The Mech Touch

It took some time for Ves to regain his composure. Although there was no harm in dreaming big, every ambition introduced a lot of risks. The greater the ambition, the greater the potential setbacks.

Normally, Ves would shove his ambitious ideas to the back of his mind because he was already preoccupied with other priorities.

He was reluctant to do so this time.

"I already have the spiritual fragment of the Unending One for months and it's just collecting dust in my vault. When will I ever get to do something with this prize? It's too valuable to keep it in storage!"

He also had a bunch of other spoils of war that he needed to make use of somehow. Most notably, it would be very helpful for him to study the remains of the Charlemagne, the Jeanne D'Arc and the Scarra for his upcoming expert mech design projects.

He decided to think about it over the next few days and try and see if he could spare some time on experimenting with the powers of the Unending One.

Ves currently had to juggle between several major priorities. He had to prepare for his upcoming design duel, complete his five remaining mech design projects, stay informed about the attempt to exchange the Auralis for another capital ship and supervise the mass recruitment effort of his clan.

He actually had a lot of other concerns and duties, but he couldn't possibly address them all. He needed to find a way to delegate these matters to people he trusted. He was already doing that but there were some issues that he was too concerned about to leave in the hands of others.

"They're generally split in two different categories: mech-design related and clan governance related."

The former could be solved by appointing a good-enough mech designer to solve the mostly-technical problems he regularly had to deal with. His concern was that none of his assistants were good enough. Even if they were, without his kind of specialty, they were helpless in the face of spiritual-related issues.

"I see now why Masters are fond of raising direct disciples. They're the best form of assistants that you can get." Ves muttered.

Right now, none of the mech designers who answered to him were heirs to his design philosophy. He guided and instructed the likes of Ketis and Maikel in a way that allowed them to find their own way in mech design. While that made him feel good, he was not doing himself any favors.

"It's not yet time to pass on the essentials of my design philosophy." He whispered to himself.

This solution had to be set aside for later.

"Crazy ideas like mine, for example." Ves joked.

"Meow." Lucky nodded his head in agreement.

"You naughty cat!" Ves leaned forward and grabbed Lucky from his desk.

"Meow?!"

"Don't think I haven't forgotten about your lack of production! You've been spending a lot of time on the Auralis with Calabast, haven't you? Did she feed you with the abundant amount of material reserves and scrap when you were working over there? How come you haven't produced a single gem?"

"Meeeeooow!"

Ves was losing patience with Lucky. What was the point of having a gem cat if no gems showed up? The little bugger was getting lazy!

"You know, I think I have a sliver of B-stone in my pockets. I prepared it just for you. Let me retrieve it so that I can—"

"MEOW!"

Ves suddenly paused. "What? Are you sure?"

"Meow meow meow!" Lucky urgently yowled as his tail whipped about in excitement.

"You better not be lying to me, buddy."

"Meow!"

After a bit of hesitation, Ves decided to give his pet the benefit of the doubt. He let go and allowed Lucky to fly a few meters away.

"I'll give you another month. You're lucky that I'm too preoccupied with other priorities to bother about your lack of production. You better give me something good after I'm done with my mech duel and my remaining projects. I don't think there will be any further distractions preventing me from meddling with your digestion system."

"Meow meow!"

While he was running low on usable gems, Ves did not mind waiting for another month if Lucky lived up to his promises. One good gem was worth 10 middling gems in his opinion. Overall, the longer it took, the stronger the output.

Of course, whether those gems were actually useful did not entirely depend on strength. In some cases, Lucky produced some gems with very weird effects. It was a struggle for Ves to find a good use for them when they didn't do anything straightforward such as increasing the defense of a mech.

At least he no longer underestimated these useless gems as much. For a long time, he disregarded the Whipping Boy gem, only to find it was shockingly effective in battle when paired with a mech that already had a suppressive effect such as the Valkyrie Prime.

He prepared to formulate a suitable glow for the Devious in case he wasn't able to obtain a compatible design spirit from the local environment.

It was easy enough to implement a glow that was based on the Superior Mother's dust phase of existence. The Devious had already been designed to embody the dust phase of existence since the mech had been conceived.

The effect of this glow was rather effective in lowering people's guards. During the initial tests, Devious mechs in stealth snuck around a testing ground that was modeled after a typical base and managed to evade the suspicion of the mock guards by 15 percent.

This was quite a drastic jump!

Gloriana became a bit more mollified when she witnessed the disposable Hexer stealth mech in action with its new glow.

"Our mech design's performance is truly better. Its success rate against the circ.u.mstances the prototypes are facing make it seem as if the Devious is a stealth mech that is twice as expensive."

Ves shook his head as he studied the data. "I think you should be careful about drawing any conclusions from these initial results. Just like how the Friday Coalition adapted to the introduction of the Blessed Squire and the Valkyrie Redeemer, the state will definitely find a number of ways to hinder the Devious from raiding their rear positions."

LMC mechs in the Komodo War were way too high profile these days. Ordinary new Hexer mech models did not catch much attention because their impact on the war was rather modest.

The Fridaymen were justified to direct so much attention on the products of the Miracle Couple. The glows of the two aforementioned mechs radically changed the dynamics of the battlefield. Even if the mechs themselves weren't too strong or noteworthy, their spiritual traits were simply too impactful!

The annoying part about all of this was that Ves didn't think the glows of his subsequent three Hexer mech designs were all that revolutionary.

Sure, the Devious might gain a glow that lowered the vigilance of people around it, but so what?

The root of any stealth mech was its stealth systems, and if those weren't all that good, the automated sensor systems would definitely ring an alarm regardless of what kind of fancy glow was active!

Therefore, the application of the Devious would always be limited. The Hexers fielded much better stealth mechs that could infiltrate much more tightly-guarded places.

Still, even a cheap stealth mech had its place. The Devious was not that complicated to pilot so any average mech pilot could employ it to perform risky battlefield infiltrations. If the Hexers were willing to deploy a large number of stealth mechs, they could easily frustrate the Fridayman supply lines, thereby slowing their forward progress!

As the Devious began to perform repeat infiltrations against the same group of helpers, the latter became a lot more vigilant. Now that they became aware of the effects of the stealth mech, the clansmen assigned to play the role of base guards did not lose their vigilance as easily.

Still, even if they knew that the Devious was definitely attempting to sneak up to them at some point, they still lost their alertness when the stealth mech came close enough!

"It's too difficult to remain alert when the glow doesn't announce itself." Ves noted the key issue. "The Devious is too good at lowering vigilance without giving itself away."

The Devious finally began to show its faults when an expert candidate and an expert pilot started to play the role as guards.

During one testing session, Ves directed his eyes to the c.o.c.kpit feed of one of the guard mechs.

From what Ves had experienced, light mech specialists generally came in two varieties.

The most dominant group consisted of flighty and impatient individuals such as Venerable Tusa Billingsley-Larkinson. They loved to pilot fast mechs because they could reach their destinations faster and outpace everyone else.

While their combat instincts were exceptionally sharp in order to allow them to pull off their risky attack runs, their inability to stay calm meant they made for poor guards!

Someone like Trinity Larkinson belonged to another group of light mech specialists. While she was almost just as capable of dancing on the edge of the knife with a light mech as other battle enthusiasts, she was much more capable of sitting still in order to observe her surroundings.

"Over there!"

Her mech abruptly raised its rifle and fired a harmless laser at the corner of a structure that was about 200 meters away.

The laser seemingly passed through empty air and struck another distant structure, but the observers of the test knew better.

The Devious that had just turned around the corner disengaged its active stealth. Trinity had managed to catch the mech barely a second after it slowly rounded the corner!

"Why did it get found out so fast?" Gloriana frowned.

"Expert candidates possess greater intuition than ordinary mech pilots." Ves explained. "I think they may be sharp enough to notice that an external influence is attempting to alter their perception."

The results were even worse when the Devious attempted to sneak past an expert pilot. Even a rather sloppy individual like Venerable Rosa Orfan succeeded in detecting the presence of an invisible stealth mech a kilometer away!

"This is ridiculous!"

Expert pilots were very sharp individuals, and not just due to their intuition alone. Their elevated mental capacities allowed them to merge with their mechs to a much greater extent. They became much more attuned with the senses of their machines. They were also capable of leveraging a greater proportion of a mech's computing power to process much more data.

All of this meant that expert pilots were much more capable of picking up and analyzing suspicious patterns in sensor data than regular mech pilots.

Expert pilots made for excellent base guards!

This setback substantially reduced the utility of the Devious model. The Fridayman Coalition fielded a lot of expert pilots. Even if they were off-duty at a base somewhere, their sharp intuition might cause them to detect something amiss even if they were enjoying a meal in a mess hall.

The glow of the mech might do more harm than good in this case. While ordinary mech pilots weren't able to detect the shifts of their own minds, expert pilots were much more aware of their changes. They were definitely capable of sensing an external influence acting on their minds!

"Well, that's why this model is cheap." Gloriana eventually shrugged. "If an expert pilot happens to catch it, then the Hegemony can afford the loss."

Ves wasn't happy with this outcome. He believed he could do better. While the Superior Mother was a capable all-rounder, in the end she was not the best choice to augment a stealth mech.

If he wanted to achieve a better result, he just had to find a suitable ingredient to form a design spirit that excelled at hiding presences!