The Mech Touch

His talk with the Rubarthans caused him to revel in his new position of superiority, but it also made him realize that he was allocating too much of his time on diplomacy.

Ves recognized the importance of conducting diplomacy. The downfall of the Hexadric Hegemony and the Vulcan Empire always served as the defining examples of how large and powerful organizations could fall. The people of these ill-fated states made too few friends and far too many enemies.

For all of his massive success, Ves never forgot that he was still an upstart in many ways. His Larkinson Clan still amounted to nothing in the greater scheme of things.

This was why it was important to maintain friendly relationships with all of the major players. Ves did not need to become bosom buddies with them all, but he should at least prevent them from developing a strung grudge against him and his clan.

In any case, Ves was done with diplomacy for the time being. He already conducted the most important talks. Unless the Terrans and the Rubarthans had many major decisions that demanded his personal attention, he could leave most of the proceedings to his subordinates.

Ves wanted to get back to work. As important as it was to remain on top of all of the drastic changes due to the changing times, he could never overlook the fact that he was a mech designer first.

This was why he threw himself back into routine. He checked up on the T Institute so that he could direct and oversee the progress that his researchers had made into forming different hyper materials.

The totem method used to produce a favorable elemental environment had spawned dozens of new hyper materials, each of which possessed properties that were completely new and unmatched by known exotics.

Ves did not forget about the deal he made with one of the Master Mech Designers at the conference. He selected a few samples of new and interesting hyper materials and transferred them to the Bluejay Fleet. The mechers had their own shipping channels.

As long as the Association verified that the supplied hypers were completely new and not yet registered in its database, Ves was entitled to receive substantial rewards.

He could ask for numerous different rewards in exchange for his contributions.

Despite all of the attractive choices he could make, he was mainly interested in obtaining more permanent EdNet quotas.

Ves fully recognized the importance of the EdNet to the development of the Larkinson Clan. The Premier Branch needed to consist of as many long-time Larkinsons as possible, but it was difficult to maintain its expansion when there weren't enough internal promotion channels.

This was why Ves inquired about the possibility of exchanging rare and precious hypers for permanent EdNet quotas.

"I am not sure whether it can be done." Jovy's projection told Ves. "I will make inquiries about it. You were lucky when you managed to obtain those initial 10 quotas. Master Xena Wintress clearly wanted to earn your favor by making them available to you. If you want to obtain additional quotas, you will have to do so at a significantly higher cost. You shouldn't expect to obtain any further deep discounts no matter how much your importance has grown. The EdNet's capacity is already stretched to the limit due to the introduction of the New Elites Program. Too many people are in a hurry to shore up their qualifications for the tough battles ahead."

Ves looked a bit disappointed. "Thank you for your clarification. Just do the best you can. This won't be the only way I intend to earn more quotas. As long as I keep working at it, the number of permanent quotas in my possession will slowly grow to a more acceptable amount."

It would make a huge difference to the Larkinsons whether they had access to 10 quotas or 100 quotas!

Unfortunately, Ves was clear that he had to continue his cooperation with the Red Association to earn more quotas. He was quite clear that the mechers likely identified how much value he ascribed to these quotas and deliberately dangled them in front of his head like a carrot!

Thinking about how frustrating it was to remain at the beck and call of the mechers urged him to find a way to upgrade the MSTS.

"It has been a long time since I worked on the Mental Simulation Training System." He frowned.

He knew that Vulcan, who essentially hosted the MSTS, constantly worked to expand its capabilities over time, but these improvements mostly amounted to minor updates to the physics model.

Aside from making the simulations more realistic, the fundamental properties of the MSTS hadn't changed in quite a while.

"If I can find a way to accelerate the perception of time when connected to the MSTS..."

He knew that it was not that simple to imitate the selling feature of the EdNet.

Even if Ves found a way to accelerate time in the simulation environment, the brains of the mech pilots would rapidly overheat and fry from all of the excessive mental strain!

The reason why the EdNet was so successful was because the mechers utilized a lot of cross-disciplinary tech to maintain the health of its users while they subjected their brains to a lot of abuse.

This was a capacity that his own researchers simply couldn't match!

"Maybe I don't have to follow the model of the EdNet so closely. There has to be a different way to produce the same result."

This was bound to be a difficult problem. Ves did not think he could rid himself of his dependency on the EdNet anytime soon.

In any case, before his expeditionary fleet arrived at the Bortele System, Ves wanted to take a bit of time away from his miscellaneous duties and focus on pure mech design.

When he entered the closed chamber where his cyborg leg had constantly been at work behind a desk terminal, Ves hesitated whether he should bother to reattach his limb.

"Hm, I don't think it is healthy to keep the sub-brain separated from me for too long. Who knows what it will grow into if it continues to remain by itself."

It was a strange sensation to reattach an artificial limb that had been standing on its own for a considerable amount of time.

Fortunately, his fears did not come true. No accidents occurred. Ves did not detect any hint of incompatibility. It was the opposite in fact. He felt truly complete now that his

sub-brain had reconnected to the rest of his nervous system!

Ves could already feel his thinking processes returning to a more optimal state. It was as if he had added a secondary processor to a computing system. The two working in harmony

with each other produced small but helpful synergies that would be helpful in solving particularly difficult design problems!

Though Ves still felt tempted to separate his cyborg leg whenever he had to go away on another business trip, there was something to be said about keeping his body whole.

The pleasant boost resulting from reattaching his cyborg leg put hirn in a particularly good mood.

He sat down behind his desk terminal and soon started to get lost in his design projects.

During the weeks he was engaged in other affairs, his cyborg leg and Veronica had both worked on numerous different design projects.

Most of the work was relatively preliminary in nature as not enough time had passed to make substantial progress.

Recent changes and developments in society as well as his own circumstances had also caused many aspects of his design projects to become obsolete overnight.

This was rather annoying as he had to spend a considerable amount of time revising a lot of details.

It was all necessary, though. He had to account for the many new insights and innovations that other people had introduced during the Survivalist conference.

If he did not do this work in advance, then his mech designs would probably become obsolete as soon as the Association announced the next mech generation!

Even so, without access to much of the promising new tech and technological principles, there was little Ves could do aside from ensuring that he could easily replace old tech with new tech.

There was still value in knowing what was to come. Many other rnech designers had little clue about what was to come, and they would definitely suffer for their lack of preparation!

As Ves continued to go over the progress he made while he was gone, he briefly considered whether it was important for him to continue working on these second-class mech design projects.

Ves needed to reserve more time to study the huge amount of knowledge required to become a first-class Senior Mech Designer.

Since he was about to design first-class mechs in the near future, was there any point in spending his time on second-class mechs?

He vigorously shook his head. "Ugh! I'm thinking like a snob again! Bad Ves!"

Ves spent too much time among the Survivalists. They all held an attitude that only first-class mechs could decide the outcome of the war, but that was way too narrow-minded for his tastes.

Even though the mechers had a point that second-class mechs and third-class mechs could not compete directly against the leading alien warfleets, there was still value in investing in quantity!

"Besides, most of my clan will still consist of second-raters for the most part. I can't abandon them just because I can play with shinier toys in the future. I should never forget my roots."

After a bit more thinking, Ves made an important decision by delaying and postponing a few projects.

"I should keep working on the Blood Knight Project since the mechers want to conduct more research on the Carmine System. It's a bit troublesome since it is a biomech, though. I need to spend more time on solving problems that I have never encountered in my other projects."

The Blood Knight Project was already troublesome when it was supposed to be a second-class biomech.

The design project would become ten times more difficult if it was centered around a first-class biomech!

His shallow understanding of biotechnology and biomech design were far from enough for him to design a decent first-class biomech!

"The Elephant Project suffers from the opposite problem."

Its complexity and requirements exceeded that of a second-class mech. Ves was already struggling to contain all of its powerful functions in a quasi-first-class mech frame.

Now that he thought about it, the Elephant Project would have a much better future if he respecified it into a first-class mech!

"I can also add a lot more powerful features to the mech design!"

There was one kind of high technology that Ves deeply wanted to integrate into the Elephant Project.

"This support mech is the perfect platform for shield link technology and energy link technology!"

The fragility and lack of capacity of the Elephant Project would instantly become a thing of the past as long as it was able to draw power and energy shields from other sources!

Not only that, but support link technology also allowed the Elephant Project to project these links on numerous mechs on the battlefield, thereby turning it into an even better heavy support mech!

There was nothing better that could compete with modern support link technology. This was one of the strongest means for first-class multipurpose mechs to survive when fighting against powerful alien warships.

As a tier 3 galactic citizen, Ves had become an honorary member of the Red Association. This meant that he gained high-level access to a lot of restrictive and powerful high technologies, which happened to include support link technology!

Though Ves wasn't allowed to implement this tech into publicly available mechs, it was not a problem to reserve it for his own clan's use!

"The only problem is that this tech is too demanding. It is unfeasible to apply it onto second-class mechs."

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