with others.

As soon as the hangar door opened, Irenal engaged the Heel's flight system and flew out. The battlefield this time consisted of a half-frozen aquatic moon environment. This was both good and bad for aerial mechs like the Heel.

"One one hand, the lack of air makes it difficult for the Heel to vent its heat while in the air. On the other hand, it can quickly dump its head onto the frozen ground as long as it lands."

Other aerial mechs that possessed a working pair of legs would find no trouble landing on the ground. I was a different case for the Lady Death's Heel, which could not even stand upright on the ground. It had to lay in an unlady-like sprawl when it lost all of its power.

Irenal ignored this minor inconvenience and set out from the base. The instant she dove her consciousness deeper into her mech, she felt some kind of energy passing over her mind. She shuddered a bit as a previously latent desire to kill became a little more prominent.

"I really want to kill someone with this mech."

Her desires became stoked and her bloodthirsty side started to gain strength. She boldly swept towards the enemy side of the battlefield and started to sweep her eyes over the light mechs that occasionally flitted past.

Even though she immediately wanted to make an attack run, she knew that light mechs would not let themselves be caught.

"I've got to find a medium or heavy mech."

After a few minutes of circling, the area became a little more crowded with enemy mechs. She often had to swing her aerial mech away from the anti-air pointed in her direction. After she had been driven out to the periphery of the frontlines, she happened to have encountered a juicy target.

"That's a medium knight! He's all alone!"

Knights almost never moved alone. They always grouped up with at least a single ranged mech in order to cover situations just like this. Irenal grinned, and she started to see red. "Dive, my mech!"

The Lady Death's Heel hovered several kilometers in the air, but abruptly started descending. The lack of air resistance on the battlefield enabled the Heel to dive even faster. Despite this, the mech shook a little as its flight systems exertised its full effort into accelerating the fall.

The knight mech's low-quality sensors finally alerted the pilot to a potential threat from the air. Its main head swiveled towards the air and found a tiny speck closing in. The pilot of the knight started to panic.

"An aerial mech! Damn! I thought this route was safe!"

Due to a lack of better options, the knight pilot controlled his machine to brace itself against the growth. It knelt down on one knee and braced the enormous kite shield against its arms at an angle facing upwards.

The pilot didn't bother trying to dodge. His knight mech was too slow, even if it barely fell into the medium weight classification.

In the meantime, the more the Lady Death's Heel dove down, the more her passion became stoked. Her heart beat faster as her anticipation ballooned to an unprecedented level. Her smile grew wider and crooked as various thoughts sprung to her mind.

Within seconds, the Heel reached the ground. The knight mech put up a desperate struggle, not quite knowing what it faced. If he knew a little bit more about the Heel, he might have chosen to dodge or find some kind of alcove in the frozen seas.

"Hahahaha! Death from above!"

The collision happened instantly. Irenal underestimated the force her mech brought to bear. Even if she piloted a light mech, they still consisted of many tons of alloys and composites. Not even the thickest mech armor could withstand the power of a falling mech concentrated into a single point.

The Heel's pointed spike mounted on its lower body did its job. It pierced through the knight mech's shield as if it was paper, and proceeded to dump an incredible amount of kinetic energy in its chest. The penetrative qualities of the bottom spike had instantly bumped against the chest armor of the knight, which was one of its best protected portions.

It lasted only milliseconds before the spike ran straight through the frontal armor. Still, the armor did bleed off a decent amount of momentum, so while the spike had managed to pierce through the back, it ran out of steam at that point.

"This... this mech is fantastic!" Irenal exclaimed, but quickly halted her celebration when she found out the mech below her spike still showed signs of moving. It tried to grasp onto a sword that had fallen a bit away from its fingers.

"Oh no you don't. Your time is finished here."

This time, Irenal remembered that her mech came with a light hammer. She raised the handle of the weapon and swung it down against the torso of the knight. She hadn't meant to aim at anything in particular. She just wanted to wreck the sitting duck apart.

This time, the hammer just happened to fall in front of a very sensitive area to men.

"Yeouch! That hurt!" The other pilot cried over the open channel.

The neural connection between pilots and mechs went both ways. If the pilot got hurt, the mech got hurt, and if the mech got hurt, the pilot received a little damage as well. In the game, this reciprocal connection was kept to a minimum in order to prevent the players from being overwhelmed by pain.

It still felt awfully unpleasant for men to get hit down below.

Irenal grew a little interested at the man's extreme response. Her mech raised its hammer yet again and let it fall on the exact same spot.

"My nuts! Stop it! Please have mercy on me!"

The woman grinned when she heard the pleas. Ordinarily, she should have finished off her opponent and found some other prey in order to tilt the battle in the favor of her team.

Yet some kind of urge held her back from moving on. She wanted to derive more satisfaction against the mech that her mech had mercilessly impaled onto the ground.

The hammer rose and fell at least a dozen times. The torso area became more dented and broken with each swing of the hammer. The knight adopted a defensive build, so its waist enjoyed a lot of protection.

A single light hammer wielded by a light mech wouldn't be able to break the shell with a couple of swings.

Nevertheless, Irenal didn't mind this at all. Instead, she began to get lost in her own world as the hammer kept banging against the mech's lower waist. Even its engine module broke down from all of the stress and shocks. The knight could not be piloted anymore, and the entire mech turned into a grayed-out mech.

That meant its mech pilot had forcibly logged out of the match. Anyone who left the match prematurely suffered a lot of penalties from the game. The knight pilot suffered so much redirected pain that he couldn't take it anymore.

"Hahahahaha!" Irenal laughed in a deranged manner as her satisfaction broke through the roof. It felt good to hammer down a man. "More!"

Her mech lifted up into the air with difficulty. The brutal collision damaged the spike to the point where it incurred a minor mind.

The woman cared nothing for this, and sought out another prey with gusto. She eventually found an isolated medium swordsman mech and chose to impale it from the skies.

This time, her opponent reacted a little smarter and moved his mech into speeds. It darted along the frozen wastelands in order to make it hard for the Heel to pin it down.

Still, despite its best efforts, Irenal succeeded in predicting its final moments. The swordsman mech became impaled upon the frozen sea. The shock to the Heel was immense, but it had been designed to withstand several of these kinds of shocks in quick suggestion. The mech wouldn't fall apart that easily.

The swordsman mech impaled to the ground started to struggle. It had managed to keep hold of its sword, and began to slash apart the spike that nailed it onto the surface of the moon.

"Nuh-uh. You won't get away from me!"

The hammer banged down against the sword, flicking it out of the swordsman mech's reach with a single blow.

The subsequent hammer blows fell down onto the lower waist of the defenseless swordsman mech. Its pilot howled as Irenal went to town with his mech.

The swordsman mech pilot quickly logged out as well, depriving her of her latest toy.

"Oh well, it's not like I can find a new toy to play with." She said to herself as she lifted her increasingly battered mech to the air.

By the end of the match, she ruined five different mechs. Her mech had become one of the most prominent ones on the battlefield, and everyone who took part in the Wartorn Instance got to see a quick highlight of her actions.

Witnessing the mech demolish five mechs in a row with the exact same brutish methods led to extreme indignation among the men.

"Whoever designed this mech is a devil!"

Chapter 376

The emergence of the Lady Death's Heel slightly disturbed the Bright Republic's virtual mech community. The controversial mech gained notoriety as more and more women flocked to the mech.

Mech industry insiders with nothing better to do started to investigate Crazy War Criminal's background. His sole mech alone aroused a fair bit of attention due to its uneven design.

The account's identity had quickly been traced back to a nobody called Rabant Clearwater. According to the Bright Republic's own records, the man was a Novice Mech Designer that had never joined an influence nor studied at a prestigious institution.

This stumped those who checked his background.

When mech designers studied the Heel's design, they found that it contained a number of very profound traces that only very experienced Journeymen and newly advanced Seniors understood.

"This isn't the work of a Novice Mech Designer!"

However, interspersed with pieces of profound design elements, most of the design adhered to the standard of a well seasoned Apprentice Mech Designer. The dichotomy of profoundness led the researchers to conclude that two different mech designers had worked on the design.

"The lead designer must be a newly advanced Senior Mech Designer. He set the framework of the design and personally worked on detailing a number of key components. After that, his assistant performed most of the grunt work in a brief amount of time. There are too many traces of sloppiness in the design for it to be a deliberate project."

Due to the lack of evidence, the people who investigated the design came up with an overly elaborate backstory. Crazy War Criminal was obviously a fake account that didn't even try too hard in obscuring its dubious status. No Novice Mech Designer could design a mech of such a level.

Instead, they considered the Lady Death's Heel to be the product of a training exercise of some sorts. The Senior laid down the groundwork while the Apprentice had to complete the design as fast as possible.

As for the reason why the pair decided to publish the aerial light mech design onto Iron Spirit, nobody knew. Anyone who tried to dig any further eventually reached a dead end as the people behind the account left very few traces.

This mystery only formed a tiny interlude in the local mech community. Ves had no idea that people completely mistook the second account's identity. Instead, he prepared himself for the upcoming ritual.

Ves first took care of some routine matters. He took care of some overdue paperwork while issuing new instructions to his subordinates in the company.

Ever since the LMC got the new Benson production lines to work, its production capacity almost tripled overnight. The Mech Nursery pumped out three silver label Blackbeaks every two days.

Although the increasingly experienced mech technicians could speed up their rate of production, Ves opted to control the pace and increase the level of quality control. The third party manufacturers may be able to play fast and loose with the rules, but the LMC could ill afford a scandal resulting from delivering faulty products.

"My men can do more." Chief Cyril argued when Ves paid a visit to the fabrication floor. "If we slow down too much, the mech technicians will start to lose their edge. They won't feel challenged anymore."

Ves looked sympathetic at that argument, but stuck to his course. "Even if the men are willing, the machines won't be able to keep up. Neither the Dortmund or the Benson machines are optimized for speed. Pushing them harder than now will certainly lead to errors."

They discussed a few other practical matters as well. Ves wanted to add another testing and quality control phase at the end of the fabrication process in order to ensure that each mech truly performed up to spec.

Chief Cyril actually approved of that. "It's about time the company implements something like that. Almost every medium mech manufacturer tests out their mechs before they send it through their channels. It's going to delay our delivery for at least a day or two, but our products will carry a lot more assurance to our customers."

Setting up this kind of procedure entailed a lot of changes in the company's production cycle. Not only did they have to hire a bunch of test pilots to pilot the freshly fabricated Blackbeaks, they also had to hire the supervisors and support crew.

The LMC also needed to clear out a large area and erect an indoor/outdoor testing ground. Without the right facilities, the test pilots wouldn't be able to push the Blackbeaks to their limits. The supervisors also needed a lot of equipment to measure the exact performance of the mechs and catch any alarming deviations before they led to disaster.

Ves threw the problem at Chief Cyril and Jake. "Draw 300 million credits to build up a basic testing ground. We don't need anything too elaborate at the moment."

With that taken care of, Ves wrapped up his work and prepared to go under for a few days. He returned to his private workshop floor and sealed it tight. Lucky followed him up until he reached his bed and laid down.

"I'm going to be experiencing another out-of-body experience for a few days, Lucky. Just keep an eye on my body and don't let anything come close."

"Meow!"

"I'm sorry, you can't come with me. The System is already exerting a lot of its energy to transport my mind across space and time. I don't think I can spare the effort to bring you with me."

"Meow!" Lucky huffed and turned his tail to Ves and flew through a wall.

Ves sighed and turned his attention to his comm. He already possessed more than enough DP to purchase another Mastery.

Just the first tier alone cost 40,000 DP each. Ves did not even consider purchasing the second tier of Masteries at this point. His DP income wouldn't be able to bear the expense.

"Alright, enough stalling. Let's get this over with."

Ves activated the Mech Designer System and entered the Skill Tree. He navigated the all-encompassing trees until he reached the Mastery section.

Each Mastery Sub-Skill offered Ves the precious opportunity to jump in the mind of a mech pilot.

As someone who always prided his secrets, Ves did not feel very comfortable about sharing his mind with another person. When he acquired Knight Mech Mastery I last time, he happened to have clicked with Barley. They worked so well together that Ves looked forward to meeting the mech pilot again.

Too bad he went missing about a decade ago.

Ves sometimes tried to search for Barley's whereabouts but encountered nothing. He started to suspect the System about its choice of pilots. Of all the knight pilots across time and space, why did it pick Barley of all people?

"Can it be that the System deliberately chooses someone who won't be around in this timeline?"

That sounded exactly what the System might do. It would neatly avoid all the inherent paradoxes that ensued whenever someone traveled back and forth in time.

Even with his Senior-level Physics, Ves did not wish to touch the subject of time travel for even a second. The amount of headaches and arguments that ensued from that topic alone could fill an entire galactic library.

For example, what if his mind traveled back in time to a Vesian mech pilot who faced a Larkinson on the battlefield? And what if that Larkinson turned out to be his grandfather Benjamin when he was young?

If the Vesian mech pilot somehow vanquished over Benjamin and killed him off, what would happen to Ves in the future? Would his father and himself still be born? Would a parallel timeline ensue the moment the System brought him back in time, or would the main timeline automatically correct itself and wipe Ves who came from the future out of existence?

Even with all of the wonders of the galaxy, time travel proved to be one of the most elusive phenomena. As far as Ves was aware of, no person, alien or machine successfully traveled back in time.

That did not mean that it couldn't be done, but if some organization managed to do it, they certainly kept their mouths shut.

Some conspiracy theorists spread rumors that their current timeline had been skewed out of its original trajectory through the constant meddling of time-traveling agents. A lot of popular dramas revolved around this premise, but everyone dismissed the possibility out of hand.

Ves did not know if he could dismiss the possibility as well. Unlike nearly everyone else, he knew that time travel was definitely possible. He experienced it himself!

From his experience with Barley alone, he knew that what he influenced in the past would definitely reverberate back to the future.

Before Ves embarked on his next Mastery, he thought about making use of this circumstance. After all, traveling back in time was an extremely rare opportunity to influence the past and correct someone's mistake.

He thought about trying to send a message to himself when he was young. The one thing that Ves had always regretted was that he fell into a rut once his mother ostensibly died. He turned into a living zombie who wasted his remaining youth and hardly applied himself in school.

If he got some sort of reality check back then, he might have been able to focus on his studies well enough to attend an upscale institution such as the Leemar Institute of Technology.

"Even if it's possible, should I even do such a thing?"

What would happen to Ves if he induced a major change in his past? Would Ves still be the same Ves, or would he turn into another 'Ves'? What happened when Ves returned to the present timeline. Would he remain the old Ves, or turn into the new 'Ves'?

"What a headache."

His Senior-level Physics taught him a lot about how to improve the components of a mech, but it taught him nothing about the fields that fell outside of this scope. He still didn't know how an FTL drive worked, let alone figuring out the secrets to time travel.

The only way he could become proficient in those fields was to study them by himself. With his superhuman Intelligence, it wouldn't even take him very long to gain a shallow proficiency in those fields.

"Much of the galaxy revolves around starships. It's useful for me to understand some of the engineering related to these vessels."

Ves always admired the interstellar craft that brought humanity to the stars. However, it always took an extreme amount of learning to become slightly familiar with their systems.

In general, mech designers stayed out of the way of ship designers, and vica versa. Neither occupations spared enough energy to branch out in the other one.

The time that Ves spent on studying starships could have been spent on deepening his knowledge on mechs. In the end, it wasn't beneficial for Ves to allocate more than a couple of hours of spare time to become familiar with ships.

"I can do something about that later. Right now, I have another Mastery to experience."

Ves found the relevant Sub-Skill in the Skill Tree and tapped it with his finger to purchase it. The System instantly deducted 40,000 DP from his account.

[Rifleman Mech Mastery I]

Five.

The System counted down the time. Ves breathed deeply and tried to lay comfortably in his bed. His body would be undergoing stasis while his mind left his body, so Ves did not worry too much about his body's health.

Four.

Ves hoped the System would pick an entirely different type of mech pilot this time. Barley had been a rather stodgy knight pilot who bought into the whole pomp and circumstance about knights. Ves hoped to experience a more daring pilot who thought offensively instead of defensively.

Three.

"Hopefully the System won't pick a woman this time."

While he had nothing against women, Ves did not wish to deal with a cranky host and make her feel uncomfortable about hosting a male mind.

Two.

On the other hand, experiencing a female's perspective on piloting mech would also enrich him in many other ways. Female mech pilots possessed different habits and concerns, and if Ves became familiar with their gripes, he could make his mechs more compatible with women, who made up around thirty percent of all mech pilots.

One.

A suction force pulled his consciousness from his head and carried it along an incomprehensible tunnel that warped through time and space.

After an indeterminate moment of time, his consciousness forcefully entered the mind of a mech pilot at a different time and space.

Thankfully or regretfully, Ves ended up in the mind of another man. The only problem was that the mech pilot currently fought against an overwhelming force of enemy mechs.

The entry of a new consciousness momentarily disrupted the mech pilot's concentration, and an explosive shell impacted against his rifleman mech, knocking down while heavily damaging its chest plate.

"Get up!"

Chapter 377

Ves ended up in the middle of a battlefield on a terrestrial Earth-like planet. Ves looked around the view screens of the cockpit and noted that the battle took place at a fortified military base placed in some kind of mountainous region that made it difficult for landbound mechs to approach.

However, no terrain could truly stop a mech from ascending up a mountain. The enemy mechs carried modular mountaineering equipment that allowed them to scale the mountains with a bit of effort.

In addition to the threat from below, a large number of aerial mechs systematically harassed the base from the air. While the defenders possessed a lot of anti-air, the sheer numbers arrayed against them slowly overwhelmed these weapon emplacements.

"Get up!" Ves mentally shouted at the consciousness of his current host. "Alven, your comrades are dying! The base is about to be overrun! Your god demands you to fight!"

That brought the man named Alven Callisto out of his daze. A surge of duty, devotion and fury swelled in his mind as he dove back into his mech.

The damaged rifleman mech climbed back up to its feet and resumed firing its laser rifle at the approaching waves of enemy mechs.

While Alven got back on track, Ves took the opportunity to study his current circumstances. The battle took place on Rilrod, a planet ruled by the Holy Dominion of Apellix, a third-rate state from the Rolling Wind StarSector.

Ves had never heard of this particular star sector, but that wasn't anything strange, as the galaxy was divided into many millions of star sectors. The Rolling WindStar Sector actually fell within the range of the galactic heartland. This meant that the level of development was a lot more prosperous than in the galactic rim.

When Ves was studying the mechs around him, he realized their prowess surpassed the third-class mechs used by states such as the Bright Republic and the Vesia Kingdom. The mechs actually fell within the range of second-class mechs, which was nothing unusual for a third-rate state in the galactic heartland.

"There is so much wealth laying around here that any casual state can arm their mech forces with second-class mechs!"

"What was that?" Alven asked.

"Nothing! Keep fighting!"

Ves still had to figure out his own situation before he could offer any assistance to his temporary partner. Now that he got a sense of where this battle took place, he tried to figure out how far back in time he traveled.

He quickly read the details from Alven's mind. His metaphorical eyes widened as he realized he traveled twenty-five years ago! That was much closer to the present!

This made it easier for Ves to apply his current knowledge, but it also made it harder for him to analyze the mechs being used at this time period. Most of the mechs used in this conflict consisted of machines from at least two generations back.

Ves possessed a fair amount of experience with last gen mechs, but he did not study the generation before that too closely. Still, if nothing else, he could make up for this deficiency along the way.

When he dove into the background of the war in question, he found out that it was actually a civil war. The Holy Dominion of Apellix worshiped a god predictably called Apellix. The religion had been founded by a charismatic leader that founded the state more than a millenia ago.

Naturally, the leader proclaimed himself and his progeny to be descended from Apellix. Thereby, his bloodline enjoyed a supreme status in the Dominion.

To an outsider like Ves, the Dominion's history sounded like one giant scam. Inventing your own religion to justify your special privileges was the oldest trick in the book. A fair number of delusional founders turned to religion to solidify their rule.

When Ves peeked at Alven's mind, he found to his regret that the mech pilot was a full-throated orthodox believer in the Church of Apellix. The man had been indoctrinated to believe in the divinity of Apellix to the point where outsiders like Ves would receive a punch in the face if they tried to tell them that they'd been lied to all their lives.

"This is a thorny problem."

Even worse, Alven fought on behalf of the increasingly corrupt Sunstar Dynasty descended from the original founder of the state and church. Each subsequent generation took the power bestowed upon them by a mass of brainwashed sheep for granted. The Holy Dominion grew more oppressive over time,

The current generation of the Sunstar Dynasty regularly indulged in pleasure and often extorted the citizens of the Dominion of their wealth.

Even if the citizens all believed in Apellix, they could only handle so much abuse.

Tensions boiled over in the past couple of years and the Church split into two. The so-called Reformers claimed to be the true believers of Apelllix. The rebel leaders proclaimed that he received a divine mandate from their god to cleanse the Sunstar Dynasty from the galaxy.

No matter if they spoke the truth, their message resonated among the oppressed. More than half of the Dominion immediately swung over to the rebels, leaving the Sunstar Dynasty in control of a couple of important star systems around the capital.

The planet Rilrod formed a vital part of the loyalists to the Dynasty. This planet contained a lot of advanced factories that produced a lot of mechs each day. It was the non-port system equivalent of Bentheim, and whoever possessed it would gain a decisive advantage in this civil war.

"Alven! Your mech is too damaged! You can't fight on!"

"Don't distract me, spirit!"

Alven shook his head and tried to focus on the fight. His mech jerkily ran back and forth along the mech-sized wall that surrounded the immense military base.

The wall already started crumbling from the sheer weight of fire being thrown in its way. A group of heavy artillery mechs stationed behind a hill constantly shelled the base and its walls with high explosive shells.

If one of those shells hit the Firerunner mech that Alven piloted, Ves could kiss his Mastery experience goodbye.

Still, the mech functioned pretty well even after having all of its chest armor stripped. As Ves studied its design, he became increasingly awed at its well-optimized design. This mech made full use of its materials and squeezed out every bit of performance hidden in the frame.

As the name suggested, the Firerunner excelled in speed and mobility. It possessed a fairly high top speed for a rifleman mech at the cost of not being able to change its course as fast. This was a normal tradeoff, and Alven already possessed sufficient training to modulate his speed according to the situation at hand.

Currently, Alven weaved the Firerunner in a wave-like motion, dodging most of the fire sent in its way. The wall blocked most of the projectiles, allowing Alven to face much fewer attacks than he should have.

Still, the damage and stress sustained by the Firerunner deeply worried Ves. "Your mech is heavily damaged. The power reactor's compartment has been breached. I estimate this mech will only function without problems for about ten minutes or less. You've got to pull back within that time!"

"What nonsense are you speaking about, spirit! Get out of my head!"

"I'm not some random spirit! I'm a mech designer!"

"What fart are you good for?!"

"I'm from the future! Just read what's on my mind!"

"I don't have time for this nonsense! The priest will expel you later!"

Ves faced a thorny issue. His host didn't care about his presence and wanted him to go. Obviously, Ves did not wish to leave so soon. He was constantly absorbing Alven's experiences as he struggled to fend off the overwhelming waves of rebel mechs.

Even though he warned Alven that the Firerunner wouldn't last, the mech pilot seemed determined to fight to the end.

Although Ves admired Alven's determination to fight, he did not wish to go down with the ship. He turned his attention to the enemy mechs that assaulted the base.

Most of them consisted of rifleman mechs. A handful of knights and other melee mechs acted as their meatshields. The melee mechs even put away their weapons in order to carry thick temporary shields meant for sieging.

Alven's laser rifle fared very poorly against these hastily fabricated slabs of alloys. Ves could tell that the temporary shields mostly consisted of a mix of mundane metals and junk exotics. They possessed no merit other than their thickness. This slowed down the mechs that carried them to a crawl, but that hardly mattered up to this point.

"You're going at it the wrong way!" Ves argued Alven. "Even at your rifle's highest power setting, you can hardly burn a hole through those alloys. It's too thick!"

Alven let out a frustrated growl. He'd been fighting against these shields over an hour, and pretty much all of his laser beams had been neutralized by this awesome defense.

"Then what do you suggest I do!?"

Ves thought about it for a moment. It was easy to point out a mistake, but hard to come up with a solution.

Still, Ves came up with something that stood a decent chance of working, but he needed Alven's cooperation.

"Give me control over your body for a moment. I need to reprogram your laser rifle."

"What?! Never! Begone, you demon! Go back to your pathetic rebellious masters!"

Ves wanted to curse this impenetrable fool. Couldn't he tell that Ves only wanted the best for Alven?

"I'm not part of the rebellion and I'm not some kind of demon! I'm just a mech designer who happened to land within your mind! I never even heard about the Rolling Wind StarSector in my life. I don't have a stake in this fight!"

"Don't bluster me with your lies, demon! I know what you are! Continue to spout your lies! It will do nothing to shake me from my faith! For the Sunstars! For Apellix!"

Alven's lust for battle grew superheated and he started to take unreasonable risks to get around the heavy shields of his opponents. A couple of times, his Firerunner narrowly escaped death in an attempt to take down the enemy mechs behind the shield.

The situation didn't look so good. The rebels eventually wore out their shields, but they brought out a lot of spares. This pretty much negated the defensive advantage of the defenders. Added with the numerical advantage of the attackers, Alven's situation did not seem so good.

Ten minutes eventually went by and the Firerunner's systems started issuing a lot of alarms.

"Your mech won't last another minute! Eject!"

"No! My faith is strong! The Sunstars shine upon me even now! I can feel it!"

Ves wanted to strangle this stubborn suicidal idiot. This religious nut threatened to cut his precious Mastery experience short, effectively wasting much of his 40,000 DP. He couldn't afford to let Alven die so soon.

If persuasion didn't work, what about coercion?

He never thought about using force against an uncooperative partner. He hit it off with Barley immediately last time, so he never thought about ending up in a situation like this. Ves started to think up some ideas on how to pressure Alven into doing what he wanted.

He took inspiration from the conflict between the images he regularly conjured up for his mech. He particularly took note of the fight between the crystal leader's spiritual remnant and the other two images arrayed against it. What mattered the most in that fight was that the remnant possessed a lot more strength than its opposition.

Ves tried to compare his strength against Alven's and found to his surprise that his mentality was a lot firmer than his host.

"I might be able to pull something off."

He did not wish to kill Alven, nor assimilate the mech pilot into his own mind. Ves only needed to threaten the obstinate pilot a couple of times to get it to do what he wanted.

"Since you're a religious nut, then don't blame me for using your beliefs against you."

If Alven believed that Ves was a demon, then he would act like a demon.

Chapter 378

Back in the present time, the body of Ves quietly slept on the bed inside the underground private workshop floor. Rather than describe it as sleeping, it had actually been put in a form of stasis, allowing the body to remain healthy even as it did nothing.

Lucky whisked inside the bedroom after doing who-knew-what. The cat missed his owner's touch and meowed softly at the sleeping body.

"Meow."

It was as if Lucky asked when his owner would wake up and pet his head again. After receiving no response, the mechanical cat climbed next to Ves and looked down at his sleeping face.

That face suddenly woke up and broke the stasis put on the body. The eyes whizzed and wirled back and forth before focusing on Lucky's extremely close head.

"Meow!"

That was fast! Why did his owner wake up so fast?

Ves hacked open his mouth for a cough. And another. And another. A strange sound escaped from his mouth as he tried and failed to take control of voice.

After a moment, he gave up and tried to move his limbs instead. He slowly climbed up to a seated position on his bed and jerkily moved his limbs before his eyes.

Lucky stared at Ves and started to feel apprehensive. He bumped one of his paws against Ves, only to elicit not a single scratch or pet from Ves.

"Meow?"

After a moment of contemplation, Ves stood up and took a step forward, only to stumble and drop down on the floor in a painful heap. He hacked open his mouth and strange sounds escaped from his throat that vaguely sounded like frustrated cries.

As Ves attempted to regain control of his faculties, Lucky stared at his body with bewilderment. After a moment, the cat's eyes narrowed into slits.

This wasn't Ves!

In truth, as the System sent the consciousness of Ves out of his body and back in time and space, something else remained inside his mind.

Ves completely forgot about what would happen to the living image of the crystal golem in his absence. The System only brought Ves away, leaving the crystal golem inside the empty and defenseless castle of his body.

After the crystal golem noticed the absence of Ves, it reached out in the empty mind and slowly took on the role of the main consciousness of the body. Its strong mind slowly connected to each and every bodily function until it had completely supplanted Ves as the primary mind of the body.

Although a lot of incompatibility still existed, the crystal golem effectively possessed the body that had been begging to be taken over.

Although the crystal golem lacked the experience to control a human body, it still possessed the capacity to learn. Over the course of several hours, the crystal golem became increasingly proficient at controlling the human body. It became satisfied once its movements rivaled a four year old child.

"I.. I.. am..."

Lucky kept a close eye on his unfamiliar owner atop a cabinet. The only reason why he hadn't attacked the stranger was because the body belonged to Ves. His tail swished predatorily behind his hind body. The cat would only attack if his owner's body attempted to harm itself or leave this floor.

As for the crystal golem, it tried to recall its name, only to come up empty. Its original spiritual remnant had long forgotten the name of the entity it was part of. As for the crystal golem's current state, it was a completely new life form that only shared a loose relationship with its former identity.

The crystal golem needed its own name. "I... am... Feraxneel."

Somehow, the word rang true within the crystal golem's spirit. It was not the name of its former identity, but the word stood for something powerful for the alien race it used to be a part of. No matter the meaning of the name, Feraxneel felt proud to carry this name.

Feraxneel explored the floor but didn't manage to unlock the security features that blocked its access to the elevators. The possessed body gave up on leaving the floor and stumbled towards the labs, where it found a number of incomplete crystals inside a couple of lab machines.

The body's eyes gleamed as it beheld these crystals. Some parts deep inside the crystal golem's consciousness thought they possessed a lot more potential.

As Feraxneel beheld the crystals, back at the Rolling Wind StarSector, Ves just ran out of patience with Alven.

Even if the mech pilot was ready to lay down his life for his beliefs, Ves still needed to experience more to make this trip worth the DP he invested in it. His consciousness began to take on a menacing aura before it nipped at Alven's unsuspecting spirit.

Ves immediately pierced through Alven's feeble barriers and began to mess around. This caused the mech pilot to cry out in pain and instinctively pulled back with his mech.

"Your Firerunner won't last much longer! Eject now!"

"Never! Get out of my head, demon!"

"Keep up your stubborn ways and I'll eat your entire spirit! Your soul will never be able to go back to Apellix when you die!"

That scared Alven more than anything. He wasn't eager to die, but he believed he fought for a righteous cause. If the demon in his mind devoured his soul before it could return to the heavenly kingdom, then where would that leave him in his afterlife?

"You evil creature." He hissed and made a quick judgment.

Even as the console of his mech blared in alarm, Alvern still hesitated on the decision to eject. His hand hovered over the lever that would pull the entire cockpit module away from the rest of the frame.

Ves noticed his host's hesitation and lost patience. He attacked Alven's spirit once again but this time aimed to take control over his motor functions. He briefly took control over Alvern's arm and pulled the lever in the mech pilot's stead.

Even though Alven quickly regained control over his rebellious limb, he could do nothing about the fact that his cockpit lifted out of Firerunner and flew back to the center of the base. Anti-air defenses swept the vulnerable cockpit but recognized it as friendly. A short moment later, the cockpit reached a designated landing ground filled with dozens of discarded cockpits.

Alven gritted his teeth as he slammed open the upper hatch. He climbed out of his smoking cockpit and sprinted towards the nearest mech stables.

Along the way, a couple of servicemen checked him over.

"Halt! Identify yourself!"

"Alven Callisto, of the Puritan Warriors."

One of the guards checked his credentials and confirmed his identity. "Here you go, pilot. Head over to building 5A4-3. A spare mech is waiting for you there."

"Roger that!"

Alven stepped on a small floating platform that swiftly crossed the courtyard and brought him out where he heard the rumbling of explosive shells and then saw the flashes of frequent laser fire in the distance.

Even as looked forward to getting back in the battle, his mind turned inward. Alven regarded the alien presence that entered his mind with an extremely wary attitude.

"Why are you here, demon? Can't you possess someone else's mind."

Ves chuckled and tried to act as demonic as possible. "Since you saw through my facade, let me tell you what I am. I am a mech demon."

"A mech demon?!"

Whatever Alven thought of Ves, he had never heard of mech demons.

"Yes, a mech demon, but I'm not what you think. I'm summoned by the Sunstar Dynasty to help you resist the rebels."

Alven's eyes widened and he stumbled on top of the floating platform. "You... you... the Sunstar Dynasty would never consort with demons!"

"It is the truth. Do you really think you loyalists can insist against the overwhelming assault?"

"Reinforcements are on the way! The base commander told us that we only had to hold out for a few more hours!"

Ves mentally shook his head. "You dunce. Even Apellix himself won't believe those words. If reinforcements were on the way, the rebels would have been much more discreet. What I'm seeing so far is an enemy force that's so confident in their strength that they can batter every reinforcing troop into pieces."

Although Ves made a good argument, Alven shook off the words as an attempt to sway his will to fight. "I will fight to defend the Sunstar Dynasty even if the entire galaxy is arrayed against me!"

Ves sensed the conviction in those words. This Alven was a true believer through and through, which gave Ves very few options to prod Alven to his desired course of action. All he wanted was to keep this idiot alive despite his wish to throw away his life.

He kept himself mum as Alven reached the mech stables. The structure sustained a fair amount of bombardment. A quarter of its stables had completely collapsed under the weight of fire, which gave the servicemen and mech technicians a lot of trouble keeping the remainder intact.

Alven reported for duty at the duty station, whereupon a frazzled officer assigned him another Firerunner.

"You're a lucky man, Mr. Callisto. This is the last intact Firerunner in our stables. It's a well-used mech, so keep in mind that it won't perform up to spec."

"That's not a problem, sir! As long as it can fight, I'm fine with anything!"

Once Alven reached the Firerunner, his platform lifted him up until he could jump inside the open cockpit. The mech pilot seated himself before bringing the mech online.

The rifleman mech booted up within a minute. Once Alven gained full control over the mech, he drove it out of the stables and went to a nearby weapon rack where it grabbed a random laser rifle.

After that, Alven received his next assignment. His job was to reinforce the southwestern wall where the fighting was the heaviest. The rebels enjoyed much more favorable terrain there. The large amounts of crags and hills gave them a lot of natural cover against direct fire.

Even though Alven hadn't entered battle again, Ves still soaked up the mech pilot's actions like a sponge. He only learned a fair bit about operating a rifleman mech in the earlier battle, but the situation back then had been too chaotic for him to make sense.

This relatively uneventful transit provided him with a good baseline on what to expect. Ves already noted that Alven wielded his laser rifle in a way that would let him bring it to bear really fast. A rifleman mech pilot was always ready to shoot.

"I'm here!" Alven declared as his Firerunner finally reached the broken and fragmented fortifications next to the crumbled southwestern walls.

He wasn't the only mech to reinforce the position. A large number of defending mechs littered the walls, having tried and failed to hold back the rebels intent on conquering the base.

"Hey! Newbies! Cover us with your rifles!"

Alven obeyed the nameless captain's words and moved to reinforce a heavily battered elite unit of mechs. The rebels outnumbered the defenders at least three-to-one, which meant that the mech pilot immediately landed himself in a precarious situation.

Ves couldn't stay in the background and do nothing. He constantly observed the enemy mechs as they continued to hide behind the thick shields held aloft by various melee mechs.

He knew that if he wanted this battle to turn out to be something else than a massacre, he had to figure out a solution against those incredibly sturdy shields.

The entire loyalist force failed to come up with a solution against those thick shields. While Ves knew how difficult it was to figure out a magic solution, he still had to try.

He entered a deeply analytical state as he combined his visual observation with the scans taken by the Firerunner. He approximated the shield's material composition and tried to dig through his extensive base of knowledge for a way to exploit these materials.

"I got it! Those shields are brittle when subjected to extreme cold!"

No material was completely impervious to every type of damage. The shields used by the rebels consisted of a large amount of fairly cheap materials in order to mass produce them to arm every melee mech that took part in this assault. With such low quality materials, it was inevitable that a major flaw would persist in the alloy shields.

"Alven! Find a cryo weapon! Find a way to freeze the shields!"

Chapter 379

Alven had no reason to respond to the demon. Why would he believe in the malignant demon's lies?

"Begone with you, demon! My faith in Apellix is the only aid I need to beat these rebels!"

Ves truly tired of those perfunctory displays of faith. The worst thing about them was that Alven wasn't hypocritical when he said those words.

"Your faith is doing well so far, has it? I'm sure you can outfaith your opponents, but what does that matter if your side is outnumbered by at least three-to-one?"

Short of an intervention by Apellix himself, the battle was as good as lost. Even a bystander like Ves could see that. He tried to broadcast his cold and brutal analysis of the situation to Alven.

The truth hurts much more than any threat spoken by a demon.

Ves showed Alven the dire state of the walls. He showed the pilot the dwindling number of defenders, the lack of reserves, and the excellent state of the attacking mechs.

"This can't be true!" Alven cried out. "The true Dominion never loses!"

If facts didn't work, perhaps another attack on his spirit worked better.

Ves invaded Alven's core and inflicted some mental damage. This caused Alven to lose control of his Firerunner, which almost caused it to hit a shell in the face!

"I'll keep doing this until you listen!"

Alven's resolve weakened a little. "What do I need to do?"

The Dominion pilot hated listening to a demon, even though it pretended to help. Still, if the Sunstar Dynasty summoned the demon themselves, then it probably wouldn't eat his soul.

The defense at the southwestern wall started to falter as fewer reinforcements came to shore them up. The rebel mechs had lost a fair amount of mechs in their offensive push, but they were on the verge of creating a breach.

Ves urged Alven to pull back his mech and head towards the nearest supply point. The Firerunner left the wall to the indignation of the loyalists officers, but neither Ves nor Alven cared for their opinions.

The Firerunner navigated the debris and craters until it arrived at the closest depot.

"Grab a fire hose. The gray one. That's the cryo projector."

With all the complicated materials being used these days, some of them easily caught fire. Bases generally hosted different extinguishing solutions, one of which happened to be a cryo projector that drastically lowered the temperature of any material.

Cryo projectors weren't available in the galactic rim. Even in the heartland, cryo projectors still used up too much bulk to be used as an independent weapon system for mechs.

Besides, most mechs possessed strong resistance against frost due to the extreme environmental conditions they might be subjected to. This pretty much relegated these kinds of projectors solely for firefighting.

"Grab a hose and point it at an enemy shield formation."

Though Alven still held plenty of doubts, he did as he was asked and grabbed a projector. The hose automatically extended itself from a socket as Alven ran back towards the half-collapsed walls.

"Which setting should I use?"

"Use a concentrated stream. It will take a while for the temperature changes to go in. Aim for the middle of their shields."

Alven proceeded to approach the enemy lines and hosed down the thickest concentration of mechs.

The rebel pilots momentarily panicked before getting back their senses. Why would their shields be vulnerable to being frozen? It hadn't failed them so far.

"It takes a while for the changes to settle in. Blast each shield for around eight seconds. That should be sufficient to wreck them over time."

Soon after, the frozen shields started to crack. As the remaining defenders shot their weapons at the enemy mechs, only to be stopped by the oversized and incredibly thick shields, the slabs of alloys started to crack.

One shield even caved in when shot by a railgun!

Both sides quickly caught on what had happened.

"This is a miracle! Hahahaha! Apellix hasn't abandoned his children in their greatest crisis!"

"Kill the mech with the cryo projector!"

"Protect Callisto's mech! Fifth squad, pull back and grab more cryo projectors. I'll inform command of what's happened!"

Alven's action started a remarkable change on the battlefield. Mechs started grabbing every availanle cryo projector in the base and began to howe down the shields one by one.

The aggressors faced an unexpected setback. The rebel mech designer in charge of fabricating the shield even slammed his table back at the rebels' main stronghold on Rilrod.

"The loyalists still have a competent mech designer among them! I thought every Senior and Master had defected to us!"

Another mech designer standing next to him rubbed his chin. "Interesting. All the other elder mech designers in the Dominion are accounted for. Maybe the Sunstar Dynasty managed to hire a guest designer."

"Hmph. Whoever dares to intervene in our revolution will go down with the Sunstars. A single decent mech designer won't save their base from being conquered."

The rebel-aligned mech designers did not speak nonsense. Even after neutralizing most of the shields, the loyalists were still in a precarious situation.

Ves privately made the same judgement as he piggybacked behind Alven's mind as he frantically tried to freeze as many enemy shields as possible.

Eventually, he realized that this base wouldn't last a day. Alven had no chance of surviving past this day. Even if he did the unthinkable and surrendered, the rebels wouldn't take him prisoner.

Wars between religious groups often turned out to be the bloodiest.

The realities of this situation forced Ves to reevaluate his strategy. He already harvested a little bit more of Alven's experience in maneuvering his mech. He only missed out on the most important bit, which was observing him when he fired his laser rifle.

After making a decision, Ves chose an opportune moment to interrupt Alven by making another attempt at invading his Spirit.

"Agh!"

Ves happened to have interrupted Alven at the same time the attackers shot apart his cryo projector. The damaged nozzle spewed out an uncontrollable spray of freezing liquids and gasses before the connection forcefully shut off.

"Are you trying to kill me, demon?! Oh wait, of course you are!"

"Stop whining and get back to shooting!"

Since every other cryo projector was in use, Alven went back to wielding his laser rifle. Ves closely studied Alven's thought processes and instincts as he dove from cover to cover, relying on his Firerunner's mobility to avoid getting pinned down.

The broken walls and the increasing accumulation of rubble, mech wrecks and debris made it harder for the Firerunner to take advantage of its relatively high top speed. It was not the most agile mech by far, and often Alven had to rely on various tricks to get around an obstacle in the way.

"Still, the fluid manner in which Alven navigated the increasingly crowded battlefield gave Ves a lot of insight on what really mattered to a rifleman mech. Alven's proficient use of the Firerunner illustrated that having a high level of agility was not necessary to avoid enemy attacks.

Rather, running fast enough while performing minor changes in velocity and direction proved to be sufficient to throw off the aim of any enemy mech that targeted Alven's mech.

Of course, skill and fervor only brought him so far. His Firerunner regularly got hit by glancing shots that Alven failed to dodge in the nick of time. Ves mentally frowned again. At this rate, the Firerunner would be chewed up before Alven could reveal all of his piloting skill.

Ves quickly analyzed the enemy mechs and tried to figure out their weaknesses.

"Those red railgunners pack a punch, but they run out of projectiles rather fast. Just stay away from them while they focus their fire on you."

"The laser rifleman mechs draw much of their power from the modular backpack module. If you can manage to damage the backpack's integrity, a lot of failsafes will set in, disabling the extra power source entirely."

"Don't bother trying to wear down their knights. Those models are built to withstand lasers. Leave them to the railgunners."

One major difference between the galactic heartland and the galactic rim was that railguns supplanted the role of ballistic rifles entirely. Though they lacked versatility, they more than made up for it in sheer power. The ability to send out a huge kinetic impact was extremely useful in breaking apart the enemy's trutleshells.

Alven intensely disliked Ves. He outright ignored the sensible advice and stuck to his old ways. This frustrated Ves to no end and forced him to teach another lesson to Alven's spirit.

"AAHHH! That hurts!"

The forceful invasion unsettled Alven and disrupted his fighting pattern. The Firerunner stumbled again and attracted a lot of enemy firepower for a moment.

"Listen to me or suffer!"

"Evil! You're pure evil!"

Ves needed to prod Alven several times in order for him to follow his suggestions. His battle performance instantly improved by a significant margin. Despite this success, Alven thought that Ves had performed some demonic witchcraft to accomplish such a result.

Alven became crazed from the pressure exerted by the demon. Somehow, Alven became a rabid dog, and channeled nothing but his instincts and the core of his training to resist the relentless rebels that sought to overrun the southwestern walls.

Much of the reason why Alven fought so hard was because Ves learned how to manipulate his spirit. As he became more familiar with spiritual attacks, he realized he could do something else than inflict pain.

"It's much like assimilation, but instead of taking over his entire spirit, I can choose to affect a couple of aspects."

Even though his attacks looked crude and did a lot more damage than necessary, Ves enjoyed a strong advantage over Alven in terms of mental strength. This left the mech pilot helpless.

If not for being in a position of control, Ves would have gotten spooked that such a thing was even possible, although he doubted a lot of humans could perform such an attack. Only through extremely special circumstances did Ves end up in Alven's mind.

"Callisto!" A loyalist officer barked over the comm. "This is no time for heroics! You are disrupting our defensive lines! Fall back to the inner defense lines!"

The gratuitous mental damage inflicted by Ves caused Alven to disregard the order. Ves had to prod Alven yet again in order to turn around.

Ves noticed that the more he intervened, the less Alven became capable of thinking rationally. By now, he'd gone halfway feral. He fought on mostly through instinct and training. While that helped Ves understand the most important skills to rifleman mech pilots, he did not wish for Alven to die so soon.

He decided to do something drastic. He wanted to take over Alven's mind entirely.

The action came with a lot of risk, but as long as he did not completely assimilate Alven's damaged mind, then the act would still be reversible. Ves had no intention of taking over a religious nut's mind.

After deciding on his course of action, Ves practically swarmed over Alven's mind. His previous attacks wore out the mech pilot's defenses, so he could offer no substantial opposition to the takeover.

Alven screamed and instinctively pulled back. His Firerunner went from fighting a pitched battle to fleeing as fast as possible. The remaining loyalists all looked at Alven's mech like it had gone mad, but they quickly turned their attention back to the attacking mechs.

If Ves had to describe his takeover, he would say that his mind turned into a blanket that covered Alven's most essential elements of self. They represented his consciousness and formed the main control center of his body and mind.

When Ves covered himself over those elements, Ves effectively captured Alven's consciousness and hijacked its connection to Alven's body and mind. For a brief period of time, Ves was Alven.

A flood of information streamed into his mind, but Ves blocked most of it, only letting the purest piloting instincts go through.

"Let's see if I can pilot a mech this way."

When Ves gained sufficient control over the process, he attempted to interface with the Firerunner.

"AAAAHH!"

Alven cried out in pain yet again, but this time it was Ves who suffered the brunt. The neural interface might have connected with Alven's brains, but it was Ves who attempted to connect with the mech, not the original consciousness.

Ves tried to circumvent his inability to pilot a mech by hijacking Alven's body and mind, but it seemed that things weren't so simple.

The pain caused Ves to eject from Alven's spirit. His own spirit sustained a moderate amount of damage as well, and he was in no shape to make another attack. Not that it mattered, because Alven's mind received so many shocks he effectively turned into an idiot.

Without any active control, the Firerunner collapsed. This turned it into a sitting duck and a magnet for enemy fire. Less than thirty seconds later, the mech blew up.

Chapter 380

When the Firerunner blew up, some force grabbed Ves' consciousness and pulled him back to his present time and space.

His mind came back online in his own body, but he felt an enormous amount of fatigue. The brief but intense ordeal on Rilrod severely taxed his spirit.

As he took a brief rest, he looked around and found to his alarm that his body hadn't woken up in his bed. Instead, his body somehow ended up in the lab!

Ves jumped off the chair and looked around for anyone who could have moved his body here. "Who's there! What did you do to me?"

The only thing that greeted him was a bemused Lucky. The gem cat meowed at him as if he was relieved that Ves had returned to his senses.

Ves looked back at the lab machine and found to his surprise that it looked a lot different from when he previously left it. The most important change was that a strange cube the size of his palm rested in the lab machine.

Last he recalled, he only left a tiny crystal the size of a thumb in the machine!

The clues painted a rather unsettling picture. Ves turned his attention inward and regarded the crystal golem that temporarily resided in his mind.

"Did you take over my body?"

The reconstructed spirit flashed some sort of emotion. Ves thought he sensed satisfaction from the imaginary entity.

"You did, didn't you?!"

Even if he knew, it was not as if Ves could do anything about it. Despite the crystal golem's unorthodox birth, its strength of spirit was still incomparably pure. Ves wasn't sure he could overpower the spirit in a mental battle.

He left the crystal golem alone and beheld the strange crystal cube. He tentatively picked it up and studied it from all sides. He detected nothing unique about the crystal, but the matter probably wasn't so simple. He whipped out his Vulcaneye and made a quick scan.

The multiscanner spat out a bunch of dense readings. Ves only took a second to interpret the data. An enormous amount of miniature circuits had been packed inside the crystal cube!

That almost caused Ves to drop the scanner. What had the crystal golem been up to? Why did he create this cube? What did the circuits do?

He recalled the crystal city's ability to harness light and briefly suspected the cube to be some sort of weapons interface. However, the circuits in the crystal cube did not match the circuits of the crystal spires.

Seeing as the crystal cube was inert, Ves felt disinclined to study it further. "I'm severely behind schedule in designing my rifleman mech. I can't afford to waste any time on fanciful alien technology."

His most recent Mastery still stayed fresh in his memory. Ves wanted to leverage his experiences into elevating his second original design as fast as possible before the details became vague.

Thus, after making a brief decision, Ves entered the elevator and went down to the restricted vault. He deposited the strange crystal cube in one of the lockboxes and left it there for later.

After that, he returned to his private workshop floor and freshened up before putting himself in his best condition. He thought back on his experience with Alven and found that it was a shame the experience ended too soon.

"I don't know why the System chose to partner me up with an obstinate fellow like him. Even if he wasn't a religious nut, he was already doomed to die that day."

He couldn't help but add a mental complaint to the System. Why put him in a hopeless situation where defeat was imminent? Couldn't it have given Ves more time to absorb some experiences?

Fortunately for Ves, he already went through a Mastery before. His time with Barley taught him a lot of general knowledge around piloting that was applicable to any kind of mech.

Armed with this foreknowledge, Ves skipped much of the things he learned before and could devote his full effort into deciphering and understanding the experiences that specifically pertained to rifleman mechs.

"It's barely enough."

To be honest, Ves truly felt he got the short end of the stick this time. Even leaving out the common elements, his harvest disappointed him somewhat. Still, he had to work with what he got.

"No matter what, I'm still a better mech designer than before."

Just to make sure he hadn't hallucinated the entire trip, Ves looked up the Rolling Wind StarSector on the galactic net.

"It actually exists! It also has the Holy Dominion of Apellix!"

He quickly browsed its recent history and found that the dominant religion had indeed undergone a schism some time ago. To his astonishment, the loyalists who served the founding Sunstar Dynasty actually made a comeback late in the war.

Long after Alven perished on Rilrod, the loyalists obtained a lot of outside help that repelled the rebels from deposing the Sunstar Dynasty and erect another holy leader to helm the third-rate state.

In the end, Alven got his wish, and the Sunstar Dynasty still stood, although they paid a heavy price to hang on to their current position of power.

Ves failed to uncover any traces of Alven. He'd been an average pilot before Ves entered the mech pilot's mind, and did not live long enough to make a lasting impact.

"Well, enough dilly-dallying around. No matter what I think of Alven, he's long-dead now. I don't have to worry about his vengeful ghost coming to haunt me in the coming days."

The System's selection of Alven Callisto prompted Ves to believe it definitely intended to pick only those marked for death as his Mastery partners.

Before, he considered the decision to be a detriment that deprived him of helpers. After finding out that he might be hitchhiking in the minds of uncooperative people, he drastically changed his opinion.

"It's better if my partners can't do any damage to me in the future. Unless they're as friendly as Barley, I should attempt to kill off my partners the next time I redeem another Mastery."

With no further barriers to designing his next mech, Ves proceeded to pick up his work again. Before he could do the actual designing, he first had to purchase a couple more licenses.

He already set aside a handful of licenses and only held off on acquiring them if his newly acquired Mastery offered no protest.

"Hm, these licenses still look good. There's no problem in snapping them all up."

Ves proceeded to buy a number of small components meant to improve a mech's ability to wield a laser rifle. They consisted of components that improved precision, various targeting aids and an advanced processor specialized in parsing all of the data.

Ves remembered that he drew a sensor system from a golden lottery ticket a while ago. He briefly inspected it and found out that it was a long-ranged mech sensor primarily used by light mechs. Although he could implement it in his current design, it wouldn't be able to reach its maximum theoretical range due to all the interference from his mech's other systems.

"It's also too expensive to mass produce right now." He frowned when he checked the raw materials needed to build the sensor module.

Despite taking up a small amount of space, the module alone might cost up to twenty million credits to fabricate. That was way too much for a single secondary component. The main reason why the price jacked up so much was because the license made use of exotics that Ves had to import from another star sector.

Ves decided to purchase a native sensor system instead, one that seamlessly integrated with the targeting system he recently acquired. After finishing his purchases, the company account decreased by about 800 million credits, which was a hefty amount, but a necessary investment nonetheless.

Different from last time, it took a lot of effort for the LMC's financial department to release the funds. Along with the company's growth, its financial controls had tightened up as well. Ves could no longer draw on the account directly, but had to submit a lot of forms in order to obtain the necessary funds.

Even though it took a couple of hours for the financial department to release the funds, Ves didn't begrudge the accountants for taking their time.

"It's good that they're checking where the money flows. We can't have a scammer trying to pretend he's me and swindle my company out of all of our liquid funds."

After all of the paperwork went through, the LMC gained a couple more licenses for Ves to use in his designs. At this point, Ves met all of the conditions to complete his next design. He breathed deeply and began to channel the crystal golem. He connected with its spirit and invited it to share his senses and take part in the design process.

The crystal golem eagerly accepted the invitation and melded closer to Ves. Unlike his own attempts at smothering Alven's spirit, the crystal golem faced a willing human.

Both of them mutually intertwined themselves, causing Ves to enter a supremely elevated state where two minds instead of one was at work.

A small part inside him believed that this state would engender a much stronger X-Factor for his design. It might even be possible to breach past his bottleneck this time!

"Let's get to work!"

Ves called up a design program and loaded in his draft design before fleshing it out. Ves already set a vision for his rifleman mech to be a consummate run-and-gunner. Borrowing from Alven's experiences, he tweaked the draft design to enable it to reach a slightly higher top speed in exchange for a bit less agility.

He also planned in other deviations from the original draft. These mostly consisted of minor tweaks and changes in configuration that rifleman mech pilots appreciated.

Once he finished modifying his draft, he went on to design the actual mech.

As usual, he started from the interior of his mech and worked his way outwards. He defined the internal frame of the mech and planned the placement of the various core components of the mech such as the engine, cockpit and power reactor.

The rifleman mech envisioned by Ves would be a fairly slimmed down medium mech, so he wouldn't have a lot of room to work with. This presented a lot of challenges to Ves, as he had to stuff all kinds of components inside his mech without any of it spilling out.

He had to make some sacrifices in order to obtain sufficient room. After a few minutes of contemplation, he made his choice.

"I can cut back on the redundancy since it's not supposed to be a damage sponge. I still need to implement sufficient compartmentalization considering that this remaining space will be stuffed with energy cells."

Many rifleman mech models often skipped out on redundancy. This weakened the mech in the event of sustaining crippling damage. The loss of a vital component would severely impact the battle readiness of the mech.

Ves accepted the trade-off because it was the least bad choice available to him. He considered expanding the bulk of the mech to be unacceptable as it would severely impact his design's mobility.

His experience with Alven taught him that rifleman mechs needed as much mobility as possible. While Ves faced a lot of limits on speed and agility with his decision to stick to the medium weight class, his design could at least withstand a decent amount of enemy fire.

While it sounded as if Ves made a lot of compromises, Ves strongly believed the end product would still perform to a decent standard. The nature of designing anything involves making a lot of trade-offs.

The key factor that distinguished good designers from the bad was the ability to make the most favorable exchanges possible. This minimized the loss in performance and kept the overall specs of their designs close to their most optimal ideal state.

His current vision for his mech hinged on providing a lot of mobility, a decent amount of firepower and just enough armor to grant it a couple of extra lives.

Of course, Ves also hoped his gimmick would play a role in increasing the value of his design.

"I'll have to arrange an entirely different internal structure to accommodate the center crystal."

Just because Ves intended to make use of a large laser propagator based on alien technology did not mean he could slot it in the chest of his design like any other component.

Chapter 381

Time flowed by as Ves fully immersed himself into designing the rifleman mech.

The crystal golem in his mind frequently added its own input on the design as well, leading to frequent changes that turned the design's appearance into something unique.

The most drastic change entailed hunching over the posture of his design. Ves went short of imitating the extreme angle of the crystal golem's original race, but even then the change looked obvious.

Ves even figured that the hunch would make his mech more distinctive, although it also made it harder for the mech to turn its head to the rear.

The change in posture shifted the balance of his design and forced him to perform a lot of extra calculations in order to prevent his mech from tipping over.

He spent most of the first month fleshing out his design's internal architecture. While the crystal propagator installed in the center of the chest introduced a lot of complications, Ves possessed enough competence to adapt to the situation at hand.

This wasn't his first rodeo, and nothing could top the internal complexity of the Caesar Augustus design. After working extensively with Jason Kozlowski's debut design, Ves ceased to be impressed with mechs that only hosted two different weapon systems.

"It's not that hard to accommodate another weapon system on a rifleman mech design."

Ves merely had to ration his weight and space allowances carefully. The internal architecture that he came up with for his rifleman mech design reflected his earlier priorities. He added as much compartmentalization as possible, but cut short the level of redundancy.

In any case, Ves put his faith on the armor to prevent the worst from coming to pass. It would still take a decent amount of effort to get past his design's compressed armor.

Since Ves recycled most of the component licenses he acquired for the Blackbeak design, Ves did not have to puzzle over how to integrate them into his second design. He already knew how all of the parts performed and what kind of conditions they demanded.

The power reactor, the Trailblazer engine, the cockpit and a lot of other components that Ves previously implemented in the Blackbeak design smoothly integrated in his rifleman mech design. Ves only faced some challenges when he attempted to slim down the components in order to free up a bit more weight and space.

Modifying third-party components came with a lot of risks, and almost no Apprentice Mech Designer would attempt such an action. Ves only went through with this move because he possessed enough knowledge to understand some of the inner workings of these components.

Still, most of the components already went through countless optimizations, so Ves did not free up that much capacity. Some of his modifications came paired with minor losses in performance.

Ves already took into account that a lighter mech had to sacrifice some capability in order to increase its mobility. Even if he used the same components as the Blackbeak, his first and second designs fulfilled different roles, thereby necessitating a lot of adjustments.

He finished up the work in three weeks, which was fairly fast by his reckoning. Ves spent the next two weeks on simulating the performance of the internal structure and tweaking it to eliminate any faults.

The tests and simulations revealed a lot of sub-standard implementations that unnecessarily lowered the performance of his mech. Ves spent a lot of time correcting these mistakes and smoothed over the performance of his mech's internal design.

"That should wrap it up." Ves said at the end of the first part of the design phase. "The hardest part is over now."

Ves accomplished a lot of work, including getting the central laser propagator to work. Still, Ves only came up with an untested application. It remained to be seen if the gimmick performed as expected.

Starting from the second month, Ves worked on the exterior of his mech, including the armor system and the laser rifle.

Before he started work on them both, Ves took the time to take a day off and check in with his company. He left his private workshop floor with Lucky in tow and visited the different departments.

Everything appeared to go on trock, although the sales of bronze label Blackbeaks had dropped to its lowest level.

"Demand for the bronze label Blackbeaks are stagnating because the third-party manufacturers have met the immediate demand for this specific design." Gavin answered Ves when he visited the marketing department. "Elemental Mech Engineering is particularly worse off since it primarily serves the domestic market. You have to understand that the Blackbeak, while fairly popular, is a premium offensive knight."

"I understand." Ves nodded. "Both its type and price segment limit the popularity of the Blackbeak. It's never meant to take over the market for knights."

By now, EME only devoted a single production line to producing the Blackbeak. While they still sold some Blackbeaks every week, the sales volume was a far cry from when the design still enjoyed a lot of hype.

"What about Vaun? How are they faring trying to push the Blackbeak across the border?"

"It's the same as EME, but multiplied a couple of times. While they've never been able to conquer a lot of market share in any of the foreign markets, they're making plenty of sales when you add up the modest demands of more than a dozen different states. They're currently exporting the Blackbeak to twelve states and counting. All of that adds up."

This benefited the LMC as well, since Vaun Industrial paid 3.5 million credits per mech. Currently, it was difficult to predict how many Blackbeaks Vaun would be able to sell each month, but Gavin spent a lot of time on analyzing the foreign markets.

"Right now, Vaun is in a good place. They're easily able to export more than a hundred Blackbeaks a month. It will be tough to push more mechs than that. This means that at a minimum, the LMC can expect to receive at least 350 million credits in licensing fees."

Naturally, like any income stream, these earnings didn't take into account the various overhead costs and other expenses of the company. In particular, the loan the company took to finance the Benson production lines significantly increased the company's interest burden.

Still, the LMC's financials looked good enough to Ves. "We're making far more money than we spend, even with all of our recent expansions."

"That's true, but there's still a war going on." Jake replied after he went over the financials with Ves. "There's a recent spate of vandalism going on in the Bentheim region. It's only a matter of time before the Bentheim System itself will get hit, and Cloudy Curtain might get swept up in the chaos as well."

"What are you saying?"

"I'm saying we should prepare for the worst."

Ves turned serious at those words. "I know there's a possibility the Vesians decide to raid our planet, but we've already made as much preparations as possible. We've upgraded our contract with Sanyal-Ablin Security Services and I've even set up the Avatars of Myth, although they're still in infancy. However, our main source of security is our relationship with Walter's Whalers."

If the Vesians decided to raid Cloudy Curtain, the Whalers couldn't sit by and let the Vesians run amok on their home planet. Gangs enjoyed a complicated relationship with states. Any gang that claimed a planet but failed to defend it against foreign aggression would be pushed from their position of power.

Even though such a measure would be costly, the Mech Corps had swept up these kinds of cowardly gangs enough times to demonstrate their point. Every citizen of the Bright Republic must defend their homes if able.

Still, just because the Whalers possessed the obligation to defend Cloudy Curtain didn't mean it had to defend every location. In practice, gangs mainly held on to their core territories while letting the invaders lay waste to infrastructure that no one except the Republic cared about.

"The Whalers are our friends, and they know how much benefits the LMC brings to this planet. They'll definitely lend a hand if the Vesians want to raid the Mech Nursery."

Jake looked a bit skeptical at Ves. As a former retainer of the Larkinsons, he was no stranger to partnering up with the less respectable parts of society. Still, the gang culture in Rittersburg was nowhere nearly as intense as the gang culture of the Bentheim region.

"If you say so, I'll believe you, but it's better to prepare too much than prepare too little."

"What is your suggestion?"

His COO put forth a bold proposal. "I suggest we hire a mercenary corps for a couple of months. We need a lot more mechs to fend off even a minor Vesian raiding party. I don't know if you haven't heard yet, but there's word that the 3rd Imodris Legion is circling around the Mech Corps in order to reach the Bentheim region. All hell will break loose if they succeed."

Ves frowned deeply at that information. Even Ves hadn't heard anything about the Vesians sending an entire legion deep into Republican space. However, if Jake mentioned it to Ves, then the news must be true. The Larkinson Estate must have informed the man.

"I see. In that case, the risk of hiring a couple of bad apples doesn't look so bad." He replied after considering the matter. "You have my permission to hire a mercenary corps. Just one. I don't want any complications. Make sure they're trustworthy. I don't mind paying above the market rate in order to ensure their quality. Just don't set a lengthy contract term."

A defense contract under these circumstances cost a lot of money, although they charged a lot less than dedicated security companies such as Sanyal-Ablin. The costs still added up to an unreasonable burden after a year.

By then, the Avatars of Myth could take over the duties previously performed by the mercenaries. Even though it cost a lot of money to set up his own personal force, the running costs looked a lot more reasonable than paying mercenaries to do the same job.

Mercenaries existed and thrived on fulfilling temporary needs for wealthy clients. Ves personally did not think much about them even as he sold his products to them, but he did not dismiss their worth entirely.

In these dangerous times, he could use all the help he could get.

After taking care of impactful decisions like that, Ves returned to his private workshop floor and resumed his design work.

"All that's left is the exterior and a round of simulations before I can fabricate the first prototype."

The most important part about the exterior was that Ves had to apply the Veltrex armor system without overburdening his mech. As an armor system optimized for knights, it functioned perfectly when the three layers were thick enough to express their unique strengths.

Ves knew that he performed a misdemeanor by applying the same system to a skinny medium rifleman mech, but the nature of the compressed armor still ensured the armor remained strong. Although the thin plates of armor did not live up to their potential, they enormously improved the survivability of his second original design.

"It's not a knight, but it doesn't have to be."

Sometimes, Ves had to thin out the armor plating so much that their effective defense barely exceeded the standard of uncompressed armor. In those cases, Ves substituted the expensive materials with the much cheaper HRF armor system that Ves had last applied to the Marc Antony line of mechs.

He laughed to himself when he drew on the old license he obtained from the System as a reward for completing an early mission. "I never thought I would go back to using this low-quality formula."

If it worked, it worked. Ves ensured that the Veltrex armor system covered most of the essential sections of his design while covering some of the joints and other tricky areas with the much less demanding HRF armor system.

"It's not what I envisioned, but it mostly gets the job done."

The use of two different armor systems led to a slightly unique appearance for his rifleman mech.

Chapter 382

If Ves had to describe his second original mech's appearance, then he would describe it as fast. Every curve and line evoked a sense of impatience and flightiness, as if it hated to stand still.

The permanently hunched posture made the mech look like it was permanently on the prowl. Everyone who looked at its appearance would have the misconception that it hunted for a living. Even though Ves had not yet designed a customized laser rifle for the mech, everyone could easily imagine the threat it contained within its speedy frame.

This was a mech that hunted other mechs for a living.

His artistic sense prompted him to coat his design with a mottled brown pattern. Although camouflage was pretty much useless in this age, the darker tones and subdued coloration brought a sense of understated class to the premium-priced mech.

Ves added a slightly brighter yellow starburst pattern around the center crystal embedded in the chest. This would draw enemy fire towards the crystal laser propagator, which was very resilient against lasers and most types of thermal weaponry.

The chest also boasted the thickest application of Veltrex armor plating, so even if the enemy missed, his mech would still be fine. Mostly.

The double armor systems contrasted strongly even if Ves tried his best to obscure the different materials. The areas around the joints, neck and anywhere with minimal armor looked noticeably thinner, and adopted a slightly different texture that Ves couldn't remove without using special and expensive coating.

"I can't do anything about the weaknesses inherent with the HRF armor plating. At the very least, I've got most of my design clad in compressed armor. It's going to be very hard for its opponents to aim for those weak points as long as it keeps moving."

The main reason why he couldn't apply thicker armor to the joints was because adding more would cripple his design's mobility. By prioritizing mobility over armor, Ves ensured his mech retained a decent amount of agility and a fair amount of top speed. It also accelerated swiftly as well, which would help with abrupt changes in direction.

After subjecting the design to various simulations, the design met most of its promised performance levels. The only areas of concern seemed to be armor coverage, power supply and heat management.

Every mech design constantly juggled the latter two concerns. Compared to other rifleman mech designs, his current work did not seem so cumbersome.

Power supply formed the most complex issue. Ves planned to employ a laser rifle that drew its power from external battery packs instead of the mech's internal armor. Most often, mechs of the Republic carried spare battery packs inside a small, well-armored backpack module. These widely available backpacks slotted into the Bright Republic's Modular Fitting Standard which Ves had installed on the back of his design.

This separated the weapon's power usage from the power usage of his mech. Some saw it as an advantage, as rifleman mechs could happily drain their external batteries without worrying about draining their mechs dry. Mechs could also carry a lot more energy in total, leading to longer deployments in the field without worrying about resupply.

"On the other hand, bringing along a backpack module adds to the weight and makes the mech vulnerable to attacks from the rear. It's not a pleasant thing if the backpack module explodes along with all of those energetic batteries."

The explosions wouldn't be as violent as the overcharged energy cells on the Glowing Planet, but the force of it could still cripple a mech.

In effect, his choice of relying on external battery packs introduced a vulnerability in his design that contrasted sharply with his design's durable exterior. It was like building an impenetrable fort but leaving the front gates exposed.

Still, those battery packs contained numerous safeguards to prevent such a disaster. Packs rarely explode these days. Many other rifleman mechs utilized external batteries as well, as many mech pilots hated the limits imposed by relying solely on internal energy cells.

With regards to the mech itself, its power supply should last it a very long while. Due to using the same components as the Blackbeak, his rifleman mech design could go on for ages before needing to resupply its internal energy cells.

"This capability comes at the cost of peak performance, although rifleman mechs don't particularly need it unless they want a quick burst of speed."

In this regard, the weapon type determined the staying power of a rifleman mech. Ballistic rifleman mechs and railgunner mechs generally lasted as long as they still possessed ammunition. In a pitched battle, it would take less than an hour to run dry.

Due to these limitations, mechs that relied on projectiles generally focused on maximizing their performance in the limited time they remained combat effective. Their peak performance could reach very high levels, although these mechs tend to wear out quickly as well.

"Still, laser rifleman mechs are the kings of attrition."

The ease at which forces could replenish energy cells and batteries made laser rifleman mechs the favored type of mechs in larger battles and longer campaigns. Lasers dealt a lot of damage, but they took time to really take effect. This made them less deadly in short bursts of combat.

Laser rifles also tended to grow hot really fast, so mech pilots had to pace their shots over an extended period of time.

These traits tended to push mechs that used laser weapons into high endurance configurations that lasted for a long time.

Mercenaries tended to prefer the burst lethality offered by ballistic weapons, while armies and larger outfits leaned towards laser weapons for their ease of supply and their staying power.

Naturally, this would only be possible if the weapon did not draw on the mech's internal power. Those mechs ran out of power faster, but offered even higher levels of mobility as they weighed the least out of all rifleman mechs.

"Still, all of these tendencies are merely guidelines. It's not set in stone that all armies only use laser weapons and all mercenaries stick to ballistic weapons."

Ves opted to design a laser rifleman mech in order to provide Melkor with a mech that allowed him to bring out his full strength. The private market still hungered for rifleman mechs of all kinds, including those designed to wield laser weapons, so Ves did not worry about a lack of demand.

He only needed to convince the market that his mech was worth purchasing over the competition.

"That's what the gimmicks are for. I've already integrated an untested laser crystal in the chest. All that's left is designing the rifle."

He already bought a standard 10-year license for a basic but proven laser rifle design. Its robust and durable qualities along with the lack of frills made it an excellent base for modifications despite its generic and forgettable nature.

One-and-a-half months have already gone by. Ves planned to finish the laser rifle in two weeks before devoting another month for testing and iteration.

"A lot of time has already gone by. Anything can happen at this point. The sooner I finish this design, the better off the LMC will be once I'm called for other duties."

"Meow."

Floating above his head, Lucky materialized and landed atop his head. The mechanical cat's bone-like exterior made it uncomfortable for Ves to offer his head as a perch.

"Get off my head!"

Ves tried to grab hold of Lucky in order to move him from the top of his head, but Lucky quickly turned intangible once his hands went up.

"Meow."

Lucky excitedly meowed as he avoided the hands and hovered back and forth in the isolated design room.

"I'm sorry for not spending enough time with you, but I really need to get this work done."

"Meow!"

"I know. I'll make it up to you later."

"Meow."

"Yeah, I'll order another batch of yummy minerals soon, however, don't think of getting anything better than junk exotics!"

"Meow meow!"

"You'll bankrupt me if you insist on dining on the best stuff! I don't have a Glowing Planet hiding in my pockets, you know!"

Times like these reminded him that he shouldered an excessive burden. His entire company and hundreds of workers relied on the functioning of a single lead designer. When mech manufacturers grew past the point where they would be called small, they rightly expanded from a single designer to a team of designers.

This wasn't the first time Ves thought about expanding the LMC's retinue of designers. The only problem he faced was one of trust. Ves carried too many secrets, any of which could ruin his life and career if others found them out.

The problem was that if he kept those secrets to himself, others wouldn't be able to understand his design philosophy. Subsequently, their work would never match his exacting standards.

Either Ves had to keep loosening his standard, or he had to resign himself to working by himself.

"After I finish this project, assuming I don't have any other obligations, I should try to cultivate Carlos as the LMC's second designer."

Even though Carlos fell short of what the LMC demanded, Ves still trusted his friend over any other mech designer who would wish to apply to work in his company. His average background and relatively poor talent meant that no one else got to him yet. As his first benefactor, Carlos would trust Ves unconditionally.

"Hm, this is for later. I still have a rifle to finish."

Ves took the existing design of a laser rifle and separated its components. After categorizing each component, Ves designed a laser crystal that would fit inside a rifle before determining which components could be left out.

He puzzled over the issue for several days. He tried to strip out as many components as possible to slim down the rifle. Ves subsequently filled up the void by shrinking the rifle or allocated the extra capacity for larger battery packs and heat sinks.

When Ves previously designed the weapon for the Tainted Sun, he added heat rods to the graser rifle. His current weapon project did not call for the same, as conventional lasers used up much less energy compared to a highly energetic gamma laser.

While Ves had always channeled the spirit of the crystal golem during his design work, it was only once he started work on the laser rifle that it emerged from dormancy.

"You probably know a lot more about these laser crystals than me. If you have anything to suggest, I'm willing to listen."

The crystal golem's second opinion proved to be highly useful in tring to integrate the alien technology in a conventional human weapon design. It helped a lot with integrating the crystal with the remaining weapon components left inside the rifle design.

In the end, Ves cut about forty to fifty percent of the components utilized in the laser rifle design. Ves could have squeezed more performance savings out of the weapon if he went even further, but he was loath to do so.

Once he started taking out the really essential stuff, the rifle would suffer a large degradation in performance. It was not worth it to take these essential components out.

Actually getting the entire monstrosity to work according to spec was a lot harder than creating a proof-of-concept. Ves needed to maintain the laser rifle's level of performance compared to the base. Even though he possessed some experience in designing a laser rifle, he still lacked comprehensive experience.

"In the end, I'm not a weapon designer."

While he found it interesting to work on a laser rifle, it only became possible for him to do so due to all of the extra Skills and Sub-Skills he picked up along the way. It would be cumbersome to branch out much further.

If not for the necessity of trying to stand out from the competition, Ves would never waste his time designing a custom laser rifle.

It took a little longer to finalize the laser rifle. The extra time allowed him to work away the imperfections and increase the efficiency of his weapon until it matched the performance of the original weapon license, but only taking up half the weight and a lot less space.

At this point, Ves was almost ready to fabricate his prototype. He only needed to polish the appearance of his mech and optimize its design for a couple of weeks.

"That reminds me. I still haven't integrated the festive cloud generator in my mech."

Chapter 383

Ves derived a fair amount of the technology used in his design from studying the remains of the crystal builders. His design's appearance and hunched posture faintly echoed the long dead race's appearance. It was clear that the design formed something of an homage to the alien race.

He did not do so because he worshiped the aliens, but because he wanted to please the crystal golem. The spirit inside his head had always nudged his design choices in this direction, and Ves found it best to accommodate its wishes in order to maximize the chances of strengthening the X-Factor of his design.

A thrilling sense of anticipation ran through his body as he thought about the end product. Besides its specs and its technical aspects, his design also excelled in the spiritual sense. It could in fact be one of its strongest points.

Ves couldn't wait to complete his design and experience its X-Factor in full force.

"The Blackbeak may be better put together as a mech, but its X-Factor simply can't compare against this rifleman mech design."

Still, the success of his design in terms of X-Factor depended on the mood of the crystal golem. Ves attempted to please it in any way he could without setting back the performance of his mech.

As for the Festive Cloud Generator, Ves decided to integrate it into the head of his design. He hesitated on the exact appearance of the head, but in the end chose to imitate the crystal builder's strange head shape.

Just like the alien race which inspired this mech, Ves designed the head to be a roughly humanoid shape but without any defined eyes, ears, nostrils or mouths. Instead, he spread a random amount of pin-shaped holes throughout the front, sides and back of the head. He only filled a couple of them with sensors, leaving the rest of the holes plugged at the very end.

The head looked unsettling, and added to the threatening nature of his rifleman mech. Due to the strange shape of the head, Ves found it to be the perfect outlet for the Festive Cloud Generator. He integrated the module inside the neck and connected it to the holes in the head via dedicated channels.

As for the color of the vapor, Ves decided to use the same understated brownish color as the exterior coating for his mech.

"My Blackbeak either releases black or red phoenix flames, depending on the edition."

In order to add some flair to those who requested it, Ves added in a soul blue shade as an alternative. This would turn the head into some kind of horrific entity that resembled a skeleton that came back to life. Ves thought this would give his design a much better visual impact compared to vapor dyed in earthen tones.

"I don't think many people will go for this option though." Ves considered. "Rifleman mech pilots aren't eager to call out attention to themselves. If the heads of their mechs suddenly burn in bright blue, they're liable to attract a lot more enemy fire."

The Blackbeak could afford to be focused on by enemy mechs, but his rifleman mech fared poorly if put in the center of attention. Even though both mechs shared the same armor system, one had been designed as a damage sponge and the other had been designed to dish out the damage.

After adding in the cloud generator, Ves essentially finished iterating his design. After this, he would no longer add new features and functionalities to his mech. From now on, he would proceed to optimize his design and smooth out its flaws until he ended up with a polished rifleman mech that wouldn't shame itself on the battlefield.

"I'm almost finished!" He celebrated to himself, though the only one who heard his words was a bored Lucky who lounged around above his head. "Getting these laser crystals to work is a bit of a pain, but it's well worth the effort."

These gimmicks did not change the game entirely, but they provided a substantial amount of benefits, so long as Ves could actually turn them into reality. That was still in question, as Ves had never fabricated crystals up to this scale.

The hardest part was already over. After completing his rough and polished design, Ves no longer needed to strain his mind on making difficult design choices. All that remained was correcting any inefficiencies that Ves had inadvertently introduced in the design.

Ves proceeded to throw his design in a large number of elaborate simulations. Through the use of complicated mathematical models, Ves crunched the numbers and tested whether the armor coverage contained any hidden weaknesses or how many times the laser rifle could fire in quick succession before it malfunctioned or blew up.

All of this was relatively boring work. Any results the simulations spat out prompted Ves to make minor tweaks such as thickening a plate of armor by a couple of millimeters or shifting one component to the left by a similar margin. This was precision that entailed a lot of repetition.

"The bigger design teams have dedicated analysts to process these simulations."

It was a waste of time for mech designers to concern themselves with this kind of work. While it demanded a high understanding of mathematics and physics, it also involved relatively little design judgment, so the work didn't have to be done by a mech designer.

"If I work alone, I can finish a decently optimized design in a little over three months. If I have an entire team to back me up, I can either shorten the time by half, or get much more work done in the same amount of time."

The tedium of taking care of every single detail brought a great burden to Ves, and it would only get worse over time. As his designs grew more complex, the amount of details that needed to be taken care of increased as well. Eventually, it was a lot more efficient to offl-load the less essential tasks to assistants.

"They don't need to be as good as me in terms of design ability or mathematical understanding. They only have to be good at their assigned task."

Many larger mech companies as well as the state-backed militaries relied on the works of design teams. The work of a single person always took longer to complete. The lack of involvement of others also made the mechs designed by a single person very insular in nature.

This meant that such mechs possessed very pronounced strengths and weaknesses. This didn't sound so bad, but sometimes a mech designer was so myopic that he overlooked a critical weakness in his design that would instantly plummet its value once revealed.

Ves was not so conceited to think he could keep track of everything, including the things he didn't know.

"It seems like it's inevitable for the LMC to become more professional."

Ves would always treat the LMC as his own personal kingdom. He merely considered the act of expanding his design team akin to hiring a couple of court wizards. As long as Ves kept a tight leash on them, they would be unable to pose a threat to him and his kingdom.

Still, just because he resolved to create a design team didn't mean he could gather a number of people with the snap of his finger.

"Hiring a number of competent assistants is easier said than done. The best people are claimed by the major players when they are a long way from graduation."

He needed to cultivate talent from the ranks. In that regard, calling any of his employees talented would be stretching it. The only way he could cut short the arduously long training process was to utilize the advantages of the System.

"Before I design my third mech, I better stuff Carlos with a bunch of Intelligence Attribute Candies and see what happens."

Ves doubted that Carlos possessed more intelligence than the average among humans. If his Intelligence Attribute happened to have shot up straight to 2.0, that was a different story entirely. His friend would experience a sea of change, and would be able to digest every textbook that Ves had gathered in a matter of days.

While Ves daydreamed about cultivating Carlos, an alarm suddenly interrupted his thoughts. A red light flashed for several seconds, long enough for the seriousness of it to set in. Ves forcefully halted his isolation and raced towards the terminal that connected to the outside world. He quickly called up Jake.

"What's going on outside?"

"It's bad. The Vesians have come!"

That was all Ves needed to know. His jaw dropped and his heart skipped a beat. Even though he made a lot of preparations for their possible arrival, Ves secretly hoped they never decided to come to the Cloudy Curtain System.

Out of all the rural systems around Bentheim, Cloudy Curtain was one of the poorest and least developed economies in the neighborhood. Despite the rising importance of the LMC to the planet, agriculture still remained the dominant export of this panet.

Even if the Vesians wanted to starve Bentheim of their food, the most a couple of mechs could do was burn some fields and destroy some processing plants. It would be impossible for an entire legion to scour the entire planet of all crops within a month.

And when they left, the farming consortiums could simply clean up the wreckage and plant another batch of crops.

No, the Vesians hadn't come to raid some farms. Their goal should be more than clear. Ves looked grimly at Jake's projection. "They're coming for us, aren't they?"

"Sanyal-Ablin thinks that's likely the case. The 3rd Imodris Legion is out in force and they're simultaneously hitting over twenty different planets at once. All of the targeted planets in question are hosting some kind of industry related to mechs or ships."

In other words, the Vesians definitely targeted his Mech Nursery.

"How many mechs are they bringing along?

"If you take into account the historical patterns as well as their usual modus operandi, they're likely bringing in one company of spaceborn mechs and two companies of landbound mechs. Mind you, these are full strength companies. They can't compare against the mechs and people employed by the private sector."

Leaving out the spaceborn mechs, Cloudy Curtain had to withstand the fury of more than eighty military-spec mechs.

"Can the Mech Nursery withstand such a force?"

"It's doubtful." Jake replied, revealing his own apprehension at the nearing fleet of combat carriers. "The defenses of the Mech Nursery can't even withstand a single company of Legion mechs. Two companies can absolutely overrun our base, although that doesn't take into account our mobile defenses."

The Mech Nursery still possessed a way to survive the Vesian fury by relying on their allied mechs.

"Talk to me about our mech disposition."

"We've just discovered the Vesians, so it's not clear how many mechs we can call up. Right now, Sanyal-Ablin has promised twenty-four high-quality mechs to our defense. These are top-of-the-line third-class mechs, so they'll be able to punch above their weight against the Vesians."

Ves nodded in understanding. Sanyal-Ablin Security Services was a subsidiary of the Konsu Clan. As a partner of a second-rate state, the Konsu Clan was more than capable of maintaining such an expensive force of mechs in the standard of third-rate states.

Still, even with the LMC's current earning levels, they could ill afford to expand their already hefty contract with Sanyal-Ablin. They couldn't rely on more than twenty-four mechs from the security company to defend their manufacturing complex.

"As for the Avatars of Myth, you should know more about them than me, seeing that they're under your sole command. As far as I'm aware, your cousin Melkor has been drilling them non-stop in their current service mechs. Although they only bring nine mechs to the table if you include your cousin, their capabilities should be on par with the average Vesian squad."

That brought their side to a third of the amount of mechs the Vesians would bring to bear. They were still horribly outnumbered, but if they fought cleverly, they still stood a chance of repelling the raiding force.

"What about Walter's Whalers? Have they gotten in touch yet?"

"They have, but..." Jake hesitated a little. "They aren't exactly eager to come to blows with the Vesians. They'll do their part for sure, if only to meet their obligations, but we can't force them to hold their ground."

"That's a problem." Ves frowned deeply. If the Whalers chickened out, where did that leave him? "How about the mercenaries? Please tell me they're prepared to face the Vesians."

Chapter 384

"About that..." Jake sounded like he swallowed a sour lemon. "I think it's best to switch you over to Melkor. He's been coordinating the Mech Nursery's defenses."

Ves waited for the comm channel to switch to Melkor.

"Ves? I've been meaning to speak to you."

"I just heard the short version. Tell me about the readiness of the mercenaries. Who did you hire and what kind of issues do they have?"

Melkor sighed on the other side of the channel. "It's complicated. First, do you know what mercenaries do during times of war?"

"Some of them join the Mech Corps or get conscripted by them, right?"

"Yes, and it's always the best of them that get snapped up one way or another. Usually, mercenaries prize their freedom and identity, so the Mech Corps usually contracts them to defend less important places that still need to be protected. So right off the bat, the best mercenaries have disappeared."

"Leaving the hiring market with the non-elites and the small to medium-sized mercenary corps who aren't worthy of notice." Ves added onto Melkor's explanation. He could predict where his cousin was going with this story from his own understanding of how the market worked. "Since this is a time of war, plenty of companies are shivering in their pants. They can't bolster their security forces fast enough, so they've immediately hired the leftovers who are still worth a damn."

The latest war between the Bright Republic and the Vesia Kingdom already raged on for a couple of months. The most farsighted companies already made their moves long ago.

"When you asked us some time ago to hire some mercenaries as well, the outfits that were still available at that time are like the last kids you'd pick to join your team. They all come with various amounts of baggage. The only good thing about them is that they know their records look bad, so they've all been setting reasonable prices."

"Did you hire a cheap group then?"

"Not exactly." Melkor shook his head. "Those guys are liable to cut and run when the going gets tough. I'm not stupid enough to put my faith on those types. Besides, none of these cowards indicated that they wanted to take on an assignment that would force them to fight directly against the Vesian frontline forces."

Ves snorted. "Good luck with that. I don't think those mercenaries can afford to be picky. They'll probably go bankrupt very soon."

"It's better to be bankrupt than dead." Melkor shrugged. "In any case, there aren't that many mercenary corps who are willing to accept a high-risk defense assignment, which is what's applicable to our situation. I've had to spend days negotiating with various outfits available for hire."

"And the result?"

"Well, after discussing it with the LMC's upper management, we've settled on a medium-sized group called the Oodis Mudriders."

"Charming name." The name of the outfit alone did not inspire much confidence in Ves.

"The Mudriders specialize in extended patrols, wilderness reconnaissance and other missions of that nature. They're really good at what they do, so I've decided to contract them even if they don't specialize in defense."

His cousin must have a good reason to do so. "Then what's the problem with the Mudriders?"

"There's no way of putting it gently, so I'll just say it. The Mudriders have a black mark on their record."

Ves instantly turned serious. "Really? And you hired them anyway?"

What was a black mark? In the mercenary circles, the Mercenary Association kept track of each mercenary outfit's performance and whether they fulfilled their obligations. They were much like the Mech Trade Association in that regard, though they did not wield any real power or maintained their own defense force. In short, they acted solely as neutral arbiters.

In their record-keeping, they frequently had to deal with mercenaries that failed to do their jobs for some reason or another. The MA would often be called to investigate the circumstances if the mercenaries and their employers failed to come to an agreement. Either the mercenaries would be acquitted, or they'd receive a red or black mark on their records.

A red mark signified a warning sign. It meant that the mercenary corps in question had fudged their job somehow. These marks instantly lowered the valuation of the corps, but fortunately for them the MA offered plenty of options to redeem themselves, usually through demonstrating good behavior in the next handful of missions.

It was a different case with a black mark. The mercenary corps had to do a completely unforgivable act in order to acquire a black mark. This usually entailed actions short of becoming a full pirate, but still looked pretty bad. Most often, this consisted of destroying something that they'd been assigned to protect, fleeing too early in battle, or getting caught doing something wildly illegal.

Many mercenary corps gave up on the spot once they received a black mark Sadly, the mech pilots wouldn't be able to get away with it either, as the black mark persisted in their personal records as well. Many pilots therefore chose to retire from the mercenary business entirely.

To those who for some reason or another desperately wanted to stay in the business, the MA offered a couple of ways out. The most popular one would be to redeem themselves through completing a number of missions with exemplary behavior.

Unlike with red marks though, the mercenaries wouldn't be able to remove their black marks with a string of boring and safe guard or patrol duties in the middle of nowhere. They specifically had to demonstrate their valor through completing high-risk assignments.

"This is the first high-risk assignment for the Mudriders." Melkor continued to explain. "They received their black marks at the outbreak of the war when they were contracted to defend a lucrative natural preserve planet. For some reason, they did not prepare for the war and got caught with their pants down when a deep-ranging raiding party entered the system. You can guess what happened next."

These Mudriders already sounded like idiots to Ves. Who didn't know that a war was imminent back then? "Okay, so their peacetime contract obliged them to defend the operations on the natural preserve, but they never actually expected to face the fangs of the Mech Legion. Did they run immediately or did they at least pretend to put up a fight?"

"It's actually both. They used to be a fairly large mercenary corps with over seventy mechs. Half of them mutinied against the mercenary commander and fled the system just hours after the arrival of the Vesians. The other half became so demoralized that even if the commander wanted to make a stand, the circumstances forced him to pull back as well, hence the black mark."

While Ves felt a lot of sympathy for the mercenary commander, that did not mean he appreciated the commander's leadership abilities. "Right, and now we're the ones they're tasked with defending. How many mechs do they have?"

"There's only twenty-four left. The good thing is that most of them are advanced mechs. The Mudriders who piloted the frontline mechs didn't hold much loyalty to the corps and didn't possess strong wills. What's left is the true core of the Mudriders."

Twenty-four mechs, most of them on par with the mechs of the Avatars of Myth. That sounded a bit better. This brought the defending mechs to at least half the strength of what the Vesians might bring to bear.

It was still short of ensuring victory, but Ves could not afford to be picky at the moment.

Melkor proceeded to tell Ves a few other details about the Mudriders that he should know before suggesting that he should meet with the mercenary commander in person.

"The Mudriders are based in the mech stables next to ours. You should really speak with the commander and try to convince him that the Mech Nursery can hold as long as they are committed to the fight."

Ves nodded. He knew how important it was to prop up the mercenaries after suffering an enormous spout of bad luck. "I'll go do that."

He cut the comm channel and proceeded to leave the underground portion of the Mech Nursery with Lucky in tow.

As he briefly glanced at the various floors, he noticed that the manufacturing complex had gone into full crisis mode.

His people halted every non-essential operation such as fabricating mechs and began to stow away every loose component and material laying around in the open.

Under the leadership of Chief Cyril, the mech technicians also started to tidy up the production lines and began to wrap them up with makeshift armor plating in order to protect them against collateral damage.

Out of everything in the Mech Nursery, the LMC could not afford to lose its three production lines. As the most valuable physical assets of his company, the Vesian raiding force would definitely do their utmost to pound the expensive machines into scrap.

Once he reached the surface, he saw that most of the office buildings had actually been retracted underneath the ground. While that didn't guarantee they would escape unscathed, it at least made them less of an obvious target.

As for the mech stables, for various reasons these structures couldn't be moved, but their sturdy construction could take a fair amount of blows before they succumbed. Ves and Lucky moved to the largest structure which had been assigned to the Oodis Mudriders.

Upon reaching the entrance, the Mudriders must have gotten prior word of his arrival because their mech pilots and support personnel all stood at attention in front.

Ves got the sense that a fair amount of pilots used to serve in the Mech Corps. It stood to reason that they stuck to the Mudriders when everyone else left the group.

An older man stood in front and approached Ves. "Welcome to the Oodis Mudriders. I am Commander Merin Husaan, the man in charge of this bunch. Isn't that right?!"

The Mudriders shouted in unison. The discipline of those who remained still appeared to be strong. The display quietly allayed some of the concerns that Ves still held. At least the Mudriders hadn't been left with the dregs.

Once Commander Husaan dismissed his men and women, he led Ves to an office that he appropriated for his use. "I appreciate you coming to pay us a visit. You don't seem like the corporate types who let their underlings do all of the work."

How was Ves supposed to respond to such a remark? "Your Mudriders form a vital part of our defense, so I can't afford to remain hands off. Now, I'm aware of your outfit's recent history. It doesn't look good."

Husaan let out a deprecating smile. "It is not a secret that my Mudriders are much-diminished. In truth, we've had it too easy in the last decade. We've expanded too fast and brought in strangers to fight alongside us. We trusted them to watch our hides, but at the critical moment, they turned their own backs to us and left."

"Can you guarantee that it won't happen again? We truly need your commitment to this coming fight."

"I will stake my mercenary honor on this task. I would rather die than to see the mercenary corps that I've built out of my own flesh and tears dissolve due to another act of dishonor!"

That sounded great, but Commander Husaan did not speak for his entire crew. Even though his men showed an encouraging display of unity, who knew if any of them held second thoughts? Once a single mech pilot ran away, his departure might lead to a cascade of defections, especially in the heat of battle.

Ves crossed his arms. "Actions speak louder than words. I'll reserve my judgement until the Vesians actually come."

"That's fair." Husaan nodded. "All I can tell you is that we'll do our best to defend these premises, but if you want to employ us at our best, then you must grant us the autonomy to operate according to our strengths."

"What does that mean?"

"I've been arguing with the man you've assigned to coordinate your defenses, and we have a disagreement on how my Mudriders should be employed."

"And you haven't resolved your argument?"

"No." The robust mercenary commander shook his head. "We're trained to fight on the run. We are a skirmishing force, not a frontline unit. Standing behind the walls and letting the enemy come to us isn't what we do."

It turned out that Commander Husaan wanted the Mudriders to be deployed outside the Mech Nursery. Instead of defending the walls, the Mudriders would harass the incoming raiding force from the flanks and force them to split up their focus.

The idea sounded good, but the problem was that nothing held the Mudriders back from running away if they chose to do so.

Ves understood why Melkor was hesitant in granting them so much leeway. They already possessed one black mark in their record.

"Let me speak to my cousin about it before I make a decision."

Chapter 385

After leaving the mech stables occupied by the Mudriders, Ves paid a visit to the facility that held the Avatars of Myth.

Melkor already used the budget provided by Ves to good use. The mech stables looked like a bunker that could withstand a lot more punishment than the one he visited before. It had also been built on top of a collapsible tunnel that led to an underground network.

"Ves." Melkor greeted him as he arrived. "I believe you have met the Oodis Mudriders?"

"They look like they have something to prove."

"You can't trust what you see. They purposely put their best foot forward." Melkor admonished him as he led him past the mechs of his own personal force.

They all looked decent, but the two gold label Blackbeaks took the crown. The two offensive knights radiated a subtle flavor that spoke of bloodthirst and anticipation. Ves mentally nodded in satisfaction. Their X-Factor should enhance the two mechs by a small but noticeable margin.

After finishing the small tour, Melkor led Ves to an underground command center of some sorts. A dozen or so new hires staffed the various workstations in the highly secure chamber. Ves recognized them as part of his own personal force due to the temporary uniforms they wore that matched Melkor's own.

His cousin seemed to have opted for a sober black uniform of stiff high-quality fabric along with touches of blue. The uniform gave those who wore them a lot of stature, and Ves approved of the look. Perhaps he would instruct Melkor to turn permanent.

"This is our first command center. Here, we will coordinate our surface defense. There are other command centers underground, but it's not necessary to use them yet. The chances that the Vesians are bringing tunneling machines are very low."

In the middle of the command center hovered a projection of the star system and the Mech Nursery's vicinity.

"From our latest observations, the Vesian combat carriers are making swift progress to the inner system. They'll arrive in orbit in about eleven hours. That's very short, and we don't have enough time to bolster our defenses."

Ves studied the space plot and traced the trajectory of the Vesian ships. "Is there any way to threaten their ships?"

"No. I've already made some inquiries and it's impossible for us to damage them. They're very well-guarded by an entire company of spaceborn mechs. As you know, the Mech Corps isn't maintaining any garrisons in this star system. Instead, the job of defending the system and planet is left to Walter's Whalers."

"I see."

Even with their recent windfalls, it took time for the Whalers to train competent mech pilots anc acquire new mechs. This raid happened way too soon for the Whalers to put up a strong resistance. Ves did not forget that they lost a lot of mech pilots in the Glowing Planet campaign.

Ves also had a first-hand look at how they operated back then. Typical of gangs, battles in space were not their strong suit. They much preferred to operate on land, as that was more intuitive and required less brain power to understand.

In order to excel in space like a true spaceborn fighting force, the Whalers would need to hire a lot of ship captains and mech officers who understood orbital mechanics and other highly technical knowledge.

Let alone orbital mechanics, Ves doubted that the average gang member learned how to count past ten.

"Okay, it's hopeless to contest the Vesians in space, but the Whalers are much better off on the ground, right?"

Melkor nodded. "That's one thing that's gone right. Dietrich has been in touch with us and they've promised to defend Freslin and the Mech Nursery, depending on where the Vesians planned to strike. However, he did warn us that while the mechs are much better than what they used to have, the mech pilots are mostly green and untested. They won't be able to stand their ground in a pitched battle."

That meant instead of relying on the Whalers to be the main force that blunted the Vesian spearhead, they could only be employed to perform less critical roles.

Ves let out a grunt in frustration. "Seems like everyone is doing their best to shirk responsibility for the most arduous task. Will Sanyal-Ablin do their jobs at least?"

"They've informed me that they are committed to fulfill their contracts, and for once, I believe them. The credibility of SASS as a whole is on the line here."

That meant that the Mech Nursery could at least depend on a core of twenty-four very capable mechs to hold the line. At least the LMC got their money's worth in that regard.

The defense picture started to become clear to Ves. He looked at the map that showed the Mech Nursery and its surroundings. Ves chose to plant the highly defensible manufacturing complex in a complex forest environment tens of kilometers away from Freslin.

This was near enough for his employees to live in the second-largest city of Cloudy Curtain and commute to the Mech Nursery every day. It was also far enough away from the city that an attack on the Mech Nursery would not pull in innocent bystanders.

Melkor swiped his finger at the star-shaped walls of the Mech Nursery. "The Vesians have come to raid our location, so they won't be wasting time on whittling us down. Standard Vesian doctrine calls for concentrating their force and breaching our defense line in a single powerful push. This strategy works well enough against most company-owned premises."

Inside the complex, Sanyal-Ablin's mechs and weapon emplacements formed a stiff defense, especially against missiles and aerial threats.

"We've got a lot of turrets."

"Don't depend on them to repel two entire companies of Vesian mechs. They're mostly employed for anti-air duty. If the Vesians are stupid enough to fly a mech over our heads, every turret will be able to draw a bead on such an exposed target."

It was a little more problematic for the turrets to target landbound mechs. In addition, they made for very obvious targets. Their complete lack of mobility easily turned them into punching bags for agile mechs that could dodge the incoming turret fire.

"Well, the Vesians won't drop down on top of us at the very least." Ves consoled himself. "So if I'm reading this map correctly, the SASS mechs will hold the wall while the Whaler reinforcements will wait at the outskirts of Freslin?"

"That's correct. The Whalers are obliged to defend their citizens first in case the Vesians split. If the raiding force doesn't decide to hit Freslin, then the Whaler mechs will be departing in our direction and hit the Vesians from the flanks."

That sounded identical to what the Oodis Mudriders requested. The difference was that Ves knew that the quality of the mech pilots from the Whalers precluded them from being employed in the most difficult position.

"I see. That's why you're so adamant that the Oodis Mudriders join the Sanyal-Ablin mechs on the walls. We don't have too much front-facing resistance otherwise."

Melkor nodded his head but let out a breath in concern. "Really Ves, you could have spent more time and resources on bolstering your defenses. Rushing the construction of the Mech Nursery helped a lot, but the base builders haven't completely finished building all of the systems that makes this complex defensible."

"Well, I can't help the timing of the 3rd Imodris Legion. Who is leading that unit?"

"A descendant of the Duchess of Imodris named Lady Amalia. She's young and way down the line of suggestion, so she's certainly set out to make a name for herself."

That sounded really bad for Cloudy Curtain and the rest of the Bentheim region. Two types of leaders typically took charge of the Vesian legions. The most common type would be career officers, who mostly inherited the position from their parents. They were much like the Larkinsons in that they possessed a strong military heritage.

It was the other type of leader that posed a huge threat to the LMC. Mech legions led by ambitious heirs often did whatever it took to earn military merits. At the highest level of non-royal nobility, the fight to inherit a dukedom often led to lots of tears.

"Okay, if it's someone like Lady Amalia, then we can expect the Vesian raiding force won't be cowed by our defenses." Ves recalled the few instances where he witnessed the Vesians in battle.

One particular moment stood out. It was when the fleets of the Mech Legion and Mech Corps temporarily banded together to escape the Glowing Planet. Once they shook off the pirates, their fleeting reticence quickly dissolved, and both sides started slinging punches at each other without any regard for caution.

Melkor laid down the most pressing issue. "Twenty-four mechs from Sanyal-Ablin will hold the walls. The squad of mechs under my command will stay back as a reserve. The thirty mechs sent by the Whalers will approach the Vesians from the direction of Freslin once they've committed to the assault."

That amounted to sixty-three mechs, which sounded deceptively impressive. In truth, Ves would be a fool to assume they would all be completely willing to commit to the fight.

The Whaler mechs especially formed the most unstable element. They could only be used as a distraction as best.

The Vesians definitely wouldn't expose any weaknesses for them to exploit. While their nobles often fought among themselves, their individual unit cohesion was extremely high.

Therefore, the lynchpin of the defense of the Mech Nursery rested on the role of the Oodis Mudriders.

"Will the Oodis Mudriders really be useful if they stand the line?"

"Definitely. Don't mistake them for being only good for skirmishing maneuvers. A mercenary corps of that caliber won't leave any gaps in the training of their mech pilots. Besides, the Mech Nursery's premises are large enough that they can still run around as much as they want to inside our defensive perimeter."

"Alright, so they'll definitely be useful if they defend the Mech Nursery from the inside. But won't they be more effective if we accept Commander Husaan's request to let them range outside the perimeter?"

Melkor conceded that point. "That's true, but this isn't a situation where everyone gets what they want. The Vesians are upon us in less than half a standard day, and we only have so many mechs to go around. You have to realize that the Vesians will attempt to breach the walls in a single go with all they got. It's vitally important we contain that initial push, and that requires a lot more than the twenty-four mechs than what Sanyal-Ablin is offering."

"Well, we've also got the Avatars of Myth."

"Ves, don't tell me what to do." Melkor curtly rebuked Ves. "Even though the Vesians are likely to employ the direct approach, there's always the chance they'll sneak around or pull off something else. A reserve is always needed to provide against contingencies, and they also need to be some of our best and most reliable people. No one else but my Avatars can fulfill this role."

This left a fairly bleak picture for the Mech Nursery's defense. Melkor truly convinced him of the necessity to leash the Mudriders to the walls. Commander Husaan and the rest of the mercenaries wouldn't be glad to hear that, but the mercenary contract they signed with the LMC didn't leave them many options for refusal.

"Seeing as you've failed to convince them, I guess I'll go ahead and talk to Commander Husaan myself." Ves replied and turned to leave the command center. "Do you have any suggestions on how to handle the Mudriders?"

"They're a disgraced mercenary corps. Those who remained care a lot about their own honor. As career mercenaries, the thing they hate the most is retiring in ignomy with a permanent black mark on their records. Maybe you can use their honor against them. I'm not the most silver-tongued person, so I haven't been able to do that myself. I hope you have better luck."

"Hah." Ves smirked. "As if I'm any better. It's more like my mouth is made of wood."

Chapter 386

The appearance of a Vesian raiding force into the quiet star system of Cloudy Curtain sparked an enormous panic. The only inhabited planet of the system turned into a beehive of activity.

With a population of less than twenty million, the people of Cloudy Curtain never really paid attention to what went on in the stars.

The planet was content to ignore the galaxy, and the galaxy in turn left it alone. Its status as an agricultural backwater always caused others to overlook Cloudy Curtain as a place of importance. In the previous wars between the Republic and the Kingdom, the aggressive Vesians always seemed to overlook this tiny planet in favor of the much more attention-grabbing Bentheim System.

In any case, if the Vesians ever succeeded in conquering the Bentheim System, the peripheral star systems around this core location would automatically fall in the Vesian hands without another shot.

Therefore, the sudden appearance of the Republic's eternal boogeymen in the Cloudy Curtain System of all places caused an enormous ripple effect among the populace. Many sleepy citizens didn't even know what to do in the event of an emergency, which was something unthinkable in a crisis-ridden place like Bentheim.

With millions of people running around like headless chickens, a number of influential organizations forcefully took charge.

The Planetary Assembly was not among them. During a crisis of life and death, no one paid attention to the local politicians. In recent times, the ruling coalition has taken a large hit in popularity. Their stranglehold on local politics was a thing of the past.

Nevertheless, The Greens and the White Doves never relented in their public criticism of the Pioneers, the LMC and Ves. The White Doves in particular rightfully argued that they had warned the people for years.

"I told you so! What was Mr. Larkinson thinking about setting up a giant mech plant on our peaceful planet?!"

"Say NO to mechs! Tell the LMC to blow up their entire factory before the Vesians land! Don't give them a reason to lay waste to our cities!"

"The war has nothing to do with us! Brighter, Vesian, I don't care what I call myself. Just leave us alone!"

"The immigration authorities lied to us! I thought this was one of the safest planets in the Komodo StarSector. I wanted a quiet retirement, not a first-class seat to a mech battle!"

Most of these voices came from the capital planet of Orinoco, which in recent times became a bulwark for the previous status quo. The businesses and influential people who congregated there purposefully amplified the voices of the discontent.

On the other side of the planet, Freslin, which had become a lively city of mech enthusiasts, fought back with their own words.

"You fricking cowards! The Republic should have you shot for your treasonous words!"

"News flash, dumbasses, mechs are prevalent in every corner in the galaxy! No matter how hard you try to bury your head in the sand, there's no way you can avoid bumping into mechs!"

"Millions of Republican mech pilots have fought and bled to preserve your freedom, and you want us to roll over and destroy our own mech builders on our own accord? You should be ashamed of yourselves!"

"I don't know about you, but the Vesians are the enemy, not one of our own! If you're so eager to lend them a hand, then go tumble out of the Bright Republic this instant!"

The raucous debate grew superheated even as the Vesian combat carriers neared the divided planet.

For some reason, the Republican Commissioner remained mum and did not face the public in order to advocate for calm and solidarity. With the critical absence of the only figure on the planet that could unite both sides, the contradictions between the two sides widened to an extreme.

In the middle of this debate, the response of Walter's Whalers revealed their stance on this issue. As the only organization on the planet with a substantial amount of mechs, they had a responsibility to defend the citizens against unbridled Vesian slaughter.

According to the social compact between the Republic and the gangs, the latter would only be obligated to fight if the Vesians ran out of control and unscrupulously harmed civilian targets.

As a mech manufacturer, the LMC fell outside of this consideration, as every business of this nature was by definition a military target. This meant that nothing forced the Whalers to defend the LMC's new partially underground megacomplex.

However, Walter himself released a statement professing friendship and support to the local mech company. They decreased the amount of mechs stationed around Orinoco, stating somewhat correctly that Orinoco did not hold anything worth destroying by the Vesians.

Naturally, all of the pampered politicians and magnates in Orinoco howled loudly at the Whalers, to no avail. The Whalers operated mostly outside the jurisdiction of the local government, so they had absolutely no reason to listen to the instructions of a bunch of self-absorbed fat cats.

Along with the Whalers, the Pioneers also provided a crucial amount of leadership and support in these trying times. They mobilized thousands of volunteers to reassure the inhabitants of Freslin and stem the outbreak of panic and hysteria.

"Hold together, people! We are not alone! Hold yourself together and don't forget that we are part of the Republic!"

Once the initial confusion subsided, the citizens of Cloudy Curtain began to make their preparations. Several emergency services came together and formed coordinated response plans.

They also wiped the dust from the almost-forgotten emergency shelters that had been built just after the founding of the planet. Even though many of the systems had rusted away or fallen into disrepair, the emergency services brought them back to minimal functionality and opened them up to the public to take shelter.

Many more inspiring moments occurred in the hours leading up to the Vesian arrival. Doom mingled with hope in equal measure as Cloudy Curtain faced its first true test against adversity in centuries.

At ground zero of this event, Ves just stepped out of the bunker and thought of something great. He abruptly turned his body and regarded a floating Lucky with a gleam in his eyes.

"Hey Lucky, you can turn intangible whenever you want, right?"

"Meow?"

"So why not do me a favor and wipe out the raiding force? You can pass straight into their cockpits and kill the vulnerable pilots with ease!"

"Meow! Meow!"

Lucky very avidly shook his head, which caused Ves to frown. What was the problem? The plan sounded perfect!

"You can't, or you won't?"

"Meeeow!"

"Why can't you do what I just described? What's limiting you?"

"Meow meow meow!"

It was times like these that Ves wished the gem cat came with a human vocalizer. Many artificial pets possessed the ability to speak in a human language. It helped a lot with kids. However, Lucky somehow lacked this function. Ves spent over five minutes trying to communicate with his pet.

"So not only does it take a lot of energy to pass through mech armor, you can't maintain your intangible state if subjected to extreme amounts of kinetic or thermal energy?"

"Meoooow!"

Vs always thought that Lucky could maintain his intangible state without limits, but even that turned out to be too good to be true. Lucky always expended a certain amount of energy and processing power to maintain the state. Both of them spiked whenever the cat faced a major disturbance, such as getting shot at by projectiles and lasers.

This wouldn't be too bad if Lucky got shot at by infantry weapons. Guns of that scale only led to minor stress.

Mech-scaled weapons were a different matter entirely. They unleashed so much energy that Lucky could only last a few seconds if targeted directly by such an awesome amount of firepower.

Once Ves found out about these limitations, he changed his mind about pushing Lucky in a direct combat role. Instead, he wanted Lucky to stick close to him until the Vesians arrived.

"After they begin their attack, try and see if you can sneak inside a vulnerable mech in the periphery and pick off its pilot."

"Meow meow meow!"

Lucky made it clear that it took a lot of effort to do such a thing, as Lucky found it very difficult to pass through the armor and working systems of an active mech. He could only take care of three or four mechs in this manner before needing replenishment.

"Three or four mechs are enough. We can use all the help we can get."

Besides Lucky, Ves also planned to go into action once the Vesians breached the walls and attempted to smash through the tunnels that led to the underground floors. With a clever application of his Full Stealth augment, he might be able to unleash a full-powered laser beam from the Amastendira.

"It's better if Melkor wields the Amestendira, but he can do more with a mech than with a pistol."

Ves did not trust any of the security officers who worked for Sanyal-Ablin with the precious laser pistol. Thus, for lack of a better alternative, he planned to keep hold of the Amastendira and use it himself if he found the right opportunity.

The recent shooting practice he got when he played the lottery at the crystal city refined his handling of the pistol. Though his marksmanship could not be compared with a professional soldier, he could at least shoot straight at a stationary target or a giant moving mech.

After taking stock of his own situation, Ves resumed his journey towards the Mudriders. When he arrived at their mech stables, Commander Husaan took him aside again and looked at him with a hopeful expression.

Ves did not have good news for him. "Melkor has apprised me of the situation. While I'm not an expert in these matters, I trust his judgment. We need more mechs at the front. If your mechs can bolster the mechs of Sanyal-Ablin, we can blunt the Vesian charge and force them to reconsider the merits of attacking the Mech Nursery."

"This is a gross misuse of the Mudriders!" Husaan instantly protested. "Let us range outside, and I'll promise you that you won't regret it!"

Unspoken in the mercenary commander's words was that if Ves insisted otherwise, that he might regret his decision. Ves took note of the commander's tone but remained firm.

"You signed a defense contract with us. I skimmed over it along the way and it states quite clearly that while you have operational command over your forces, you still have to deploy them according to the needs of your employer. Now, as your employer, I'm telling you that you are needed at the walls, not away from them. I won't brook any further argument on this issue."

Although Commander Husaan was at least twice as old as Ves and experienced countless conflicts, he still felt a sliver of a threat from the mech designer's tone. The mercenary leader turned grim.

"The contract also states that the Mudriders still reserve the right to refuse any unlawful or suicidal orders."

"Don't kid yourself. This isn't a suicidal act. We aren't facing the full might of the 3rd Imodris Legion! They just threw two companies of mechs at us as an afterthought. Their raid on our facility is just an afterthought! As long as you work together with us, I'm sure we can succeed in fending off the Vesians!"

"We can't!" Husaan shouted back at Ves. "The Mudriders have been through hell and back, and we've changed beyond recognition! One more trip back to hell will break our men. I'm not sure there will be anything left of the Mudriders if I announce your plan to my mech pilots."

Ves stood silently in front of the mercenary commander with a grim expression. He could not afford any further compromises. Not when it concerned the well-being of his company.

"Are you a mercenary or a crybaby? I'm not so sure, because you sound a lot like the latter."

Commander Husaan looked indignant at Ves. He tightly gripped his fists. The two fell into an impasse. The fate of the LMC and the Oodis Mudriders both rested on who yielded first.

Chapter 387

The two argued back and forth but they largely repeated the same arguments. Ves hadn't been able to come up with a compelling argument to convince the Mud-riders to partake in the defense with all their heart, so Ves simply chose to be firm and unyielding.

Certainly, he felt a little bad about the Oodis Mudriders, but compared to his own benefits, why should he care about the well-being of some random mercenaries?

"Are you not a mercenary?" Ves pressed, having just reminded himself of Melkor's advice. "Do you still wish for the Oodis Mudriders to exist after this assignment? If the Mech Nursery falls, your mercenary corps is ruined. You'll lose every opportunity to clear your records of your black marks."

Commander Husaan frowned. "Is the alternative any better? You're throwing us to the meat grinder!"

"That's because you signed up for this job! You wanted to prove your valor, right? Then do so! Proving your courage means you should stand up to adversity when everyone else tells you to run away! It's disgraceful of you to hear you try so hard to shirk your duty. Do you need a reminder on what a high-risk assignment entails? It's not a walk in the park, for heaven's sake!"

"Even if you're right, you are going too far with this! You are not our commanding officer. Your word isn't law! Don't think that I won't dare to pull my forces out of this deathtrap of a complex if I think you're about to throw away our lives!"

"If the Mech Corps hears about your words, they'll scoff at them. The nature of combat doesn't allow us the privilege of choosing our battles. The Vesians are spoiling for a fight. So what? Countless pilots of the Mech Corps are doing their duties right now without any complaint! If they can step up, why don't you?"

"That's because the Mech Corps enjoy the best training and the best equipment! Their mechs are all top-notch machines while my Mudriders are working with five to ten year old mechs!"

"Boohoo. I've seen your mechs. You can't fool a mech designer's eyes. Your mech models are all robust designs. They've got plenty of life in them yet!"

"And we'll risk losing most of them before the end of the week if we cash head-on against the Mech legion!"

Obviously, Ves did not manage to shake Commander Husaan's position. After a brief moment of silence, Ves decided to resort to the carrot rather than the stick.

"If the Mudriders do this for me, I won't skimp on the rewards."

"We're already entitled to the highest class of hazard pay as well as compensation for any damage we might incur. Still, no matter how much money you throw at us, it won't make the dead come back to life."

"I'm not talking about more money. How about receiving a couple of exclusive mechs in exchange?"

"Are you kidding me?" Husaan began to turn his back to Ves.

"Wait a minute! These aren't your average mechs!" Ves quickly followed up on his statement. "You must have heard about the LMC and its latest model, right? The Blackbeak's characteristics fit perfectly with the Mudriders. It's mobile, resilient and doesn't require frequent resupply. I'll personally fabricate two top-tier gold label Blackbeaks for your mercenary corps."

Although it sounded ridiculous that Ves attempted to bribe Husaan with a couple of mechs, the mercenary commander couldn't help but halt in his tracks. He knew about the renown of the Blackbeaks. They were excellent mech models and their quality surpassed the machines that the Mudriders currently employed.

Two mechs might not sound like much, but the rarity and status of any gold label mech from the LMC could not be belittled. Ves worked hard to elevate the value of his handcrafted mechs exactly for moments like this. Commander Husaan knew what kind of treasure that Ves was offering.

"I'll also add in one of the first copies of the laser rifleman mech that's currently in development. I can't say too much about the design, except that it shares most of the traits of the Blackbeak and will certainly outclass any of your current rifleman mechs."

As much as Commander Husaan acted tough, every mercenary was a mech geek at some level. They passionately slobbered over mechs and could talk in detail about them to their fellow mercenaries. They favored different brands and followed the exploits of various famous mech designers.

As an up-and-coming mech designer, Ves hadn't managed to build a huge following outside of Cloudy Curtain, but his talent was more than evident from the meteoric rise of the LMC.

This might not be so important to Husaan personally, but he did not think about his own benefits.

Rather, he thought about how owning three prestigious mechs would affect the renown of the Oodis Mudriders.

Outfits that owned and flaunted rare and valuable mechs attracted a lot of attention, for good and ill, but mostly the former. Husaan fell silent as he thought about how he could use the gold label mechs as an opportunity to revive the Mudriders after surviving this assignment.

He could already see it now. With the surge of interest from the possession of the exclusive mechs, the Mudriders could easily replenish its ranks even if most of the new hires would never be able to pilot the valuable machines. In effect, their combat effectiveness only played a secondary role compared to their fame. It was enough to treat them as mascots.

Husaan looked at Ves with a speculative look, but the mech designer kept his expression neutral and composed.

Ves did not open his mouth again because he did not want to fall into a trap. It did not cost the company a lot of resources to fabricate those mechs for the Mudriders. That did not mean that Ves was eager to fall into a one-man bidding war and be forced to raise his offer to a ludicrous level.

Three mechs was enough.

He did not know what Husaan was thinking about, but the man offered up his hand for a shake. "Deal."

After Ves left the mech stables, he silently sighed in relief. He only went out on a limb there. Although he could have raised the price if Husaan remained stubborn, even he had his limits.

It was an extremely unpleasant experience to be blackmailed by the mercenaries that you had already hired. The Mercenary Association heavily frowned upon what happened just then, although exchanges that happened under the table always took place anyway. This was one thing that no rule or regulation could abolish.

In any case, while Commander Husaan placed a lot of importance on those three mechs, the bureaucrats of the Mercenary Association would likely swipe away the report within the blink of an eye. After all, it was just three mechs. Ves might as well offer a fruit basket instead.

Just after Ves left the mech stables of the Mudriders, a lot of shouting and movement erupted from the place. Even if Commander Husaan let himself be persuaded by Ves, it was another challenge entirely to convince the rest of his men to go along with Melkor's defense plans.

Ves left them to it and returned to the command center. Men and women dutifully labored to bring the Mech Nursery's defensive measures up to full readiness. While Sanyal-Ablin controlled most of the defensive systems, a handful of other functions remained in control of Ves and his forces.

Melkor looked up from a projection of an intricate battle simulation. It showed a large amount of miniature Vesian mechs punch through the outnumbered mechs from Sanyal-Ablin and begin to divide and surround each separate group of mechs.

Meanwhile, the mechs outside the base that represented the Whalers and the Mudriders stood in place, well away from the fight. They never moved forward for a single instant during the entire battle.

The simulation painted a very grim picture of what would happen.

"Ves." Melkor raised his head with a hopeful expression. "How did your talks go with Commander Husaan? Did he relent on his stance?"

"It took some convincing, and I also had to throw in an incentive, but he finally agreed to station his mechs at the front."

"Thank you! You've been a lifesaver for me! That's just what I needed!"

With the tentative cooperation of the Oodis Mudriders, the defenses at the walls stood a much better chance of surviving the initial push. Melkor showed Ves of how the battle might play out.

"If the Vesians stick to the most convenient strategy in their playbook, although I have to mention that there's no guarantee they'll stick to it, then our job will be to put up enough of a fight to make them reconsider."

Ves picked up on the distinction between Melkor's words. "You don't think there's any hope we can defeat the Vesians?"

"Impossible. All the evidence we've gathered suggests that the 3rd Imodris Legion is a standard Vesian Legion. That means that their mechs are designed and built to military standards and their mech pilots went through strict, systematic training. There's no way they'll expose any flaws for us to exploit. We have to beat them fair and square."

The problem with beating them fair and square was that the Mech Legion specialized in those kinds of fights much more than irregular mech outfits.

"So if we can't defeat them, we just try to bleed them as much as we can in the hope they get scared of all the blood they lose?"

"Essentially, that's the plan." Melkor nodded without shame. "It's a different story if the Mech Corps is stationed here, but all we have are a handful of disparate mech forces, and we're still outnumbered to boot as well. The only factor that's in our favor is that the Vesians won't be setting out for a fight to the death. They only want to do a quick smash and run attack."

Ves nodded. "We're not important enough to force them to sustain massive losses. Now that I think about it, it's already generous for the Vesians to send out two mech companies to destroy only three mech production lines. In their eyes, we are targets of opportunity."

"Exactly so. The 3rd Imodris Legion is hitting over twenty star systems at a time. They aren't necessarily out to inflict massive damage to our industries. They are attempting to put a dilemma on the Mech Corps forces stationed in the Bentheim System. Will they move out to reinforce the besieged star systems? Will they split up to help each system at once, and risk getting ambushed, or will they choose to abandon some systems in favor of more strategic ones?"

All of them posed very interesting questions, but Ves left the problem for the higher ups of the Mech Corps to come up with a response. Ves knew well enough that Cloudy Curtain ranked at the bottom of their priorities. He could not count on the Mech Corps to provide any timely assistance.

Ves studied the simulation along with Melkor. With the help of the Mudriders, the Vesians mechs had a much harder time trying to penetrate inside the complex. However, the simulation turned a little fuzzy then, which indicated that the AIs found it difficult to predict what would happen next.

Melkor slammed his fist against the tabletop. "This buggy system!"

"Even if the AIs could make up their minds, we can't rely on their results, Melkor. It's all up to fate right now."

"You're right." He sighed. "I predict that the Vesians have to sustain up to twenty percent losses to make them reconsider their raid. They won't shy away before then, because they're trained to accept adverse losses in the course of their duties. Their willpower can't be shaken. We can only hope their commander is rational enough to weigh the risk of further losses just to smash a single manufacturing complex."

With those words, Ves left Melkor with the final planning. Ves did not have much to bring to the table. Before the Vesians made their landing and revealed their mechs, Ves could not even use his expertise as a mech designer to identify any potential weak points.

Ves returned to his office and helped coordinate the evacuation of personnel and the buttoning down of various valuable equipment.

Everyone moved to prepare for the incoming raid. Over ten hours went by in relative quiet, only to be broken when the planet's perennial cloud cover momentarily parted to make room for a large number of mech transports.

The Vesians descended from orbit.

Chapter 388

The combat carriers possessed the capability to descend from orbit and land on any planet with a standard amount of gravity. That did not mean they did it all the time. Any ship that landed on a planet became a sitting duck. Therefore, the Vesian combat carriers remained in orbit and instead sent out smaller transport ships that conveyed the mechs to the surface.

One peculiar nature about Cloudy Curtain was its ever-present cloud cover. The clouds not only blocked vision, but various other signals as well, so the Vesians wouldn't be able to coordinate between their space and ground forces very well.

However, this did not hinder their operations too much, as Cloudy Curtain itself hosted numerous quantum entanglement nodes that maintained contact with the wider galaxy, which could all be hacked in many ways. The Vesians also deployed floating comm buoys to maintain secure lines of communication.

Most of the transports predictably flew towards Freslin. However, two transports deviated from the rest and headed towards Orinoco.

"How many mechs do these transports carry?" Ves asked as he stood besides Melkor in the command center.

His cousin carefully studied the models and also looked up the details on the galactic net. "This particular model normally carries six mechs. The Vesians apparently don't think much of us if they feel confident enough to hit two targets at the same time."

Both of them found the Vesian decision to be an unexpected gift. Their odds of withstanding the Vesian push drastically increased with the absence of those twelve-or-so enemy mechs.

"Will the Vesians wait for those mechs to finish up in Orinoco before attacking the Mech Nursery?"

"They shouldn't be." Melkor mused. "You have to be aware that the Vesian raiding force has already entered this system for more than half a day. The Mech Corps already knows about them and will free up a response force sooner or later. The Vesians don't want to stick around for too long. I predict they will only stay for two or three days at most."

Raiding forces only came equipped to attack rear echelon facilities. Neither their mechs or pilots could compare to the best of what the 3rd Imodris Legion had to offer. Furthermore, they also lacked the supplies to fight an extended drawn-out engagement.

Their plan was to get in and out as fast as possible, doing as much damage along the way as they could.

As a detachment of the Vesian raiders flew towards Orinoco, the citizens of the capital city panicked. Walter's Whalers practically left the city undefended, and only a handful of influential organizations maintained a loose collection of mechs.

These mechs would not be able to pose a threat at all. The strong pacifist tradition among the old elite discouraged any meaningful investment into forming a proper standing force of mechs. Some mechs even looked severely outdated to the point where only grandfathers and grandmothers could identify their exact model on sight.

The impending arrival of the Vesians at Orinoco led to a fierce discussion among the upper echelon. Representatives of the ruling coalition, the local businesses and the farming consortiums all gathered together to discuss potential countermeasures.

"I don't see why the two biggest consortiums are content to look on from afar! I know you guys have built up a secret force of mechs! This should be the best time to make use of them!"

"Those are slanderous rumors! We are peaceful farming consortiums. The war has nothing to do with us! It is categorically impossible for us to send out any mechs, because we don't have any in the first place!"

"Why are we arguing among ourselves when we don't even have any mechs to send out? Why do we not meet with the Whalers and attempt a reconciliation?"

"Are you kidding? They'll rob us blind if we attempt to negotiate with those thugs and brutes! Let us announce a widespread evacuation and hide out in the wilderness. The Vesians may be able to do an enormous amount of material damage, but we can always rebuild after they leave."

"My businesses will be ruined if the Vesians have free reign in Orinoco!"

As the different interest groups in Orinoco tried and failed to come to a consensus, a series of thunderous explosions happened outside. The force of the explosions shook the floor and even unsettled the footing of the people in the conference room.

A door slammed open as a security officer hastily entered the gathering. "Sirs! Massive explosions have destroyed the spaceport, the planetary assembly building, various storage yards and the headquarters of the five biggest companies in Orinoco. An anonymous message has only given the occupants two minutes of time to evacuate before the bombs set off!"

Several people looked at each other with a stricken expression. "Awful!"

The sudden chaos plunged the capital city in a full-blown pandemonium. People panicked and ran in every direction.

The Vesians spotted the destruction as well. Seeing that most of their strategic targets blew up on their own accord, the two transport ships that previously headed to Orinoco changed course and joined the main raiding force to Freslin instead.

Just this act alone revealed the motives of the explosions. By destroying the most valuable structures in and around the capital city ahead of time, the Vesians had no more reason to stop by.

"Who is responsible for those bombs!? Don't they know what they've done! This is naked treason!"

"Whoever destroyed my headquarters will pay!"

The consequences of such an act was very severe, but whoever bombed those places managed to accomplish their goal of diverting the Vesians away from their city. After all, if they didn't persuade the enemy transports to change course, the Imodris mechs may have decided to destroy a lot of other infrastructure as well.

While certain people in Orinoco sighed in relief, others in Freslin looked furious. In the command center, Ves looked grim.

"I knew it was too good to be true. It looks like we'll be facing the full force of the Vesians after all."

Unlike Ves, Melkor couldn't accept what had happened. As a bona fide Larkinson and a former cadet of the Mech Corps, he found the self-sabotaging actions of the bombers to be a profound betrayal of what it meant to be a citizen of the Bright Republic.

"The Mech Corps won't take this lying down! They'll certainly investigate the bombings after this is over!"

"I know you're angry, Melkor, but this isn't the time to focus your attention on those bastards hiding in Orinoco. We have to get ready to meet the Vesians."

The two lagging transports that previously headed towards Orinoco caught up to the main formation that flew towards Freslin. A tense hour went by as the transports reached a flat and uninhabited plain well outside Freslin. The Vesians deployed jammers at that moment, making detailed observation impossible with the equipment at hand.

"They've set down around forty kilometers away from our base." Melkor noted as he changed the center projection to a plot of the local terrain. "After their mechs embark from the transports, there is a chance they will stop by Freslin first. However, it doesn't have anything in particular worth destroying, so it's likely they'll go for the Mech Nursery as soon as they are deployed."

It did not take long for the Vesians mechs to move. After a brief period of organization, over eighty-five mechs set off in the direction of the Mech Nursery. Long-ranged sensors hidden in the forests around the Mech Nursery caught the broad strokes of the Vesian movements, but lacked the power and sophistication to observe any detailed information such as the type and models of the individual mechs.

"Eighty-five mechs is more formidable than we thought." Ves frowned as all of the readings tentatively concluded there were definitely more than eighty mechs on the move.

"The numbers are never exact. The amount of mechs in a standard Vesian company always fluctuates for some reason or another. Forty mechs is just a guideline."

The addition of five additional mechs mattered a lot to the defenders. It meant that they might have to beat at least five mechs more in order to make the Vesian commander lose heart in his raid.

If some unknown organization hadn't decided to blow up Orinoco ahead of time, then the Mech Nursery wouldn't have faced more than seventy-five mechs. Melkor couldn't help but boil up inside at the thought.

Still, he finally managed to get a grip. He adjusted his visor on his head, which maintained a blue glow for now. He started to issue some commands, directing most of the mechs from Sanyal-Ablin and the Mudriders to man the section of walls that faced the incoming threat.

The projected plot showed several dots moving into place. Most of them congregated at or behind the walls in spread out patterns several lines deep. Other mechs stationed themselves in the center or on the other sides of the walls.

"What's going on right now?" Ves asked.

"Before the Vesians come into range, they'll definitely try to soften us up."

It didn't take too long for Melkor's prediction to arrive. A swarm of missiles approached the Mech Nursery from a great distance. The Vesians had staggered the launches of the missiles so they would all arrive at their target at roughly the same instant.

"How many missiles?" Melkor barked to a sensor operator working behind a nearby console.

"Five-thousand missiles sir! They are all of a light design!"

Both Ves and Melkor relaxed a little. Light missiles packed the least amount of punch. That was not to say that they didn't feel threatened by the swarm of missiles, but at least it did not match their worst fears.

"Inform Sanyal-Ablin and every rifleman mech to intercept the missiles."

"Done sir, though Sanyal-Ablin says they've already moved."

Even though Melkor acted like a base commander, the truth was that none of the forces defending the Mech Nursery answered to him. Except for the Avatars of Myth, every other outfit involved in the defense listened to their own commanders.

That was why Ves considered Melkor to be a coordinator instead of a commander in this battle. He could only make suggestions that others might not follow up upon if they thought they knew better or if it harmed their interests.

"The upcoming battle hinges on the Mudriders." Melkor explained. "The mech pilots of Sanyal-Ablin are professional enough to do their duty, but your friends from the Whalers need a lot of encouragement in order to convince them to attack the Vesians from their flank. If the Mudriders can't hold off the initial push, everything else will fall apart."

"I'm confident Commander Husaan knows what's best for his mercenary corps, but I'm not sure if all of his mech pilots follow suit. Last I heard, a big argument erupted at their mech stables."

They no longer had any time to do anything about it. With the Vesians about to arrive at their doorsteps, they needed to trust in the measures they already prepared.

At this time, the high-flying missiles finally arced into view of the Mech Nursery.

At this time, the manufacturing complex had retracted almost all of the non-essential structures underneath the ground. The only structures that remained above ground consisted of defense measures.

The turrets grabbed the most attention. Over a hundred different turrets installed and controlled by Sanyal-Ablin automatically swiveled towards the incoming swarm of missiles before unleashing a rain of lasers and projectiles.

The anti-air fire struck a lot of missiles, but plenty more made it past the initial volleys. Even as the missile swarm visibly decreased, too much had been sent their way. Less than a thousand made it through and began to impact the entire surface of the inner perimeter.

Ves didn't look too worried at the explosions happening above his head. Most of the missiles landed on empty soil or impacted the walls and reinforcement enclosures that sheltered the defending mechs.

"Sanyal-Ablin's ECM is top-notch." Melkor nodded in satisfaction. "Over ninety percent of the missiles have been led astray. As expected of a subsidiary of a faction from a second-rate state."

Perhaps the Vesians hadn't expected the missiles to end up damaging barriers and clumps of dirt, because the eighty-five Vesian mechs suddenly slowed down their pace.

"They're beginning to realize we might not be the pushovers they thought we were." Melkor guessed what went on in the enemy's minds. "After all, hardly any company invests so much of their resources into fortifying their manufacturing complexes."

The two Larkinsons waited with baited breath at what the Vesians would do next.

Chapter 389

The Vesian mech force unexpectedly paused in their approach. Neither Ves nor Melkor knew why, but they could make a guess.

"Haven't the Vesians gathered intelligence about the Mech Nursery?" Ves asked with a puzzle tone. "Surely they must have known what they were about to face?"

"They might not have done their due diligence. In their eyes, the LMC is just a regular up-and-coming mech manufacturer with only two years of history at most. Can you say that every mech manufacturer is able to erect such a massive defensive installation as the Mech Nursery in such a brief amount of time?"

Definitely not. Anyone who casually read his background would know that Ves only possesses a distant backer. Being a nominal disciple to a Master Mech Designer did not afford him a lot of protection regarding these situations. Some Masters even apprenticed thousands of mech designers at once and only instructed them casually if they spared the time for them in the first place.

In any case, the amount of growth he experienced in recent times was very much out of the norm for an Apprentice Mech Designer of his age and background. Now that the Vesians became aware that they faced something other than a pushover, they must have paused to reassess their plans.

"It's too bad their commander is prudent enough to interrupt their approach." Melkor shook his head. "I would have preferred if whoever is leading them is overconfident. That way, it's easier to spring them into our traps."

"We can't have everything. At least we've increased their apprehension of us."

"Not really. The Vesians still won't think much of us once they find out how many mechs are defending this place. They still outnumbered us by a comfortable margin."

It only took about ten minutes for the Vesians to make their move. This time, the main formation of mechs remained in place while over twenty mechs started to sweep forward in different directions.

"Damn! They're being especially careful now."

The maneuver revealed that the commander of the Imodris raiding force wanted to scout out their target before they made their next moves. It was the safest and most considerate action to take, and it did not take that much time to gather intel as the Mech Nursery was only so large.

Just as they stared at the plot which kept track of the approaching enemy scouts, Melkor suddenly received a comm request. He accepted it, causing a projection of Husaan's face to appear next to the central projector.

"The Vesians have sent out their scouts. Let us out of the walls, and we'll hunt them down! We're fast enough to catch at least a third of them off-guard!"

"No." Melkor immediately replied. "Remain in place. The Vesians may be dangling some bait in order to draw us out. Let them come to us."

"...Understood."

Ves scratched his head. "Isn't it better to deal with the scouts now that they've separated from the main body? This is a good opportunity to whittle down their numbers."

"Do you think the Vesians are that easy to fool? Don't trust what the sensors are telling you. I bet this stationary group of mechs here have already started moving elsewhere. And those dots that depict solitary mechs might be accompanied by four or five more mechs each."

"Ah." Ves realized Melkor's point. The Vesians might have already been aware of the sensors placed in their surroundings. If they knew that others spied on their mechs, they would have deployed their own countermeasures. "But how will we know where they are if we can't trust this plot?"

"We wait until they arrive. As long as we don't take the bait, they'll eventually give up on their tricks and resort to the direct approach."

A tense hour passed as the Imodris Legion scouts came into visual view of the Mech Nursery. The high walls blocked most of their direct vision, but that hardly halted their attempts to observe the defensive measures of the base as most of their sensors did not need line of sight to work. Merely getting close enough was sufficient.

Melkor tasked a couple of marksmen to shoot at the scouts whenever they thought they could pull off a shot. While most of them missed, they successfully curbed the brazenness of the scouts.

Not once did Melkor command anyone to go out and hunt down the scouts. Sanyal-Ablin's mechs consisted of mediumweight models that specialized in defense. They could never catch up to the light mechs.

Only the Oodis Mudriders might have been able to do so, considering that a fair chunk of their forces consisted of light mechs. In truth, these light mechs did not make for good defenders, but Melkor was deeply unwilling to pull them away from their walls. Their light firepower might mean the difference between victory or defeat.

After the scouting phase ended and the light mechs pulled back, the Vesians arrived just beyond the maximum engagement range without any attempt to obfuscate their approach.

They stopped short of coming into rifle range. Instead, they spread out and guarded every approach. Moments later, it became apparent why they did so.

A dozen or so artillery mechs began to shell the walls. The explosions ruptured the surface of the walls made out of a blend of junk exotics and various bulk materials. Although they looked extremely firm and thick, they couldn't withstand a concentrated artillery barrage.

Melkor gritted his teeth. "The Vesians usually don't bother to shell an industrial target. Their commander appears to be an exception. He's treating us like a serious target."

None of the mechs or turrets possessed the capability to retaliate against the distant artillery mechs. The most they could do was shoot at the incoming shells as they arced into the walls. More than two-thirds of the incoming shells never reached the Mech Nursery, but the remainder that got through slowly broke down the targeted section of walls.

Minutes passed by as the cracks turned into a hole, before widening up into a breach. After the last shells landed, the breach had become so wide that it could fit two mechs walking side by side.

"That's not good." Ves noted.

The artillery mechs then shifted their aim towards the turrets spread throughout the surface of the Mech Nursery.

The weaknesses of the turrets hammered home with each shell that got through the intercepting fire. Their complete lack of mobility turned them into stationary targets that would get destroyed sooner or later.

If the Vesian artillery mechs hadn't managed to destroy their target in their current salvo, they just sent out another one until the turret finally stopped working.

This went on for over two hours until the artillery mechs expended all of their shells. By then, over seventy percent of the turrets that Sanyal-Ablin had previously erected turned into hollowed-out ruins.

Fortunately, no one lost their lives, as nobody manned the turrets. Their operators worked at a SASS-controlled command center deep underground.

By now, the Mech Nursery hardly hosted any people. The only people who remained consisted of those who played a role in the defense of the facility. As for the civilian employees, Ves all sent them back to Freslin where they lived.

Even if the Vesians managed to breach through their lines and massacre everyone within, at least Ves wouldn't have too much guilt on his conscience.

"What will they do next, now that they've destroyed most of our turrets?"

"They've spent several hours on the surface already." Melkor replied. "The Vesians should be looking to wrap this up. The longer they stay on the surface, the higher the chance they'll encounter the reinforcements from Bentheim. No matter how careful the enemy commander wants to be, he can't fall behind schedule."

Every defender tersely waited for the Vesians to make their next move. Evidently, they had enough of paying around, because they shifted their formation in favor of breaching through a defensive line.

Surprisingly enough, the Vesians suddenly put forth two heavy knights.

"Damn! They brought out heavy knights! They'll be leading the charge!"

Ves did not need to hear an explanation to realize how bad the situation turned against them. If the Vesians only brought their medium mechs, then they stood a decent chance at fending off the incoming Vesians.

Now though, the appearance of the heavy knights changed everything. Even the most basic models of heavy knights withstood at least four times as much damage as a medium knight. In effect, the two heavy knights possessed as much of an impact on the battle as eight extra medium knights!

In general, only military forces employed heavy mechs. Not even Sanyal-Ablin fielded a single heavy mech despite having the resources and capacity to do so if they borrowed their backer's help.

The appearance of the heavy mechs alone caused everyone's morale to drop. Every mech pilot from SASS and the Mudriders knew how tough these mechs could be. The odds of killing them fast enough was minute.

"Ves! Conventional forces will take too much time to bring down those heavies! By the time they can be repelled, every other Vesian mech will have free reign inside the perimeter. We have to take those heavy mechs out early!"

"Why are you looking at me like that?"

"Because you frequently pull a miracle out of their butt! If you're hiding a secret weapon, then this is the time to employ it!"

"Well, I've got the Amastendira. Will that be enough?"

Melkor shook his head. "I've already considered it. While it's a devastating weapon against people, it won't do too much damage against mechs. A beam at maximum power is probably capable of piercing through the armor of light mechs while dealing heavy damage to medium mechs, but it will just bounce off if pointed at a heavy mech."

That was really bad news, but Ves already expected something along those lines. The Amastendira granted its wielder near-absolute superiority against any kind of human-scale battles. Sadly, it did not change the paradigm that humans would be able to defeat a mech in an even fight.

A group of two heavy knights accompanied by thirty mechs started to form into an assault formation. The melee mechs stood in front while the ranged mechs stood at the rear.

"It's going to be too late to do anything soon! Ves! Tell me you've got something!"

Ves panicked a little. He did not possess any other deadly weapons like the Amastendira. Neither would he be able to purchase any other solutions from the System as he recently drained most of his DP on his second Mastery.

Only until Lucky lazily flew past his vision did he remind himself that he might have one last resort.

"Lucky!"

The cat halted in its flight and turned its head at Ves. "Meow?"

He pointed at the projection of the heavy knights readying themselves for a charge. "Can you take care of these two heavy mechs? You have to assassinate the pilots and destroy some controls or essential components. Can you do that?"

"...Meow."

Lucky did not meow in a reassuring way. The cat looked at the two heavy mechs with their thick plating of armor with very visible dread. It would be tough for his intangible form to burrow through all of that compressed armor.

The cat tapped the air a couple of times. Ves communicated frequently enough with his pet to understand Lucky's vague meaning.

"So you say you can definitely take out one mech, but you're not sure if you have the energy to take out the other?"

"Meow!"

"One heavy mech taken out is better than none!" Melkor told them from the side.

"He's right, Lucky. If you can do it, then go for it!"

Lucky hastily floated out of the command center in a zip. None of the sensors showed his position, which worried Ves a little, but at least the Vesians wouldn't have any warning either.

He hated sending out Lucky so early in this battle. Ves wanted to save Lucky as a trump card or employ him as an assassin that would quietly take out a couple of enemy mechs stationed furthest from the main battle. Instead, the appearance of the heavy mechs forced Ves to play this card ahead of time.

The battle hadn't even entered its most crucial phase and Ves already started running out of cards to play.

As Ves waited for Lucky to make his move, Melkor turned to leave the command center as well. "There's nothing more I can do here. I'll be boarding my mech before I join up with the rest of the Avatars. Stay here and keep me informed, Ves."

"Will do."

At least Melkor could fight the Vesians personally. As a mech designer, Ves enjoyed no such privilege.

Chapter 390

Besides the two heavy knights that attracted most of the attention of the defenders, the other Imodris mechs looked well-built as well. Ves forcefully shook off his fear and began to focus on what he could do to help.

"As a mech designer, I can still be of use."

Out of all the defenders, he knew more about mechs than everyone else put together.

In battles like these, mech designers sometimes assisted frontline units by analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of the enemy mechs. They also kept their eye out for weak points generated by battle damage.

Ves kept his eyes trained on the projections that showed the approaching Vesian formation. The enemy finished their preparations and began to set out towards the broken gap in the wall.

Now that the enemy came into range of the Mech Nursery, their jamming failed to block its powerful sensors. Detailed telemetry poured into the command center in rapid tempo, swamping the support personnel. They tried their best to help the processors identify the mech models.

"Report!" Ves barked.

"Sir! The enemy regiments have been identified. One company comes from the 5th Vavulan Chausseurs and the other company is detached from the 1st Meandering Monkeys!"

Additional projections popped up that provided a brief overview of the two regiments of the 3rd Imodris Legion.

The mechs 1st Meandering Monkeys all took on a mottled brown-green coating, and predominantly consisted of light and medium mechs. Much like the Oodis Mudriders, the Monkeys excelled in long-range wilderness operations, and would usually be deployed in wild, untamed planets.

The 5th Vavulan Chausseurs on the other hand consisted largely of frontline mechs coated in gray and pale blue to better blend into an urban environment. They eschewed light mechs entirely and based their full force around medium melee mechs and a fair amount of medium frontline mechs, the latter of which replaced their humanoid arms with ballistic cannons or laser cannons.

Ves understood the enemy composition. The Meandering Monkeys only made up the numbers and didn't form that much of a threat. The true threat lay in the Vavulan Chausseurs, whose formidable mechs had been designed to break through enemy defenses. Their allocation of two heavy knights to this minor raid further underscored their power.

Right now, they couldn't withstand two heavy knights at once. It was not that the heavy knights possessed the means to run down every mech and kill them in a single blow. Their true threat lay in their ability to act as immovable obstacles that absorbed everything the defenders dished out.

Having just come off a Mastery experience where the attacking force cleverly used disposable heavy shields as a means of approach, Ves knew the value of an impenetrable defense. So long as those heavy knights remained operational, a large portion of the mechs from Sanyal-Ablin and Mudriders would have to divert their firepower to hold back their inexorable march.

At this time, the Vesian mechs entered into range of the defending mech's rifles.

"Open fire!"

Almost every rifleman mech among the defenders proceeded to open fire behind the walls. The initial volley of fire largely hit their marks, only to be stopped by two enormous tower shields.

"The Vesians have sustained minimal damage!"

The Vesians cleverly arranged their assault formation into a column of two ranks. With the two heavy knights in front, the more vulnerable mechs at the rear had little to worry about.

Occasionally, some of the fire slipped around or above the shields, but the rest of the Vesian mechs only sustained glancing damage.

Despite enduring a rain of fire, the Vesian mechs remained in formation and continued to march forward. The only downside to their formation was that they moved at a snail's pace in terms of mech speeds.

Heavy knights carried an immense amount of high-quality armor, and their shields weighed as much as an entire light mech or more, so it was a given that they moved as fast as an elderly person.

Their relatively slow pace meant that the defenders slowly managed to chew up the shields. Nevertheless, these shields did their job as they forced the defenders to expend a large amount of munitions that might have otherwise been targeted at the lighter mechs.

As the formation of Chausseurs neared the walls, the mechs of the Meandering Monkeys started to branch out and pressure the sides of the Mech Nursery. Their diversion forced Melkor to request the Mudriders to split some mechs away from the center and deter the flanking mechs from breaching an undefended part of the wall.

"Fire on the mechs behind the knights!" Melkor ordered in the central command channel.

Once the enemy mechs entered a certain range, it became possible for some of the defending mechs stationed in the far left or right of the walls to target the sides of the incoming column. This time, they achieved some solid hits, although the frontline mechs quickly turned their cannon and retaliated in kind.

Most of their fire splashed against the walls that the defending mechs hid behind, but the intense barrage succeeded in suppressing them. At this moment, the inevitable collision became imminent. The Chausseurs showed movement that indicated that they were about to bypass their heavy knights and breach the defensive line.

"Open fire! Ignore the knights! Focus on the frontline mechs!"

The melee mechs of the Chausseurs carried a substantial amount of armor. The frontline mechs on the other hand had been built to scale, so their individual quality left much to be desired. Their deadliness came not from their superior equipment, but from the training and coordination of their mech pilots.

Even though their basic-level pilots would never be able to advance to advanced pilots, as long as they gathered a sufficient amount of numbers, they would be able to suppress any enemy formation, which was what they did right now.

Their twin cannon barrels outputted at least twice as much firepower as a rifleman mech. What they lacked in flexibility and close-combat effectiveness, they more than made up for in the sheer amount of firepower they could unleash in a short amount of time.

Of course, they also overheated very quickly and expended their energy or munitions rather fast, but in a short raid like this, endurance didn't matter too much.

The only reason why the defenders maintained their ground was because the cheap construction of the frontline mechs also made it easy to take them out. Plenty of mechs turned inoperable after sustained concentrated fire, but the Chausseurs continued unabated. They had already steeled themselves for some losses.

To the Mech Legion, losing a couple of frontline mechs was nothing, as each of them came with a unit price of around ten million credits or less. Their mech pilots mostly managed to eject well in time, so the Vesians actually hadn't lost any lives at this point in time.

"Watch your fire! Don't aim too high! We can't afford to hit their cockpits when they eject!"

The Mudriders and the Sanyal-Ablin mechs purposefully avoided targeting the cockpits of the Vesian mechs. Neither group wanted to incur any more enmity than necessary. If news came out that they excessively slaughtered too many enemy pilots, then they would certainly be hunted down by the 3rd Imodris Legion.

The Mech Legion on the other hand held no such scruples. If they saw an opportunity to eliminate an enemy pilot, they would gladly do so in order to damage the Bright Republic's vitality.

At this time, the imposing manner of the Vesians reached an oppressive level. Many of the mech pilots stationed on the walls started to vacillate. Why did they even need to resist the Vesians in the first place? Neither the quality nor the quantity of their mechs could match the combined force of the Chausseurs and the Monkeys.

Melkor tried his best to firm up their side's resolve, but everyone knew that the battle might take a turn for the worst once the enemy melee mechs came into play. To the Chausseurs, their frontline mechs only played a side role. The regiment invested most of its resources in cultivating their melee mechs.

Ves quietly stood in front of the central projector of the command center and balled his fingers into fists. "Come on, buddy. Make your move before it's too late."

Just as the Vesians were about to make their final sprint, one of their heavy knights suddenly halted. Even though the mech's shield had almost been chewed apart from withstanding all of the enemy fire, the frame itself only suffered a couple of scuffs. The mech still possessed a lot of fight, and shouldn't have halted suddenly.

The momentary halt of that mech caused the entire column of Chausseurs to come to an uneven halt. Many of their pilots turned their attention to their halted comrade, unsure why the mech turned into a statue.

Moments later, fumes started to leak from the frame. Small explosions erupted deep within the frame that destroyed vital components. The heavy knight abruptly powered down and fell over facedown like a puppet whose strings had been cut.

Everyone was taken aback, including the defenders. What had happened to that seemingly invincible mech?

Moments later, a tiny blur escaped from the chest of the fallen heavy mech. It darted towards the next heavy knight, only to be met with a barrage of fire from a couple of quick-thinking mech. The fire went straight through the tiny blur, forcing it away from its original course. In order to escape the fury of the Chausseurs, the blur instead changed course and dove deep underground.

"I knew you could do it, Lucky!"

His pet managed to succeed in taking out a heavy knight! Even though his sneak attack only worked once, the consequences for the Vesians were dire. With the takedown of one heavy mech, the remaining one now became the focus of the defending mechs. They all diverted their firepower to that heavy, blasting apart its shield in short succession and started working away at the mech's heavy armor plating.

While the Vavulan Chausseurs fell into a brief bout of confusion, to their credit they regained their senses extraordinarily quickly. They all became enraged at the strange attack and switched tack almost immediately. Their mechs all charged forward at their full speed, leaving the defending melee mechs scrambling to meet the charge.

"Hold the line! Set off the traps!"

The ground before the Vesian mechs briefly exploded as mines hidden just below their feet became armed.

Although the explosions all hit multiple mechs, their power left much to be desired. In order to hide them from the Vesian scanners, they only came in relatively small packages.

Still, even if the mines mostly failed to breach the armor of the stricken mechs, they ddi succeed in slowing their charge. Ultimately, this caused the Chausseurs to clash against the defensive line with less than perfect force.

Still, the line almost buckled then and there as the handful of knights failed to withstand the impact of the chargning mechs.

For a moment, both sides recovered from the charge, but then the true melee began.

"Hold them back! Don't let them through the gap!"

The previous artillery bombardment opened up a wide gap in the defensive walls that the defending mechs struggled to stop. However, the intensity in which the Chausseurs pressed down upon them indicated that they wouldn't be able to hold for long.

Ves frantically studied the mechs of the Chausseurs, but found to his disappointment that they'd been too well-designed to expose any obvious weak points. Only upon sustaining damage would vulnerabilities begin to show, but that was easier said than done as the Vesians constantly rotated the mechs that faced the front.

As soon as a mech sustained a heavy blow, it pulled back and another mech of the Chausseurs filled its place. This spread out the damage and prevented the Chausseurs from suffering a loss in combat effectiveness.

This way, they managed to maintain a constant level of pressure on the defenders, who all lacked the numbers to pull off the same tricks.

The mechs of the Oodis Mudriders suffered the most out of this exchange. They possessed relatively few medium mechs, and most of them hadn't been designed for a stand-up battle. Several of their mechs succumbed in quick succession, prompting Melkor to make his move ahead of time.

Chapter 391

"Mudriders! Pull back from the front and go to the flanks! Contain the Meandering Monkeys and prevent them from breaching our flanks!"

Commander Husaan eagerly pulled back all of his surviving mechs. In their place, the Avatars of Myth finally committed to the battle.

Although the defensive line instantly stabilized at their arrival, neither Ves nor Melkor smiled, because according to their plans, they should have kept the Avatars in reserve for a longer time.

Still, the Avatars fought valiantly, proving that Melkor did an excellent job in hiring the initial cadre. Led by Melkor himself, their ranged mechs laid down accurate support fire from an elevated position on the walls. They mainly trained their firepower on the frontline mechs hanging back from the melee.

"Knights, pin down that incoming heavy mech! Don't let it shoulder its way inside!"

The melee mechs led by the two gold label Blackbeaks crashed against the Vesian mech with uncharacteristic fury. The two mech pilots of the Blackbeak got caught up in the fervor and fought back with ferocity. They pushed aside the enemy medium mechs and approached the sole surviving heavy knight from two different directions.

"Out of the way, you puny mechs!" The brash and angry mech pilot of the heavy knight broadcasted.

The Blackbeaks purposefully ignored the warning and began their awe-inspiring clash with the heavy knight. While the Blackbeaks quickly showed that they couldn't withstand a frontal clash against the heavy knight, their superior mobility allowed them to circle around their lumbering opponent and pressure its vulnerable back.

This forcefully halted the forward momentum of the heavy knight, because it could ill afford to let an enemy pester its slightly weaker rear armor!

"Annoying gnats! Stand still for me!"

The heavy knight continued to make wide horizontal sweeps with its large broadsword, only for the nimble Blackbeaks to jump back well before the blade reached their former position.

The two elegantly-styled mechs continued their dance around the heavy knight. The red vapor leaking from their red-dyed relief-studded shoulder pauldrons caused the area around the heavy knight to be partially obscured in bloody mist.

Ves estimated the cost of the heavy mech to be around 300 million credits. To be held back by a pair of mechs with a fair market price of around 100 million credits was very impressive.

As the heavy mech became more flustered, Ves became more familiar with its design. He opened a channel to the two pilots of the Blackbeak and issued some advice.

"The knight you're facing is very top-heavy! Its legs look sturdy, but they're actually strained to their limits! Focus on the rear knee joints, it's the weakest part of its legs!"

"The sword it is wielding is large and heavy, but the arms are burdened by an excessive amount of armor! Forget about trying to chip away at the arms, it's actually a trap!"

"Its left side is its former shield side. The heavy knight is balanced only when it wields its tower shield. Now that it's gone, its balance is out of whack. Press its left side to further destabilize its footing!"

The vulnerabilities he pointed out did not lead to an instant defeat, but they successfully enabled the pilots of the Blackbeaks to keep the heavy knight on its back footing.

Not even the Vesians expected for their heavy knight to be pinned down by a pair of knights. The rest of the Chasseurs began to move to help out their beleaguered comrade, only to be stalled by the rest of the Avatars and Sanyal-Ablin mechs.

The front line fell into a momentary stalemate, but that would only last ten minutes as most. The mechs from Sanyal-Ablin had the edge in quality, but they were hard-pressed to hold back the superior numbers of the Chasseurs, especially since they didn't attack as a horde but instead utilized rigid coordination.

Ves knew that grueling grinds like these tested each side's resolve and depth. On both accounts, he favored the Vesians over the defenders. None of them besides the Avatars truly wished to stand their ground. The LMC was just a client to them. Once the battle turned ugly for them, Ves had no doubt their will to battle would plummet.

Every minute, another mech succumbed, mostly on the defending side. A couple of pilots died or sustained heavy wounds, but most decided to eject early rather than risk their lives. This hastened the attrition of the defending side, and despite the valiant efforts of the Avatars of Myth, they could not halt the overall trend.

"Damnit, where is Dietrich and his mechs?" Ves wondered.

Due to all of the enemy jamming, Ves lost contact with the Whalers stationed outside of Freslin.

On the flanks, the situation didn't look much better. The Meandering Monkeys took advantage of the Mech Nursery's lack of numbers to defend its perimeter and spread out to pressure the walls from multiple directions.

The turrets that survived the previous artillery bombardment suppressed them from climbing over the walls for now, but the Monkeys constantly whittled them down with their ranged weapons. They jumped and ran around with such fleeting grace that the turret operators hardly managed to land any hits.

The situation on the flanks alleviated a little bit when the surviving Mudrider mechs moved to face the flanking Monkeys. This curbed their daring actions, but only for a limited time. The Mudriders were outnumbered at least two-to-one and the turrets would only last long against the full might of the light mech company.

As Ves bit his lips, a crackling comm channel came to life. "Ves!"

"Dietrich, you're here!" Ves responded with a much-relieved tone.

This entire battle revealed the precarious nature of the defenders. With any help, Ves predicted that the Vesians would have no trouble breaking through the perimeter.

The timely arrival of thirty friendly mechs breathed a lot of life into Ves. "Where are you right now? Are you in a position to hit the Vesians?"

"We're two minutes out. We can already see the flashes and hear the noise from here! Fadah and I are leading our rookies forward as we speak, but don't put your hopes up on our mechs! They're rookies for a reason!"

"You don't have to hammer the Vesians. As long as you can divert their attention and split them up, it's enough!"

Ves filled Dietrich in on the current tactical situation. While Dietrich wanted to turn the Whalers towards the 1st Meandering Monkeys, Ves argued otherwise.

"The Monkeys are a distraction! Defeating them while they're all dispersed will take too much time. By then, the 5th Vavulan Chasseurs will have succeeded in breaking through. We can't let that happen!"

As long as they stalled the Chasseurs and inflicted increasingly severe losses, the Vesians would finally begin to realize it wasn't so easy to break into the Mech Nursery. At that point, their commander had no choice but to consider the gains and losses of continuing the raid.

However, in order to reach that point, the combined defensive force had to inflict enough casualties to make the Vesians second-guess their actions.

Ves proceeded to watch on as the loose collection of Whaler mechs approached the sides of the main engagement. They met a couple of scouts from the Monkeys, which lost them the element of surprise, not that they counted upon it in the first place.

Instantly, the Vesians adjusted their maneuvers. Some of the flanking Monkeys pulled back from trading potshots at the Mudriders and moved in the direction of the incoming reinforcements. As for the Chasseurs, they did not let up their forward assault, but instead turned most of their frontline mechs around to face the Whalers.

"Damnit, careful Dietrich! They're sending out all of their frontline mechs along with a number of light mechs in your direction!"

Those frontline mechs might not be clad in a lot of armor, but they possessed a lot of firepower and could run at a decent speed as well.

As the two sides clashed, the Whaler mechs instantly became entangled in a messy firefight. Although they utilized much better mechs than before, their young mech pilots proved incapable of drawing out their strengths.

Compared to the old guard who largely perished in the Glowing Planet campaign, the fresh-faced recruits lacked a lot of hands-on battle experience. Facing an even number of light and frontline mechs, the mechs commanded by Dietrich couldn't help but falter in their steps.

Dietrich, Fadah and the handful of veteran pilots did all they could to shepherd the rookies, but they already had their hands full trying to resist the elites among the Vesian mechs.

Even though the arrival of the reinforcements from Walter's Whalers failed to make a big of an impact as Ves had hoped, at least they successfully diverted a large portion of the enemy mechs.

The main engagement at the gap of the walls still proceeded frigidly. Sanyal-Ablin failed to persist when they still drew the attention of an entire company of Chausseurs. A handful of their mechs had steadily fallen in the last couple of minutes. With each single casualty, the battle turned further and further out of their favor.

To be frank, even with the successful diversion of the frontline mechs, the remaining defenders still fell into an awkward situation.

Just as Ves contemplated doing something drastic, the battle between the three knights finally came to a conclusion.

One of the Blackbeaks retracted the sword that had punched through the ragged-looking rear armor of the heavy knight. The weighty mech quickly collapsed while the two Blackbeaks banged their swords against their battered shields before raising them into the sky.

"Avatars!" They shouted into the open.

The pure exultation in their voice along with their dramatic victory couldn't help but lessen the inevitable air of victory around the Chasseurs. The Vesians grew indignant, and quickly diverted some of their mechs to take out the Blackbeaks.

"Come! Let us see if you have what it takes to take down a Myth!"

The two knight pilots brazenly taunted the Chasseurs. If Ves didn't suspect them of doing so spontaneously, he would have thought it was a deliberate ploy to lower the morale of their opponents.

In any case, their actions succeeded in changing the overall pattern of the most crucial portion of the battle. The battle at the gap in the walls turned into a muddled mess as the Chasseurs tried to vent their fury on the two Blackbeaks.

However, the gold label mechs proved difficult to pin down. Unlike the lumbering heavy mech, their lighter and more balanced construction allowed them to dance aside most attacks. Those that landed on their shield or armor only dented them a bit or created shallow cuts. Compressed armor was no joke, and without exerting enough force, the mechs of the Chasseurs wouldn't have much success in punching through the layers.

"We can do it!" Ves faintly hoped.

The valor displayed by the two Blackbeaks astounded everyone. Much of that came from the skilled handling of their mech pilots. Melkor had indeed picked up a pair of treasures on Bentheim.

However, these pilots only felt free to act this way because they piloted an excellent pair of mechs. These two particular gold label mechs had been the latest copies of their line. Ves improved much in recent times, and he managed to pass on some of these benefits to his latest handcrafted mechs.

Although the physical performance of the mechs hadn't received much of a bump, they still boasted superior agility due to the gems that Ves had secretly implanted in them. In addition, their X-Factor came out a bit stronger than before, as Ves invested a substantial amount of mind energy into their construction.

Both of these factors boosted the performance of the Blackbeaks to an unheard of level.

Just as Ves thought that the battle had taken a turn for the better, another mech from the Chasseurs appeared from the rear.

Ves instantly felt his joy bleeding away at the sight of the incoming mech. The quality of this mech stood out starkly. This must be the commander of the raiding force, and by the looks of his fancy mech, he must be a noble as well.

Chapter 392

The nobility enjoyed an exalted status in the Vesia Kingdom. They stood above the vast majority of commoners in each single aspect. Even the non-hereditary knights who earned their titles through merits also operated within the Kingdom with impunity.

Wealth, power, status and more became within reach if one acquired a noble rank. As a citizen of the more egalitarian Bright Republic, Ves and the rest of his state simply couldn't wrap their heads around why the Vesians accepted the rigid caste-like division of society.

When the experts spoke about the noble phenomenon, they simply shrugged their shoulders and explained it was a matter of culture. In other words, every citizen of a kingdom state had been brainwashed from birth to accept such a backwards-sounding structure.

After all, with the continued advance of science and technology, the ancient justifications such as the Mandate of Heaven, the Divine Right of Kings, superior bloodlines and other such excuses had been debunked as pure excuses.

The various states set up as feudal monarchies simply couched their privileges in more modern terms. Most of the time, the various kingdoms justified their right to rule by pointing out their investment in terraforming the planets and establishing the colonies.

Once the initial population accepted the rulership structure, it slowly became a given that their state would always be ruled by so-called royals and the aristocracy. Humans possessed the capacity to accept all kinds of absurdities as long as everyone else around them believed them as well.

Right now, the entire battle for the Mech Nursery entered a brief pause at the sudden entrance of the Vesian commander. Ves zoomed in on the projection and studied the mech in more detail.

It was definitely a mech that surpassed the typical premium price point. The abundance of jewels and decorative alloys alone must have cost as much as a Blackbeak, but they only made up a portion of the exterior of this flamboyant-looking mech.

Ves peered at the epaulet on the left shoulder of the mech. It depicted a hand holding aloft a notched sword being shone upon by a single golden star.

"So it's a knight."

That meant the noble certainly earned his knighthood through his own efforts. Ves would have rather faced a baron than a knight, because the latter often turned out to be mediocre descendants of brilliant mech pilots.

"Sir Ravanac!" The Chasseurs broadcasted in the open. Their morale instantly surged while the morale of the defenders plummeted.

This Sir Ravanac calmly stepped forward as if he was approaching a picnic instead of a battle. His mech consisted of a mace-wielding medium melee mech. It carried a heavy two-handed mace that looked heavy enough to crunch the armor of any unmech. Only comechs such as the Blackbeaks appeared to be sturdy enough to withstand a direct hit.

The more Ves studied its design, the more his expression soured. "This mech is too high-class!"

He should have anticipated that the raiding force would be led by a noble who piloted a powerful mech. His machine alone could wipe out every defending mech with ease as long as the rest of the Chasseurs and the Monkeys tied them down.

Ves knew he had to intervene in person. He turned away from the central projectors and moved to exit the command center.

"Tell Melkor to stall the noble as long as he can!"

As he ran through the halls and reached the surface, he stepped on a small but swift floater platform and commanded it to convey him right towards the breach.

The speed of the platform caused the wind to whip against his form, but the floater platform's sophisticated antigrav modules and inertial dampeners allowed him to comfortably remain on his feet.

Even as he traveled to the front, Ves kept his eye on his comm, which projected what happened once the noble reached the battle.

Melkor tried to approach and drag out the fight by engaging in a conversation with the kngiht, but Sir Ravanac did not bring any further delays.

"Enough! Press the attack! Wipe out these Republican dogs and smash this entire factory into pieces!"

The Chasseurs resumed their fight with twice as much vigor now that their noble commander personally took charge.

The mechs from Sanyal-Ablin had almost reached their breaking point, and this sudden push only accelerated their inevitable defeat. Even with the Avatars of Myth backing them up, they wouldn't last very long.

Sir Ravanac's mace-wielding mech entered the fray as well. Melkor quickly decided to command his two knight mech pilots to divert the noble as long as possible.

The two Blackbeaks moved to stall Sir Ravanac's mech. Unlike before where they faced a sluggish heavy mech, Sir Ravanac possessed a much better balance between power, speed and armor. Sir Ravanac's abundant experience also allowed him to maneuver around the chaotic battlefield in a way that prevented the Blackbeaks from pincering it from two different directions.

While the Chasseurs led by their commander almost overran the defenders, the battle at the flanks fared no better for the defenders.

Dietrich, Fadah and the handful of veterans failed to stiffen the backs of their rookie pilots. The quick and agile mechs of the Meandering Monkeys constantly played tricks on the newly recruited Whalers. In every area short of weight class, the mechs of the Whalers fell short compared to the Vesian machines.

"Sorry Ves!" Dietrich sent out as his aerial marksman supported his rookies from a low altitude. If he flew any higher, he risked being shot from the air by the frontline mechs that supported the light mechs from the rear. "We can't get rid of these Vesian light mechs! It's taking all we can to preserve our mechs!"

With no further hope for reinforcements, the Mech Nursery was about to be broken through. Without a cohesive force of mechs to stop the raiding force, the Vesians would easily be able to penetrate past the gates and wreak havoc inside the underground floors.

The various defenses and barriers integrated in the tunnels would only slow down the Vesians up to a point. Only mechs could defeat other mechs. That was the ironclad rule in these kinds of war.

When Ves finally reached the gap in the walls, the Avatars of Myth and the Sanyal-Ablin mechs already started pulling out. The Chasseurs succeeded in pushing through the gap, though they paid for their aggression with the loss of a couple more mechs.

Ves controlled the floater platform and manually controlled its flight path to climb on top of the walls.

At this point, no one paid attention to a single person, but Ves knew this would change very soon.

With one hand, he activated his Full Stealth module, and with his other hand he drew the Amastendira from his pocket, which unfolded into an elegant-looking laser pistol.

Once the Amastendira came online, he dialed its output to the highest setting possible. When facing mechs, he could not skimp out on power.

"I've only got ten shots. I have to make the most of what I have."

At the highest power setting, the Amastendira would only be able to pump out ten high-powered beams before it forcefully entered a lengthy cooldown cycle.

It was a heavy price, but a worthy one as well. The setting was meant to pose a threat to mechs, however slightly.

"With this pistol's maximum output combined with my aim, it's probably futile for me to try and take out Sir Ravanac's mech."

The Amastendira still possessed enough power to threaten a mech clad in compressed armor, but he'd have to be precise enough to hit a weak point. Melkor might be able to pull that off, but Ves held no such confidence.

After weighing the matter back and forth, Ves decided to strike the tightly-packed formation of Chasseurs. Right now, they attempted to press forth through the gap in the walls. This granted Ves with a unique opportunity. No matter where he aimed at, he was guaranteed to hit an enemy mech. His lackluster marksmanship wouldn't be much of a detriment in this target-rich environment.

No, the only thing he had to be careful of was the inevitable retaliation. From the way their ranged mechs quickly trained their fire on Lucky when he flew out of the first heavy mech, Ves expected instant retaliation after he fired the first shot.

One of his hands briefly brushed on his stomach where his trusty old shield generator rested. If his Stealth Augment couldn't save him, he at least trusted the shield generator to protect him long enough to get away.

Now that he entered stealth, he had to move quickly in order to take advantage of its short duration. He commanded the floater platform to climb up high in order to obtain a commanding view of the battle.

Once he became satisfied with his position, he extended the Amastendira and gripped it carefully in a two-handed grip. He carefully took the time to aim his weapon before he unleashed the first shot.

The sheer amount of energy passing through the bubble of stealth caused it to fluctuate. The powerful white-hot laser beam immediately caused the mechs of the Chasseurs to bleat out an alarm as the beam struck the back of a swordsman mech trying to press forward.

The beam vaporized the relatively thin layer of uncompressed armor and continued to burn through to strike the mech's power reactor. The component instantly failed, causing the rest of the mech to shut down.

Ves quickly adjusted his aim and raked the singular powerful beam from the Amastendira through the rear armor of a bunch more mechs. Although he failed to take down another mech, he did manage to startle the Chasseurs into a momentary halt.

The handful of frontline mechs that supported the main push quickly turned around and bombarded the air where his floater platform previously hovered. However, their response was just a tad bit too slow.

Ves wasn't an idiot. As soon as the first shot subsided, he stomped on the floater platform, causing it to initiate an emergency descent. As the invisible bubble of stealth restored around his form, he barely managed to evade the furious volley of fire flying over his head.

The Chasseurs didn't know what they were dealing with. Ves probably figured they thought they faced some kind of powerful stealth bot. Just as they figured they took down the stealth bot, Ves opened fire yet again from another position.

This time, the powerful beam passed through the rear armor of another mech, but failed to hit anything critical. However, the power behind the beam was so strong that it wrecked a lot of internals, to the point where the strength of the mech suddenly dropped by at least a half.

For the subsequent shots, Ves kept the floater platform moving as he fired the Amastendira. While this severely affected his accuracy, the sheer damage and chaos that ensued from his action successfully turned around the battle.

Only after he shot his eight laser beams did the Chasseurs manage to hit him directly. His shield generator flared up, protecting his body from the explosive shells that detonated against his form. He yelled in pain from the energies bleeding through the near-impenetrable shield. A wash of heat and force flung him away from the floater platform which the Chasseurs quickly shot into pieces.

Ves tentatively managed to regain control over his altitude with the help of his antigrav clothing. With the loss of the floater platform, he wouldn't be able to fly as fast as before, but at the very least he managed to preserve his life. He quickly checked the charge of his shield generator.

Its charge dropped from eighty percent to a dismal forty-seven percent.

"Damnit, I can't afford to get hit another time!"

Even until now, Ves hadn't been able to recharge his ultra-compact shield generator. This piece of wondrous technology was completely beyond his present capacities. He figured that the only way he could recharge the shield generator was to go back to Leemar, something which he wasn't keen to do before he advanced to Journeyman Mech Designer.

"The shield generator is a lifeline. What will Master Olson think if I come back so soon with a depleted charge?"

Ves could only fire two more full-powered beams, but the damage he caused had reserved the entire trend. He managed to fell five mechs and heavily wound a couple more. The Chasseurs completely lost their imposing manner, while the defenders thought that Ves had deployed some secret trump card.

Now, the only variable that mattered was Sir Ravanac. Would the knight insist on pushing forward, or would he finally decide to pull back?

Chapter 393

What the 5th Vavulan Chasseurs didn't know was that Ves almost expended all of his means. His stealth augment almost ran out of power while his pistol could only unleash two more powerful beams.

Ves hoped to fool Sir Ravanac into thinking that he could continue to harass the Chasseurs from the dark. Now that they had just succeeded in hitting Ves, it was important for him to demonstrate that he could continue to pose a threat to their rear.

"My stealth charge has almost run out. I've got to finish this quickly."

He positioned himself at a different angle and elevation and proceeded to fire at the uncertain Chasseurs yet again. This time, the mechs had put up their guards and oriented some mechs to the front. His ninth shot managed to carve through the shield of a knight mech, but failed to inflict significant harm on the mech itself.

Even as he unleashed his shot, his form dove down quickly, allowing him to dodge most of the counterattack, although a volley of rapid-fire laser beams managed to clip his left side, causing the shield generator to whine in protest.

"Thirty-eight percent charge!"

His stealth field was also on the verge of giving up. Without any further thought, Ves snapped his Amastendira for the last time. This time, he chose to shoot Sir Ravanac's mech despite knowing that it wouldn't have much of an effect.

His aim was a little off, and the beam streaked above the fancy mech's head. Ves quickly corrected his aim and slashed the beam downwards until it hit the mech's shoulder blades.

Unfortunately, rear armor or not, the Amastendira's full-powered laser beam only left a shallow furrow inside the plating of compressed armor. The only thing his final shot managed to accomplish was to pull Sir Ravanac away from his fight against the Blackbeaks.

Both knight mechs looked like they had gone through a giant tumbler. One mech lost its shield and had its entire left arm smashed, while the other mech had its beak flattened while suffering a severely dented leg. Ultimately, the two offensive knights highlighted the shortcomings of their type, which was that they lacked the true resilience of a defensive knight.

"Now, will you decide to pull away or not?" Ves frowned.

Whatever the case, he did not have the luxury to hang around. He quickly dove back behind the wall just before his stealth augment ran out of power. Without any concern for his dignity, Ves quickly dropped down to the ground and ran towards the nearest underground access point.

As Ves sought refuge underground, the battle in the gap had turned into an awkward state. Neither the Chasseurs nor the defenders fought with all of their might. The latter had almost run out of steam while the former kept up their guard for further sneak attacks.

The power exerted by Ves and the difficulty in pinning him down had truly struck a nerve in the minds of the Vesians. They quickly lost a bunch of mechs, which robbed the attackers of much of their energy. Even though they would still be able to break through the defenses, the amount of casualties they'd suffer along the way might quickly reach an unacceptable point.

Even as Sir Ravanac agonized over the decision, the two battered Blackbeaks did not show signs of giving up. Their pilots continued to press on the mace-wielding mech, preventing its pilot from considering the situation with a sober mind.

With much of his raiding force stalled, who knew how many mechs he would lose at the end of this raid. It would be a joke to suffer more losses than their targets.

"These Brighters are too stubborn!"

Why did they fight so hard to preserve a single facility?

The losses that the Chasseurs already sustained put the noble in a difficult spot. He already lost a number of mechs. If he did not achieve any results, his superiors would scorch him over a fire. Yet if he recklessly continued the assault, the cost would become so unbearable that he might get sanctioned over the disaster.

Perhaps the pressure had been too much for him, because Sir Ravanac eventually gave in to his fears. "Pull back!"

In his opinion, it was better to retreat and claim that the intelligence officers screwed up by underestimating the defenses of the facility they were supposed to destroy. At worst, he'd receive a reprimand. He could always regain his honor in subsequent battles.

If he instead pressed on with the attack, he might be able to break the defenders, but he might also lead his unit to a bad end. In that case, the consequences would be much more dire. Losing his knighthood was the worst thing that could happen to him.

Once he lost the protection of his elevated status, his enemies among the Legion would certainly pounce on him. He'd lose everything he'd worked for these past couple of decades.

The Chasseurs slowly receded from the gap. The defenders didn't follow, as they weren't in a state to pursue. Only a third of their mechs still possessed the strength to fight back, which was way too little to pose a significant threat to the diminished Chasseurs.

In order to guard against any further sneak attacks, Sir Ravanac's mech joined the most intact mechs at the rear guard. As the Chasseurs gradually quickened their pace, the defenders realized that they successfully repelled the Vesians.

"We did it! They're gone!"

"What a hell!"

"Where did those laser beams come from?"

As the mechs at the walls celebrated their success, both the Oodis Mudriders and Walter's Whalers experienced the same thing. The Meandering Monkeys completely gave up on their harassment and pulled back to escort the deflated Chasseurs back to their transport ships.

Almost no one could believe they pulled it off. Even as they celebrated their success, they still held a lot of doubts.

"Alright men, knock it off! The Vesians may still change their minds! Start policing the battlefield and make sure to replenish your supplies!"

The different outfits quickly went into action. They retrieved their fallen mechs and pushed aside the hollow wrecks of the Vesian mechs. All of their pilots managed to eject to safety long ago, so the defenders had no scruples about moving them away.

In actuality, the mechs held a lot of value. After handing them over to repair shops, the mechs could be brought back to working condition. The defenders already started contemplating their salvage rights.

This was one of their rights, and while other employers might quibble over how to distribute or retain the wrecks, Ves could care less where they ended up. After a few detours, Ves wearily returned to the command center and watched the center projection for the latest movements.

"Where are the Vesians?"

"The 1st Meandering Monkeys and the 5th Vavulan Chasseurs are in the process of boarding their transports, sir." Someone reported.

"Have they left any mechs behind?"

"Not as far as we are aware of, sir."

Ves worriedly waited for the Vesians to make a move. The worst part about it was that due to the jamming, they couldn't get any detailed or reliable readings of their movements. For all they knew, the Vesians managed to pull the wool over their eyes and maneuvered around for another attack.

"Detecting ship movements! The transports are lifting off!"

Fortunately, some things couldn't be hidden, and the massive amount of power needed to lift a number of transports carrying lots of mechs could be observed from dozeons of kilometers away.

"The Vesian mechs are being brought back to orbit!"

Only after the transports climbed past the perennial cloud cover did everyone truly begin to relax. Most of the defending mechs stood down in order to recover from the brief but intense battle.

Out of all the different outfits that took part in the defense, the Oodis Mudriders actually suffered the least. Though they lost a number of mechs at the start, they stopped suffering any major losses once Melkor diverted them to hold the flanks. The Meandering Monkeys never made a serious push.

Both Ves and Melkor scoffed when they heard about how the Mudriders got off light.

"Sanyal-Ablin suffered the most. Out of their twenty-four mechs, only seven of them are still in fighting condition. Five of their pilots lost their lives as well."

"And the Avatars?"

"My men did well enough." Melkor grunted with some amount of satisfaction. "I'm sorry to say that most of our brand new mechs got wrecked. Some of them can still be salvaged, but the others are a total loss. I'm glad we haven't lost any pilots."

As for the Whalers, Dietrich mentioned that their rookies had flat out performed dismally. The enemy frontline mechs chewed at least a third of their largely uncoordinated force of mechs. It appeared that the Whalers required a lot more time in training in order to become an effective fighting force again.

With victory came the spoils. In the evening, Ves held a brief celebration over barbecue. Mech pilots from every participating outfit mingled together and sang drunken songs. As the rank-and-file forgot about the horror they faced in the afternoon, the leaders gathered together in a quiet conference room, both to debrief them all and to distribute the rewards.

"Sanyal-Ablin, your sacrifice has been noted. Please inform your branch office that I'm ready to transfer the money that you are owed." Ves nodded to the grizzled mech commander that hailed from the security company.

"Next time, beef up your defenses." The commander grumbled.

The bills from SASS would certainly be steep. Ves had pushed them into a position where they had to fight against a military force that outnumbered them by a fair margin. The commander could have easily decided to give up on defending the Mech Nursery, but his professional pride called him to stand his ground.

Ves respected and appreciated the sacrifice the commander made. Of course, all of the extra money that the LMC owed to the security company would certainly be painful.

After Ves and SASS exchanged their words, Melkor turned to Commander Husaan. "Your Mudriders fared well, but you didn't play that much of a rule."

"Hey! We managed to pin down most of the Meandering Monkeys! Just because they're light mechs doesn't mean they pose no threat!"

"You didn't adjust your deployment once the Monkeys pulled out much of their mechs to face ourr incoming reinforcements! The Meandering Monkeys managed to pin down your entire mercenary corps while outnumbered two-to-one!"

Melkor's observation put Commander Husaan in a tight spot while Ves quietly sighed. For all their earlier agreements, Husaan still found a way to shirk his duties. While Ves respected the losses they sustained in the initial push, they failed to make any contributions in the rest of the engagement.

"Enough, Melkor." Ves stretched out a hand and intervened. "The Oodis Mudriders haven't contributed as much as we hoped, but we can defer to the terms in the contract in that case. Their final remuneration will certainly take a hit once we run through the compensation formulas."

Though Melkor didn't look like he was done, he deferred to Ves and took a step back. "Fine."

They quickly discussed the performance of the Avatars and the Whalers before carving out the loot. All of those wrecked Vesian mechs became prizes for the taking.

Without any suspense, Sanyal-Ablin received the lion's share of the loot. The Whalers received a modest amount of what remained while the Mudriders only received a handful of the most ruined hulks.

As for the Avatars of Myth, considering that they worked directly for Ves, they had no need to fight over scraps.

"Tomorrow, we'll continue this discussion. By then, the processors will have finished their calculation. We can come to a final agreement on your compensation at that point."

Everyone nodded and left the conference room, leaving Ves alone with Melkor.

"Where's your pet?"

"He hasn't shown up." Ves replied with concern. "I'm not even sure if he's even intact."

"Maybe it just needs some time to recover. That strange cat of yours has a lot of tricks in store. I don't believe it's gone for good."

As Melkor turned to leave the room, Ves scratched his cheek. The LMC managed to survive the raid, though it had reached the brink during the battle. If not for his personal intervention, he wouldn't have managed to bluff the commander into cutting his losses.

"This isn't supposed to happen. Lucky and I can't keep intervening to save my hide."

Ves already planned to enact a lot of changes. First and foremost, he intended to elevate the Avatars of Myth and bolster their numbers to a full company.

"The time for training and adjustment is past. It's time they become a worthy personal force of mine."

Chapter 394

The local press called the 3rd Imodris Legion's failed attempt to raid the Mech Nursery the Battle for Cloudy Curtain. They certainly had a flair for the dramatic, as the name suggested that the Vesians had been on the cusp of conquering the planet.

Just as everyone thought that the Vesians would stomp the LMC flat, the up-and-coming mech company surprisingly held them off.

Although the outfits hired by the LMC sustained a lot of losses, it became a fact that they actually repelled two Vesian mech companies!

Every citizen in the Freslin area swelled with pride. Their tiny rural planet actually contributed to the war in a splendid war. A company founded by one of their own citizens hadn't flinched against the invaders but instead fought back with endless ferocity!

"Hahaha! Cloudy Curtain still has some teeth! We're more than a bunch of farmers who only know how to cultivate cloud rice!"

"Who said that people from Cloudy Curtain can't fight? We've smacked the Vesians right in the face!"

Compared to the jubilation of the citizens in Freslin, the mood turned much grimmer over at the other side of the planet. Orinoco suffered a substantial loss. Worst of all, it had likely been done by their own side.

The spaceport, the planetary assembly building, all those company headquarters and all kinds of infrastructure turned into hollow craters and fields of debris. Many of the pieces that erupted from the blasts even went on to damage the surrounding structures.

Tragedy swept the entire capital city as emergency services worked day and night to rescue those buried underneath the wreckage.

Although the occupants of the buildings had been warned of the bombs, they only had two minutes of time to evacuate their workplaces, which was much too short for most of them. The only reason why the casualties hadn't surpassed a thousand was because most workers stayed away from work due to the raid.

Blame and recrimination hadn't started flying yet, but the undercurrent already started surging. The political and economic alliance that dominated Cloudy Curtain for so many years started fraying apart as each side blamed the other for setting off the bombs.

"I don't know why you have the shame to show yourself in public! Instead of risking your own lives to fight the Vesians, you blew up your own structures and killed your fellow citizens! If I didn't know any better, you're likely working for the Vesians!"

"Don't point your fingers at me! Our company has suffered the worst of all! What about you? Your company headquarters somehow got away unscathed. Don't think we're clueless about your ambitions. You've always wanted to supplant us over the years. The Vesian raid was the perfect excuse to do us in!"

Throughout the Bright Republic, the 3rd Imodris Legion's shocking raids unsettled the entire Bentheim region. The near-simultaneous raids strained the Mech Corps, which had to choose where to send their forces quickly and in enough numbers to make an impact.

The Mech Corps largely failed.

The raiding forces went in and out as quickly as possible while inflicting as much damage as they could. They mostly struck smaller star systems with barely any defenses. While that meant they only caused a marginal amount of damage, the damage to everyone's morale was enormous.

The 3rd Imodris Legion basically terrorized the entire periphery around the Bentheim System while suffering very few losses. This changed the aspect of the current war, as the citizens of the various rural systems finally realized that even they couldn't escape its horrors.

The Bright Republic moved quickly to support the stricken star systems. Cloudy Curtain was no exception, as a handful of ships arrived from Bentheim to support the disaster relief and begin to rebuild some of the infrastructure on Orinoco.

However, alongside the aid, the Republic also sent out investigators. The self-sabotage incident in Orinoco had become famous throughout the entire state overnight. The power brokers over at the capital city huddled like rats and kept their heads down in front of the ongoing investigation.

When Ves heard about the news, he shook his head. "Whoever set those bombs aren't stupid enough to leave any traces. Those investigators will probably spend a few weeks in Orinoco before they compile a meaningless report and go back to their fancy offices in Bentheim."

"It doesn't change the fact that our political opposition is completely discredited in front of the Republic." Gavin responded. While everyone mourned for the dead and started preparing for hte funerals, Gavin and the rest of the Marketing Department already started slobbering over the golden opportunity presented to the LMC. "It doesn't matter who is ultimately responsible, they're all made from the same cloth. The ruling coalition is finished."

Ves nodded. Right now, the White Doves caught the most flack of all. The raid exposed their ideology as an unrealistic fantasy that did not fit at all in the brutal Age of Mechs. Many citizens of Cloudy Curtain also fingered the pacifists as the group that was most likely responsible for setting off the bombs.

"It's all well and good to celebrate their misfortune, but do you have to publicly lionize our own battle so much?"

Ves had changed his antigrav clothes into a dark, formal suit in order to attend an upcoming funeral. Over a dozen mech pilots died to defend the Mech Nursery, and he owed it to them to pay his respects.

Thus, he found the contrast between the solemnity between the funerals and the exuberant publicizing of their success in the media to be jarring.

It was as if the LMC danced on the graves of the fallen mech pilots in order to score some points from the public.

"Boss, don't let the losses think we've lost. In actual fact, we won. Think of how rare that is! Almost every other raid succeeded in overrunning the other rural star systems and inflicted tens of billions of credits in economic damage. The Bentheim region is bleeding, and they need to be shown a victory to prove they hadn't let the Vesians beat them black and blue!"

"What's being spread on the galactic net is too slanted!"

Right now, the LMC in cooperation with the Bright Republic's propaganda office enthusiastically spread footage of the battle at the walls. In particular, the Marketing Department edited the footage they released in a way that made the two gold label Blackbeaks of the Avatars of Myth the main stars of the show.

Although their performance had been above and beyond, Ves found the manipulative editing to be a little too much. Their increased prominence came at the cost of recognizing the sacrifices of the other participants in the battle.

"Boss, right now, nobody cares about the dead." Gavin heartlessly replied. "You just have to switch to another news portal to see, hear or read about all the tragedies Imodris has caused. In the midst of all that doom and gloom, the public needs something to cheer about. I don't see why we can't promote our Blackbeak models along the way as well."

Ves eventually relented on the issue. He saw the advantages as well as anybody. Interest in the Blackbeaks exploded once again. The third-party manufacturers received an influx of new orders and the waiting list for the silver label Blackbeaks practically doubled in a matter of days.

In the next week, Ves spent his full time on processing the aftermath of the battle. He attended the solemn funeral. He issued the payments owed to Sanyal-Ablin and the rest. He also approved plans to repair and strengthen the Mech Nursery's defenses.

All of that flushed down the LMC's liquidity down the toilet. The company spent almost all of its cash to afford

It was a good thing that the Blackbeaks gained prominence again. With the increased sales that resulted from the impromptu marketing campaign, Ves did not worry too much about the company's financial health.

In the end, this was what made the Mech Nursery worth defending. By continuing its operation unabated, they contributed to the war effort in their own way. Its loss would have weakened the Republic, and its preservation represented a rare ray of sunshine in the middle of the doom and gloom that followed the 3rd Imdris Legion's daring raids.

"What is Imodris up to now?"

While the raids had been an astonishing success for the intrepid legion, it hadn't actually inflicted any significant material losses. The Bright Republic's ability to wage war hadn't been impacted at all.

Right now, everyone in the Bentheim region dreaded Lady Amalia. The aggressive heiress was like a poisonous snake who slithered in the back garden of their house. Any attempts to root out her presence failed. She could be hiding anywhere.

It was a good thing that Ves had nothing to do with it. He left the headache-inducing issue to the Mech Corps and resumed his normal operations.

Construction teams swarmed the Mech Nursery and started patching up the gap in the walls. They also filled in all the craters and restored much of the turrets that got destroyed.

People started coming back to work, and offices started to get lively again. Down in the manufacturing floor, the mech technicians quickly restored all of the production lines and resumed their normal production.

Ves even paid a visit to the floor and took some time to fabricate two more gold label Blackbeaks. After an expedited testing process, Ves quickly had them delivered to the Oodis Mudriders.

Even though their performance fell a bit short in the previous battle, Ves still honored the unofficial agreement he made with Commander Husaan. Even though the Mudriders could fall into a black hole for all he cared, Ves would catch a lot of flack if word went out that he stiffed a mercenary corps.

Mercenaries did not take kindly to anyone who withheld their payment.

Once he took care of all of those chores, Ves left his subordinates to process the remaining issues and went back down to his private workshop floor.

He still had a design to complete.

As he stepped back inside his private workshop, he looked around but failed to spot Lucky's presence. He contacted security every day, but none of them had managed to find out where he holed up.

"I hope you're still alright, Lucky."

His cat should still be okay. His entire body incorporated a substantial amount of high-grade Rorach Bone. Its main trait allowed it to repair any broken or missing parts by itself. It did so by siphoning any available energy. This was a very inefficient process though, so it might take months for Lucky to become whole again.

Ves sighed and turned back to his design. He activated a projector that displayed the progress he made so far. While he finished designing every aspect of the mech, it still looked very rough in his eyes.

He still needed to optimize this design.

"Let's get to work."

He put his rifleman mech into a variety of mathematical models and let the processors simulate the outcome of different events. The results revealed various weak points and imperfections that Ves hadn't been aware of when he first drew up the design.

The simulations revealed a lot of problems about the laser rifle. Ves designed it in a small and compact package by incorporating an alien crystal. The interaction between the crystal and the rest of the body of the rifle did not go very smoothly.

At the heart of it, the compatibility issues revealed that Ves did not fully understand the alien tech he incorporated into his design.

Ves did not give up on this matter. "I can still make this work."

Several weeks went by as he continuously iterated on his design. The rifleman mech became more polished every day, and while the problems with the crystals embedded into the chest and rifle of the mech persisted, Ves inched closer and closer to a solution.

Sometimes, he took a break in order to get a status update on what was happening up above. Much of it sounded mundane and routine. The Bright Republic moved quickly to shore up the mood of the public, and the 3rd Imodris Legion appeared to have made themselves scarce for the time being.

"There's one thing you should know about, boss." Gavin said after he finished reciting the latest report. "Someone recently licensed your Blackbeak design."

What?

Chapter 395

Ever since Ves debuted the Blackbeak BP-A-01, no one showed any interest in licensing the design. The MTA valued its licensing cost at a whopping 3 billion credits. For the same amount of money, a mech manufacturer would be able to afford another mech production line.

Therefore, no company casually licensed someone else's design.

"Who licensed my design?"

"A medium mech manufacturer called Arkadis Mech Design and Production. It's founded by Gillian Arkadis, a twenty-year old veteran in the business."

"A woman?"

"Yeah, and she's an Apprentice Mech Designer as well, just like you. Some of the analysts in the business are really perplexed at her decision. She's a proven mech designer who graduated from the Ansel University of Mech Design, is more than capable of coming up with her own designs that are substantially more polished than your own work."

A graduate of the AUMD meant she was a true insider in the Bentheim mech industry. She wouldn't lack connections to obtain a favorable licensing agreement from her fellow mentors and alumni.

Ves had been in the business long enough to know that the mech designers connected to the AUMD considered themselves to be the most foremost mech designers of the Republic.

They often treated anyone who graduated from inferior institutions as second-class mech designers.

They also regarded mech designers who became fortunate enough to study at a more prestigious foreign institution with a lot of wariness and apprehension. Many mech designers who originally came from the Bright Republic had forsaken their old home in favor of trying to make it big in the prosperous Friday Coalition.

Ves happened to enjoy the rare distinction of falling into both of the fore-mentioned categories. Someone like him was something of a pariah in their circles.

So it came as a huge surprise that an AUMD graduate like Mrs. Arkadis decided to license his latest commercial design.

"Send me what you've gathered so far of Arkadis and her company."

Gavin transferred a bunch of files to Ves, who quickly skimmed them over. He did not find anything unusual, but neither did he see any compelling reason why Arkadis would want to work with his Blackbeak.

"All of her products so far are light mechs." Ves noted with emphasis. "She designs a large variety of landbound and aerial light mechs, but none of them have anything to do with the Blackbeak, which falls into the medium weight class. Has her company shown any indications of gearing its production lines into producing the base model?"

"As far as we know, Arkadis Mechs is still in the process of delivering a major order to a large client. Even if they wanted to begin production immediately, they still have to work on their current backlog."

"So we won't know what she's doing with my design until at least a couple of months have passed."

All in all, both Ves and Gavin could only scratch their heads. Ves figured that Mrs. Arkadis might have noticed the charm inherent in the Blackbeak design and wanted to figure out its secrets by working with the license.

"Do you think she's trying to reverse engineer your secret sauce?"

All Ves could respond was to wish her luck. Without any insight into the X-Factor, she had no chance of replicating his work.

"If it's so easy to copy my work, Elemental Mech Engineering would have already released a Striker variant of the Blackbeak."

Ves did not forget about EME, which entered into a special licensing agreement with the LMC to produce the bronze label Blackbeaks. Ves always had the sense that Andar Neverland, the founder and chief designer of EME, wanted to do the same.

So far, the EME hasn't released anything of the sort even after many months of producing the bronze label mechs. This indicated that Mr. Neverland achieved nothing that was good enough to go public.

"Keep an eye on Mrs. Arkadis and her company. It might be that she only licensed my design on behalf of someone else. Try to find out if anyone else is connected with this event."

"Will do, boss!"

Ves hung up after that and leaned back on his chair. No matter what, the fact that someone licensed his design under normal conditions meant that his prestige was enhanced once again.

Many mech designers constantly pumped out new designs every couple of months in the hopes that others picked them up. Entire design studios lived off this kind of business model.

The better the designs, the more they earned. The beauty about running a mech design studio was that it cost almost nothing to design a mech. Sure, the studios had to invest in a lot of infrastructure, but the cost of setting a design studio paled in comparison to setting up a mech production plant.

"That 3 billion credits will come in handy."

Currently, Ves published the Blackbeak under his own name, so all of that money went into his personal accounts. Added on with the money that he already earned from other sources, Ves actually owned a lot more cash than his own company.

Ves had plans for his money, but that could wait until he finished his current project. He hadn't forgotten his main vocation. "I shouldn't get too distracted by all the money flying around. It's great that someone licensed one of my designs, but I can earn a lot more if I sell the mechs myself."

He dove back into his work on optimizing his design. He had become very proficient at this work, so he constantly improved on his design with each subsequent iteration.

At a certain point, every improvement only increased the performance of his rifleman mech by a fraction of a percentage point. The extra work put into further optimization wasn't worth his time anymore, although many other mech designers disagreed.

"I can only continue to perfect my design if I have a lot more manpower and processing capacity at my disposal."

The LMC expanded a lot in terms of production capacity, but its research and development capabilities hadn't progressed beyond a one-man show. The limitations of this approach really started to grate on Ves.

Only the gimmick still showed some problems. While Ves succeeded in stabilizing the operation of the chest crystal, the one embedded into the laser rifle turned out to be a lot more finicky.

It took him an entire week to get the laser rifle to perform up to standard. Ves spent way more time on fixing all of the bugs in his design, but it had all been worth the extra effort.

His rifleman mech looked fast and lethal, exactly the way he liked it. Ves caught all of the major flaws that he knew of. If he wanted to, he could publish his design right now.

He'd be a fool to do so, though.

"I still have to fabricate a prototype."

Even though he subjected his rifleman mech to millions of simulations, all of the modeling couldn't compare to a single physical test.

After making sure his design required no further tweaks as of yet, he saved its latest state and left his private workshop floor.

He first returned to his private office above the ground to handle the paperwork that piled up in his absence. Much of it seemed routine, so Ves quickly processed the documents before calling over Jake to talk business.

"How is the LMC?"

"It's still growing strong." The old man replied. "Our production is bottlenecked by our lack of production lines. I recently became informed that a fellow colleague of yours licensed the Blackbeak design."

It was obvious what he wanted to say. Ves forestalled his words. "You want me to spend my money on another production line, is that it?"

"The company will grow a lot faster with even one additional Benson production line. Lately, there's a lot of demand for these machines. It takes a lot of manual labor to make some of the equipment, so there's a waiting line of several months for their products. If you can lay down an order now, it will save us a lot of time down the road."

His argument had a lot of merit, but Ves quickly declined the request. "I already have plans for my personal funds. For now, The LMC can fund its expansion by reinvesting its profits."

Jake looked disappointed, but he did not have any rights to any money earned by Ves in the first place. He knew it was something of a long shot to peel money away from his boss.

"There is another matter that needs to be discussed. The board of directors wants to convene soon to decide on a couple of important matters. Chief among them is the topic of issuing dividends."

Ves abruptly turned his full attention on Jake. "Dividends, you say?"

"Correct. The Larkinsons and much of the board believe that the Living Mech Corporation is past its initial growth phase. Due to the bottleneck in production and sales, our profits have stabilized as well. Short of investing in more production lines, there isn't any other compelling reason to reinvest all of the company's profits back into itself."

Ves could argue the point. Just because the company's growth had slowed didn't mean it stopped entirely. All of the profits it saved up would eventually be spent on things that would accelerate the company's growth.

Still, Ves knew without Jake needing to say that the Larkinsons hungered for money. With the war going on, they needed as much as they could get in order to support the careers of the Larkinsons in active duty.

As a Larkinson himself, Ves was sympathetic to their demands. He did not oppose the act of issuing dividends in principle, but Ves did not wish for the other shareholders to be too greedy about the matter.

"Tell the board that I'll be present when it next convenes." Ves nodded to Jake. "Tell them that I'm not against this suggestion, but they can forget about it if they want the LMC to hand out most of its profits to its shareholders."

If the LMC stopped investing in new production lines and instead gave away its profits to its shareholders, then the company would become stagnant and eventually reach a dead end.

As the majority shareholder, Ves stood to earn most of the dividends, but the last thing he needed was more cash.

After discussing these matters, Ves left his office and went back underground. This time, he entered the fabrication floor and approached Chief Cyril.

"Chief, please schedule the Dortmund production line for my own use. I'm almost ready to fabricate the prototype of my next design."

The chief whistled in appreciation. "You're truly ready to move on to this stage?"

"Do you think it's too late? Or too soon?"

"There is no sense of late or soon in the mech business. You're done when you're done. No one else can make that decision for you. Certainly, in a perfect universe, mech designers have access to an unlimited amount of resources to polish their design until it shines like a sun. But we don't live in that universe."

Ves agreed. "I hate to say it, but sometimes we can only make do with 'good enough'. I don't have the resources to go much further at this point."

They proceeded to prepare for the upcoming fabrication project. Each new design brought its own challenges. In order to minimize the chances of failure, Ves had to spend at least a couple of days simulating the fabrication process to see whether he could nail all of the critical parts.

He didn't spend these extra days in vain, because Ves also had to order a substantial amount of resources unique to his second original design.

Once the new shipment of raw materials arrived at the Mech Nursery, Ves readied himself to reproduce the design of his dreams.

"I hope it works. I know it can work. It has to work."

Chapter 396

"Why can't I get it to work?"

Ves stood stumped in front of the 3D printer as he halted his fabrication efforts. The other mech technicians who watched from the sidelines couldn't help him either.

Initially, fabricating the components for the prototype went smoothly. Ves already practiced fabricating the most tricky parts, and much of the components used familiar materials employed in his other designs.

The HRF armor plating posed no difficulty at all, although Ves found its lengthy fabrication time to be a drag. It couldn't be helped, as the formula key draw was to refine a lot of cheap materials into effective armor plating. Transforming all of those raw materials took time that even the best machines couldn't hurry up.

As for the now-familiar Veltrex formula, Ves knew all of its nuances inside and out. Parts which other mech technicians might struggle with came out of the Dortmund production line with ease.

To be sure of their integrity, Ves scanned each and every part with his Vulcaneye scanner. Even a deviation of 0.1 percent led him to scrap the entire part entirely and force him to fabricate another copy.

Mechs could tolerate a lot of deviances, but just because Ves could clunk some sloppy parts together didn't mean it would fly in the market. The MTA strictly certified every mech sold in the open market because they disapproved of the practice.

Ves stuck to a higher standard, so he was even stricter to himself than the MTA.

The only unforeseen problem came when he fabricated the two light crystals. As the gimmicks of his second original design, the crystals needed to be attention-grabbing and unique. In order to amplify their performance, Ves stretched their physical attributes to the limit of what he could make.

The smaller crystal posed fewer problems. The main challenge with this smaller sample came when Ves tried to assemble the laser rifle. Even though it was scaled to the size of a mech, some portions required extreme precision, and that was exactly the case with the smaller crystal.

"Still, anyone can assemble this rifle with enough practice." He determined after he fumbled around until he got the rifle to take on its intended form.

The big crystal rested on the chest of his hunched mech. Though the mech's posture made the crystal a bit less prominent than he originally intended, it would still be able to mitigate energy attacks from the front. Any laser beams that strayed close to the chest would partially lose their efficacy in the vicinity of this crystal.

The problem with this big one was that it was extremely hard to reproduce. It required a perfect environment and a flawless machine in order to recreate a large enough crystal.

It always worked when Ves practiced its fabrication in a virtual environment. He worked under perfect conditions back then. Right now, Ves already ruined his fourth big crystal. He looked in dismay as the Dortmund printer spat out a huge crystal that was larger than his body but displayed a very large crack on its surface.

"This is why you need to test out your designs for real." Chief Cyril said as he stepped forward until he stood next to Ves. "More complex mechs sometimes come with hundreds of tiny issues that aren't apparent during the modeling phases. Especially with weird stuff like these crystals. This is alien technology, right? Those fancy models of yours probably can't wrap their math around its attributes."

"You have a point." Ves conceded. "The smaller crystal is close enough to what I've reproduced in my lab to work. This bigger one is a different story."

He never physically fabricated a crystal of this size before. He vastly underestimated the actual difficulty involved in creating such a monstrosity. He thought it wouldn't be so troublesome to scale up a crystal according to his current understanding of the alien crystal technology.

Ves discretely turned his attention inward. "Can you do anything to help?"

The spirit of the crystal golem barely communicated back. Even though it was a complete spirit, it did not retain too much knowledge from its predecessor. It retained a lot of knowledge in some fields, but possessed huge gaps in many other areas.

"Do you think it's a problem with my design or a problem with the working environment?"

The chief scratched his head. "I'm not sure, but my gut tells me that reproducing the crystal is pushing beyond the limits of the capabilities of the Dortmund printer. It's like trying to cook a traditional meal without a kitchen."

The manufacturing of mechs and its components always centered around the design, the materials and the hardware. All three of these points needed to be satisfied in order to produce a good mech.

Right now, Ves encountered a shortcoming in the one area which he had never really worried about before. The formidable Dortmund printer which Ves relied on to produce his mechs for the next generation started to reach its limits.

Now that they recognized the problem, they could work on coming up with a solution.

"Maybe you should scale back your ambitious design. Do you really have to include such a huge crystal?"

Ves pursed his lips. "I can make some compromises on its size for the bronze and silver label variants, but the gold label mech is my poster model for this product line. It can't under-deliver on its promises."

"That's the trouble with gimmicks. It all sounds well and good, but when you try to turn them into reality, you begin to realize that they're called gimmicks for a reason. Anything that's good enough to be included in a standard design doesn't come with so many issues."

He basically faced two options right now. Either he could scale back his gimmick, or he could try to find a workaround for his problems.

"There shouldn't be a problem with the concept. It's only our hardware that's failing us." Ves summed up. "Problems with engineering can be solved with engineering."

Cyril snorted. "That's easier said than done. What do you want to do? Improve the Dortmund printer? You don't understand a thing about how it works."

"That's true. I'm thinking about using an entirely different approach to create the crystals. When you think about it, using a 3D printer to fabricate a crystal is like using a feather to hammer a nail. It's the wrong tool for the job."

The insights provided by the crystal golem revealed that his former race utilized an entirely different method to make their crystals. Human fabrication technology predominantly pieced the crystals together at an extremely microscopic level, while the extinct aliens essentially grew the crystals in a more organic manner.

Ves could go on and on about the technical details, but the basic solution would be to imitate the alien race's method of production by creating a customized, homebrew synthesizer.

"Instead of making our own machines, why not buy an existing one?"

"They won't be tuned to create the kind of crystals I want." Ves shook his head. "I already looked it up in case I can simplify the production of the crystals. There's no easy solution out there."

The machines that met his standard could only be obtained from second-rate states such as the Friday Coalition. He could get his hands on a basic machine that fit his needs for the ludicrous price of 100 merits.

He would rather make his own machine than to cough up that many merits at once.

"Do you even know how to make your own machine?"

"I've never made one before, but I already have a framework in mind. With my understanding of alien technology, I can probably kludge something together that works."

Even if Ves specialized in designing mechs, he possessed a broad breadth of knowledge that would not lose out to any of the engineers working at equipment manufacturers like Benson Industrial Machinery.

He only lacked practice and familiarity with industry-specific methods, but Ves had become somewhat familiar with the makeup of these kinds of machines. He personally worked on reconstructing the Dortmund printer by hand so he wasn't working from scratch.

"How much time and effort will this take, though?" Chief Cyril asked a very pertinent question. "If it takes a couple of months or more to design a tailor-made synthesizer, aren't you better off with an off-the-shelf machine?"

Ves faced a lot of time pressure as well. With everything that happened so far, the war between the two states risked becoming super-heated at any moment. Ves really wanted to finish his current design project before that happened.

He tried to estimate how much time and effort he needed to put in the design and creation of the crystal synthesizer. "Most of the technology involved is readily available. I only need to design and fabricate some custom modules in order to accommodate the alien technology. It's going to take some time, but not that much."

Most importantly, Ves did not intend to work by himself this time. In a project like this that fell out of his expertise, he figured that soliciting everyone's advice couldn't hurt.

The entire Production Department led by the Chief and Carlos started rotating in different shifts. They looked on as Ves designed a crystal synthesizer in front of their eyes. He already had a good idea on how it should look like, but he felt much less certain about some of the details.

He couldn't hope for the mech technicians to understand the entire machine, but their puzzlement guided Ves into a deeper understanding of what he did. Sometimes, they pointed out a couple of faults that Ves had overlooked, which saved him a lot of time down the road.

Five days went by as this open process continued. Both Ves and the mech technicians gained a lot out of this exchange. On the sixth day, Ves felt the crystal synthesizer's design looked good enough to reproduce.

"I don't fully understand how it works, but I can see it doesn't come cheap." Chief Cyril spoke as he inspected the final design for anything else they overlooked. "Unlike with mechs, you can't put it in a simulation and see whether it works."

Ves and the LMC lacked the right mathematical models to do so. As a company that mainly produced mechs, it had no business with designing and producing its own production equipment. Ves would have to sacrifice a lot to get his hands on the right models.

He would rather save himself the trouble and create the synthesizer on the spot. It was sloppy, but it worked.

"I think the cost of the raw materials alone will amount to about 250 million credits."

That was not a light sum, but the LMC could handle the cost. Ves only needed one of them in order to enable the LMC to mass produce the crystals necessary for his design.

Ves used the Dortmund printer to fabricate the components. He then moved on to the assembler to piece the synthesizer together.

Naturally, he did not fully rely on the machines to do all the work. For some of the more delicate components, he put them together by hand. At each step, he verified the assembly by scanning his work with his Vulcaneye. Any deviations from his design could prove costly, so Ves was very meticulous about the assembly.

A couple of days later, a crystal synthesizer half the size of a massive industrial printer rested in the corner of the Dortmund hall. After an extensive round of checks, Ves fed the synthesizer with the necessary materials to produce a big crystal.

After a couple of hours of work, the machine spat out a crystal with multiple cracks on its surface.

Ves, Carlos and Chief Cyril looked at each other in dismay.

"Maybe it's just some teething troubles."

They put the synthesizer to the test and let it grow more than ten crystals in a row.

Five of them came with enormous cracks. Three of them looked fine to the naked eye, but when they scanned the crystals, they discovered numerous micro fractures.

Only two of the crystals met the standard.

What now?

Chapter 397

"An eighteen percent success rate doesn't sound so bad." Carlos remarked from behind. "How much does it cost to grow one of these crystals?"

Ves quickly estimated the costs. "A couple of million credits due to all of the exotics. This specific composition is meant to be cheaper than the original substance."

"Can we recycle the failed products?"

They quickly investigated the failures and it turned out that salvagers could recover much of the value. It required special processes only available to professionals, so the LMC would lose a fair bit of money in the exchange.

However, at least they wouldn't lose tens of millions of credits on this entire endeavor.

To Ves, that was good enough. "I don't have the time to perfect the synthesizer. We'll just have to make due with what we have."

Right now, he wanted to move past this obstacle and finish assembling the prototype. The importance of finishing his rifleman mech design trumped any other considerations. He could always work on the synthesizer later.

He set one of the flawless crystals into the only remaining cavity inside the mostly-assembled prototype. After making all of the connections, the crystal appeared to be functional, but whether it truly worked remained to be soon.

With the installation of the central crystal, Ves only needed to wrap up a couple of matters to finish the prototype. When Ves stepped back from his completed work, he began to admire the vision he brought to life, if only partially.

Its hunched humanoid form and mottled green-brown coating gave it a sense that it thrived out of the spotlight. It functioned great on its own, but it showed its true value when employed alongside other mechs.

The entire frame looked sleek and slim for a medium mech, and the smaller-than-average laser rifle only reinforced that impression. The only sacrifice to this form factor was its backpack module which Ves had included by default. Without it, his rifleman mech wouldn't be able to change its external battie.

The entire Production Department drooled over the prototype. They knew what a monumental work it represented, and what kind of effort Ves had put into its design. Although the final design might look a bit different from this early copy, they already started imagining this mech on the field.

How would it perform? What kind of mech pilots did this mech appeal to? Will it sell any hotter than the Blackbeak?

"It looks like an alien."

"That's because it's based on a dead race."

The thing that creeped the mech technicians out the most was the weird head. It was basically a ball with holes spread evenly onto its surface. While that didn't do any favors to its structural integrity, its unsettling appearance emanated a faint psychological pressure.

Combined with the incomplete X-Factor, and anyone who gazed upon the mech would be taken aback.

Some time later, Chief Cyril asked Ves where he wanted to put the prototype to its paces.

"We recently worked on setting up our own testing grounds. The recent raid has pushed its completion back, but we imported enough equipment to perform at least basic tests. I think it's best if we do the testing in-house rather than send it to the APMTG like last time."

Sending it to a dedicated testing grounds would make sure that Ves gathered the most extensive amount of data. However, the same data might also get leaked.

"I'm not sure the prototype even works as expected." Ves said with a sigh. "Before we proceed to the most demanding tests, we should first find out if the mech works at all. Basic testing will be done for now. There's no need to put it on a ship to Bentheim."

Designing a rifleman mech differed a lot from designing a knight. When Ves designed the Blackbeak, he benefited from the fact that the type was one of the most mechanically simplistic mech types in existence. It featured relatively few complex systems and did not demand too much precision.

A knight only needed to be tough and durable in order to work.

Rifleman mechs made use of a lot more systems, all of which needed to mesh well with each other. A fault in one system might result in a knock-on effect on adjacent systems and so on. In the worst case scenario, a catastrophic fault might even lock up the entire mech in the middle of a battle.

Therefore, Ves already readied himself for a more extensive testing phase. He planned to fabricate at least one more prototype in order to make sure his changes hadn't proven detrimental to the design.

"Alright, let's get out to the testing grounds."

Ves did not personally plan to attend the entire test this time. He off-loaded the work to the LMC and only made sure they measured the things he wanted to know, such as the performance of the two crystals.

"Who shall be its test pilot?"

Ves was tempted to call up Melkor, but figured that it might be a bit too premature for him to get familiar with his latest design. Instead, he ordered someone else from the Avatars of Myth to take up that duty instead.

A professional testing ground employed specially trained test pilots who knew how to push their mechs to the limit without breaking them. The LMC's testing grounds enjoyed no such luxury, but everyone made due with what they got.

In the meantime, Ves took a rare break from his work and tried to locate Lucky. His cat hadn't shown up at all since the raid, causing him to fret over the health of his feline companion many times.

He figured that Lucky hadn't gone very far from the Mech Nursery, so walked the entire perimeter with his Vulcaneye pointing down at the ground. Although it didn't specialize in it, the multiscanner offered him the ability to sweep a wide area for specific signals.

Ves programmed in the attributes of Rorach's Bone and began to walk back and forth along the grounds. Although the scanner wouldn't be able to penetrate more than a couple of kilometers underground, its current reach was much better than every other scanner in his possession.

After half a day of searching the area close to the former gap in the walls, the Vulcaneye let out a loud beep.

"Found you!"

The scanner's readout revealed a very strong signal that matched the profile of high-grade Rorach's Bone more than one kilometer underground. Ves marked the spot and called up a digging team from the security garrison.

The people of Sanyal-Ablin came equipped with a person-sized digger module. It started to drill through the ground by itself under the supervision of a security tech. Twenty minutes later, the digger module reached Lucky's presumed location.

Once the digger module climbed back up to the tunnel, it carried a very sad-looking Lucky.

"Meow..."

The cat had seen better days. His formerly milky-white body took on a gray and lifeless shade. His back had a nasty hole that only just started closing up with the help of the self-repairing properties of Rorach's Bone.

"Lucky!" Ves picked up Lucky and hugged him against his chest. "You don't have to repair your body by yourself. Let me help!"

Ves quickly brought Lucky's damaged body back and tried several ways to hurry up the repair process. He fed Lucky with a bunch of exotics and attempted to transfer energy directly to his body.

It didn't work as well as he hoped. Somehow, Lucky couldn't take on energy directly. He ran on something different than normal, and the only way to get it was by digesting high-value minerals.

Feeding Lucky worked better, but the cat didn't display much of an appetite this time. It was as if his stomach could only digest so much in his damaged state.

"Rest well, Lucky. I hope you get back up."

"Meow.."

Lucky risked his life to save the Mech Nursery from destruction. Though the price was heavy, they eventually came out on top. Lucky would recover, which was more than he could say for his shield generator. With less than fifty percent charge left, Ves could ill afford another risky move.

Thinking about the money piled up in his bank account, Ves finally decided to expand the Avatars of Myth. He tracked down Melkor at the mech stables of the Avatars. Melkor had just wrapped up a training session with his subordinates and was about to turn in for the day until he spotted Ves.

"It's time."

"Time for what?"

"Time to turn the Avatars into a full-blown fighting force. Is your cadre ready?"

Melkor had been waiting for this day. "We still need to work on our team tactics, but we got the basic coordination down. It's a good thing we haven't lost any pilots from the previous battle. Fighting the Vesians head-to-head has instead boosted our esprit-de-corps. The men and women under my command already developed a sense of purpose and belonging."

"That sounds great!" Ves replied. The more his mech pilots felt like they belonged, the more they were willing to risk their lives for him. Loyalty always took a lot of effort to foster. "In the next half year, I want the Avatars to scale up to a company-sized force. I want at least forty mechs and a matching amount of ships."

"It's not that easy to get our hands on some ships, and we need a no-nonsense captain to keep them under our thumb."

"I already have a captain in mind. Don't worry about that. I'd like to hear your opinions on what kind of ships we need to buy. Although I'm flush with cash right now, I can't afford to splurge on a combat carrier."

Melkor looked disappointed at that. It was the dream of every mech force to be brought from star to star with a purpose-built combat vessel. Naturally, both of them would never dream of acquiring a fleet carrier. Only entire states could afford to procure or construct such massive ships.

Let alone the construction costs, Ves couldn't even bear the running costs of owning a capital ship. The amount of money spent on fuel, supplies, salaries and more would bankrupt him within a couple of years.

Even the more modestly sized combat carriers fell out of consideration. At this stage, Ves reluctantly let go of trying to own a well-armored ship and started to consider more modest ships.

"With our current budget, we can consider two possible options." Melkor spoke up after some thought. "We can either go cheap and snap up a couple of old cargo haulers that have been converted to mech carriers, or we can spend a lot more to buy carriers that have been built for this purpose from the start."

A step down from combat carriers would be the so-called light carriers. This used to be an informal designation for any private sector vessel that had been designed to convey mechs for mercenaries and the like.

They largely featured the same civilian-grade armor as the cargo haulers, but with thicker layers. They also featured much more reinforced structure and more hardened ship components.

All in all, light carriers formed the best choice of conveyance among the stars for a personal force like the Avatars of Myth.

The only problem was price.

"Those ships don't come cheap. Even a basic one can cost a billion credits." Ves replied. He already did his research beforehand. "Compared to a beat-up cargo hauler that some shipyard rearranged into a carrier, the costs are much more generous. A fully functional one can be bought for 200 million credits, while a less reliable one can be had for fifty million credits or less."

Prices varied wildly in terms of age, quality, model, size and more. The smallest mercenary corps often couldn't be picky, and chose to traverse the stars with dubious-looking rust buckets akin to the Happy Jelly owned by the Whalers.

Thinking about that old and decaying ship prompted Ves to wince. He did not wish his Avatars to ride on such awful carriers.

"Let's go for the light carriers. I can afford the expense, if only barely. It's worth the investment."

After making their choice, they started picking the right model of ships.

Chapter 398

Ves felt as if he turned back to three and looked at a catalog of model starships. Even though Ves developed a love for mechs early on, he also enjoyed other marvels. What kind of kid didn't fantasize about gallivanting across the galaxy in a modern and fully crewed starship?

As the owner of the Barracuda, Ves enjoyed owning the sleek corvette, even if he hadn't traveled on it all that much.

It was the thought that counted. He could always rely on a quick getaway as long as he owned his own vessel. Many others couldn't say the same.

From the Age of Stars, humanity became increasingly more dependent on starships to run their entire society. A single planet could never fulfill the needs of its citizens on its own. Not in the long run.

During the Age of Conquest, humanity aggressively developed bigger and better starships. The states that emerged during this time measured their military might against the aliens and each other by the size of their navies.

Armed warships began to become more prolific during this time. With the development and proliferation of capital warships, weapons scaled to become more destructive as well.

With some cannons capable of cracking entire moons, warships increasingly lost their allure and turned into objects of fear.

By the time the Age of Mechs came to pass, the Common Fleet Alliance worked hard to remove the dread and stigma associated with warships. They disappeared from the public eye, whereupon weapon-less starships began to make a comeback.

With the ascendancy of mechs, a demand emerged for starships equipped to accommodate mechs instead of general heavy equipment. Mechs packed into standard-sized containers still fit fine in all sorts of cargo haulers and transports, but mech forces couldn't be bothered with packing and unpacking their mechs in the middle of a warzone.

"We need ships that can launch and retrieve mechs immediately."

Mech carriers emerged from two different strains. Ship designers modified the classic assault carrier designs that used to convey infantry or tank units from planet to planet. Mechs required a lot more vertical space in the hangar and launch bays, so the first combat carriers quickly became very expensive.

Since such expensive vessels were out of reach for most private sector outfits, many clever ship designers started taking old, decommissioned hulls and converted them into improvised mech carriers.

These carriers converted from old cargo haulers and all kinds of other starships with large cargo bays didn't seem very reliable, but they did the job without breaking the bank, and that was what mattered the most.

Of course, Ves would not consider buying these rust buckets. He could afford something much better.

In between converted carriers and combat carriers existed a special ship classification called light carriers. It basically took the best of the two former classes and combined them into an economic but somewhat capable ship class that was the favorite of medium and large-sized outfits everywhere.

Ship designers utilized thick plates, cheap civilian-grade ship armor and a highly reinforced internal structure and hull. This gave the light carriers a lot more resilience in direct battle, though they would never be able to withstand the amount of punishment that combat carriers could endure.

More importantly to Ves, light carriers utilized their internal volume much more efficiently compared to converted carriers. The former had been designed from the ground up to accommodate mechs, while the latter only tacked on that feature afterwards.

"We're going to need two big ones or three smaller ones." Melkor stated as they sat behind a console and stared at a projection of commercial starships. "With forty mechs, give or take a few, it's very difficult to find a good ship that can fit twenty mechs at once."

Ves nodded next to him as he navigated through the virtual portal. He narrowed down the selection of the catalog to light carriers that fell within his budget.

Every light carrier that fit twenty mechs cost at least more than 2 billion credits.

Even if Ves could afford such hardware, he almost had a heart attack when he saw the prices.

"These prices ramp up really fast! A light carrier that fits fifteen mechs only costs a bit more than 1.3 million credits right now!"

This meant that Ves would be better off buying three smaller carriers than two bigger ones. He would have to spend at least 4 billion credits to accommodate forty mechs, but he could also pay 3.9 billion credits to fit forty-five mechs instead.

The latter seemed like a better deal overall until he realized that he needed to pay for the upkeep of three ships instead of two.

"Three ships allow us to bring more spare mechs or supplies, but it's going to be difficult finding a good crew for all of them at this time." Melkor noted. "You're the boss, Ves. I'm fine with whatever you decide."

It depended on what Ves demanded from the Avatars of Myth. He initially established them because he wanted to stop relying on other forces for protection. He wanted to command over his own force of mechs that he could rely on to accompany him through these tumultuous times.

Ves weighed the matter and came to a decision. "I think it's best to stick with two light carriers for now. Right now, it's a bit too troublesome to get three new ships up-and-running in a short amount of time. These larger carriers may be bigger and more expensive, but they bring more benefits as well."

The bigger ships not only carried more mechs, but they also offered larger workshops and cargo holds. The extra storage would especially come in handy in expeditions that involved resource extraction.

In order to drive down the cost, the smaller carriers squeezed as much space for mechs as possible, leaving very little room for other cargo.

"It's a good choice in the long run." Melkor nodded. "Look at this model. The L'Aquitaine Shipyards Asperion Mark IX."

The Asperion Mark IX cost 2.3 billion credits, but for a ship that carried twenty mechs, it came with additional bonuses above the bare models. The Asperion in particular came with powerful thrusters that seemed geared for quick landings and takeoffs.

"It's a very good ship model when you want to deploy in an active warzone, but it's not what I'm looking for. All of that performance comes with awful fuel economy and shorter range. It's a good ship for warmongering mercenary corps, but I'm looking for something with more reach."

Ves wanted a ship model that could match the extensive ship range of the Barracuda. This would help a lot if Ves ever wanted to go on a distant expedition.

The pair browsed the catalog a little more and found another noteworthy ship model. Melkor zoomed in on the Consolidated Starship Design and Assembly's latest light carrier, the Remar Martis ICG-7F.

"This Remar Martis has the best range out of the list. It's incredibly fuel efficient and comes with larger fuel tanks as well. While it won't be able to match the Barracuda's reach completely, it definitely comes close."

"Hmmm..." Ves mused as he inspected the specs. "The range is good, but I can't say the same for everything else."

"You're right. I wouldn't bring the Remar Martis anywhere near a fight."

The ship designers working for CSDA prioritized range and fuel economy over protection and cargo space. That might not sound so bad, but the ship cost 2.7 billion credits, which was way too overpriced in his eyes.

As a mech designer by profession, he could recognize when he was being ripped off. CSDA marketed the Remar Martis for its range and fuel economy, but in truth it didn't cost that much to produce this model.

Just with mechs, armor cost the most of all. No matter how sophisticated the engine and other internal components, they didn't cost nearly as much as an extra layer of armor plating.

"Let's look for ships with balanced specs. I think every aspect is important."

He wasn't stupid enough to pick a perfectly balanced ship. Boring ship models like that compromised on anything. Ves still sought a ship with more extensive range, but not at the cost of everything else.

After an hour of scouring through the catalog, they came across an uncommon ship model from an obscure foreign shipyard that exported its products to the Republic.

The KSG Naval Works Trieste TRLC-343 fit all of their criteria. The model possessed a generous range while managing to avoid skimping on armor and cargo space. However, the light carrier was a little larger than most, and came with a pretty high price tag of 2.6 billion dollars each.

Ves fell in love with the Trieste designs. The smooth curved contours of the ship complimented the sleek Barracuda, and the ship came with the biggest workshop compartment he had ever seen.

"The cost is a little much, but I can afford them if I want to. What do you think, Melkor?"

"I'm fine if you want something cheaper. The capabilities of the TRLC-343 look very good, but we can still opt for three smaller carriers if you want to save on money."

Ves shook his head. "This is an investment for the future. I think it's a mistake to skimp out on something as good as this. Let's make this our first choice."

The Trieste seemed really good, but a couple of other models came close while demanding a bit less money. With a selection of five different ship models, Ves decided to make his selection and place an order later.

"Let me first send this list to Captain Silvestra. As a ship captain herself, she might be able to point out shortcomings that we haven't spotted."

It would be a mistake to base a major purchase on the spec sheets alone. As Ves very well knew, many qualities of a product simply couldn't be fit into a set of numbers.

After he sent a brief to the captain of the Barracuda, Ves and Melkor moved on to expanding their roster of mechs.

"If I decide to place an order for two Trieste-class light carriers, I won't have enough money left to acquire thirty-one mechs at once. Not if I want to leave some room for upkeep."

Even with his recent windfalls, Ves did not earn all that much in a personal capacity. He drew practically no salary from the LMC as the founder, CEO and chairman of his own company, mainly because he never bothered to do anything about it. Even if he decided to open the dividend spigot in the next board meeting, Ves still came up short.

Melkor showed his understanding. "The Avatars of Myth doesn't need forty mechs at once. It will take time to find some promising recruits and train them to a level where they can be of use. I would much prefer it if you place an order for those carriers as soon as possible, because shipyards tend to take a long time to assemble and deliver them to their customers if they're made to order."

"You're right. The Trieste is made to order. Right now, KSG Naval Works has a waiting list of four months."

Ves held a lot of money, but it seemed that he always found himself penniless after another bout of spending.

"That's the price of power in this galaxy." Melkor said. His lips curled up in a rueful smile. "Small figures like me can't even dream about spending this kind of cash. I really envy you, Ves. Between piloting mechs and designing them, I would have gone for the latter if I knew you could earn this much money."

"Hahahaha!" Ves couldn't control himself and laughed. "That's the funniest thing I've ever heard. I used to dream about becoming nothing more than a mech pilot!"

Both of them chuckled at each other. They both knew that they weren't entirely serious.

Ves achieved much more as a mech designer than he would ever achieve as a mech pilot. Melkor was a true Larkinson who could keep a cool head on the battlefield, but wouldn't know what to do in the workshop or behind the counter of a store.

"I have a good feeling about the Trieste. They're pricey, but they're also beasts. It's best to invest in them early in order to get them ready for anything that can happen in the future."

"You're the one who's paying, Ves. Just keep in mind that most outfits don't spend nearly as much money on a pair of ships."

Chapter 399

Ves returned to his penthouse office after finishing his discussions on expanding the Avatars of Myth. Considering the vast nature of their current expansion, it wasn't possible to expand their fighting strength to forty mechs within six months.

"It will probably take a year, if not more." He guessed. "These things take time."

If he wanted to, he could hire a mercenary corps instead, but that would be a huge mistake. They only ever cared about themselves. By establishing his own outfit, Ves would be certain that its power belonged to him and no one.

He threw himself back to his work. With the prototype still undergoing tests at the nearby testing grounds, Ves wanted to take care of any other matters that he neglected as of late. He turned on his terminal and went through the recent reports sent in his direction.

"Local politics, bah."

The self-bombing incident of Orinoco provoked an enormous amount of outrange. If the citizens of Cloudy Curtain seemed mad, then the rest of the Republic were absolutely head-over-heels about this incident. If not for the valiant defense at the Mech Nursery, the reputation of the entire planet would have already plummeted to the bottom.

Ves briefly skimmed the recent events. The investigators from Bentheim hadn't found any proof that led to the ones responsible for the devastation, but that didn't help the White Doves very much. Everyone pretty much assumed they did it because it fit their ideology the best.

Naturally, the spokespersons of the pacifists vehemently denied the accusations, but even their strongest supporters started to waver. The White Doves went into full crisis mode in order to stem the bleeding. Whether they would survive at the end of the day or not, nobody knew.

"They survived this far without any problem. I don't believe they can be felled by a single crisis."

Many citizens still wanted nothing to do with the war and the wider galaxy. The recent horrors taught some people that they couldn't bury their heads in the sand, but it prompted even more people to bury their heads even deeper.

In her report, Calsie predicted that the White Doves would eventually find their footing with the radicals among their circle.

What this meant for Cloudy Curtain as a whole, neither Ves nor Calsie didn't dare to make any predictions. One thing was for sure. The LMC's influence had reached new heights. On both an economic and societal level, the company became a steady fixture in the minds of everyone who lived on the rural planet.

That wasn't too shabby for a company founded around two years ago.

Ves turned back to his paperwork and went through all the other reports. The company's financial picture looked better than before. All of the recent spending put the company's financial health in a dangerous position for a time, but the LMC quickly climbed out of the hole with the help of increased demand for bronze label Blackbeaks.

People bought them because they admired the battle footage of the two gold label Blackbeaks. The Marketing Department's excessive promotion seemed to be in poor taste to Ves, but the public couldn't get enough.

Since gold and silver label Blackbeaks were hard to get, buyers turned instead to the third-party manufacturers to get a quick fix. EME even instituted a waiting list again as they received an unanticipated influx of orders.

Vaun Industrial also enjoyed a small boost in sales, though the effect was much less pronounced. Foreigners didn't care too much about the Bright-Vesia Wars. Anyone watching the generational conflict from the sidelines thought that nothing substantial happened during these wars because the border between the two states never shifted very much after the end of each war.

"Countless mechs are destroyed and hundreds of thousands of mech pilots die in each and every war. The stars will be dyed with blood by the time this latest war will end."

When Ves read the reports, he spotted signs of an impending mobilization order. The Bright Republic had only switched to half a war footing right now. They hadn't mobilized nearly as much manpower and assets as they could have because it took time to organize everything.

So instead, the Bright Republic stretched out the process in multiple steps. Right now, the reports suggested that the Mech Corps had almost finished mobilizing what could be brought to bear within the short-term.

In the first wave, they would certainly call up a large number of reservists, including many mech designers. Many of them would move on to supporting the Mech Corps in the rear but close to the frontlines.

Ves believed that a mech designer like him escaped that fate. Someone of his stature would probably be called up the second wave, which would happen a little later but was not too long away.

"I have to publish my rifleman mech design before that happens. Even among mech designers, there's a large difference between those who published a single commercially successful design compared to those who published more."

Publishing multiple successful designs enhanced his prestige, which improved his odds of landing a cozy assignment. It could mean the difference between mindless number crunching to actual design work.

Ves tentatively resolved to complete his design within a month, which actually shortened his time to a few weeks because his design also had to go through the MTA's validation process.

"There's barely enough time for me to squeeze in another prototype."

He already had to hurry up the process and cut some corners in order to finish his second design in a reasonable time frame.

Several days went by as Ves reacquainted himself with his company. Besides holding up in his office, he also held meetings with the heads of each department. Ves got a much better picture of the current state of the LMC after listening to the people in charge of its various aspects.

All of them made some early preparations for the coming release of the company's second product line. The market for rifleman mechs was very competitive, so the Marketing Department carried the heaviest burden of all.

"Are you confident you can drum up demand for my second design?" Ves asked Gavin.

"Oh, it's dead easy as long as your design performs within expectation. We can sell a dead rat as long as it has some good points!"

Gavin's words reminded Ves that his design might not match the expectations placed upon it. Even as he fabricated the prototype, Ves got a sense that the mech had been a little discordant.

At the end of the testing period, the results finally came in. Ves received an extensive written report along with countless logs and a lot of recordings. Carlos, who had been supervising the test, visited Ves in his office in person.

"I can already tell on the look on your face that the news isn't good."

"The prototype is largely sound, except for one annoying aspect."

"Let me guess. It's the gimmicks, right?"

"Exactly so." Carlos confirmed as he manipulated the projector to display a recording of a couple of firing tests. "As you can see here, we got the rifle to work after a bit of kludging. We rearranged some of its internal components to get it to work, but we can get the weapon to work."

Ves nodded. "I'll be sure to study the modifications you've done to make it work. How did the big crystal fare?"

"The center crystal is a bust." His old friend bluntly stated. "Oh, don't misunderstand, we got some things to work on, such as the ability to draw in energy. It's the discharge that's the issue."

"Lay it out on me, Carlos. I can take it."

"There are three major problems with the big crystal. First, it's output isn't steady. Sometimes it releases a trickle, other times it dumps its entire capacity at once."

"So the control module I've attached to the crystal doesn't work?"

"It might as well be a piece of scrap! Its existence doesn't make any difference!"

"Noted. What else is wrong?"

"Well, our next problem with the chest crystal is we can't aim the light beam at all. The firing angle changes with each discharge. Sometimes, the beam goes high. Sometimes, it goes sideways. Other times, it goes low. Only rarely does the beam go straight and parallel to the ground."

Ves began to frown. "This is something else that the control module is supposed to take care of. Have you checked whether it worked at all?"

"We inspected it more than twenty times! All of the hardware works! It's just that the crystal outfight ignores its signals for some reason."

"Okay. The third problem then. What else is there?"

"Well, the final issue is a fundamental design flaw more than a mechanical problem. You see, if the crystal releases the beam at a straight angle, the hunch of the frame makes it difficult to aim it forward or upwards. The mech has to bend its upper body backwards in order to discharge the beam anywhere else but the ground. The test pilot told us that it's a huge tell that largely defeats the purpose of having a center crystal."

Ves already understood that point when he made those design choices. Even though his vision for his mech had changed to imitate the posture of the crystal builders, he didn't regret the choice.

"This also ties in with the control module. If it worked as it's supposed to, it allows the mech to fire a beam from the chest at the right angle. While that doesn't help too much if the mech pilot wants to shoot at something in the air, it should be fine on level terrain."

All of these major problems came down to the control module. For some reason, it didn't work the way it was supposed to. Ves scratched his head and tried to figure out why. It wasn't anything complex and Ves triple-checked each part that made up the control module, so he hadn't screwed it up.

There was something more fundamental in play. Ves found it strange that the control module worked perfectly in the simulations, but did nothing when he reproduced a physical copy."

Carlos continued to fill in Ves of all the pertinent information. Besides the malfunctioning gimmicks, the rest of the mech moved fast and smoothly. According to the test pilot, it was the most comfortable rifleman mech he had ever piloted in his career.

"I don't get it." He said. "Your rifleman mech is mechanically sound and strong on its own if you leave out the gimmicks. That modified laser rifle of yours isn't really necessary either. Sure, it cuts down on total weight, but it's much easier to grab a readily available laser rifle than to supply a custom-built one for this model. Why bother with these crystals at all?"

That was a difficult question, especially in light of all the difficulties Ves faced in trying to get it to work.

Ves knocked his fist against the table. "No matter how troublesome it can be to integrate the gimmicks in my mech, the end product should be worth it. Mech design isn't all about the basics. The market expects more from us. Sure, I can publish a rifleman mech design without any bells and whistles right now if I wanted to, but what will that get me? Nothing!"

"The performance of your mech isn't that bad!"

"It's not good enough! Not if we compare it to the best on the market! That gimmick that you find so troublesome is our secret weapon and our only hopes of obtaining a share of the market."

Carlos sighed and crossed his arms. "You're too emotionally committed to this idea of including this toy into your mech. I know what's going on. You stumbled upon some fancy alien technology one day, and the first thing you do is try to find a way to add it to your next design. That's fine if you can get it to work, but who can tell if you are wasting countless hours on a feature that will never meet our expectations?"

He laid out a very important question. In his eyes, Ves fell into the sunk cost fallacy. He was like a gambler who lost an early bet, but kept making bad bets one after another in order to recoup his earlier losses.

Chapter 400

Unforeseen problems always popped up during a design process. Ves previously did his best to minimize inexplicable conundrums by never working with technology beyond his means.

For his first original design, he deliberately chose to start with a knight mech because it was one of the most mechanically simple types of mechs available. Stepping up to a rifleman mech which featured a lot more systems interacting with each other meant that the chances of something going wrong went up.

"I'm not going to draw back because of a single setback." Ves responded to Carlos. "Sure, I can make do without the gimmicks and publish as is with a couple of touch-ups. But what does that say about me and my approach to designing mechs?"

"That you're safe?"

"Safe is boring! Safe doesn't drive any sales! The strongest maxim in the mech industry is that it's better to publish a mech with flaws but is extremely good at some aspect than to publish an all-round mech with nothing that stands out!"

"This is different from that, Ves! You're not talking about a flaw that can be worked around, but an outright failure of a core feature! What are you going to do with a crystal that's a dud?"

Ves faced a lot of pressure to discard the gimmick, but he believed it would be a mistake to do so. It was better not to publish his design at all than to leave it out. The crystal formed a core part of its identity since Ves initially set out his vision for his design.

Certainly, the huge amount of time he spent on incorporating this feature also played a factor. He spent so much time on it already that it would be an awful shame to discard his previous work.

Just like gamblers who threw away good money after bad, Ves maintained his confidence that he could overcome this setback in time. He was honest enough to know that he might be digging a deeper hole for himself, but he just couldn't stop at this point.

Ves waited for the prototype to return to be shipped to the private workshop, upon which he scoured its entire frame. Almost every part was held in place and performed within expectations. Even the control module appeared to be in working order.

It just didn't work.

"Why not?" Ves scratched his head while furrowing his brows.

In order to test out his suspicions, he removed the control module from the prototype and began to connect it to some of the smaller crystals he hosted in his labs. After adjusting some of the settings in the control module, the connected crystal responded perfectly according to the commands that Ves sent out.

"That's strange."

The control module worked with smaller crystals but not the bigger one. From what he determined so far, the problem didn't lie in the control module, but instead the bigger crystal.

"Maybe it's defective as well?"

Ves brought in the second large crystal that his homebrew synthesizer produced without flaws and tested out the same connection.

Again, it didn't work.

"Both of these crystals are flawless. They shouldn't differ from the crystals in the simulations at all?"

So what went wrong with these crystals? He started to perform numerous tests, and found a clue when he observed what happened to the signal being sent out by the control module. The signal seemed to disappear into nowhere once it entered the big crystals.

"I see what's going on."

These alien crystals reacted strangely to certain input, and it must have treated the incoming signal as an energy source. The crystal subsequently absorbed the signal, preventing it from issuing commands.

"Still, how can I solve this problem?"

Ves didn't understand why the smaller crystals properly recognized the signal while the bigger ones treated it as an energy source. He must have overlooked something very substantial when he initially scaled up the crystals through extrapolation.

"Maybe I need to scale up the properties of the signal as well."

He proceeded to tinker with the control module and set it to send out a variety of different signals. He increased and decreased its frequency, amplitude, duration and etcetera, only to come up with the same fruitless result.

"There's something about this supersized crystal that turns it into something completely different than its smaller varieties."

Experimenting with signals hadn't brought him any closer to a solution, so Ves took a step back and tried to approach the problem from a different angle. Right now, a major discrepancy exists between simulation and reality.

A mathematical model that tried to approach reality could never imitate all of its facets. Ves knew that. He suspected that some obscure effect not baked in the models played a key role in the inability for the crystal to process the signals.

Ves proceeded to compare the data from reality and simulation and tried to spot all of the differences.

"There's too many differences."

The datasets differed too drastically for him to make any sense where the problem lied. Ves had to manually comb through each discrepancy. It was like trying to find a needle in a haystack.

The work bored him a lot, and Ves hadn't been able to pin down the reasons why these differences appeared. He knew too little about how reality worked. Not even a Master Mech Designer dared to claim something similar.

"This might not be the right approach."

Maybe he should turn to help. There wasn't anything preventing him from calling someone knowledgeable to help him out of this fix. Ves considered sending a message to Master Olson or Horatio, her assistant.

"What will that do for their impression of me if I walk up to them like a child who lost his toy?"

Ves felt very reluctant to call for help for something he should be capable of solving on his own. To do otherwise was to admit that he had overreached.

He turned to the crystal golem whose spirit lingered in his mind. The crystal golem largely stayed quiet these last few days.

"Can you help me out? What does your understanding of crystals tell you?"

The crystal golem responded lethargically, as if it didn't have much of a clue either. However, it did take the initiative to send out an impression of a crystal cube to Ves.

"The crystal cube?" Ves remembered that the crystal golem had taken over his body and used its control over it to synthesize a strange crystal cube. He couldn't figure out its purpose, so he put it in the vault. "What is that cube supposed to do?"

The crystal golem released the mental equivalent of a shrug. Its spotty memory didn't cover that area. All the spirit knew was that the crystal cube was a very important device to the crystal builders.

Curious, Ves decided to retrieve the strange object. He left the labs and entered a highly secure elevator that brought him down to the vault floor. After going through an extensive round of checks, he entered the vault and opened up the safe that held the cube.

As he pulled it out, he stared at its transparent shape under the light. "Is this a weapon? A processor? Or something else?"

The crystal golem built it for a reason, and Ves believed that it played a very important role somehow. He spent the next couple of hours trying to get it to reveal its secrets. He connected it to all kinds of devices and sent all kinds of signals at it, only to come up with nothing.

Even knocking at it with physical force failed to elicit a response. The cube behaved similar to the bigger crystal but it proved to be even more inscrutable.

After trying every trick in the book, Ves placed the cube against the surface of the big crystal on a whim.

Things suddenly started happening. Both crystals started lightning up from the inside. Ves almost dropped the cube, but he kept his hold on it as it interacted with the other crystal. From the sensor readouts, Ves quickly figured out that the circuits embedded into the structure of the crystals had become active for some reason.

The entire process took about three minutes to fizzle out. Both crystals turned inert and nothing Ves tried out could replicate the process.

"Maybe it works with other crystals as well?"

When Ves pressed the cube against the other big crystal, the pair started lightning up as well. They remained active for the exact amount of time before turning back to an inert state.

"Curious."

Ves proceeded to push the crystal cube against the smaller crystals as well. This caused the pair to light up, but for a much briefer amount of time. When Ves plotted the data, the formula was relatively straight forward. The larger the volume, the more time the process dragged on.

"This is all very interesting, but what has happened?"

He noticed an immediate difference when he resumed his basic tests. The big crystal no longer ate up incoming signals, but began to process them properly. Its internal circuits appeared to be following different instructions this time that made them compatible with this control method.

More than that, many other parameters improved as well, though not more than ten percent in any single area. This held true for each crystal no matter the size.

By now, Ves slowly understood the purpose of the crystal cube, if only one of them. "This is the key. It's a catalyst that unlocks the true potential of the crystals.

It had to do with the circuits embedded in the structure. From the scans he made, Ves noticed that the crystals hadn't changed, but the energy running through the circuits followed different paths.

In truth, there was much about the circuits that Ves did not understand. Even now, only a fraction of the total circuits ever did anything.

"I think I solved my problem now."

Ves set out to resolve the problem with the chest crystals and succeeded in coming up with a solution. While Ves did not prefer to become dependent on a single object, he had no other alternatives for the time being.

The crystal cube was unique and formed the key in getting the most important gimmick to work. From another perspective, its uniqueness was a good thing. It meant that others wouldn't be able to replicate his gimmicks without creating something similar to the unique cube.

Good luck with that.

The advantages became more clear to Ves, and he grinned when he realized he possessed a monopoly on something. "Only my gold label rifleman mechs will enjoy these extravagantly-sized crystals. Every other variant will have to make do without this capability."

The bronze and silver label versions would only hold crystals only half as large or smaller. Ves hadn't determined the threshold where the control module's signals ceased to work on a crystal.

With a clear direction in front of him, Ves wrapped up his experiments and embedded the big crystal back in its socket on the chest of the prototype. He also took aside the laser rifle and partially disassembled it in order to activate it with the crystal cube as well.

After that, he spent a couple of days making minor adjustments to the rest of the frame. Ves hadn't let the problems with the gimmicks distract him from the other shortcomings.

In order to save some time, Ves decided not to fabricate a second prototype, but make his modifications on the design on the spot. While it was a bit more troublesome to change the shape and configuration of an existing mech, he still managed to accomplish most of what he wanted to do.

As for the rest, Ves went back to the Dortmund production line to fabricate the remaining replacement parts. After a brief assembly, the minutely-improved prototype was ready to be sent to the testing grounds again.

Chief Cyril and Carlos looked perplexed when Ves informed them that he solved the problem with the chest crystal.

"You still don't understand anything about these crystals. Is it really safe to go through with using them?" Carlos asked.

"I think the risks are manageable." Ves confidently replied. "I've tried almost everything to get those inactive circuits to work, but nothing happened. While there's a risk they'll activate in the middle of a battle and do something strange, I don't think it will happen very often."

Although it sounded as if he was content to include a ticking time bomb in his design, Ves believed it would take an extraordinary impulse to elicit a strange reaction. In those conditions, the rest of the mech might already be trashed before the crystal could do something strange.

"Let's get through the tests as fast as possible so I can make my final tweaks on my design!"