The Mech Touch



Master Benedict Cortez had gone through a similar journey as Ves. He had lived for over 150 years, and spent much of it struggling to progress his design philosophy and explore his way forward.

As a pioneer of his own field, he had to make a lot of difficult choices on how he wanted to allocate his time. No mech designer could spend his time on pursuing every possible application of their field of specialization.

Aside from monstrous outliers such as the Polymath, every other mech designer eventually had to give up on pursuing other ideas to the limit in order to make sure they retained the capital to break through.

Ves understood that the choice between Superpublishing the Dullahan Project or the Ghost Project indirectly affected his subsequent career.

"You are at the point in your life where you have started to move beyond the limitations of a Journeyman Mech Designer." Master Benedict accurately pointed out. "What are Journeymen in your opinion?"

"Journeymen are explorers." Ves replied according to his own views. "Mech designers at this level have set a rough research direction, but they still need to invent many distinctive design applications from scratch. Since it is difficult for Journeymen to know what is good or what is valued by customers, it is always recommended to travel around and try out a lot of stuff."

"That is a good perspective, Ves. You have succinctly described the essence of Journeyman Mech Designer. The key here is developing an initial recipe of successful design formulas that you believe in. It doesn't matter how you accomplish this initial goal. Journeymen such as your colleague Ketis knew exactly what she wanted to design as soon as she advanced to this rank. She has spent all of her time on furthering her ability to design swordsman mechs. You on the other hand have devoted much of your time to exploring much of the limitless possibilities of your own design philosophy. As a pioneer in your own field, your competitive pressure is different, so there is a logic to delving into multiple different design applications."

Ves slowly frowned as Master Benedict lectured to him. "Are you suggesting that I won't be able to explore so many research directions once I become a Senior?"

The older mech designer smiled and leaned back on his chair. "Before we speak about that, I think it is better for you to gain a greater understanding of what Senior Mech Designers actually are. There is much I cannot reveal to you yet no matter how close you are. What I can tell you is that Seniors only have one overarching priority: to realize their design philosophy and advance to Master Mech Designer. Nothing else can surpass this goal. As such, do you think that a Senior who dabbles in three different research directions can break through as easily as a Senior that dedicates all of his work hours on deepening their progress in a single branch of their design philosophy?"

Ves grimaced. "I understand your point. A Senior that devotes all of his time on further developing a single research application has a greater chance of advancing to Master within his remaining lifespan."

"Why the glum face, Ves?"

"It's just… I don't really want to be forced into giving up on other interesting ideas." Ves admitted to the Master. "I once received a lecture on how a mech designer could develop his design philosophy into differently shaped trees. You can either shape it into a thin tree that can grow really tall, or opt for a wide tree that happens to be a little short."

The fact of the matter was that Ves didn't want to make a choice. His greed was too great.

He just realized that he possessed a Superpublish Voucher in his Inventory. He had obtained it from the System a long time ago but always kept it in storage because he rarely utilized the normal Superpublish ability to begin with. He would have left it in the dark for many more years under ordinary circumstances, but the current situation just happened to be an excellent opportunity to take advantage of this possibility!

Ves still wasn't certain whether it was worthwhile for him to use up this precious voucher at this junction.

"You have obviously chosen to grow a wide tree with many different branches." The former Skull Architect observed. "And now you have come to a point in your career where you are reluctant to nurture a single branch at the cost of neglecting all of your other ones. This way, your wide tree will eventually transform into a misshapen tall tree as one branch grows higher than all of the other ones."

Ves nodded. "I know what I am like as a mech designer. I can never stick with spending all of my time on exploring just one narrow design application. I like to travel around, gain lots of inspiration from interesting discoveries and find a way to create new possibilities. Choosing to give all of that up just so that I can increase my chances of realizing my design philosophy goes against my nature."

"It sounds as if you have become so attached to your development strategy as a Journeyman that you want to persist with it at the Senior stage. That is uncommon but not completely unheard of in the mech industry. Mech designers that fall within this category do not enjoy a good reputation in the industry. Certain circles have taken to calling them infantiles and other pejorative terms. The meaning is that while a mech designer has grown to become a Senior, his mentality has not grown in accordance. Like children, they still get distracted by whatever catches their fancy. Their inability to follow priorities and focus on a single research direction means that their chances of advancing to Master is miniscule."

"..."

Benedict studied Ves closely. "Are you feeling unreconciled?"

"I do, Master. It's just… my brain is telling me one thing while my heart is telling me another thing. I don't want to narrow my options."

"No one can do everything by themselves, Ves." The Master Mech Designer sagely said. "This is also one of the reasons why Senior Mech Designers start to mentor their own students. The former can continue to devote their full efforts on developing a single topic of research to their limits while the latter can take over responsibility over all of the neglected branches."

Ves still didn't look satisfied. "I already intend to teach more students when I am ready to do so, but that still doesn't sit well to me. No matter whether it is the EBSS or the Geist System, both are equally worthy of further development. I also have other ideas that I want to flesh out as well. I don't necessarily want to hand all of this over to my students and apprentices. I want to do it all myself."

Master Benedict chuckled and shook his head. "You may have heard many stories about this already, but the difficulty of realizing your design philosophy exceeds your imagination. There are good reasons why there are so many Seniors who grow old and die without leaving any permanent legacies behind. They have worked just as hard as myself or more, but they ultimately lacked sufficient discipline and decisiveness to embrace a strategy that was within their means. Do you think that you are good enough as a mech designer to successfully realize your design philosophy while sticking to your current scatter-brained approach?"

Though Ves had a lot of capital that he could count upon, he did not blindly say yes. Underestimating the challenges ahead of him was a good way to grow stagnant as a mech designer!

He did not want to end up as Professor Velten and die while constantly holding regrets about the decisions made in the past.

Ves lowered his head for a moment. "Before I answer that question, can you tell me what it takes for mech designers to advance to Master with a broad research strategy? While you mentioned that the chances of breaking through under those circumstances are minimal, you did not say it is impossible. This implies that there are mech designers who succeeded. What are they like? What do they have in common? What allowed them to succeed where so many others have failed?"

The Master raised his palm in a calming motion.

"Whoa there, Ves. Slow down. I cannot answer all of those questions for you, but let me put it this way. The most extreme and defining example of a Senior who dabbled in everything yet managed to advance to Master based on the quantity of successful research results alone is the Polymath. I am sure you have read her biography already. Though it is painfully short on details, her intelligence, learning ability and imagination are off the charts. You may be the most brilliant Journeyman Mech Designer that I have ever met, but you do not come close to her level."

It was taboo for any mech designer to equate himself to a legendary Star Designer. Anyone who made these thoughtless claims deserved to be treated as a pariah!

"I am not that delusional, Benedict." Ves responded. "Besides, my research interests aren't nearly as broad as hers. What about other mech designers who succeeded with this approach?"

"Hm." Benedict paused for a moment. "I know of Master Mech Designers who match your description, but their starting points are unquestionably higher. They are first-raters without fail. Many of them are born in prominent families or grew up in families that are highly immersed in technology. They possess cranial implants and other augmentations that boost their intelligence and design abilities to a frightening height, allowing them to design mechs and conduct research at ten times the efficiency of their more normal peers. Even then, each of them had to fight a constant uphill battle in order to break through and realize their difficult and overly ambitious design philosophies."

Ves' eyes lit up as he heard these descriptions. Though his circumstances were completely different from these blessed sons and daughters, his gains over the years were not necessarily inferior!

He was utterly convinced that even if he was a little worse at the moment, he possessed the means to match or exceed these brilliant mech designers!

There was no way that Ves could hide these thoughts from a highly observant Master Mech Designer.

To his credit, Benedict did not rule out the possibility that Ves might succeed.

"I know what you are thinking, Ves, but you should not be in a hurry to make a rash decision. A more reasonable development strategy that you can take is to choose a single design application as your major. This will be your main contribution to the mech community and the basis of realizing your design philosophy. You can subsequently relegate all of your other possible research directions as your minors. You should organize your schedule so that you can budget a portion of your time on continuing your explorations of your secondary research projects."

That sounded like an acceptable and more realistic work approach for a Senior. Ves seriously contemplated whether he should take a step back and choose this approach instead.

"If your minors share complementary and mutually reinforcing relationships with your major, then you can leverage this synergy to realize your design philosophy in advance and start off as a Master with a much stronger footing than usual." Master Benedict explained. "This way, you will not waste the eclectic gains you have made as a Journeyman and Senior. You instead converted them into the foundation that has helped you propel your main research direction to significantly greater heights."

That was a compelling image. As Ves thought about all of the work he had done to this date, he felt that it might be more appropriate for him to narrow his research activities to an extent. If he could develop many synergies between his major and all of his minors, he could develop a grand framework that could turn into an entire new system in the field of mech design!

His eyes burned with passion! The more he thought about this approach, the more he felt that he could make it far while still staying true to his heart!

"Have you found your answer, Ves?" Master Benedict asked.

The younger mech designer firmly nodded. "I did. Thank you for your guidance, my friend. I think I know how I want to develop my design philosophy in the future."