The Mech Touch

One of the reasons why Ves valued the Dullahan Project so much was because he saw it as an opportunity to increase the potential or upper limit of the growth of living mechs.

What was even more important was that a method that worked on living mechs might also work on mech pilots.

After all, the two ultimately became one at the end of their progression.

The implications of succeeding with the Dullahan Project therefore ranged far beyond giving Venerable Jannzi back a version of her old Shield of Samar!

It had the potential to upend the entire mech community and introduce a brand new age where heroes emerged among mech pilots in far greater numbers!

Of course, Ves did not dare to commit too much to this incredible ambition. He could only treat it as a hopeful dream that he should aspire towards.

What was interesting about his past discussion with Master Dervidian was that the man left Ves with one important remark.

"The reason why we pay so much attention to the qualities and the mentality of mech pilots is because they play a crucial role in determining whether ace pilots are able to survive the transition to becoming god pilots." The accomplished Master Mech Designer revealed to Ves. "At the end of this dangerous journey, an ace pilot must give up his remaining humanity and everything that holds him back. Can you imagine how much is lost in this final process? If the pilot loses too much of himself at once, he will not retain much strength to survive the transition. This is the primary reason why so few of them have survived this difficult test."

Ves gained a much deeper understanding of the difficulties that mech pilots had to endure in their attempt to become the top powerhouses of humanity.

They had to meet extremely high requirements at every major junction. Any serious flaw or imperfection was enough to disqualify them from moving further!

More and more mech pilots fell off at every pass until only a scant few exceptional individuals succeeded at the end. This was an incomparably brutal gauntlet and one that was way too harsh for too many mech pilots!

Ves developed the drive and ambition to figure out a way to help mech pilots pass these difficult tests so that more of them would be able to gain the strength that they deserved.

Of course, that was easier said than done. The MTA researched this topic for centuries but never made any serious progress as far as Ves was aware of. There should have been a lot more god pilots than the hundred or so that were known today if the mechers managed to come up with a viable solution.

Ves therefore did not think too much about this matter and went back to pursuing his own projects.

He thought he would have to become a Master first before he had an opportunity to come up with an innovation that could change the status quo in a more desirable fashion.

It was a completely welcome surprise that the Dullahan Project might give him an early preview of what he needed to do in order to make transcendence accessible to many more people!

Compared to the great significance of the Dullahan Project, it looked as if the other three expert mech design projects were not that important.

Ves didn't see it that way.

The Dullahan Project promised profound changes and a possible power-up, but it would probably take a lot of time to realize the benefits.

What the Larkinson Clan needed in the short and medium term was greater combat strength. Ves couldn't afford to wait decades or centuries needed to allow his grand plans to come to fruition. He needed powerful mechs that possessed clear advantages on the battlefield.

Each of the three remaining expert mech design projects possessed special advantages that gave them an edge against enemies.

For example, the Ghost Project might become one of the few successful implementations of a melee stealth mech that could become a powerful champion killer in battle.

The Greenaxe Project was another opportunity for Gloriana to incorporate the lessons she learned from the evolution of the Mars from a classical living mech to a post-living mech.

The Bloodripper Project allowed Ves to apply his own lessons to the creation of a new classical living mech from scratch.

In short, each of these projects possessed great significance to Ves. Even the Greenaxe Project where Gloriana would leave the biggest stamp on the upcoming expert mech would provide with a lot of data related to his field of expertise.

Ves smiled as he finally concluded the long but fruitful conference meeting. He expected to make massive gains by the end of this final design round.

"We are in a special time." Ves spoke at the end. "Each of us have made a lot of gains from witnessing a major battle up close. Our works have all been tested under punishing conditions while the works of our enemies have taught us many lessons. This is the point where we must apply our gains to our new design projects and advance the quality, capabilities and performance of our mechs. I will be severely disappointed in you if your mech designs in the following year are hardly better than the mechs that you have designed in the past."

This was both a request and a warning to his subordinates. The reason why he was so eager to go on adventures and embark on the Trailblazer Expedition was to gain more material to fuel the progression of his design philosophy.

He wanted colleagues by his side who also benefit from these experiences.

If there were dummies around him that could not gain any useful benefits from the Larkinson Clan's activities, there was no reason for them to stay by his side!

No one was immune to this rule. He was even willing to boot the people he cared about the most like Gloriana and Ketis if they stopped becoming a productive force within the Design Department!

Of course, this would never happen. The two women were just as passionate and driven as him. They were so invested in mechs that they would never stop trying to push their design philosophies to a greater height.

As the meeting finally wrapped up, Ves and the others began to start their design work in earnest.

While the expeditionary fleet continued its journey to the border region between Krakatoa and Zelmar, Ves was already starting to flesh out the initial drafts of numerous mechs such as the Eye Project and the Bloodripper Project.

Both of them stood out from the many other current design projects because they were equipped with luminar crystal weapons.

Of course, their weapons were bound to be radically different.

Ves needed to design an affordable but also powerful long range luminar crystal rifle for the Eye Project.

This was difficult because Ves needed to change his mindset from that of abundance to one centered around frugality.

"It's not about designing the most powerful luminar crystal rifle, but the most cost-effective one." He muttered.

He needed to find a good balance between power and cost. Although Ves believed that the greatest selling point of the Eye Project should be enough to turn it into an attractive product, he did not want its performance to be mediocre.

The Bloodripper Project was much different. It needed to be equipped with a powerful luminar crystal submachine gun that was both light but powerful enough to threaten expert mechs.

The challenges related to this weapon were different. Ves was in control of the design budget and he could practically pour as much money as he wanted in the development of this weapon.

The problem was that the weapon's mass and dimensions could not be too excessive. Making the gun too big and heavy would slow down the Bloodripper and make it easier for enemies to catch up with an expert mech that was supposed to be fast and elusive!

Ves scratched his head. "Neither of these weapons will be easy to design."

Fortunately, he already built up a notable amount of accumulation in luminar crystal technology. He spent enough time on digesting the research conducted by the MTA and conducting numerous experiments himself to expand his repertoire and deepen his understanding of this alien tech.

Though he still felt that he did not understand the essence of luminary crystal technology, the years he spent on working on it slowly allowed him to develop his own understanding of this tech.

"I don't know how the original luminar race sees their own creations, but to me they are all weapons that have the potential for greatness. The weapons that I have developed until now only utilize a fraction of the power of luminar crystals."

One of the secrets behind luminar crystal technology was that it could interact with spirituality and spiritual energy.

Ves hadn't been able to make much progress on this front because there were too many unknown and convoluted aspects about luminar crystal technology, but he managed to come up with a few shallow tricks with the help of the Illustrious One.

If he applied those tricks to the two upcoming weapon designs and put additional effort into coming up with further design solutions, he might be able to enhance their firepower even further!

"No matter what kind of special gimmicks these mechs are able to rely on, their technical performance must not fall behind."

With that thought in mind, Ves started his work on the two ranged mech design projects by working on their weapons first.

It was easiest for him to start with designing the standard weapon for the Eye Project.

He already visualized the weapon during the drafting phase. Instead of taking advantage of the ability to swap out multiple different attack phase crystals to change the damage output of this weapon, he intended to stick to laser beam output for this project and seek to maximize its performance.

"It should be possible to integrate the laser beam attack phase crystal to this weapon to such a degree that I can improve the performance of this combination by 10 percent."

Designing rifles around laser beams, positron beams, light beams and all kinds of other damage types introduced a lot of additional requirements that required Ves to make a lot of compromises in the weapon design.

Ves no longer had to do that as long as the new weapon design solely fired laser beams.

He was quickly able to design the basic setup of a laser-oriented luminar crystal rifle with considerable power.

Since the Eye Project was designed to be a marksman mech oriented towards extreme firepower like the Amaranto, it went without saying that Ves would equip the Eye Project with a heavier version of the standard luminar crystal rifle.

However, according to the deal that he had made with the MTA, a heavy luminar crystal rifle had to bear additional security measures to prevent them from being used by unauthorized users.

This was a troublesome requirement that significantly reduced the convenience of commercial mechs that were equipped with this weapon.

Ves had to spend many hours to implement the additional spiritual and technical security measures he developed years ago to the Eye Project's primary weapon.

This was a tedious chore but he was already used to doing all of this extra work.

His bigger concern was that he didn't think the weapon was powerful enough. Ves had a feeling that he could add more power to the weapon if he went out of his way to try out new ideas.

"How can I make it stronger while also keeping the cost under control?" Ves frowned.

Obvious solutions such as using phasewater was out of the question for this commercial project. Ves needed to rely on a more ingenious design solution in order to squeeze more power out of the same building blocks.

"What can I do?"