The Mech Touch

The whole excitement surrounding the newly-discovered interactions between different glows was just getting started.

The mech market gained an entirely new appreciation of LMC mechs, and many customers in foreign states who hadn't been exposed to them before began to dip into them for the very first time.

The LMC's market reach expanded every day as the demand for the Doom Guard and other products skyrocketed.

The Aurora Titan model, which had long been accumulating dust in the LMC's mech catalog, suddenly turned into a hot commodity!

The LMC quickly published a statement that described it as its most effective counter to the Doom Guard's glow!

Plenty of early adopters of the LMC's latest product felt pissed. Their seemingly-undefeatable striker mechs turned out to be easily countered by an old, existing product!

Soon enough, their complaints died down once they realized how unsuited the Aurora Titan was for offensive operations.

Only the defending side could make effective use of the Doom Guard and the Aurora Titan! As long as the enemy had to come to them, the relatively immobile mechs could employ their strengths to maximum effect!

In that sense, the Aurora Titan was far more useful to the customers who already bought a Doom Guard. The former mech could shield a lot of friendlies from the indiscriminate glow of the latter.

The addition of such a useful mech vastly increased the tactical flexibility of the outfit in question. It became easier to deploy more mechs around the Doom Guards in order to cover the striker mechs.

By cleverly positioning the Aurora Titans in relation to the Doom Guards, it was possible to form a solid line of mechs that hovered right behind the Doom Guards.

The only caveat was that a single Aurora Titan already cost a fortune!

"What the hell? This overengineered piece of crap that is as slow as slow costs 3 million hex credits to purchase? That's a ripoff!"

"I could buy three Doom Guards for the cost of two Aurora Titans!"

"Who cares about this polarizing module gimmick? Why doesn't the LMC release a cheaper version that skips this useless feature?!"

The glow arms race had already started. The LMC slightly jacked up the price of the Aurora Titan, but not too much considering its margin had already started off high to begin with. This was standard practice for a low-volume, high-margin niche product.

In fact, the LMC had actually dropped its price before when the new mech generation settled in. Now, the mech company reversed its decision as the orders for the product multiplied by a factor of 10,000!

That 'low-volume' description might not apply to the outdated mech model anymore, but the LMC was insistent on retaining its 'high-margin' nature!

In fact, Gavin even suggested that the LMC could still afford to pump up the price of the Aurora Titan to 4 million hex credits!

Ves immediately shot it down.

"Unacceptable! The current price bump can still be excused with reasonable arguments. Jacking it up by another million hex credits will just appear as naked profiteering! No one in the market will be stupid enough to realize that the LMC is just treating them as cash cows. I don't want my mech company to develop so much animosity from our customer base."

His assistant frowned. "I don't understand your obsession with reputation. Many mech companies in your position would have long taken advantage of our unique situation. So what if we exploit our monopoly? There is no right and wrong in business! There is only supply and demand! We offer something that is in huge demand, so it is only proper for us to raise our prices. Even if the buyers hurl insults at us, they will still value our products!"

"It will be ten times harder to build up the high esteem we've accumulated after we have torn it down. The market won't forget our transgressions so easily."

"Frankly, boss, I disagree. Your products will only become more useful over time as you develop your design philosophy further. The LMC's growing success already proves that your mech designs are desirable to a wide portion of the market. We could earn five to ten times as much profit if we actually do something useful with our monopoly!"

As a businessman, Ves agreed with Gavin.

As a mech designer, Ves did not agree with Gavin.

Throughout his career, Ves always considered himself to be a mech designer first. His progression and his desire to realize his ambition surpassed his desire to maximize his money-making potential!

"You don't understand, Benny, but you are not required to. I'm calling the shots here. The price of the Aurora Titan must not exceed the current price barring market-specific complications such as tariffs or surcharges."

Gavin looked disappointed, but Ves took no notice of it at all. This was the perk of being his own boss!

As the Larkinson Clan and the customers of the LMC avidly explored the myriad of interactions between different glows, Ves turned his attention back to his current priorities.

Right now, Ves wanted to finish the Hexer mech design project as quickly as possible. It had already suffered some delays due to all of the excitement surrounding the new Doom Guard design.

However, when Ves returned to the design lab, something else emerged that demanded his attention.

"The recruiters have finished sorting the mech designers who want to work for us?" Ves uttered with surprise.

Gloriana nodded. "I've already taken a brief look at them. They're all pretty good. Most notably, the applicants are all young, educated and vetted. Their personalities are neither too timid nor too arrogant. A considerable amount of them are fans of our work and dream of becoming Larkinsons."

"How many of them are locals and how many of them are foreigners?"

"A disproportionate number of commoners from the Sentinel Kingdom have applied." She explained. "In fact, we even received some applications from some promising nobles, but we rejected them out of hand due to their strong loyalties to their current houses. Despite this, almost a third of the foreigners make up the current list. The best and most confident citizens of neighboring states had to pay a considerable price to travel to the Cinach System. On average, their quality is higher, so we've been able to approve more of them than we thought."

"I see. So all of the prior vetting has been performed, right?"

"Yup. We even tested their integrity with our Bright Warriors. We didn't allow them to pledge an oath. It was enough to see if our clan god approves of them. In fact, we even threw out hundreds of spies and informants after exposing their true nature."

The Golden Cat was Ves' killer weapon against spies and other malicious people! Before her creation, Ves hated the constant infiltration that took place in his organizations.

His obsession with foiling spies and saboteurs was one of the most important reasons why he created the ancestral spirit! Even though he wasn't sure if everything turned out well, he was glad he succeeded in establishing a spiritual network that was intrinsically tied to the Larkinsons.

The existence of Goldie and the Larkinson Network was one of the biggest contributors to the stability of his rapidly-growing clan! Even if the number of adopted Larkinsons surpassed 20,000, there was little sign the newcomers were overwhelming the truebloods!

Of course, good vetting and thorough selection already weeded out a huge amount of unsuitable applicants.

"When will the final selection begin?"

"We can start tomorrow if that is what you want. The mech designers who passed all of our tests are all residing in a nearby hotel."

"Alright." Ves nodded. "Then let's send them a notice to show up tomorrow morning."

"How will we decide which ones to pick?" She asked. "There are a thousand mech designers to choose from. Each of them are desirable in their own way. What will be our criteria?"

Many more mech designers tried their luck, but failed to meet the standards of the LMC. With their current level of prestige, Ves and Gloriana no longer had to set their sights on average Novices and Apprentices.

Only the ones with higher potential deserved their consideration!

Of course, the truly talented mech designers were still scarce. Most of them either found success by starting their own businesses or had already been locked in by other rivals.

Even so, plenty of diamonds in the rough remained.

"Hmm.." Ves rubbed his smooth-shaven chin for a while. "The ones who are most loyal and talented get priority. While I don't particularly care about their design philosophies, we should ensure we have a good amount of variety. I'll also keep my eye out on those with remarkable traits."

He didn't exactly explain the latter to Gloriana. What he truly meant was that he wanted to recruit at least a couple mech designers with spiritual potential!

In a massive group of thousand, reasonably talented mech designers, he refused to believe that none of them had the potential to advance to Journeyman!

Of course, hiring too many of them wasn't necessary. Ves mainly wanted to bolster his design teams right now. Obedience and humility mattered the most in this case. There was no room for egos in his design teams!

"I don't want you to hog all of the mech designers." Gloriana added. "Let me choose as well. I want at least half!"

"Alright, but don't go overboard."

"Incompetence is the last thing I want in my mech designers. By the way, I think we should increase the goal we set. Adding four more design teams sounds rather conservative. I think we can handle double this amount!"

"What?! You want to recruit eight design teams at once? Our Design Department will become a madhouse if we bring in so many mech designers at once!"

"Are you doubting our leadership ability?" Gloriana frowned and crossed her arms. "Our status is incomparable to theirs! Our authority is absolute. What you fear won't come true, especially considering the quality of the remaining applicants."

"I'm not thinking about that. I'm more concerned with the added burden of managing them all. Mech designers can't be led like other professionals. It is already a burden for me to manage the two design teams we have at the moment."

Gloriana shook her head. "That is why you should delegate, silly. Isn't that your favored solution to many of your problems within your company and your clan? Just hand over some authority to Ketis, Miles and anyone else you trust."

He already thought about that. Ves had a lot of doubts about this solution because none of his subordinate mech designers stood out in their management ability. The best out of the bunch was Miles, who already ran his own mech business for a time.

As for someone like Ketis, all she knew was hacking her problems with her greatsword!

"Trust in your people, Ves. They aren't as incapable as you think and they don't need to be coddled. Give them a challenge, and they will rise to the occasion."

While her words sounded wishy-washy, Ves was inclined to agree with her. He had treated his subordinate mech designers like children too much. While their professional capabilities weren't as good as his, they were still adults who worked hard to get to this point.

"I'll consider it." He eventually decided. "Hiring enough mech designers to fill up eight design teams is a rather huge change for us. With the size that we have adopted for our teams, that amounts to 48 mech designers!"

"We might as well round it up to fifty in that case."

"Yeah."

The thought of adding fifty new mech designers to the LMC's Design Department filled him with both dread and anticipation.

As long as he managed to keep them under control, they could contribute immensely to his design efforts!

"Let's see what tomorrow will bring."

Mech designs were vital to mech companies. The LMC had long been constrained by the limited output of mech designs from its undersized Design Department. Now that they were about to rectify this situation, Ves and Gloriana almost couldn't wait!