The Mech Touch

Ves quickly calmed down after he heard Tristan describe Patricia's marriage.

Though he felt uncomfortable about her decisions, Patricia was her own woman. It was fully within her right to marry any man she wanted. For her to marry some random Apprentice Mech Designer who graduated from Leemar was her prerogative.

Why should he care so much about the man she chose to spend the rest of her life with? It was none of his business. Ves had his own relationships to deal with. He could hardly spare any attention to Patricia's circumstances, especially since it became even unlikelier they would ever cross paths in the future.

Both sides got something out of each other so Ves could hardly fault the practicality of the pairing.

Still, Ves expected that Patricia would marry someone better.

"I've heard rumors that Master Null favors Patricia a lot." Tristan continued. "If he isn't so insistent on hiding his identity in order to avoid his old enemies, he might have even taken Patricia in as his direct disciple. Hearing from you that she's your former classmate, that doesn't surprise me anymore. Where the hell did the two of you even study to become this good?"

"Just an average institution in the Bright Republic. The two of us are just abnormal." Ves shrugged. "It's not important. I'm just happy to hear that Patricia is finding success in her own way. I hope she doesn't take too long to advance to Journeyman."

Ves noticed that ever since he became a Journeyman himself, his perspective on Apprentices and lower had shifted. He hung out more with other Journeyman who all regarded Apprentices as kids with relatively little importance and took over their attitude.

As someone who only recently crawled out of the ranks of Apprentices, a part of him felt offended by this treatment. Yet as a Journeyman himself, unrealized potential was still unrealized.

They still had to pass the extraordinary threshold in order to gain notice. This was quite hard for most Apprentices. Compounding the situation was that mech designers did not have an equivalent rank to expert candidates in the mech piloting profession.

Expert candidates only possessed a fraction of the potential of expert pilots. However, their emergence proved that a particular mech pilot possessed a definite potential to become someone greater, and thus could always count on enjoying better treatment and much more investment in their training.

Not so for Apprentices. Most only had a vague clue of how far they progressed, and no one took their judgement seriously.

After a bit of chatting, Tristan passed on one more remark before he ended the call.

"Don't neglect the Rim Guardians. Even if they're often bullied by the other Mechers, they are still one of the most well-equipped organizations in the galactic rim. They have access to tech, exotics, treatments and other goodies far beyond any local power. Best of all, they're quite willing to share in their bounty to their allies as long as they're helpful in some way."

Ves sighed. "I know. Thanks for the reminder. The problem is that it's not so easy to earn their favor."

"The best things are always the hardest to get. You should be grateful that you even have a chance at all due to passing the trials set by the Rim Guardians."

The call quickly ended after that. As Tristan's projection winked out, Ves digested what he learned.

He scratched his chin. "Tristan's conduct is already that of a mech designer ready to strike it out on his own. Even if he's a direct disciple, he is one of the youngest and is unlikely to inherit Master Katzenberg's mantle. It's no wonder he's eager to forge a lot of ties."

Ves did not understand much about the situation facing direct disciples. They acquired their design philosophies from their Masters. Did that mean they were stuck with it forever or could they pursue a side path in order to differentiate themselves from the main branch of their inherited design philosophy?

Something like that would be useful to know, but Ves forgot to ask for clarification from Tristan.

"Well, I'll probably have more opportunities to talk to him later."

The Barracuda transitioned into FTL and went underway. It would take some time for Ves to reach the territories of the Kinner Tribe.

He particularly looked forward to reaching the Bloodstone System. Everything he heard about Bloodstone stood in sharp contrast to the peaceful and indolent Zin Alpha he just exited.

Bloodstone II became known as the Planet of Red Rocks or more dramatically the Planet Stained in Blood. Such descriptors referenced the frequent amount of conflict that took place on the central planet of the Kinner Tribe.

Though the small third-rate state managed to achieve more stability, that did not mean that Bloodstone II lacked any blood to dye its rocks even redder.

The planet and the rest of the star system acted as a center of business for many mercenary outfits. All of the relevant Kinner institutions related to their famed mercenary practices operated out of Bloodstone II. The Mercenary Association also set up a regional headquarters there, adding more support to the lively mercenary trade.

Naturally, with so many mech pilots gathered in one place, a portion of which consisted of foreigners, the mech arenas soon followed. Not only did the Kinner Tribe host some of the most exciting mech games in the star sector, they also offered many venues for mech duels.

Mech pilots dueled each other to earn more fame, to resolve vendettas, to improve their evaluation and most importantly to raise their value in event a wealthy client bought their service for life!

"If I didn't know any better, Bloodstone can aptly be described as a slave market for mech pilots. The only difference is that the slaves are willing to indenture themselves." Ves muttered.

The mech pilots who willingly pledged their loyalty to their buyers did so for the future of their children. A small number of citizens of the poor state managed to become wealthy, powerful and influential due to the continuous sacrifices of their parents and grandparents.

Every Kinner dreamed of giving their offspring a better life. They had to make a lot of sacrifices, but it was intimately fair as those who worked hard managed to pass on their gains to the next generation.

In this way, the poor and beleaguered Kinner Tribe managed to carve out a niche that no other state was willing to fulfill and stay upright even when surrounded by different threats.

This kind of hard-working attitude against adversity reminded him a bit of the Bright Republic, except the Kinners were subject to much more pressure.

His perspective had become colored by the Societal Revival Theory. Ever since Lord Javier brutally laid out how the upper echelons regarded human society and their beliefs on how they ought to strengthen it, Ves could no longer go back.

The higher he climbed and the more he saw of the universe, the more he began to agree with the assumptions of the theory. It was as if he was slowly turning into a stuck-up member of the upper class he had always despised.

"Maybe I'll reach a point where I'm virtually indistinguishable from the likes of Senator Tovar." He whispered to himself.

Should he fear this development or consider it as a given? The higher his status, the harder it became for him to sympathise with the masses. Becoming a galactic citizen starkly separated him from the majority of humans relegated to living out their entire lives as space peasants.

He recognized that his mentality on society and people shifted drastically from the beginning of his career.

"I was so innocent back then." Ves reminisced. "Times were simpler and I didn't have all these powerful entities intertwining themselves in my life."

He couldn't afford to return to that simple mindset. He might have been happier and more optimistic back then, but he was so naive that his present self wanted to punch his earlier self in the face!

After he spent enough time moping about his mentality shift, he began to dive himself back into work.

Aside from studying up on bestial mechs and smart metal tech, he also went back to the variants he designed for the Skull Architect.

Compared to his own creations, Ves did not really put his full effort into his variants. He mainly focused on improving the technical and usability aspect while substantially holding back on applying his design philosophy.

Ves nonetheless spent a handful of weeks inspecting the variants and making sure they performed soundly. His inability to fabricate prototypes of the mechs in order to test their performance in reality hampered him quite a bit, so he substituted that with as many simulated tests as possible.

The new Sub-Skills he picked up recently helped out a lot in eliminating dozens of tiny flaws he had overlooked.

His lack of passion and energy for the variants became evident in his lazy naming sense.

He named his variant of the Caskar Pike the Molar Pike for reasons he didn't quite know.

His modifications to the spaceborn missileer were mostly basic. He reined in its mobility and introduced various quality-of-life improvements to the software of the mech. His main focus for the Molar Pike was to turn it into a mech that even mech pilots untrained in missile weapon systems could pick it up easily.

For this reason, despite the rather notable drop in maximum performance, Ves expected its effective performance in actual battles to be substantially higher.

"It's not as if most pirate mech pilots can draw out even half of the potential of a Caskar Pike." He muttered.

He applied the same approach to the Toroz Topaz, a variant of the Toroz Ruby. Out of all of the Skull Architect's designs he had come across so far, the spaceborn striker mech design intrigued him the most.

Although it featured a bloated internal architecture due to being armed with both a shotgun and a pair of heat beam projectors, the base model's complicated design neatly showcased the Skull Architect's strengths.

Although his design philosophy focused on energy transmission, in practice he diverted towards maximizing efficiency and performance of almost every part. Which part of a mech did not generate or consume energy?

In effect, the Skull Architect probably faced a choice back when he was a Journeyman. Should he narrow the scope of his design philosophy and work with a narrow definition of energy transmission, or should he widen it to encompass as many aspects as possible?

Clearly, Reno Jimenez chose the latter, and it eventually drove him crazy.

After interacting with many mech designers, Ves came up with a general rule.

"The more ambitious their design philosophies, the more radical their mech designers tend to become."

When Ves applied this rule to himself, he couldn't quite figure out his place in the spectrum. Obviously, his design philosophy was anything but modest, but he himself did not consider himself to be an obsessive maniac such as Gloriana or the Skull Architect.

"I'm not perfect, but I think I can be quite sane and rational when I want to be." He confidently declared.

"Meow."

Lucky, who was floating by his side, clearly disagreed.

"Oh, shut up you. You're just a cat. What do you know about humans? I'm clearly different!"

"Meow!"

Lucky appeared so exasperated by Ves that the cat turned around and phased through the deck. The pet had enough of his owner's self-delusion for one day!

Ves shrugged and resumed his final inspection on his last variant. He took the Jinven, an aerial marksman mech design, and slapped many of the same solutions he developed for his other variants. While he also added in some unique fixes, by and large the Skull Architect's designs all shared the same flaws.

"Perhaps they aren't flaws according to their original designer. Every mech designer has a different idea on which design choices are right."

The resulting variant he lazily called the Airven turned into a mech that any pirate could easily use to become a terror in the skies.

Having finished going over the three variants, Ves transferred the relevant files into an encrypted data chip before placing it in a protective case.

Ves had finally finished his homework. Now, he needed to submit it to his 'teacher'.

"There's probably a way to pass this chip to a Shadow Courier stationed in the Bloodstone System."