The Mech Touch

Though Ves foresaw that the chances of entering into a conflict with Karlachers may be fairly likely, that did not deter him or any other leader of the Golden Skull Alliance from proceeding with their current plans.

None of the alliance partners were afraid of a fight. Patriarch Reginald Cross even looked forward to fighting a duel against another ace mech!

However, just because the Golden Skull Alliance feared no battle did not mean that Ves could ignore this latent threat.

What he was most afraid of was that the Karlachers in the border region might choose to combine their forces and employ overwhelming numbers to overrun the expeditionary fleet!

Just as how Lord Hemmington Cross fell after getting ambushed by two enemy ace mechs, Ves did not think that Patriarch Reginald Cross would fare any better when put into a similar corner!

Would history repeat itself once again?

Ves shook his head. "That's impossible."

The biggest mistake made by Lord Hemmington Cross and his clan was that they grew too arrogant and stopped being careful.

The Larkinson Clan wouldn't be making the same mistake. With the Black Cats and many other clever Larkinsons keeping careful watch over both allies and enemies, Ves was confident that his people would be able to detect most potential threats in advance.

If any Karlachers attempted to form a massive armada, then it was impossible to hide such a massive movement from the eyes and ears of the Black Cats.

In addition, now that Calabast reminded Ves of a certain prophet's powers, he was tempted to turn Ylvaine into an early warning system if not for the fact that it took a lot of energy to make predictions. 

After checking to make sure that his clan had the situation well in hand, Ves felt relieved and began to commit most of his time to his core work.

It was finally time to commence the next design round.

This was a big event and one that involved an even greater amount of Journeyman Mech Designers than before.

As soon as his wife and all of his other peers gathered in the conference room, Ves stood up and prepared to make a big announcement.

"This will be the final round of mech design projects that we will embark upon." He revealed. "Once we complete this batch of projects, we will no longer wait until we have completed the last remaining design project before starting another round of projects."

Numerous mech designers looked surprised.

"You're abandoning the design round model?" Ketis asked.

Ves nodded in confirmation. "Yes. While it has worked for our Design Department in the past, it is becoming increasingly more restrictive as we continue to involve more people and projects. For example, the smaller projects can usually be completed in three months, while the larger ones can take up to one-and-a-half years to finish."

"That is not necessarily an adverse arrangement." Juliet Stameros countered. "It was usually the case that finishing one project freed up time to work on other projects. Those of us who just happened to work faster can use their free time to take a break or to work on various personal projects. None of us have wasted our time in the period between design rounds."

As someone who lived through these moments himself, Ves knew that Juliet was right. Every Journeyman in the design department was relatively young, ambitious, eager and professional.

None of the people in the conference room were inclined to slack off and waste these precious moments. Even their holidays were strategically planned to work away their exhaustion and provide them with opportunities to gain inspiration.

"I don't disagree with you, Juliet, but I still hold the same opinion. The structure of planning and scheduling our design work around design rounds is not only overly clunky, but also produces a lot of delays. For example, Venerable Jannzi lost her Shield of Samar almost two months ago, but aside from doing a lot of prep work, we haven't done any serious work. If we weren't stuck with the design round model, we could have made a lot more progress in the Dullahan Project already."

That said, the preparation work was not all that useless. Ves and the others had spent a lot of time on searching for and selecting new tech, materials and component designs to add to the Dullahan Project.

The more time they invested in their searchers, the more fitting elements they found for Venerable Jannzi's future expert mech.

As soon as they concluded this meeting, the mech designers involved in the Dullahan Project would definitely make a lot of progress in the following weeks!

The Journeymen all exchanged their opinions about the current planning structure, but none of them showed any strong objection towards the proposed change.

They were all flexible and capable enough to work under many different structures. Whether their design projects were grouped in organized design rounds or not made little difference to them. They just had to pay more attention to the workload of others in order to make sure that there was enough time for collaborations.

"What happens after we end this design round?" Dulo Voiken asked.

Ves shrugged. "You are free to start your own projects, either by yourself or in collaboration with others. You are all free to choose how many projects you want to take on at the same time. You can also set your own deadlines. My wife and I won't interfere with your choices as long as you remain productive enough to deserve a place in our Design Department. Our clan has already accumulated a sizable amount of existing mech designs, so it is no longer important to maximize the quantity of our output. I care much more about quality these days. You can tackle fewer design projects if you want, but you must always make sure that the ones you do work on will deliver solid results at the end. Is that understood?"

"Yes, sir."

Now that he got that out of the way, he began to organize the major design projects in person.

Ves did not spend much time on going over the upgrade projects. Older mech designs regularly needed to be updated in order to keep up with the changing times.

Some upgrade projects were fairly straightforward and could easily be completed in a couple of months.

Other upgrade projects required much more extensive redesign work, so they could easily stretch for a year if they were particularly complicated.

Fortunately, much of that time was spent on simulation and optimization work. The mech designers didn't have to do a lot of intensive and challenging design work in order to complete these activities.

What the Journeymen were truly interested in was the original design projects that centered around developing completely new mechs.

The mech designers introduced numerous new projects that generated interest from Ves.

For example, Ketis finally fleshed out her mech concept that she came up with after getting inspired by the plasma sword of the Neo Amadeus.

She first instructed the central projector to display a draft design of her work.

The projection depicted a swordsman mech that possessed a distinct oriental and exotic aesthetic. It differed substantially from her other swordsman mech designs as the proposed mech featured a lot more curving lines.

Aside from its look, the new draft design also attracted attention because it wielded two sword at once.

The swords that it held in its hands were not the regular straight ones that Ketis preferred. They resembled slender sabers at first, but their vibe was substantially different from the ones that she had designed in the past.

"Okay, so you have chosen to proceed with designing another dual-wielding swordsman mech." Ves said as he did not look too impressed so far. "What makes this mech special and what is the reason why mech pilots should opt over your work over other competing products?"

Ketis remained confident so she should have a good answer.

"Let me explain the reasons one by one. First, my new Samurai Project is centered around designing a new form of assault-oriented offensive swordsman mech. It is designed to be an offensive powerhouse similar to the Red Axe but with different strengths and weaknesses. The most important element of my new proposed design is the use of special technology that I have found after spending many hours searching for the right offensive solution."

She waved her hand, which caused the sketched mech to activate a function that caused the curved swords to light up with energy!

"These katanas are meant to be based on stormblade technology, which is a relatively new and ingenious way to allow bladed weapons to inflict partial energy damage."

"How does it work?" Dulo Voiken curiously asked. "Does it work for spears as well?"

Ketis smiled at him. "I will share the details of this tech to you later, Dula. For now, what all of you need to know is that stormblade technology can enhance the damage potential of my new Samurai Project on an optional basis. Against weaker opponents, it is not necessary for my new mech to activate the stormblade function. This allows the mechs to save a lot of energy. It is only when they are fighting against stronger and tougher opponents that it makes sense to energize their katanas so that they can inflict additional heat and energy damage to their targets."

The swordsman mech designer projected a document that showed a summary of the technical specifications of stormblade technology.

Ves and the others looked increasingly more impressed. Stormblade technology did not add any overwhelming power boost to a swordsman mech, but it did not demand a lot of space and it was fairly energy efficient.

This was mainly because an active stormblade weapon did not have to remain at full power unless it was about to hit a target.

The damage boost was also pretty nice, though it was far from reaching the level of a true plasma weapon.

However, Ves believed that the biggest advantage of stormblade technology was that it was affordable!

Sure, stormblade weapons might not present any actual bargains, but the Larkinson Clan could bear the cost of mass producing Ketis' new swordsman mech!

His eyes glinted with approval. "Tell me more."

"Stormblade technology lies at the heart of the Samurai Project. As you can imagine after studying these numbers, my new mech is more flexible and adaptable against the enemy. It can handle crowds of weaker opponents just as easily as smaller numbers of well-armored elites. In addition, since it is a mech that can be piloted by both Swordmaidens and Heavensworders, its upper boundary of performance is extremely high, just as with all of my other mechs. Those who possess great skill are easily able to punch above their weight! The same can't be said for a Redaxe."

That was true. Technique had always been one of the core factors of all of her mech designs. Drawing from her extensive transcendent swordsmanship skills, Ketis always designed her machines in a way that would allow her to use them to the utmost if she was able to pilot them in person.

Ketis grinned and pointed towards the scabbards of her draft design. "The Samurai Project even has a special solution that allows it to breach armor with greater ease. If you look closer, you will be able to see that the scabbards of the katanas are thicker and integrated with tech. That is because they can infuse the blades with additional power, allowing the katanas to burst out with significantly more cutting power shortly after pulling them out. This was one of the selling points that convinced me to adopt stormblade technology for this design project."

"This mechanism of accumulating power is awfully clunky."

"You don't know what you are talking about, Ves. Let me do my work and finish my design. I can guarantee you that you will change your mind once you see this attack method in action."

Ves chuckled when he heard this boast. "I would be glad if you can prove me wrong."