The Mech Touch

Having spent two furious days on realizing his vision, Ves felt as if his competition design lacked something.

He felt the same itch whenever he felt as if his mech ideas lacked some sort of gimmick.

For example, the Deliverer wouldn't be so remarkable without Ylvaine lending his prediction ability to the mech pilot.

The Doom Guard would never have shot up from the ranks of striker mechs and form its own category if not for its terror glow.

Right now, Ves felt that while his competition mech managed to meet most of his expectations, he felt he set his sights too low.

"I can add more to mech design." He whispered.

The problem was the lack of capacity.

Choosing to center the duel around striker mechs was one of his ways of constraining Jovy.

Letting this MTA mech designer design a swordsman mech or any other mech that offered a lot of skill expression was just a disaster in the making!

With all of the tricks that Jovy had at his disposal, there were way too many opportunities for him to empower his mech beyond the level of an indigenous mech designer!

While Ves did not regret this choice, it harmed Ves just as much!

Even if competition mechs weren't required to last as long, even if Ves could tune up the performance of the individual parts to their breaking point, he still ran out of space!

This was the point where he resorted to his specialty and imbued his mech design or its intended design spirit with some special feature.

However, Ves did not need to turn his head to see Master Willix floating high above the floor.

Ever since the design phase of the duel commenced, the Master had been keeping a constant eye on both contestants. Like a goddess watching over her subjects, hardly any of their actions escaped her vision!

So far, Ves did not bother too much with her blatant observation. He couldn't do anything about it, and he hadn't done anything remarkable aside from concentrating his mind and imbuing a gradual amount of spirituality into his mech design.

So far, the mech already acquired a rudimentary spiritual foundation. Though it wasn't nearly as deep and strong as the spiritual foundations of his serious mech designs, it was already sufficient to host a design spirit like the Superior Mother!

Yet was this everything he was capable of doing? For a time, Ves slowed down his work as he began to ask himself whether he should feel resigned to this bland outcome.

His sense of deprivation grew stronger. As time went by, he increasingly felt as if he was missing something essential. Without adding this extra factor into his mech design, he could forget about winning the upcoming design duel!

He paused and halted his design work entirely. He stared dully at his current design, trying to do his best to pin down what it lacked!

Meanwhile, above the air, Gloriana had floated next to Master Willix and joined her in observing both contestants.

While Ves inexplicably paused and let precious minutes pass by, on the other side of the workshop, Jovy continued to build his design at a steady and confident pace.

No matter what kind of odd conditions he faced, this was hardly the MTA mech designer's first challenge!

It wasn't easy for him to become a mech designer and advance to Journeyman in the halls of the MTA. The workload was incredible, the amount of knowledge he needed to master was tremendous and he constantly had to compete over resources!

Winning design duels was one of Jovy's favorite methods to get ahead of his peers. Not even the thought of facing a certified masterwork mech designer swayed his confidence in his strength and ability!

"Mr. Armalon is an avid design duelist." Master Willix noted and she approved of what she saw in him. "He has dueled over sixty times, and won at least forty of them, and hardly anyone of them is weak!"

Gloriana widened her eyes. "How can Jovy be so strong?"

"Aside from working hard, his design philosophy is very formidable. What he can do for now is just the tip of the iceberg, but even so, he can already confound many rivals. Even in the galactic center, his specialty has to be taken seriously!"

"It's that formidable?! How come I haven't heard about it more?"

The Master Mech Designer sighed. "Probability manipulation touches upon some very high-level abstract concepts. There are many ways to classify design philosophies, and sorting them by subject is merely one of them. In the MTA, it is not just the subject that matters, but also the grade."

This was something that Gloriana never heard of! Even when she lived at Centerpoint, she never sorted design philosophies by grades!

"How do you determine the grades?"

"By difficulty, scope, ambition and other factors." Master Willix patiently explained. "Ordinarily, I wouldn't bring up this topic to a mech designer as young as you. Knowing the grade of your design philosophy is often detrimental to your development. However, since you have become a masterwork mech designer, you have already proven that you are firm in your research direction. It won't hurt to know where you stand and where other mech designers stand."

The Master waved her hand. "In a state such as the Sentinel Kingdom, most local mech designers have developed simple and basic design philosophies. I'm sure you are already familiar with them. They don't have much ambition and they are constrained by their environment. Therefore, they merely seek to make their mechs cheaper, more efficient, more resilient and so on. While their dreams are still admirable, their limited ambition means that it is actually relatively easy to realize their design philosophies."

Of course, owing to the same poor environment, it was very difficult for the local Seniors to advance to Master!

"Where do I stand?" Gloriana asked.

"There is no objective and authoritative way to determine that. If I use my own judgement, I would rate the grade of your design philosophy as middle-high."

That caused Gloriana to pause. A sense of dissatisfaction appeared on her face. "Why just this?"

"You will have to discover that on your own, Miss Wodin." Master Willix replied. "Don't take my word for it. My judgement is different from that of other people. In fact, in order to counteract bias as much as possible, the MTA employs a very comprehensive set of algorithms and comparisons in order to apply the exact same standard to everyone."

"Is the grade set in stone?"

"Never. Mech designers, even high-ranking ones, can constantly evolve and develop their design philosophies. Sometimes, their ambition swells and their grades automatically rise. Other times, they are getting on in their years and see no hope of realizing their impossible dream. By setting their sights lower, they don't have to overcome as many hurdles and have a much better chance of advancing to Master."

Her explanation contained a lot of implications. Gloriana had already caught many of them. "I see. Higher grades are associated with difficult but ambitious design philosophies. Though the odds of breaking through are low, once you do, you can become a very powerful Master! In contrast, lower grades don't require as much effort to realize, but such Masters simply can't strengthen their mechs as much."

"That's not necessarily the case." Willix said. "Low-grade design philosophies aren't necessarily weak, and high-grade design philosophies aren't omnipotent. It is all about how you use them and how you develop them. Even at Master, when you develop a low-grade design philosophy to an extreme, it is enough to break any high-grade design philosophy!"

This confused Gloriana a bit. "So when it comes to strength, the grade doesn't matter?"

"No, though many mech designers disagree. It's a perspective problem. There are different thoughts on this matter. Because it is less arduous to realize a low-grade design philosophy, there are many Masters who barely make the cut. This has caused the average strength of their group to be quite low. Yet I personally know of many so-called 'low-grade Master Mech Designers' who have come close to reaching the threshold of Star Designer! Once you reach this height, the grade of your design philosophy is no longer an accurate measure of your strength!"

This revelation shocked Gloriana! What Master Willix touched upon was far too high level for a young Journeyman like her to know!

She automatically inferred the situation of mech designers with high-grade design philosophies.

"If I am guessing this right, then high-grade design philosophies are so ambitious and difficult that not a lot of Masters with them have broken through. However, once they do, the performance of their mechs are substantially more powerful because they are able to perform much greater miracles, is that right?"

Willix nodded. "This act of 'performing miracles' as you say is much more drastic at the Master level. You can view it as an amplification of sorts. How strong your design philosophy is when you are a Senior will directly affect how strong it is when you become a Master. That said, many mech designers dream of realizing a powerful design philosophy, but few are able to do so within their lifetimes."

"The few that do are all monsters." Gloriana summed up. "I see. Even though the group of high-grade Masters are small, because their average strengths are so high, it is not difficult to develop the idea that high-grade design philosophies are better!"

Obviously, Master Willix disapproved, otherwise she wouldn't have led Gloriana to this conclusion.

"If it is not presumptuous of me to ask, where does your design philosophy stand?"

"My specialization is gravity systems, and it sounds exactly as boring as you think. The MTA officially categorizes it as a medium-grade design philosophy." Willix smirked. "Yet I have not taken any notice of the insults and disparagements I've received. I have worked diligently while exploring additional applications of my design philosophy in order to raise the performance of my mech designs. Nowadays, I can call myself an equal to many high-grade Masters."

Her status at Halcyon Citadel was high because of that! Not a single resident Master at Centerpoint looked down on her and her modest-sounding specialty!

Gloriana looked even more impressed at Master Willix. In her eyes, this MTA Master was practically a role model to her!

Even if Willix wasn't as exceptional as her rivals, she had long overtaken many of them and continued to make progress even to this day!

"What about Ves and Mr. Armalon?"

Willix turned to Jovy, who was still making a brisk amount of progress. "One of the factors that I have left out is the difficulty of developing a design philosophy. The higher grades are much harder to formulate and internalize. An exceptional design philosophy such as probability manipulation is ranked as a superior-grade design philosophy. This means the requirements to adopt it are extremely demanding. I dare say that in the entire Yeina Star Cluster, there is no one else who can specialize in this strange field!"

"Doesn't that mean that it becomes harder for a Master to develop personal disciples?"

"Partially." Willix admitted. "It takes a very specific person to develop a high-grade design philosophy. The odds of a mech designer meeting all of the requirements naturally is small, but that is when nobody interferes. If a Master wants to nurture a personal disciple, he can always mold a student."

"I see. You haven't told me how Ves stands, though."

"Your partner is… difficult to pin down. I have some thoughts about his design philosophy, but I cannot say anything about its grade other than that it is fairly high. It is just…"

"What's the matter?"

"What is he doing?"

Both of them looked down at Ves, who finally began to move after freezing for fifteen minutes straight.

He began to place his palm into the projection, distorting the mech design he developed up until now.

Ves twisted his fingers, which somehow caused his work to take on a slightly different air!