The Mech Touch

Prime mechs had become the new obsession of the Miracle Couple.

This newly-invented category of mechs exhibited properties that no one in the fleet had ever heard of. In order to make sure that someone hadn't stolen his thunder, Ves even spent a few hours searching across the entire galactic net.

He even visited the MTA and Rim Guardian's virtual portals to look up whether other mech designers discovered different forms of resonance besides the ones that everyone knew about.

It turned out that Ves was not unique in this case. He looked fascinated as he read up on inventions that enabled resonance between two expert pilots in a single expert mech, resonance between two expert mechs with two expert mechs and more creative arrangements.

In fact, a more immediate example was the infamous Unit L of the Coalition Reserve Corps! Venerable Ghanso Larkinson's Charlemagne exhibited the capability of extending its resonance to the Scarra, a group of accompanying quasi-expert mechs!

Therefore, inventing a new and unusual method to generate resonance was not unheard of in human space. The reason why they weren't popularized like other forms of resonance was because the conditions were too harsh.

Unless a skilled mech designer specifically invested in a specific solution, it was too difficult to meet all of the conditions. It simply wasn't worth it to popularize a different method because the market and the mech industry simply had better options at their disposal.

Better did not necessarily mean stronger. After all, Unit L had already paid off in spades by defeating more than a dozen expert mechs and killing off almost just as many expert pilots.

Better in this case meant that it was more economical, practical and cost-efficient to just rely on fielding expert pilots with traditional expert mechs. If a better and more affordable method of utilizing resonance became known, then it would have displaced the current paradigm!

In the context of the prevailing industry standard, prime mechs were not that impressive. They were merely souped-up standard mechs that failed to match the standard of genuine expert mechs.

The main reason why Ves bothered them at all was because he currently lacked the ability to field expert mechs. This was just a temporary problem, though. Once he completed the current round of mech design projects and tackled the next round, his clan would likely welcome its first batch of expert mechs in about a year.

Ves was looking forward to that time.

He just had to be patient. For now, Ves was attracted by the convenience and the various applications of his new invention. He had just confirmed that just like forced resonance, prime resonance could be used to supercharge battle formations, thereby allowing them to unleash much more powerful attacks than usual.

Now that he confirmed the utility of the Valkyrie Prime, it was no longer a priority to investigate it further. If he wanted to increase the comprehensive strength of his forces, it was much more efficient to develop additional prime mechs.

When Ves and Gloriana entered the former's personal workshop the next day, they planned out their next assignments.

"We have multiple expert pilots who are currently being underutilized due to the limitations of their mechs." Ves began as he projected a list of the Larkinson Clan's expert pilot roster. "Now, we have given Venerable Joshua something to sink his teeth into. While he still cannot express his full might with the Valkyrie Prime, he can at least begin to exercise his resonance strength. This alone is enough of a reason to continue building prime mechs. While they demand a very specific resource, they aren't as troublesome to design as expert mechs."

"How much Unending alloy do you have, still?"

"I just took stock of that earlier." Ves spoke. "To be honest, we don't have as much as I would like. We have enough Unending alloy to comprehensively armor three to four mechs depending on how frugal we are. The Valkyrie Prime admittedly uses more Unending alloy than is strictly needed. If we skip reinforcing the internal frame and reduce the thickness of the armor plating by at least 25 percent, we can probably make four additional prime mechs that will perform nearly as well."

Of course, both of them knew that this wasn't actually true. While the performance of the subsequent prime mechs was indistinguishable from the Valkyrie Prime against normal opponents, in tougher battles that extra armor and reinforced structure could make a substantial difference!

Though Gloriana frowned a bit, she was helpless to do anything about it. The only way to remedy this shortcoming was to supply more Unending alloy, but how could she possibly do that? She didn't even know how Ves got his hands on this extraordinary material!

"It's so fascinating to know that materials like Unending alloy exist." She sighed as she leaned against her husband's shoulder. "The Milky Way is home to a large variety of exotics. The Red Ocean will introduce even more materials with unusual effects. I wonder if we can find a substitute for Unending alloy?"

Ves shrugged. "I'm not so sure about that. Unending alloy itself is a manufactured product. I salvaged it out of some really old and creepy statues that must have been built by extinct alien civilizations. I've tried to analyze the alloy in order to figure out its composition, but it's too damn hard and incredible in other ways for me to do that. Not even the lab equipment on this ship is up to par. I think we need to get our hands on actual first-class scanning machines to identify the exotics and the proportion that make up this remarkable alloy."

That wasn't going to happen anytime soon. While Ves was tempted to ask Master Willix a favor, he didn't want her to look too closely at what he was doing with Unending alloy.

As Ves and Gloriana made some quick calculations on how far they could stretch their current reserves of Unending alloy, they ended up with an unsatisfactory conclusion.

"We can either build 4 good prime mechs or 5 barely passable prime mechs with the supply we have." Gloriana stated. "Barely passable in this case means very vulnerable when their weak points are targeted."

"The biggest issue by far is the Shield of Samar." Ves noted. "The mech is too damn big. It uses up more Unending alloy than a more normal medium mech. While Venerable Tusa's light mech is not as demanding, we can't be too stingy with his machine."

The two puzzled over their options and eventually decided to make some compromises.

Ves tapped the projected names of Venerable Dise, Venerable Orfan and Venerable Tusa. "We need to prioritize our resource allocation towards our offensive melee mechs. They are the ones who need the premium protection the most. Venerable Dise just happens to be the nexus of the Swordmaiden battle network, so her mech has the highest priority."

There was a good reason to focus on meeting the needs of their offensive melee specialists. Just like Venerable Joshua, the three aforementioned expert pilots were powerful duelists and possessed a lot of agency on the battlefield. They could single-handedly turn a battle around by taking advantage of their high threat and fantastic freedom of movement.

However, when it came to choosing which base model to develop the three prime mechs from, Gloriana developed some very serious misgivings.

"What?! You want to develop our prime mechs based on our unfinished designs? Are you crazy? They're not complete!"

"Calm down, Gloriana!" Ves quickly raised his palms. "It's not as absurd as it sounds! First, look at the current state of our projects. They are all in their early prototype testing phase. We have already performed extensive simulation testing to optimize our designs to an extent. Compared to the past, we have been able to accomplish much greater improvements at this stage due to the vastly-increased processing power at our disposal. So even if we are merely in the stage of testing the first iterations of our mech designs, they are already functionally sound!"

Naturally, the designs still had much to go before they reached a satisfactory standard of quality, but the difference it could make was only 5 to 10 percent at most.

This meant that if Ves really wanted to, he could immediately command the Spirit of Bentheim to churn out second-class Bright Warriors and Ferocious Piranhas that already performed nearly as well as the finished versions that would come out in a couple of months!

Of course, he wouldn't do so. His factory ship's production lines were still in the process of producing enough Transcendent Punishers to occupy all of the bunkers of his fleet.

In addition, Gloriana would get even more upset about using products before they were finished. Ves was already pushing her patience to the limit by suggestion they do so for their prime mechs!

"Look, it's not as bad as it sounds, honey. We might be moving quickly, but we can always correct the prime mechs afterwards once we complete the designs they were derived from. We're only talking about a handful of mechs, so the amount of work we need to do is not that onerous."

While Gloriana still didn't look pleased with his idea, she couldn't think up a better solution.

She sighed. "Fine. Have it your way then."

With her consent, she cooperated with Ves to determine the individual configurations of every prime mech.

Venerable Dise was paired up with the Bright Sword Prime, a prime version of the swordsman mech configuration of the Bright Warrior IB.

Venerable Rosa Orfan was paired up with the Bright Spear Prime, a prime version of the Bright Warrior IB that was hastily customized to wield spears.

Venerable Davia Stark was paired up with the Bright Beam Prime, a prime version of the rifleman mech configuration Bright Warrior IB.

"These names aren't very creative." Gloriana grimaced.

"They're descriptive enough, and that's enough."

Venerable Jannzi still retained the Shield of Samar. Instead of developing a new prime mech, Ves and his wife would instead convert the defensive expert pilot's beloved machine into a prime mech.

As for Venerable Tusa, he was slated to receive the Piranha Prime, a prime version of the Ferocious Piranha IB.

With this setup, Ves predicted that they could probably finish the development of all of the prime mechs.

As the couple determined what kind of mechs they needed to design and build over the span of a couple of weeks, they began to decide how much Unending alloy they should allocate to each mech. In order to gather even more Unending alloy, Ves even decided to take away the Unending mech weapons he previously built for his expert pilots during the Nyxian Gap Campaign!

Despite this extra addition, they still came up short, just as they expected.

"We have no choice but to skimp on the prime mechs assigned to Venerable Jannzi and Venerable Stark." He continued. "Stuffing their prime mechs with as much Unending alloy as we can cram into their frames will definitely strengthen their capabilities, but the value we gain out of it is marginal. After all, it's fine to keep them in the backline during a battle."

In order to make the best use out of the dwindling amount of Unending alloy they had left, Ves developed a fairly novel suggestion.

He did not allocate any Unending alloy to the Bright Beam Prime.

He instead diverted all of that extra material to the Shield of Samar, thereby supplying it with enough Unending alloy to armor up its entire forward exterior! If that wasn't enough, Ves also wanted to gift it with a thick tower shield that consisted of multiple layers of Unending alloy and Breyer alloy!

As long as the Shield of Samar wasn't attacked from the rear, it should be more than capable of withstanding a huge amount of damage!

"What about the Bright Beam Prime?" Gloriana asked. "You used up all of the Unending alloy we have left. I won't have any extra defenses, let alone the ability to induce prime resonance."

Ves smirked. "The mech doesn't need any defenses. The Bright Beam Prime can just huddle behind the prime version of the Shield of Samar. As for the other issue, we actually have another prime material on our hands. I have 51 P-stones in my collection, most of which are collecting dust. I'm willing to invest 40 of them to empower the Bright Beam Prime's laser rifle!"

Since Unending alloy could be used as a prime material, why not P-stone? Even though the latter did not possess any defensive properties, it could still be used to augment other components and systems!