The Mech Touch

When Ves successively visited the other expert pilots, their demands all fell in line with his expectations.

He had already gotten a good sense on what they sought in a mech. Since each of them started off as third-class mech pilots, their tastes and desires strongly leaned towards specialization.

This meant that they didn't ask for too many incompatible options. They had little need for bells and whistles. They just wanted a mech that worked just like the machines they were used to, but with much better performance.

Each expert pilot had looked up on expert mechs and became dazzled by the countless examples of powerful works. This helped them gain a better sense of what was possible.

After collecting every expert pilot's opinion, Ves mulled over them once he returned to the Scarlet Rose.

"Venerable Tusa is the easiest to satisfy. His expert mech is smaller and his demands are simple."

An expert light mech was still very capable, but the size of its frame limited its capacity. It had less room for modules and other functions. While this limited the versatility and other parameters of a light mech, it at least reduced the scope required at development. This meant that designing Tusa's expert mech first delivered the fastest results.

This was a very important detail to Ves. He felt far too exposed even if the Larkinson Clan was about to gain a lot of new hardware in the coming months.

The sooner his expert pilots were able to exert their full strength, the safer they would all be. Hardly anyone had the guts to mess with a fleet protected by an expert pilot.

"There are other reasons for designing Tusa's mech before the others."

Ves was very well aware that Venerable Tusa felt he was being overlooked too often. If the aggrieved light mech specialist was the first one to receive an expert mech, then all of that resentment would probably fade away.

This should especially be the case if the mech was good!

The other reason to satisfy Tusa's demand first was due to the political influence he wielded.

Of the five expert pilots, Venerable Joshua and Venerable Dise were solidly behind his back. Venerable Orfan may be more reluctant but tentatively fell into his camp.

Opposite to them, Venerable Jannzi and Venerable Tusa were both opposed to the direction that Ves had taken the clan.

Of the two, Venerable Jannzi had become quite vocal about her opposition. While Venerable Tusa also disapproved of Ves, he was clearly more open to persuasion.

As long as Ves met Tusa's needs by providing him with an expert mech first, the latter's opposition would certainly fade!

"This is a good way to solve numerous problems at once." He muttered.

Of course, Ves still needed to discuss his plans with Master Willix. She might have a different opinion.

Ves yawned as he stepped into his stateroom with Nitaa following as his constant guard.

"Meow!"

"What? Are you serious?"

"Meow meow!" Lucky shoved a pair of gems on the desk before jumping away and phasing through the deck.

"You regained your powers!"

After several weeks of trying to digest the B-stone that Ves had used as a laxative for his cat, two odd gems came into existence.

Ves eagerly stepped forward and swiped up the gems.

The gems were dark and hardly any light passed through. Their surface was coarse as they were covered with rounded spikes that ran all over their surface.

His face turned odd. "How painful was it for Lucky to push out these spiky gems?"

He couldn't imagine the pain he would go through if he was the one who was forced to squeeze out these oddly-shaped gems!

"Well, at least I'm not a gem cat, haha!"

He proceeded to study them with his System vision in order to discover their details.

[Antithesis Essence]

???

[Antithesis Essence]

???

"...That's it?"

Ves patted his head and rubbed his eyes. When he inspected the gems yet again, they delivered the same description.

"You defective piece of crap! You're growing lazier and lazier!"

No matter how much he complained, his System vision never improved. For some reason, the latest two gems produced by Lucky possessed indeterminate properties. The only clues that Ves received were in their names.

He frowned in puzzlement. "What is essence? What does it mean when they are associated with the word antithesis?"

When Ves retrieved the definition of antithesis from the dictionary in his implant, he gained a very simple definition.

"Antithesis: person or thing that is the direct opposite of someone or something else."

While this was an easy description for him to understand, he didn't see how it applied to gems. When he considered the effect of B-stone, did this gem possess the ability to neutralize the effect of other gems?

"Maybe its power is even greater than that!"

Ves experimentally retrieved some of his other gems and put them close to an Antithesis Gem. Nothing happened, but he separated them anyway just to be safe. He didn't want any of his other gems to lose their potency.

Just like the question marks in their description, the gems remained a mystery. Ves wasn't really sure what would happen if he embedded them in a mech.

He had some guesses, though.

"These gems are most suited to the Sanctuary or any other mech presided over by Lufa."

Perhaps such a mech would gain powerful neutralizing abilities that were capable of negating spiritual energy and other manifestations of power.

"What if.. I use them myself?"

For a moment, he felt tempted to embed a into his Unending Regalia. He reluctantly set aside this plan when he considered that the effects of Lucky's gems were usually exclusive to mechs. He also felt that it might be a bad idea to keep them on his person for a lengthy amount of time.

As a mech designer and spiritual engineer, it was essential for him to manipulate spiritual energy. Constant contact with a gem that might very well interfere with that was just asking for trouble.

After he made this guess, Ves resolutely decided to put them in his vault rather than in one of his pockets.

Once he took care of that, he collected his thoughts before turning his attention back to his main work.

"I've already fooled around long enough. Let's get back to completing my remaining design projects."

After finishing the Crystal Lord Mark II, Sanctuary and Chiron designs, he only needed to tackle three more before he cleared the board.

Of the three that remained, the Valkyrie Redeemer Project was the most important to him. Introducing the Blessed Squire to the Hexers caused them to change the way they fought against the Fridaymen, mostly for the better.

A fair amount of time had passed since the LMC introduced a global update across all of its current mech models.

Every opponent who fought LMC mechs in battle faced much trickier circumstances now that they were capable of manipulating the range of their glows!

This presented a great advantage to every LMC mech, not just the Blessed Squires and the altered Doom Guards.

Certainly, the two aforementioned mech models gained the greatest boost in value.

After tricking the Fridaymen many times, they finally learned their lesson. Before the release of the retraction dial update, the Glow Crusher reigned supreme among the counters of LMC mechs.

Now that the mech pilots of the Blessed Squires became very proficient in controlling the radius of their glows, there was almost no chance that Master Olson and Master Katzenberg's work succeeded in crushing any glows!

In order to fulfill its original function, the Glow Crusher had to discharge its accumulated motion energy directly into a Blessed Squire.

This was incredibly difficult to achieve! With the amount of protection that Hexers afforded to their Blessed Squires, the Glow Crushers rapidly diminished in importance.

Ves grinned as he read through the reports and watched some of the latest battle footage. Skillful use of the retraction dial provided other benefits as well. The smaller the radius, the more resilient the glow. The Hex Army increasingly favored deploying multiple Blessed Squires in a single formation, but with their dials set half-way.

While this massively reduced the range of their influence, their glows gained just enough resilience to withstand the pressure of individual counters.

"This is quite clever."

The battle tactics developed by the enterprising and ambitious commanders of the Hex Army were very novel.

Not only that, but once any of them developed a clever tactic, the Hex Army quickly propagated them to other units.

Since the mech divisions and mech regiments of the Hex Army were much more homogenous than the forces of other local states, they encountered significantly less barriers to sharing know-how and best practices. What worked in one unit of Hexers typically worked in many other units of Hexers.

This was not the case for the Friday Coalition. First, each partner organized its own separate military mech armies. Second, each mech division and mech regiment adopted their own distinct traditions, tactics, mech designs and so on. This severely hampered their ability to form a broad and unified response.

Of course, the high degree of uniformity in the Hex Army wasn't without flaw. Just as the Glow Crusher had proved, a single counter successfully weakened the Hexers as a whole!

It was fortunate that Ves managed to come up with a quick response by implementing the retraction dial. Not every designer was able to solve this kind of problem with ease.

Ves was sure this wasn't the end of it. He could smell the vengeful Fridaymen cooking up yet another way to crush his work.

To be honest, he wanted to delay the completion of the Valkyrie Redeemer until the Fridaymen made a move in the second round of their little competition.

Gloriana hit back at his proposal.

"DO YOU KNOW HOW LONG I'VE WAITED FOR YOU TO BE DONE WITH YOUR FRIVOLOUS GAMES?! THE HEX ARMY IS STARVING FOR OUR MECHS, VES! NOW STOP DILLY-DALLYING AROUND AND DO YOUR PART SO WE CAN FINALLY HAND OVER THE VALKYRIE REDEEMER DESIGN TO THE HEGEMONY!"

Faced with such an impassioned demand, Ves could only acquiesce.

"It'll be okay." Ves comforted himself. "I can just publish an update just like before when the Fridaymen come up with their second response."

He studied the second-class light aerial marauder mech design in detail. The technical design work was already complete for the most part. Gloriana clearly showered it with a lot of attention as Ves discovered that it had gone through four iterations.

In fact, according to the logs, she even worked together with some of the institutions of the Hex Army to gather the most comprehensive test data and provide her with numerous helpful suggestions!

It didn't take much effort for Ves to discover that these very clever suggestions came from Hexer mech designers.

While they were so repelled at the thought of contributing to a mech design that was tainted by a male mech designer, the snobby Hexers had no qualms offering their advice anonymously.

Ves frowned a bit. "Meddling cows."

Regardless, the insightful suggestions allowed Gloriana to optimize the Valkyrie Redeemer design to a far greater extent than usual. The performance of the latest prototype exceeded his estimates by at least five percent.

"That is quite a difference!"

One of the reasons the Hexers invested so heavily in the Valkyrie Redeemer was because it was a female mech design. As a mech that was meant to be used by the superior gender, the Hexers wanted to make sure that their most important soldiers received the best!

Though Ves was not pleased that his territory was being encroached upon, he knew that he had to abide by the demands of his clients.

Technically, Ves answered to DIVA, but these days the Hex Army took over from the intelligence agency and liaised directly with the Miracle Couple.

"Maybe I should impose some rules next time." He considered. "It's one thing to listen to my clients. It's another thing to let them walk all over me! I'm not the kind of boy who likes being stepped upon!"