The Mech Touch

It did not take long for Ves to come up with an answer why he was so willing to raise his second daughter into a mech pilot.

"Our family needs to be able to defend itself."

Ves understood that there was a lot more to life than piloting mechs.

He had accomplished vastly more as a mech designer than if he retained the ability to pilot mechs and went on to serve in the Mech Corps!

If he truly lived such an ordinary trajectory, then he would have likely turned into one of many Larkinson mech pilots who blindly risked his life for a state that did not care for him and his family.

There would have been no opportunity for him to earn increasingly greater sums of money. He wouldn't have been able to build an entire clan from scratch that vastly exceeded the power and wealth of the Larkinson Family either.

He was made to be a mech designer.

Yet despite how much Ves valued his identity as a mech designer, that did not change the uncomfortable fact that he was ultimately a non-combatant.

His ability to affect the battlefield was limited to preparing the mechs and organizing his clan beforehand.

Once a battle started, there was little he could do to tilt the outcome in his favor.

Sometimes even that was not enough, as evidenced by the painful deaths his clan suffered over the years.

All of the battles that Ves took part in had emphasized the need to control as much military might as possible.

It took a lot of trouble and effort for him to build up his clan and his own mech army.

The Avatars of Myth, the Living Sentinels and all of the other mech legions that were at his disposal today might be under his beck and call, but if it came down to it relying on others to safeguard his interests was not as good as taking care of business himself.

This was why Ves envied Patriarch Reginald Cross!

The Cross Patriarch might not know a thing about running a business or designing a mech, but he didn't need to learn all of that complicated stuff.

He only needed to be stronger than anyone else to get his way! He could fight anyone who wanted to take his stuff and he could attract a lot of mech pilots and other qualified manpower by virtue of his strength!

Ever since Patriarch Reginald broke through, the status of the Cross Clan had risen like a rocket.

No longer was the Larkinson Clan the only group in the Golden Skull Alliance that mattered.

A clan that was led by a genuine ace pilot often had boundless prospects, especially in a dangerous region like the Red Ocean where martial strength was even more essential to survival than in a more peaceful locale like the Milky Way!

"If times are good, then mech designers and other civilians can play an important role. If times are bad, then the only people that can ensure everyone's survival are soldiers."

This was ultimately the reason why Ves wanted to raise at least one powerful mech pilot within his own little family.

Aurelia was the eldest sister and a natural fit to become a leader. As long as she was willing to follow the trajectory that her parents had prepared for her, the first-born daughter was in a great position to become the future leader of the Larkinson Clan!

This would ensure that the leadership of his own organization would remain within his sphere of influence even if he no longer attended to its affairs.

The only reason why Ves remained a patriarch to begin with was because he did not want another leader to hijack his own clan from under his nose.

There weren't many people he could trust with ultimate power over the clan, but his own offspring were definitely different!

Yet relying on authority and respect was not enough to ensure that his lineage remained dominant inside and outside his clan.

He needed to provide himself and Aurelia a more solid backing.

If he could raise Andraste into a powerful mech pilot or greater, then his lineage would have the military power to ensure their dominance for centuries!

Those that did not respect his design and business accomplishments would most certainly acknowledge Andraste's martial prowess.

Those that did what Ves could do for the mech community would not hold any crooked ideas with a supremely powerful daughter at his side.

In short, there were too many upsides to nurturing Andraste into a future expert pilot or ace pilot.

Even if she did not develop the right genetic aptitude in the end, then there were always other chances.

With four more children on the way, Ves did not believe that none of them would have the fortune of developing a good genetic aptitude!

Still, Andraste possessed so many favorable conditions in this area that it would be a horrendous waste if she was unable to pilot a mech.

As a father, he could not bear the thought of letting her down once she became ten years old.

"There should definitely be a way to raise a kid's genetic aptitude! I don't believe the Mech Trade Association is as helpless as everyone thinks. How can such a powerful organization that was completely dedicated to mechs achieve no results at all in this vital research direction?"

Perhaps Ves wouldn't have been qualified to hear about this possibility in the past, but his status was much different in the present day.

He had done too much for the Mech Trade Association already. Not only did he provide the mechers with a transcendence glow that could artificially induce mech pilots into breaking through, he also invented a spiritual training program that could do the same job in a different way!

Not only that, but his future potential was also great.

For example, the aforementioned spiritual training program could potentially provide high-ranking mech pilots the option to conduct simulation training that could fully reproduce the actual performance of their powerful mechs.

Ves and the T Institute were also researching more ways to empower and facilitate the growth of mech pilots. From spirit fruits to companion spirits, he promised to offer more to humanity in a decade than entire MTA research teams had contributed in centuries!

Though it might sound a little conceited, Ves was convinced his status among the people in the known within the Association surpassed that of many of their own Master Mech Designers!

This was evident in how openly the Survivalist Faction and the Transhumanist Faction favored him and pulled strings on his behalf.

Though Ves did not have as many experiences in interacting with the MTA than many Masters, he was pretty certain that getting in touch with the likes of Master Willix, Master Bouderon, Master Dervidian and the Polymath herself did not happen to any ordinary Journeyman!

As Ves continued to worry about Andraste's potential chances of piloting a mech, he simply couldn't settle his unease.

"I deal with uncertainties every day. Why can't I settle down regarding this specific issue?"

He looked down at his cute and tiny red-headed daughter. His paternal instincts encouraged him to do everything possible to pave the way for Andraste to reach her potential and enjoy the most of what life had to offer!

Not being able to interface with a mech would be devastating if her parents and her environment spent years on preparing her to become a mech pilot.

This was also why most parents generally did not build up the expectations of their children so much.

The crushing disappointment that most children felt after they tested their genetic aptitudes after their tenth birthday was too great for them to endure!

Should Ves and Gloriana pretend that Andraste wasn't set up to become a mech pilot over the next decade?

"Perhaps this is better, but…"

As someone who interacted with many mech pilots and once dreamt of becoming one himself, he felt it was a huge pity of Andraste ultimately missed the opportunity of her lifetime.

"Do I truly have no power to affect my daughter's chances?"

Ves became so obsessed by this matter that he spent the next few days in a research frenzy.

He first read a lot of academic literature on this subject matter. Even if most of the medical and neurological theories and jargon went right over his head, he managed to understand the broad conclusions of the studies.

"There is no systematic method to instill genetic aptitude onto people."

In fact, the most predominant theory in the branch of neurological sciences was that almost every human was born with at least some viable form of genetic aptitude.

The problem was that as these children grew up, they would get subjected to many different environmental variables. Their nutrition, their exposure to different temperatures, their sleeping patterns, their head injuries and so on all imposed a positive or negative effect on a child's genetic aptitude.

Due to how quickly young children tended to grow, their genetic aptitudes swung so wildly that there was no point in measuring them at this stage.

It was only before the onset of puberty that their brain development no longer swung so wildly in this particular aspect.

If a kid possessed D-grade aptitude at the age of 10, then the chances were overwhelmingly great that this would be the aptitude that they would remain stuck with for the rest of their lives!

One group of neurologists believed that achieving the best genetic aptitude was a matter of raising a child as well as possible. If the positive influences outweigh the negative ones, then a kid had a high likelihood of developing decent genetic aptitude!

However, their theories were not convincing enough to other scientists. There were plenty of cases of children who grew up in poor and awful environments that nonetheless turned into highly talented potentates.

The contradicting theories and empirical data provoked a huge fight within the academic community that still raged on to this day!

Ves eventually sighed and shut down his terminal. "This is useless."

If the neurologists developed a secret formula that vastly increased the chances of developing the right genetic aptitude, then he was pretty sure that none of them were a part of the mainstream scientific community.

The acrimonious fight between the different schools of thought made it clear that most of these self-professed experts possessed no actual clue about this subject matter!

"If conventional science can't provide any answers, then what about unconventional science?"

Ves decided to pay a visit to the Larkinson Biotech Institute and the T Institute in order to find out whether any of the scientists under his employ possessed any viable ideas.

Unfortunately, there were few people within the two research institutions that possessed any expertise in genetic aptitude, and none of them possessed the guts or ambition to increase a child's chances of becoming a qualified potentate.

"What did you expect, Ves?" Director Ranya Wodin-Larkinson placed her hands on her hips. "There is no way that we can embark on such a difficult research project! It is easier for our clan to develop a minidrive than to invent a method that can guarantee that our offspring will develop good genetic aptitudes! What you have been puzzling over has driven so many neurologists and other biotech researchers crazy that it has pretty much become a taboo to dive into this rabbit hole!"

It was far too difficult to produce any results in this field. If Ves invested millions of MTA credits into building a specialized research institute that solely dedicated its efforts to studying genetic aptitude, the likely outcome was that he would have wasted all of that money while gaining absolutely nothing in return!

Ves didn't even have any hope that spiritual engineering might be able to handwave the problem away because there was no foundation for this kind of transformation.

"Stop dreaming, sir." Pesca Aduc, the recently appointed director of the T Institute, replied to Ves. "Let me put it in terms that you can understand. Biology is equivalent to the hardware of a mech while spirituality is the software of a mech. Genetic aptitude is solely determined by the quality, configuration and condition of the hardware. While there are ways for software to affect hardware, the possibilities are relatively limited and I cannot see how this interaction can solve such a difficult problem."

"Damn. It was worth a try."