The Mech Touch

"So this is what it is like to make a mech." Jannzi whispered.

The four Journeymen of the Larkinson Clan were already accustomed to the effects of a design network. Even if this time was different, they already connected to Blinky's network enough times for the novelty to wear off. As soon as they became used to the deeper and more intimate connections, they cast aside all distractions and focused solely on their respective work ȧssignments.

It was different for Venerable Jannzi. Even though Alexandria heavily limited how much data the expert pilot received, the sharing of comprehension was not completely cut off on this end.

Gloriana believed it was best if Venerable Jannzi gained enough input to understand the gist of what the mech designers were working on. This allowed Jannzi to share her thoughts on what she thought about particular parts and systems such as the armor system or the flight system of her mech.

However, when Jannzi finally gained a peek of what went on in the heads of the Journeymen, she quickly became lost in all of the technical insights.

Just because the design network allowed for the sharing of different perspectives didn't necessarily mean that the recipients were capable of understanding them! Though Jannzi possessed a huge amount of understanding on how to pilot a mech, that was radically different from knowing how it worked!

"I feel stupid." She frowned.

Despite her enviable strength and capabilities as an expert pilot, she felt utterly dwarfed by the sheer intellect and knowledge accumulation exposed by the Journeymen.

Even Ketis, who was arguably the 'stupidest' of the four, possessed a wealth of knowledge on science and engineering that was equivalent to a chief engineer!

Jannzi found it incredibly novel to get a taste of what it was like to view reality like an engineer. When she shifted her sights to a rack of tools, she vaguely became aware of what each and every complicated technical gizmo was supposed to do. There was no way for her to operate these tools proficiently, but just knowing what they did was illuminating!

When she observed the projection of the latest design of the Shield of Samar, she obtained a flood of hints and ȧssociations, most of which completely surpassed her own comprehension!

Though an expert pilot such as Jannzi gained a boost in learning capabilities and was expected to master slightly more advanced knowledge, even mech technicians were able to school her on how mechs worked and how they were put together!

Even so, understanding just 0.01 percent of all of the input she received was enough to deepen her shallow comprehension of how the Shield of Samar worked!

She became more fascinated by the scraps of knowledge that she was reluctantly able to understand. She gained a much better estimate of how much damage different sections of her mech was able to resist, how much heat her mech was able to accumulate and how far she could push the new shield generator.

Though she already possessed a certain degree of understanding of how her expert mech was supposed to perform, her comprehension easily doubled after just a short time of connecting to the design network!

"How much will this stick, though?" She questioned.

This was a good question. Much of her current improvement was supported by the brainpower shared by the connected mech designers. Once Jannzi lost access to them, her ability to interpret and understand technical knowledge would take a nosedive.

Even so, she would still be able to keep the overall insights and conclusions that she made. That was enough to optimize her piloting style and boost her combat effectiveness by as much as 10 percent!

Further away, Ves briefly threw a glance at her. Due to the design network, he and the other Journeymen became aware of what the expert pilot had gained.

"A design network is much more useful than I thought!"

They should have added mech pilots to the networks sooner. Although it wasn't strictly necessary for them to know how a mech worked in order to pilot them effectively, a greater degree of technical understanding and proficiency was always helpful and rarely caused any harm!

Of course, aside from gaining basic technical comprehension from the Journeymen, Jannzi also gained a taste of their design philosophies.

If she was able to understand 0.01% of the general science and engineering knowledge of the mech designers, she was able to understand even less of their respective specializations!

All of the accumulated theories, ȧssumptions, data and insights that distinguished one Journeyman from another was far out of the reach of a general Novice or Apprentice.

How could a mech pilot possibly grasp all of these secrets?

As a result, Jannzi was only vaguely capable of understanding the generalities of everyone's design philosophies.

For example, when she looked at the projection of the Bulwark Project, she gained an appreciation of its surprisingly sharp sword, its highly optimized and customized technical structure, its stable and incredibly resilient flight system and above all how much life it possessed.

She focused specifically on the latter. Though Jannzi never made her dislike for Ves a secret, she never looked down on his ability to design mechs.

Now that she gained an opportunity to get a peek on what made Ves so good at his job, she eagerly immersed herself further in how Ves thought and how he viewed his mechs.

"It's.. not what I expected." She whispered.

Every mech designer possessed vastly different perspectives. Ketis actually stood out the most because of her extreme obsession for swords and the strength of her will, which was actually as strong as Jannzi's own will!

Yet Ketis' perspective did not interest Jannzi at all. Every expert pilot developed their own principles and obsessions and never showed much interest in what other peers valued.

This was why Ves was much more interesting to Jannzi. Not only did Ves possess a much deeper understanding of living mechs like the Shield of Samar, he also possessed a different and arguably greater perspective on Qilanxo.

Venerable Jannzi fell silent as she parsed new facts and insights on the design spirit she was bonded with for a long time.

Unlike Venerable Orfan and Venerable Dise, Jannzi had never served with the Flagrant Vandals or Lydia's Swordmaidens. She never had the opportunity to meet and interact with Qilanxo back when the design spirit was still a giant lizard.

"So she looked like this." Venerable Jannzi's eyes lit up. "All of those depictions were wrong."

What fascinated her more was how Ves viewed the design spirits he worked with and where they came from. Some were natural like Qilanxo and others were artificial such as the Illustrious One.

Jannzi had no idea how he could even make such amazing god-like entities. That was something that Ves kept tight to his ċhėst, among many other secrets.

Yet even the basics she was able to obtain from Ves was enough for her to gain a brand-new perspective on living mechs!

As an expert pilot, she was already able to sense much of the special traits of living mechs, but it was only now that she gained the context needed to understand what Ves' design philosophy was truly about.

Venerable Jannzi and many other Larkinson mech pilots already guessed or deduced some of these phenomena. However, now that she was able to get a glimpse of how Ves viewed his work, she realized that his efforts into designing living mechs was much more extensive than she thought.

This was especially the case for expert mechs and unique machines like the Shield of Samar!

She understood that her sole machine had already undergone a huge amount of growth. Compared to newer expert mechs such as the Dark Zephyr and the Riot, the Shield of Samar enjoyed an enormous head start in terms of growth!

This conveyed Jannzi's personal mech with greater advantages. Not only was it easier for Ves to add extra functionality to the Shield of Samar, but the mech was also able to offer additional ȧssistance.

"So this is how Ves views an ideal relationship between a mech and a mech pilot."

After all of these revelations, Jannzi became a lot more confident in how she should develop her relationship with the Shield of Samar. It was truly worth it to bȧrė a part of her mind and will this time!

Naturally, Jannzi wasn't the only person to obtain a substantial harvest.

Though Jannzi possessed a large amount of really weird and outright wrong ideas about the Shield of Samar, her piloting approach and her specific thoughts on the performance of her expert mech provided greater direction to the mech designers.

What Ves truly valued was how Jannzi developed her domain attributes. Her force of will embraced the concepts of defense and shielding in a unique manner and gaining an insider's look on them was invaluable!

Together with other influences such as Ves' design philosophy, every part produced by the Journeymen became more in tune with Venerable Jannzi.

Ves even suspected that Venerable Jannzi would be able to resonate with the upgraded Shield of Samar to a substantially greater degree!

There were many other benefits that were too numerous to count. What gratified the mech designers a lot was that Alexandria was capable of keeping up her design network all day.

Maow.

Alexandria yawned as Gloriana and Juliet chose to take a break this time.

Just like before, the Larkinson mech designers opted to rotate their shifts a bit so that at least two of them remained busy.

Gloriana frowned a bit as she held her large belly. She had to take breaks more often due to concerns about her pregnancy.

What she worried about the most was her water breaking while she still had work to do! Dr. Ranya had already given her a couple of treatments that were meant to delay such an occurrence, but human bodies weren't as predictable as machines.

"Just wait for a bit, alright?" She whispered towards her child.

As Gloriana took a well-regulated rest, Ves kept working as he fabricated the internal components of the Shield of Samar. There were a lot of them due to the size of the expert mech and it would take days to fabricate them all. Many of them were so intricate and complicated that Ves even had to discard some of his finished parts.

"Ugh, this is the downside of adopting Gloriana's design philosophy. Some of my work doesn't meet my standards anymore!"

Ves wasn't too bothered though. As he continued to work, he became more satisfied with his output and the output of his colleagues.

Though of the mech designers entered into an inspired state, the mood between them was excellent and they were running ahead of schedule.

The only consideration he was uncertain about was determining the timing of borrowing Vulcan's power.

Ves lifted up his hammer and hesitated whether he should whack himself over his head.

He shook his head. "It's not necessary now, and maybe I should reserve this for Gloriana. She'll be fabricating the parts that contain GT-535 tomorrow. This resonating material is critical to the performance of the Shield of Samar and it will be interesting to see how well Gloriana can make them when she is in a false inspired state."

Tomorrow would definitely be a critical day!