The Mech Touch

A tournament fever had befallen the Larkinson Clan!

After encountering continuous setbacks and difficulties in their attempts to procure carrier vessels and secure contracts with vital resource suppliers, it became clear to the Larkinsons that they needed to solve their problems from a different direction.

Winning a competition would definitely help! An excellent performance in front of a large audience would not only showcase the Larkinson Clan's strength and potential to interested parties, but also yield fantastic prizes such as combat carriers and other valuable goods.

Of course, the Larkinsons weren't the only newcomers to the Red Ocean who understood the benefits. There were lots of other pioneering organizations that faced similar problems and made the same choice. This led to an unprecedented degree of competition!

There could only be a handful of winners for every competition. Most participants came away with only greater experience and another failure to their names. There were so many skilled mech pilots and brilliant mech designers that it was truly hard to reach the top of any given competition.

Despite that, pioneers and adventurers kept applying to them in droves. Few were resigned to mediocrity and wanted to find their opportunity to greatness.

There were many different competitions the Larkinsons could participate in. Chance Bay was a hub to many of them and specifically set up contests that were geared towards transient visitors.

"That's convenient." Ves said after he read up on the rules of several different tournaments. "Since it is expensive for so many people to stay in a central star node, these contests never take more than a couple of days. The majority even end on the same day they start."

Aspiring contestants didn't have to apply too far in advance to take part in these short competitions. As long as they met the requirements, they could get in even if the occasion started the next day. The tournament organizers were quite accommodating in this regard, and the format of their contests easily adapted to any additions or removals.

Shorter competitions were also more convenient to the live spectators who visited the Vulit Central Star Node in droves but could only stay for a short period of time.

"…Guu…waaawaaa…"

"Oh, daddy is just thinking about what design tournaments he should sign up for. Would you like to help me choose?"

"…Ffuuwaawaaawaaa…"

Ves' heart melted as he leaned in to kiss his little daughter which he held against his chest. Feeling her body warmth against his chest and sensing the pure and innocent joy from her mind delighted him to no end!

Pure love radiated from him as he cooed and played with his baby. Becoming a father was one of the happiest instances of his life. Though the way he went about his day hadn't changed all that much, Aurelia's appearance had made his life a lot more joyful every day.

"…Miew… miew…"

His daughter's companion spirit was also a cute bundle of joy. Just like Aurelia, Mana spent much of her time sleeping and resting.

However, after spending so much time inside Aurelia's little mind, she had grown more curious of what lay outside her safe and cozy home.

Nyaaaa.

The Golden Cat hovered around the little white kitten and made sure that Mana did not do anything dangerous. She also just loved to spend time with her newest kin.

"Miew!… Miew!…"

Mana rolled around as Goldie gave her a bath. Even though spiritual cats didn't need to be cleaned, the habit was ingrained in their species!

Ves chuckled at the amusing sight. Even Aurelia stopped reaching out towards her father's face. Since Mana was another part of herself, she was able to experience the feeling of getting licked by Goldie as well!

"Waaaa…"

"Don't think about it too much, sweetie. You are you and Mana is Mana. You're a human, not a cat."

Once he finished attending to his baby, he swept his gaze back to the projected display.

The Larkinson Clan had the ability to participate in many tournaments. Ves allowed the rest of the clan to make its own decisions on which ones they should join. General Verle and the legion commanders knew their soldiers better than anyone else and could make far better judgments on where they could achieve higher rankings.

The Larkinsons weren't arrogant enough to believe they could realistically get into first place all the time, but the prizes for entering the top 5 usually weren't that bad. Larger and more elaborate competitions also showered generous rewards to those who ended up in the top 10.

Aside from that, individual clansmen such as the expert candidates were also allowed to apply to individual tournaments themselves.

There was a considerable risk to doing so as letting so many of them enter into random tournaments might yield a lot of embarrassing defeats.

"It's okay. It's better to try and fail than not try and miss a potentially great opportunity."

Even if there was only a 0.1 percent chance that any of these Larkinsons became a finalist, the possibility of bringing home an additional combat carrier or two was worth the effort!

The tournaments, specially the ones revolving around mech combat, were also fantastic opportunities for the Larkinson mech pilots to gain valuable combat experience in a safe and controlled environment. Even if they lost, they at least learned a lot of lessons from their beatdowns.

As for the embarrassment they would cause to themselves or their clan, Ves didn't consider this to be a big deal.

Other organizations might be a lot more sensitive towards the impact that losses would have on their reputation, but Ves knew that if he and a few other Larkinsons managed to perform brilliantly in a couple of contests, their glorious achievements would easily outshine the clan's trivial losses!

"At the end of the day, reputation is a means to an end. We don't need to get too fixated on becoming famous. What really matters is translating these intangibles into solid resources that increase the combat strength of our fleet." Ves reminded himself.

It was for this reason that he didn't care what his other clansmen were doing as long as they applied to enough tournaments.

Ves just needed to focus on what he was able to do by himself. He pulled up a giant list of mech design tournaments that were scheduled to start within a month.

Though mech design tournaments weren't as popular as mech combat tournaments, they were still attended by plenty of people.

Although there weren't as many laymen in the audience, design tournaments attracted a lot more industry insiders. Mech technicians, salesmen, mech designers and so on all liked to attend these interesting events.

Perhaps mech pilots might get bored seeing mech designers spend hours on fiddling with designs or fabricating an entire mech from scratch, but those with the relevant background in mech design and mech manufacturing found them to be incredibly fascinating!

Novice Mech Designers and Apprentice Mech Designers cherished these opportunities the most. Design duels and design competitions were one of the few instances where they could see other, better mech designers perform their craft in the open.

Each of them hoped that they might be able to grasp new insights, gain bursts of inspirations, learn valuable lessons and at worst widen their horizons from observing the methods of more successful mech designers.

"Hmmm, there's tournaments for Seniors and Masters as well." Ves noted with a bit of surprise.

These were usually high-end affairs that attracted a more elite crowd. They weren't held as often but always attracted a large amount of media attention. Ticket prices were much higher, but the Red Ocean wasn't short of filthy rich people who were willing to splurge.

The prize pools weren't simple either. After all, Seniors and especially Masters were already successful and capable in their own right. They often had better things to do with their time, so the only way to convince them to perform in public was to lure them with excellent fleet carriers, exclusive entry passes and even batches of phasewater!

Ves momentarily grew red when he learned that the winners of these prestigious competitions were able to receive phasewater, but he quickly shook his head.

"I'm far from becoming a Master, let alone a Senior. Even if I break through tomorrow, I won't have any accumulation that would allow me to beat other mech designers at this rank."

He could only settle for the contests that centered around Journeymen. Once he applied a couple of filters to the list, the number of tournaments dropped by a huge amount.

The main reason for that was because he removed all of the tournaments that centered around Novices and Apprentices as well.

There were a lot of competitions for low-ranking mech designers. They attracted huge crowds because they were cheaper and their learning content was more accessible to those with shallower foundations.

As for Journeyman-level design tournaments, they were highly relevant to Apprentices who already developed solid ideas for their design philosophies but sought ways to push them to the next level.

"This is also a good opportunity for me to recruit additional assistant mech designers." He realized.

If he performed impressive enough, then even if he failed to win any prizes, he could still come away with a harvest by recruiting additional personnel.

Sometimes, there were also other Journeymen in the audience who wanted to witness how their fellow colleagues approached their craft.

"I can also approach other contestants in these tournaments!"

One of his goals was to recruit two additional Journeymen. However, even after the clan had posted a recruitment notice at the local job market, not a single person answered back.

The Larkinson Clan was too unremarkable and obscure in the Red Ocean. Journeymen were already formidable professionals, so they could easily find employment in larger and stronger organizations!

If Ves wanted to attract available Journeymen, then he needed to make a splash and get in touch with them in person.

He was quite confident in his persuasive abilities. As long as he could hoodwink two of them to take a gamble and join an ascending organization in its early days, the Design Department would be able to complete 50 percent more mech design projects in the same amount of time. This was a massive leap in output!

Of course, all of this was fantasy if he was not able to achieve any good results. With Journeymen who grew up in more developed places such as the galactic heartland and the galactic center taking part in these contests, Ves knew that he would have a tough time regardless of his choices.

"I need to stack the deck in my favor as much as possible."

Many design tournaments adopted different formats, durations, requirements and themes.

For example, there was one design tournament that ran for three days and centered solely around designing knight mechs.

There was another design tournament that did not impose any restrictions on the mech type that contestants were allowed to design, making them a lot more diverse and chaotic.

The method of deciding which competition mech was the winner is also different from event to event.

In some of the competitions, the mech designers were allowed to bring their own champions who piloted their new works.

In other events, the tournament organizers provided mech pilots from their own pools.

There were even tournaments where the competition mechs didn't fight to eliminate each other, but instead faced several challenges in order to achieve the highest scores.

Some of the larger and more extravagant tournaments even utilized advanced technologies to produce duplicate mechs or quickly repair heavily-damaged machines!

This way, these competition mechs could continue to duel each other multiple times with minimal delay, thereby preventing the audience from having to wait hours while nothing important took place.

There were so many different options that Ves grew dizzy from it all. Since he and his clan could only stay in the Vulit Central Star Node for a limited amount of time, he had to weigh his choices carefully in order to avoid squandering his time!