The Mech Touch

In order to have any hopes of satisfying the demands of the Hex Army, the Valkyrie Redeemer needed to offer competitive performance.

The Hex Army was famed for fielding just 600 different mech models across all of its mech divisions. Many millions of identical and uniform mechs fought alongside each other on every battlefield.

Compared to the relative lack of importance of male mech designs, the mechs designed for females were far more critical to the Hexers. Teams of Hexer Master Mech Designers poured all of their efforts into designing the powerful and exquisite female mechs.

The performance of these Hexer-approved mech designs would definitely be top notch! If the Valkyrie Redeemer wanted to occupy any space in the Hex Army's exclusive mech roster, then it had to offer stellar performance!

This was difficult for Ves and Gloriana to accomplish when the marauder mech design did not offer that much capacity.

Ves already understood that he needed to find an optimal balance between firepower and mobility. He could not afford to sacrifice either in order to strengthen the other.

"What is worse is that even if I try to balance them out, their performance parameters can't dip below a certain standard!"

If he tried too much to balance the two aspects, he risked compromising them both!

Still, even if Ves and Gloriana weren't able to match the technical excellence of Master Mech Designers, they only had to come close enough!

Both of them already accepted the inevitable gap in performance.

What Ves needed to do was to compensate for this shortcoming by relying on his unique strengths!

Just as in the case of the Doom Guard, the value of mech design did not solely depend on its specifications.

As long as he could add value through applying his specialty, the Valkyrie Redeemer would definitely be able to beat out the Hexer-designed competition!

A considerable amount of anticipation welled in Ves. Since he published his Doom Guard design, he has achieved a major breakthrough in his design philosophy.

Spiritual constructs! Triggered abilities! Under the pressure and stimulation of having to compete against Jovy Armalon, Ves had finally unearthed some of the untapped potential of the spiritual foundation of his mech designs.

The Purge and Purify abilities that Ves had 'programmed' into the Purgatory Envoy both worked as he intended.

This was just the start. Ves was very sure he only scratched the surface of what he could do. "Still, it's unlikely that I can develop an ability that can strengthen a rifle's damage output or increase the defense of a section of armor plating."

This was something that went beyond the scope of his specialty. Only mech designers who dedicated their entire lives to improving these aspects were able to achieve these effects, if only modestly.

Outside of that, the only other way to strengthen the performance of a mech was to rely on resonance. While powerful, it was only limited to a small number of high-ranking mech pilots.

Mere mortals weren't capable of achieving resonance!

"I should forget about these fantasies."

While he couldn't develop abilities that physically affected the performance of a mech, he could at least stick to familiar ground and find more ways to influence both friendly and enemy mech pilots.

A vision already started to form into his mind.

Valkyries were often associated with the dead. They flew over battlefields and chose which warrior had the right to die and enter Valhalla.

Though Ves wasn't particularly well-versed in this ancient myth, the inspiration it offered already caused him to paint a vivid vision of his mech design.

"The Valkyrie Redeemer shall represent the phase of death!"

He imagined a squad of aerial marauder mechs swooping over the battlefield, using its mobility to cover a large amount of ground and remain elusive.

Once the Valkyrie Redeemers stumbled upon a target that was worthy of death, they swooped in to help the victim on their way to the road of death!

In the context of Hexer beliefs, the Valkyrie Redeemers lived up to their name by 'redeeming' its enemies through death!

"The glow of the Valkyrie Redeemer has to compliment this vision." Ves murmured.

He decided to pair his mech with a suppressive glow akin to that of the Doom Guard. Its primary function was to induce fear and the threat of death to the Valkyrie Redeemer's targets.

If the Valkyrie Redeemer dove upon an enemy that was already discomfited by fear, then the chances of success would doubtlessly be greater!

However, the biggest obstacle to implementing such a useful suppressive glow was that its range was not that large.

An aerial marauder mech would likely fly several kilometers in the air before spotting a target. Once it dove, the Valkyrie Redeemer would give the target ample time to evade or prepare a counterattack.

With the velocity the Valkyrie Redeemer built up during its dive, its glow would only affect an enemy for a couple of blinks before impact!

"That's way too little time for a suppressive glow to have any effect!"

The most it could do was to startle the enemy at the final moment. While that sounded like a useful way to surprise an enemy, Ves was not impressed.

"The problem is that all of the glows of my mechs until now are like stars!"

Stars radiated an immense amount of energy in the form of electromagnetic radiation. Yet for all of their power, they shot it out in every single direction, thereby dispersing all of that energy very rapidly.

Ves looked at the draft design of the Valkyrie Redeemer and began to manipulate the design interface.

He selected a tool that allowed him to draw a transparent sphere around the draft design.

The sphere basically represented his estimate on the effective range of its glow.

The exact range depended on many factors, such as the strength of the design spirit, the strength of the spiritual foundation and how closely the mech matched the original design at the start.

Regardless of the range, it did not extend across a battlefield.

Ves never really felt bothered by the lack of range in the past. Most of his mechs possessed supportive glows. They were primarily meant to boost the mech pilot and any friendlies in the vicinity. The range of his spherical glows were sufficient enough to cover a sufficient amount of friendly mechs.

Yet when it came to targeting enemies, this range was not necessarily good enough.

He rubbed his smooth-shaven chin for a moment before coming up with a possible solution.

He raised his fingers and altered the sphere. He narrowed it down into a half-sphere before reducing the angle even further.

In the end, he reduced the original sphere all the way down to a very narrow cone.

"Will this work?" Ves frowned.

He had no idea. He had never attempted to concentrate the glows of his mechs. Though theoretically it should increase the range and strength of a glow in exchange for narrowing its area of effect, Ves had no way to quantify the benefits.

Without a sufficient theoretical basis, he could only resort to trial and error to see if he could accomplish this radical new application of his glows.

His eyes lit up. "As long as I succeed, I can apply this trick to any mech!"

Depending on how far he could extend the narrowed glow, he might be able to implement it in all of his subsequent ranged mech designs!

A month ago, he never would have conceived of a way to extend and concentrate the glows of his mechs. He had always taken it for granted that they functioned like stars.

Now, Ves believed he had the means to turn these stars into flashlights. By turning an omnidirectional source of glow into a directional source, he hoped to extend its range by at least several kilometers. This should be sufficient to grant his mech a powerful psychological advantage over its opponents!

"This will be my primary focus for this design project."

He planned to implement this feature as a triggered ability. He wanted to bestow the mech pilots of his Valkyrie Redeemers the ability to 'mark' a target for death from a distance.

Once the Valkyrie Redeemers placed the mark, the target should feel as if death was rapidly closing in. Unless they were mentally resilient enough, they should definitely become affected by fear!

The only snag in this plan was that second-class mech pilots weren't weak. The mech militaries of the Friday Coalition trained their mech pilots to an excellent degree, which meant it shouldn't be easy to make them break a sweat!

Ves had already seen that the elite personnel of the MTA easily resisted the glow of a Doom Guard. While the soldiers of the Friday Coalition weren't as stellar, they shouldn't be pushovers either!

"Perhaps that is where concentrating my glow can help. The narrower the cone, the higher the intensity of the glow. At least, that is what I think will happen!"

As long as a glow grew strong enough, Ves refused to believe the Fridayman servicemen would remain fearless!

Ves began to document his vision and ideas while continually letting his imagination run wild.

What other triggered abilities should he implement in his Valkyrie Redeemer design?

He had many ideas, but Ves wasn't confident he could realize them with his current capabilities.

He also had to take the properties of the design spirit into account.

The Superior Mother might be strong, but she did not possess the predictive capabilities of Ylvaine's spiritual fragment.

Different spiritual attributes were suitable for different abilities.

What Ves had to do was to see how he could employ and combine the spiritual attributes of the Superior Mother to produce useful abilities.

"The Superior Mother embodies both mothers and the six phases of existence." He reminded himself. "It's an ancestral spirit that is tied to every Hexer!"

It also happened to contain a portion of his mother, though Ves had not found a trace of her so far. Each time he inspected the dormant Superior Mother, he only identified its original spiritual attributes.

This was what he had to work with. Fortunately, the Superior Mother was not a one-dimensional spiritual entity. In order to fit all of the six phases of existence, Ves had introduced a lot of different spiritual attributes in a single spiritual product.

Ves was actually pretty surprised the Superior Mother had turned into a coherent spiritual entity. Before conducting the ceremony that led to her birth, Ves half-expected to create an abomination or an incoherent amoeba.

Instead, he managed to create a spiritual product that possessed the strength of six different spiritual entities at the same time!

There was no way Ves would forgo the advantages of this condition. So far, he only came up with the Marked for Death ability that corresponded to the phase of death.

"I should offer a boost to friendlies as well."

Ves did not wish to design a second Doom Guard. He wanted his Valkyrie Redeemer to be a mech that female Hexers could look forward to piloting.

As an aerial marauder mech, the mobility of the Valkyrie Redeemer allowed it to do more than hunt isolated targets.

It could also be used in larger battles as an emergency responder!

Once the Valkyrie Redeemer descended to assist a faltering friendly unit, Ves wanted the beleaguered Hexers on the ground to greet their rescuers with hope!

A strong boost of morale at the right time could do wonders in reversing a losing engagement!

Ves believed that adding this boost would truly be able to achieve a drastic effect on the battlefield.

"This is the bare minimum!"

So far, Vese did not know how many triggered abilities he could fit in a single mech design. He already discovered with his Purgatory Envoy design that he could only shape so many spiritual constructs before the spiritual foundation of a mech became compromised.

Even so, he did not feel he had reached his limit back then. It was only due to lack of time that his Purgatory Envoy ended up with only two simple triggered abilities.