The Mech Touch

Slowly but surely, the Larkinson Clan showed that it was here in Davute to stay.

Industrial District 2 welcomed a player that wasn't afraid to invest a large amount of money.

The Larkinson Clan might not be particularly loaded with cash, but it had an abundant reserve of phasewater that effectively served as a form of hard currency in human society.

In many cases, the Larkinsons didn't even have to exchange their phasewater for MTA credits on the open market. A lot of vendors and institutions were more than happy to accept payment in phasewater directly!

For this reason, the inflated price of land at a desirable location on the surface of the Davute VII truly did not bother the clansmen.

They knew that the ruling parties did not sell their plots of land due to scarcity alone.

As a port system that was definitely on track to become one of the largest trading hubs of the Krakatoa Middle Zone, there was a huge amount of commercial potential in Davute!

Any company that got in early and built the most substantive facilities on the main trading planet was bound to earn a huge amount of investment in return!

In fact, just holding on to the land for a century and waiting for the price of land to appreciate wildly due to increasing urban development was a hugely lucrative speculating opportunity!

_{ɴᴇᴡ ɴᴏᴠᴇʟ ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀs ᴀʀᴇ ᴘᴜʙʟɪsʜᴇᴅ ᴏɴ ꜰʀᴇᴇᴡᴇʙɴ(ᴏ)ᴠᴇʟ. ᴄᴏᴍ}

If not for the limitations imposed by the authorities and the risk of Davute getting raided by alien extermination fleets, investment funds would have snapped all of the available land in and around Kotor City already!

As the Larkinsons constructed their major facilities, it became clear that they did not spare any money in building the most robust and defensive structures in the entire district.

They eschewed the trend of constructing floating structures entirely, deeming them to be unsafe and a waste of money to keep afloat, and focused their efforts on building a formidable surface fortress as well as underground facilities that went up to a kilometer underground!

If not for the fact that the land grant did not allow for deeper structures, the Larkinsons would have dug further underground!

While the Larkinsons had yet to draft too many plans for the underground spaces as of yet, for now they made for a handy secure storage site where they could dump much of their surplus mechs, bulk goods and miscellaneous supplies.

For now, the surface construction efforts already took up much of the attention of the Larkinson Clan.

Ever since the Design Department decided to relocate its design teams from the Spirit of Bentheim due to the capital ship's impending refit, Ves and the other mech designers waited for the builders to finish the new design facilities first.

Modern construction technology was extremely fast and productive. As long as the clan spent enough money to hire the best construction engineers and acquire powerful construction mechs, vehicles and machines, the Design Department did not have to wait too long to utilize their new workplaces.

It only took a week to erect a large design lab that could accommodate up to 1000 mech designers!

While the large, sturdy and modern structure still needed to be furnished and outfitted with full suites of high-quality heartland-level lab and workshop equipment, the quantity and quality of the facilities would definitely not fall short of the ones utilized by Master Mech Designers!

Once the facility was complete, Ves anticipated that his design teams could tackle dozens of major design projects at a time without needing to wait their turn to access specialized machines or get constrained by increasingly more inadequate processing power.

Gloriana and Ves dropped by the incomplete design lab facility just as several teams of specialists and engineers had arrived to set up and install the extremely precious first-class processing banks, lab machines and workshop machines.

Due to their extremely high value, the Larkinsons had already begun to station a small garrison that consisted of both Living Sentinels and Eye of Ylvaine units.

While neither of the two mech legions excelled at offensive actions, they already formed a highly effective defensive against raids and long-ranged bombardment.

Though there were still months to go before the MTA ceased to offer its protection to the clan, everyone thought it was better to be overprepared than the other way around.

General Verle even opted to station the Shield of Samar and the Minerva at the compound early in order to provide additional guarantees!

Just the sight of them was enough to inspire the workers at the compounds.

"This is where we will be spending much of our time working in the next five years, isn't that right, Ves?"

"Mmhmm."

Ves held his dozing daughter against his chest as they both stood before their future workplace.

A lot of other construction efforts were still ongoing in the background, but the widespread use of sound-dampening technology made sure that none of the noises spread too far away.

The facility is almost done. I think it is time for us to give it a name. Do you have any suggestions?" Gloriana asked.

Ves observed the white facade of the modern structure that had already been interspersed with green plants in order to liven it up the location and make it look less like a functional industrial site.

The architecture of the design lab was inspired by the interior of the Green Dream. Ves had visited the Green Dream multiple times and had taken a liking of the Aduc Family's aesthetics.

"Let's call it the Genesis Lab." Ves spontaneously decided. "While we won't stay here forever, this will be the place where our Design Department will spawn hundreds of mech designs in the coming years."

Gloriana accepted his decision but did not look too enthused about the name. "Hmmm, that can work, but what of the rest of the compound? It will need to bear a name as well. Since this will be the industrial heart of our clan and mech in Davute, its name will be known to many different parties. Have you come up with any good candidates?"

"Not yet. I was thinking of calling it the Mech Nursery, which is a name I used for my previous manufacturing complex back on Cloudy Curtain, but I think this place deserves its own identity."

"Well, you should hurry up as our new neighbors and the local business community have already shown a lot of interest towards our decision to invest in Davute."

She was right. Gavin had already passed on a dozen invitations and requests for meetings from different parties. Ves did not have time to handle most of these social calls so he shoved most of them to Minister Shederin.

Even so, there were a couple of companies that looked like potential business partners to Ves. He had marked out their names and planned to meet with their leaders in person in order to signal his willingness to work together.

After studying their future workplace's exterior, they approached the facility and headed inside.

They passed by numerous construction teams and heavy-duty lifter bots carrying all sorts of valuable equipment.

Ves did not worry about whether any of the men around him were up to no good. Every builder, specialist and construction engineer were either long-standing members of the Larkinson Clan or had recently been inducted to it. The clan had already hired hundreds of additional personnel just to speed up all of the construction efforts!

The key factor was that the loyalties of all of the construction workers were beyond doubt. This made Ves feel at ease in entrusting them to build the facilities that would host the main revenue-generating activities of the clan.

Ves and his wife toured numerous different places.

They visited the workshop area where an MTA-provided superfab worth 5,000,000 MTA merits would soon be available.

They visited the design rooms and design halls that offered many design amenities to both individual mech designers and large teams of assistants working in unison.

They also visited the highly-guarded data vault where all of the advanced, first-class processing banks and memory banks were already in the process of getting installed.

A total of 60 million MTA merits worth of first-class machines and equipment would soon be concentrated in the Genesis Lab. This was an extremely luxurious lineup of hardware that was practically overkill for a bunch of Journeyman Mech Designers!

It was fortunate that Ves wasn't an ordinary Journeyman. He was confident that he could earn back all of the value put into acquiring all of the expensive machines with enough time!

"I love this workplace." Gloriana gushed as they completed the short tour. "There is much more room available to us now even if we hire another batch of Journeymen. The interior is also much more configurable for us, which enables me to configure my own design studio exactly to my liking. The amount of energy and processing power available to us will also be unprecedentedly high!"

"This is only temporary, Gloriana. We just invested a lot of MTA merits in this expensive equipment. We only have a single copy of every high-quality machine."

"What are you trying to say, Ves?"

"The Genesis Lab won't remain well-equipped forever. Once we resume our expeditions, I don't want to go back to using inferior second-class lab and workshop machines. We'll have to uproot all of these machines and ship them over to the new and improved Spirit of Bentheim so that we can resume our work while on the move."

Gloriana didn't look too happy with that, but Ves had the final say in the clan.

He knew that not everyone was particularly fond of living the spaceborn life, but Ves was still convinced that this was ultimately the best choice.

The fact that he poured a lot of money into building several plots of lands and constructing a lot of expensive facilities was not a sign that he had changed his stance on this matter!

Ves just thought that he had a lot more money to spend these days, so he readily approved an ambitious spending plan.

Even if his expeditionary fleet would ultimately depart from Davute in the future, a branch of the Larkinson Clan would remain to keep the manufacturing complex running!

"As long as this place doesn't get attacked and razed, this compound will become a big source of revenue for our mech company!"

After the couple finished their tour of the incomplete Genesis Lab, they visited a few other facilities under construction.

They briefly observed the massive halls that would soon house most of the LMC's production lines.

They also dropped by the collection of apartment buildings, estate buildings and standalone mansions that provided enough living space for 50,000 clansmen.

Of course, the clan could easily expand this figure by constructing additional housing!

The last place the couple visited was a wide expanse of grass and greenery.

The builders had already constructed the bare form of a large gallery-like structure.

Though much of the interior and exterior needed to be worked on, the gallery already played host to its most important feature.

A mech-sized statue of the Golden Cat was placed in the center of the gallery!

The massive totem brought warmth to the Larkinsons and a sense of welcome to any external guests.

With the natural light of the local star shining down from above, the golden totem made the Larkinson Clan's ancestral spirit look transcendent and otherworldly!

"Meow. Meow."

"Miaow~"

Naturally, Lucky and Clixie had already been hanging out around the statue for some time. Dozens of cats brought by other Larkinson stationed on the surface had been gathered in a small semicircle at the front of the massive totem.

Both Ves and his wife found this sight to be adorable!

"You truly went overboard by building such a large totem this time. Our compound will probably become the number one cat sanctuary on this planet." Gloriana noted with mirth in her voice. "Strays will pour in from every direction in order to pay tribute to the Golden Cat!"

This wasn't his intention. The gallery was meant to exhibit the Larkinson Clan's unique collection of design spirits.

However, seeing how a bunch of cats imitated the behavior of human religious groups such as the Ylvainans, Ves suddenly realized that this gallery structure might take on a different meaning!