The Mech Touch

It took a bit of time before the intended pilots of the Greenaxe Project and the Bloodripper Project arrived in New Constantinople.

Once the Bluejay Fleet's courier vessel brought them over to Diandi Base, the expert pilots first went through a thorough examination in order to verify their current condition.

Unlike the other expert pilots of the Larkinson Clan, Venerable Kolak Glendale and Venerable Pedro Rodrigo had yet to make use of any general cultivation elixirs.

While these amazing elixirs had the effect of accelerating the growth of resonance strength, they were made to speed up the growth of expert pilots, not replace this essential process entirely.

An expert pilot that forcefully boosted their resonance strength yet never seriously fought with an actual expert mech would become completely useless at the later stages!

Any serious battle-tested high-tier expert pilot could easily demolish a peer that had only made it this far by piling up elixirs after elixirs.

This was also one of the reasons why Ves felt reassured with letting his own pilots make use of the elixirs. They had already fought and challenged powerful opponents plenty of times.

Even now, the expeditionary fleet of the Golden Skull Alliance as well as the Warborn under the command of General Ark Larkinson had moved right back to the border regions in order to defeat more aliens!

In any case, once Venerable Glendale and Venerable Rodrigo left with their new expert mechs, they would soon be able to speed up their growth in a controlled manner!

The two pilots expressed great enthusiasm for their upcoming testing session. Once they had read through the manual and familiarized themselves with all of the unique settings, they soon changed into their newly issued piloting suits and waited for their turn to come.

The Larkinsons decided to conduct the test on the proving grounds that was situated outside of Diandi Base.

Ves and Gloriana had already anticipated the need of a large and extensive site to test the performance of their new mechs, so they commissioned the Terrans to construct the necessary facilities.

There was nothing fancy about the proving grounds. There were large spaces, obstacle courses, bot dispensers, privacy screens as well as more secure underground testing chambers in case there was a need for greater secrecy.

Ves did not really care that much about maintaining total confidentiality this time. Neither the Greenaxe nor the Bloodripper were all that strategically important to the Larkinson Clan at this time. He wouldn't lose any sleep if the mechers or the Terrans happened to observe the newly fabricated expert mechs.

Ves, Gloriana and Alexa had moved to a well-protected control tower that granted them a clear overview of the surrounding terrain.

The lack of assistant mech designers increased their burden to an extent, but it was not a big issue. They could just go over the data logs after the tests had ended in order to gain a complete understanding of the performance of the new machines.

Besides, Alexa alone was worth dozens of assistant mech designers by herself! Her ability to process data and interpret patterns were so good that Ves and Gloriana could focus on the areas that interested them the most.

"Can I ask you a question, sir?"

"Go ahead, Alexa. You're my disciple now. Asking questions comes with the territory."

"I still do not fully understand why you are investing so much attention and effort into the Greenaxe Project and the Bloodripper Project. These are extravagant machines at the second-class level. Even if their assigned pilots can reluctantly make use of all of their features, they are still disproportionately costly compared to other second-class expert mechs. If future breakthroughs happen at a higher frequency, it becomes increasingly less tenable for the two of you to commit so much energy into these kinds of projects."

Ves smiled even as he continued to set up his workstation.

"You are partially right. We do not intend to invest an unreasonable amount of effort and resources into the development of second-class expert mechs going forward. Our second-class colleagues in the Design Department can pick up the slack while our attention shifts to first-class mech design projects. The Greenaxe and the Bloodripper are the last of their kind. We started them, so we have to accompany them to the end of their initial development track."

Gloriana provided an additional explanation.

"The Greenaxe and the Bloodripper have greater significance to us than to meet the needs of two of our low-tier expert pilots. They also serve as testbeds of our latest technological innovations. They possess features that are not present in our older generation works. It is vital for us to test our latest advancements and collect enough empirical data. The results from these experiments are vital to the development of the Jupiter Project and the Blood Star Mark II Project."

In other words, the Greenaxe and the Bloodripper could also be regarded as experimental works!

They contained a lot of new and untested technological advancements that might not perform as stably and optimally as their developers wished.

By testing them out in less important expert mech designs, the Miracle Couple could gain much more certainty that their upcoming high-tier expert mech designs would perform well despite pushing so many technological limits!

Realization dawned in Alexa's eyes. "I understand. What are the key advancements that you intend you to observe during the initial tests?"

"There are several key systems that merit a lot of attention, but let us focus on the basics first. We should start with the Greenaxe as that is the simpler of the two machines."

They waited as Venerable Kolak Glendale entered the cockpit and settled inside his new battle partner for the first time.

Unlike many of the other Larkinson expert mechs, the Greenaxe lacked a distinct personality and ego, so it did not actively respond to its expert pilot on its own initiative.

The Greenaxe was rather dull in that aspect, but this was a deliberate design feature.

It wasn't until Venerable Glendale activated his powerful machine and interfaced with it that the Greenaxe truly came alive in a way that could not be fully described!

Venerable Glendale already started to resonate with his machine despite not having practiced this skill!

The more Alexa gazed at the Greenaxe that had been placed in the middle of a field down below, the more she had the illusion that she was looking at a giant version of its expert pilot.

She let out a small gasp. "So this is what you mean by second skin. This variation of living mech gives up on turning a mech into a living partner so that the pilot can exert greater control over the entire mech frame. Won't the burden be greater for Venerable Glendale?"

"It depends." Ves responded. "The Greenaxe is not a complicated mech, so the burden of controlling it is not that great to begin with. Even if we install additional modules later on, Glendale will still be able to maintain a high degree of control as he grows stronger. From what we have observed from the Mars, it is no problem at all for an ace pilot to embody his entire machine."

The Greenaxe started to move and perform a standard testing routine. The more Venerable Glendale moved his formidable melee expert mech, the more he became proficient in its control.

This was one of the advantages of a second skin mech. The pilot was able to ignore the barriers that got in the way of controlling a machine, allowing him to control it as if it was his actual body!

The advantages of this were especially great for melee mechs. When the Greenaxe started to lift up its green-edged greataxe and started to swing it around, the machine immediately displayed exquisite control and fluency over its own movements!

"The greataxe is the most powerful aspect of this expert mech." Gloriana spoke with pride. "With the help of a local development company, we managed to invent a new transphasic alloy mixture that combines a resonating exotic with a hyper material. This key feature allows the Greenaxe to cut through solid matter with crushing force. More importantly, we believe that it should be able to cut through transphasic energy shields with much greater efficiency, especially if it reaches masterwork quality in advance. I anticipate that it should only take three to four months before the greataxe can improve in quality, and that is only because the weapon is so massive."

That caused Alexa to grow confused.

"Shouldn't it take years for the god body method to produce a qualitative transformation?"

"That is indeed the case for my past works, but I have improved my design application since then." Gloriana confidently smirked. "I have recently completed the development of my second generation god body method. The Greenaxe and the Bloodripper are the first of my works to benefit from this advancement."

"How is it different from the first generation?"

"I am glad you asked, Alexa. Compared to the first generation of my tech, the second generation is faster and more efficient in every way. The greatest difference is that my expert mechs are embedded with concentrated hyper material nodes. You can think of them as seeds that are especially good at absorbing energy. These hyper material nodes can absorb a greater amount of spiritual feedback and exotic radiation to accelerate the transformation of a mech."

"That is not the extent of what these new hyper material nodes can do." Ves added.

"My husband is right. The original reason why I developed these nodes is to facilitate the process of selective advancement and repairs. You see, as long as the pilot or living mech sets priority on one or a handful of these hyper material nodes, much of the energies absorbed by a god body mech will only focus on improving the quality of a part of the mech frame. This is useful in many ways. The Greenaxe can concentrate on improving its axe first, thereby making it stronger and more effective at breaking through strong defenses. This is the most effective means of improving the expert mech's combat performance in the short term. The other parts of the expert mech can wait."

Alexa looked impressed!

"I see! This is even more useful for repairs!"

"Indeed." Gloriana grinned. "It is difficult for the mech designers and the mech technicians in the field to reproduce parts of masterwork quality. Outside of my husband and I, no one else in the clan can reproduce the high-quality parts. There will be circumstances in the future when our local branches and detachments have to take care of this problem themselves. With my second generation god body solution, the logistics of bringing a damaged masterwork mech back to peak conditions have become much simpler."

Ves nodded in agreement. "The Larkinsons in the field can simply fabricate a replacement part of lesser quality and install it onto the damaged mech in question. The living mech can then set a priority on the new part, allowing it to channel the majority of absorbed energies into speeding up the improvement of its weakest components."

The implications of this advancement were enormous. At the very least, the expeditionary fleet could handle the repairs of its expert mechs without needing to rely on the help of Ves and Gloriana!

Alexa had a decent understanding of the significance of masterworks. They had become even more important in the Age of Dawn as masterwork products worked particularly well with E energy radiation!

The Greenaxe continued its test by chopping its new greataxe onto a transphasic energy shield.

Even though the transphasic energy shield was not that strong, the resonating greataxe easily managed to cut the barrier in half. This destabilized it to such an extent that it immediately collapsed!

"Excellent! The new alloy is doing its work!"

The transphasic greataxe managed to cut through solid alloys with even greater ease, and only got slowed down when it tried to cut through blocks of first-class alloys.

The only problem of cutting through so many difficult obstacles was that Venerable Glendale tired out at a much faster rate!

"This will improve in time. He's just a low-tier expert pilot for now."