The Mech Touch

After several weeks of intensive design effort, the Bright Warrior Mark I Version B Project almost reached completion.

It had not been easy. In order to rush the design work, Ves deliberately diverted additional design resources into the project in order to brute force its completion as fast as possible.

Optimization work that most often required both design ingenuity and raw processing power.

The former could be increased by allocating more manpower to the project, which he did. Not just Gloriana and Juliet, but many more assistants took part in performing the tedious work of solving all of the little faults and inefficiencies in the multiple configurations of the second-class modular mech platform.

The latter was even simpler to solve, but that made it even harder for Ves. The Spirit of Bentheim's powerful ASTERA AI core was capable of performing a huge amount of calculations every moment of the day. Additional processors took on this burden as well and served as backups in case the AI core became unavailable.

The issue was that the factory ship also needed to draw on these capabilities in order to run billions of major and minor systems that kept the entire vessel running.

On top of that, the other five design projects also needed to perform an immense amount of calculations to come up with better solutions to the myriad of problems they faced.

Ves decided that finishing the next incarnation of the Bright Warrior design was more important than anything else, so he straightforwardly doubled its allocation of computing power at the expense of other priorities.

Not everyone felt comfortable with this decision. Gloriana had a lot of words to say to him when he announced the change.

"You're delaying the completion of our Hexer mech designs!" She accused when they were just starting their session at the design lab. "Don't you care about the Komodo War anymore?!"

To be honest, the war did not occupy his thoughts as much as before. While he still wanted the Friday Coalition to lose, his own needs came first.

Ves crossed his arms. "Gloriana, before we help anyone else, we have to help ourselves first. The Battle of Reckoning almost squashed us, you know. Think about what would happen if the Fridaymen succeed. Not only would we all die, but the Komodo War won't be getting our upcoming Hexer mechs at all. So if you truly care about the plight of the Hexadric Hegemony, you should help me finish this important design project once and for all so that we can get back to finishing our other projects with minimal delay."

"I'm not blind to the circumstances we're facing, but we're not allocating our design resources efficiently anymore. Piling twice as much mech designers on the Bright Warrior Project won't double its progress. On the other hand, taking a few of them away from our other projects will slow their progress considerably enough that it will take at least several more weeks to finalize them even if we put back what we took."

"The Hex Army can hold out for a few more weeks. The war is not a conflict that is decided in a matter of weeks or months. Besides, the Hegemony is big and is probably working on other solutions. We're hardly the only ones who are trying to save it. Our next batch of Hexer designs are all auxiliary in nature so their effect on the war effort will likely be subtle."

It was difficult for Ves to placate Gloriana, but their safety was truly at risk this time. The only other way to solve their lack of powerful mechs was to purchase a huge batch of premium mechs from their upcoming destination.

Neither Ves nor Gloriana liked this solution. The Larkinson Clan should be making use of internally-developed LMC mechs. Otherwise, what was the point of running its own mech company?

Ves knew that his mechs possessed great advantages that could give his mech forces a decisive edge. He was so confident in his own work that he truly intended to replace any third-party mech in their roster with one of his own products over time.

As for Gloriana, she simply wanted to control everything. She had no involvement in the design of third-party mechs, so they possessed plenty of glaring traits that scarred her eyes whenever she looked at them. The Princess Jeckas, the Vima Suns and the Tamris Stellars had already sickened her to the point where she didn't visit the hangar bay on her own accord anymore.

The Bright Warrior concept may be bland and full of compromises, but it was much less objectionable than mechs designed by other competitors. She craved control, and being able to put her mark on the Larkinson Clan in this fashion was the best way to soothe her urges.

In the end, Ves managed to persuade Gloriana to play along. She didn't have to agree with him, but she shouldn't get in the way either.

"I'm the principal designer in this department." He reminded his wife. "It doesn't make much sense to give every project equal attention at this moment, so I've decided to shift resources around. That's all you need to know. I'm not deliberately delaying our Hexer mech design projects. They'll just have to sit in the back for now. If you want to remedy this situation, then do your utmost to complete our priority project."

She did just that. Due to how much time, effort and affection she invested in the Cherub, Blinding Mech and Devious Projects, she worked on the Bright Warrior IB Project as if her life depended on it! The energy she displayed helped a lot in hastening its progress!

All of their hard work eventually bore fruit. With the wealth of data provided by the logs and footage of the previous battle, their working conditions couldn't be better.

Mech designers always worked best with enough supporting data at their disposal. The entire point about fabricating prototypes and putting them through their paces was to verify what worked, what didn't, and what needed to be fixed.

Even though they only had a single battle to go on, the experiences the prototypes went through were so thorough and all-encompassing that none of the lead designers felt lost.

Gloriana pounced on every irregularity in the data and obsessively tried to solve or mitigate them no matter the difficulty!

There was no doubt that she contributed the most to the project at this stage.

She even tolerated the necessity of working together with Juliet in order to accelerate the project by a couple of days.

Now that she no longer behaved catty in the presence of the other Hexer mech designer, it turned out that the two women worked quite well together.

The collaboration between Ves and Gloriana was best described as a union designed to borrow each other's strengths while covering for each other's weaknesses.

The budding cooperation between Gloriana and Juliet generated a different dynamic.

Both of their interests and strengths overlapped to an extent. When it came to flight systems and anything related to mobility, Juliet held the upper hand against the Wodin scion, but that did not mean the latter had no way to be useful.

On the contrary. When Juliet developed a solution that allowed a given configuration of the Bright Warrior to accelerate faster, Gloriana took a look at the proposed solution and solved some of the problems and shortcomings that the changes introduced.

The overall result was that the mech's overall performance noticeably improved without introducing too many downsides!

"I'm quite impressed by how far we have been able to push the mobility of all four configurations." Juliet reported her progress to Ves one day. "While Gloriana still isn't the most pleasant person to be around, we are doing quite well for ourselves as long as our thoughts coincide."

"You want to finish the project as fast as possible as well?" Ves asked.

"Why wouldn't I? My fellow Penitent Sisters didn't suffer as badly in the last battle as the rest, but our numbers keep growing smaller. The best way to prevent us from losing any further sisters is to make the other mech forces stronger so that they can hold their ground much better next time. This Bright Warrior of yours will definitely help with that. Besides, completing this project faster allows me to get back to working on the Giant Killer design. Our Penitent Sisters need its firepower."

That was another good reason to work hard on the current project.

He thought about the opinions that others held about the Bright Warrior IB. Neither Gloriana nor Juliet exhibited much passion for the future backbone of the Larkinson Clan. Aside from Ves himself, only a handful of assistant mech designers exhibited any passion in the mech design.

"Is the Bright Warrior IB a bad mech?" He questioned himself.

He didn't think so. It was a good performer by any objective measure. It just didn't have the pronounced strength and star power of his more flamboyant designs such as the Doom Guard, Valkyrie Redeemer and Crystal Lord Mark II.

The reactions of the other mech designers reflected the reality that the mech industry and the mech market simply didn't care too much for boring but serviceable products.

The Bright Warrior IB ticked all of the boxes, yet that was nothing special in the eyes of others.

Even its glow was rather bland and lacking in distinct features. Whereas the Piranha Prime could destabilize any opponent that got close while the Valkyrie Redeemer could do something similar at a distance, the Bright Warrior merely boosted the sense of belonging of a Larkinson mech pilot.

"That does sound kind of weak." Ves belatedly admitted.

The Golden Cat may be a key factor in increasing the cohesion of the Larkinson Clan, but she was not that impressive when employed as a design spirit.

She simply didn't bring as much benefits as some of his other design spirits such as the Superior Mother or the Illustrious One.

It was not as if he considered the option of inserting another design spirit in the Bright Warrior IB. Yet every time he thought about it, he instinctively felt it was wrong.

"The Bright Warrior product line must remain as a pure representation of the Larkinson Clan."

The mech had to prove that the Larkinson Clan did not necessarily need to borrow the power of other grand and powerful entities in order to hold its own. If the Bright Warrior mechs were weak, then that simply meant that his clan still had a long way to go before the machines actually became good.

In a way, the Bright Warrior product line served as a mirror to the Larkinsons. It presented an unvarnished view of the actual state and strength of their clan.

"It doesn't matter if the Bright Warrior's glow is a bit lackluster for the moment. Goldie has already grown a lot and she'll definitely enjoy an even greater growth spurt now that we have gained a bunch of expert pilots."

The high-quality spiritual feedback provided by Venerable Joshua, Venerable Jannzi and so on invigorated the Golden Cat. Her strength and capabilities constantly rose every day. She was slowly catching up to the likes of Qilanxo and the Superior Mother.

Ves smiled. He no longer felt insecure about the Bright Warrior IB anymore. Perhaps the only spiritual aspect it was truly lacking in was that Ves hadn't succeeded in incorporating a working spiritual construct.

"My original Bright Warriors never managed to trigger the Ancestral Possession or Ancestral Assistance abilities I've developed." He frowned.

Their conditions were too harsh and Ves overestimated his capabilities. While Ves still felt that there was a chance those abilities had a chance of working, perhaps he should go back to the drawing board.

Should he discard the non-working abilities and replace them with simpler spiritual constructs? What iconic spiritual feature should he add to the mechs instead?

Ves turned his gaze towards the Larkinson Mandate.

"What can you do these days, Goldie?"

Nyaaaa?