The Mech Touch

The tests that Ves performed aboard the Vivacious Wal yielded plenty of useful results.

Not only did Ves gather a heap of new data on how a shuttle-sized crystal cannon performed, he also tested the defensive properties of the entertainment ship's shield generators in the process.

Due to obvious reasons, the short-ranged shield generators were mostly optimized to resist physical damage.

After all, no one wanted a mech to crash right out of the right and slam against the stands where thousands of spectators were seated to enjoy the action up close. A mech arena would quickly go out of business if even one accident occured, and if such a catastrophe took place here, Raella's entire venture might collapse overnight!

This was why she reacted with considerable dismay when she saw that the shield generators were already straining to contain the firepower of a single discharge of the crystal cannon.

"If bigger versions of these crystal weapons become standard-issue in our clan, then it will become a lot harder to hold matches safely. I guess we'll have to stick with fielding purpose-built arena mechs that are weaker and lighter than standard mechs."

Her boyfriend didn't care about that at the moment. He only had eyes for the incredible firepower shown by the new weapon.

"I like this gun!" Vincent enthusiastically grinned. "You should install like a dozen of them on a single mech! No wait, it'll be even better if you make it really huge so that a single mech can blast a hole through any mech no matter how tough it is! It'll be like one of those Eternal Redemptions from the Penitent Sisters but much easier to land a hit at a distance!"

Thinking about the Eternal Redemption which had yet to see any action made Ves feel a bit of pity. The cannoneer mech design that Ves had finished some time ago was armed with a large and powerful gauss cannon. The mech designed exclusively for the Penitent Sisters possessed top-notch single-shot firepower and physical impact, but that was before Ves conceived of this new weapon system.

Now that he was close to developing a powerful and versatile luminar crystal weapon system that had the option to deliver a lot of kinetic energy at higher efficiencies, the Samheim Cannon wielded by the Eternal Redemption seemed tasteless in comparison.

Sure, the mass production luminar crystal weapons wouldn't be as exaggeratingly powerful as the ones handmade by himself, but their numerous advantages such as incredibly fast beam propagation and ultra-low heat build up more than made up for the reduction in firepower.

The advantages of luminar crystal weapons became especially obvious at longer ranges. The muzzle velocity of a physical weapon could never catch up to the speed of light. Even other types of energy weapons still landed their shots at relativistic speeds!

In space combat, range was king. The capability to inflict reliable damage at extended ranges could completely change the direction of a battle. It was incredibly hard to deal consistent damage at such distances. This was why the Transcendent Punishers piloted by the Eye of Ylvaine was such a valuable trump card to the Larkinson Clan.

The mass introduction of luminar crystal weaponry would definitely change the equation. It would allow other ranged mechs piloted by other clansmen to catch up to the amazing performance of the devout Ylvainan mech pilots.

This didn't make the Eye of Ylvaine obsolete. In fact, combining the two should result in even better results!

He shrugged. This was a regular problem that many mech designers faced throughout their careers. Different technologies advanced at different rates and major breakthroughs rarely coincided with the intentions of individual people.

Ves should be glad that he gained an option to equip even better weapons onto his ranged mech designs. Looking back and feeling regret about not being able to equip them to his prior mech models was pointless and counterproductive. He couldn't change the past but he could definitely affect the future.

He smiled. Soon, his second expert mech would be the first machine to wield his incredibly powerful enhanced luminar crystal rifle! The rifle of this amazing machine would serve as the benchmark for all of the other luminar crystal weapon models to come.

"It would have been even better if we had an energy weapon specialist on hand who could optimize this weapon even further."

It was too difficult to raise any of his assistants to Journeyman. Though Ves had yet to intervene too much in the development of his Braves, none of them possessed the brilliance he sought, at least not yet. They were still young and could always bloom into greater mech designers, but the odds that any of them would follow in Ketis' footsteps was quite slim.

Ves realized he was expecting too much from his men. His own life trajectory was anything but normal and the only homegrown success in the form of Ketis was not a good example at all due to her abnormal development pattern.

Though he supposed he could grant helpful companion spirits to mech designers with spiritual potential such as Miles Tovar, he did not want to expend valuable resources to prop up weaklings.

A Journeyman raised in this fashion would definitely lack the essential drive and other essential qualities that could bring them forward.

This was why he started off with someone younger like Zanthar Larkinson.

Even though it would take at least a decade before Ves would begin to see some fruit, once Zanthar came to his own, the Larkinson Clan would hopefully gain a powerful ranged weapon specialist and could fill up one of the gaps in the Design Department's roster.

To be honest, the Design Department still had other vacancies that limited the potential of any completed mech design projects.

"We also have to obtain a kinetic ranged weapon specialist, an armor system specialist, a neural interface specialist, a sensor and ECM system specialist, an amphibian and aquatic mech specialist, a heavy mech specialist and so on. This list can go on forever if I wish!"

In practice, it was impossible and impractical to take on so many lead designers. A given mech could only accommodate a limited amount of design philosophies. Range was also a difficult issue.

Now that Ves remembered, Ketis and Juliet hadn't left any PPs behind in the Yeina Star Cluster. Unless someone forked over the merits required to insert their essence into their PPs, any commercial mech models that Ves wanted to release in his old star cluster would not be able to display their full strength.

"Hmmm, we'll have to solve this problem before we enter the Red Ocean." He murmured. "It will be a lot more expensive to arrange this matter once we leave this galaxy."

This meant that he had to earn even more merits to take care of this problem.

"I could also choose not to solve this problem."

The Design Department would definitely take on more Journeymen eventually. It was unrealistic to arrange PPs for all of them so that they could extend the influence of their design philosophies into a backwater region that Ves and many Larkinsons had already forgotten!

He shrugged yet again. "I'll see how many merits I have at my disposal once I am about to enter the Red Ocean Dwarf Galaxy."

He really needed to make some progress in helping the MTA mech pilots advance to the rank of expert pilot. He hadn't heard much about them for a while. This was bad news as this implied the mechers that Master Willix had dumped on his lap were not experiencing any significant changes.

"I'll take a closer look at them after I finish the Sentry Project." Ves tentatively decided. "Completing my expert mech designs is important, but satisfying Master Willix is also important!"

First, he had to complete his immediate priorities. He returned to the Spirit of Bentheim with his crystal cannon and continued to explore the new changes and challenges that arose as a consequence of scaling up the weapon system.

Due to his prior experiences, he didn't encounter as many new issues. He already built up an arsenal of existing solutions that could easily be adapted to the current circumstances. Only a few major issues came up which was a natural consequence to massively increasing the energy consumption, heat generation and other parameters.

Though he had to make occasional trips back to the Vivacious Wal in order to test fire each new iteration of his crystal cannon, he completed this phase of the side project a bit faster than expected.

Ves finally embarked on scaling up the weapon system to a full-scale mech-grade rifle after he addressed all of the issues.

This was a larger project than the ones he had embarked on before. The material consumption had increased to a drastic degree due to the expensive materials he was using up. The painful part about all of this was that the volatile exotics he was using up were very difficult to recycle. This meant that there was little point in scrapping the weapon because the yield wasn't great.

Poor recyclability was one of the more obscure downsides to luminar crystals. Though the material composition was a major determinant of recyclability, the recycling industry developed a lot of equipment and methods to extract as much value as possible out of metallic parts. The recyclers were less adept at recovering valuable materials from crystals because they just didn't work with them on such a large scale.

In any case, this wasn't a big deal to Ves as he was willing to spend extra money to obtain greater performance. The LMC still earned enough profits for him to dismiss these costs.

Once he finished his first mech-sized rifle, he needed to test it out as well.

Considering the damage output of the smaller-sized shuttle-grade cannon, Ves was not sure whether it was a good idea to test it out indoors.

He suddenly realized that he had another option.

"I can test it out on one of the many testing grounds of this star system!"

Still, that came with its own risks as Ves was never certain whether the testing grounds he rented would record and pass on the data that all of its sensors had gathered. Perhaps he could alleviate this issue by ordering the Black Cats to inspect the site, but that was no guarantee that everything would be fine.

In fact, it would have been better if the fleet was situated in a remote star system. Without thousands of ships and huge populated settlements in the vicinity, it was a lot easier to guard against any potential onlookers.

In fact, according to the local laws, mechs couldn't arbitrarily fire their weapons out in space. The expeditionary fleet was parked too close to Talulah Silver and all of the traffic going in and out. Even if a mech did its best to point away from all of the hustle and bustle, accidents could always happen.

Even if the Larkinson Clan possessed enough strength to bend the rules, it was not a good idea to do so on a regular basis.

He rubbed his smooth-shaven chin. "Hmm, maybe I'll just wait until we get going again. We just have to make a small detour to a relatively quiet star system."

Hopefully, he wouldn't have to do this too often in order to get the results he wanted. He felt that his initial mech rifle design already came close to meeting his goal. Once he returned to his wife, she would probably embrace its power!

Yet… was this all he could do with the crystal weapon system?

He frowned. "Now that I think about it, I haven't really explored the prime resonance potential of my luminar crystal weapons."

In fact, he suddenly realized that luminar crystals were actually spiritually reactive materials that he could make on demand!

That latter part was important because P-stones and Unending alloy were impossible for him to make. If he could replace some if not all of their functions with different varieties of luminar crystals, he could easily solve the greatest limitation to producing more prime mechs!

A very important question emerged in his mind.

"I already know that luminar crystals can interact with spiritual energy. Can I develop a crystal that can store this energy?"

If he could answer this question with a yes, then that would be a major breakthrough that would open up a lot more possibilities!