The Mech Touch

by Stayrr

Humanity has conquered half the galaxy and the Age of Mechs reigns supreme! Ves Larkinson lacked the genetic aptitude to become a famed mech pilot. Fighting against his fate, he studied mech design in order to express his love for mechs as a builder instead of a soldier. When Ves graduated from college, he returned to a new but empty boutique. Left with a small, newly founded mec

15. 368 - 399

Read The Mech Touch - Chapter 368 Shaping online free - Novelfull

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 outweighed 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 in 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 to 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 other 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 broke 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."

If you find any errors ( Ads popup, ads redirect, broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know report chapter so we can fix it as soon as possible.

Report chapter

Chapter 369: Leaving the Cave

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 get 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 reached 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 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 amount 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 smooth. "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 exorted 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 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."

If you find any errors ( Ads popup, ads redirect, broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know report chapter so we can fix it as soon as possible.

Report chapter

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 come 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 has 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 prioritised 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 on 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.

If you find any errors ( Ads popup, ads redirect, broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know report chapter so we can fix it as soon as possible.

Report chapter

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 a least a decade to growth 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 use 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 blanket 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 an 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.

"That 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 describe. 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 have 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?"

If you find any errors ( Ads popup, ads redirect, broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know report chapter so we can fix it as soon as possible.

Report chapter

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 cheap 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 to 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 a 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 role. 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 its 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 be impressing 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."

If you find any errors ( Ads popup, ads redirect, broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know report chapter so we can fix it as soon as possible.

Report chapter

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 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 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 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 grey 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 off runnings 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 to 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."

If you find any errors ( Ads popup, ads redirect, broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know report chapter so we can fix it as soon as possible.

Report chapter

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 in 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 on 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! It's opening strike alone is enough to split my mech in half!"

"Any men 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.

In 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 maneating 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 maneating 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.

If you find any errors ( Ads popup, ads redirect, broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know report chapter so we can fix it as soon as possible.

Report chapter

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 around 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.

It's 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 grown. 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 mediumweight 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 it 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 find 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 for 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 greyed-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!"

If you find any errors ( Ads popup, ads redirect, broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know report chapter so we can fix it as soon as possible.

Report chapter

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 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 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 it 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 out 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 experienced 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 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!"

If you find any errors ( Ads popup, ads redirect, broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know report chapter so we can fix it as soon as possible.

Report chapter

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 amount 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 Star Sector.

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 Wind Star 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 studied 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 lastgen mechs, but he did not study the generation before that too closely. Still, if nothing else, he could make up 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 of 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 Star Sector 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 suprise 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.

If you find any errors ( Ads popup, ads redirect, broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know report chapter so we can fix it as soon as possible.

Report chapter

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 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 part deep inside the crystal golem's consciousness thought they possessed a lot more potential.

As Feraxneel beheld the crystals, back at the Rolling Wind Star Sector, 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 a 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 the 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 was on the way, the rebels would have been much more discrete. 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 amount 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!"

If you find any errors ( Ads popup, ads redirect, broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know report chapter so we can fix it as soon as possible.

Report chapter

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 hurt 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 grey one. That's the cryo projector."

With all the complicated materials being used these days, some of them easily caught fire. Bases genetally 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 go set 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 agressors 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 has 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 choose 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 in 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 thought 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.

If you find any errors ( Ads popup, ads redirect, broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know report chapter so we can fix it as soon as possible.

Report chapter

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 on 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 Star Sector 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 standing, 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 mech 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 involved 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 large laser propagator based on alien technology did not mean he could slot it in the chest of his design like any other component.

If you find any errors ( Ads popup, ads redirect, broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know report chapter so we can fix it as soon as possible.

Report chapter

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 into 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 to correct 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 payed 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 destructive 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 wants 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 don'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.

If you find any errors ( Ads popup, ads redirect, broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know report chapter so we can fix it as soon as possible.

Report chapter

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 kept 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 exploded 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 already went 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 loosen 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 he 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 provied 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 loathe 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 in 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 with 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."

If you find any errors ( Ads popup, ads redirect, broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know report chapter so we can fix it as soon as possible.

Report chapter

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 worshipped 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 point.

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 for 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 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 judgement, 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 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 of, 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."

If you find any errors ( Ads popup, ads redirect, broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know report chapter so we can fix it as soon as possible.

Report chapter

"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 tasked 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 in 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 don't possess strong wills. What's left are 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 insuring 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 floor, 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 the 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 these 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 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."

If you find any errors ( Ads popup, ads redirect, broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know report chapter so we can fix it as soon as possible.

Report chapter

After leaving the mech stables occupied by the Mudriders, Ves payed 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 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 for gangs, battles in space was 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 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-own 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 many 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 defences. 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 temporary 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 of 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."

If you find any errors ( Ads popup, ads redirect, broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know report chapter so we can fix it as soon as possible.

Report chapter

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 had 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 for 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 Star Sector. 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 sands, 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 judgement. 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 of 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.

If you find any errors ( Ads popup, ads redirect, broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know report chapter so we can fix it as soon as possible.

Report chapter

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 Mudriders 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 my, 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 fits 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 pursuaded 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 ot 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.

If you find any errors ( Ads popup, ads redirect, broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know report chapter so we can fix it as soon as possible.

Report chapter

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 was 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 control 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 to 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.

If you find any errors ( Ads popup, ads redirect, broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know report chapter so we can fix it as soon as possible.

Report chapter

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 to 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 specialised 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 approached. 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 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 explation 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 as 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 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 up 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 the Vesians personally. As a mech designer, Ves enjoyed no such privilege.

If you find any errors ( Ads popup, ads redirect, broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know report chapter so we can fix it as soon as possible.

Report chapter

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 grey and pale blue to better blend in to 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 in 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 as least twice as much firepower as a rifleman mech. What they lacked in flexibility and close-combat effectiveness, they more than made it up 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 groups 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, 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 to 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 stopper up. 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 disappointed 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 to 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.

If you find any errors ( Ads popup, ads redirect, broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know report chapter so we can fix it as soon as possible.

Report chapter