The Mech Touch

Months of focused work and effort culminated in the completion of the C-Man Project.

Ves, Gloriana, Sara and Tifi had all worked intermittently on the ambitious expert brawler mech design. Each of them applied their specialties to make it stronger and more distinct compared to the previous expert mechs designed for the Larkinson Clan.

Gloriana played an especially big role in the design project as she applied numerous radical new solutions to the mech design. Whether her unusual theories could bear fruit remained to be seen, but she did not regret her ambitious design choices.

Professor Benedict Cortez also lent a hand by taking care of the aspects of the C-Man design that were more specific to expert mechs.

The older man spent time with Venerable Vincent in order to identify matching resonating materials.

Once they formed a list of compatible resonating exotics and alloys, Professor Benedict consulted with the other participating mech designers to settle on special material that should hopefully give the C-Man a way to utilize the power of true resonance.

The good news was that the Larkinsons already possessed the key material. It turned out that Vincent was able to generate a notable reaction from one of the 47 resonating exotics that the Larkinsons managed to excavate from the Garimel System.

The clan had already submitted samples to the mechers who subsequently figured out the essential properties of the newly-discovered material.

Marneium was a resonating exotic that could actively absorb heat and convert it into electrical energy.

While it did not generate that much output when left alone, as long as a compatible expert pilot resonated with it, the substance could generate a formidable amount of energy by absorbing the surrounding heat.

This was the perfect resonating exotic for a ranged mech or an energy-intensive mech!

It would have been great if Venerable Vincent stuck to the initial idea of piloting a hybrid mech armed with energy weapons, but Marneium was not a bad choice for the current configuration of the C-Man.

Compared to other expert melee mechs such as the Riot and the First Sword, the C-Man had the potential to drain its energy reserves a lot faster.

Aside from carrying a backup shield generator that could be quite burdensome to maintain at full power, the C-Man's main form of defense was an active system that could expend a huge amount of energy in a short amount of time!

TESMAS was capable of turning the C-Man into an overwhelmingly tough and powerful battle machine in the right conditions.

However, the smart armor system's terrible energy consumption at full power meant that Vincent would barely be able to win a single fight before needing to replenish its depleted energy cells!

This was a major inconvenience and only limited the C-Man to short bursts of intensive combat against tougher opponents.

Marneium offered a potential solution to this shortcoming. As long as it was able to absorb the waste heat generated by the mech along with thermal energy obtained from other sources such as incoming energy attacks, the active boost could drastically extend the C-Man's operation time even while it was engaged in heavy fighting!

Of course, all of this did not come for free. Venerable Vincent bore most of the burden maintaining the Heat Conversion resonating ability.

At this early stage, Gloriana doubted that Vincent could maintain this state for long. However, as long as he continued to develop as an expert pilot, his resonance strength and other extraordinary properties would gradually become more formidable, thereby reducing the burden of resonating with Marneium.

Perhaps a time might come in the future where Venerable Vincent would be able to maintain the Heat Conversion resonating ability for the entire duration of a battle, thereby effectively making it far tougher than other expert mechs!

She quietly sighed as she studied the final iteration of her expert mech design. "It would have been even better if it could fit another key material."

It was difficult to justify the addition. TESMAS already stole the show by being so powerful and demanding. Much of the capacity of the C-Man design had to be allocated to energy cells and other elements to support this demanding system.

As such, the cost of adding an additional key resonating material became too high. The C-Man already had to incorporate other, more generic resonating materials in order to be able to generate a resonance shield and such.

While Gloriana wasn't fond of this choice, she didn't think the absence of a second key resonating exotic would drastically reduce the combat effectiveness of her expert mech design.

"TESMAS is so strong on the onset that it can exceed any regular resonance ability in performance!"

By borrowing the remarkable properties of phasewater, it could achieve a peak strengthening effect of up to 1200 percent!

That wasn't all. If Gloriana's goals came true, then the C-Man and all of its physical parts including the nanomachines that made up TESMAS might become even stronger. This could radically increase the hardness of the C-Man's outer frame and allow it to withstand even more damage!

"Perhaps the C-Man might be able to resist more damage than the Shield of Samar if it grows strong enough!"

Of course, Venerable Jannzi and the Shield of Samar were doing their best to prevent such an outcome.

Jannzi enjoyed a formidable head start over Venerable Vincent and possessed the fastest growth rate among all of the active Larkinson expert pilots.

The Shield of Samar constantly benefited from Jannzi's growth and was also due for an upgrade. Her outdated parts and systems needed to be renewed with more advanced versions to make sure that the living mech maintained the status of the toughest machine of the Larkinson Clan.

In effect, the planned upgrade was nothing more than an attempt to bring up the tech and sophistication of the older expert mech so that it no longer fell behind to newer expert mechs such as the Minerva and the C-Man.

However, that was a consideration for another day. At this time, Gloriana needed to dedicate all of her attention to her impending fabrication run.

She along with Ves, Sara and Tifi had all convened in the secure workshop room inside the Genesis Lab.

There was no meaningful way for them to improve the design any further. The powerful new upgrades to the Design Department's processing power and supercomputing capabilities had substantially increased the efficiency of the optimization process.

The technical refinement of the C-Man design had already reached a satisfactory level. While it would be even better if they could spend a few more months on finetuning its design even more, Gloriana still had to finish her work on the Blade Chaser Mark II and the Mars Project.

"Mama, what is that?"

"That is a superfab, honey."

"What is a superfab?"

"That is a really big machine that we use to make our mech. Mama and papa are about to use it to make a powerful new mech."

"Wooo…." Aurelia looked impressed.

"I need you to be a good girl and let us work uninterrupted, okay? Lucky, Clixie and Shannon will keep you company if you need it. We have made sure to bring plenty of toys to keep you busy!"

"What if I want you, mama?"

"Mama and papa will take regular breaks. Don't worry, Aurelia. We won't stay away for long."

Gloriana rubbed her growing belly as she said that. Now that her pregnancy with her second child had caused her to develop a sizable bump, she needed to take more breaks in order to preserve her health and the health of her next daughter.

"Before I go, would you like to join me in showing our devotion to the Superior Mother?"

"Are we going to see grandma?"

"In a way. Come with me, honey."

Gloriana brought her daughter to the shrine dedicated to the Superior Mother. She knelt in front of it and guided Aurelia into doing the same.

Once she had finished her ritual, Gloriana felt a lot more certain about her upcoming attempt.

She brought Aurelia back to Shannon before joining the other mech designers.

The Journeymen all stood before the highly advanced AP-VEX superfab that the Larkinson Clan acquired more than half a year ago. It was part of a larger suite of advanced first-class production equipment.

With all of this high-quality gear at their disposal, it was a lot easier and faster to fabricate high-quality mechs!

Gloriana did not need to ask whether Ves and the others were ready to make use of the new gear. They had all used the production equipment before or practiced with them in preparation for this fabrication run.

The only significantly different deviation from their normal approach was the fact that they had already prepared their batch of TESMAS beforehand.

She turned towards a secure storage crate that safely and securely stored the extremely expensive batch of nanomachines.

Just transporting it to the Cat Nest was a miniature ordeal in itself. After integrating over 5 kilograms of phasewater, the customized version of TESMAS was probably one of the most expensive technological products on the planet in private hands!

Gloriana and her husband had already examined the nanomachines to verify whether they were sound and made according to their specifications.

"Everything is ready." Ves confirmed. "Every material is in place. We are not short on anything. We can start as soon as possible."

"Understood. This fabrication run will take about three days. Hopefully we will be able to make Venerable Vincent happy."

The expert pilot had already arrived along with his pregnant wife. Vincent already looked stoked to see his first expert mech come to fruition.

He could finally pilot a mech that was capable of keeping up with his growing strength!

Previously, it took at least a week to fabricate an expert mech. The reason why they were able to cut this time was because the AP-VEX superfab along with the other first-class workshop equipment were able to perform the same production tasks a lot faster.

Another reason why they were able to reduce the time was because they were able to skip the time-consuming step of fabricating and assembling the armor system of the C-Man.

In fact, if they were willing to rush the fabrication process, they could probably deliver a complete expert mech within 48 hours.

However, Gloriana wanted everyone to take their time and make sure they worked as thoroughly as possible. Working for three days straight was not as cumbersome as seven or eight days.

After the mech designers studied and confirmed their work schedule one last time, Gloriana initiated the first step.

"Alexandria."

Maow!

An arrogant-looking red cat emerged from Gloriana's mind. The cat imperiously looked down on everyone else, though she pointedly did not direct her gaze at Lucky and Clixie.

"Connect!"

Maow maow!

The cat extended numerous spiritual bonds to the participating mech designers as well as Venerable Vincent.

Everyone's mind became more connected and in sync with each other. Gloriana, Ves and Sara Voiken were already familiar with this remarkable state, but this was Tifi Coslone and Venerable Vincent's first experience with the design network!

It was quite interesting to feel their awe and surprise at the design network. Tifi already became engrossed by the design philosophies and perspectives of her fellow mech designers.

Vincent became completely lost by all of the science and engineering that filled everyone else's minds.

In turn, the mech designers all became familiar with how Vincent approached reality and thought about himself.

It didn't surprise Gloriana at all at how much the expert pilot was absorbed with admiring himself. His thoughts were so masculine that Gloriana was unable to hide her contempt!

However, that did not stop her from using what she learned from Vincent to guide her in her fabrication work.

Vincent might be childish in certain aspects, but he was also a brave and inspiring warrior.

Gloriana aimed to maximize these positive traits and transform the former Brighter into a hero that was larger than life!

The C-Man was the key to Vincent's ascension!