The Mech Touch

His most recent conversation with Master Willix implied that she was gradually introducing him to her faction.

Ves had no desire to take part in the power struggles of one of the most powerful organizations of humanity, but if he wanted to survive, he had little choice but to shelter under an umbrella.

As far as backers went, Master Willix and whatever group in the MTA she was a part of didn't sound so bad. Though Ves didn't know anything solid about her colleagues and the Star Designer that was supposed to be her patron, Willix herself was quite a decent and high-minded woman. She didn't look like the sort of person who would join a club that went against her own ideals.

What always struck Ves the most about Master Willix was how she constantly emphasized the importance of serving the greater need by contributing to humanity. She was one of the least self-serving high officials that he had met in his life!

"If her other compatriots are like this, then maybe it's not so bad to get into their good graces."

The only annoying part was that they constantly preached about contributing humanity and expecting Ves to do the same. In practical terms, that translated into donating his precious research results to the MTA so that the rest of humanity could one day benefit from his hard-earned innovations!

Sure, the Association always awarded those who submitted their valuable research gains with merits, but Ves was pretty sure that people like him were being ripped off by a huge margin!

With its effective regulatory strength and monopoly position, the MTA could easily leverage any valuable innovation and earn thousands of times more profit than what it had given to the original inventor as compensation.

This was the real basis why the MTA maintained its dominance and power for so many years despite not holding a lot of direct territory.

By allowing most of humanity to rule their territories in the form of states, the powerful trans-galactic organization avoided most of the excesses that came with governing a powerful empire.

Instead, the mechers stood above this level, allowing them to stay clean and untouched by the filth of ordinary society. Their supreme position allowed them to look down on the space peasants who constantly offered their most precious goods and other valuable gains to the effective rulers of human civilization.

"What a brilliant scam!"

Humanity's past history showed that people tended to dislike all-powerful overlords. The Terrans already tried and failed, so the MTA cleverly sidestepped the most obvious trappings of an empire and instead put up a disguise.

The only part about the MTA that Ves wasn't sure of was whether it was sincere in its mission. Were people like Master Willix truly the norm in the upper ranks of the Association? Or was the MTA just a vehicle to rule over humanity without making it too obvious?

Before he knew the answers to these questions, Ves thought it was best to maintain his distance to the mechers. He had seen them at their best and worst and knew that they had no qualms about sacrificing pawns if necessary.

At his current strength and identity, Ves was nothing but one of their many pawns. This was a bad position to be in so he needed to promote his status to them as soon as possible!

"I should be at least a knight!" Ves affirmed. "That allows me to jump over most problems at the very least."

He had no wish to get entangled in more complicated matters, so he did not harbor any desires to become a more valuable chess piece like the queen or king.

He just wanted to raise his family and design mechs. Grand objectives such as saving the galaxy or defeating humanity's enemies was none of his business!

Of course, he didn't mind pretending to be a savior in order to gain an advantage.

"I wonder how Master Willix's buddies will treat me once I reach the Red Ocean."

The new frontier was a lot looser and more chaotic than the old galaxy, and that made it all the more important to build good relations with one of the highest authorities over there. The MTA might not be able to fulfill all of his wishes, but it was already valuable to gain the veneer of its backing.

Ves soon put his brief conversation with Master Willix out of his mind and went back to his duties.

He invested more time on finalizing the Chimera Project so that he would be able to finish it before reaching the gate system.

The design of the base model went well. Despite the complexities involved with designing hero mechs, the Chimera Project was based around an expert mech, which meant that Ves was able to make a lot more allowances.

Compared to the Transcendent Messenger that he had once designed, the Chimera Project was much less of a compromise!

High-end mech parts tailored for expert mechs simply weren't constrained by the limitations of their standard third-class equivalents.

Whereas before Ves had to make a difficult choice between two different benefits, with the Chimera Project he could comfortably have his cake and eat it too. The components he utilized were both powerful and took up considerably less space. High-end energy cells and heat sinks offered the same effectiveness but took up ten times less space.

As a result, the Chimera Project's performance when fighting up close and from afar was not that much worse than the other expert mechs.

"From what it looks like, the base form of the Chimera Project will be able to perform roughly 80 percent as effective as the First Sword in melee combat and 75 percent as the Amaranto." Ves roughly guessed as he observed the projection of the latest iteration of the design.

Gloriana, who was holding her sleeping baby, softly nodded. "You're right, but those percentages are just generalizations. There are certain areas where the First Sword and the Amaranto can perform two or three times better than the Chimera Project. Their designs have given up a lot of versatility in order to reinforce their strong points."

By stacking up a lot of related systems or miniaturized components, the First Sword and the Amaranto possessed strong advantages that multi-role mechs simply couldn't match.

For example, the Amaranto possessed a much more abundant energy and heat capacity. It had more staying power in a battle and could fire its rifle at higher power levels for a significantly longer duration than the Chimera Project.

Endurance and operating time were definitely two of the Chimera Project's weaker properties. That put Venerable Joshua's expert mech in the same category of the Dark Zephyr.

"The Chimera Project is more of a troubleshooter and a firefighter than a mainstay." Ves described. "It isn't able to last as long as our specialized expert mechs, but it will be able to achieve a high impact in whatever it wishes to accomplish. This is because it can always adapt itself to target the enemy's weak points with its own strong points."

This aligned with the principal core concept of the Chimera Project!

So what if it was only 80 percent as strong as the First Sword in melee combat? Venerable Joshua would be a fool to duel against Venerable Dise in swordsmanship!

The real point of an asset like the Chimera Project was to fight like a scumbag and avoid fair matchups whenever possible!

While both Venerable Joshua and the Chimera Project were worse than Venerable Dise and the First Sword in almost every aspect of melee combat, the former pairing was at least 1000 percent stronger in ranged combat!

Though Venerable Dise was able to employ special resonance abilities to project sword energy at a distance, it was foolish to think that she and her expert mech could match the prowess of a genuine ranged expert mech!

Ves was already familiar with the properties of Venerable Dise's techniques and knew that they drained a lot of energy while producing attacks that possessed limited range and propagated rather slowly.

In other words, while Venerable Dise had to do the equivalent of lifting a crate to perform a ranged attack, Venerable Joshua merely had to lift a toothpick to accomplish comparable results. The differences in efficiency and effectiveness were too big!

The same applied if the Chimera Project was locked in a duel against the Amaranto. There was no reason for Venerable Joshua to compete against Venerable Stark in the latter's home ground.

It made a lot more sense for the Chimera Project to close in as much as possible and use its sword to cut apart the fragile expert range mech!

All of this did not even factor in the mounted wargear that was designed to give the Chimera Project a powerful short-term boost in battle. Just the base model was enough for Ves to feel gratified!

He focused on the internals of the Chimera Project. This was where the other heart of his expert mech design was located.

The second theme of the Chimera Project was regeneration.

Admittedly, Ves was a bit less certain about the specifics of this advantage. Master Willix had integrated a lot of Fixer Iron inside the frame, which produced comparable effects to Rorach's Bone.

The two materials were both capable of regenerating serious damage in battle, but they possessed plenty of differences.

Fixer Iron was a resonating exotic while Rorach's Bone was a more general exotic. The former mainly had to be powered by true resonance while the latter drew its energy from ordinary sources.

In general, Fixer Iron possessed more potential than the other material. This was because its effects scaled with resonance strength. The stronger the expert pilot, the stronger the regeneration effect!

Once Venerable Joshua became a high-tier expert pilot, his formidable will would allow him to distort reality to a greater degree, thereby enabling him to produce miraculous results! Perhaps he could even bring a dead mech back to life!

The only point of incongruence was that regeneration was not a perfect fit for a hero mech. It would have been a lot more suitable if it was applied to a defensive mech such as the Shield of Samar, but Ves couldn't do anything about it. He couldn't let Venerable Joshua's domain go to waste.

"I think it's fine." Gloriana said when she noticed his concerns. "One of the relative weaknesses of the Chimera Project is that it is not able to function as a conventional defensive mech. Even though it is covered with Unending alloy like our other expert mechs, its internals are just as fragile as that of our other offensive mechs. However, considering the fact that Venerable Joshua can actively restore any components damaged by excessive heat or concussive shocks, the Chimera Project is a much hardier expert mech than any enemy might think!"

That made it comparable to the Riot that also possessed a couple of defensive surprises.

To be honest, Ves was less interested in making the Chimera Project more resilient and more interested in increasing Venerable Joshua's chances of survival!

The latter's value was much greater to Ves, especially in the long term! Expert mechs could always be replaced but a rare mech pilot who was completely loyal and also possessed a highly compatible domain was priceless!

This was why Ves cared a lot about the Chimera Project's ability to regenerate and last longer against stronger opponents.

"That's not all, though." He said.

The Chimera Project was designed around a third theme, one that was less substantial than the other two. He never consciously designed this hero expert mech along this concept, but after the confrontation against the Olympus Mons, he had done a lot of rethinking and became a lot more aware of the purpose of the Chimera Project.

The third theme of this expert mech design was hero.

Out of all of the expert mechs of the Larkinson Clan, only the Chimera Project was explicitly designed to turn its expert pilot into a hero!