The Mech Touch

5727 Stand Tall

The combination of effects and synergies of the luminous fire fey were frankly insane.

Tristan had grown a lot since Ves last met his old friend in person. The former Fridayman had been working diligently to develop his own mech company, and managed to make ends meet for a long time.

The Age of Dawn and the introduction of exotic radiation clearly granted immense boons to the Journeyman Mech Designer.

As Ves studied the physical copy of the luminous fire fey floating above Tristan's head, it became clear that it possessed remarkable qualities that he had never seen in any other living fey.

All of this was due to the integration of Tristan's so-called hyper gems. The positive fire hyper gems and the negative water hyper gems both produced a myriad of effects that effectively increased the firepower of the luminar crystal weapon.

One of the reasons why the combined firepower amplification was so strong with this fey was because the luminar crystal cannon was not actually that strong.

If the same gems were used to amplify the firepower of a warship laser cannon battery, the paltry gems would hardly be able to make a difference!

The only way to make the gems more effective was to increase their quantity or improve their quality.

That could get very expensive.

The greatest advantage of Tristan's gem's was their compact nature. They provided a greater performance boost to a mech or object than anything else relatively to their mass and volume.

That made his gems useful in a lot more situations than this. Compared to his previous gems, Tristan's new hyper gems came much closer to matching the performance of Lucky's own gems.

The two types of gems definitely shared a common root! Ves even suspected that Tristan was gradually moving closer to what Lucky was naturally able to produce.

Ves looked forward to the day that Tristan's gems were no longer inferior to Lucky's products.

There were still far too many steps that Tristan needed to complete before that happened. The progress he made so far was already impressive, but when Ves knew what more could be done with these extraordinary gems, he was not as enthusiastic about them as he should have been.

That did not stop Ves from thinking about inviting Tristan to his clan.

The former Fridayman mech designer had abundantly proven his competence with his luminous fire fey.

His gems had improved to the point where they could provide powerful performance for second-class mechs.

It was not much of a stretch to think they could provide similar performance boosts to quasi-first-class mechs. Tristan would just have to synthesize his gems with higher grades of materials.

What held Ves back from making this decision was whether Tristan was even willing to join the Larkinson Clan.

Tristan had been working as an independent mech designer on Davute for numerous years now. He attained limited success so far, but his future prospects continued to follow an upwards trajectory.

Although he and his mech company had worked for the Davutan Branch of the Larkinson Clan numerous times, there was no indication that he actively sought to improve his ties with the Larkinsons in the past.

The Journeyman worked hard to stand on his own two feet, and he was adamant about maintaining his current boundaries, even to the point of rejecting a growing number of buyout offers.

All of this indicated to Tristan that he wanted to be responsible for his own success for the most part.

Perhaps he might be willing to cooperate with the Larkinsons more extensively by developing the luminous fire fey for the Fey Fianna, but he was clearly trying to improve his own business.

When Ves looked down at Tristan yet again, his old friend did not project anything that indicated he wanted to join up with the Larkinsons.

Even though the Larkinson Clan was clearly in the ascendancy, Tristan was different from all of the envious mech designers who wanted to join up and gain access to an easy track to becoming a first-rater.

In other words, Tristan was too proud to rely on excessive handouts. Even the luminous fire fey was just an attempt for him to earn lots of money by relying on the merit of his own work. It was emphatically not designed to attract Ves' sympathy.

Ves silently nodded at Tristan while maintaining eye contact.

Both of them were mech designers, and both of them had surpassed a certain stage of maturity. They had no need to exchange any words in order to understand each other's meaning.

Ves essentially conveyed his willingness to absorb Tristan and his mech company into the Larkinson Clan.

Tristan basically rejected Ves' goodwill and made it clear that he wanted to earn an honest living as a mech designer.

This was a respectable attitude.

In fact, Ves respected his old friend a lot more, because he would have made the same choice!

The more Ves climbed up the ranks, the more he realized that mech designers needed to possess a lot of pride and persistence as they approached their work. None of them succeeded in becoming a Master Mech Designer or Star Designer by leeching off other people's generosity!

In this case, Tristan clearly rejected the most beneficial short and medium-

term option available to him. He deliberately made this choice in order to preserve his nebulous long-term possibility of becoming an excellent mech designer, with a minute probability of advancing to the rank of Star Designer one day!

No matter how astronomically small this possibility may be, Tristan was not one of the mech designers who gave up because of that. He was willing to grind and toil like an ordinary second-class mech designer because he believed that was the only way he could earn the ultimate payoff in the future.

Ves was not sure whether Tristan would be able to attain his ultimate dream.

The former Fridayman who had technically become a Davutan was taking his time towards promoting to Senior Mech Designer.

The successful development of positive and negative hyper gems were significant achievements and most certainly brought Tristan closer to the next step, but it might still take years before he finally caught up to Ves' current rank.

By then, Ves himself may have already realized his design philosophy at that time!

Ves closed his eyes and turned away from Tristan. There seemed to be no way for the two to converge anytime soon. They were following two different trajectories that were unlikely to intercept.

That was fine. Ves was short on time and always acted with great urgency.

Tristan on the other hand had found his own rhythm. He showed a willingness to follow a more sedate pace in order to strengthen his foundation and break through only when he was truly ready.

The only problem with that approach was that a functioning human society with a substantial mech industry might no longer exist by the time that Tristan came into his power.

Oh well.

"Thank you for demonstrating your product, Mr. Wesseling." Ves said in a formal tone as he adopted the role of host again. "Your luminous fire fey is a fantastic premium solution for customers who are looking to augment the firepower of their forces but lack the space to accommodate more units. Your newly developed hyper gems are particularly interesting to my clan. Outside of my fey, I can easily anticipate that they can augment the performance of all of my living mech models. Are you interested in discussing a long-term supply agreement for your specialty products?"

Ves valued Tristan's gems so much that he was not willing to wait until he had closed this event.

"Wesseling Design Services is always interested in conducting business with any party." Tristan smoothly replied as he played his own role. "I should warn you that I have yet to develop many variations of hyper gems. If you request hyper gems based on rare and less accessible attributes, then you must give me time to develop the right solutions. I am also unable to mass produce high-quality hyper gems at this time. They are too… volatile to be relied upon. I am not yet able to supply my customers with hyper gems that are effective enough to be utilized in first-class mechs."

"I understand, Mr. Wesseling. I will take your current limitations into account. I have utmost confidence in your ability to grow and refine your products over time."

The two exchanged a few more pleasantries with each other before Tristan finally moved off the stage, taking his impressive luminous fire fey as well.

Ves did his best to reset his mood and focus on his current priority.

"The luminous fire fey is an impressive product and certainly had the capital to win first place. The reason why I decided to place it at third is not because of its shortcomings, but because the following contest submissions are even stronger. As far as I am concerned, the top 3 all deserve to be in first place, but that is not permissible according to the rules that we have set. There must be winners and losers, so the following fey is the penultimate product that does an impressive job of enriching the available options of my Fey Fianna."

A new fey hovered above the stage.

Different from the luminous fire fey that radiated so much power and generated a powerful E energy vortex, the second place winner looked like the polar opposite!

It was a fey that was coated in all black that was designed to reflect as little stuff as possible.

It also happened to be covered by emitters that were so form-fitting that they were barely raised from the exterior surface of the device.

Not that many people looked surprised to see it appear on stage. They had toured the exhibitions before and already had a hunch that this particular product would be able to rank at the top.

There were those that even thought it should have won first place!

Alas, Ves made a slightly different choice, but that did not mean that the fey was bad.

[Stealth field fey

Developer: Professor Czilia Avoqee, Lead Engineer

Category: Utility

E Energy Attributes: Negation

Summary: The stealth field fey is designed to work in concert with at least three more identical units, but should ideally be working in concert with many more. As its name suggests, the stealth field fey is designed to project a field that can not only dampen all outward emissions, but also make anything within the area of effect invisible to the naked eye, provided that the objects within are not producing any powerful emissions themselves. Only powerful sensors at close range or targeted scanning at further distances by alien warships can expose the flaws of this stealth field. The stealth field fey is a powerful example of high technology simplified for second-class mechs, and therefore suffers many inadequacies such as excessive cost, extremely high power consumption, relatively short run time and accelerated wear-and-tear. Despite all of these shortcomings, a group of stealth field fey can offer a viable solution to allow a modest group of mechs to silently approach an enemy position in space by relying on ballistic flight.]

The description was longer than usual, but the stealth field fey deserved it. This was a product that could most definitely sway entire battles in the favor of the human side, and it was all because the stealth field fey could effectively hide a bunch of mechs from the sensors of enemy warships until it was too late!

The tradeoffs were great, but as long as a mech force made good use of this tactical advantage, an alien foe could definitely be taken by surprise!

"Professor Czilia Avoqee, please come up to the stage and explain the development of your stealth field fey to us all. Where is tech derived from and how did you manage to fit such a powerful capability in the chassis of a relatively small fey?"

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