The Mech Touch

Ves almost reached the end of his journey.

He had approached and solicited the opinions of hundreds of people.

His increasingly more elaborate search for voices generated a lot of confusion inside and outside of his clan.

His behavior resembled that of a mech designer who started to slide into a mid-life crisis. His insistent questions on what he should focus on in the future sounded as if he was losing sight of his own life.

Ves did not care what kind of commotion he caused. He already built up a reputation for being eccentric and doing whatever he wanted, so his clansmen merely shrugged and continued on with their work.

In any case, the Larkinson Clan had matured into an increasingly larger, more structured and more professional organization in the last few years.

As he continued to discuss his future with all kinds of personalities, he gained a lot more depth about the consequences of every potential decision he could make with regards to the System.

There was no avoiding the fact that the current decision would dictate how he would live out the rest of his life.

No matter how much he wanted to diminish the importance of the System to his life, the advantages he could obtain from its upgraded version were too great for him to ignore.

To turn his back on all of the fantastic benefits that it could provide to him was not wise. If he was able to strengthen himself and his clan further, he would not only be able to rise to the top faster, but also gain more advantages in battle.

When he looked back on his life, he clearly recognized that much of the reason why he was able to come out on top was because he improved faster and accumulated more power in a shorter amount of time!

The more he improved, the less he felt threatened by other parties.

In the past, the mere mention of the Friday Coalition and other second-raters would have caused him to shake in his boots.

Nowadays, any word about the Fridayman would prompt him to roll his eyes. Even if his old enemies were bored enough to seek him out, so what?

His clan was more powerful than ever and Patriarch Reginald Cross personally pledged to protect him against any foe!

After listening to so many opinions and hearing how a lot of people placed their hopes on his rapid improvement, Ves did not want to disappoint their expectations.

Right now, the Larkinson Clan still needed to tread lightly whenever any first-raters were involved. Ves and his subordinates did not dare to answer with straight refusals if the Terrans or Rubarthans came calling.

"I need to fix this sooner or later." Ves furrowed his brows. "Preferably sooner."

He and his clan might have grown into significant influences in Davute, but they were still small fry in the Red Ocean as a whole.

Plenty of Larkinsons voiced their concerns about getting confronted by enemies beyond their ability to handle. The ones that had been with the clan since the early days were especially sensitive to this. Their experiences with fighting against large and overwhelming forces such as state militaries and dominant alien groups had left them with traumas that still haunted them in their nightmares.

"We're still so small in the end." Ves depressingly whispered as he felt a lot less secure about the state of his forces.

The Larkinson Clan may have grown at a meteoric rate since its founding, but that did not change the fact that it was still an ant in the greater scheme of things!

There were many different zones in the dwarf galaxy, of which the upper zones with the richest deposits of phasewater and resources dictated the overall trend in this exciting new frontier.

Whatever happened in the Krakatoa Middle Zone had little to no impact on the development of humanity's expansion in the Red Ocean. The Larkinsons had no capital at all to feel proud of their strength or secure in their ability to defend their assets.

Ves and the Larkinson Clan did not need to be the strongest organization in human space. It just needed to possess enough strength to make parties such as the Big Two and the first-rate states treat Ves politely.

Even so, the journey to reach this point was unimaginably far. Considering how many threats might emerge during this lengthy period, Ves ultimately concluded that it was better to leverage the System as much as possible despite any misgivings that he possessed.

Of course, he still needed to make sure to make clever use of its capabilities. There were good ways and bad ways to utilize the conveniences provided by the fragment of the Metal Scroll.

As Ves underwent this gradual evolution in thought and understanding, he finally returned to the abode that had been his home for the past five years.

The Royal Mansion looked as resplendent as ever. Situated in the heart of the Blue Cat Estates located on the southern end of the Cat Nest, the large estate served as both his sanctuary and his home during his stay on Davute.

As Ves entered the large and expansive back garden of his personal home, the laughter of kids and the meowing of cats filled up the pleasant air.

Maow! Maow!

Mew!

Maaw!

Meuw…

A spiritual red feline hovered before three growing spiritual kittens. Alexandria preened with pride in front of her ‘offspring' and playfully licked the bodies of the three diminutive companion spirits regardless of how many times they complained!

"Hihihihi!"

"Hihihi!"

Further ahead, two little girls were sitting on the grass and played with a dozen or so animated dolls.

<o>,m The bots in the shape of princesses, tigers, ponies and other cute figures were able to interact with the girls in different ways.</o>

The sight of Aurelia and Andraste playing with each other without a care in their little world brought a lot of warmth to their father's heart.

The two sisters had always gotten along well with each other. Aurelia had already assumed the role as the responsible big sister and took care of Andraste whenever possible.

However, due to Andraste's combat and physical-oriented augmentations, his second daughter grew a lot faster than normal and already became just as tall as her older sister.

Nonetheless, Andraste was more willing to accept Aurelia's guidance and leadership role. This was rather odd as Andraste was partially bioprogrammed to become a leader as well.

"Miaow miaow~"

"Clixie…"

Up further ahead was his youngest child, who was already vigorous enough to chase after Clixie. Ves' eyes grew soft as he beheld his first son.

Though Marvaine Wodin-Larkinson was younger than Aurelia and Andraste, he represented a new beginning to his little family.

Just as Gloriana treated Aurelia as her principal heir, Ves already saw Marvaine as his designated successor.

There were multiple reasons for that. The fact that Marvaine was a boy was one reason for that. What truly made him special was his designer baby package.

For their third child, Ves and Gloriana went into business with Witshaw & Seneca yet again.

The wedded couple was happy with the products that the renowned genetics company had provided to them in the past. Both Aurelia and Andraste showed a lot of promise and their carefully-designed genes played a large role in their accelerated development.

When Ves and Gloriana made the decision to have a third kid, the pair made several important decisions.

Ves finally had his way and could start with raising a son.

The Living Mech Corporation had also begun to earn a lot of money at the time. With breakout successes such as the Pacifier, the War Squire and the the Hymenoptera mech lines, the Larkinsons suddenly gained a lot more room to spend their hard-earned cash.

While the Larkinson Clan invested most of its earnings into major asset acquisitions and infrastructure projects, Ves selfishly decided to spend way more money on his first son's designer baby package.

Whereas Aurelia and Andraste's designer genes had cost Ves 4000 MTA credits each, he forked out 100,000 MTA credits all at once in order to strengthen and optimize Marvaine's genes as much as possible!

His wife actually lodged a complaint at first.

"This isn't fair to Aurelia and Andraste!" Gloriana exclaimed! "How will our oldest daughters be able to compete against their younger brother? He'll become too good!"

Ves nonchalantly crossed his arms. "Don't turn this into a bigger deal than it sounds. You know as well as I do that there are horrible diminishing returns at this level of spending. Just because we spend 25 times more on our baby boy's designer genes doesn't mean he will be 25 times stronger or smarter. The actual difference will be only 5 to 10 percent at best. The bigger improvements are mostly found in secondary and tertiary properties such as better health, strengthened immune system, more efficient metabolism and such. It's a lot harder to boost his smarts at this level."

"He will still be smarter than our two daughters!"

"That's the point, honey! We agreed to raise him as a mech designer, didn't you?! The designer baby package that I have chosen for him massively enhanced his memory, his learning speed, his pattern recognition abilities, his abstract thinking capability, his logical thinking processes, his compatibility and utilization of cranial implants as well as vastly greater protection to his brain and nervous system. All of these changes are especially geared to provide him with the greatest possible advantages in any job that is related to the hard sciences."

Ves had opted for Witshaw & Yeneca's Formula U-775128-MMT because it was tailor-made for mech designers.

Any baby that was born with the associated designer genes would exhibit a frightening ability to learn and understand a lot of science, engineering and math-related subjects at a relatively young age!

Though Marvaine was still too young at the moment, it would not take too many years for his intelligence to bloom to the point where he could skip multiple grades at school!

Faced with all of these fantastic future achievements, Gloriana eventually agreed to invest a lot more money into Marvaine's genes.

She too wanted to raise a little genius who could make her proud by designing a fantastic mech in the future!

It would have been better if Marvaine was a girl rather than a boy, but she already got her way with Aurelia and Andraste.

"Papa!" Little Marvaine grinned as he stopped chasing after Clixie.

The boy instead turned around and toddled closer until Ves waved his hand.

Marvaine's little body floated above the ground and flew into his father's embrace.

"I missed you, papa!"

"I missed you too, my little genius."

Though Ves loved all of the children that he had so far, Marvaine was truly special in his eyes.

A part of him felt the need to live vicariously through the child he identified most closely with. He wanted to shower Marvaine with all of the advantages and opportunities that he never got to enjoy in his own life.

While Ves eventually managed to do well with the help of the Mech Designer System, he wanted to do his best to raise Marvaine into a talented mech designer that did not need to rely on such a dangerous tool to achieve success in the mech industry.

So far, Marvaine had already taken the first step in this possible career journey. This was because Denny, his fluffy blond main coon spiritual companion spirit, had already begun to embody the attribute of life!

This development gave Marvaine the potential to become Ves' true successor in mech design.

It also annoyed the hell out of Gloriana. If Marvaine developed a great talent for designing mechs, then it would be a lot harder for her to persuade her boy to design mechs according to her own ideas!

As Ves hugged his son, he suddenly felt a lot less confused than before.

No matter what he chose in the end, he needed to make sure he decided what was best for his family!