The Mech Touch

Gloriana's test sounded a lot more straightforward than the inexplicable selection that Ves just performed.

The mech designers who applied to join the LMC all felt as if they returned to their student days.

As engineers and creators, every mech designer had to master the fundamental sciences. From mechanics to physics, the amount of knowledge they had to learn by heart was incredibly voluminous.

Not a lot of people possessed the intellect and learning ability to become a mech designer. However, these were essential traits to their profession, especially considering that even the most highly-rated mech design universities only allowed its students to become Apprentice Mech Designers upon graduation at most!

While there was a lot of employment available to bottom-tier mech designers, that was not was the profession was all about. Those who stopped learning and absorbing new knowledge after graduation were not worth investing in. It was fine to put them in some dead-end design team in order to perform crunch work, but their lack of growth and improvement meant that they would never gain their employer's appreciation.

Ves and Gloriana weren't looking to exploit their new hires. Not necessarily. They wanted to build up a solid foundation for the LMC as it grew from a sector-wide enterprise into a cluster-wide enterprise and beyond.

With the meteoric growth of the mech company, the demand on low, middle and high-tier design capabilities rapidly increased!

Ves and Gloriana couldn't possibly waste their time on addressing all of these demands in person. Their time was valuable and should constantly be spent on moving their progression forward.

Therefore, acquiring new talent that could be cultivated into useful substitutes was their ultimate goal.

This was why Gloriana put a twist in her test.

The mech designers each flipped through the pages of the virtual book projected in front of their faces. The exact subject matter of the book was something that involved very complicated internal architecture concepts.

While the mech designers didn't experience much strain at the start, it quickly took more and more effort to maintain their concentration. The devious part about it was not that they were forced to stand all the time, but the angle of the projected screen only revealed its contents when their viewers looked at it in a precise angle!

If the mech designers slouched over or tilted their head in any way, the screen would immediately become illegible!

Along with the fact that they didn't have any tables to lean or distribute their weight, the mech designers struggled increasingly more to maintain the exact posture that was required to keep reading the textbook!

Gloriana grinned. She personally programmed all of it. She keenly studied the people who held up better than the others.

Eventually, one of the candidates had the bright idea to take regular breaks. The man in question simply decided to sit on the ground and take the time to mentally process the complicated subject he just absorbed.

His example inspired the mech designers around him. Soon enough, over seventy percent of the entire crowd began to follow suit!

"It's too bad he's male." Gloriana shook her head.

Some of the mech designers stubbornly remained ramrod straight. Perhaps their bodies were strong enough to endure strain, or perhaps they believed their performance would improve their scores.

Whatever the case, after thirty minutes of frantic learning, the textbooks disappeared.

"Alright, the examination begins now. You have thirty minutes to solve all of the solutions with the knowledge that you have learned. Good luck." She said.

As was typical to mech design courses, the exam was not a simple quiz where the test paper needed to be answered by performing some dry calculations and derivations.

Instead, each candidate came face-to-face with a design interface that had already loaded in a very complicated section of the internals of a mech!

The internal makeup of this section contained some obvious and less obvious problems. Each candidate had to fix these problems by applying what they learned and knew in the best way possible.

Due to the openness of the problems, the candidates possessed a very wide range of freedom. Gloriana rarely set up a problem in a way that could be solved in a limited amount of ways.

This was a true challenge to the mech designers!

The reason why Gloriana set up the exam in this way was to mitigate the advantage of augmentations as much as possible. Those with better backgrounds who were able to afford a gene mod template or a cranial implants must have absorbed the knowledge in the textbook much better.

Yet that didn't mean that they were necessarily good at applying what they learned!

Mech design was a profession based on practice rather than theory. A mech designer wasn't some erudite theoretical physicist who locked himself inside a lab all day to run formulas in their minds.

They used what they learned to get something done!

The performance of the candidates quickly diverged. There were those who possessed powerful augmentations but managed to apply what they learned in a competent fashion.

There were also those who enjoyed the same advantages but let the stress of their situation get the better of them! They failed to match the performance in the previous tests conducted by the recruiters!

On the other hand, there were plenty of mech designers from poorer backgrounds who managed to tough it out and bear the burden without substantially affecting their normal performance.

"Mech design can be stressful at some times." Gloriana softly whispered. "When the stakes are high and the time is short, I expect my assistants to withstand the pressure and perform up to my expectations."

Ves agreed with her. He knew that she wasn't looking at the absolute best performers, but rather those who were able to match the performance of their earlier tests as closely as possible.

When the thirty minutes finally passed, the projected design interfaces finally disappeared. No matter how many problems the mech designers had to solve, they no longer had the opportunity to do so! What they managed to accomplish in this brief interval of time was their only chance to prove themselves in this manner!

"Alright, I have taken note of your results and scored them accordingly." Gloriana sternly notified. "Those who have performed well have attracted my attention. Please make sure you maintain your performance in the subsequent tests."

She didn't say that those who did poorly were still in her consideration. That caused some of the deep thinkers in the crowd to frown.

Unlike Ves, Gloriana wasn't ready to make her choice until she conducted all of the tests she had in store!

What she sought were well-rounded mech designers who excelled in every criteria she set! Though it was unlikely for any of the candidates to approach her level of perfection, she didn't want to get stuck with assistants who might fail her at a critical moment!

Anyway, now that Gloriana's turn had finished, it was time for Ves to conduct his next test. He stepped forward and gestured at one of the mechs looming quietly at the side.

"Do you see that Doom Guard?" He asked with a smile.

Though the mech was inactive, its fearsome red coating and ominous scarlet third eye already intimidated some of the candidates.

While everyone stood at a healthy distance from the mech, the truth was that they were already within its range!

Ves calmly approached the Doom Guard until he roughly reached halfway between the striker mech and the crowd of candidates.

He loudly tapped his foot against the floor. "My next test is simple. When the Doom Guard standing behind me becomes active and turns on its glow, your task is to approach me! The first five mech designers who reach my side will pass and be guaranteed entry into the LMC!"

A lot of mech designers lit up in that condition! Compared to Gloriana's selection process which appeared to be a marathon, the tests given by Ves were much more direct.

As long as they performed well in some way, they received an immediate entry in the job of their dreams without needing to undergo any further tests!

A lot of the candidates wanted to join the group of seven mech designers that Ves picked out before. Right now, those lucky bastards were gleefully watching the proceedings as if they already belonged to a superior class!

However, the mech designers who applied to join the LMC all heard about the Doom Guards. They were very well aware that it wasn't simple to approach the mech at all! If not for the fact that Ves set the finish line a good distance away from the Doom Guard, perhaps no one would be able to pass this test!

Just to be sure, Ves added an additional condition. "If none of you manage to reach my position, don't worry. I will just select the five who are in the leading positions. Don't give up and push yourselves to your limits and beyond!"

Though the majority of candidates already dreaded this test, a significant portion of them looked fired up! Ves keenly noticed the burning passion and ambition fueling their determination to push through as far as possible!

This was what Ves wanted to see. For this test, he was looking to pick up the mech designers who exhibited the most determination!

Upon his command, the mech pilot of the Doom Guard slowly booted it up. After several minutes, the pilot flicked the switch, causing its glow to ramp up within a minute.

The growing pressure immediately affected the moods of the candidates despite standing further away!

Even Ves experienced some strain, but he maintained his easy smile as best as possible. "Start!"

The mech designers moved. Surprisingly, over three-hundred of them immediately moved away from the Doom Guard!

Ves wanted to rub his eyes. Had they given up already?

He was profoundly disappointed at their decision. From a logical standpoint, it made sense for those who weren't used to enduring this kind of pressure to withdraw. While that meant they wouldn't have any chance of getting selected this round, the prudent candidates possessed enough self-knowledge to understand they would never be among the top five.

Why waste their energy and pile up their stress if they wouldn't gain anything for their efforts? In fact, this entire test was a bit perplexing to begin with! Unlike mech pilots, mech designers weren't frontline soldiers!

While Ves understood this rationale, it didn't conform with his principles or the principles of the Larkinson Clan! In his opinion, even if there wasn't a chance that they would make it very far, at least they needed to show some courage!

If mech designers constantly avoided challenges they never believed they could overcome, then they wouldn't make it very far. The whole point about progressing to Master Mech Designer was to accomplish the impossible!

Those who only took the path of least resistance didn't possess the heart of a high-ranking mech designer. Every single mech designer who managed to advance to Journeyman not only possessed spiritual potential, but also the willingness to swim upstream!

Those who managed to advance to Master and realize their design philosophies were even more extreme! They defied common sense so much that they even managed to swim up a waterfall!

Mech designers who were capable of reaching these extremes were worth their weight in phasewater in his opinion. Even if they didn't possess any spiritual potential, he wanted to snap them up anyway!

Several minutes into the test, the crowd of mech designers quickly split apart. A couple of hundred more mech designers joined the ranks of those who gave up at the start. They overestimated their ability to withstand the terror emanating from the Doom Guard and learned their lesson the hard way!

Less than two-hundred candidates managed to keep moving forward, but even this group quickly stretched out. The majority of them slowed their pace and looked like they were walking into blizzard.

Only a couple dozen managed to maintain a brisk pace. Just as Ves expected, most of them consisted of the passionate, strong-willed or determined candidates of the bunch!

There were plenty of outliers as well. Those who came from a military background or received a harsh upbringing all possessed minds of steel! No matter how much the Doom Guard tried to break their will, they held themselves together and kept approaching Ves as if he was their only savior!